'How to tell a story with one image?' by Pamela

I found it today.

 

A huge willow woven heart

(In local craft shop window)

Called me over,

Across the white and black

Of the zebra crossing.

Huge willow woven heart

Beat loud enough

To command my entry  

Into the Beauty of Many Hearts.

Orange and green made-from-felt hearts,

Red- woolly- knitted hearts,

Ceramic- glass- turquoise hearts,

Recycled- materials hearts,

Ruffled- multi- textured hearts,

Glittery- hearts,

Hanging- on- a- thread- hearts.

Well, it is two days before

Valentines Day.

Then I found it,

Or did it find me?

I knew we were meant to meet immediately

In a basket of lesser hearts,

(No disrespect meant

But somehow,

In comparison,

They were…

Small and nondescript.

To me, anyway.)

There it was.

I found My Very Own Heart

Large Black Felt Heart

Edged and held together with

Red wool blanket stitches.

Scattered shiny red buttons

Of various sizes,

All round, with four small black holes

Stitched on

With red cotton.

What else

Was On my Very Own Heart

That tells my whole story?

Red embroidery thread on black felt,

Describes red feathers…

Or are they leaves?

Small red beads as berries,

Holly or rowan or both.

In the centre…

In the very centre…

Oh joy of joys…

White Thread Bird.

Dainty white stitches for curly tail,

Open wings and beak

Lined with small fluffs

Of white felt.

Delicately beautified with

White pearl and

Gleaming silver beads.

A Bird of Peace.

As if that were not enough,

In between 

Two upper black felt curves

(Which shape any heart,

Though not always edged with

Red wool blanket stitches)

There was

A small red heart

Within 

Large Black One.

It’s purpose was to hold in place

A white hanging ribbon.

In delight..

I held the ribbon

So

Black Heart hangs from the heavens

On a shaft of white silver light.

Beneath,

At the bottom point

Which every heart may reach…

Were two small silver bells.

If Black, Red and White Heart

Were shaken,

Silver bells sing.

I left the shop

Called ‘Beautify Me’

With my Valentines Heart

It is how I would like to end my story.

'The Feast of Life' by Sheila

At the feast of life I feel as if I have gorged myself whilst others starved. 

 I live in the most beautiful place, I have a wonderful family and a fabulous lifestyle. I have been a mother for 27 years, an autonomous home schooler for 20 years and a foster carer for 10 years. The youngest of my four children will be 16 next week, and I have a very loving relationship with all my family. 

There has been a lot of luck involved of course, but luck is also what you make of it. My husband and I have shouldered crises that would have finished many couples. We are stickers! We have made all our own bread for over 20 years, even taking it on holiday. Perhaps it is the bread that has kept us both so healthy.

Now I stand at the threshold that all parents reach - I am no longer a parent of children. My role of 27 years is drawing to a close, I have space in my agenda. Having had my spirit fed so plentifully for so long I yearn to give something back, to support other families and nurture other children, to share some of the wisdom that I believe I've accumulated. I have written a book and I have been trying to get myself out there, but it's hard. I have a soft underbelly; and I'm scared. How easy it would be to withdraw, claim to have tried and failed. Get on with my luxurious life. But I have spent years gorging myself at the feast of life whilst others have starved and if I don't do something I will be ashamed.

Maybe I could open up my home. I have a spare bedroom and space for campers, I could run courses, or support groups, at the very least I could show people how to bake bread and make peanut butter. If someone with my awareness and good fortune can't give back who can?

Desire and fear course through my veins in equal measure, as Mumford says “If my enemy was bigger than my apathy I could have won!”

'Diggers and Dreamers' by Pamela

These days we try to create community on computers.

I will imagine us all sitting warming our hands and cheeks around a fire on the screen. It is glowing orange and red on a cold and windy black night. We snuggle up to our mouse to ‘google search’ a wide view of a starry sky.

Sitting around a real shared fire was more my idea of community when I moved to the countryside almost twenty years ago…and we did. You know, with wood and streaming eyes from the smoke. Well, not on cold and windy black nights…in fact only on warm and balmy summer nights. Survival did not depend on whether the chocolate had melted properly around the bananas wrapped in aluminium foil (placed carefully in the glowing embers of the fire). That was after the chicken thighs had eventually been cooked in the indoor kitchen oven. It had taken the barbecue too long to either burn to a cinder or leave the centre pink and raw.

The ideals of ‘back to nature’ were always pitched against the reasons human beings had invented technology to make most things easier. I discovered that young, fit and full of energy were the main requirements to living sustainably.

Our young earnest couple who lived in a caravan in the middle of a large field had a vision of converting the world to pumpkins ( they came from Australia) They wanted to fill the field with pumpkins and make pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, pumpkin smoothies etc. to sell at festivals and eventually have their own Pumpkin Restaurant. He then tragically had a stroke, in his early thirties, becoming partly paralysed.. Pumpkin Dream Ended. So did their marriage. Like I said, young fit and full of energy is the main requirement to ‘working with nature’.

