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cameronsdligar-blog · 4 years

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Studying foreign places in Europe is an possibility

many college students dream of someday pursuing. It is an possibility that provides the chance to enjoy a new way of thinking, a new manner of learning, and even a new way of residing. Study in Europe It gives you the opportunity to meet new humans, make new friends, and create recollections you will usually have with you. To placed the proverbial cherry on top, it additionally looks excellent on a resume.

Still, studying distant places isn't some thing that should be taken lightly. It is a chief selection that calls for careful thought and planning.

Before jumping into the selection to move to Europe for a semester or two, consider the following things:

The Country Where you Want to Study: When it comes to observe overseas packages, Europe's possibilities appear almost endless. This is due to the fact Europe is situated on a continent with a plethora of exciting international locations. You can't in reality determine to "take a look at overseas Europe style;" instead, you should choose the real usa you want to head to.

One issue that is essential to maintain in thoughts is that just because you're studying in one usa, that doesn't suggest you cannot tour to any other or several others. If you in reality like the educational system in Germany, for instance, however adore the people and scenery of Ireland, choose to observe in which it is quality for your lecturers. Then, certainly tour to Ireland on a weekend or two. Put lecturers first, and play second.

What Nation Will Benefit your Major: Not everyone's foremost will be applicable to observe abroad packages, Europe or elsewhere. But, a few majors can greatly benefit relying on in which you pick to head. If you're majoring or minoring in Italian, for instance, it makes perfect feel to look at in Italy. If you're majoring in architecture, you can advantage from analyzing the ancient homes of Greece. If you're majoring in fashion, you may need to don't forget a semester in Prague.

What Each Program Offers: Not all applications are created equal. Some may be higher appropriate for you than others - it just relies upon on your individual needs and desires. When you pick out examine abroad packages, Europe school officials can help lead you toward which of them are excellent for you. These officials also can lead you in the direction of scholarships for take a look at overseas applications. Europe is very accommodating to worldwide students. They need to assist you, so permit them.

Are you deliberating analyzing abroad in Europe however don't know the way to start? Nowadays, incomes your diploma or a part of it overseas has turn out to be a essential device for college students to grow for my part and professionally. With over 5,400 institutions, a cohesive higher education policy, a secure environment, and an great cultural and historic heritage, Europe has a lot to provide you as a scholar. On this article, I explain the steps you must follow to come observe in Europe and come up with some pieces of recommendation on the essential elements to take into account when preparing your overseas examine enjoy in Europe.

* STEP 1: Have you already commenced your higher training studies? There's a outstanding distinction between applying for studies overseas in Europe as a first-year scholar and shifting from a university or college from any other country: - If you aren't enrolled at any higher training institution in your property us of a and would really like to study as an undergraduate pupil in Europe, you can need to prove you've got correctly exceeded your higher secondary school / high college research and your school leaving examination. If you exceeded the leaving examination and your property united states signed the Lisbon Convention or have a reciprocal agreement with the country in Europe where you will be studying, you is probably exempted from taking the examination again. To check the validity of your previous studies at high faculty to keep to better training research, you need to touch either the university or college of your interest or the ministry of schooling of the usa where you will be studying. Which one you will should touch vary depending on the us of a in Europe. - If you're already studying at university or college in your private home u . S . A . and would like to have a look at overseas in Europe, you could hold analyzing the step #2.

* STEP 2: Decide whether you'll be an exchange or a unfastened mover pupil. If you would love to observe your complete diploma in Europe, coming as a free mover student might be the maximum suitable choice for you. If you would much like to examine abroad in Europe for a particular period of time, collaborating in an trade application between your modern-day school and its counterpart in Europe might be the quality approach. It is important your firstly evaluate your reputation as a student, as it will determine a way to practice for research overseas in Europe. Among the variations between being an trade or a free mover student in Europe, I would point out those ones: - Exchange college students publish their applications thru their coordinator at their domestic college, even as free movers should arrange all of the documentation by way of themselves. - As an change scholar, you will be charged moderate or no lessons charges at all, at the same time as you will ought to pay complete tuition and registration expenses as a free mover scholar. - Keep in thoughts that if you intend to go back to your house college, you must make certain you agree in written with your teachers what publications you studied abroad will be recognized after you are back. This is typically done thru a document called "Learning settlement". - In general, alternate college students comply with distinct application closing dates than the same old dates.

* STEP 3: Find a school that first-class meets your educational profile and private expectations.This is the most time-consuming part of the process of organizing your overseas study experience in Europe. When deciding on a college in Europe, you ought to recollect elements inclusive of: - The language of guidance: in Europe, you can examine in many languages, along with English, Spanish, French, German or Italian, just to say some of them. Don't be afraid and take the danger to improve your foreign language skills. Many faculties in Europe offer languages guides addressed to their global students. So you will be capable of earn a degree whilst learning or enhancing your foreign language skills. In fact, I studied Swedish while incomes my degree. The language of guidance of my lectures changed into Swedish! It might appear difficult within the beginning, however the result is truly rewarding. - Social activities: does your college provide sports to get you socially integrated within the campus life? It's now not just about having fun, but also about mastering more about the u . S . A . in which you may be living in and mastering other folks who are in the same scenario as you. You may also make superb friends! - Accommodation provide: does your college provide you with accommodation at the campus or help you find an area to live? You need to search for an accommodation choice earlier than coming to Europe. - Career opportunities: consider the opportunities to be had for you after you end your research on the faculty you chose. Do they additionally assist you with profession development?

* STEP 4: Take the admission checks. This may not continually be the case but, for certain competitive have a look at applications, college students are required to skip an admission test. The results you acquire at the ones tests will decide whether you may subsequently be admitted. In the occasion you're making use of for studies related for great arts, you can additionally be required to skip aptitude assessments.

* STEP 5: Prepare your scholar visa and residence allow. Once you have got decided on your faculty and have been admitted to the examine software of your choice, you could initiate the procedure of making use of for a student visa or residence allow. Students from positive nations or planning to live in Europe for a time period longer than ninety days, will ought to follow for a Schengen Visa and/or a residence allow. Usually the utility for a residence permit and a Schengen Visa is perform via the embassy or consulate in your home usa, in which you could additionally address any questions you can have.

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pri · 6 years

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We asked you to tell us about your random acts of kindness. These were our favorites.

Boston artist Bren Bataclan often gives away his paintings with a note asking people to "smile at random people more often." He gave us two to give to PRI listeners and readers. Bataclan selected two people who commented on PRI The World’s Facebook page about the random acts of kindness they did for others or someone had done for them.

So, who were the two lucky people that will receive one of Bataclan's paintings and what were their "random acts of kindness"? The first winner is John Stewart from Salt Lake City, Utah, who works as a professional Santa, a job that can often be thankless and taxing. His goodwill extended beyond the North Pole when this happened:

"One year, I finished up a private party at a family's house. It was a lot of fun, and at the end, the parents gave me a Christmas card containing my fee. Once I got home, I opened the card and discovered that they had paid double my normal rate. It was very nice of them. Later, I went to dinner with a friend at a restaurant. She was asking me about being Santa, and I told her I always loved when the older kids at the party would not let on to the younger kids. They played along and made it fun for everyone. The waitress overheard and told us that she had to tell her young son the truth about Santa this year. I asked her why, and she said that because she had just finished a round of chemotherapy for cancer, and this was her first day back to work, and Christmas was not going to be like it had been in previous years. Like a shot of lightning, the universe was giving me a message. I gave the waitress the extra money that the family had given me. I told her Santa always made sure kids had a good Christmas."

