Tyrannosaur and tears

DH and I watched ‘Tyrannosaur’ this evening, which was incredibly powerful and also really quite shocking and disturbing. It is mostly about Hannah (played by Olivia Colman) and Joseph (Peter Mullan) and the relationship which develops between them, with issues of anger, domestic violence and redemption as key themes. Olivia Colman was fantastic, as was Mullan, and although it is a hard film to watch, I did enjoy it.

The problem is though, that becoming a mother has ruined me… I find watching documentaries and films that deal with anything more challenging or difficult than marshmallows extremely hard. Domestic violence is not something that I have ever encountered first hand, or in my family or in any of my close friends families as I was growing up. I think that I have been very fortunate because I think that many families are affected by this in their lives.

When I think about the pain, cruelty and violence that some people are capable of, it sort of strangles my heart as a mother and makes me want to protect my children with a fierceness and magnitude that scares me with its power. It is a protective rage that I feel for both DS and DD but in particular DD, as I feel that as a girl she will have even more hurdles and challenges in her way. The more that I learn and engage with feminist issues and equality, the more I realise how unequal the world is. The more I learn about how children grow up in the UK and western societies as a whole, the more that I see how girls and women are prescribed a certain ideal of womanhood and femininity. And while every cell of my being wants to protect and screen all of the pain, sadness, hurt and damage that can potentially and will probably happen to my children, I know that I can’t. I know that I have to let them grow, and learn, and discover, and make mistakes because it is through those things that they will discover who they are, what they believe, and what role they have to play in their communities and society as they grow up.

Nonetheless, as they sleep peacefully, sweetly and perfectly, my heart yearns to keep them safe, to try to learn the lessons for them, to feel the pain for them, and to take out the baddies for them. I think that the moments I have watching my children sleep are some of the most intimate moments of the day. As they lie breathing and dreaming, they look so fragile and small, and yet the world that they are growing up in is so vast – vast with love, joy, adventure and excitement, but also with pain and darkness. They will have to make their own ways in this world, and as their mom I can only hope to do everything I can to give them the tools, experiences and love (always mostly importantly, love) that will help them to navigate the path. In the meantime, however, it is in the moments of their quiet sleep that I can pray for them, I can kiss their cheeks and stroke their foreheads, I can whisper ‘I love you’ over and over, so that perhaps it will store up in their memories, seep into their pores, be shored up and anchored in their hearts and minds forever.