Posted on

New Book ‘The Bunker Diary’ coming soon

Is it possible to survive a war bunker unscathed?

Thousands of ‘quasi refugee’ children from Lebanon landed in Australia in the eighties. Thanks to the government of the day and the sponsor families, a whole generation was given a fresh start.

But there was unfinished business.

While half the heart was full of hope, the other half was haemorrhaging from scars, phobias and nightmares.

But there was no time for a PTSD diagnosis.

As a social worker in the middle of this ‘wave’, I was ill-prepared to recognise then what is obvious now: untreated trauma cannot be buried with the dead. It torments like a heavy passenger in the vehicle of life, and sometimes usurps the driver’s seat.

The Bunker Diary is the culmination of dozens of testimonials from this generation who had their innocence robbed. The story weaves together the threads of their underground bunker experience, set near Beirut’s Green Line that became the red line between religion.

Lightning, candles, canned food, sea ports, crashing waves, electricity blackouts and antennas are constant triggers for haunting flashbacks. Young survivors develop chronic stomach cramps because eating is futile without a toilet, and this mutates into eating disorders in adult life. A parent being asked ‘what were you like at my age?’ can unhinge a luggage full of traumas.

This is the long-overdue and untold story of a chapter that shaped a generation, encouraging survivors to finally reconcile with the demons of their past to avert trans-generational trauma in the future.

Joseph Wakim was born in Lebanon, worked with these ‘refugees’ as a social worker in the 1980’s, before becoming an award-wining human rights advocate. After a 40-year silence about his own childhood ‘demons’, he was finally forced to face his PTSD, enabling searing insights from a lived experience.

Posted on

Shedding new light on the ancient Southern Cross

Shedding new light on the ancient Southern Cross

Spotting celestial signs of Jesus’ scars in the Southern Cross
Published in Sunday Age / Sydney Morning Herald on 6 January 2019

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/faith-spotting-celestial-signs-of-jesus-scars-in-the-southern-cross-20190103-p50ph2.html

Why are the iconic five stars on our national flag named the Southern Cross rather than kite or diamond?

It was Italian explorer Andrea Corsali who first coined ‘this cross’ as ‘so fair and beautiful’ in 1515 while on a Portugese voyage to the Indian Ocean.

But why evoke the crucifixion and therefore Christ when observing configurations of constellations?

This question led me to ponder the significance of the five stars, especially the faintest fifth star Epsilon Crucis, at the ‘heart’ of the cross, which our indigenous Wardaman astronomers named Ginan. This is the same star that is excluded from the New Zealand flag.

The Southern Cross ‘asterism’ has legendary meaning in indigenous Australian cultures, representing a sting ray, an emu’s head and a possum. In colonial Australian cultures, it has been adopted on the national flag, in the Eureka Stockade, as a ‘badge of honour’ tattoo and as a symbol of resistance.

When viewed as the ‘crux’ (cross in Latin), these lights that pierce our night sky do indeed bear more than a resemblance to the lacerations that pierced the crucified Jesus. A nail for each hand, a nail driven into his feet, a crown of thorns on his head, and a lance through his side.

Chapter 19 in the gospel of John states that the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on crosses on the Sabbath, so the soldiers broke the legs of the crucified ones to hasten their deaths. ‘But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead … the soldiers pierced his side with a spear.’

Suddenly, the fifth star, and the word Cross, shed a different light.

The five stars match the five scars.

The enigma deepens when we consider that the estimated age of this constellation is between 10 and 20 million years. It is the smallest of the 88 known constellations, but perhaps the greatest in significance.

It now spells a searing reminder of the ‘big bang’ of love, long before the crucifixion was prophecised, long after we felt the ripples of this ‘supernova’. It heralds the new era (Anno Domini) that established our calendar years.

Due to the movement of the Earth’s axis, the Southern Cross has been invisible to the northern hemisphere since about 400 AD. Together with the two Pointers, it now navigates us to the South Celestial Pole. But together with the four gospels, it navigates us to the celestial sacrifice of the ‘lamb of God’.

If a star pointed the magis to the birth of Jesus, stars can point to the death.

Can we shrug off the scar-stars of the Southern Cross as a cosmic coincidence?

