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Use of child death as an analogy for sense of loss should be punishable by wearing a dimwit hat for ever more

697 replies

wibblies · 03/11/2015 11:31

Fucking Liz Fraser in the weekend guardian is the latest in a long line of journalists and writers who seem to think this is ok.

Here's a sample of what she has to say in her article about her sense of loss in watching her children grow from primary age into teenagers:

"When the joy goes - and it does, because life moves on and you can’t play peek-a-boo with a 12-year-old who wants to play Minecraft with his similarly zit-infested mates – it feels like bereavement."

"Those young children are dead now. They are gone."

"The bereavement is long, slow and refreshed every day."

Just so you know, Liz Fraser, watching a child grow up as it gets older is really not anything like not watching a child grow up because the child is dead. I know this, because I've tried them both.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who notices this shit? Please tell me you recognise that it's not the fucking same at all? That it's not even a tiny bit similar and that it's crass in the extreme to suggest it?

OP posts:
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Replyingnow · 27/01/2023 21:44

She’s never off it.

Valeriekat · 28/01/2023 10:40

It is also a very controlling thing to say about your child. Horrible, insensitive and plain stupid.
Sorry for you sad loss.

Valeriekat · 28/01/2023 10:45

MackerelOfFact · 05/11/2015 11:33

Exactly, CurrerBell. Death is a shit metaphor for continuing to live. Can you imagine...

Person A: Do you still have that lovely little rose plant?
Person B: No, it died.
Person A: That's a shame, what happened to it?
Person B: It grew into that huge rose bush over there.
Person A: Oh. It didn't die then, did it?
Person B: The little rose plant died when it grew into a larger rose bush.
Person A: Confused

Person X: How's your dog?
Person Y: She died.
Person X: Oh, that's sad. Will you be getting another?
Person Y: No, we still have her, she's just bigger now.
Person X: Oh right. I though you said she was dead?
Person Y: She's house trained now so the dog we used to have is dead.
Person X: Confused

Parent 1: How's little Gertrude these days?
Parent 2: She's dead.
Parent 1: I'm so, so sorry. I had no idea.
Parent 2: She's about to start University though.
Parent 1: Crumbs, I must've misheard, I thought you said she was dead.
Parent 2: Little Gertrude is dead, she's been replaced with teenage Gertrude.
Parent 1: Confused

I mean, WTAF?

(I'm obviously not comparing plant/pet death with child death, but just to show how it doesn't work in ANY context whatsoever).

Brilliant!

Springtime1973 · 28/01/2023 17:11

Don’t mess with Liz 😅 She’s just had a whole thread removed because she didn’t like it that people outside of Cambridge know she is far from the perfect princess she’d like us to believe she is.

while writing her parenting books, telling is how we should behave, she was having.affairs with not one MARRIED MAN, but TEO MARRIED MEN.

One from when her son was 6!! Lasting for FIVE YEARS. This hungover for a year as she was securing the second HUSBAND OF A FRIEND!!

Yes. BOTH APPARENTLY abused her. The one who is the subject of her book, Coming Clean . And subject of a multi social posts a day. He was…. ALREADY an alcoholic. She knew this. She knew he was married. She wanted him. She was going to get him.

Be careful what you wish for. If he’s married, it’s almost given that he’s a dog.

If I were you, I’d trust your own instinct when parenting. Self proclaimed parenting expert? Loose old Liz, continued the theme of her Middle Years book and that dreaded article on this post, and bored with her first three kids ABANDONED THEM while still at school and moved to Italy with her new baby and man.

well that went well, not!

while she takes all the praise and glory for her children, the parenting expert was in fact her ex husband.

the man is a saint. She, for one that rams on about TRUTH on Twitter, is not. As for truth, she’s got no idea what the word truth even means.

I thought you might appreciate an update.

betweenfor · 28/01/2023 17:13

Interesting.

Mangolist · 28/01/2023 18:16

Must admit the deletion message made me laugh. There were very few mentions of a court case

NellietheElephantpackedhertrunks · 28/01/2023 18:22

Astonishing! I don’t even miss the younger versions of my kids or want to go back (although of course I loved them at every stage) and enjoy watching them grow up. OTOH, if one of them died, I cannot even begin to imagine how I would begin to cope.

NellietheElephantpackedhertrunks · 28/01/2023 18:23

I think though she was probably deliberately trying to shock to generate interest.

Thesystemonlydreamsintotaldarkness · 28/01/2023 18:24

It’s really not the same. Death of a child is the saddest thing in the world. How anyone gets over it, I have no idea. Is it even possible to get over it.

so bloody thoughtless.

and massive hugs to anyone who has lost a child

Springtime1973 · 28/01/2023 18:41

And it was all good fun. And TRUTH 🤷‍♀️ I’ve eyes in the back of my head just in case she hunts me down!

Springtime1973 · 28/01/2023 18:45

She is only interested in herself. It would not have crossed her mind she was being so unkind. She doesn’t care about her own children so I supposed we shouldn’t have thought she would have compassion.

Springtime1973 · 28/01/2023 18:49

It isn’t at all. The point I was making is here vileness is really starting to catch her up. She has sold her own children for her own gain. Vile woman who will go to any lengths to keep herself relevant.

CambridgeBun · 28/01/2023 18:59

She is so predicable. It was when not if. I was observing from the sidelines. It was all very good natured banter. Nothing more said than if your friend had ann affair with, firstly a friend’s husband and secondly the two that most wouldn’t even offer a lift 😅

Lock up your husband. Loose Liz is on the Loose.😝

my children we’re at the same secondary school. Lovely, lovely young people. An absolute credit to their father. I can only assume she bitterly regrets letting him go.

