I am unwinding a life.  Two and a half years of self-employment comes to an end today and on Monday I am back to work.

I am excited for this new beginning; to have colleagues again, and the pattern of the school year, to release the fear of where (and when) the next contract is coming from.  I am looking forward to the rituals of sports’ day and seasonal celebrations.  It will be good to feel I am supporting an organisation and contributing.

It wasn’t expected.  I had other plans.  Sometimes things fall apart and you have to change direction, look at the stars, the sun, steer a new course.

Unwinding…

I have stopped several work streams which have been important over the past eight years, pulled back from others, I am cancelling websites and plans.  It is strange.  After so long of trying to make one thing work, to be folding it up and putting it away.

I can be slow on the uptake.  I repeat a pattern, only I don’t realise it’s a pattern because I have cunningly chosen to locate it in a different place, or with other people.

I am learning to paint a new pattern.  It is not even, or regular.  It does not “make sense”, it is not tidy or expected.  My teachers would shake their heads, grown-ups would look at it baffled.

But there is joy in it, simplicity, freedom, hope, beauty.

And a measure of grace.

 

I’m working through The Artist’s Way at the moment.  I am celebrating having got to week four.  One of the tasks is to write letters to yourself, both from the past and from the future.  I thought they were really interesting!

From eight year old me:

Remember to dream, to imagine, to be wild, to be outside, to climb trees, to get lost in books, to play at the beach, to dig a sand hole big enough to hide in, to play on the swings, to eat blackberries straight from the brambles, to jump in puddles, to collect feathers and shells, to lick cake mix from the spoon, to go outside in the rain and let the drops fall on your tongue.

From eighty year old me:

You are doing your best, which is all anyone can ask.

Be kinder to youself. Play more. Day dream.

When it comes down to it you will realise you need very little.  Make peace with yourself. You are a child of the universe and she loves you.

Enjoy creation.  Enjoy your people.  In the end it doesn’t make much sense so enjoy the ride, take it as it comes.  Seek joy.

With love

Fiona xx

Things are different now.  For the past three years I have been working on the basis that everything is ok.

I couldn’t face the alternative.

A rat in a lab maze, I ran hither and yon, pushing the button, get the treat, try again, and again, and again.  Keep on keeping on. Keep calm.  Look for the silver lining.

The definition of stupidity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

There is a magic at work here I cannot control.  In truth nothing is ok.

It is three years since my mum had an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and then, three weeks later, a stroke.  I was in the first week of a new job, a job I’d been waiting for for almost four years,  finally  available.   My fortunes were about to change.  We would buy the house, and do all the things we’d planned to do when we met.

That week my world began to unravel.  I know that Alzheimer’s leads to dementia.  And I know that dementia is a life-limiting condition.  I know that a stroke can make the symptoms worse.

In that week I chose to lock it up, all the fear and sadness, and to do what my family does; soldier on.  should have fallen apart.  But I don’t do that.  I deal with it.  I rise to the circumstances.  I cope. Grief is messy and my inner teacher tells me there is no use crying over spilt milk and anyway it hasn’t happened yet, so get on with it.

This kind of avoidance, though, leads to something nasty brewing in the woodshed,   beneath the surface, half-sensed, , the dull ache of infected tissue, toxic and breeding.

I began to get sick.  The job was very stressful, I was working additional hours for myself.  I did not understand my symptoms, or their root, and eventually I had to give up the job due to poor health.

It took a long time to recover.  I started therapy.  Things improved, but something was still “off”.  I felt stuck.  There was something I couldn’t see.  I could sense it, I could feel its breath on my neck, catch the shadow at the edge of vision, but when I turned there was nothing there.

The shadow has been growing.

We made the decision to move in with my parents.  Life unpeeled further.  Home gone, possessions in storage, my work space also gone, work patterns disrupted, income halved.  The helter-skelter picked up speed, I was no longer in control, the first domino gone the rest were falling down, a click-clack spiral, beautiful destruction.

It arrived like an unwanted visitor.  Suddenly unlocking the door I had so carefully secured and hidden. She is here now, cloaked in grey, ash-smeared, this grief.

I am sad.  I am sad that I am losing my mum. I am sad that my friend and confidant is gone, that I can’t have her back.  I am sad that this illness, or a by-product, will take her from me.  I am sad that my dad is in so much pain, watching the woman he loves suffer and diminish.  Sad about what she didn’t have in her own life, her health having been so challenged the past ten years.  I am sad that I can’t do anything to make it better.

