ABSTRACT
Discussion of the importance of the dormitory and the author’s mohair blanket as a source of comfort leads into outlining events for her and Christopher Milne that are “threshold moments” when they realise that they are living in a strange new world. The author talks about grief and how she, Christopher and other students dealt with it. She draws on Vamik Volkan’s (2006) notion of linking objects as being repositories of unprocessed emotions for traumatised people, applying it to her mother sending her a pair of woollen mittens and fur-lined boots when it is discovered she is suffering from chilblains. Applying the idea of linking objects as repositories of unprocessed emotions in relationship to these objects allows her to reconnect with the confusion she felt about being loved by being sent them as well as feeling abandoned by not being at home. She realises it led her to connect love with being abandoned which had serious implications for adulthood. Her grandfather dies while she is at school and she feels guilty because she cannot feel any emotions, concluding that the suppression of her emotions was now pervasive in her life. This leads into discussion about the ways in which children act out their problems in play and seek to escape the confines of the school through an imaginative life.
