Constance Hall's Blog, page 12

Are you ok?

In the past few days I have read some pretty weird shit about you and your family…

Some comments aimed at you have left me thinking… “What actual fucking planet are we on?”

People never cease to amaze me, before they have even caught their breath, grieved for the beautiful gorilla, felt relief at the boy’s safety, they narrow their eyes and search for the most important thing…

Someone to blame..

I went to the Zoo in Melbourne a few weeks ago… I hated every second of it. But fuck who am I to complain, my kid didn’t escape me, fall into a gorilla enclosure and get dragged around like a rag doll, I also didn’t have to come home to comments like “they should have shot the boy” or “I hope the neglectful parents lose custody of their children over this”

So I think the Zoo let me off pretty lightly.

You see, my son Arlo is 4 as well. He was out of my sight about 5 times on that day, I have another kid, a niece and nephew that (kill me) I like to look at occasionally and twin toddlers who basically rule my every moment. So when Arlo sees that I’m busy, he takes it as his opportunity to fuck as far off as he possibly can before he gets caught and dragged back to the pack.

Not once on that day did it ever occur to me that I might turn around and see him in a lion’s mouth or getting dragged through a Gorilla’s swamp, while I know that we are never completely safe from external circumstances, I like to think that a zoo is somewhere that I can tie up my 7 year old’s shoe lace without condemning my 4 year old to death.

But what I really wanted to say to you is not that “I understand”, not that “we have all been there”, not that “it actually could have happened to anyone” because it could have… But what I really want to say to you is… Are you ok? Because I saw the video footage yesterday and I must say, I have barely recovered and that isn’t even my child.

I want to ask you if you have a support network? I don’t doubt that post traumatic stress syndrome could rear its unwanted head here and I want you to know that right now, you need a team. A #queenteam of support to look after you and your boy. Doctors and counsellors and family and friends and wine because you have been through a horrific ordeal and you need to heal.

Not forgetting that nothing beats a good dose of guilt to interfere with the process of moving on.

And to hear your fellow humans shout vile abuse to you over the loss of a gorilla is heart wrenching.

Yes we lost an endangered animal and yes it kills me to see dolphins and Elephants and Lions killed for sport or ivory or any other fickle reason but this? This is completely different.

From one mum to another let me leave this by saying, I love Gorillas and understand the importance in keeping them protected and the whole thing is such a great tragedy, but I would have pulled that trigger myself if it would get my son back into my arms.

Love to you.

Enough

claiming that they must be “not coping or are suffering from depression”.

We have a mental health industry lacking so much funds that real depression is more often than not being ignored.

We have a beauty industry that disguises words like “fat” with “unhealthy” and “old” with “tired” to convince us to buy their pointless products to look “healthy and fresh” (young and thin).

So they are photographing cellulite and tearing down celebrities and exploiting depression to make buckets of money, when mental health has none.

Beauty has been defined by the one industry who can’t afford to tell us the truth… That we don’t need to buy anything because we are so fucking beautiful as we are.

But if we knew that we don’t need creams and weight loss pills and body wraps the industry would collapse and if we all knew how common mental illness really is and how often the suffering is met with closed doors, then we might not see it as gossip. We might not pick up that magazine or click on that story that’s capitalising on a glorious Queen in her bathers, zooming in on her cellulite, assuming it’s a symptom of depression when all it really is a symptom of is a Queen pulling a big fat fuck you finger to the miserable magazines with nothing better to write about than cellulite.

We ARE beautiful as we are, without any products or tablets. Just as we are.

And we don’t need to read that shit to feel better about ourselves.

And mental health needs support and funds, not gossip and bitchiness.

Queensrule.

Beautiful Georgie

Georgie’s mum Sunnie is the most lovely women, her kindness and generosity reaches everyone she meets, she promptly invited me over to her house and I’m not kidding when I say that she was the first (and last) person to ever bake me a cake for my visit. No shit, I almost died, even my mum has never baked me a cake (sorry mum but it’s true).

My dear friend Sunnie’s beautiful boy Georgie amongst other thing happens to have Autism.

When I recently asked her what the biggest challenge of raising a boy with Autism was and she responded that it was the judgements.

Comments like “control your child” and “what’s wrong with him” upset Sunnie so much in the past.

And I was shocked that one of the biggest challenges in a condition that we have no control over was also the one thing that we DO have control over, OUR behaviour.

It didn’t upset her for long, being a wise and resilient mum, Sunnie decided to protect her boy by arming people with knowledge,

she made these cards and kindly hands them out to the people her and Georgie meet.

Sunnie told me that she now never apologises for Georgie’s behaviour, she just hands out these cards and always takes the opportunity to educate anyone on Autism and has such a positive and supportive response.

She told me about a time when Georgie was getting very agitated during a train ride, Sunnie was feeling really uncomfortable expecting people to get upset with him, instead she was blown away by a uni student Queen who said “it’s ok, I’ll play with him” and the two of them had a great time on the train jumping up and down, laughing. Georgie’s happiness is contagious and #queensrule

Amazing Sunnie had the following advice for anyone facing the Autism diagnosis,

Breathe.
Don’t waste your time blaming anyone or anything, don’t waste your time with questions like “why?”, use your time to find out “How” you are going to show your beautiful child the world through their very special eyes.
Make sure Science is backing up any theory or treatment you go with.
Do whatever it takes to make YOU happy, your child will be happy if you are.
Finally, embrace Autism. Be proud of Autism.

And as a mum who doesn’t have a child with Autism, I am so grateful to have friends open enough to share these experiences with me, I learn so much from friends with children who have disabilities and I am so grateful to have friends like Sunnie who are so open about disabilities because I have so many questions but I am always afraid to ask, I was even scared to write this post in case there was something that will offend someone or wasn’t written with the right terms.

But it’s a tribute to a dear friend who has inspired me and so I went ahead with it.

I love the cards she has made, I love that Sunnie has used her strength to change her situation and I love that we can use our Queenliness to improve other people’s experiences while learning more about Autism.