Life at Happy Coulson is amazing. It really is. But here, like everywhere, life is not a bed of roses. Here, the schools are not perfect and Tana and India often feel like outsiders. As a parent, when your children are hurting your instinct is to pull them out of that situation. And we could. There are other schools. But we learn from Tana, who picks himself up after every tumble and launches himself back into the fray. He bounces back like a rubber ball, and this is an important lesson.

We need to be resilient. Sometimes life is hard and we have to do things we don’t enjoy. We have to put our heads down and just get through it. In the Coulson family, we call this the ‘Triple M’ or ‘Mile Munching March’. Chris and I coined the phrase when we were trekking in Tanzania and our not-really-a-guide took us the wrong way down the Great Rift Valley.

Lost in AfricaWith no sign of human habitation, dwindling light and water supplies, and just a sentence in our guide book to warn us off the area with its dangerous animals, bandits and lack of clean water, this was serious. But thanks to Chris’ compass watch and some serious Triple M, we made it and climbed an active volcano the following day, the highlight of our trip.

So we’re sticking in there, watching carefully and keeping the lines of communication open. We encourage our children to talk to us about everything and try hard not to brush them off with a flippant “oh, you’ll be ok”. We remind each other of all the wonderful things in our life and acknowledge that even if Happy Coulson IS actually a bed of roses, every now and then you’ll find a thorn.

Filed under: Happy Coulson

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