How To Help Your Child Succeed In Life: Part Two

As parents and primary caregivers of children, we must prepare them for life. From the moment they first become ours to nurture and take care of, we have a responsibility (whether we acknowledge it fully or not) to help them both survive and succeed in life. 

In this current series of blogposts, all titled "How To Help Your Child Succeed In Life," I plan to share what I hope will be helpful insights and tips I have (to date) learnt along the way while parenting and mentoring my own young children. I am still very much learning as I go myself, and it is my hope that perhaps what I share may be of help or assistance in some small measure to others.

Just last week my family went on a camp specifically for homeschoolers that focused on imparting homesteading and lifestyle block living skills. We hope to purchase a small rural farmlet soon, and so this camp was one we were thrilled to find online and be able to attend as a household. 

It was a camp put on specifically for Christian homeschooling families, and it was a camp that had both prayerful and practical content each and every day. One of the key takeaway points for me personally, from what was shared over the four days at the camp, was the concept of Thoughtfulness.

Regardless of whether you and your household have a faith belief or not, Thoughtfulness is a concept that is universally highly valued and of tremendous benefit. When it comes to journeying through life alongside others and looking after what is entrusted to us to do or to have stewardship of materially, Thoughtfulness proves to be highly beneficial. 

It became very apparent during the camp that each and every choice we make, whether it be in relation to assembling a farm fence, putting together an off-grid solar panel system or pruning an old heritage pear tree, it all requires Thoughtfulness. 

Thoughtfulness, it can very much determine how successful our child will be going forward through life, both in the short term and the long term, not only with what they say but also with what they do.

Thoughtfulness. As I have chewed over all that was shared over the four days at the camp, I have felt very much that Thoughtfulness is a key concept we need to emphasize more often in our family and our household going forward on through life. I truly believe that Thoughtfulness, in relation to relationships as well as the actual literal practical choices we each daily make, would make a positive difference for us individually and as a family team.

Even a very young child can be encouraged to see how they can practise Thoughtfulness more. Too often we as parents, as their mentors and guides, actually unwittingly encourage our children to in fact be too self-focused. Encouraging a child to see how things said or done, (directly & indirectly) affect those around them, is something that we can do as parents from when they are quite young.

Picking up their toys independently, and receiving positive affirmation about how lovely it is to have them be so grown up about helping Daddy or Mummy keep the floor area safe & clutter-free, is a great starting point towards encouraging Thoughtfulness to grow within a child. 

Letting a small child know how it makes a practical difference time-wise when helping to put the groceries away in the pantry; praising the kindness they have shown when they offer Grandma a cool drink of water when she comes to visit on a hot summer's day ...... when we encourage our children to literally practise Thoughtfulness more & more in relation to those around them, we help them obtain gradually more & more experiences of success in life.

Being thoughtful about choices is a skill that grows over time. An awareness of others takes gradual developmental maturing at a cognitive level. Yet, as parents & caregivers we can encourage and emphasis the positivity and constructiveness that Thoughtfulness offers to a child from even a very young age. 

Affirmation, confirmation and encouragement all aid to build awareness and willingness, when it comes to nurturing Thoughtfulness in one's child. We can affirm a child's choice of kind & thoughtful words. We can affirm a child's choice of caring & thoughtful actions. Most importantly and most effectively, we can model Thoughtfulness ourselves and therefore mentor that very quality in our offspring daily. 

Today I thought I would share a Chart of Life Skills I put together & compiled, that are wonderful for a 3 year old child to work away at mastering. This list of life skills builds on those highlighted in the Life Skills Chart I shared in my previous post, and which you can view here.

What may be as simple an action as picking up their Lego blocks as a preschooler, may one day lead on to them being a thoughtful and responsible employee in a busy industrial setting as an adult. Being able to see the need to keep a workbench safe and hazard free in later life, may well start directly stemming from those lessons taught about keeping their bedside cabinet clutter-free. Learning to guard their words around others, may install such wonderful communication skills they are promoted to a more responsible managerial role within the company they were originally apprenticed to. We simply do not know what the long term constructive outcomes may be, for encouraging even a very young preschooler to practise greater Thoughtfulness.

As parents and caregivers of young children, we can prepare and help our child have greater opportunity for success through life, by keeping the concept of Thoughtfulness always in mind and at the forefront of all day to day decisionmaking. Success is relative to what effort and guidance is gently, yet directly given when parenting, mentoring and guiding our children. Thoughtfulness has the potential to make a very significant difference; it is surely worth nurturing it in our children from now on.