The other "random acts of kindness" winner is Ruth Deakins. She befriended a homeless man in San Diego and posted this:

"I've gotten to know him over the years. While talking to him recently, he told me he was married at one time and has a grown son and a daughter who died in her 30's. I asked him if he had worked during his life. He said he had for many years and once owned a home. He's now 70 years old. I asked if he would qualify for social security. He said he does, but he didn't know how to apply. He knows his social security #, but doesn't remember much else about his life; i.e., addresses where he once lived, etc. I think he may be in early dementia. He's all alone now and has no connection with his family. I took him to the social security office and spent the day there in the lines. At being 70 years old, turns out that he could collect $1,600/month in social security benefits. That would be life-changing for him, but he has no documentation that he is a legal citizen in the U.S.; therefore, he will not receive the money. He said he came here from Mexico when he was four years old, but has no documentation that he can remember obtaining. He may be a legal citizen, but he just doesn't know."

Listen to the full story at pri.org.

#random acts of kindness #kindess #raok #art #boston

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Russian Campaign Promotes Homegrown Vaccine and Undercuts Rivals Russian news outlets connected to election disinformation campaigns in the United States have set their sites on a new target: convincing Spanish-speaking countries that the Russian coronavirus vaccine works better than its American competitors, according to researchers and State Department officials. The Russian campaign has focused on Latin American nations, including Mexico, which this week signed a deal to acquire millions of doses of the Russian vaccine, and Argentina, which last month began vaccinating its citizens with it. Conducted on Spanish-language social media and reinforced by the official Twitter account of the Russian embassy in Mexico City, the campaign signaled a new wrinkle in Russian influence operations, promoting Russian industry and scientific cachet over its competitors as governments around the world race to vaccinate their populations. The Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, was named after the first satellite to orbit the earth, which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Sputnik V is considered less expensive and easier to transport than vaccines made by the American companies Pfizer and Moderna. But some researchers say the criticism in Russian outlets of the Western vaccines has been misleading. “Almost everything they are promoting about the vaccine is manipulated and put out without context,” said Bret Schafer, a fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an advocacy group that tracks Russian disinformation. “Every negative story or issue that has come out about a U.S.-made vaccine is amplified, while they flood the zone with any positive report about the Russian vaccine.” Media outlets backed by the Russian government posted to Facebook and Twitter hundreds of links to news stories that reported potential ties suggesting American vaccines may have had a role in deaths, the researchers said. The accounts left out follow-up reports that found the vaccines most likely played no role in the deaths. “This was a coordinated effort that was part P.R. campaign and part disinformation. It is one of the largest operations we’ve seen to promote a narrative around the vaccine in Latin America, and it appears to have had an effect,” said Jaime Longoria, a disinformation researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that supports journalists and independent researchers. “Russia steadily seeded a narrative that has grown and been, to some degree, accepted.” Researchers have tracked similar Russian efforts in Eastern European countries that are still negotiating with Russia to buy the vaccine. Disinformation researchers have also monitored Russia spreading similar narratives in a half-dozen languages, targeting countries in central and Western Africa. China has also joined the fray, striking a similar anti-American vaccine tone aimed at a domestic audience, according to disinformation researchers. While Russia and China do not appear to be working together, their shared interests have led to a shared narrative. Last month, a Twitter account dedicated to Sputnik V included a Chinese report that falsely claimed the U.S. media had remained silent on deaths related to Pfizer’s vaccine. Intelligence officials in the United States noticed the first uptick in Russia targeting Spanish-speaking communities in August, when President Vladimir V. Putin announced that he had granted approval to Sputnik V. Since then, Russia’s campaign has intensified, said two intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with reporters. The State Department officials described Russia’s influence campaign as a combination of Russia’s state-backed media outlets highlighting reports that warned about the dangers of the U.S. vaccines, while promoting any reports that were enthusiastic about the Russian-made vaccine. At the State Department, a report circulated last month outlining Russia’s efforts, according to the officials. A department spokeswoman said Russia has tried to promote its own vaccine while “seeking to sow distrust” in the United States about Western vaccines. Analyzing over 1,000 Russian-aligned Twitter accounts, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center found that Spanish-language accounts showed the greatest engagement. Russia’s campaign, the spokeswoman said, “undermines the collective global effort to end the global pandemic.” The influence campaign in Mexico has become the best understood of the efforts by the outlets with ties to the Kremlin. It was different from previous Russian disinformation campaigns, which leaned on posting false and misleading information online. As social media companies have become more aggressive in rooting out disinformation, Russian operations have focused on promoting selective news stories that skirt the truth, rather than reject it. The new approach was particularly effective because the Spanish-language Twitter and Facebook accounts of Russia Today and Sputnik, two state-controlled media outlets, regularly rank among the most influential in Latin America, said researchers at First Draft. Russia Today and Sputnik did not respond to a request for comment. “They have cultivated a large audience and regularly rank in the top 10 of the most-shared stories or links,” said Mr. Longoria. This week, Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s deputy health minister, said his government had signed a contract for the Russian vaccine, procuring 24 million doses that will cover 12 million people. The vaccine will be delivered in several stages through May. On Tuesday, the medical journal The Lancet published the results of an independent review of Sputnik V, showing that it had 91.6 percent efficacy and no serious side effects. The news was a boost to the Mexican government’s procurement efforts. In December, Facebook said it had removed a Russian disinformation campaign that posted information in French, English, Portuguese and Arabic about a number of topics, including in support of Russia’s vaccine. “We know influence operations come in different forms, including overt messages promoted through state-controlled media. We put clear labels on these publishers so people know who the information is coming from,” said Liz Bourgeois, a Facebook spokeswoman. She said Facebook had seen clandestine Russian operations mentioning Covid-19 in the past, but it had not found any current campaigns. Posts by the Russian news outlets would not have been considered clandestine and would not have been removed by Facebook. Covid-19 Vaccines › Answers to Your Vaccine Questions Am I eligible for the Covid vaccine in my state? Currently more than 150 million people — almost half the population — are eligible to be vaccinated. But each state makes the final decision about who goes first. The nation’s 21 million health care workers and three million residents of long-term care facilities were the first to qualify. In mid-January, federal officials urged all states to open up eligibility to everyone 65 and older and to adults of any age with medical conditions that put them at high risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid-19. Adults in the general population are at the back of the line. If federal and state health officials can clear up bottlenecks in vaccine distribution, everyone 16 and older will become eligible as early as this spring or early summer. The vaccine hasn’t been approved in children, although studies are underway. It may be months before a vaccine is available for anyone under the age of 16. Go to your state health website for up-to-date information on vaccination policies in your area Is the vaccine free? You should not have to pay anything out of pocket to get the vaccine, although you will be asked for insurance information. If you don’t have insurance, you should still be given the vaccine at no charge. Congress passed legislation this spring that bars insurers from applying any cost sharing, such as a co-payment or deductible. It layered on additional protections barring pharmacies, doctors and hospitals from billing patients, including those who are uninsured. Even so, health experts do worry that patients might stumble into loopholes that leave them vulnerable to surprise bills. This could happen to those who are charged a doctor visit fee along with their vaccine, or Americans who have certain types of health coverage that do not fall under the new rules. If you get your vaccine from a doctor’s office or urgent care clinic, talk to them about potential hidden charges. To be sure you won’t get a surprise bill, the best bet is to get your vaccine at a health department vaccination site or a local pharmacy once the shots become more widely available. Can I choose which vaccine I get? How long will the vaccine last? Will I need another one next year? That is to be determined. It’s possible that Covid-19 vaccinations will become an annual event, just like the flu shot. Or it may be that the benefits of the vaccine last longer than a year. We have to wait to see how durable the protection from the vaccines is. To determine this, researchers are going to be tracking vaccinated people to look for “breakthrough cases” — those people who get sick with Covid-19 despite vaccination. That is a sign of weakening protection and will give researchers clues about how long the vaccine lasts. They will also be monitoring levels of antibodies and T cells in the blood of vaccinated people to determine whether and when a booster shot might be needed. It’s conceivable that people may need boosters every few months, once a year or only every few years. It’s just a matter of waiting for the data. Will my employer require vaccinations? Where can I find out more? Twitter declined to comment on any Russian operations targeting Spanish-speaking audiences, but said it was still investigating. The Russian campaign relied on cherry-picked news reports, researchers said. On Jan. 17, Russia Today Espanol tweeted that Norway was moving to investigate why 23 older people had died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Three weeks earlier, the same account tweeted multiple reports about six people who died during Pfizer’s vaccine trial. The reports did not include context from medical experts who said the deaths most likely had no connection to the vaccine. The accounts shared similar narratives on Facebook. On Jan. 5, Russia Today’s Spanish-language Facebook page shared a story with its 17 million followers claiming that a Portuguese nurse died two days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The story implied that the vaccine was responsible, despite doctors and an autopsy concluding the vaccine probably played no role in her death. Russia’s diplomatic corps also used their social media accounts to promote an image that the Russian vaccine was being subjected to unfair scrutiny. The volume of posts was notable, said Mr. Longoria and others who study Russian influence operations. On CrowdTangle, the Facebook-owned tool that analyzes interactions on the site, they found that Russia Today and Sputnik pages targeting Spanish-speaking audiences generated more than 1,000 posts with over six million interactions over the last year with the word “vacuna,” Spanish for vaccine. Researchers said Russia’s earlier efforts focused on other targets, like the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. A Russian effort to undermine confidence in that vaccine — including memes and posts on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere depicting it as dangerous — peaked over the summer and early fall, according to researchers. The campaign included suggestions that the vaccine would turn people into monkeys because it was developed using a chimpanzee virus. It largely targeted countries that were debating purchases of the British or Russian vaccines, according to a previous report in The Times of London. That campaign abruptly stopped in mid-December, after the drugmakers announced that Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had reached a deal to test a combination of their vaccines together. “You can see a distinct tipping point, where suddenly the stories about AstraZeneca go from being wholly negative to being wholly positive,” said Mr. Longoria. “It is very stark, and very clear that when the business interests changed, so did the objectives of their influence operation.” Oscar Lopez contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #campaign #Homegrown #Promotes #Rivals #Russian #Undercuts #Vaccine

