Bad Calmer

It’s the one good thing that comes with a stillbirth. 

Losing my daughter Emily was an emotional bushfire.

The kind of experience that sorts out in your mind the stuff that really, properly matters. 

There’s no room for dead wood and detritus in the mental forest when you face such a death so squarely. 

Emily’s legacy to me was a boat-load of perspective.

And I try my best to honour that by not sweating the small stuff.

Keeping calm and carrying on. 

But every so often something happens that undermines that inner calm.

Something that makes me aware of a build up of leaf litter on the forest floor.

An irritation that highlights a need for a spot of woodland management to regain that precious perspective. 

The repeated photographing of us and our workmen by our objectors is one such irritation.

As is being shouted at from the footpath or libelled online and in the parish magazine.

Those libels have included being called ‘dishonest’, ‘criminal’, engaged in ‘subterfuge’.

One particular favourite of mine said we were just like ‘the creeping barrage of the Somme’. 

So when I see a lurking paparazzo in the bushes it occasionally ignites my fury and I can feel a raging rant boiling up inside me. 

But then I remember Emily’s gift to me. 

I cannot possibly begin to fathom the personal miseries or internal battles that incite these people to harass us like they do.

I do not live in Syria.

Just look at the incredible place Oli and I will be lucky enough to call home and the wonderful life we will be able to provide for Chloe and Rory there. 

Emily is buried under a beautiful oak tree at Rowan Farm. 

So she’ll keep me grounded there.

And if I ever get frazzled, I’ll pop over to see her and imagine her telling me to calm down and pipe down and carry on.

And I’ll thank her for the umpteenth time for her wise words. 

Because I’m truly the luckiest mummy there has ever been. 

I just wish Emily was here to tell me in person.