Sunday, November 25, 2012

Please help

We are off to India in January for 3 weeks. All the kids, my Mum, tBG and me.

I think we're going to have an awfully big adventure. Half the people I speak to think it will be a terrible adventure, the other half think it will be a wonderful adventure. Everyone agrees that it will be challenging on many, many levels.

One of the challenges we've anticipated will be the poverty. What to do about the beggars, how to do it without feeling heartless and unkind, how to do it without supporting a ruthless industry, how to do it without ignoring pain and suffering, how to do it and stay ok in our hearts.

We've talked to the children about what they may see, we've watched a stack of travel shows and read blogs and looked at pictures, they understand that India is very very different to Australia. But they don't know it. It's not in their bones and nor in mine.

So what we've decided to do is to make a difference while we're there by funding an organisation that works in the community, with the community. We're raising money for Seva Mandir and then when we're in Rajasthan we'll get to meet some of the people who work for the organisation and give them the money we've raised. We'll be providing funds for non-formal education centres, or for an immunisation program like this one, or maybe to help fund healthcare for women and children.

I've set up a My Cause page. If you can, I'd really appreciate your help in raising funds for this.
I want our kids to see that we can help, that we can make a difference. Not just be tourists.

No donation is too small, not when the wage for an agricultural worker in Rajasthan is less than 100INR per day ($1.80 USD, $1.70 AUD) ... and women get paid less.

Please visit http://www.mycause.com.au/mycause/raise_money/fundraise.php?id=55535 and help us help others.



Friday, November 2, 2012

10 years ago

10 years ago I was 10 weeks pregnant with my own best Little Guy.

Today, instead of writing a paper like I should have been, I was trawling through iVillage archives and finding all the posts I made from 2002 onward in the forums there, documenting my pregnancy adventure. Copying/pasting them, into a diary of sorts, and remembering how I felt. It's bizarre going so far back in time and reading old younger me. I was so sad at first when I got pregnant. I spent the first 8 weeks crying about it. TLG was completely unplanned and I was preparing to leave my XH when we got pregnant. And so when I discovered it I felt so incredibly trapped and forlorn   Also, the hormones just about killed me with moodiness.  But once I hit the 8 week mark I felt beatific instead of sad. And I stayed like that the rest of the pregnancy.  Delighted, wondrous, happy beyond compare.

How I wish I had been able to experience that again.  This time I wouldn't have been at all sad, not one tiny bit.  But no matter how hard I wish, how much I want it, it's just not happening.  Mostly I'm ok. Sometimes I'm completely not.

Today, not.

Truthfully internet, some days even looking at pictures of baby Little Guy makes me cry, he was so small for such a short time, and now he's all big and I'm terrified of losing him. What about when he stops cuddling and kissing me with love.  He still does, but I know that the time is drawing ever closer when he pulls back.  I don't want him to.  I'll be lost without his affection.  And what about when he gets older and marries.  What if his wife doesn't like me? What if she won't let him see me? How will I live with that? Then the other day, my Mum offhandedly said something about daughters being the ones who look after their aged parents.  I don't have a daughter. What about when I'm an old old lady, will tLG visit me and do all the things I see my Mum doing for her Mum, will he care? It breaks my heart to have him growing up and away from me.