Celtic WOman – “Mná Na hÉireann (Women Of Ireland)”.

   Hiya people! 🙂 

   For today, I’d like to share with you a song from the famous Irish all-female group Celtic Woman, whose music I’ve enjoyed for years and have shared a few of their songs on here already. This one comes from their album Ancient Land. Mná na hÉireann is actually a 18th-century poem, written by Ulster poet Peadar Ó Doirnín, but it was later set to an air composed by Seán Ó Riada another of whose compositions, Mo Ghile Mear,, sung by a former Celtic Woman member, I’ve featured on here before. Women of Ireland has been performed by all kinds of musical artists, not even just Irish ones. I believe the first one I heard was by Mike Oldfield when I was a kid, others include Sinéad O’connor, Kate Bush or Jeff Beck. A lot of such old Irish poems personify Ireland, whether as a mother or a goddess, or, as is the case here, as a beautiful woman who is mistreated by the English and the Irishmen need to defend her, though are not always successful at it. Here, the lyrical subject is also mutually in love with the woman in question. As you may know, I myself don’t speak Irish (yet), so couldn’t write a translation, but there is an article about it on Wikipedia  which contains several different translation of this song. At the time of releasing Ancient Land, Celtic Woman consisted of Eabha McMahon, Mairead Carlin, Megan Walsh and Tara McNeill, the latter also playing the violin and harp. 

Rachel Newton – “Three Days”.

   Hey people! 🙂 

   For today, I want to share the third piece on here from Rachel Newton’s very interesting concept album called Changeling. I really like it, because as someone who happens to simultaneously be into folklore as well as all things disability and mental health, I have a bit of an interest specifically in changelings as well and I like the fact that she thought about making a whole album dedicated to this topic, and it’s a great album. This particular instrumental piece speaks to my imagination particularly much though. It is Rachel’s original composition, inspired by the old Scottish custom which said that, after the birth of a child, three women must have stayed with the mother and baby for three days, to make sure that the child won’t be taken away by the fairies. And so from the image of this that she had, she wrote this piece for fiddle, viola and cello, where the three instruments symbolise the three women. 

Question of the day.

What social stigma does society need to get over?

My answer:

As someone who is disabled and mentally ill, the most instinctive answer for me is disability/mental illness stigma, but since many of my readers also have mental illnesses and/or disabilities, I figured I’d leave that in case someone would like to write about this and I’d write about something else. Recently we’ve been talking with my Mum about stigma that mothers have to face, and if I were a mother, I’d be pissed off big time about it. Even when I’m not, I find it very annoying. Being conservative, Christian, traditionalist in a lot of ways, albeit an open-minded and quirky one, and all sorts of things like that I’m not necessarily a feminist the way feminism is typically understood these days, and neither is my Mum, but I think both of us still are, just in a different way. I suppose though that in this case the more modern feminists would probably agree with me. What I’m talking about is, when a man who has children goes out for a beer with his friends, no one investigates where and with whom he left his children, no one makes a tragedy out of it that a dad went out on his own without dragging his kids along. When a woman goes out with her friends clothes shopping and happens to come across someone she knows in the meantime, she’ll very likely be questioned about where her children are, as if her sole function was being a mother. Many will even procede to make such a “cruel” mother feel guilty or something. I’m not saying that a father can replace a mother, and there are definitely things that mothers tend to do better than fathers, and that fathers tend to do better than mothers, hence I believe that it makes sense that their respective roles in the family should be different, but their responsibility for children, and the right to have other identities and not just one of a parent, is something they both should share.

Also in the family department, the childless/single people stigma bites. I know a lot of young single and/or childless people and it’s crazy how often I hear people talking to them or about them how they should start looking for someone, how it would be super cool and cute and amazing and delightful if they became a mummy or daddy, how it would be good if they found another half to make them happy, ask them if they already have someone, or when they’re gonna have kids etc. etc. etc. Probably the most of that stuff that I witness is directed at my brother, who has no plans of finding a girlfriend any time soon and thus of having children either. I’m in a similar situation, but luckily I get way less of such bullcrap because duh, I’m blind so in most people’s brains it’s probably not even possible for me to be in a relationship and have children. 😀 Even my Mum, who is a very open-minded thinker and doesn’t like going with a life scheme and all that, and always tells us that she doesn’t want us to feel pressured to do any of the normal stuff that people do, she’ll still sometimes sigh how she’d like for Olek to “settle” and “find someone”. Thankfully she always has me to remind her of her no schemes philosophy lol.