How To Help Your Child Succeed In Life: Part One

As parents and primary caregivers of children we must prepare them for life. From the moment they first become ours to nurture and take care of, we have a responsibility (whether we acknowledge it fully or not) to help them both survive and succeed in life.

How to help your child succeed in life should surely be one of the major reasons we do what we do, as parents and caregivers. We should do our upmost to literally prepare them for life and for being independent functioning adults, and that does take some planning and practical effort, both short term and long term.

One of the things that stands out for me personally as a parent is that I must make every effort to impart actual day to day life skills to my children. Surely, there is no point in encouraging a child to be a top achieving student academically, or to encourage them to excell in some area of particular giftedness that they have (such as in sport or music), and not ensure that they also have the necessary basic life skills to look after themselves. We need to prepare our children with those necessary skills to help provide themselves in later life with food, shelter, sound health and well-being, as well as good social skills for positive relationships and constructive citizenship.

If you are a parent of a child it is absolutely up to you to teach them the basics. We can and must step up and teach our child how to cook, clean, budget, do home maintenance, etc and the sooner we start the better. As a young adult I left home to go off to do tertiary training and I wasn't at all equipped for a number of the real life aspects of home away from home. I barely knew how to use a cheque book and I certainly had no idea how to change a lightbulb or even a car tyre for that matter! Looking back with hindsight I was, quite frankly, rather clueless and ill-equipped on the life skills front.

Looking back, I would have had so much more opportunities and advantages potentially awarded to me if I had been taught an even greater range of life skills, before leaving the family nest. I want to ensure that my own children are far more clued up and far more experienced and practically skilled than I ever was. Yes, it is wonderful to promote academic excellence before your child, but if they have no idea whatsoever about how to properly sort their household laundry, or have never learnt a healthy range of meals to prepare, they will be incredibly ill-prepared for actual daily life!

I expect both my children to have all the basic life skills, regardless of their gender or their natural preference for particular activities. Life really is such that we must prepare a child for day to day life living; regardless of any preconceived social ideas about who should do what or the like.

I personally believe it is most beneficial for my son to be just as good at understanding the practices around cleaning and cooking as my daughter. Likewise, it is beneficial for my daughter to know how to change a tap washer, a car tyre or jump start a flattened car battery. We simply do not know what very skill will prove to make a significant difference in our child's life ahead! We have a responsibility to equip our children, each of them, as much and as best we can for what may be on life's path at a future date.

Some mothers can be their child's worst enemy, with their over-mothering of their children, even through to them being in adulthood. You know the type. There are some mothers who go about after their offspring, regardless of their child's actual age, constantly picking up after them, making their beds, doing all the aspects of their laundry, etc and the result is deemed wonderful because everything looks good and is perfectly in place! Yet, what has really been achieved with regards to actual skill sharing?

How can a young adult not know how to properly make their very own bed or care for their laundry in this the year 2020?! Surely, this would clearly not constitute genuine true success for life, in this current day and age! How can we deem ourselves a parenting success for gifting a child a cellphone and have not set up for them to take full responsibility for paying to run that very cellphone eventually?! We have to put in place that which promotes independence and that which includes good stewardship of all things material and immaterial also.

Yes, we can do things faster and better than a child, yet we have to think beyond the immediate outcome and think further afield down the track. We simply must train our children up in the way they will eventually go. We want them to be independent and functioning human beings, who show thoughtfulness literally to others, via their contributions. We surely want our children to not be helpless and dependent on others. We surely want our children not to be sadly placed in a position later in life of being easily exploited for their ignorance or lack of ability or skill!

There are many skills we can impart to a very small child, that will hold them in good stead. Surely we want that for them when they themselves are one day an adult, have their very own household, and are out interacting independently in the wider world.

I would like to share some ideas about teaching a child life skills, over the next little while, via this very blog. There are skills that can be taught, and that are age specific, that we as parents can share with even very young children. I sincerely hope what is shared will both encourage and inspire other parents & caregivers, when it comes to training up and skilling their children for success in life.

I am still very much on the journey myself, when it comes to parenting and training up our young children. However, I genuinely hope by sharing some insights all learnt along the way, and by sharing some helpful tips that have worked well for our household, that it might prove encouraging and helpful for others also in a similar season of life with young children.