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roycekimmons · 3 years

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Archdevil Grimthistle Lectures on the Internet

Author’s Note: I wrote this a few years ago as a thought experiment. Intrigued by the style and mythos of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, I wondered what it would be like if Lewis’s anti-hero Screwtape (or a demon like him) were to give an update to his colleagues on the state of the world with the rise of the internet and social media. What advice would Screwtape give to other devils today whose sole purpose in existence is to make human life more miserable? To give myself more freedom, I created my own character—an Archdevil named Grimthistle—operating within Lewis’s mythos. Though similar to Screwtape in some ways, Grimthistle is first and foremost an academic who finds himself lecturing an auditorium full of other devilish academics on the possibilities afforded by emergent technologies to nurture human misery.

My lovely young devils, demons, succubi, and wraiths, it is with special delight that I speak to you today. As you are all well-aware, human history has taken some interesting turns in recent decades as our forces and those of the Enemy have guided humans in developing ever new mechanisms of warfare, both of the crude physical variety, such as naval and air vessels, machine weaponry, drones, and the most holy atomics, but also of the more refined intellectual and social variety, such as mass media, radio and television broadcasting, movies, and now, the internet and social media.

It is of the latter that I will speak today. I do so without intending any disrespect to the awesome mechanisms of destruction that many of you have had a claw or tentacle involved in developing. For who could ever argue against the amazing destructive power of the gatling gun, napalm, or chlorine gas? Indeed, I have never addressed a group of you, my fellow sufferers, in which the mere mention of phosgene did not elicit riotous applause. Yet, I fear that our wild successes in the 19th and 20th centuries on this front have somewhat distracted us from our eternal quest.

It is true. Seeing humans writhe in agony on a battlefield, dismembered, mutilated, frightened, and despondent has led me to shudder in ecstasy more times than I can remember. With delight I have pictured in my mind the ocean of tears that we have undoubtedly wrung from our Eternal Enemy’s eyes as He has been forced to watch his self-destructive children brutally hack each other to bits in ever bloodier and bloodier conflicts. Yet, in the eternal scheme, the joys of mortal bloodshed are merely a passing amusement that can lull our demonic efforts into a sense of security.

As I have always argued, war itself garners us no net benefit to souls corrupted. Lest we forget, the soldier can just as surely be saved by the Enemy as can the pacifist, and I can tell by your grumbling stomachs that many of you have developed quite a taste for the souls of these pacifists that now seem to find their ways to our kingdom in droves. Indeed, all humans will die, and though it may give us pleasure to help them toward that end sooner rather than later, we must always remember that our true goal is not to speed them toward death but to ensure that they belong to us thereafter.

Though a bare bodkin is all it takes to kill a saint, you need words to kill the memory of that saint and to prevent others from becoming saints themselves.

Toward this end, I have always contended that the aforementioned mechanisms of intellectual warfare have ever been of more use to us than their more blunt and explosive counterparts, because though a bomb may efficiently destroy the body, only words, ideas, and beliefs can corrupt the soul.

You might remember some of my earlier work with the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, English, French, and Russians on this front. Through the mere writing and reading of words, we have empowered a single devil to serve as any given author’s muse, and through that author, that devil’s words can be propagated to untold thousands, even millions of humans. Indeed, how many of the countless children of light squirming in your insatiable bellies now were first corrupted by actions and ideas that originated from a written word?

For that reason, we should embrace human technological advancements that allow us to share our demonic messages at an ever greater scale and rate. But, if we do not act quickly, I fear that the Enemy will use these mechanisms toward achieving His ends, as He attempted to do, and I fear met some success with, when He began using the printing press to propagate His words and a knowledge of the universe to the masses. That is, we must always be at the forefront of every new advancement in communication the humans make both to thwart the Enemy’s purposes and to expand our own.

For the most part, I feel that we have done this and have beaten the Enemy handily across every emergent medium, ranging from early written texts to Hollywood movies. But I cannot stress enough to you how the internet, and social media in particular, is different from anything we have seen before, and for that reason, we should divert all of our attention away from any other interests we might have and focus squarely here. I will not belabor this point further, but suffice it to say that these new media have more potential for evil (or good) than any previous communication medium in history, and if we do not act quickly and in a devilishly smart way, then we may quickly find ourselves losing hard-fought headway in this great and eternal war.