There are moments of lightness. She still has her humour, she loves nature and delights in the garden birds.  Fairy lights make her smile and she enjoys familiar films and songs.  I am holding these moments, like magpie treasures, glimpses of gold.  They will pass soon enough.

I had thought I could avoid this place.  If, I reasoned, I could understand what I’m thinking about this, if I can rationalise it, I will be able to avoid the pain. I have tried so hard to “keep going”, I have lectured myself into activities, projects, plans.  I have driven myself to complete tasks and hold visions and push, push, push as though this will make it better, or will give some kind of relief.  I think of the all the cliches of people losing themselves in their work.  I would see it in someone else. I couldn’t in myself.

It is  sad.  And nothing I can do will stop it being sad for a long time.

I open my hand.  The petals I have clenched from my dream-flowers are withered.  I cannot keep them tight-fisted anymore.  I will let them go, borne on the breeze, across the sea.  I have opened my hand.  They fly to the moon.  Dust and ashes. There is no medicine for this beyond time and patience.

The spiral waits.  Whisper the words, croon them, a spell woven with breath. Be gentle with the small soul-self who sits weeping in the corner. Be kind to the organised, brave self who offers projects and distractions.  Hold them close and show them.  It is time.  Let go.  Allow it and allow it and allow it.

This is just the beginning.

 

The darkest time and in the shadows things fall away.

I had a coaching session about fifteen months ago with Lauren Barber when I expressed a wish to stop working in education. After the session I was full of determination, I began unpicking strands of that work, but I found it hard to put it all down. It was so safe and known and people get it.  The work kept coming in dribs  and drabs. I kept saying yes. I kept telling people I wanted to leave education. But I kept doing it…Then a big contract ended suddenly, and at around the same time we moved and I lost my work space.

I can be pretty slow on the uptake at times. It seems to me obvious today that this was an ideal time to make a change. I could have said thanks to the universe and got busy with my “joy job” of healing, guiding and supporting others.

Instead I panicked and started trying to breathe new life into that old work stream. I grabbed at straws. I stumbled on with a foot in two camps, lurching from one kind of work to another, over-stretched, confused, anxious. I kept looking back and being angry with the way things had worked out, annoyed with business colleagues and the fact that I felt badly treated. It’s not fair (stamps feet, sits on floor, pouts). I was working hard to create my heart work stream but it was slow, stop-start progress, as I lacked the focus and energy, the force of intention and I split my attention across five different jobs.

Today I was once again looking back, feeling frustrated and betrayed, how hard I’ve worked, I told myself, and what for? It came suddenly, out of the sub-conscious,  a good old slap from the universe. Hey sugar plum, say my guides, what are you moaning about? They did you a favour! This is what you wanted, what you’ve been dreaming about and manifesting the past eight years, a little thank you would be nice, instead of your personal pity-party. Say thanks to those people who “let you down” say thanks for the fact that they peeled away the things you no longer needed…(universe folds arms, taps feet, looks kind of pissed).

Oops.

Ok, erm, noted.

I’m sure I’ve done this before. I wish for something and then when it shows up I keep looking beyond it, like I can’t see it somehow, or can’t believe it.

This month I’m doing work in two of my classes on transformations (in The Circle  ) and transitions (with  Angel Tribe). It’s time to do differently. Stop looking back and just put all that shiz down and move the flip on. It’s a gosh darn dream come true to have a chance to do the new work I’ve been given. The old served a purpose, had its place, but it’s time to say goodbye, create a little magic to let it go and move on.

 

 

 

He is about nine years old. They have crossed the railway lines, steam engines belching smoke and fire. Sooty dragons passing. The castle is under siege and they must protect it. They scale the volcanic mass, ancient lava spell-fixed, frozen beneath them, its jagged forms gifting hand and toe holds. The upward journey is easy. It is the descent which traps them. Ignomy as the fire brigade are called to get them down and later, his mother’s strap across the back of his legs to teach a lesson. It stings.

He learns. To be more careful next time, avoid being caught…there’s things to be doing in this city, scaffolding to climb, bonfire gangs and gaps in the gazelle fences giving a free pass to the zoo. A boy has things to be about .