Posted on

Peers vital to turning troubled teens from jihad

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/peers-vital-to-turning-troubled-teens-from-jihad/story-fni0ffsx-1227558178885

http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-path-of-least-resistance-produces-least-results-in-fighting-radicalisation/story-fnihsr9v-1227557973356?from=google_rss#load-story-comments

http://bit.ly/1jLv2Kf

Herald Sun and Courier Mail, 6 October 2015

 

Path of least resistance produces least results in fighting radicalisation

THE gnashing of teeth over another radicalised teenager and another innocent fatality has triggered questions on how this could have been averted. While Strike Force Fellow rewinds the video footage in this critical incident investigation, authority figures rewind the recent years to see how this angry kid escaped their radars.

These authorities include police, politicians, imams and professionals who work with youth. Too often, the incubation takes place out of their gaze in the darkness of a bedroom and the glow of a laptop, where one beckoning voice to take up arms is amplified, while voices of reason are drowned out.

The counter-radicalisation authorities have knocked on many doors but they are the doors of least resistance and have produced the least results.

Ministers visiting respected imams have produced many meetings, consultations and photographs. But breaking bread together has not broken the radicalisation pathway.

These imams are often locked up in offices, late at night, holding committee meetings, planning religious events and fielding media questions. Like clergy in other faiths, they are more likely to be sitting at a boardroom table than sitting opposite an angry teenager who refuses to pray at the mosque.

ISIS recruitment videos have been “successful” because they use Western youth as their beckoning mouthpieces, appealing in English to their peers that they understand their isolation: “For all my brothers living in the West, I know how you feel … you feel depressed … the cure for the depression is jihad.”

ISIS recruitment videos have been “successful” because they use western youth as their beckoning mouthpieces, appealing in English to their peers that they understand their isolation.

The young recruiters also tell their vulnerable targets not to listen to their imams or their parents. Hence, the youth are less likely to pray in the traditional mosques.

Community engagement with Muslim elders renders a similar result. Having been involved in these honorary roles for more than 25 years, we could point bureaucrats in the right direction and we could organise forums but we are unlikely to be personally acquainted with the youth in question.

Consulting with social workers and youth workers is a step closer to the grassroots but the teenagers in these environments have at least broken their social isolation and hear a diversity of voices. The youth on dangerous pathways are less likely to attend the PCYC or sports clubs but they may be in their social neighbourhood.

The suggestion by Attorney-General George Brandis that school teachers could be trained to “spot a jihadi” oversimplifies a complex pathway that is too often clandestine. Memos could be issued about this “de-radicalisation in schools strategy” but it risks creating false alarms and Islamophobia in school grounds, while missing other forms of radicalisation such as white supremacy. Engaging with all these adult groups who understand their responsibility to collaborate with police and politicians is the well-worn path but the path to radicalised youth may require detouring off these smooth surfaces.

When authorities intercept a teenager on this radicalisation path, there is often moral panic about homegrown jihadis and the threat that this dangerous disease may be contagious. But that situation presents a perfect opportunity to learn about the pathway from an “expert”. Which websites did they visit? What were they promised? Who are their recruiters? Such a person could be galvanised and later deployed as the frontline of defence in the grassroots and cyberspace resistance against radicalisation.

The defecting and disillusioned jihadis who have renounced ISIS are the true “experts” whose first-hand testimony from behind bars could be recorded as a counter-narrative. When isolated youth key in trigger words in the search engine of their computers, this pop-up video could automatically appear, from youth to youth, warning their peers about the three-dimensional reality, compared with the two-dimensional rhetoric.

These credible counter-narrative videos could refer to the imprisonment resulting from breaking the foreign fighters legislation.

They can inoculate other vulnerable youth against this dead-end street that was sold as a path to paradise. Youth peers are more likely to derail the radicalisation pathway by planting seeds of doubt and creating opportunities to offer non-violent alternatives to redressing isolation and anger.

This may include sports groups, political parties, prayer groups, social justice groups and even expert work in de-radicalisation.

In my first job as a street worker with runaway youth, my most effective outreach was done by former street kids whose understanding of the plight and emotions was lifesaving.

In my book What My Daughters Taught Me, I explain how teenagers have so much to teach – if we open our ears and listen. By helping me to become a better widowed parent with mutual honesty and respect, I did not need to discover any dark secrets second-hand.

Youth are a fountain of wisdom, waiting to be heard.

Posted on

If we treat people as outsiders, they become outsiders

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/if-we-treat-people-as-outsiders-they-become-outsiders-20151004-gk0sel.html

http://bit.ly/1L1yDL0

 

If we treat people as outsiders, they become outsiders

October 4, 2015

Anti-Muslim vitriol plays into the hands of radicalisation recruiters.

