We stand together....

What have I done?

 

As a new mum, I feel like I have to ask myself the question above. I have brought an innocent child into a world, in which evil runs free and hides in plain sight.

 

I sat and cried this morning; I read the news and felt myself break inside. Those poor children, the families in attendance have been victim to a cowardly attack by someone who has nothing but hate in his heart!

 

I sat and spoke with my partner this morning as we tried to digest the reports flooding in about the poor souls lost to a terror attack at Manchester Arena. My BF actually said, I am scared to take her anywhere or do anything with her. My response to his fears, was, “That is what these terrorists want”, and I truly believe that. They want fear, disorder and chaos… they thrive on it. Terror is how these extremist’s get a stronghold, they use it to their benefit. Retaliations against one side, then fuel the beliefs of the other, the way things are going right now it will never end! It is a vicious cycle. It’s just unfortunate that nowadays with technology, this enemy is finding it way too easy to hide in plain sight and use social media to its advantage.

 

How do you cope with the crippling fear that something will happen to your child?  I mean I am 100% worse than most as with part of my diagnosis of Anxiety is that I Catastrophise. I always think of the worst case scenario, which is why I avoid large crowds of people etc. But at the same time – I don’t want to pass these irrational (I know that they are irrational at least) fears onto my daughter. I want her to grow up confident and sure of herself, independent and also caring; but will this just lead to problems…? Here I go again with the worrying…

 

Due to last nights atrocity we likely have a whole generation of children that are going to be afraid of going to concerts. Just this morning I heard a radio presenter stating that his daughter asked him if anything would happen at the Olly Murs concert she was going to… it’s heart-breaking that this coward attacked in the first place, but that he actually targeted an event with a large audience of children… its despicable, and there is no rationalising that.

 

My theory is that if we allow ourselves to become shut ins and we allow the fear to stop us doing what we do, then the terrorists are winning. So all we can do is Keep Calm and Carry On. They want to cause divide in communities – so stand together. We need to at this point. It is also worth pointing out that Muslim’s are not responsible for this attack; the extremists are. It is highly likely that some of the emergency services and first responders/ doctors/nurses etc that helped the wounded last night were muslim… So targeting innocent people for their religion will not resolve anything, it will only divide us more.

 

I just hope that our children and our children’s children find a way to make this world a better place, to work together to look after their neighbour and to try and come up with solutions to all of these problems.