~for Andrew x

I realised a while ago that teaching wasn’t for me. Perhaps it was the constant anxiety and daily nausea. Or the insomnia and the migraines. Or the TIA. Eight years ago I decided it was time for a change. Since all the stress I had been increasingly interested in complementary therapies. I’d been using Bach essences, having massages and using aromatherapy at home. I signed up for a reflexology course. The plan (fateful words) was to leave school work and set up my own clinic. Mid way through the course I left my regular job, started a small admin role to bring in a little regular money and began my business.

Two weeks later my husband, deep in the midst of serious mental health needs, left.

Plan B. Two children to feed, bills to pay, dealing with the loss of an eighteen year marriage, I went back to school work.

In spite of all the crazy I finished my reflexology training and, in between a range of different school jobs, I saw clients in the evenings and at weekends. Every now and again I’d have a go at making it a bigger part of my life, but it stayed small. Maybe everything else crowded it out. Maybe other things in my life’s garden were too prominent and stole the sunlight it needed to grow properly.

Yet other things didn’t really thrive either. I took on a significant role in a special school. It was a job I had wanted for a few years. Within eight months I had burned out. Barely able to walk, constantly dizzy, unable to drive, I left.

I was really confused. I’ve looked for divine guidance for over thirty years. But all my tried and tested tools seemed to be failing. The compass was spinning madly and nothing made sense. I’d try different paths only to hit another dead end. The panic started then, as I plunged down different avenues seeking an answer, too scared to sit still and get my sense of place back.

I don’t know when the shift started. Somewhere in the early summer of 2016, on dew soaked grass, as the sun rose. I was tuning in to natural rhythms, the seasons, the moon. I was using oracle and tarot cards (shuffling soothes my soul). I was making friends with stones, crystals, shells. The fountain-pen edges I had inked onto my life in my teens began to bleed and blur; veins opening, leaking.

It was still only a few hours a week but my therapy work began to push it’s way through. People began to call, I began adding to my tools – Reiki, crystal healing, essences and coaching skills.

The auspicious moments are only so in hindsight. A chance meeting through work. A general conversation about hopes and dreams, about visions and values. Seven months later an exchange of messages and an offer, work in a holistic therapy centre as part of a team of healers.

Looking back the determination, the dog-with-a-bone mentality that refused to let go, was worth it. Looking back the gut knowledge that this was part of my essential self was right. Learning to trust that way of knowing comes hard. Easier to hold on to popular ideas, to fall back on conventional wisdom.

The lesson for me is that its ok to dream, its ok to try, and try again, and then start over. To listen to your body. To listen to the clouds and patterns on the beach or the birds thrown against the sky, like lyrical confetti. Its ok to change your mind, be scared, gain a new perspective, do things differently. Its ok to doubt and have hope at the same time.

Sometimes doors open. Sometimes they close. Sometimes you have to wrap your dreams in gossamer and moonbeams and bury them in your heart for a while.

My friend B says “what’s for you will not go by you.” Maybe she’s right ❤

Some dreams have teeth.  When you wake the marks show on your skin, the images burned behind waking eyes.

We are in a field, tending pigs, my husband, myself and a child (maybe our child). We are focussed on the animals, watching their behaviour, noticing how they interact.  It is a flow moment, we are captivated, enjoying the time outdoors, completely at ease with this time together.

I look up. It is a wide, prairie landscape. In the distance is a rambling, ranch-style house and behind it, on the horizon, incongruous against the clear blue sky, the black spinning column of a twister.

My heart begins to pound.  Time rushes back into the void and I urge them to pack up and head for the house, but they are slow, sleepy with the relaxation and calm.  I am urgent, shouting, calling instructions, dragging at hands and possessions, picnic blankets, bags.

When we arrive back at the house it is full of people, kids on the floor playing Lego, parents on sofas chatting.  It seems we are staying with friends.  The house is surrounded by a porch and all the windows are floor to ceiling, I can see the twister through the windows.  It’s a wooden house.   When the twister hits it will splinter, the glass and nails becoming deadly shrapnel. I start to yell instructions, to try and rouse people, but they are all engrossed in their own activities, the wind is screaming now and I can’t make my voice heard over its shrieking.  Slowly, like a nightmare (oh, wait) they begin to respond. Children whine because they want to take their toys, adults seem indifferent, they are sarcastic about my panic, as though it is unwarranted, chill Fi, seriously.  I get people to collect water, some food, essential supplies.  It seems there is a basement.

