I Send you a Hug by Anne Booth

We have a lovely blog from Anne Booth all about the inspiration for her beautiful book, I Send you a Hug, with illustrations by Asa Gilland.

I grew up in an immigrant home – my parents were Southern Irish Roman Catholics who emigrated to England in the 1950s – and my Irish heritage of generations of people being forced to leave their homes to look for work, meant that as a child I was very used to the concept of the ache of missing loved ones.

I remember my mum singing Irish folk songs filled with longing like ‘If I were a blackbird, I’d whistle and sing, and I’d follow the ship that my true love sails in,’ or ‘The water is wide, I cannot get o’er, and neither have I the wings to fly…’ These were love songs, full of romance, but also expressed the feelings of family members and friends who couldn’t be together, and they used Nature and the idea of birds flying to get across the idea of separation and the desire to meet again. Later, I discovered and loved the poetry of the Romantics such as Wordsworth and Keats, highlighting the power of the imagination and the innocence of children and the idea that Nature is inspiring, and I think both these influences have affected ‘I Send You a Hug.’

I was also influenced by a spirituality of Nature. As I grew up I encountered the imagery of the Bible, especially the psalms and hymns inspired by the psalms, where there was an image of a loving God who made the world, and expressed their love through creationJesus in the Gospels uses lots of imagery from Nature to express the love of God – he talks about God loving little sparrows and about chicks sheltered under the wings of a hen, about flowers and a shepherd minding his sheep. Later on I learnt about Celtic spirituality, which makes lots of links with the natural world.

I also grew up very aware of the pain of being separated from loved ones by death, but also had the comfort of the belief that love doesn’t end with death. There is an Irish tradition that if you see a robin, it’s a sign that someone you love who has died has come back to check on you. I have seen many people take comfort in the sight of a single white feather floating down from the sky, believing it to be a sign that someone who has died is sending them love. After my mother died, I went on retreat in Wales, and was very comforted and felt very close to her when I heard the sound of a song thrush, and when my father died I remember walking out of his house to go home and tell my children he had died, and being very aware how green the trees were, and how loudly the birds were singing.

When Covid and lockdowns came, people experienced more both of Nature and the pain of separation. We could not see our son for six months, and he had Christmas, New Year and his twenty second birthday alone. We sent each other lots of pictures of nature during that time, and I remember sitting in our garden, listening to the birds, whose songs were so much louder when traffic was still, and thinking and praying for him. Many people had far more final separations when loved ones died. I hope that they were comforted too by birdsong and memories of happy times together, and I hope this book, so beautifully illustrated by Asa Gilland, comforts anyone who is apart from someone they love.

I Send you a Hug by Anne Booth and Asa Gilland, Published by Puffin Books. It is available now.

 

Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.