Life skills take time to learn and master. Some can often prove to be quite complex skills that require much simpler steps to be initially grasped by a child first.

Everything from waterplay, with some nonbreakable dishes, can help install in a child the basic skills needed for life going forward. What was once simply waterplay can lead to washing and drying the nightly dishes, or even eventually taking responsibility for loading and unloading the dishwasher.

We have to start with simple basic skill sharing. We have to practice immense patience as we repeatedly model and guide, and eventually each individual skill gets learnt and mastered for growing complexity and success. We can literally teach our children to have success in life by developing their independence and dexterity in a range of diverse practical day to day life skills!

As a parent I can promote open communication with my children as we go about learning each new skill, and we can discuss the benefiting consequences that result when the particular skill has been fully mastered. I have personally found that my children grasp life skills so much better, when the reasoning behind what is taught to them is explained in ways that they can understand. They remember it better, and they understand why we do what we do and how we do it, when time is taken to get it right from the outset. What is done with intentional thoughtfulness and care, often proves to be done eventually with excellence and noticeable immense skill.

How to help your child succeed in life? It can begin as early as training up a two year old to master some very basic skills.  As I explained to my young ten year old son very recently, the very same principles that apply for putting away his soccer ball and keeping it out of the rain and sun after playing with it, are also those that would help him potentially look after a large commercial grade farming tractor, should he choose to own one at a much later date. Both items can suffer damage if not looked after properly, and it takes thoughtfulness and conscious effort on his part to keep all his personal property in good order.

Go for it and help your child succeed in life today, by starting the new year with a simple and age appropriate system of chores being set up and implemented across your whole household. The legacy of skilling our children with day to day life skills, will benefit our descendants potentially for generations upon generations to come. We can help a child succeed in life, beginning today.

Mothers Have Feelings Too

She often gives all day. Then every so often she also gives all night. As a mother, you often burn the candle at both ends to do the very best by your loved ones. This can be at considerable cost to your own time, energy levels and overall well being. Those around you can come to be somewhat expectant, even somewhat blase, that Mama will fill in the gaps, respond without question and make all the boo boos go away.

I will always remember the first moments of seeing each of my children for the first time and how there was this immediate love-at-first-sight experience that occurred, and that it really was quite overwhelming.

Those little tiny fingers, those little purple wrinkled feet... they were hands-down the most gorgeous of things to ever see! You fall head over heels in love, and your heart and your head become committed to living henceforth with the best of intentions to meet the needs of this precious gift of a little person.

Yet, today I want to talk about what may be the not so great stuff of mothering. The stuff of mothering where that precious little bundle grows up and develops, and begins to step out into the bigger, wider world.... and eventually they start to repeatedly test your patience.

They start to really stretch your willingness to hold back from applying a kick to the backside that would launch them out into the wider solar system to never return, because they have repeatedly answered you back and yet again defied your instructions and directives.

You know what I am meaning, right? There are occasions where that precious bundle of joy has completely disappeared to be replaced by a stroppy, uncooperative defiant little monster and you are tearing your hair out and perhaps considering taking up drinking or consuming secret stashes of chocolate (that is if you haven't already, lol!).

Sometimes mothering and parenting another little human being just doesn't seem to match up and qualify as the world's greatest and most rewarding job, as much as we like to say it is.

Sigh. Kids!

Most if not all mothers have those occasions where your child or children forget that actually YOU (the Mama right in front of them) have feelings. YOU have needs, and this very Mama is not just here on planet earth solely to act as cook and maid, as well as chauffeur or general dogs body, so every other household members universe keeps ticking over beautifully. Mothers have feelings too!

Recently I contributed what little extra time I had (and some!) to a church social media project and the outcome of what I was creating was coming together to be great. It looked amazing. It had potential to work brilliantly, and it was very satisfying to see each aspect come together really well.

Then I got a message to shelve it. That's right, a message was handed on to me to shelve it, after literally weeks & weeks of working committedly on it, into what was sometimes the small hours of the night. There were second thoughts obviously about it, and I was told to shelve it. Without going into all the details of how this shelving was handled, and what statements I was quoted as allegedly having made about it's shelving, I was wounded. A wrong was committed, and I was at the receiving end of this wrong, and it hurt.

Mothers have feelings too.