When an incident is imbued with a single drop of Islam, it apparently explains everything, and blinds us from asking the right questions.

We are so hasty to roll out the loaded labels, such as “terrorist” and “gunman”, even when referring to a 15-year-old boy. If Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar was a gun-wielding white teenager in school uniform, rather than a brown teenager in a black robe, would we have labelled him a mixed-up kid with mental problems or a radicalised, cold-blooded terrorist?

If a white teenager had opened fire inside a mosque, would we have labelled him an angry misguided youth?

If we are serious in wanting to break this cycle of violence and acts of terror, we need to stop using dehumanising labels and stop absolving ourselves by  shifting blame to Islam.

The complex reality is that many factors line up to trigger such violent acts, including broken families, mental health, perceived lack of alternatives, current circumstances, loneliness, detachment, exposure to violent videos and a twisted moral compass that defines heroism as a violent means towards a rewarding end. These are the push factors that recruiters exploit, especially if the recruit is vulnerable and lacks a good parent.

The pull factors include the lure of adventure, power, belonging, respect, weapons and rewards in paradise. They glorify acts of “warriors” and encourage copycat behaviour.

Too often, the “go to” people for deradicalisation have been community elders, established imams and elected presidents. But the real “experts” on this issue are the youth and their peers, who are more likely to understand and circumvent the cycle.

Youth peers are more likely to derail the radicalisation pathway by planting seeds of doubt and offering other pathways towards redressing injustices. These might include youth groups, political parties, fundraising for charities and letter writing.

Islamophobia might inadvertently feed into the recruitment propaganda, with predators reminding their targets: “We told you that they hate you, you are not welcome, you will never be one of them. Come home to us, come join your brothers and sisters where you will feel welcome, loved and honoured.”

Islamophobia and bombardment with hate messages communicating that Australia does not trust Muslims push “them” to the margins.

Our self-appointed vigilantes should stop giving oxygen to these lethal messages online and on talkback. Stop pushing people over the edge. Stop pushing people to denounce every crime committed by Muslims. Stop pushing people to feel that they are collectively guilty until proven innocent. Stop pushing people towards radicalisation and towards the Islamic State recruitment propaganda. If we treat people as outsiders, they become outsiders.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was keen to point out that venting at Muslims was not the solution to radicalised teenagers, as it could, ironically, be one of the causes.

“We must not vilify or blame the entire Muslim community … our absolutely necessary partners in combating this type of violent extremism.” Indeed, Muslim youth could be our frontline of defence.

This act of leadership was necessary, given the virulent online commentary about deporting Muslims, blocking the 12,000 Syrian refugees, and banning the religion. Any Muslim reading these rants may realise that they reinforce the message of the radicalisation recruiters.

NSW Premier Mike Baird is correct that radicalisation is a global issue and we need to remain open to ideas.

For a start, radicalisation and violent extremism have been treated as a national security issues by federal bureaucracies in Australia. In other countries, radicalisation is treated as a social issue, to be redressed from the ground up, in local neighbourhoods, using peer-to-peer influence as the frontline “weapon”.

At a community-initiated forum on radicalisation last Tuesday, youth, police and community leaders pooled their collective experiences to understand the cycle in order to break the cycle.

We recognise there is no one pathway to radicalisation, and Muslims have no monopoly, given the prevalence of white supremacists.

Hence, there is a need to build resistance and resilience among youth against the predators and recruiters.

The critical incident investigation by NSW Police, Strike Force Fellow, is yet to determine the motivation of the gun-wielding teenager. Just because a person chooses to pray at a mosque, or any place of worship, does not render that place a breeding ground of radicalisation. On the contrary, the Parramatta mosque willingly opened its doors, because it seeks the same solution as the rest of society.

But speculation based solely on religion offers no solutions. And it could perpetuate the problem.

Posted on

My Child Magazine: What my daughters taught me

 http://www.mychildmagazine.com.au/blog/what-my-daughters-taught-me

http://bit.ly/1PWitpa

My Child Magazine

What my daughters taught me

No tea leaves could have predicted that Joseph Wakim would raise his daughters alone.

August 26, 2015

Once upon a time I lived in my hometown of Melbourne with my young family: my beautiful wife Nadia and our three little girls, Grace, Michelle and Joy. Ours was a house of music, dancing and laughter. And, as Lebanese Christians of the Maronite Church, ours was a house of faith. I was the hardworking king of the Dad-pun, and Nadia the ever-calm domestic queen. After all, we were ‘crowned’ during our marriage ceremony to have authority over our mini-heavenly kingdom of home and family.

