Life After Pain (A Walk Everyday May Blog)

  Hi Dragonflies, When I used to go to my father when I was upset as an adult and confided in him with my struggles he would always say, "You never learned to self-soothe!" For a long time I partly believed in what he said and wondered what was wrong with me. It wasn't until I lived with my husband that I started to realise that if this were true (which it is not) then why is the blame put on me? It is the job of the parent to teach a child to self soothe and instead my father neglected me whenever I needed him and when I turned to him on the rare occassions as an adult he would use this line on me so he didn't have to help me and so he could deflect blame. He knew that I struggled so much as ann early adult because of his failure to really be there for me and to teach me how to be independant. I was naturally independant to some degree but my enjoyment of being independant came from not having to be around my father. I was often upset that my father didn't make t...

  Hi Dragonflies, Although I am studying Early Childhood Education I also have a lot of empathy for children of all ages. I amy even work up the ranks of being an educator to primary school children and even high school children. I was intially working towards becoming a teachers aide but later decided to study childcare as it aligns with my desire to become a parent to living children. I love helping children blossom and become their best selves and so this blog entry is dedicated to teenagers naviagting domestic violence. When I was a teenager I was experiencing family domestic violence and I was also bullied at school. I know I had other friends who were having a worse time of it and I even had a friend who was experiencing online bullying. I didn't have the internet at home so I guess that's why I wasn't targeted online but I also saw my bullies as a challenge and worked hard to always have smart comebacks which would make my bullies look stupid. My bullies didn't h...

  Hi Dragonflies, I wrote a post about this recently on reddit and I had 86 up votes and a few women commented saying they experience this a lot too and that it really annoys them. In the past two weeks I have been harrassed by strange men while I was alone twice. But I have also noticed that when I visit a local cafe in my neighbourhood which I would describe as 'mumcore' I don't get approached at all except by the workers. So it's in other public spaces that aren't predominately occupied by women. Yesterday was a strange day. Firstly I sat on the other side of a train seat and this older man preceded to talk to me as if he knew me. It was definitely like he had 'male character syndrome'. I was using my work app at the time and it called me as part of my sign in. Then he stopped talking for a while. It suddenly dawned on me that I could use this sign in technique to my advantage. So I got out of the app and signed in again. This time when my phone called me...