The main reason why I’m so opposed to people imposing their relationship/children views on other people is not even so much because I don’t like schemes, but more so because I think not everyone is a good fit to be a parent. It’s a great thing to have a great family if you can and if you’re a good parent, but I think it’s a really bad idea to make it seem so that it should be the majority’s vocation to have children. My Mum and me have come up with that idea many years ago that people should be tested in all sorts of ways whether they’re fit to be parents and then be allowed or not allowed to have children. Obviously in practice there would be loads of problems and controversies around it that would be super difficult to handle in real life, and especially if you look at it from our Christian perspective, but in any case, parenting is a very difficult task, probably the most difficult in the world, and few people at the age of 20 when they’re often emotionally still much like children themselves are ready to start raising children of their own and the whole social pressure is an awful idea.

What is such stigma in your opinion? 🙂

Question of the day.

What was the last thing you took the time to really enjoy? It can be anything – food, beverage, film, etc.

My answer:

I was reading a very interesting Polish book that I just finished today. Perhaps it may not sound interesting for most people, and would likely even be infinitely boring for many, especially if you’re one for quick pace and a lot of action, and don’t like non-fiction, but it was interesting for me, mostly because I’d never come across anything similar before, and always sort of wanted to. It was a book from (I believe) 1843, called Dwór Wiejski (Rural Manor House) by Karolina Nakwaska. It’s essentially a retro self-help book for women – women who were mistresses of rural manors. – Why would I even want to read something like this when I’m not even a housewife or a mother or anything that the potential reader of such book would be, except a woman? Well, language, mostly. 😀 Have I ever said before how delicious, interesting, full of character, or just funny, archaic/obsolete polish words and sentence structure can be? I absolutely love reading old Polish books, but I rarely get a chance, because such stuff is usually only sold as physical books, or not easily available at all, unless some second-hand bookshops, forget ebooks. And I really don’t like scanning and usually can’t achieve satisfying enough results by myself. I wasn’t hunting for this particular book or anything like that, it just happened that someone added it to the section in our blind library where people can add their scanned books, and I was interested by the excerpt. I like learning about how people used to live before, I like books about what people used to eat, what they used to wear etc. etc. about specific groups of people and their situation. I’m also quite into women’s history as well. Here, it’s not some historian’s book or a historical novel, but pretty much a first-hand account. I love love love reading old recipes! I love etnography. So this was, essentially, the perfect book for me, and I relished it properly. Well, the scan was pretty bad, so I would have relished it more if not the abundant spelling errors and unreadable fragments, but still it was great. The first volume is about all sorts of different things from how to serve and go about meals as well as good manners relating to that, to how to raise children, charitable activity and giving a good example to people, taking care of the ill and treating in the absence of a doctor, treatment of servants etc. The second was all recipes, and the third was an alphabetical glossary of all things possible that, according to the author, women should be knowledgeable in and on which she had some advice to give them. It’s from a very strongly Christian perspective. The author emigrated from Poland as far as I know during or after the November uprising and lived in several different countries – Switzerland, Germany, England and France – the book was written in Switzerland I guess, so she also had a good idea not only about manor life and a manor mistress’s life in Poland but in other European countries and had quite a modern perspective for her times. She often makes comparisons between how all these different countries she’s lived handle specific things like toilet training of children or cleanliness in the house. Apparently, she was quite ostracised by people before the publishing of her book as they thought she simply wants to promote and imitate foreign ways of life, but I think she really just wanted to introduce the good things from other countries that could be adopted in her motherland. And it seemed to be successful because eventually her book became quite popular with women.

In the third volume, there’s a mini section about language mistakes and how it isn’t appropriate for a lady to make them, and she mentions a lot of particular mistakes that apparently were common at the time. Interesting to see what was considered a language mistake over 100 years ago, especially that some things that were considered appropriate or some words or phrases that she uses in the book are now considered incorrect and some of the things that she says are incorrect are now normal, but most of those mistakes I’ve never ever heard in today’s speech so it was quite funny. Or when talking about table manners, she writes in such an indignant tone how it’s absolutely hideous to eat more than one dish with the same fork, and even proceeds this comment with the warning that she’s about to say something extremely hideous. Or she says things like how it’s not appropriate to make balls from bread and throw them around, or spit or eat from someone else’s plate. You’d think she writes for kindergarten children or some barbarian vikings, not the gentle women in the age of romanticism. But my Mum has a pre-Vatican Council II book for lay people about the Mass to help them understand it better, and there is also a fragment about how one should behave, what to wear etc. and spitting in church, (or rather, not spitting) is mentioned, which she found rather hilarious.

