Category Archives: Trauma

…. Yes, My Revolution Begins in My Body …..

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I had been thinking for some time that I would like to change the nature of my blogs. This wonderful short video written by the creatively erudite Eve Ensler, has come up for me this morning on social media and has given me the hefty nudge I’ve been needing!

All my life my body has needed, no…. y-e-a-r-n-e-d for a revolution, I tell you a damned great big, rooted in the fertile ground of Mother Earth, Revolution! Well, here I am at long last, ‘facing’ my body, standing in that revolutionary soil, feet first, head-on.

It’s a tragic and terrible thing to ‘awaken’ and find yourself emerging from sleepwalking through life. She, I was a ”fat little girl” who ached from the disrespect coming at me… the energetic violations of a world hell-bent on making me wrong, or at least, squashing my voice, squashing me, suffocating the screams. They weren’t actual screams you see, they were on a parr with Edvard Munch’s ‘Silent Scream’ … a scream that rips apart the fascia in the body, MY body.

Climbing trees to escape was my way. Hiding in that oak tree where no one could see me, hear me, smell me …. touch me; I didn’t want them to touch my soul. I hid in fields of tall grasses, hollow trees, dry ditches where Cuckoo Pint grew with such voracious sexual beauty that they embedded themselves in my six year old mind, to be replicated, unwittingly, in my fifties on canvas.

Arum_maculatum_0_700.jpg Cuckoo Pint growing wild in the British countryside.

DSCN1285.JPG ‘Passion Fruit’ Acrylics on Canvas circa 2005

I hadn’t realised as a child (who would?), that  I wanted to break free with the insanity of a woman who could be stoned at any given moment, the psychological pain in me was so great. The wild young thing who had rising passions … in the body in the Soul …. in my heart… passions for sounds, colours, shapes. The desperation to be dramatically daubing colour everywhere…. in my hair, you know what I mean, like people do now…. oh-bring-it-on…… I feel it brewing… damned convention, wretched polite society, that girl is still there waiting to be met…. Of course she found the Cuckoo Pint voluptuously divine in its shape and colour. Of course she recognised its significance in her own physicality…… but not in words…. it was a kinesthetic sensing and knowing. Only looking back do I see the fog, smog sticky old bog in which she tried to breathe. N.B. not being able to breathe can cause brain fog….

You could ask me, “but what happened to you in your childhood then?” and my answer could be and is….. “You will have to listen deeply. You will need ears that can permeate the impenetrable. You will only understand if you can come to the rawness of the psyche with me, where there are the bones of the bare and broken; the molten lava of Gravitas and Expansiveness of Life.”

This is where I now invite you to come on my journey with me. My amazing life of a woodman’s daughter where suddenly, smashed and grabbed at the age of fifty-eight, it all changed. In 2011 the diagnosis of colon cancer was upon my body and my heart and then ALL that follows on from that is not even circuitous, but more a direct shaken by my bones sort of story….. the story of little c. Please note, dear traveler, there is no Big C in MY life and never will be… I am bigger than it will ever be, regardless of how this all spins and weaves its way through to my transition into the next bit of my journey ……

This is the first of, who knows how many posts, exploring my body’s need to be all ‘present and correct’ just as it is!  If you’re interested or know of anyone who might relate, please share……

 

breathing through dried mud.

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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.

👑

A Tip for Dealing with OVERWHELM

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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

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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.

Wild

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Seize the day as night comes slowly
to gather and hide the Light.
Be present in your breath for
therein lies the wisdom of your Life.
Crack wide the rigid bones of your ribs
for there, nestled within that cage,
lies the cavern of your wild and glorious Love.

Pushing

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Tears come –
a leak in my
soft, weary eyes
paints the mural
of my life.
Salty stains fall
silently on my
worn out canvas.
Often we push
ourselves beyond
our Soul’s desire
and the body
screams for us to stop.
But I wonder what it takes
to ‘do’ nothing when the
world demands we ‘do’
it all………….