It had cost me considerable time to do the project, and I had been very faithful in my commitment to doing it from start to finish, and beyond. Yet, due to what was obviously a second thought about it from a church leader, I was told to abandon it and drop it, and I was left feeling that my efforts and time were overall treated shabbily.

This may well not at all have been the intention (who can ever really know what is really behind another person's words or actions at times), but this experience of being somewhat flippantly and obviously wrongfully spoken about, after giving sacrificially behind-the-scenes for so many weeks, caused a stir for me on the wounded feelings front.

To make matters worse, it was left somewhat to perhaps be implied that I had chosen to abandon the project and encourage others not to pursue its final launch, when this was simply not true. I had been instructed to abandon it, and to put aside all that I had been sacrifically putting in to it, and this all very much felt like this came at me from left field. A wrong was put in place, and it wounded me deeply.

How others can wound us so thoughtlessly at times, doesn't make sense sometimes, does it?

It can be so completely obvious why some words or some particular actions WOULD be hurtful and wounding to most normal people, yet the one carrying out the wounding remains somehow in the dark and somehow so thoughtlessly clueless. It just doesn't seem to make reasonable and rational sense that they could, right? Yet this stuff happens.

Mothers have feelings too.

My children one by one came to realise that Mama was quietly hurting over something. My daughter picked up on it first. Perhaps because she herself is a creative individual, and a giver and a helper by nature herself. She could perhaps relate sooner than other household members to how I was feeling about having my efforts plus time undervalued, squashed and somewhat stood on.

It felt like my husband just remained for some time in his own little bubble of a world and that he just couldn't understand what was "the big deal." As long as he saw the house being kept, the children's needs being met, his world and reputation were not directly personally rocked, so any feelings I may or may not have had about the situation and how it had panned out, could be at best somewhat ignored. It wasn't a big deal, right?

What's the big deal???

Mmmmm, that's always a loaded question to ask a person who is dealing with feeling wounded and is quietly hurting at the hand of someone else's words or actions.

What's the big deal??

The big deal is that time and energy were spent on an additonal extra commitment undertaken, and these clearly appeared to be not valued. The big deal is that my work ethic and practice, my ability to support & honour leadership, my reputation and personal character was being potentially painted to be questionable, all at the orchestration of others and also beyond my control. My name was being linked with the reporting of a circumstance that was not true in depiction or entirety. This greatly saddened & wounded me.

So often as mothers we give so wholeheartedly to those around us, and at some considerable cost to ourselves, and due to that, the ability for them to actually wound and hurt us increases to a level that they just don't realise has perhaps occurred, or in fact exists.

They just don't perhaps fathom as fast as they should that any additional extra wound inflicted can in fact be one that really does cuts us deeply. This perhaps occurs because for a good proportion of our daily mothering lives we are already letting other frustrations and wounds inflicted upon us wash off us like water on a duck's back.

As a mother we have had to have thicker skin daily, for the sake of loving and parenting a child well. Yet behind this thicker skin is still a person who has feelings. In the role of 'Mother', a woman just had to hide her feelings away a little more so, for the sake of being in the role of  'Mother.'

Unlike a police officer, or others who were a uniform in a role of authority, 'Mother' doesn't often get to take her uniform off so often at the end of any given day. Instead, she can be placed in the position of constantly being on duty as 'Mother' from dusk and dawn and more!

Mother. She can give all day and often through the night also.

A mother is a vulnerable being. It can literally cost her some of her health. Her body is often never the same after carrying and birthing a child. It just simply isn't chemically the same, and is often visibly physically never the same either. There is an element of great sacrifice from the moment of conception that a mother makes for the sake of her child.

A mother is a sacrifical time giver. She will choose to put aside some of her life and her time to ensure that her child is helped. That is time and life that can not be gotten back. It is time she gives often, frequently & for the most part very, very willing. It is also time occasionally that she will give regardless, even when her will or her achy shoulders would like to tell her not to.

Mothers have feelings too.

A kind word. A compliment. A small child's big hug and smooching kiss and "I love you, Mummy!" can make all the difference on a daily basis to how a mother is able to keep on her game energy-wise.

It can be just the ticket to help her keep her feelings in check, so that she CAN ride out the other not-so-great-moments of sheer pushing through on her part.

A spouse or partner who chooses to go out of his way to make sure Mama IS getting some time back, and IS getting some energy back, is a bloke worth his weight in gold.

Mothers have feelings too!