My Mum also loves old books like that, and old recipes, and as I read it I thought that she would be interested in it even more than myself. I mentioned it to her and she said she’d love to read it. So, tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and I decided to buy a physical version for her, which is exactly what I did yesterday.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hey people! 🙂

Today I have a question for all the female readers of my blog which is the following:

How old were you when you got your first period? How did your family and friend react? Did anyone say anything weird?

My answer:

It was a little strange with me because from what I’d always heard from my endocrinologist, it was quite possible for me not to have period due to my pituitary not working quite as it should. So when all or almost all of the other girls in my boarding school group and class were already having period and for me nothing was really changing, at least apparently, I readily and happily assumed that I’m going to be spared and didn’t really care much about periods anymore, and my Mum also assumed I’m not going to have it so that’s better for me. Not that I ever did overly care about periods, it never seemed very creepy or shameful like it does to a lot of girls, I was quite aware of what it was from observing and hearing people and also my Mum talked a lot about it to me, at least what it feels like and what it means and what it’s like in theory, so I knew what to expect. There was a lot of taboo around things like this in my Mum’s family, my grandma is scared of even such words like vagina so Mum herself always wanted it to be clear with me and now with Sofi that, while it’s something extremely intimate, it’s not a taboo or anything shameful. So one day in April I was greeted to an extreme surprise when I woke up – I vaguely remember that I had some exam on that day or something… something to do with music school I believe – and felt all wet and sticky down there. I honestly was convinced it must be something else, just some other kind of discharge, but no! I was a little shocked to learn that it happened after all. But actually it wasn’t even that very late, I don’t remember how old I was exactly, but I couldn’t be older than 14 I guess. Luckily that first visit of Jack the Ripper/Butcher in my life was not particularly painful or intense, which changed quite soon afterwards, but still I think I was rather stressed about it and worried that I won’t be able to manage it well practically, because one thing my Mum didn’t do was that she didn’t show me or explain to me at all what I’m actually supposed to do when having a period, probably because she didn’t seriously think I’d have to bother with it in real life. And I didn’t like having to rely on the boarding school staff ffor assistance with my period hygiene at the beginnings. It took me quite some time, but luckily summer holidays came quite quickly after that so then I had less stress about it and could learn to put a pad in my underwear and not to make everything around messy while I was showering. 😀

I didn’t really tell that many people started having periods – my Mum knew, and the staff at the boarding school, and my roommates – and a couple of my close online friends, but I don’t think anyone of them said anything at all, let alone anything weird. Those of them who knew about my hormonal issues were only surprised that it actually happened, and as I said so was I.

How was it with you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi guys. 🙂

Here’s my question for you for today, a girly one:

Who taught you to apply makeup?

My answer:

I can’t really apply makeup, and I can’t say I care. I hardly ever wear makeup anyway, and I don’t think it would change a lot if I knew how to do it. Zofijka tried to teach me, she’s only 12 but has been an expert in such things since many years, but that didn’t really work out. When I was younger, maybe 15 or so, figuring out such things, I asked my Mum to teach me how to do it, not as much because I wanted, but more because I considered it sort of necessary, it felt to me like all women do this so I probably should too, that it would be kind of awkward if I wouldn’t. But since my Mum knew I’m not normally into that sort of things she asked me “Do you seriously want it?” and I said no, but I guess I should know, she was like: “No, why?”, and, yeah, I actually realised I don’t need it at all. If I do want/need some makeup, I can ask Zofijka, her style is quite different but she likes to be treated as an expert, or I can ask Mum, or go to a makeup artist. I’m allergic to loads of makeup products anyway and so I look quite spectacularly awful after applying them, and my skin feels even worse than it looks. 😀

How was it with you? 🙂

Linnea Henriksson ft. Stor – “Mamma Är Lik Sin Mamma” (Mum Is Like Her Mum).

Hi guys. 🙂

Here’s my favourite song from a currently very popular Swedish pop singer Linnea Henriksson. I can easily not care about her popularity in Sweden simply because she’s not popular anywhere else, and I think she’s a really good singer. And this is a really good hommage for all mothers!

Question of the day.

Do you shave your body hair? Do you ever wax?

