Mountain Ash, this brings to memory an experience from my years as a day care teacher. The school was in a very poor part of the city, the children (18 months to 4 years old) often came without breakfast...those were the days before the breakfast programs. My co-teacher and I used to have cereal and fruit waiting for them, paying out of our own pocket, because we knew how useless it would be to try to teach children whose tummies were grumbling.

Anyway, we had one little girl, afraid of everything, terrified of getting dirty, etc, etc, etc. One morning, we invited her mother to have breakfast with us. She ended up pouring her heart out to us...she had been physically/verbally abused by her own mother and grandmother, and she could see herself going in the same direction with her daughter - we noticed it often, but especially one day when she raged at the child for getting her socks dirty. She told us that she wanted be a good mother but didn't know how.

Well, we decided to help her by asking her to help us in the classroom. She wasn't working at the time, so we knew she had the time. She was delighted. Over time, as we nurtured her, she learned new ways to nurture her daughter. We showed her how to prepare healthy inexpensive meals, we got her finger-painting (and foot-painting as well!), playing at the water table with the children, cleaning out the sand table, playing tag at the park, and mopping up everyday spills - just to show her how ordinary and messy and "okay" it all was. After a few months, she felt "mended" and decided to move on...found a good job, a new apartment and started living a healthier lifestyle. Years later, I ran into her and the child on the street...both of them looked amazing, she was a whole new woman and the daughter was a laughing, healthy - and very caring - child. The bond between them was tangible and lovely.

So this experience reminds me that there IS a way to thrive beyond the damage...as you say, it takes a village to rear a child, perhaps it also takes a village to mend and nurture each other through the rest of the journey as well.