Mothers will often give beyond what others at times will give. They will often invest in people and projects that others would simple give up on, or even feel weren't worth doing.

A mother will often back the horse that everyone else thinks will always cross the finish line last, because that IS what a mother will do.

Mothers have feelings too. It is that wonderful base of feeling and emotion that oils the wheels of her mothering and her parenting, and which makes a child feel both safe & loved, and able to step out into the world from. Coming to the realisation though that their mother has feelings too, will be the making of a child also.

Knowing and realising that mothers have feelings too, would certainly perhaps help keep the world a better place always. Knowing and acknowledging that mothers have feelings too, ensures for us all that a small child who will in fact become an adult one day, will perhaps be a little less likely to insensitively wound another. Mothers indeed simply do have feelings too.

Diligence

To Fail Or Not To Fail

Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do, you fail. For years I have fought this inner sense of failure, all stemming at the root of it from a comment my father once made about me when I was a teenager. This inner sense of failure, of not being good enough, not being able to measure up no matter what you do or say, is incredibly binding once it latches on and takes seed.

You can do all that you can, go all out to try & achieve, go all out and work hours that others would think were humanly impossible or practical, and yet the sense of failure can still lurk or even literally manifest itself as actual failure and act as a heavy leaded milestone you just cannot shake off.

Words have incredible power. They truly do give life or death. They can tear down or build up. They have the power to bless and the power to curse. As a parent now myself, I am committed to never placing such a curse over my own children as was unwittingly and insensitively placed over me.

It can seem at the time to the speaker that the words spoken don't seem to bear much, but they can actually bite really hard and deep into the soul of the person hearing them. I myself know firsthand how much hurt can become attached to a flippant comment made by a parent or figure of authority and how, even many years later, it can resound in the inner ear of the mind when a situation triggers it being remembered.

Today I was busily working away at the computer working on the next video in a series I wanted to upload on the Household Logistics Channel. I had the video already to be exported to be uploaded and BAM! Things failed. The external hard drive that all the various individual video and photography clips were stored on, as well as the actual completed video itself, all in an instant became locked away and unable to be accessed and retrieved. FAILURE.

The hard drive which I had placed my complete trust in had failed me. No matter what I tried to do, or what my IT professional husband tried to do, the hard drive was not going to work and the outcome was systematic and total failure to launch. FAILURE.

Literally hours and hours of time, energy and resources are tied up in something that by all accounts has failed. Sometimes it truly seems that no matter what you do, you fail.

And so I have to wait. I have to wait to see if the hard drive will in fact allow for the files to be recovered from it, when it is seen by a recovery specialist on Monday. If not, I have lost literally a week's worth of work. I am currently gutted and frustrated beyond frustrated, because there is simply nothing I personally can do to rectify the situation. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do, you really do fail.

Everyone fails at some point. For those of us who constantly seem to have repetitive experiences that reinforce our inner sense of failure, failure however little it might seem to others, has an extra harsh dimension to it. When you have heard yourself deemed a failure, as someone who is not going to amount to much, by an authority figure or figure of significance in your life, the ability to always bounce back from yet another failure may not always kick in as fast or as well as it would perhaps for someone else.

Some people do not have to battle an inner battle about a sense of failure like others do. They can let a failure wash off their back quite easily, compared to others of us who have scars and wounds related to failure already in existence.

Dealing with failure takes skill and inner strength. That inner strength has to be nurtured and it is best nurtured in our children when they are young. As parents we have a responsibility to be our child's best and first advocate. We have a responsibility to strengthen their inner selves, to build the foundation and platforms for their inner soul to bounce from when life hits them hard and fast. It takes thought and time to encourage our children, and it is time and effort worth investing in.

And so I wait and face as best I can Failure, this current sense of failure, head on.

I have to wait until early next week to hear the news about this latest current failure I am dealing with. I am trying not to spiral downward with the sense that yet again, this is something I tried to do and yet it was destined to fail, because reality and rationality say that there really is no such thing as a curse lurking over my external hard drive.

Still, I would like to go back in time if I could, and I would tell my teenage self that life is challenging, but no one, (not even I) will not amount to very little. I would like to tell that young person that somehow you will have the strength to pull yourself up time and time again, and you will ride out your failures, even if it takes a little longer sometimes than other people may take.

We ourselves can speak light into our dark places, and we can succeed even when we fail, because we can choose to step up once again, even when we feel yet again letdown and failure lurks yet again all too familiarly at our door. We can each succeed at journeying through our failure, no matter what anyone else may say, and we can journey through it well.