After a career in psychology and social work, I was completing a Master of Business degree in the hope of becoming a better breadwinner. Nadia, a graphic designer, was studying to become a teacher and she taught at the Arabic Saturday school. We were both changing professions and pursuing our dreams. We loved and were loved. We were happy.

We dreamed of travelling together, making music together, even having more children.

But Nadia’s worst fear found its way into her bosom. She privately applied positive thinking that the small lump was normal during breast-feeding. In our culture, the C-word was unmentionable. It was as if by merely evoking the name cancer, we were stepping on the tail of this sleeping monster. By the time Nadia was diagnosed with this ‘death sentence’, it had reached her womb and our dreams crumbled. We clung to what we had and who we had like a life-boat in a stormy sea. My arms became my children’s life jacket.

From singing and dancing on our timber floors, our children learned to whisper and tip-toe as mummy’s medication meant that she needed silence. From going to mummy for their everyday wants and needs, I ushered them to my bosom, turning on the valves in my heart to make up for their mother’s heart that slowly stopped beating.

It was suddnely time to progress as a parent from an L-plater to a P-plater, but without an experienced driver by my side. I pretended to know exactly what I was doing.

As I rushed the children to school (and myself to work) every morning, Grace and Michelle quickly learnt to be self-sufficient. I only helped them with their school ties, but like most men I could only do this while standing behind them as if it were around my own neck, not while facing them.

Little Joy needed more help. Grace taught me how to tie Joy’s hair in a ponytail and secure it with a hair tie. It took me a while to realise that this morning routine was faster if I put the elastic around my wrist in preparation, rather than trying to reach for it with one hand while holding Joy’s hair in place with the other.

To my surprise and relief, this did not cut off my circulation and my hand did not turn purple as my mother had once warned. In time, I also learnt that the ponytail looked smarter if I tied it high on her crown; too low and it seemed to sag with gravity as the day progressed.

This was not information I could glean from textbooks. It was more like rock climbing up a cliff face on the Discovery channel—there was no time to look down and I was scared of heights.

‘Dad!’ echoed Joy from the valley below. ‘It’s not straight!’

I pulled on her ponytail as if it was my climbing rope.

‘Ouch!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Straightening it?’ I guessed.

I stood behind her, with my head above hers, and looked into the bathroom mirror—which she was too short to look into without standing on tiptoe. Sure enough, this morning’s ponytail was slightly off-centre. Rather than redo the entire routine from scratch, I tried to wriggle it to the middle by fiddling with the hair tie.

‘Ouch! You’re hurting me!’ Joy reached back, undid the ponytail and handed me the hair tie to start again.

I tried to defuse her mood and cover my confusion by neighing and imitating a flustered horse, having trouble with a ponytail, see? But she was in no mood to laugh. How was I supposed to know that you cannot drag a ponytail like a desktop icon without torturing the child?

The solution was staring at me: the water taps. I remembered that Grace and Michelle usually splashed some water on their hair when they were tying it into ponytails or plaits. Water was the gel that gave the hair a defined shape. So that’s why Joy’s silky blonde curls always ended up making a golden halo!

But I didn’t quite get the water thing. I pumped some liquid soap into one hand and added some cold running water, then tried to turn it into a game. ‘Have you washed your face, Zuzu?’

No answer meant no, so I gave her a face scrub, also splashing some water on her hair.

‘Aagh! It’s cold!’ she shuddered.

I tempered the water to warm. ‘The cold was to make sure you’re awake!’ I explained, pretending it was deliberate. Then I asked her to blow her nose into my hand, cupping her mucus so it would not squirt all over the washbasin, just like my mother used to do with each of us, lovingly, each morning. She used to say it would unblock our ears so that we would be able to hear the teacher. Now Joy would hear the teacher too.

‘Yum! Organic hair gel,’ I mused.

‘Eeuw!’ she protested, grossed out. ‘Don’t you dare!’

I washed it away with another dollop of liquid soap and now made sure that the sleep was removed from her eyes.

‘Aah, Dad!’ she cried, pushing my hand away. ‘It stings!’

But the more I added warm water, the more the soap bubbled up around her long eyelashes. She squinted in irritation and I kept splashing and rubbing in frustration. Her eyes tightened, her mouth opened and her cries for help echoed throughout our home.