We’re all reaching an age where what and who we know is far more “exciting” than I can only imagine the mental, not to say, physical exhaustion of having one affair. Let alone two. And with such stomach churning men. Harry, the children’s dad. Is an absolute gentleman.

Mangolist · 28/01/2023 19:15

I rarely get angry with people but I genuinely suffer with c-ptsd and its fucking awful. She writes about it as if it's a badge of bloody honour and it makes me really cross.

I'm sure she has some kind of personality disorder but it's really galling to see her using something that I got from truly horrific situations to garner sympathy

CambridgeBun · 28/01/2023 19:16

For a “parenting expert” she really didn’t/doesn’t get parenting! It is a an eclectic ride up and down hills, but mostly it just chugs along.

I won’t deny the day they passed their driving tests was the day I praised the lord that my days of driving miles, waiting in car parks for fixtures, cinema or whatever to finish and driving back again in silence in case I was “so embarrassing.”

Almost to the day the last one passed I was no longer so embarrassing. Possibly because I was never going to be the most embarrassing mum in the school. Those poor kids. So undeserving of the shame she loaded on them. To this day, she is still posting photos of them on Twitter for her groupies to praise and adore her.

Cambridge is not a big city at all. She and her lovers behaved like it was. Rowing and fighting in cafes. Police being called. She is do brazen that she couldn’t see just how unpleasant this was for so many people just trying to work in cafes or have a cup of tea with the toddlers “they currently couldn’t stand, but soon would miss, because teenagers are even worse.” Righto Liz.

We’ve witnessed her parenting of the three eldest, who thankfully were abandoned to their really super father. The poor little one is quite literally on her own waiting to sink or swim. For the little girl it is a shame Liz can’t really live in Cambridge anymore. Too many bridges burned. BANNED from too many cafes. I’m sure Harry would have looked out for her. He’s still mopping up around Liz. Most of the other dads at school were unanimous that hey would have left her, belongings an all on the parent, right next to her morals which are firmly wedged in the gutter.

GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing · 28/01/2023 19:17

Bloody hell, that’s awful

CambridgeBun · 28/01/2023 20:21

Oh trust me she has. Narcissist. Egotist, gaslighter, all those adjectives she loves to throw at others.

She is now, of course, flogging domestic violence for all she can monetise out of it. What is so derisive is so many of her SM followers are clearly following her because she promised advice, support and signposting to services as part of her role as ambassador for a domestic violence charity. They really didn’t do their due diligence.

Rather than listen and support, like you suggested, she uses keywords, many of these trigger words and talks only about herself.

Some of these people have lost everything. Yet she glosses over them. Ignored them. She gives off a vibe, one many of us here know well, that they are not worthy of her acknowledgment. Their issues pale into insignificance.

This is her pity party and the only way you’re coming in is if you quite literally pay her with ego polish and cash. This is what actually pushed my group of friends from occasionally check in on her latest drama to taking action. She has set up an electronic donation box so people can pay for childcare for her daughter SHE DOESN’T WORK! And buy her COFFEE can you believe it? In hipster cafes around Oxford. Where she lives MORTGAGE FREE. She also has a MORTGAGE free property in Venice. Both paid for by her poor, innocent ex husband.

Some of her followers have lost their homes. I don’t think she realises/values them enough to get that this means homeless. Not she is no longer living in a beautiful home because she put a metaphorical bomb under that.

Her pity pledge is that she is “too ill to work.” Her C-PTSD makes it impossible. Her body is in agony and her brain has been damaged.

A parent who works for the BBC said it’s not because she’s “too ill to work” why she’s
not working. I’ll leave it for you to interpret this 😉

I can only emphasise with you. I can see that it is so hard at times to live with. My brother is a veteran who saw active service. As a family we have witnessed his challenges, but he has not had the luxury not to work.

You are so right though. Even before the affairs, which of course weren’t her fault. Of course not Liz. Three families being torn apart. One a newly wed, she was of course the victim. She really believes she is!

The second affair, the man she has minutiae’s in her latest book, was well know for his drinking and for being a vile drunk. He worked in one of the ‘trendy’ cafes. Any sane person would have run a mile. Not the sociopath. She was not giving up until she had him. Witnessing her flirting was stomach churning.

TBH, most steered clear. She just wasn’t good company. Only interested in herself. Worryingly jealous of her daughters and obsessed with them being more attractive than her.this is not gossip. She even wrote a newspaper article about it. That raised a few eyebrows in front of and behind the school gates.

There was no substance to her or her debate. She was always right. There was no point even trying.Name dropping like she was the only one to have studied at Cambridge, to have a z list contacts book. Cambridge is awash with graduates who stayed and are now simply parents living and working here. Let’s face it, we’re long ago graduates, if we were. Long into careers or vocations. Where we went to uni irrelevant. There are lots of well known people in Cambridge. Many held in esteem as actual, qualified experts. There are also many more like Liz who basically think they are more worthy. I’ll not say who the minor celebrity is she had her marriage ending 5 year affair with. Name checking him got the last thread shut down by the “blocker.” But jeez 🤮

Mangolist · 28/01/2023 20:24

Perfectly put

steff13 · 28/01/2023 20:28

Did she say this again? What was the purpose of reanimating an 8-year-old thread?

HarlanPepper · 28/01/2023 21:00

I've got no skin in this game but@CambridgeBun and @Springtime1973 have remarkably similar writing styles. Why has this 8 year old thread been resurrected now?

betweenfor · 29/01/2023 00:19

There’s quite some backstory @HarlanPepper .
I hadn’t noticed any style similarities. Hope you’re not troll hunting!

HarlanPepper · 29/01/2023 08:21

There's always a backstory. Interesting that neither user has ever posted on Mumsnet apart from on this thread, yesterday. Seems like someone has a bit of a vendetta going, I don't know if that makes them a troll, but it does make me question their motives.

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