THE HEALING SERIES 👧🏻👦🏽❤️‍🩹

Dear all,

I’m happy to introduce my new Healing Series for children ages 6 to 10. This has been a labour of love and grew into the current 4-book series when friends and family spoke of a vacuum in the children’s literature space – there were very few books which allowed painful, stressful events in the child’s life to be softened in the gentle flow of story-telling.

The Healing Series includes coping with:

Bullying
Suddenly becoming an older sibling to a new brother or sister
The loss of a parent (will be in stores in May 2025)
Parents’ separation (will be in stores in May 2025)

Traumatic experiences can initiate strong emotions and physical reactions that can persist long after the event. Children may feel terror, helplessness, agitation or fear as well as physiological reactions such as heart pounding, vomiting, or loss of bowel or bladder control. It is critical to identify when a child is feeling deep seated discomfort which they are not able to verbalize. Other overt behavioural signs and symptoms include acting out or withdrawing, nightmares, physical ailments, difficulty concentrating, clingy/separation anxiety, crying frequently, self destructive behaviour, academic struggles and loss of appetite. These are the most common, but the whole gamut of emotional and behavioral symptoms can be wide and varied. Basically, any behaviour that is not normal for the child should be considered a signal for help.

Consider these books, then, as a way of starting conversations with your child about events and circumstance that may be distressing them. Every story in this collection gently holds the child’s hand and helps them navigate the confusing, painful and daunting times that they find themselves in.

In our beautiful but imperfect world, I hope that these books through the magic of story-telling in the safe haven of home and family, help to protect and nurture the mental and emotional wellbeing of our children 🌸.

SRI LANKA: The books are currently available in most bookstores across the island
PAKISTAN: The books will be available at Liberty Books, Paramount Books and the London Book Company in a couple of months.
KOBO: Will be available on KOBO by the end of April 2025.

I see the swing again
Not the same but very like
The one I used to fly upon
A lifetime ago, I’m caught
In a clutch of rememberings
It was my first day of school
I was the quiet one, so shy
The teacher would be inclined
To ask another little girl
To take me under her fledgling wings
A few minutes before
The 11 o’clock bell would ring
All kinds of dreadful things
Would grip my little heart
It would hammer in its cage
As time closed upon the break
Even as I rushed towards her desk
Don’t forget! please don’t forget!
To pick a friend for me today!

I’d come back home tired out
My little head would pound and pound
I couldn’t understand it then
But I would go out and reach
For the sturdy ropes of the swing
As it rocked gently to and fro
Waiting to hold me in
Its reassuring cradling
I’d swing and swing and swing up high
Chase out all the daytime angst
With every forward rush
With every surge up to the sky
I’d breathe in anew and fortify
Until my sore heart soared again
I couldn’t understand it then
This self-soothing, this consoling

Life went on, its ebb and flow
I duly shifted to my swing
That I always found along the way
Into its vital comforting
The whoosh of the wind a lullaby
A hypnotic whisper in my ears
To let my troubles fall away
To just fly and fly and fly up high
As I kicked off into the liquid sky

When you went away
I stopped looking for my swing
That hollowness, that grief
Those are things the lulling breeze
Could not fill and cannot ease
Their echoes ring, as they wring
At heartstrings that pull them in
I will not let them fall away
Steeped, replete with memories
I now carry all of these
Forever and eternally
Unwilling to set them free
Upon a beclouding and benumbing breeze.

Mahvash Mohtadullah

Tag: soothing

📚NEW SERIES RELEASE 📖

THE HEALING SERIES 👧🏻👦🏽❤️‍🩹

VERSE | (S)WINGS OF (G)OLD