Maternal Grace came charging in. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, just some soap in her eyes,’ I shrugged.

‘Haram (poor thing). Use the towel, Dad!’

Despite the tears and drama, in the end the soapy water did give Joy’s hair a crisper contour and removed the halo. On special occasions, I graduated to plaits and braids, but only once I’d qualified for my hairdressing P-plates. When we shopped together next, Joy and I looked for blue hair ties to match her eyes and her uniform.

On weekends, we used her fancier selection, which included ties decorated with butterflies.

When Joy’s long hair became knotted, I knew it was time to untangle it with a nice hard brush. I ran a warm bath and added some bubbles, hoping to make it a pleasurable rather than painful experience.

‘Turn around, Zuzu, and close your eyes,’ I instructed. ‘First, we crack the eggs!’ I squeezed some shampoo onto her head and lathered it into her scalp with both hands. ‘Second, the waterfall.’ I poured bucket after bucket of water over her head (warm this time) to wash away the soap.

Then I held her head up with my left hand and brushed her hair down with my right hand. I had expected the shampoo to make the brushing easy, but if anything the knots seemed worse. The only solution, then, was to apply force. But the firmer I held her head, the more she screamed. I gritted my teeth and brushed harder and faster, all the way down, so that her pain—and mine—would be brief.

‘Ouch, Dad!’ she cried. ‘You’re killing me!

I added more shampoo and rinsed thoroughly but it made no difference.

At this point, Michelle rushed in and gasped, ‘Grace, have a look at this!’

As Joy heard her rescuers arrive, her cries became hysterical.

‘Stop, Dad!’ Grace exclaimed. ‘Can’t you see the red lines down her back?’

I lifted her hair and indeed there were scratches on her back from my vigorous brushing. Luckily, her skin was not bleeding, or I could have been arrested! Maybe our neighbours had heard her screams and already called the police. That’s all I needed in my situation!

‘But I used heaps of shampoo to make it smooth!’ I pleaded innocently, shaking the now nearly empty bottle.

‘No! You need conditioner to make it smooth!’

How was I supposed to know this silky-smooth secret? From that day on, Joy’s hair would forever be an effortless pleasure to brush.

Whenever I washed it, I cracked emu eggs of conditioner on her head.

Was I too paranoid, too protective or too private to take ‘driving lessons’ from experienced mothers? I could have asked my extended family or many others in the mothers’ club who were always obliging.

But at the time, I did not want to give anyone any ammunition to gossip about my family. I would imagine them chattering as soon as I walked away, or hung up the phone .

‘Oh, Joe phoned me the other day. You wouldn’t believe what he asked me. He said, “Sorry for the stupid question, but do I use

shampoo or conditioner to remove tangles?” So cute, but those poor girls. How will they turn out with only a man to bring them up?’ . . . Blah, blah, blah.”

Yes, I was probably too paranoid and too private, but I soon learnt not to underestimate the wisdom to be gleaned from the treasures under my own roof—my daughters.

It took some time for me to progress from a P-plater, proving myself, to a B-plater, being myself. My car became a mini-bus for picking up and dropping off their friends.

My daughters and I all resisted the offers for someone else to step in and ask me to step aside. They knew that a man suddenly hopping on one leg was going to fall and fail more often. But they were there to pick me up, with their silent smiles that spoke a thousand words.

It was not me stepping up to the sacred stage of their mother, fearing failure. It was my daughters stepping up to the mother roles, trusting me with their lives, trusting that I had it deep and dormant within me to paddle our life boat to safety.

I used to whisper bed-time stories in their ears to lull them (and myself!) to sleep. Now they whisper reassurances to me, or is that Nadia speaking through them?

My inflated fears have been conquered by their piercing love.

When my eldest two daughters were overseas, I asked my youngest child Joy why she missed them so much.

‘Because we are much more than sisters, Dad. We are best friends.’

This is an edited extract from WHAT MY DAUGHTERS TAUGHT ME by Joseph Wakim, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now

Posted on

Book review: Emotional journey – Widowed father tells his story

http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/emotional-journey-book-review/2754941/

Emotional journey: Widowed father tells his story

John Grey | 30th Aug 2015 12:00 PM

THIS is not a how-to book about raising daughters – though there is much to be learned here. What My Daughters Taught Me is a deeply-felt, emotional family journey told by a single father.