So, the reason that I am here is not to tell you that we need to win the internet. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that we are winning, and one need look no further than Ratcruncher’s pioneering work with pornography or Spinemold’s ever-impressive sex trafficking networks to know that the Enemy has no idea how to counter the efforts of our vilest and most devious. Rather, I want to extend an invitation to you all to participate in this great and important work and to show you how easy it can be to use these tools to destroy families, destabilize communities, and ultimately corrupt souls. In short, I just want to show you how easy it is so that every sufferer within the sound of my voice can corrupt enough souls to evermore stave off the insatiable hunger that the Enemy in his cruelty has inflicted upon us.

First, use the newness of these media to divorce humans from the wisdom of their forebears. This is an old tactic that we have used in every bloody revolution in history, because it works! Young humans see Instagram, Snapchat, or whatever the newest app or tool is and think to themselves “this is my generation’s medium” and “older people just don’t get it.” And they’re right! Comically, they never stop to ask themselves why the older generations “don’t get it” or can’t be bothered to learn it, and this generational exceptionalism can be used to feed their hubris to a level that they will even divorce themselves completely from the aged, mock them, and disenfranchise them.

Once the young stop looking to the experiences of the old for wisdom, you know we have them! In the past, for instance, if you introduced relationship troubles to one of these youngsters, your greatest fear would be that they would go to a seasoned, responsible elder to learn from their experiences. The beauty of this generational isolation via the internet is that the young only talk to and trust the opinions of other inexperienced young exactly like them. Once they have started doing this, you should then encourage them to think that this is the meaning of community — surrounding themselves with others exactly like them — and you will quickly find them fumbling over one another incessantly, thinking themselves wise while they make the same mistakes made by their ancestors millennia ago. By playing upon this youthful exceptionalism, you can essentially create entire communities where no one has any experience, and by playing to their youthful hubris, you can prevent them from ever catching onto the simple fact that the best way to safeguard themselves against difficulties in life would be to learn from their elders as well as the other simple fact that homogeneity of experience is the antithesis of community.

If you do this correctly, they will quickly come to disregard the wisdom of millennia as quaint or old-fashioned, but you can take this one step further by simply introducing a few doubts in their minds about their forebears’ intelligence or morality — a few drops of poison in the deep well of history. Teach them some general labels or categories — without clear definitions, mind you — to apply to entire swathes of history, and you will never have to worry about them reading a book or entertaining a serious thought again. Don’t want them to read the Magna Carta? Remind them that England was an imperialist nation. Don’t want them to read Jane Austen? Convince them that she wasn’t a true feminist … or Victorian … or whatever. Don’t want them to read Milton? Convince them that he was not a true Christian … or for others that he was too much of a Christian. Ad aeternum. It’s that simple.

Though we all loved the spectacle when Needlegrinder and his devious minions guided the Nazis in burning mountains of books, we don’t need the young to physically burn anything to have the same effect. Merely teach them that if a reductionistic label can loosely be hung on any person or document, then it should be relegated to the rubbish heaps in their minds, and you will never have to worry about them seriously contemplating the wisdom of previous generations.

Besides, not having them physically burn books serves another purpose. Even the most brainwashed sychophant casting a book atop a pyre might experience an idle curiosity to crack open a tome to see what the fuss is all about, but the young enlightened mind doesn’t suffer from curiosity, because it has already neatly collated and categorized the ideas of previous generations without honestly having considered them. The beauty is that they think they know what they reject before even considering it and then pat themselves on the back for their brave prejudice.

It’s also quite comical to do this, because then you can watch them claim intellectual and moral superiority over absolutely anyone in history without realizing that they themselves are the most ignorant, prejudiced, and backward of all. I, after all, was there with Socrates and can tell you that the youngest ancient Greek completing his first lessons in logic could wipe the floor with any modern thinker’s supposed intellectual prowess.

Second, on the topic of logic, you should ever strive to convince them that logic is merely selective cynicism or comedic skepticism. Allow me to explain. We have done a fine job of convincing everyone that they know what “logic” is, and we have had similar successes with “science,” “reason,” “rationality,” and various other terms such that the vast majority of humans who now use them have little to no understanding of their actual meaning. This allows them to weaponize the terms in favor of their own “noble” prejudices and beliefs — using them to aggressively criticize those of others — as they sit comfortably in their own irrational belief systems.

Indeed, we have succeeded in convincing the most “rational” minds of the day to now believe that their thoughts are rational merely because they have them, and that anyone else’s are irrational simply because they do not. And rather than question the rationality of their own “noble” prejudices, they think that “logic” involves nothing more than the use of sophistry to interrogate and humiliate others.

A beautiful, succinct example of this can be seen in how thought leaders quickly focus on spelling and grammar errors on social media to try to delegitimize the arguments of any who disagree with them. Had they actually studied logic or knew how it worked, they would understand that there is absolutely no connection between the truth of a notion and how it is presented. Yet, when they only have 280 characters to convey a meaningful thought — as if that were even possible — they will regularly devote half of that space to questioning their opponent’s thumb typing, believing themselves to be rational only because their autocorrect was working properly that day. You can participate in this beautiful dance by convincing them to respond while driving or otherwise distracted, because then they will feel flustered and committed to the argument only to have the veracity of their thoughts reduced to whether their car hit a bump.

If that doesn’t work, then the boilerplate tu quoque has never gone out of style. When the hated Lamb shouted “thou hypocrite” to those we had seduced, He obviously did so to convince them to repent — signaling to them that their beliefs were correct, but their actions were not, thereby jeopardizing their souls. From time immemorial, we have devilishly twisted this powerful technique away from a tool for salvation toward destruction. Rather than concern for the welfare of their opponents’ souls, convince your humans to shout “hypocrite” in an attempt to attack their opponents’ underlying ideas. It will never occur to them that distance between belief and action actually represents cause to repent — the changing of one’s actions to better align with one’s beliefs — and they will rather use it to argue the inverse: that a person’s thoughts, ideals, and beliefs should retroactively be manipulated to reflect their actions. Or, in other words, that if there is a disconnect between belief and action, then belief must be the culprit.

This wicked tactic is devilishly sinister, because it implicitly confuses the relationship between belief and action to the point that they will no longer look to beliefs as ideals to aspire to (therefore inspiring them to change their actions) but will rather treat them as little more than excuses or justifications for their actions. Indeed, though the Lamb wanted his targeted “hypocrites” to act on their beliefs so that they might be saved, we can easily convince modern thinkers that their beliefs should be malleable constructs that serve no purpose beyond justifying their damnable actions. Hence, though the Enemy appealed to hypocrisy to convince humans to change their actions, we can devilishly appeal to hypocrisy to convince them to change their beliefs.

Taken together, these muddled approaches to logic are invaluable tactics for ensuring that our followers will always “strain at gnats” while “swallowing camels,” as the Enemy Himself suggested of our adherents. By absorbing themselves in the critique of others’ “gnats,” they can console themselves in their own “camels,” yielding beautiful generations of cynical, aggressive humans who have no rational basis for their own beliefs but who nonetheless demand pure, stone cold reason from any who disagree with them.