My answer:

I don’t at all. I was never encouraged by my Mum to shave, as she has bad experiences with it herself, plus if I’d do that myself that would be quite difficult. When my Mum was a teen, she was at some sort of a camp or something, and her roommate saw her legs and was like: “Oh God, you don’t shave yourself?!”. So, as a teen, my Mum didn’t want to stand out too much and she thought maybe it’s something shameful that she doesn’t do that, and she started to shave. But once she started to shave, she couldn’t stop, because she thought that if she did, her hair would grow even quicker and longer than before she started doing it and her hair is dark so no fun. And after some time it somehow happened that she got folicules inflammation or however it’s called, something like that, that was difficult to get rid off. So at some point when I was a teen and started to notice that some of the girls at my boarding school started shaving, I was asking Mum whether I should do that too or what. And as I said, Mum discouraged me from that, saying that it’s definitely not necessary, if I want, I can, but don’t have to, especially that because I’m blind and not particularly dexterous and well coordinated as you know, that certainly wouldn’t be easy for me to master and could be quite risky. Besides, I seem to have gotten lucky genes after my grandad, who has little to no hair on his arms on legs, I do have some body hair, but only a little bit and I guess they’re not too dark really. When I got a bit older, I was more concerned about my pubic hair, so eventually my Mum did try to teach me how to shave them, but it didn’t really work out as I wasn’t able to do it on my own, and wouldn’t feel OK asking someone of the staff at school to help me out. And when some time after that my Mum realised that I was self harming with those razors she got scared and didn’t let me use them anymore anyway. And actually I no longer feel like shaving even my pubic hair at all, I’m OK with them, and so far I don’t have a sexual life and don’t plan in the nearest future so I don’t have to take anyone else’s opinion into consideration. 😀 Now Zofijka, who is developing much faster than I did, is having the same dilemma, to shave or not to shave, but she seems to be much more concerned about that, even despite Mum’s discouragement. 😀 And I’ve never actually tried waxing. I guess I don’t care about the hair thing at all nowadays.

Do you? What do you do with it? 🙂

Question of the day.

How often do you shop for clothes? How would you describe your style, and where do you like to shop?

My answer:

I shop for clothes as rarely as possible. I dislike the atmosphere of most clothes shops, and I always feel exhausted after clothes shopping. I get some of my clothes online, also my aunt who is roughly similar size as me and very indecisive about what she likes sometimes gives some of her clothes to me and if I like them, I wear them too. I don’t like the chain shops usually as they are so boring and lacking individuality. There is an outlet shop close to where I live and the lady who runs it has lots of gorgeous clothes, my Mum is friends with her and buys stuff there for herself and for me. Sometimes if I need some particular clothing my Mum buys the fabric and goes to the dressmaker. As for my style, I like darker/more toned colours, I don’t like wearing something just to look well, it has to be comfortable above all. Ideally I like to be both elegant and comfortable. I like wearing dresses, or leggings. I have a lot of a bit vintage clothes that I like. But my most favourite clothing item at the moment is my purr T-shirt, the one I showed you some time ago, and I would most happily wear it all the time. My Mum is my stylist, and because we have mostly similar styles, we get along here.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you ever get your nails done?

My answer:

I like having my nails done. In contrast to most other beauty related procedures, I do like how nail polishing feels, there is something nice about it. I like darker and more muted colours for my nails as well as for almost everything actually). But what is the point of doing your nails if you’re a nail biter/picker?! Absolutely none! I might be good with it for one day, desperately trying not to bite or pick my nails, not knowing what to do with my hands and all the nervous energy, but trying desperately, but the next day I usually forget about it or can’t resist it when some bigger stressor occurs or when I’m bored or something and then my nails look even worse than they did before. I can be a real intense and erratic nail biter and nail and cuticle picker so my nails look better normal than with all the polish and stuff. Still, sometimes, once in a while, I do get my nails done. Just to have to clean out all the polish the next day because it looks ewwwww gross. 😀

You? 🙂 Which colours do you like on your nails? 🙂

Question of the day (24th April).

What do you do with your hair? Do you ever style it? Do you get it cut at a salon? How often do you wash your hair, and what type of shampoo/conditioner do you use?