Author Joe Wakim’s soulmate Nadia was killed by cancer in 2003, leaving him with three girls to raise.

With honesty, courage, imagination, self-deprecation and humour, Wakim tells of his efforts to be mother and father to the girls, while remaining their friend and keeping their family culture strong.

Fighting against gender and cultural stereotypes all the way, he deals with grief, community expectations and guilt, while encountering a daily slew of challenges which will be familiar to many parents.

He deals with the tyranny of the television (which he dubs “His Majesty”), the distraction of devices (“serial text offenders”), the dance lessons, the sanitary pad shopping experience, the medical dramas, the parties, the fashions and the formals, the first jobs and the driving lessons.

Nadia’s memory is always there with him, manifesting several times in Wakim’s occasionally filmic storytelling to help him sort through issues. These are moving moments, as are those when he recalls her last days.

The wonderful friendship that Wakim engenders with his daughters reaches a timely and mutually frank maturity when the girls begin dating.

Dad expresses his fears about other drivers at night, and strangers trying to spike their drinks. His middle daughter archly responds: “You think we’re that naive? I’ve raised you better than that, Joe Wakim.”

Posted on

Raising daughters as a single dad

http://www.hillsnews.com.au/story/3307118/humour-helped-in-dads-great-challenge/?cs=1454

Hills News, 27 August 2015

 

Baulkham Hills author publishes autobiography about raising three daughters as a single dad

By Flora Cauchi

Aug. 27, 2015

For the past 12 years, Joseph Wakim has laughed, cried and learnt a lot from his daughters.

Exemplary dad: Father-of-three Joseph Wakim said in his family he wears the pants. “But my daughters choose them,” he said and laughed. Here he is with his personal stylists Grace, Joy (front) and Michelle.

FOR the past 12 years, Joseph Wakim has laughed, cried and learnt a lot from his daughters in what he says has been an eye-opening experience.

The Baulkham Hills author recently published an autobiography, What My Daughters Taught Me, based on the “massive task” of raising three daughters who were 4, 9 and 11 when his wife Nadia died of cancer in 2003.

“It was very easy to feel overwhelmed about being a single parent,” he said.

“I was increasingly aware that the answer was in spending more time with them.

“Perhaps not enough men have been able to tell their stories and with the book I feel like I raised the sledgehammer and smashed the rusty shackles”

“But it was a massive learning curve; I didn’t know how to cook, look after their hair or do other domestic things.”

Mr Wakim, 52, a logistics manager, learnt the most important thing was to keep a sense of humour and laugh at moments like the washing gone wrong or taking their pet rabbit out for a walk on a dog leash.

The idea for the book stemmed from an article written for The Hoopla website.

“I wrote about what it’s like for a man to buy sanitary pads for his daughter and it went viral,” he said. “Perhaps not enough men have been able to tell their stories and with the book I feel like I raised the sledgehammer and smashed the rusty shackles.

“There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a man but we need to have an open mind about it.”

“There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a man but we need to have an open mind about it”

He admits his perception of what it means to be a strong father has changed.

“Now I know that being strong really means to be able to say sorry when you make a mistake or to be adaptable.

“When we get together, we have an honest laugh and humour’s a very big part of the book.”

Where to catch Mr Wakim talking about What My Daughters Taught Me:

■ Glenhaven Clinic: Book signing at the Father’s Day Forum on September 1, 6pm (corner of Glenhaven Road and Jerrawa Place). Details: Christine Hanna, 0433 655 555.

■ Dymocks Castle Towers: Book signing on Father’s Day eve, September 5.

■ Castle Hill Library: November 27.

 

Joseph Wakim’s top three tips for single parents:

■ Remembering that parents are the first teachers — therefore we have a massive head-start in terms of moulding and shaping our children. No point blaming school or technology later on.

■ Have an agreement that you’re always approachable. I think the opposite of love is fear. You don’t want the kids to be scared of making mistakes.

■ Sense of humour. Especially during puberty and adolescence. If you’re going to correct your children at everything they do, you’ll exhaust yourself. The only way to calm the seas is with the humour hormones. Smile, let it go and move on.

■ The Hills-based non-profit social group called Single with Children offers an opportunity for single parents to meet and support each other.

 

 

Posted on

Parenting in the face of grief

http://www.essentialkids.com.au/family-life/family-home/parenting-in-the-face-of-grief-20150821-gj4l72.html

Parenting in the face of grief

August 21, 2015

Joseph Wakim

The chapter headings in my book all begin with ‘How to …’ There is even a chapter titled ‘How to grieve’, as if there was such a ‘recipe’.