And third, because the simplest antidote to any of our efforts is civility — or hell forbid, love — you should work tirelessly to paint any instances of moderation, kindness, respect, or deference as weakness or, preferably, treason to one’s cause. What has at times been considered simple human decency and concern for the other should be treated as wishy-washy indecision or barriers to the crushing wheels of progress. Having a civil conversation should be treated as fraternization with the enemy. Speech itself should be treated as a form of oppression, rather than just the communication of ideas, so that the very act of speaking may be regulated and controlled and the speaker can be dehumanized as nothing more than a soulless perpetrator of evil to be stopped at all cost.

Here, again, labeling can be enormously useful. Just as history can be ignored if it is merely labeled, so too can the living human other. In the U.S., for instance, we have polarized politics enough that merely appending a D or an R to the end of a leader’s name is enough to convince almost half the population to distrust anything that they will say. And this works for lay people as well. Every time your adherents notice their neighbor saying something online, you should whisper softly to them “Mrs. So-and-So is a democrublican, so I should distrust her.” That way they don’t have to busy themselves with understanding the actual content of Mrs. So-and-So’s words, the reasons why she might say them, or the experiences that might have led her to do so. If they have a useful label for her, then Mrs. So-and-So becomes nothing more than a label, something to be collated and ignored at whim — certainly not a human to be valued.

Playing upon historical pendula of oppression and evil-doing helps in this regard, because if humans can feel that their voices have been silenced in the past because of a label that has been placed upon them, they then can use this feeling of injustice as moral grounding to place labels on others for the purpose of silencing them in return. Some angry souls will embrace this as justifiable vengeance, but most must be convinced that it is merely a practical consideration to correct historical imbalances of power. At any rate, the effect is the same. Some are allowed to speak, while others are silenced not because of anything they themselves have done but because a label has been placed upon them that likely originated hundreds or even thousands of years in the past. The deliciousness of this irony is that oppressors and victims can engage in an eternal hateful dance, wherein they merely alternate who is leading at the moment. Feeling justified, oppressors can ridicule and demonize victims for as long as they are in power only to have the situation reversed in never ending cycles of hateful vindication.

The deliciousness of this dance is that they will never realize that the simple solution peddled by the Lamb is forgiveness, mercy, and love. By viewing human history as a never-ending cycle of oppressor vs. oppressed, they can easily be blinded to the only solution to the cycle, believing that someone must inevitably always be the oppressor and that the other must always inevitably be oppressed. Thus, they will direct all of their vengeance and moral outrage not toward destroying oppression but in becoming the oppressors themselves. This allows them to self-justify their hatred, wrong-doing, and all manner of injustices while at the same time patting themselves on the backs, claiming that their hatred is justified or is even an act of love.

As with other tactics I have previously mentioned, this tactic relies upon the use of labels and that they have a superficial awareness of one another. Be cautious in this regard, however, because though you want to provide enough identifying information to allow your adherents to effectively marginalize the other, you must walk a fine line between that devious enterprise and unknowingly guiding them to develop noble emotions like empathy. For that reason, keep labels limited to divisive issues of the day, and never encourage humans to label themselves in any way that acknowledges their common humanity or their common relationship to one another as children of the Enemy.

Some of you will contend that this is nothing new; after all, labeling the other has always been a useful tactic. But, I contend that the internet has made such labeling immensely more powerful for sowing discord and corrupting souls for two obvious reasons. First, the sheer amount of information that humans must now deal with via the internet and their social media feeds means that they must organize information — and by extension the people producing it — in ever more efficient ways, and labels are nothing if not devilishly efficient. And second, the actual design of these tools allows them to do this with ease! Many platforms actually solicit labels from their participants and allow them to block, ignore, or even silence other humans for no reason other than being different from themselves. Thus, with only a little prodding on your part, you can effectively guide your subjects in creating the most vitriolic, isolated, and homogenous echo chambers imaginable, where they incessantly rage against the idiocies of the unrepresented other while having their moral egos continuously stroked by those most like them.

It is amazing to think that rather than learning to love the quintessential other in the form of one’s neighbor, as the Enemy implored them to do millennia ago, human technologies have instead veered toward empowering ever more selectivity in determining who one’s neighbors are, thereby not requiring humans to make any kind of soul-stretching growth! Rather than following the Lamb’s uncomfortable commandment to “love thy enemies,” humans have rather decided to separate themselves more fully from their perceived enemies. After all, all religious and humanist arguments for loving others is predicated on the belief that the other is human, but if we can convince them to think of the other as something less than human (via a smorgasbord of available labels), then all such mandates become null and void, and those labels only develop teeth if they have a safe place where they can demonize labeled others without intellectual interference or empathetic overtures.

I am mindful of my time and that the hour draws late. As you might guess, I have much more to say on these topics and encourage you to visit my work published in Tormentors’ Quarterly and the Journal of Soul Corruption Techniques for more detailed guidance on how to use the internet to full effect. But allow me to just close by providing a few words of encouragement.

This is an exciting time for us as the demonic host, because humans have found themselves with more unbridled power and less soul-searching discipline than at any other time in history. The Enemy seeks to use these tools for promoting love, goodness, and salvation, but there is no doubt that we are winning. Humans today live on the privileges afforded to them from the sacrifices of previous generations and squander their time and resources on selfishness, self-delusion, and self-destruction. This old devil, for one, has never seen anything like it. What a time to be dead!

#fiction #social media #internet #christianity #cs lewis

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starsaboveyouadoption · 3 years

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love comes in layers - 1 year, 4 lessons

Originally, I had intended this entry as a reflection on my first 100 days as an adoptive parent. At the time of writing, as a bank of entries ready to start Stars Above You with, it felt an apt starting place. With Covid and Lockdown and the haze of limbo in between, the months rolled on, and before I knew it, we made it to an even bigger milestone – one year together as an adoptive family, or as we call it, our first “Family Day”.

Post-adoption, it’s amazing how you enter a strange dual-edged time warp, where time simultaneously seems to be racing away from you and you can’t believe how far you’ve come as a family, whilst also being able to recall some of the really raw moments early on as if they were yesterday. With that in mind, I thought I’d revisit the half-finished draft of this post, and inject some “1 year on” lessons into it as I went along. So what follows are my reflections on adoption 1 year on, for whatever they may be worth to you as someone starting out (in which case I hope they serve as a heads up to what you may go on to feel/experience yourself, though every road is different), or as someone walking along the same path as me now, still a relatively newly formed family with a lot of miles still to travel, but at least some of the road behind.

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It was around the time of the juncture that I mentioned, as I was lying down on the floor of Little Star’s nursery waiting the obligatory 5 minutes after they’d nodded off for their morning nap to make my ninja-esque escape out of the small crack in the door left ajar, that a realisation struck. We’d survived our first 100 days of adoptive parenting. Somebody else looking at the scene may have read this as a parenting fail. At 16 months, Little Star still needed the reassurance of me lying on the floor next to their crib, playing the same lullaby tune on our white noise machine that we’d been dependent on since only a few weeks after they came home, while they fell asleep. They still needed (up until pretty recently) a dummy to soothe them, a specific comfort blanket made by my Mum given to them in introductions to snuggle up to, lots of quite prolonged winding down time ahead of going upstairs, and for me to wait at least 5 minutes, if not longer, before attempting my escape lest they wake up again, scream their head off and refuse to go back down, leaving a very grumpy toddler (and Mummy) for the rest of the day.