FC 18/9/2015white-poppy-close-up1-212x300

The Flaming Pyre of Shame

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If all we can sound are tears,
then let us weep.
If all we can say is no,
then let us shout it out.
If all we can do is weep and shout
and then walk on the other side of the road,
let us hang our heads in shame
for we are no better than the
traffickers, thieves and jingoists.

If …this ….is …so,
then let us make an altar of bracken,
lay ourselves upon it, offer up
our lives for theirs……
a body,
…. upon a flaming pyre of shame.

LIVING WITH FIBROMYALGIA and CHRONIC ILLNESS. Is fighting it the right way?

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images-1

Hello!

I haven’t posted for a while….all too often Life happens when all you want to do is sit with your own thoughts, in your own space, doing your own thing. So here I am, on the wings of the creative Muse, being called back to Me.

It’s a soggy day here in Snailwell and yes, I can confidently say that, should I venture into my garden, there will be a snail and slug patrol going on, looking for the next tasty treat to ravage! The skies are clearing now. For a while it felt like someone had scooped up my cottage and shoved it into a black hole. It’s pretty grim for the 26th of August; bring back the sun – please.

I was just thinking, as I sat down in my armchair here, I am living everyday with Fibromyalgia (FMS) and although I know there are people far worse off than me, in my life, the impact it has, is very difficult. I never contemplated getting to the age of 62 and feeling A) in constant pain or discomfort. B) Being unable to walk more than a few steps without being in almost immovable pain. C) Feeling completely thrown into the void of bewilderment about my life, what it’s been, where I am now and where I am going. D) struggling on a daily basis, not to DO my work as a Singing Teacher/ Therapist, but to actually cope with the logistics of the unknown; what will today bring when I step outside the door?

Still recovering from a little dance with cancer  four years ago and a couple of other pretty significant surgeries three and two years ago, the Fibro is now playing havoc with my body. Those of us with this chronic dis-ease in our systems know all too well how exhausting it can be to carry on….. people talk about ‘Fighting’ cancer or chronic illness….. I don’t ….. I believe we have to take a long, deep warm in-breath and just sit with what is, allowing the passage through to something else. Being kind to oneself is not always easy, especially if you have lived a life where you have complied with the done thing, of pushing yourself to overcome that which is getting you down.

My Life has changed significantly in the last five years and just now, I don’t know where I’m going, or really have much of a sense of who I am anymore, but I do know this: we are drip-fed a lot of illusions in our lives. ‘You can be anything you want to be’, ‘you can have anything you want to have’, ‘you are X’ etc etc. This is not true; these things are illusions. Actually, at the end of the day, when we begin to really look at our lives and accept the conditions we find ourselves in, we see that all we have left is our innate ability to Love and be Loved and out of that other things may grow, if we allow them to.

As for the pain? Toxins come in many forms….. it’s isn’t entirely one thing or the other. It is a combination of ‘poisons’ which inhabit our bodies, a lot of which are environmental, belief systems about ourselves and others and the more obvious things like foods and chemicals in medications and on the land. No doubt there are other things too but these I’ve listed are for me, the building blocks of dis-ease. For example, when someone is led to believe they are ‘stupid’, they will often take that on board if there isn’t anything to counter that abuse. With that belief deeply buried in their physical and energetic bodies, they will become ‘stupid’ and as such, they will experience pain on one or more levels. Changing those deeply embodied beliefs is not easy, it would seem. However, acceptance of how things have been and are, does release the strangle hold which has a big impact on the body and mind.

Something to try: Place your LEFT hand on the back of your RIGHT upper arm and your RIGHT hand on the back of your LEFT upper arm then gently squeeze or pat. This is grounding and consoling the wounded parts of you and dealing with trauma to your system. 

So, as I now go into my day, I am encouraging myself to be kind and loving to me and to all those I come into contact with. We are all battling something in life, if we think LOVE, we shall be LOVE….. pain or no pain.

Namaste.