Any age, shape and fitness can sit on the computer and talk to the rest of the world. As my teenage children do…even on a warm and balmy summer evening when I would much prefer they came and ate melted chocolate on mushy hot bananas.

When they were younger, the chocolate was a strong enough pull to have them sitting out and enjoying poking a stick into the fire, or even better melting a pink marshmallow in the flames, so the outside went dark and crunchy and the inside was soft and gooey. But not now, as teenagers, addiction to face book, tweeting etc, are even stronger than addiction to sugar.

So why am I telling you this slightly cynical tale?

I guess I have become more of a realist since my dream to ‘live in the country’ began twenty or so years ago. 

My new husband and I (both in our mid thirties) researched many communities around Great Britain, from a book called ‘Diggers and Dreamers’ The title was to show that there were different kinds of people attempting to make new pioneering ways of life Those who tend to focus on the here and now practical things that need doing (diggers) and those who see the vision and hold the dream of new possibilities (dreamers). I was definitely in the dreaming section. Fortunately husband is enough of a digger for a balance.

How many times have I crashed from the idealism of how humanity might be to the pain and grief of how we actually are?

The fights over where the fire was to be built, by whom, from what and where?

Power politics and fixed opinions create just as much conflict within a community of environmentalists in rural West Wales  as well…anywhere else. It did eventually lead me to train as a mediator in my endeavour to see how we can respect and meet each others needs. It had not been my idea of idyllic ‘life in the country’ for war to be waged over where the ducks can splosh around without putting diverse wildlife at risk. 

In fact, I would say that the last twenty years of living the dream  have slowly but imperceptibly transformed this dreamer. I hope not into a cynic, but one who has developed a reality check of time, patience, endurance, and practical application required to do just about anything.  

We need each other, to overcome why the google search for ‘community sitting under a starry night’ ended up with a ‘no connection…please try again’.

Even computer communities have their problems.  

[Click here to visit the Diggers and Dreamers website if you are interested in exploring intentional communities and alterntaive living in the UK ]

'A Day of Revelation' by Suzanne

Being part of this project has been a revelation to me.

I am many things, a mother, an emerging artist, a homemaker, writer, student, though many times the home bit takes over. My life is a constant balancing act, and sometimes it feels like I am only doing the mundane, necessary things. However, spending a day with a photographer and film-maker made me see my life in a whole new way.

The images are of me in my home environment, but the simple fact of being seen, being acknowledged, even in a simple way by someone taking a photograph, brings such a beauty to this.

 Many of us within the home feel a sense of invisibility, as we go about our daily tasks often unseen.

The process of being seen, through an experience like this, brings a new value and focus to the seemingly everyday things we take for granted, but actually do have immense value in the bigger picture. It makes me realise that although I do creative work, the work in the home is also a part of this. This only became clear to me today.

'The beginning of our story' by Angie

So, I thought it may be a good idea to write a little more about the journey that has been taken for me to get here, beautiful west Wales.

 I think it is important to say a fair bit about the challenges and celebrations I have experienced being the mum of a child who is (sometimes) disabled. The impact that this has had on my other child, my husband, myself and friends and family. I say 'sometimes' because Molly is only disabled when attitudinal or physical barriers are put up in front of her. She has and always will have learning difficulties but she is not disabled by them. She is disabled by people being unwilling to accept, welcome, include or involve her. Or people refusing to adapt activities in order for her to take part. Happily, we have had an incredible welcome and experience since being here. For example, everyone (bar one) we have met have instantly accepted Molly for who she is and not asked us intrusive questions like "oh, what's wrong with her?"

She already goes to a kayaking group at our local swimming pool once a week. The young people working there welcomed her unconditionally, they were open and happy to allow Molly to use the kayak in the way that was comfortable for her. There is no pressure for her to do what everyone else is doing or in the same way. Such is their inclusive and welcoming attitude that they took the time to forward us details of other acitivities they thought molly may enjoy. 

Tonight we are trying out another local activity. A local venue, provides (free of charge) an opportunity for anybody and everybody to go along and make music. there are no restrictions on what 'music' is. You can play/use an instrument, use your voice, a stick, the floor, your body - what ever feels right for you. i chatted with the woman who facilitates the session last night . I did not label Molly in our conversation but i did explain that it is unusual to find activities that are welcoming to people who perhaps need real freedom to express them-selves and she really understood what I meant. Tomorrow evening we're trying out an African drumming group. Oh yeah, and, Molly is also going swimming with her WONDERFUL PA/friend Fran each Thursday with other families we have made friends with through the Home Education tribe.

 

The only disablist attitude we have encountered here was at a specialist service youth club. We were 'sign posted' to it by the social worker who was helping us apply for Direct Payments for Molly. In the past we have steered clear of specialist services, holding the strong belief in inclusion and therefore opting for non specialist options (there's loads of stories attached to that comment). So, anyway, to cut a long story short...