But to us (and especially to me), this was an absolute win. We were no longer having to rock endlessly to sleep, dependent on TV programmes for Little Star to understand it was sleep time. We were no longer spending the first 20 minutes of what would usually be a 45 minute nap anxiously hovering over the monitor to check if they were going to jolt awake any minute and hear that angry battle cry, or getting through umpteen bottles of Calpol in our guesses as to whether their restlessness was linked to toothache, tummy pain, reflux, or just general toddler stubbornness and FOMO. We were finally (finally) able to put Little Star to sleep through a short series of little rituals that worked for them, taking far less out of our down time than before – able to put them down in the cot to (semi) self soothe without too much fuss, and at last able to sleep most nights and enjoy most nap breaks without the constant feeling of anxiety and exhaustion from second guessing what might happen next. In short, we’d found a system that was working for us.

I thought back to the immediate fortnight after Little Star moved in, probably some of the toughest days of my life. The moments of joy and awe at having this little bundle sleeping upstairs on good nights felt like winning the lottery, but for those first weeks and months, more nights than not were spent feeling drained from a whole host of pressures – trying to “read” Little Star (but, if babies don’t come with a manual, trying to read your adoptive baby’s cues when you’ve known them for a matter of days or weeks feels like trying to interpret hieroglyphics). Trying to “keep up” with the Mummy world’s expectations of what Little Star “should” be doing at their age (you know exactly what I’m talking about I’m sure). Trying to build up some semblance of a routine amidst the chaos. Trying to mourn our old lives (even though Little Star was so wanted). Trying to be the parents we’d told ourselves (and others) we’d be. And everything in between. Trying to be perfect.

If someone asked me the overarching word I would use to describe our first month at home with Little Star, I would either say “mind-blowing” (in all the right ways), but also, without a doubt, “isolating”. The loneliness was palpable. We’ve talked about this in a previous blog but as a reminder, in adoption, the general wisdom is that when you bring your child home, you need a period of several weeks to establish yourselves as a family, and for your child to settle before meeting any visitors, even close family. This is referred to as “cocooning” and is a vital step of the moving in process (I can now see how important this was with hindsight). However, with all of the benefits this brings for bonding as a family unit, it does rob you of the opportunity that most new parents get of seeing a friendly face amongst the stress, being able to accept a helping hand in their care when days get rough, and maintaining perspective. You feel (and pretty much are) living in a bubble, and while usually this bubble actually only lasts a few weeks, at the time it feels so intense. And to top it all off, I put myself under so much pressure. Pressure that I can now see in retrospect I had no business putting myself under. So for those of you considering adoption, or maybe especially those of you who may be in the period leading up to meeting or bringing your child home, for what it’s worth, this is my learning from our first 100 days (or 1 year!)…

Let go of conventional parenting wisdom

We had this drilled into us repeatedly throughout our assessment, but somehow, it never really sticks. When you’re new to being a parent, and in our case going in “cold” to a toddler with an established personality, who wasn’t carried by you, hasn’t spent the first year of their life growing up in your home environment, doesn’t know how to read you nor you to read them, and hasn’t had the same stability, security or opportunities as other children to start them off in life (not to mention an added dollop of trauma, grief and loss) – I can tell you now that most of what you read in baby magazines and online articles, how your friends and relatives parent their babies, what the health visitor, GP, or especially bloody Mumsnet says about what your baby “should” be doing by now, categorically will not apply (at least for some time). Many adoptive parents come up against the myth (which we will explore soon!) that if they adopt a baby who is relatively young or from birth, that child will not be affected by their adoption and will largely be “normal” – and thus should you notice any differences these are all in your head as an over-protective earth Mum type. I’m here to tell you that any child development or adoption expert will confirm that the evidence suggests this is absolutely not the case and even babies adopted from birth will already have had experiences, traumas and risks associated with their early and in-utero development that mean conventional parenting wisdom will often not apply.

In those early months, and maybe for much longer than that, give yourself a break. Of course, it’s important to identify if your child is not meeting extremely crucial developmental milestones that may indicate additional needs or support requirements. But please do not get yourself wound up about any of the following as I did:

· Whether your child can self-soothe to sleep. This is in my experience of the most dominant narratives within Western parenting advice. That at a mere 4 months old or so, your baby should be capable of settling themselves to sleep with no help from you, and that if you do need to help them, you are setting them up for a life of stunted development, and “making a rod for your own back”. Notwithstanding the rant I could go on about my feelings on this for any baby, for adoptive parents specifically I would really warn against absorbing too much of this messaging. As my intro alluded to, my partner and I were at our wits’ end at times trying to help our elder baby learn how to self-soothe better to sleep, and it was causing us some problems, but we got there in the end, and crucially, the biggest problem of all that we stressed about was that we “shouldn’t” be doing this and that. A lot of the time we realised if we were honest that the things it took to get Little Star to settle to sleep weren’t usually a big deal for us but we were hyper aware of social expectations around it and started tying ourselves in knots to push them before they were ready to be capable of sleeping the way many Western birth children do. Because we were worried what people might think. Which actually as it happened, was largely unfounded as mostly people are too concerned about their own parenting neurosis to contribute to yours, and your loved ones won’t be taking anywhere near as much interest in it as you are. There was the odd comment here and there from certain quarters but nothing I couldn’t usually put down to well-meaning, if misplaced and slightly unsolicited, advice. My take on it is – it is far more important in those early days and weeks to provide your child with some continuity as they ease from their foster placement to your home, than to try to keep up with the Joneses on this one. However, a caveat to this is if it causing you and/or your partner problems, then of course your wellbeing is a priority and it absolutely makes sense to try what you can to make things easier on yourself. Sometimes easier means trying something new. For us, a lot of the time, easier meant keeping to what was familiar for Little Star, and only making very gradual incremental changes over a longer period of time. Something I’ll always remember is our social worker saying to us at one particularly neurotic check in, “you don’t see many 5-year olds needing to be rocked to sleep at night. So, rest assured, Little Star will get there in their own time”. This is a very common issue for adoptive babies, and every adoptive parent I’ve spoken to on this subject has agreed - throw the “rulebook” out the window, and do what works for your child and your family. Any extra soothing time is extra bonding opportunities as far as we are concerned.

· What they’re eating and how they’re eating it. As it happens, we are fortunate that by and large, Little Star is not a fussy eater, with a good appetite, and mostly, will eat what’s put in front of them so we manage to maintain a relatively healthy diet. However, they, like many toddlers, have gone through times of fussiness, food refusal, screaming at the highchair, throwing their food at the cat, and spitting everything out. Many adoptive parents will say that they haven’t always been super on board with the food their little one was fed in foster care, and they would have chosen to do things differently if they’d had their baby from birth, but that by the time they’ve met their child, their eating habits are quite established, and it’s been hard to move them on to a rainbow of 10 a day when they’re refusing everything but chicken nuggets (especially older children!). The main message I’ve picked up from more seasoned adopters in this area is – don’t sweat the small stuff (at least for now). There will come a day you might want to step up those gradual changes I talked about earlier, but usually the more immediate and important emotional need is to offer your child comforting familiarity, a sense of security about food, and not inadvertently create any anxieties around meal times, especially when you are trying to establish meal times as a family bonding opportunity. For older adopted children who may have lived in their birth homes before being in foster care, food can be a very common area for anxiety. Some may have experienced not knowing where their next meal is coming from or food being removed as inappropriate punishment, and sometimes overfeeding is a factor in neglect/abuse (we hadn’t realised this until we did our prep training). Therefore, it is very common for adopted children to develop insecurities about food, hoard or steal food, or develop anxiety about there being enough to go round. This isn’t exclusive to those who have grown up in their birth family’s care – sometimes even the knowledge of poverty in their life history is enough for some children to develop unhealthy attachments. We don’t believe this to be an issue for our Little Star, but many adopters have shared their experiences with this, and the general consensus seems to be, not to make food a battleground, to do what gets you through and to not force major changes upon your child within the first 5 minutes.

