Making the world a tiny bit better
How hard you try as a mother to offer your children a nest, an ideal world. Yes, there are bad guys in books and films, but everything is fine here, you're safe - you explain to them as they snuggle up to you at night. They should grow up in peace and happiness, they will find out about everything else soon enough, they are told. Hopefully when they are big enough.
But are you ever? You can deal with a lot - but sometimes it just seems too much. As an adult, wouldn't you sometimes like to isolate yourself from the brutal reality of world events and live your small, insignificant life in peace? For example, when the world seems to consist only of catastrophes, like now?
Teenagers have to find their own answers. You can't cheat them out of reality.
My children are no longer small. But at the moment I don't know what to say to them about world events. One minute we had the pandemic and the next we have a war of aggression by an insane despot here in Europe. The world has changed overnight - and our children will have to live in this world. That overwhelms me.
How to deal with it? I spoke to a trauma therapist about this. She said that you should explain to children what is going on in the world in an age-appropriate way. Without glossing over it, but also without burdening the children with their own fears. Easier said than done.
It's easier with younger children. You can explain to them that a bad man has invaded another country. You can tell them that they are safe here, that mum will make sure nothing happens to them.
That no longer works for teenagers. They know that neither mum nor anyone else has this situation under control. I can spend a long time trying to exude calm and confidence. The truth is that I don't know how to deal with the situation. Teenagers have to find their own answers. You can't cheat them out of reality.
Doing something helps you to feel less bad.
The proverbial guilty conscience that almost every mum struggles with, and which I thought I had left behind, is now making a comeback. It resurfaces as a kind of shame. Shame for the world in which I have placed my children, full of wars, violence and lies. As if the climate crisis and pandemic weren't enough.
You want the world to be wonderful, peaceful and whole, and you do everything you can to convey this to your children. And now they see with their own eyes that death and suffering never end. This disenchantment is painful. Especially in a situation like now.
You can't do much about it, but you can do a little bit, and that's what I try to teach my children. And doing something helps them to feel less bad. «If you want peace, then you must be peace,» says the Buddhist monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh. It's a sentence you can work with.
Even small gestures help, donating something, for example, demonstrating for peace, seeking community. They may only be small drops in an ocean, but they alleviate the pain. And they help to make the world a tiny bit better.
