Good Enough Mama

What to say?

In truth, it was going to be difficult anyway. I've been absent for a long time from both social media and publishing blog posts. But right now, as I feel compelled to speak again, the situation in Ukraine is unfolding in front of our eyes via world media.

So, what to say? What can I say?

I have this push-pull reaction, which may be familiar to you.

I’m drawn into a ‘what must it be like?’ hideous imagining prompted by the human stories. I'm appalled by the impact on mothers and children, made totemic by the bombing of a maternity hospital.

Then I recoil from what can feel like the voyeurism of watching a car crash.

Then I try to get my head around the history and geopolitics of it all. What it might mean for my own family, not to mention the future of our entire world.

Then I pan out to the backdrop: an ongoing pandemic, climate crisis, resurgent nationalism, endemic racism... all the many existential forces that we face.

Yet part...