Update!
Little girl in my class had a really good conversation with her mother, who was sweet and maternal and supportive. She said she could come home straight away or stay if she felt well enough, and they'd go to the doctor together when she goes home. Her boyfriend's going to go too. And she's decided not to tell her father, not because he'd respond badly, just because she doesn't need to.
So she's staying through the next two weeks, and it's all good.
It makes me so angry/sad for the young Irish girls for whom it's so complicated and involves plane trips and invasive operations and finding accomodation - more cost than is manageable for lots of them. Or they go alone - no mother and boyfriend there to support them.
It makes me so sad for all the girls who told their parents and got shamed and abused and rejected instead of supported over the years. Not to mention the girls who gave birth in fields and barns and left their babies there to die, so afraid were they of the priest and the church and their parents and the judgement of the community.
Anyway. It's all good. It's not easy, but it's simple.
Little girl in my class had a really good conversation with her mother, who was sweet and maternal and supportive. She said she could come home straight away or stay if she felt well enough, and they'd go to the doctor together when she goes home. Her boyfriend's going to go too. And she's decided not to tell her father, not because he'd respond badly, just because she doesn't need to.
So she's staying through the next two weeks, and it's all good.
It makes me so angry/sad for the young Irish girls for whom it's so complicated and involves plane trips and invasive operations and finding accomodation - more cost than is manageable for lots of them. Or they go alone - no mother and boyfriend there to support them.
It makes me so sad for all the girls who told their parents and got shamed and abused and rejected instead of supported over the years. Not to mention the girls who gave birth in fields and barns and left their babies there to die, so afraid were they of the priest and the church and their parents and the judgement of the community.
Anyway. It's all good. It's not easy, but it's simple.
6 comments:
Thank goodness. I'm so glad to hear this.
I am glad her mother was supportive! And thankful you were there for her too.
I'm glad her mother is understanding. When my daughter miscarried she came home because she was having "the worst period ever." I told her it wasn't a period, that she was miscarrying. Later that evening her boyfriend accompanied her to a hospital I wouldn't have suggested and she was judged and mistreated in the emergency room. This stuff happens. No point in pulling shame into it.
Jeeze, Lisa. That's horrible. Women have been treated horribly when having miscarriages here, but more because there's no resources to treat them, and the hospitals just don't seem to care. They're sat miscarrying in waiting rooms full of pregnant women - it's awful. A sympathetic midwife or nurse makes all the difference - why is it so hard?
This stuff does happen. It's a fact of life, and a consequence of sex. People who treat pregnancy as some sort of punishment (of women) sicken me.
Jennifer, it's a relief, isn't it? Part of me would love to be one of those people who aren't concerned with the lives and experiences of others, but it's just never gonna be.
jo(e) Thanks. I was glad too. She tried to apologise to me today and I told her I was SO glad she was in my class.
I, too, am glad to hear of this. Yay for the mother!
So glad it worked out.
I thought that part was the best part of teaching - to mean something so fundamentally in a young life.
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