If you knew me
you would brush away my weeping
with a thousand gentle touches
as weightless as a
cooling breeze,
soft as purest light,
silent as a dark
night’s moonbeam.
If you knew me,
your heart would know
that you are my healing,
you are my sacred self,
you are the Belovéd.
8th of July 2020
Written from the inspiration of the mysterious nature of life and love.
When we think, say, or write something of tenderness, who are we truly writing this for or about? Perhaps it is about ourselves? Perhaps I am the ‘Belovéd here?
🙏
Category Archives: Emotions
Enough is Enough!
I explained to my therapist on Thursday that, having been on and off diets since aged 9 years old (I am now 64), I had a major breakthrough on Wednesday evening. I was flicking through TV channels (as you do!) and came across that nauseating programme: ‘Embarrassing Fat Bodies’. Being the self-flagellating person that I *was*, I watched 10 minutes of it, enough to then turn it off. What I did hang around for was a segment where a
I was flicking through TV channels (as one does!) and came across that nauseating programme: ‘Embarrassing Fat Bodies’. Being the self-flagellating person that I *was*, I watched 10 minutes of it, enough to then turn it off. What I did hang around for, was a segment where a 56 year old woman had lost 14stones. She looked older than 56, but the real shock came when she was asked to remove her upper clothing. All the weight she had lost had left her with incredible amounts of loose skin which, had she been 95 years old it wouldn’t have been a shock, it would have been a natural progression of the physical body changing.
Suddenly, even though I have seen images like this before, I realised I shall stop this struggle to be an average weight because I have never been and now, I never will be because I refuse to put myself through this a minute longer. To have my body turn into a collection of shrivelled creases, where it cannot spring back to youthful smoothness, is not what I want and neither would I intend to have it surgically removed.
A lot (most) of my adult life has been spent *TRYING* to be acceptable, beautiful, lithe and slim…… That’s it…. no more. IT’S ME TIME NOW …… JUST AS I AM!
There is Still Beauty in Suffering.
It’s so easy to think we are ugly… I have been there, have done it, still do it, am beginning to stop it….. I empathise…. but I also say, we see more of our own imperfections (what are those anyway!?) than anyone else does. I/we can easily say how beautiful I think you/we are, yet… that is a fleeting consolation to you/us unless you/we believe it ourselves…. I know you know this. There is something about living this life where one of our many lessons is to truly embrace our humanness, with our beauty, our ugliness, our suffering and our elation. At the end of the day, you/I/we are perfect in our imperfections and WE ALL make up the majestic mural of what it is to be gloriously human. You are stunning;


A Little Drop of Rain
This little drop of rain
hits my reddened cheek,
sliding like ice cream
off a warmed up stick.
Sweetest of Summer splashes
yet salty like my tears.
Grey
Grey…. I am not sure about this…….it’s more a pewter, but dull….
dull ……. oh…. so ….. dull…..”Dull as ditch water”, a grump riddled parent used to bark…… not about the weather, but about some creative piece I had written or drawn……
Dull – as – ditch – water………
I remember winters then. I remember snowdrifts, sledges, being pulled, but being scared, snowballs in the face ….. getting frozen toes and jolly red cheeks…..soaking wet socks, the crisp nakedness of undisturbed fallen snow; where has it all gone?
oh, how I loved winter, then.
It’s this grey….. this grey that hangs around like a splodge of badly mixed paints, looming, ready to tip all over my world… but it never happens….. not today anyway…… it’s just grey……
Like my mood: incubating….. not dull, no…….never that.
breathing through dried mud.
I’be just been to the most wonderful Qigong session. I was brought back to my heart and to at least one rather profound revelation.
We did a ‘standing posture’. We don’t usually do these, but I remember them well from my Energy Therapy Training at Snowlion schule. As if I needed to be made even more aware of pain! Argh…. I heard a voice in my head say “I am in so much pain when I stand still.” Yes, it’s true. Physically I am in a lot of pain if I just have to stand. As it is, that Nirvana state which is possible is nowhere in sight for me. But it meant more than that . It was telling me that when I don’t keep working at/on/with moving on, getting things done, being busy, I AM IN PAIN.
I recall how my maternal grandfather and my mum used to do potato picking up to earn money. I would go with her sometimes, yet I hated getting mud and dirt on my hands. Not when it was wet, but when it dried on me. It was as if I couldn’t breathe.
