Looking Away

I’m struggling to watch the news with images and audio clips of children being separated from their parents and family. It’s distressing to all persons watching on regardless of circumstances, sex, nationality, political persuasion or whatever. Almost all adults are hard wired to help when we hear children in distress. It is too much to bear, to see it in the news day on day, how it will end or play out politically I don’t know and the rationale or motivations behind it bear little relevance to those children or some bloke sat in the north of England. 

It sends chills through me. Be clear I’m not trying to compare my experiences with those of families on the other side of the world but I have had my screaming and crying children taken out of my arms against my will and better judgement, I’ve felt small hand’s desperate grip on me as though their lives depended on it and I’ve heard the cries as they’re carried away. The summer of 2007 was a bleak summer we’re haunted by the experience, I should have stopped it but I was unable. My inaction and inability to protect them and us hangs over me more than a decade later.  All adoption and fostering stories are complicated  and ours is no more so others. Like many we’ve given our hearts and futures into the hands of social workers and a system that is essential but flawed. We were cogs in that machine and justice needed to be seen to be done but this justice cared not for little people or us.

I often blog and say nothing of our story and journey though the care system, it’s our story and not a currency to be peddled for hits on my site. I skirt round the facts because they belong to us. However, it’s a story that is present in our every day, my children’s actions and reactions in my motivations and thoughts. 

I turn from the news because I understand what this does to children and adults. Time doesn’t heal this shit, children don’t grow out of it and not remembering isn’t the same as not being screwed up. 

I’m looking away but I am bothered. 



Since posting this events have moved on, however the damage for those children and families is done.