Last night Emily was once again inconsolable. She'd had a great time in respite and aside from a backlash meltdown when she came home, understandable for someone who doesn't cope well with transitions, she'd really benefited from the break.
Yesterday though she was tired and emotional -in the actual, non drunk celebrity, use of that expression. She had raged a little and then became sad. We sat together and I hugged her and tried all the usual things that mothers try then Emily remembered Twitter. A few months ago after another similar night Emily sat beside me and as I was on the Social Network and said "write it Emily sad" I said lots of people will see this though. She repeated it so I did. The replies were instantaneous and overwhelmingly lovely.
Last night from her despair Emmy said "tell the people Emily is sad"
So I did. Ironically the first reply came from lovely @welsh_gas_doc I say ironically because one of the methods to calm Emmy is that she asks me to phone the Dr when she's struggling. Emily trusts Dr's she knows they make people better so from a lost remote control, to a broken printer, to sadness at me going away for work, Emmy asks for their imput. Before you worry that I'm actually phoning and wasting NHS resources, I'm not.
Suffice to say 3 years at Drama School are finally paying off :0)
We'd tried "phoning the Dr" already and so when lovely Dave appeared sending a lovely message this was the first indicator to Emmy that all was well.
Then we were deluged again. Tweets full of kindness, virtual hugs, photos to make her smile and links to youtube clips to make her happy came in one after another.
By this time Em was laughing and I was crying. crying because with all the talk of restrictions and foulness and the darkness of some people intentions in cyber space, Social networking had demonstrated it's value in terms of our lives once again. People who don't know us wanted to send their friendship to a 15 year old learning disabled girl who was sad. For no reason other than their own humanity. This is a beautiful thing.
She settled and then she went to sleep. I stayed up a while and considered the flipside of internet trolling. The kindness is definitely worth enduring the cruelty of its cousin.
Peace of mind restored in 140 characters of humanity you can't say fairer than that.
