Shred Party

 One Friday afternoon, Thomas and Cora came home from school after a Very Bad Day. They were absolutely fuming and close to tears. I listened to both of them (talking over each other) as they told me all of the bad things that had happened that day. As they talked about it, they seemed to get more and more revved up. 

Finally, I held up my hand. I told them I had an idea, and asked them to grab some post-it notes and two pens. I made them each write down every bad thing that had happened that day. Even if it was just a small thing, as long as it was weighing on their mind, I told them to write it down. 

Then we got out our massive paper shredder. I told them to run each piece through the shredder. As it roared and ground and made all kinds of noise, I said over the racket, "Now, imagine all of the bad things that happened are being destroyed too. They're gone! They've happened, and now they're in the past, so you don't have to carry them anymore. They're over." 

I told them about all the times in high school and college when I'd been too upset to move past certain things. More than once, I made myself write down all of the bad things that had happened. I wrote letters to the people who had hurt me. I listed all the things that were irritating me about one of my siblings. Once, I even wrote down all the hopes and dreams that I felt would never come to fulfillment. And then I found a creative way to destroy them: I tore them up, burned them, flushed them down the toilet (which I told them I no longer recommended), or scribbled over them. There was release, somehow, in seeing the things that I'd carried removed from my mind and dealt with, destroyed. 

But I wanted to turn the day around for them. It wasn't enough that the past was behind them, they were still feeling the sting of it. So we looked up one of the songs that has always cheered them up when they're struggling, the Chipmunks' "Three Little Birds." I played it on high volume on my phone, and told them to pick up the shreds of paper and throw them in the air. And then we danced under the falling colorful scraps. We stomped on them on the floor, and ground them under our feet. Cora laid down and made a snow angel in the confetti. And before long, we were all laughing so hard, we were crying. 

We'll fight this war one battle at at time. But today, we gained some ground. Or, at least, we came out of the battle with smiles (and one heck of a mess to sweep up!).