Of course, these headings are all tongue in cheek, as I clamoured for a ‘DIY Manual’ when I first became widowed. In my disorientation, I yearned for a lighthouse, somewhere on the dark horizon.

After a two year nightmare with breast cancer, we hoped and prayed that this monster would go away. But it was my wife Nadia who was taken away from me and our three young children who were all aged under twelve years at the time.

Unlike fatal accidents, terminal illnesses may trigger anticipatory grief. While my beloved was melting away like a candle before my very eyes, the shadows on the wall painted a picture of things to come: that day, the silence, the stillness, the darkness, the emptiness. I squeezed my eyes shut but this only accentuated the images of coffins, churches and cemeteries.

These flashes of anticipatory grief can also be a wake-up call to prepare the children for this life-changing experience. In my case, our faith helped me set the ‘stage’. When we recited the rosary, I referred to their holy mother (Mary) Mary in heaven. I referred to the rosary chain as a ‘hotline to heaven’ and the wooden cross as a bridge between this life and the next. I referred to the Creed and all that ‘We believe …’ as if all this would help my children to say goodbye to their mother. My bed-time stories took on themes and characters that subtly prepared them for this bitter pill.

But children’s antennas are sharper than we think and mine already noticed the gradual changes: tip-toeing around the house, more candles and incense burning, whispering instead of talking, mum becoming more bed-ridden. As their dependence on mum decreased, their dependence on me increased. Paradoxically, this was a blessing because their dependence kept me anchored to the here and now.

Then the dress rehearsals are over and the final curtain is drawn. I kissed my wife goodbye then rushed to my children to explain that their mother had now crossed that bridge.

Grief takes its hold on different people at different times. In some cultures, collective wailing is seen as helpful – better out than in, better now than later, better altogether than separately.

But we preferred to keep it in our family. Tears were triggered unexpectedly – from movie scenes, when they could not sleep, from school report cards, when we had bad days and their lips would quiver: ‘I miss mummy …’

As a father, there was no point burying my grief in my pillow. It was expressed rather than suppressed right in front of my children: ‘I miss your mummy too …’

Nadia died the day we moved into our new home, which may have saved us more painful memories. Her shadows never danced on these walls and her voice never echoed in these rooms.

I hung all her clothes in our shared wardrobe. To conceal my own denial, I rationalised this to my frowning children: ‘you never know, one day you may grow into them! You know how fashion goes in circles!’ The truth is that I knew nothing about fashion until they taught me in their teenage years, when I wore the pants but they chose them!

We created our own sacred space – a backyard water fountain crowned with her photo, smiling at us from every angle like the omnipresent Mona Lisa. ‘Mum’ remained an everyday word, not something taboo. It made no sense to hide her wall hangings, as we wanted death to be a part of life, not the opposite of life. Fortunately, we had a great collection of family videos that captured my wife in full flight – singing, laughing, dancing – and my children kept laughing with her.

Anniversaries, birthdays and Mothers Days became dreaded dates on our calendar. To lock ourselves away from the ‘cruel world’ and hold our breath would have been cruel on my children. They did not want to spend the whole day meditating on who they were missing. My children taught me that sometimes they grieve best by doing mundane things with mundane people, perhaps to remove the intensity.

Even our trips to the cemetery could have been guilt-ridden, so I asked my children how they felt.

‘I don’t feel that she’s there … is that a bad thing, dad?’

‘Your mum is already inside you and knows what’s in your heart.’

When they had to make Mother’s Day cards at school, we would place their cards in plastic sleeves and wedge them behind a vase.

There is a paradox with widowed parenting. On one hand, you feel like you are hopping around on one leg, falling more often, running out of breath more often, taking twice as long to do things because there is no adult for you to lean on. On the other hand, what you least accept is someone offering to ‘take the kids off your hands’.

Why? Because you learn that your children are afraid of losing you, for obvious reasons. God knows how many times I prayed ‘please take me instead – my daughters need their mother!’ But at a time of tumultuous changes in our family, I now had to be that constant, that lighthouse for them.

