You Weren't With Me
Little Rabbit and Big Rabbit are together after a difficult separation, but even though they missed each other, Little Rabbit is not ready to cuddle up and receive Big Rabbit's love. Little Rabbit needs Big Rabbit to understand what it felt like when they were apart. "Sometimes I am very mad. I don't understand why you weren't with me," says Little Rabbit, "I worry you will go away again." Big Rabbit listens carefully and helps Little Rabbit to feel understood and loved. This story was designed to help parents and children talk about difficult separations, reconnect, and find their way back to each other.
The book may be helpful to families who have experienced:
- Divorce or caregiver separation
- Caregiver work-related separations
- Military service related separations
- Immigration related separations
- Child welfare related separations
- Parental incarceration
- Parental substance use related separations
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"A sensitive, reassuring, and well-illustrated work." - Kirkus Reviews
This book is a treasure, exquisitely attuned to the inner life of very young children and people of all ages as they grapple with the universal pain of separation from those they love. It is an invaluable resource for parents, substitute caregivers, clinicians, and all those who endeavor to help young children feel heard, understood and supported. --Alicia F. Lieberman, Ph.D. Irving B. Harris Endowed Chair of Infant Mental Health, Professor, UCSF Department of Psychiatry, author of the Emotional Life of the Toddler and Don't Hit My Mommy, Psychotherapy with Infants and Young Children
For times when painful separation is so difficult to understand or to try to explain, these sweet, poignant bunny rabbits say just the right thing in just the right way. They give voice to a little one's hurt, yearning, and fear that once experienced is hard to get over; they guide a caregiver on how to hold those feelings and acknowledge them and then use healing words and tenderness to gently move forward. --Lisa Amaya-Jackson, MD, MPH, UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress
"Chandra Ghosh Ippen's timely book addresses a wide variety of painful situations in which a child is separated from a parent: divorce, military deployments, parental incarcerations, parental drug abuse and immigration-related separations. Indeed it is a treasure! We need more stories like this to help jump-start the important conversations about challenging separations between children and parents. Only then can healing begin." --Patricia Tilton (Children's Books Heal)
"You Weren't with Me by Chandra Ghosh Ippen Is a lovely, tender book that addresses the tumultuous, intense and complex feelings that children confront when they are separated from their mother. . . .The text does a superb job of addressing a spectrum of emotions and concerns and models a very empathetic "serve and return" interaction between child and parent. I highly recommend this book." --Gayle H. Swift, Adoption/Family Coach