Now, what we did have is some commentary about Little Star having not been able to feed themself with a spoon at a slightly older age than the “norm”, having been still used to some “baby food” when they came home, and still taking quite a few bottles at an age where they would probably be expected to have dropped them. These sound like trivial things but when you are continually met with surprise that they are still on the bottle, or haven’t practiced some of their motor skills yet, it can be hard not to feel defensive or worried. The bottle thing really got to me for a while – quite a few well-meaning people questioned why we weren’t changing this, or why we still give Little Star a night time bottle, or why they had it in their crib to get to sleep. It’s taken a lot of blocking this stuff out and trying to stay true to our instincts but thankfully we’ve persevered with what worked for us. And lo and behold, Little Star started feeding themselves one day – with a little bit of practice and praise, they’re doing just fine!

· Walking, talking and other milestones. Should you have reason to believe/know your child has formal development delay, then of course this is not applicable. However outside of this, do try not to worry if your child isn’t as early a blossomer as other children you know. Often adopted children, even those without specific additional needs, can be slightly delayed in starting these things, mostly because they’ve had a level of disruption in their first year(s) which other children usually don’t. Even with all the best encouragement and intentions of foster parents, if a child has had a number of moves, shared their home with other foster children, or even has been in the process of being prepared for their move to you at a crucial time in “typical” development, they may not have had the opportunity to practice key skills as often. Little Star was on the later side of walking – they’d been cruising for ages but our foster parents shared that they’d hung back on encouraging them as they were due to move in with us imminently and wanted us to experience this milestone which we thought was thoughtful of them. It’s worth remembering that for even the loveliest foster parents in the world, they are often balancing the needs of several children within the same home, and with the best will in the world, won’t always be able to provide the intensity of “coaching” around these things as a parent would focusing solely on their one child. Personally, we were bowled over by how conscientious our foster family were in nurturing Little Star’s abilities, but certainly there were things that they just took a little longer to do, because of the impact of transitions. If a child is trying to get used to a whole new life, their little brain may not be able to focus on everything all at once. It’s also quite possible that foster parents will parent differently to how you might choose to – may naturally encourage or not particularly focus on certain aspects of development that you might see as important, and vice versa. I wish I’d been kinder to myself about these things – trust me, it’ll happen in time.

Your child may not be the “same” child you meet in introductions.

Recently I was watching the movie Instant Family and laughing out loud, relating to the moment that the previously smug adoptive parents realise that their well-behaved brood are in their “honeymoon phase” and hell on earth is waiting to be unleashed! So…one consistent thing I have heard almost every adoptive parent I know speak about is that they have been surprised by how differently their child behaved, or presented, once home a little while. This is particularly poignant for older children, but certainly there are some truths with babies. In the adoption community we talk about the “honeymoon phase” and are warned to see this coming on our preparation course (though of course you never really do!)

Little Star came across as a very placid, easy-going baby during introductions with their foster family over the course of a week. They appeared to be a very good sleeper, very adaptable to changes in routine, and quite happy-go-lucky. We also sighed a huge breath of relief when they fell asleep perfectly on the first few nights – maybe we were so in tune with our baby that we had seamlessly transitioned them to their new life…? Fast forward 1 week, not quite so. Little Star was having episodes of waking up screaming for 2 hours at night, refusing naps and/or food, and acting cranky for what felt like endless hours. None of the sleep cues we were told about and actually tried successfully in introductions were working, we had no idea how to soothe Little Star when they became distressed, and it felt like an enigma to work out what they wanted. We had some really low moments in those first few weeks, and if you’re not prepared for that happening, it can hit you like a train. I will also add that a year on as Little Star has grown to an older toddler, we have had multiple sleep regressions where even when we have established key routines, these have then been undone, and to this day Little Star finds it very difficult to self soothe, and still reflects the description of them as a younger baby as a “fractious cryer”. The depressing truth, unfortunately, is that we have yet to find anything that “works”, if they do wake. If there was one aspect of their behaviour that I would see as affected by in-utero development, it would be this.

The first few days were something akin I suppose to those first few days with any new baby. You are so in awe of this new bundle of joy, and they perhaps excited about the novelty of their new surroundings, that you can get lulled into a false sense of security – and so when the inevitable hits you, you can feel like a failure. I’m here to tell you that this will happen at some point, but please try not to beat yourself up, or assume you are useless parents!

When you think about it, it’s actually entirely logical that your child would behave differently. If they’re older, perhaps they’re testing boundaries to see how far they can push you before you’ll give up on them like other adults in their life? Adopted children have left everything they’ve come to know behind. Familiar sights, smells, sounds, routines. The bond they’ve created with their foster family, all those little day to day things that make them feel safe and secure. This point really hit home to me when I tried to imagine, having had Little Star home for nearly 6 months, somebody else now coming along, taking them back to their house and “starting again” with everything. I couldn’t even imagine what they would go through.

Trauma and loss are so integral to the adoption journey, and your child will exhibit signs of this at some stage in those early days. For Little Star, they went from being a champion sleeper at the drop of a hat, to am anxious, screaming baby who was inconsolable at times, and who didn’t appear to like us very much at others. This was so different to our experience with them in our first week that I think we went into shock, and this can be the time when relationships are really tested. I remember endlessly questioning if I’d made a huge mistake, genuinely believing I couldn’t do it, planning my days hour to hour to get myself through, and sitting sobbing in front of Little Star’s highchair on those dark days with this knot of anxiety in my belly that I didn’t think would ever go away. For me, looking back, knowing what I know now, I would have sought help and talked to people about how I was feeling a lot sooner. I did reach out to a few close family members, but I was so worried about what people would think and say if I admitted I was struggling that I didn’t ask for as much help as I needed at the time. I imagined that I would be met with “what did you expect?” and feel shamed, so I largely said nothing. This is where it doesn’t always help that adoption can be quite romanticised. A lot of well-meaning people comment on how beautiful it all is, how “lucky” your little one is (more of that another time!!), and try to make you feel better with basically saying how “normal” certain behaviours are for babies/children of their age. But there’s nothing normal about being plonked into those behaviours cold, at an age where you child has already developed a personality of their own, and when you have no experience of how babies work, or more importantly much sense of how this baby works! On top of which you are being expected to practically isolate in your home for 2 weeks which is not natural when most people have new babies. You can feel like there’s some invisible parenting manual out there that everyone else is reading and you’ve missed in the post.

Needless to say, these times fade away as your child grows to build attachments with you, and your confidence will increase, I promise you, to the point where you’ll struggle to remember in the future how you ever felt that way. But even though it all seems like a foggy dream now, I know that I did feel that way, and it was really awful at the time. Please know you are not alone. Reach out for support, talk to your support network that you’ll have spent so much time articulating during your assessment (they focus on support networks for a reason!), and don’t be afraid to talk to your social worker for help – everyone is willing you to succeed. And one last thing, don’t try to be “perfect”. You don’t have to pretend every day with your child has been bliss because of a feeling of debt to the universe for this finally happening for you. You can admit you’re struggling, and still be an awesome parent.

