Hot Chocolate Anyone ?

Morning all .... 👋☕️💕

@Adge .... wartime has strange effects on people .....

My parents were frugal with food as a result of shortages and rationing here, with the real understanding that food supplies can run out .....

My in-laws, who suffered much worse and saw active trauma inducing atrocities in wartime, including the starvation death of a parent, have gone the opposite way ..... spend-thrifts, and wasting food through over-supply and refusing left-overs .... and then can be suddenly critical of wastage .....

My MIL for a long time shunned handmade and homemade clothing and housewares items. She has suffered abject poverty (FIL too) after having been comfortably middle-class before that .... and homemade everything from scrounged whatever was their means of survival .... still laced with shame.

I struggled to cope with the wastage .... still do .... so I quickly established a veggie garden (fresh produce is highly valued within the culture) and composting. MIL has had companion dogs since FIL left her many years ago now, so any suspect meat items go in that direction, cooked of course .... and now we have a canine as well .... only not here .... so I am having to be very cautious of buying meat ..... with mr, sabotaging that control by buying it for me when one of the kids and I are on a Lenten (Vego) eating pattern ..... and he is buying cooked meat meals for the other two.

My solution is to keep stacking the uncooked foods into the freezer, and then he is getting irate when he wants to use that space and finds it full.

A lot of r’s dysfunctional food behaviours seem to be an extension of his parents’ issues .... leaving me the impression that inherited war trauma is a real thing. It has affected a few of his first cousins with mi issues as well, and the generation before tend to be extremely controlling and emotionally abisive, swinging between harsh withholding and lavish endowment.

Recognising the patterns seems to be half the battle to overcoming them.

Hi Folks, am back.

The weekend camp was a bit mixed. Saturday, our older MI daughter tackled two fears. She hates anything touching her head (to panic level) but coped with putting on a helmet to try out a rockclimbing wall. She's scared of water in many forms, but got in at a very wavy beach up to past her waist, with the waves splashing her and even knocking her off her feet. Wow... She got Hubby to take photos so that she can show her psychologist at her next visit. Meanwhile, between encouraging her, I was accompanying our younger daughter and a friend out a little bit deeper, because they wanted to body surf. I was enjoying that too, but ran out of energy a bit sooner than them, and it was a bit of an effort persuading them to come back to shore... no way was I leaving our 13 y.o. and a younger still friend in the water unaccompanied! At a swimming pool maybe, in mild surf, no way! Ooooh I'm aching now... but so worth it.

Today was less smooth. Lots of pain and tears from the older daughter, some due to yesterdays' exertion, some of it her possibly-psychosomatic pain. I went for a wander in the scrub around the campsite for some thinking/praying time. It's hard when she's genuinely hurting, but you know the cause is probably psychological, not physical, and the hefty pain relief she uses may be doing more harm than good.

BUT she's now safely home with a couple of big victories out of the weekend. Hoping that they give her the encouragement she needs to tackle some of the other big issues.

@Smc thanks for update, was wondering how w'end went.

@Catcakes here's a fiery hot chilli chocolate for you.