Author: Oana

Grief is…

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…a whirlpool, we were told in counselling last week. It sucks you in, when you least expect it and it spits you out, exhausted and drained. …a maze, out of which you never quite manage to emerge, I read. You pass from one chamber to another, sometimes chased, just like in the Maze Runner, not by a griever but by Grief. Sometimes you crawl through it, from one chamber to another and back again where you started: shock, anger, acceptance, pain, shock, anger… …anger plus despair plus pain plus loneliness. All at once, on any given day. …a loud banging-like noise in your head that deafens you to any other noises of this world. All you feel like doing is shout back. But at whom? And to what effect? …never knowing how to play your emotions. Play them down and they come flooding over, like a tsunami, when you least expect it. Play them up and people drain away from you, like water off the surface of dry, parched up land. Grieving emotions are inconvenient …

To the parents(not pastors) who have just received devastating news…

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Your world has just come undone… You are numb and shocked and drained and running on adrenaline, all at the same time. This is not a “judge from afar, express an opinion, pray into it, believe over it” sort of situation anymore. This is THE real thing. This is your son heading down a path you’d rather take yourselves, a million times over, than allow him to walk it. If only you had the choice, that is… You are standing by his side, feeling helpless and useless and small. I know how it feels. I so do… And I do feel sorry for you both as on top of your personal anguish you will have to face the public opinion. There are thousands of pairs of eyes fixed on you now. I wish I could say to you that what is behind them is all compassion and love and support. But I would lie to you. Some of them will but some of them won’t. Some of them will judge you by the outcome of …

Santa Letters

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Just like any other five year old, Emma loves Santa. I have blogged about how we introduced Santa in our family and about how we have tried to reconcile the idea of Santa with that of Jesus‘ birthday and celebration. Last year we used this beautiful image I had found online to explain to Emma that Santa doesn’t have to replace Jesus: This year Emma has been asking more questions about Santa and a couple of times she has even asked me if he is real. I feel uncomfortable telling her fibbs so instead I kept saying to her that he is God’s helper and that he is bringing gifts that God has for her. Emma also wrote her first letter to Santa this year, with daddy’s help, asking for a “guitar, my size” and about Georgie’s whereabouts in Heaven. Too sweet!! This morning, Santa replied to her letter, via the Lapland Mailroom! Back in October, the elves in Lapland were looking for mummy bloggers to review their Santa letter service and we happily volunteered! …

The ultimately healthy Christmas bacon butty

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Bidvest 3663, “the leading food service wholesale distributor”, as their website introduces them, has launches last week a very interesting challenge for a food lover and blogger like me: the best bacon butty! I eagerly and enthusiastically subscribed to the challenge as, I must confess, I am a sucker for bacon, must have a lot to do with being raised in Romania and all those cold winter months and hearty food my mum used to cook for us! But I decided to take the humble(yet yum!) bacon butty and lift it to the professional and dignified level of a healthy light lunch! Here is what I used as ingredients: lean bacon medallions crispy lettuce basil infused olive oil (two tablespoons, for flavour, mainly) two organic eggs cranberry sauce Honey and slept skinny(100 calories only per portion) Assembling my healthy bacon butty was easy and fun: I scrambled the egg, fried two bacon medallions and slightly toasted my skinny. I spread a thin layer of cranberry sauce on the top part of my skinny and used …

Magic ordinary moments

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The weekend that has been. We spent Sunday in Newcastle, going for a walk and taking in the autumnal beauty. The crisp air. The togetherness. The colours. The rawness. Emma loves being outside. She loves seeing us together, although she would act disgusted if we try to be too close to each other with Alex :-). She loves the sense of normality that we had lost during the months of Georgie’s hospitalisation. We love Newcastle because that is where we went the weekend after we put Georgie to rest. It is a special place to us, bitter sweet, like most memories we have now. We are sort of getting back into a family routine. But he is missing, of course he is. He will always be missing and all we can do is keep him with us in our conversations and in our hearts.