For us, the opposite of life was not death, but wasting this life. For us, the opposite of love was not hate, but fear. It was fear of the unmentionable C-word that delayed my wife from an earlier diagnosis. And it was fear that my children snapped out of me. Every time I nearly drowned in fearing the future, their immediate needs became my life jacket: Dad, I need help with my homework, I can’t sleep, I’m hungry, the printer is not working, I need a lift …

They didn’t care about my gender, they just needed the deed done.

Perhaps a dying parent’s candle is never really snuffed. Their remaining flame just flicks across to the surviving parent who needs to turn it up. Perhaps the lighthouse is not on some dark horizon, but glowing within us.

When we lose a key family member, we are still a family. In fact, we become best friends.

Joseph Wakim is the author of What My Daughters Taught Me, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now

Posted on

A widowed father on the life lessons learned by raising 3 girls

http://www.debriefdaily.com/inspiration/what-my-daughters-taught-me/

21 August 2015, Mamamia

A widowed father on the life lessons learned by raising 3 girls

When Joseph Wakim’s wife died of breast cancer in 2003, his three daughters were 11, 9 and 4 years old. Despite well-meaning friends, family and even strangers telling him he would need help to bring up his daughters, Joseph followed his heart and did the job his way, trusting that he – and the girls – would know what to do. In this exquisite extract from his memoir What My Daughters Taught Me he describes the precious life lessons they taught him along the way.

In my mind’s eye, I lifted the sledgehammer and swung it over my shoulder. It was time to smash the rusty shackles that had tied my feet for so long to prescribed gender roles. They held me back from the intuition mothers exuded when they entered a room. Without a word spoken, mothers effortlessly read a room, gauging its temperature, scanning their children’s faces and measuring their heartbeats.

They glanced at the gap between a child’s lips and realised that child was seething. They watched the chest rising and falling, how fast and how deeply, and realised that a sibling tiff had just finished. They noticed if there was no eye contact between the siblings and how slowly they blinked. They saw one vertical line on a brow and realised that a child was worried. They sensed discomfort by how the children crossed their legs.

This was the language of love, a language that should not be the monopoly of mothers. It is a language that we men can reclaim and relearn, as it lies dormant within us, waiting to be brought back to life. I was sure that whoever gave women this gift would not have bypassed fathers, in case they ended up like me.

My fellow man and I were not predestined to enter our family home as dopes. Our intuition antennas are inbuilt and just need to be raised. All we need is to learn how to turn on the switch.

This is not getting in touch with our feminine side. This is getting in touch with our inner self. We are not shackled to Banni Adam, but have always been part of Banni Hawa (the children of Eve). It is odd that we fathers see ourselves as men-tors to our daughters. I was so hardwired that I spent years thinking it was me doing the teaching, but in fact it was often the reverse, just as Michelle had intimated.

My daughters stretched my imagination to straddle not only traditional gender boundaries but also generational boundaries. They gave me permission not to act my age. They gave me permission to be childish and not to suppress our ageless yearning for play and story-telling. This is not getting in touch with our inner child, it is getting in touch with our inner self.

We men miss out on so much if we remain shackled in the prison of traditional gender roles. I have discovered all this by circumstance and by accident, but other men can discover it by choice and live a richer life. It does not mean becoming less complimentary to one’s spouse. It means sharing more and being more of a well-rounded role model for one’s children. Sure, I could have outsourced the traditional women’s work to a paid maid from the start, but this would have been skirting the real challenge. ‘In-sourcing’ within myself not only completed my family, but completed me. Freed from my shackles, I could now spread my wings and emancipate myself.

It was time for a mishwar to celebrate . . . everything. My three ladies fought over the mirror in their bathroom. Yes, even a trip to a restaurant was a special occasion. I grabbed the keys and yelled, ‘I thought you were “flawless”!’

As the chorus yelled back, I bolted out the door and waited on the front lawn.

When they emerged and strutted onto the ‘green carpet’, I asked, ‘Where am I driving you?’

‘Who said you’re driving?’ asked Michelle.

‘I’m driving,’ offered Joy.

‘You’re on your Ls!’ replied Grace.

‘So what, I need to learn, don’t I? That’s why they’re called Ls!’

While they were debating, I sat in the driver’s seat and started the car. They fought for the front passenger seat and Grace won. I crossed myself and reversed the car out of our driveway, looking in the rear-view mirror. I saw my past. I saw my children. I saw myself. Was the man in the mirror their driver, their mentor, their teacher? So I once thought, before my emancipation. Now I knew they were mine.

This is an extract from What My Daughters Taught Me by Joseph Wakim, published by Allen and Unwin, .