Guest Post: Author Anne Booth on Sadness
‘Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge-from which new sorrows will be born for others-then sorrow will never cease in this world. And if you have given sorrow the space it demands, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich.’ (Esther ‘Etty’ Hillesum (15 Jan 1914 – 30 Nov 1943)
I wrote ‘A Shelter for Sadness’ in October 2017, just after my dad died, years before the pandemic. I wrote it as my own personal response to the quote by Etty Hillesum which we have at the front of the book, but I felt, as I wrote it, that I could see it as a good picture book text. I sent it to Anne Clark, my agent, who loved it and sent it to Templar, and they wanted to publish it and decided to ask the amazing illustrator David Litchfield to illustrate it. David was so much in demand that we had to wait a long time for him to be able to work on it, but it was so worth the wait. I couldn’t be more proud of the picture book which has resulted, and I can’t exactly say I am glad it has come out in a pandemic, but I hope that, now that it is here at last, that it helps and reminds all of us to build shelters for our sadnesses, be they big or small.
In our own nation, children are living each day with great sadness that needs to be treated gently and given a shelter. They may have lost loved ones, they may have been, or be, ill, they may be sad about vulnerable relatives and friends, or family unemployment or money or housing problems, or about the general ongoing situation with Covid-19, or indeed about Climate Change. Across the world, including in our own United Kingdom, there are refugees, including many many children who cannot do anything to change the sadness that living through wars and losing their homes, and often family, and having terrible experiences, will always cause them. Children know what is happening inside and outside their own immediate worlds much more than many adults give them credit for, and are even more powerless than adults to change things, and to expect them to just get on with school work and not worry, to not let them acknowledge and look after their sadness, is damaging to them. They need to be helped to recognise their sadness and not to be frightened or ashamed of it. They need to be allowed to honour it, to build a shelter for it, so that, unacknowledged and buried deep, it doesn’t cause them more hurt, in the form of depression, feelings of self-hatred or other-hatred, as Etty Hillesum said.
I think the way that David Litchfield has drawn Sadness is so beautiful – this is not a scary monster, but someone you can befriend and live with.
I know what it is to be sad as a child, and I still need to give retrospective shelter to my childhood sadness, because for a while it affected my adulthood in a bad way, and it can still cause problems for me if I forget to give it shelter. I really want children not to be scared of, or ashamed of, feeling sad. It’s inhuman NOT to feel sad when bad things happen. Resilience in itself is a good thing, but it too often is presented as an exhortation to have a stiff upper lip and ignore emotions. I think emotional resilience and good mental health don’t come from ignoring real feelings. Our children need to be able to build a beautiful space for their sadnesses, be they caused by Covid-19, or something deeply personal like family breakdown or bereavement, or so called smaller things. My dogs Timmy and Ben both died during lockdown, and it broke my heart, and I had to remind myself that it was still OK for me to be sad, to give shelter to my sadness, even though other people were going through more terrible things. Losing a pet, or struggling with school work, or falling out with friends, for example, are also all sadnesses which children may need to build shelters for – so that, learning to build shelters for their big and small sadnesses, they can truly live full and happy and compassionate, loving lives. I hope that my text, and David Litchfield’s absolutely beautiful illustrations, will help them to do this.
Read about Etty Hillesum here https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9780805050875?gC=5a105e8b&gclid=Cj0KCQiA9P__BRC0ARIsAEZ6iriOzVWtnasSEuHCBh5d9OeasdKAFUFwGc298H163Wz73P7JPTNgpeMaAgjsEALw_wcB
- Thanks to Anne Booth for your lovely guest post
Review:
A boy builds a shelter out of twigs and leaves and welcomes his Sadness inside. Together he and Sadness are quiet, and noisy, and everything between. There is space for Sadness to wait out through the cold and the dark until it is ready to step out and look at the beautiful world.
There are many stories about waiting for sadness to go away, but few that accept sadness as an important and necessary part of our lives. By showing a little boy at peace with his Sadness – who comes to live as a blueish round giant – this story gives children and other readers permission to feel their own emotions.
David Litchfield’s illustrations make great use of light and dark, as well as colour, to show the shift in emotions. The story begins with almost-black double page spreads and midnight blues, then works through the seasons of the year before Sadness comes out into the light. The illustrations very much tell the story too and possibly hint at the boy’s own emotional journey. Sadness himself is perfectly pitched to the young audience as a friendly but vulnerable giant – someone in need of love and care and shelter.
With the COVID-19 pandemic playing out around us, we need now more than ever to confront our negative emotions. Hurt that goes unacknowledged can become difficult to manage. The shelter in this story is a metaphor for how we can all look after ourselves and not fear our negative emotions.
A touching lyrical story for our times.
- A Shelter for Sadness is available now from Templar Books. RRP. £12.99 (My copy of the book was provided as part of a promotional blog tour)