On one particular day, my grandfather really shouted at my mum because I wasn’t helping pick up spuds. I think I was about 8 or 9 years old. “Lazy little bugger” are the words I remember my Grandfather saying. That upset my mum, pushing her into anxiety and shame – about me and about herself….. The bad mother syndrome, foisted on to women by angry men. She felt that at my age, I was too young to be forced to do it, however…. that was not her response to me. In turn she laid into me and was really ratty with me for what feels like, the rest of her life 33 years to be precise.
And so that label stuck. I then went on to spend the rest of my life until 2011, forcing myself to keep going, to jump up quickly from the chair, to run upstairs, to cycle everywhere, to work hours on end. My belief was that I had to do anything I could to not appear – ‘fat and lazy’. I had to jump through hoops of fire and not get burned.
After gradual decline, post mum’s passing, I became seriously ill with FMS (fibro) filled rapidly by cancer; the rest is history.
Now, those ego driven, scared, hurt behaviours of the child – ME, are impossible. Too much has happened. Too many hurts have fermented and exploded into dis-ease, in me.
So – facing the stillness is now imperative. Perhaps I shall find myself hidden in those layers of pain. Perhaps – could it even be that it’s all okay? Maybe it is.
👑
Love ~ Whole ~ Heartedly
We see through mists
to where we think Love bides.
Never pausing,
or sometimes even breathing.
The fear this red and luscious longing
will go out there on the wing
and not be one with us,
or attempt the Soul to Soul
deep contact thing…
Nothing comes from forcing
as forcing creates fixing
and from fixing,
not one tear can flow,
not one heart is healed,
not a single life is saved…..
and no one,
not one person
receives our abundant beautiful Heart.
Love ~ Whole ~ Heartedly
Coming in & going out.
Coming in
we gasp our first.
Going out
we release our last
and in between,
we live our lives
round, robust
Impassioned –
and there,
guided by a
single, inner light,
we do our soulful,
sweetest best.
In respect of Jo Cox,
Labour MP shot and killed
In her constituency Wednesday 16th June 2016
💗
A Tip for Dealing with OVERWHELM
OK – I don’t do overwhelm at all well! I never have, but it was easier when I was younger…. There was always a way of transcending that terrible feeling of being weighted down. Not anymore – so what has changed? My perception. I have an auto- immune illness and and I’m a lot older.
I don’t like to moan about life at all, so finding a way of expressing the feelings of being in this staggeringly snare filled jungle of briars and nettles, is like having my breath stopped. ‘The Silent Scream’ comes to mind. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, yet it is the most isolating feeling – a madness which threatens even the stability of the best of us.
So…., how to remedy it? I have just read back over what I’ve written. The answer doesn’t lie in the making of lists, prioritising etc, at this point. When suffering overwhelm, it is just too much to do that as I can’t ‘think’. No, the answer lies in my statement, “it’s like having my breath stopped”. So I take it right back TO my breath.
I sit quietly. (Preferably without my cat on
My lap – dribbling!).
I close my eyes.
I hear the sounds outside of birds singing.
I feel the air on my skin.
I feel the chair under me and supporting my back.
I bring awareness to my breathing, noticing I am gripping my upper abdomen/solar plexus.
I get curious, sensing the movement or lack of movement, in and out as the ribs lift and fall, enabling the lungs to utilise the intake of oxygen.
The movement is small, I begin to feel the tension falling away, dissolving and freeing.
I notice how I have stilled my mind through my awareness of my breathing.
I sit, allowing myself to deeply enjoy my own breath, my own sense of self.
Now I can move forward…. ‘Overwhelm’ has dissipated and I can begin to make a lists of priorities.
I drink a glass of water to flush out the toxins which the overwhelm is likely to have produced.
Peace Be. 💗
Elusive Butterfly
Funny how things
change in a
flutter of an eyelash.
Light heart
washed over by
blue grey mist,
blinding me to my
joy and laughter.
Incredible how life
whips around like
a barrel of a revolver
Spinnnnn spin
Spinning.
I spin –
Hey!
do you know
this sort of
wheeling and
dealing of the heart?
Love is so fragile.
Would that it were
not a butterfly
trapped in room
to simply settle
and become an
ornament of beauty
on the marble mantlepiece.