Trauma

How much trauma can a child's heart take? That is the question that runs through my mind often at present.

As a parent, I feel angry. I feel frustrated.

At present, I struggle to not run on to the farmland I daily see, just out there on the horizon, past my own home. I struggle to not run, and not gasp at air and not fall down heavily to my own knees, out on that farmland. To let a wail creep out from my own heart, and burst out, pouring from my own lips.... it is becoming something of an inner personal struggle.

How much trauma can my child's heart literally take?

I will always remember this child's face contorted with anger at being thrust into a world of harsh light and cold, having been incubated in the six star hotel of my womb. Having not grown for a month, within that very warm and perfect-for-her-hotel, she appeared angry and wild at being thrust out into another whole new world that potentially could, and would, prove to be not so perfect.

This same child, in turn and in time, would have significant respiratory issues lurking in her Pandora's Box called Life. We would face together: the grief of classmates lost because she no longer was able to attend school and needed instead to be schooled at home, and the constant repetitive issues that respiratory weaknesses would thrust upon her. Missing out on regular or even special events because of her respiratory health issues, would often create another heartache for us both.

Somehow amongst these losses, a love, a sense of kinship even, would develop for animals. First a cat, then another became part of our family. Some rescued chickens, then a family of rabbits... then a kitten, then a rescued dog. They would all become companions, become family members, and this child would grow stronger gradually healthwise with time also.

Yet trauma. Ugly, revolting trauma has kept lurking quietly. Ready to bite. Ready to hiss and spit at this very child. This very child, who is my child.

From the farmland no doubt, would come what looked to be a planted disease. A disease that would wipe out a whole family of much loved English Angora rabbits, one by one.

One by one.

So quickly. So tragically quickly. One by one each, so terrribly, terribly quickly, would they weaken and quietly suffer. They would weaken and seek the freedom given by death. So horribly and so revolting quickly.

I stayed out that Watch, such a horrible Watch, and was there when some would finally move from this life to the next. My child too, several times, saw this happen and was gently talked through it. Love makes you not abandon.

It was all too quick this particular trauma. This horrible, disgusting, revolting firsthand experience of repetitive, far too quick trauma wounded my child terribly. Deeply. Dreams are still dreamt. Words are still spoken now. Even now, words and artwork reveal and tell how much her heart literally still often aches for her beloved rabbits.

The death of each chicken, five out of a brood of six, over time due to age or just some natural cause over the years would add some heartache also. Why does this thing called death, which so unrelentingly attached to life, have to touch that which we each love and cherish so deeply when we are in the season of childhood?

As a parent... Sigh, I try to guard my words from become profane. It is a struggle, not too rain down revolting words within the universe, because my own heart aches with its own grief and despair plus that attached to seeing my child's heart ache with grief also.  My heart aches for my child, who so deeply feels each of these traumas that keep coming her way. She loves so fully, so deeply, each and all of her furry and feathered friends.

Now, it is her cat. Her beloved, much loved cat. The one that would sit close at hand, wrapped up, still and quiet resting close to her, that is now missing. It is her cat, that has and is becoming a source of another potential horrible, aching trauma.

No sight. No familiar sound. He has disappeared. He is gone.

We wait.

With each and every passing day, we wonder, both silently and not so silently about where he is. I watch her face contort again, every so often, with the pain of heartache. The ever underlying worry. The ever underlying anxiety passes seen. It shows me that it is there, as she wonders about where he is; what is happening for him.

My own mind tries to keep doors shut. It tries to keep doors from opening. Doors that have images that are dark, horrid and undesired.

I simply don't want to explore the thought that he has or is being tormented, because there are stories of such happening for real. I don't want to see or consider that he is being held against his will by some sicko. I just plain don't want to think there is anything dark or sinister behind this much loved pet's current absence from hearth and home.

As I bush-bashed my way yesterday through tall overgrown grasses on farmland, with a towel at hand, I called out and named this feline, who is essentially for us a missing child. I sought to find even a body, to it bring home, so my child's and my own heart could properly grieve if need be.

The lurking sense of dread and lack of closure builds with each passing day.

Prayers keep being sent.

Some measure of whispered hope keeps being spoken, as I stand so often in the cool of night listening and wondering at present.

Come home, Cat. Come home.