Skip the parenting Olympics

I think this point applies equally to biological parents, but perhaps feels more poignant to adoptive parents who may, as I did, be struggling with other layers of complication which can make feelings of guilt more pointed.

When I first became a Mum, I felt really lonely. Although most of my friends actually do have children, many of them don’t live in immediate proximity, many of their children were quite a bit younger or older than Little Star at the time, and on top of that, I was cocooning with Little Star for the first month or so, so couldn’t really have seen people in person. I then had a couple of good months of meet ups where I was gradually introducing Little Star to friends and family, before Covid struck, and lockdown put a halt on any plans to start integrating them into my wider circle and get into any sense of normality with babysitting, play dates, etc. I have one friend who is also an adoptive parent with roughly the same timeline as me who has been an absolute Godsend throughout and who I was texting regularly (as I was with some other friends) but I really felt like a fish out of water in the parenting world.

On the suggestion of a colleague of my partner’s, I joined a few apps for meeting Mum friends in the local area, and I started to make a few online connections with local /online peer groups of other adoptive and biological parents. I also follow a few accounts and hashtags on Instagram I thought might help me feel I was in some company. While in many ways, this has been a positive experience and provided me with much needed peer support for times when I really needed reassurance, positivity and a forum to ask all the questions I had about raising a baby, there have also been times it’s left me feeling woefully inadequate. I always knew that there was pressure on new parents, but it wasn’t until I entered the world of #mumsofinstagram, that I realised how much frankly, bullshit, there is out there in the stratosphere. I now roll my eyes at carefully curated and filtered photos of perfection, but it’s taken (and still takes) work to recognise that my parenting is, as is another saying in the adoption world, “good enough”. So, I now consider it my civic duty to inform you if no-one else has, that to be a good enough parent, your child does not need:

· To be a yoga maestro/baby Mozart/be fluent in baby sign/to have mastered phonics by 12 months

· To have had a cake smash photoshoot, custom-made balloon arch or 100-person party for their first birthday

· To be kitted out in matching pyjamas in a whole-family photoshoot for Christmas

· To be on a daily rota of classes, groups, and Mum and baby Zoom sessions to be making the most of their potential

· The latest in the most recent trend for baby toys and accessories, especially Sophie the bloody giraffe, or £1000 10-part baby travel system from John Lewis

· To join you in an 18-photo montage on Instagram with matching Mum/Dad-and-me outfit in a carefully choreographed palette of neutral pastels

And you do not need to:

· Be eating breakfasts of runny yolked #eggporn washed down with an oat-matcha latte in a Scandinavian mug next to a roaring fire to be a #wintermummy or be making the most of your #metime

· Be wearing a fresh face of makeup and working off the cocooning weight with buggy runs to not have “lost yourself”

· Sacrifice your every waking moment to filling every second of your child’s free time with active play

· Set yourself up to be the sole foundation of your child’s happiness for them to grow up as secure, well-rounded individuals

One thing I’m grateful for (if that’s the right term) from lockdown is that just when I was starting to feel this pressure, the ability to take part in some of these presumed rights of passage was taken away, and in turn, I managed to recognise these things for largely what they are – passing trends and fads that will be replaced with new ones over and over, as part of the persistent narrative of the time about what it means to “give all” to your child. I did grieve and still feel slightly sad about, the loss of being able to socialise Little Star in the same way I may have chosen to without these circumstances but I’ve noticed that there was an unexpected opportunity for plenty of low-key bonding, attachment and gelling as a family unit that we may not have made room for in a parallel world.

Love comes in layers

And finally, I just want to end on a note that I’ll expand on far more in a future post. One of the most counter-intuitive and mind-bending things about adoption is that the typical narrative about how you are “supposed” to feel about your child may well not apply, and for good reasons. And then if you’re not careful, you can end up in an unhelpful spiral of guilt at the time you least need to be bogged down by that.

Think about meeting your partner, or when you first formed one of your close friendships. Did you fall in love with that person instantly, or did you take time to get to know them, grow affection, build intimacy and share life experiences together which became your glue? With exceptions, I would guess that the latter is far more likely. I think this is a flaw in how we as a society talk about our relationships with babies and children, not least even for biological parents, but my feeling is this is a last taboo as a society we are not yet ready to break openly.

I would wager that a huge chunk of parents don’t necessarily feel the immediate rush of unconditional love on meeting their baby or child that we are programmed to believe they do. Because to admit otherwise is a bit of a taboo in our society, and depends upon a whole host of other social issues such as post-natal depression and new parent pressures being discussed in a more open and emotionally vulnerable way, this white lie becomes a self-perpetuating social expectation. With adoption, this pressure can manifest itself particularly pointedly sometimes, because of the added layers of feelings of “less than” that can arise (and sometimes be exacerbated by) the process, and the shame attached to admitting things aren’t rosy from the get-go when outwardly you have wanted this for so long. We can feel we “owe” our child, who may have already been through traumatising experiences and loss, that immediate depth of feeling.

This is where it’s important to remember that it’s not a dichotomy – you don’t either love your child to the depths of the ocean or feel nothing for them. And struggling with new parenthood doesn’t always even equate to post-natal depression. I suspect that there is a whole spectrum of feeling as a new Mum or Dad that allows for all sorts of scenarios. Many new adopters will tell you that they felt a strong affection, and a fierce protective instinct on first bringing their child home, and a deep caring, but not necessarily true “love” for some while afterwards. And just in case nobody else tells you this, I’m here to tell you, that is normal, and that is okay. I would say my “love” for Little Star kicked in after about a month, but some will tell you it took significantly longer than that, and it doesn’t bear any reflection on how well you are caring for your child. Love just takes time.

If I did it all again, there are some things even within the adoption community I would take with a pinch of salt. Some people who I had come across via online forums or WhatsApp groups were painting a very rosy picture of life as ab adoptive parent that I felt to be inauthentic, but it didn’t help me to feel less affected by it when I was in my early days, worrying I wasn’t feeling what I “should” be. If you come across this, my advice would be to turn your focus inward to your family, your child, and your wellbeing. Adoptive parents are not immune to the Instagram filter of parenthood, and like any other human, they make mistakes and can be as guilty of misrepresentation as anyone else.

Some adoptive parents are able to identify something that kick started that feeling for them. Times like the first time their child was ill, or really needed them, or when they had to advocate for their rights, or were frightened of losing them in the ensuing legal processes, were moments of clarity for them where they realised how far their feelings had come. It’s all individual and it’s all okay. There is a saying with adoptive parenting that sometimes you have to “act as if”. For me, this meant acting “as if” in ways such as how I displayed physical affection, eye contact, care and advocacy despite not always feeling totally “there yet” and that at times, these things could feel a little unnatural or even, dare I say it, forced. The outcome being that despite some internal wobbles, what your child receives and knows is still warmth, attention and affection in the bucketloads. You will get there, and sooner than you know, you won’t need to be acting “as if” at all.

And so, I hope this blog is of some assurance to a few people out there. I certainly don’t know it all, and would be lying if I said I embody all of these principles, or remember all of these things every day, but they’ve held me in good stead for the past year, and I pass them on to you, with every hope they’ll help you on your journey.

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