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[Animals] Frieda Hughes, daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes: "I have a responsibility to be the last one left in my little family"


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Frieda Hughes, hija de Sylvia Plath y Ted Hughes.

 

Writer and painter, Frieda Hughes, daughter of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, has put down roots in the Welsh countryside, after living in Australia for years. With seven children's books and eight collections of poems behind him, he has just published 'George: A Magpie Memoir' (George: memory of a magpie), for now only in English, a diary where he explains how adopting a magpie changed his life. life. Now he has made his home an aviary for injured animals that he rescues and cares for: he lives with thirteen owls, a ferret, a dappled snake, two huskies and five chinchillas. His father passed away from cancer in 1998; a decade later his brother, Nicholas Hughes, who committed suicide, as his mother, Sylvia Plath, did before: childless, she is the last remaining of the saga. Frieda Hughes has put her experience with grief at the service of other people and has trained as a therapist, working as a counselor in a mental health center and in an institute with adolescents.

Can love for an animal like a magpie change your life like love for a human being?

I loved George so much because he is interesting, I love my animals, birds and owls in a different way, I love some more than others, just like I do with human beings. There have been people I have loved more than George and others less.

George arrived at a time when you were putting down roots: you had returned to Great Britain, after years living in Australia, you had settled in Wales in a country house that you thought was going to be your last. Everything is related?

Yes, it was putting down roots and I would have loved George to be a part of it, but unfortunately it wasn't to be. George taught me that when we love someone at some point you have to let them go. Either you get bored with them or they will get bored with you, you will die or they will die. Seen in perspective, if it hadn't run away from my house I would have had to put it in an aviary, my neighbor was very scared, so it had a happy ending.

You also took in a raven named Oscar, to what extent did his death affect you?

Yes, Oscar was dying and I had him at home for 49 days. It was clear that he was only going to be with me for a short time, however his death brought back George's departure and was linked to other deaths, the death of my parents, my brother, the people I love. It's interesting. Sometimes we cry inconsolably over the loss of a famous person we didn't know, and people will say, hey, why are you crying so much? It just activated something.

In his book he writes: "The ground that supported me seemed in constant flux. After the suicide of my mother, Sylvia Plath, on February 11, 1963, my father, Ted Hughes, found it difficult to settle." How did that lack of stability affect you growing up?

I grew up quite resilient. On the one hand, I got used to making a house very quickly out of nothing, in any strange place, to feel at peace. On the other, she desperately wanted to stay still and safe in one place. Nowadays all my friends' children have a lot of things, when I was little it was not possible, we kept moving. So I developed the ability to be alone, as soon as I started making friends, they would take me out of there again. He longed to put down roots and on the other hand he had a great capacity for adaptation, they are the two sides of the same coin.

The ability to adapt is very useful in today's world.

I had a boss who said: Frieda, nothing in life is as constant as change. I felt that tremendous fear but he saw it as positive. And in reality it is so, imagine a relationship in which you could predict the next 30 or 40 years, you would feel stuck.

 

https://www.elperiodico.com/es/ocio-y-cultura/20230512/frieda-hughes-hija-sylvia-plath-87256464

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