My answer:

What do I do with my hair? As little as possible. 😀 I liked it when I had long, very long hair but it’s awfully impractical and uncomfortable. Now I have a short, light hairstyle, a bit of a bob I’d say…? so I just brush it in the morning and all is cool. I have very thick hair though so I need to cut it regularly. I do it at a salon. I hate it, as it’s soooooo boring, and you have to smalltalk with people, and I hate people touching me, but oh well, not much can I do. Maybe at some point I’ll become a pro hermit and then I’ll be able to stop caring about that, but as long as I live with people I have to bear such inconveniences. I rarely style my hair, if I do, my Mum styles it for me for some family gathering. Grrrrrrrr I hate it, it’s… yes you guessed it it’s boring! 😀 I used to dye my hair and liked it, I don’t like my natural colour, it’s kind of mousey (is that how you call it?). One guy I liked once told me that I’d look terrific in black hair because apparently the combo of blue eyes and black hair is so rare and intriguing etc. and I bought this idea, and dyed my hair black for a good while. I did look well in this colour, everyone said so except for my grandma and I felt good in it, but the problem was that many black dyes actually have red in them apparently. While on some people that looks cool, my Mum says I am closest to a winter in that seasons classification or whatever it is so warm colours apparently don’t go too well with me or at least some of them don’t, for me that red glimpse would destroy the effect and I disliked it. And other than that I didn’t have the patience and discipline for that dying thing, my Mum didn’t either, and when I’d be at the boarding school I’d have to dye it ideally every week because of how quickly my hair was growing, but of course I couldn’t, so by the time I was back home my natural hair was showing very clearly. Then I tried with very dark browns but there was often a reddish glimpse too. And finally someone else, in a bit of a sarcastic way suggested to me, that if I’m so much into everything Celtic I should dye my hair red so I would look more Celtic. I decided that I’ll take it seriously and I did have fiery red hair for a while and Mum and some other people said I looked very cool albeit original. I who am apparently a winter and hate the colour red. But when it comes to the hair colour, red is definitely fine with me, unless it’s not some weird kind of reddish that doesn’t fit me at all. But that didn’t last long either. So now I’m back to my normal mousey hair, which, surprisingly, has sort of darkened apparently over the course of that time when I was experimenting with the colours.

My hair isn’t too oily, so typically I wash it twice a week. Right now I don’t use one shampoo continuously, we have one shampoo together with Zofijka at the moment and I don’t even remember what it exactly is right now. I’d used very different conditioners throughout my life, I used to have a bad tendency for dandruff as a kid because of hypothyroidism and then I used some other stuff as a teen just to keep it healthy, but as I can remember it wasn’t really working. Now the only conditioner I use from time to time is vinegar.

You? 🙂

Question of the day (23rd April).

Hi guys. 🙂

I have some girly questions now for all my female readers out there. 🙂

Do you wear makeup? If so, how often do you wear it, and what are your favourite brands? How old were you when you started wearing makeup, and who taught you?

   My answer:

   I don’t wear makeup. Like, almost never ever. First, although I consider myself a girly girl, I don’t have much of an interest at all in THIS particular kind of girly stuff, it’s boring for me and all sorts of even hairdressing and such is just an annoying necessity for me. Second, I can’t do it myself. Many blind women can and are great at it, but, well, I can’t even always draw a straight line, so, could be quite adventurous. Third, I don’t go out much anyway these days, and I don’t really see the point of all that hassle for staying at home. Fourth, I have a kinda problem with self care stuff, just as I do with self-esteem as it is obviously related, I’ve improved in recent years and months but, ugh, if I sometimes don’t even feel like feeding myself or keeping myself warm on worse days, I don’t even think about makeup then! 😀 Fifth, I’m allergic to a lot of that makeup stuff so actually as a result I look even worse than without it, or my skin gets irritated/itchy. And as you can probably already see, I’m not enough into that to hunt for hypoallergic stuff. Lastly, I don’t even have such a model in my family that makeup is something that a woman should necessarily do. My Mum used to wear it, she is a very image conscious person, but only when she had to, so for outings or such, she didn’t like it. My Mum has always preferred to be natural, and she says she feels like a wax doll with tons of makeup on her face. Now it has to be a real big occasion for her to wear a full makeup, as she’s such a lifestyle expert nowadays and OMG there’s so much chemicals in cosmetics and you never know what they put in there! 😀 While I always mock my Mum’s obsession with all that, I kinda share that approach, and I just don’t feel the need to do that. All the cosmetics I use, OK, the big majority, are just natural home-made things.
I did use to wear some more make-up in my late teens, when I was in a lot of ways identifying myself as a Goth, I still do feel a lot in common with Goths though I never was like a full Goth, at some point I just met some people online who were Goths and we seemed to get along very well, I always liked black and wearing black things, and I have naturally a very light skin and always liked it this way, I liked Gothic music and felt like I had a bit of a similar mentality to them in a lot of ways. I wasn’t going around looking like a Goth, but liked a bit of a Gothic looking makeup at times and would most willingly wear black clothes all the time. As I said I still somehow feel drawn to the Gothic subculture but am not as crazy about it and sort of outgrew it quite a few years ago. I guess the last time I wore a full makeup (a serious one, I mean for serious purposes) in a Gothic style was at my 18th birthday party. Now I only sometimes underline my eyebrows as they are very light, and that’s it. The actual last time I wore makeup was about a year, maybe longer, ago, when I was playing with Zofijka. We like pretending things or playing crazy roleplays or such and that time we were playing that we were two very stupid and brainless country girls going for a party to some sort of a club. we were able to only talk about guys, and our favourite music which was very trashy dance and everything that is cringy in the world, it was all very comical so when we weren’t playing, we were laughing our brains out at ourselves, but well you’d have to see it for it to be funny. We both had very overdone, heavy makeups, with crazy amounts of rouge, and I was wearing a ragingly red lipstick and we both had weird hairstyles and high-heel shoes (Zofijka was in her school traCKSUIT…) and were chewing gum very demonstratively for an even more cringy effect. We stuffed our clothes with things so we also looked very fat, and just… brainless overall, you get it. The problem appeared when Zofijka tried to get rid of all that makeup on my face and couldn’t get rid of all that rouge, it lasted for so long that I was afraid I will have to stay like this hahaha. So those are the only purposes for which I wear makeup nowadays, entertaining Zofijka hahaha. That’s more interesting though I guess.