Gradually the room empties.  I am checking the window, monitoring the twister’s movements, I know it could miss us, I know it could vanish back into the sky, but it isn’t. It is moving forward, sinuously snaking, brushing up shrubs and small trees in its skirts.

The last person leaves, there is still enough time for me to get downstairs. Only there isn’t. The twister has somehow jumped, it is right by the house, I try to get myself to the stairs but I am paralysed, I try to drag myself forwards, to shout. Nothing.

Everything goes black.

Half awake and before coffee I am spilling this into my journal, my eyes blurred as they watch the images again, my pen racing across the page.  I want to know what this means, what it is here to tell me.  I have dreamed of twisters before.

In this instance there is something about being asleep.  About not listening.  About being too comfortable to see the risks and dangers.

And there’s a message about putting others first.  About expending all your energy at huge personal cost to make sure others are safe and happy, even when they are busy sleepwalking themselves towards oblivion.

I know what this speak of in my life and my patterns.  I know that I need to learn when to stop.  When I have given enough. When it is ok to get myself to safety.  Lessons.  Reflections.

I wonder too about the idea of creating safe space, of what my storm-shelter looks like in the waking world. Of how I can furnish it, of how I can set in place a warning system so I know when to go. How I will bring this into reality is the work.

I dream of journeys.

I don’t record my dreams, but it feels like this has been a theme for a while.

I am in an airport with my first husband, the children are younger.  We are working out where to go to catch our flight.  He leaves to make enquiries.  I am adrift in a space with red walls and charcoal grey flooring.  After a while my phone rings.  He tells me I’m in the wrong terminal.  He is in the right place and I have to get there before the plane leaves.  I don’t have my bags.  Or my children…

I am at a station.  I have a whole load of suitcases, heavy and unwieldy.  I need to get to my train.  I ask politely and am directed to platform four.  But when I get there, there is no train.  The announcements are confusing.  I look for a member of staff but there is no-one there.  I have left, as always, plenty of time, but in the last instant an announcement tells me I need to be on a different platform.  I have to cross the tracks, via a footbridge.  I cannot manoeuvre my case, despite my best efforts.I will not make it in time.  I will miss my connection.

I am on a train, looking for my seat.  I need to find the right seat, this is very important, I have a numbered ticket. I ask people in each carriage, each give me directions which I follow as best as I can. I know the guard will be furious if I’m not in the right place, but no matter how hard I try I can’t find my seat. It doesn’t seem to exist.

These.

And others like them

It is only yesterday morning that I wake up and make the connection.

Since my stroke in 2008 I have been trying to get somewhere.  I thought it was to a more balanced life.  Or to my “life purpose”. Or to wellness; the day I woke up feeling connected and peaceful and entirely aligned.  I have been working really hard – in reality, and in my thinking life – to make this happen.  I have refused to believe it isn’t possible, gosh darn it.

It has been exhausting.  And I haven’t managed to find the elusive destination (as shown in all those dreams).

Instead…

It seems I was here all along.  Suddenly and without warning it drops into consciousness, and it’s so obvious, where it wasn’t five minutes ago…this is exactly where I need to be.  In this place, with these people, doing these things.  This is it.  There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to run.

This is such a novel idea and sensation.

To simply be.

To have time to catch my breath.

 

I am seventeen years old.  The walls seem to stretch forever and I can’t see the end of the hallway.  I am standing in line.  At a wooden table a man sits with a notebook.  He speaks to each person, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.  Some people head on up the corridor.  Others move to the open doorway behind the desk and pass through.

It is my turn.  He is wearing a non-descript uniform and wearing Buddy Holly glasses.  He looks up briefly, no expression on his face, and then looks back down at his page.  “You can leave now,” he says, “or stay and help sort things out.”

There is a heart-beat of a pause.

“I’ll stay and help,” I say.

He makes a note in his book.  I head off down the corridor, and return to my dream.

It was a beginning.

In the dark soil I wait. It is silent here.

For the longest time I dreamed of sunlight. I remembered the gentle kiss of the breeze.

Before I fell.

Now I am blind. Hidden here, waiting.

There were days I wished it sooner. I wept in frustration, put my mind to the task. I will grow! I can do this thing! Onwards!

Nothing happened.

A millipede wriggled past; an earthworm gliding. The soil grows very cold and I retreat deep into my shell.

Time.

No time.

Pause.

And silence.

What will it be like, that crack, splitting me in two? No longer myself as roots and shoots emerge.

Will I remember the darkness when I return to the sun?