"Barefoot children"

”Barefoot Children”


As a child they raise the compassion, as young people fear and horror as adults they populate our prisons, mental hospitals, treatment and ultimately of our cemeteries.
The young people who are totally emotionally cold sticking down a friend, or throw an unconscious contemporary in the water to drown. has also been children. So also those who are escaping life by using drugs or other abuse or those who steal and rob both themselves and us.

I know these children, they lived under my roof and my care and nutrition. I have long searched for words that can express the experience that the work with these children has given me. I want to increase the understanding of an unresponsive environment for these my children and adolescents, and subsequently adult, who life treated so recklessly

Not that I demand that society should be lenient with the crimes they exercise against others or themselves. I just want as many people as possible to understand, so that we can meet these children in the way they have the right to be answered
.
Thus we prevent that they become adult bodies with the small child's needs. Or in other words, that they go around like ”ticking bombs”, and never let someone so close to allowing the possibility of defusing them.

What I have seen, felt and experienced in meeting with these my children and adolescents, can well be expressed in poetry form. And so I have done, but since all my poems are written in Swedish I cannot share them with you. So I have to use only the prose here. Even if the poetry easier find its way to the heart of the reader.
So if you just acquire yourself one line in what I`m writing about these children I have succeeded.. Then you will not belong to the crowd, which adds extra stones into my children's backpacks.

All genuine empathy begins with understanding. And the easiest way out is compassion, which is usually perceived as derogatory and reducing, what we do all need to grow is respect for our person, the requirement that makes us worthy of love that can and confirm us.
My poems and thoughts is not only about the children and young people who has been abused and as a consequence abused their own lives in different ways, but also for us adults and the abandoned children, we all carry within us.
The pain of life is our heritage and its rise is often to search just in childhood. This basic grief unites us all and gives me hope that many of us can recognize ourselves in this I’m writing about.


I tried to translate this little poem of our famous poet Nils Ferlin but it really does not give justice to his lovely and easy words. It’s lovely just because of its simplicity in which there are so much to find.
I share it anyway.
Also for you to know from where I got the expression when I’m talking about ”Barefoot Children”

Barefoot children

You lost your words and your piece of paper,
you barefoot children in life.
So you sit back on the dealer's stairs
crying in total despair

What was that word - was it long or short,
was it well or badly written?
Think hard now - before we drive you away,
you barefoot children in life. (Nils Ferlin from ” Barfotabarn”-33)

To be continued… Next; What do I mean with empty ”pieces