   OK so how about you? 🙂

Song of the day (3rd March) – Karliene – “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme”.

And here’s another song from Karliene, it is a traditional Irish ballad which she covered, and I like the symbolic language in it a lot, I think it’s incredibly beautiful.

Commitmentof a mother.

Hi guys. 🙂

I’ve been thinking about finally writing some other posts, other than my usual series, and looking forward to doing it, and I planned to do some more writing over the weekend, though, quite predictably, I was never able to publish anything as it was my Mum’s and my brother’s birthday, also I had some rather bad anxiety and quite a lot was going on here. Nevertheless, both my Mum, and one of the recent writing prompts gave me an idea for a post. One of the recent words of the day at Word Of The Day Challenge was commit, and recently me and my Mum talked about commitment and dedication in relation to my grandma. I’d like to write about my Mum, and how I admire her, and thus also generally about mothers and motherhood.

There are lots of things that I admire in my Mum, but the one I would like to focus on now is her commitment.

Her commitment and dedication to motherhood, to us, her children, and to our whole family. I really don’t know where we’d be if not Mum, and I’m not just talking about the fact that she gave birth to my siblings and me, but that she is like an adhesive for our family, and keeps together us and everything in our house and family. I am happy to say that I have a good relationship with my Dad, but it has never been as deep as my connection with Mum. And even if I was ony to say on behalf of myself, I also don’t know where I’d be without my Mum.

Being disabled, I need more help with many things than an average person, sometimes a lot more, and my Mum has always been there for me, ready to help me out with really different things. Even when I was away from home at the boarding school, she always tried ther best to find the time and possibility to visit me or take me home for the weekend while she didn’t really have to as there was a rather big distance between the school and my home. She also tried her best to make my life easier there, and when there was a time I was emotionally abused by some of the staff she was the one to notice it despite the distance between us, and she was the one to make it stop. I’ve heard many very positive comments about my Mum at school, both from the staff and my friends, that I am really lucky to have such a committed and involved Mum. Not that other kids didn’t of course, though such situations also happened sometimes as they always do, that some children came from families where they weren’t loved, but because she did so much more than she had to, and her involvement was very visible. I also have mental health difficulties, since years but that both me and some of my family became more aware of only in recent years, and while my Mum doesn’t always understand it, she’s still there for me, if not in any other way than at least happy to help me practically. She’d been helping me to get to therapy, picking my prescriptions, she is my “spokesperson” in all sorts of new or difficult situations when I feel anxious or whenever I’m just not fully able to stand for myself, and I appreciate help hugely. She’s done so many big and little things for me that I probably wouldn’t be able to acknowledge all of them in a single post even if I dedicated it only for such purpose. 😀

My Mum is definitely a type of altruist who gets easily engaged in what she does and is very responsible and caring, that’s her nature, but sometimes I wonder whether all those commitments she has made over the years since she’s become a wife and a mother, whether they sometimes don’t make her feel unfulfilled in other areas, like her professional career for example, or her social life that would extend beyond her family.