We arrived with Molly to a not particularly enthusiastic welcome (and I will say at this point that despite our historical choices we entered into this experience with openness and a desire for it to be right for Molly) we went ahead and got chatting with various people. Molly was great, she explored the new environment, sat with the other young people there to have a cup of tea, stayed within the boundaries (that is, she didn't wonder off outside) and was generally appearing to have a positive time. However, about 20 mins into the visit I was then introduced to the youth leader who proceeded to tell me she didn't think the group was right for molly and that they couldn't meet her needs! Shortly afterwards (I won't go into any more details), Molly was ready to leave and we never went back. Molly has not mentioned it since, so I know from experience she is therefore not interested in going again. 

I have described that experience  to demonstrate the difference an attitude makes. By making the statement she made, the youth leader was instantly excluding a young person she knew nothing about, had met only 20 minutes previously and made no attempt to ask her, me or Rob for our knowledge and expertise. She put up that barrier I mentioned earlier and disabled Molly. 

And of course the positive and the negative experiences I have just described were not new to us coming here. They have been a part of our lives from the moment Molly was labelled.

 

Fortunately, we chose a path of inclusion, instinctively, but also really importantly because we became a part of a network of parents who believed in and fought for inclusion. I trained with and worked for that network, an organisation called Parents for Inclusion who provided support to parents of disabled children wanting their child to be included in mainstream school/activities and who were experiencing barriers to that happening. And there are 18 years worth of stories here, but for now, I really want to focus on our move to west wales from more recent times.

We had talked and dreamed about selling up in London and moving to the country to be self sufficient and live gently on the earth for years. We had tried a couple of times. The first time we thought the Brighton area would be a good compromise, we looked at properties but actually the truth in the end was we were not ready to leave London or our network of support , we were still learning how to cope with the barriers being thrown at us.

 

Some years later we considered Hebdon Bridge, because it had a reputation for being an open minded community and I had parent contacts from my work, even a job offer. We put our house on the market and travelled up to Hebdon Bridge with a pile of property details. We weren't able to find a property we really liked and on the last viewing I had a wave of panic and had to get back to London as fast as our little Combi could manage. It took us about 8 hours to drive back, plenty of time to talk through my panic, our dreams and what our next steps were going to be. 

As it turned out, our next steps were confronting those things we were still finding difficult and working out what we needed to change. The first major change was opting for Education Otherwise. Oh yes! And what a triumph that was. Not without it's own challenges and upsets but the doors that kept opening up for us once we started to seperate ourselves from the system was FANTASTIC. Both Molly, and we, at last had the freedom to learn in ways that were meaningful to Molly, respectful of who she is, without pressure, without being impossibly graded and labelled, at her own pace. She was at last enabled to make real choices (by that I mean choices that were actually meaningful to her) experience supported independence and boy did she flourish - we all did. 

I apologise to my son on a regular basis that we had not opted for home education for him - we didn't even know we could when he was going through the system. He, Jake, had his own struggles at school. Mainly that he was not being allowed to express his developing identity, he recognised so many of the rules and regulations were nonsense, he witnessed and experienced, himself, injustices carried out by those people whom he was 'supposed' to respect - dying his hair pink and wearing a piercing under his lip was a punishable offence and he was made to sit alone in a room all day. He was told his appearance would hinder him ever getting a decent job, in a bank for example! Well, "thank goodness" he, and we thought! So, once again Jake - "sorry"!  

Joking apart, I do wish I'd known I had the right to educate my children outside of the school system sooner than I did . At least I was able as a parent to support my children through the trials of school and I hope, I believe, I enabled Jake to grow with a strong understanding of human rights (he did also bare witness to the struggles we had in fighting for his sisters inclusion) - he did in fact go on to study and achieve a degree in Human Rights! 

The other interesting change happening in our lives was that the friendship group Molly had grown up with actually began to disperse as they all got older. We had hoped for and spent years nurturing, with the support of the parents of those friends, the relationships and friendships to have longevity. For many years there was a lot of getting together, sleep overs, party's, trips to panto etc. But none of that secured the friendships into the teenage years. In fact, what happened was her 'best' friend eventually totally ignored Molly and her neighbourhood gang were all off out doing teenage stuff which Molly could not access without support. In amongst that though she was still able to 'do stuff' and had a busy, happy time of it. That was only possible however with eventually being able to access Direct Payments. Thank god for Direct Payments!! (Yes, another story is there in waiting). 

By the time we left London Molly had been going to Peckham Shed (AMAZING inclusive theatre group) for years and loved it, a cycling club every week and had a pool of 4 wonderful Personal Assistants with whom she went shopping, swimming, to festivals, to cafe's or just hanging out. So, you may be thinking "why did you leave London when things were working well?"

To be continued......