Monday 30 May 2011

What’s in a name?

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I was looking at all the blogs out there and was wondering how everybody came up with their blog names, and I thought I’d tell you about mine.
 I once wrote another blog, where windmills were mentioned as a metaphor for Holland, or more aptly a poem called ‘Welcome to Holland’ by Emily Pearl Kingsley, which is a beautifully written piece describing the emotional roller coaster of becoming a parent to a child with special needs.
The poem touched me deep at a time where it was very relevant to my life. I clutched onto it like some sort of shield and it calmed me, a comforting reminder that I was not alone but most of all, it inspired me to write and through that writing I made lifelong friends.
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I am one of the lucky ones, my child has transformed in ways that could have never been imagined, things could have been very different, but instead they ended up ok and life goes on. Recently old issues had been replaced by new more minor issues with a different child, ones I tried not to see coming for a long time as denial is a comfortable place to live. Ironically, the place that I now live as those issues have come to light is surrounded by a wind farm.  I looked up after a particularly bad day to see the windmills towering over me and it felt like a calling to write again.
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I know I will never truly leave ‘Holland’, I have made too many friends and the next part of my life seems set to play out here, but I am able accept it and I am familiar with its peaks and valleys. So now my days are spent under the windmills breathing in the scent of freshly mown grass enjoying the tulips and watching their majestic blades turning in the wind, the fear is mostly gone replaced with acceptance and I feel strangely nostalgic. I think windmills will always hold a special place in my heart as they are the symbol for many of my life lessons, the good and the bad.  
So, how did you name your blog?

1 comment:

TheThingsIdTellYou said...

My mother had died about 4 and a half years earlier, just after the birth of my first child. I had just had my second child and he was the age that my first was when Mum died.

And I was thinking of all of these things that she didn't know about Sam. About Alexander. About what had happened since she'd been gone.

I was really struggling, and thought it might be cathartic to just write it all out somewhere, the things I wished I could tell her, ask her.

So. The Things I'd Tell You. http://thethingsidtellyou.blogspot.com/2007/12/where-to-start.html