My parents got married when she was 22. Mum was learning to be a beautician and after that tried studying pedagogy but didn’t really have a heart for it and didn’t feel motivated so quit it and then, two years after their wedding, they had me. They had to go a long way until they realised that I’m blind, it wasn’t like that I was born and they were told that, my blindness was congenital but well doctors just didn’t notice it and left my parents to figure it out on their own, and as it has turned out there were some other things we had to figure out blindly, pun intended, even much later on, but that’s another thing actually. Anyway, when Mum finally did figure out that I’m blind, soon after Olek arrived so with two little kids and one disabled she didn’t even think about looking for a job, despite at those very beginnings the financial situation in our family was really not the best, and by the way it’s also partly thanks to Mum that now Dad has the job he has and that our situation is much better nowadays. But Mum, even when I went to the boarding school at the age of 5, still was a full time Mum and still is, even though both me and Olek are adults and Zofijka can mostly take care of herself during the day, and so can I for the most part. And we really appreciate her for that, but as I said, I wonder whether she doesn’t feel a little disappointed with her life sometimes, having so many commitments, many of which she really didn’t have much choice about.

They say though that you usually copy your parents in your life choices. ANd that would be true for my Mum, because the thing was very similar with my grandma.

She is a very intelligent, cultured lady, had great ambitions as a young woman, got degrees in such diverse fields as food technology and theology, but she is also a very gentle, sensitive, idealistic and actually naive person, believing that everyone is like her and has the same values. And during her food technology studies met my grandad – also a very intelligent, cultured, strong, manly, fiendishly ambitious and versatile man. – They were madly in love with each other like most couples are at the beginning, the thing was that each of them had their own dreams that were quite different from each other’s, and my grandad was incredibly stubborn and domineering, to the point that in our current standards I suppose we could call it abusive. His dream has always been farming, because of his huge interest in agriculture, so it was clear to him that his wife will have to adjust and live in the sh*thole and dedicate herself to him and breeding hens to help him grow his business.

I love my grandad, have had a pretty close relationship with him, he has always stood for me when I most needed it, even when no one else did, and I always feel very safe with him and like we have a strangely deep connection and understanding for each other, and overall he’s one of the people I admire most in my life, particularly for how comprehensively skilled he is, but although he has mellowed a whole lot in his old age, I feel really bad about him being so bossy and tyrannical to my grandma. He wouldn’t let her go anywhere on her own, he decided what she should do or not do, with whom she can meet, he forbade her to drive anywhere, have her own work or money or any personal life that he wouldn’t be able to fully control. I guess even if she was assertive she wouldn’t be able to resist this and stand for herself, but she wasn’t, at all. He even didn’t let her to go to church on her own, only when it suited him and he would be able to drop her there, which was a big pain for her because my grandma has always been a very devout Christian. Grandad was brought up in a Christian family too, but it was never a priority for them and I guess he was too proud to be able to live through Christian faith where you have to be humble and rely on God rather than on yourself. So he wasn’t really keen on that which was also a big problem for grandma. As the children arrived her life was focused only around the household/farm, selling eggs with grandad and mothering the four kids. Later on grandad started drinking too much alcohol and has once tried to commit suicide, and while it’s no longer a problem and he doesn’t drink at all, it used to be something that grandma really struggled with and couldn’t accept, and tried to desperately hide it from children in which she succeeded as my Mum only learned about his alcoholism when she was an adult. At some point as I told you grandma got a degree from theology and wanted to work as a religion teacher or something like that but then one of my aunts was born and there were quite awful complications and she was a very vulnerable and sickly baby even though now thankfully she’s thriving and perfectly fine.

Now my grandparents’ relationship is less stormy, as I said my grandad has mellowed a lot both to his wife and to his children and all his grandchildren love him dearly, though they’re certainly not madly in love with each other and grandma is still suffering because of grandad’s cynical/haughty approach regarding faith and that he treats her like she’s very inferior to him, but he does appear to love her in some way and cares for her in that controlling, possessive way as some people do since they can’t otherwise.

She has certainly had her fair share of sufferings, but, most importantly here, has been always so very committed, to her husband, children, and every other responsibility that life has placed on her. In a way I admire her for that, but on the other hand, the extend to which my grandma commits herself is sort of strange to me and I feel like I couldn’t do that without feeling frustrated. just every minute. She doesn’t actually have her own life. Her life evolves around her children and grandchildren, caring for her husband, their work, praying, and now there is a little bit of place for gardening, but that’s it.

My Mum is not like that, my Mum is stronger and more assertive, but still has that extreme ability to dedicate herself to others.

It makes me wonder how marriage and motherhood can really change you and your life so much. When it comes to me, I’m happy to help people, but I really don’t think I could commit myself to someone to such an extend and so unconditionally, it feels rather overwhelming and strangling. I still most probably have a fair bit of ife ahead of me and I know things can change, but so far I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to have children, and even if I would want at some point, I most probably wouldn’t be able to be a good mother for many different reasons. But I really admire my Mum in that, and other mothers who do it like this, silently and without shouting how altruistic they are, and I know that if ever my Mum would need someone to commit themselves to her, I will try my best to do it since I owe her so much. I am proud to say that now I can at least listen to her, and that even though it’s usually her who is the listener for others, I often listen to her when she has problems, and I  am the first person she goes to since I got out of the boarding school if she wants to talk about some stuff that affects her deeply. i am happy she trusts me and that I can give her at least that.

What do you think about commitments in relation to motherhood/family life? What are your experiences with your mum, or with your own parenting if you are a parent? Are you deeply committed to anyone, be it in a relationship or whatever? If you’re not a parent, do you feel like you could dedicate yourself to your children full time or is your professional/social/any other aspect of your life so important to you that you couldn’t give it up? 🙂

Question of the day.

What was the last book you purchased/borrowed from the library?

My answer:

I wanted to read a book by the Polish positivist writer Eliza Orzeszkowa called “Marta”, so I downloaded it from our online library for the blind. Actually, some of the books of Orzeszkowa are compulsory readings at Polish schools, so I’ve never had particularly warm feelings to her works as I found most of compulsory readings unbelievably boring, but I wanted to read that particular book, not for anything particular, just because I thought it could be interesting and thought provoking. It was, I read it in two days. It describes fate of women in Poland at the time of positivism, their occupational situation, how all the fields were dominated by men, to put it very basically. It is described on the example of a woman called Marta, who has been just widowed at the beginning of the book, and although her financial situation in her marriage was very good and stable, and she led a happy life, from now on she becomes poor and is forced to look for a job for herself to be able to feed her little daughter. She is an educated gentrywoman but her education turns out to be not enough to find a job just anywhere, it’s just what usually young ladies were taught, a bit of everything, but nothing deep enough to be really useful in life long term. It is a very dramatic book and it describes how Marta is slowly forced by life to beg to provide at least basic things for her daughter, and finally when her daughter becomes ill with severe bronchitis because of the incredibly poor life conditions and Marta isn’t able to give her what she needs to recover, she commits suicide. So as I said it’s very dramatic, but also incredibly thought-provoking, and Orzeszkowa has definitely a talent for describing people, their emotions and stuff, which made it even more pleasant to read, as I really like detailed descriptions, if skillfully written. So I devoured the book much quicker than I thought I would. I supposed it can be very interesting as I said, but I thought it also can be much harder to actually get through, so was quite surprised.

How about you? 🙂

From me Misha to all women.

Hhrrru?

This is me Misha. I wanted to be a real gentleman yesterday and mish you all happy WOmen’s Day, but didn’t make it on time finally. So today I’m coming with belated mishes.

I mish you all the best in your lives, that you’d be adored by men for how pretty and nice you are and by other women for how feminine and good you are. I mish you lots of loving beings in your lives whom you could love too. I mish you lots of happiness and beauty and yummy food and relax and fun in your lives and may all your own dreams and mishes come true and then may you have some other things to mish yourself or to dream about cus people like to dream.

Yesterday I pampered my all three ladies. I couldn’t bring them flowers like other guys did, they always need me so much they don’t let me out on my own hehe, but I curled up with Zofijka on my bed and purred her my best mishes and I spent a lot of time with Mila and I sat on Mum’s knees for almost half an hour. That’s a lot, isn’t it? I’m not a very cuddly creature. In the evening Mum and Mila were watching some films and eating and drinking and I was near too and then felt tired and actually wanted to go to one of my hideouts, but decided to make Mila a pleasure and I lied down at her feet and warmed her up and purred. They said I’m a cute little boy and Mila said I’m the best thermophore she’d ever seen. I think they were all glad of me.

Hope you had a nice day yesterday. What nice things did you do for yourselves?

Mishest regards and Mishhugs!

Misha