Becoming Involved again

Today is about awareness that my living has been hampered by my need to keep one eye open, somehow on guard, prepared, bags packed, keys in bag, ready for........ I have known this for a while and seen its manifestation in good and bad ways. In some situations it has enabled me to use willpower to get me through, to succeed against the odds, to get the job done, in others it has left me unable to sit still and just be with myself. Although the awareness has been there for some time now the simple fact that I have found it increasingly difficult to get "stuck in" to anything has really hit home. I have sat doing nothing, I have sat with my feelings and let them out, I have run from things, I have fought, I have feared, all of it has something to do with an uneasiness that probably has its roots in many events in my life where I simply felt or experienced the sense that I had been surprised, shocked, wasnt expecting it and the resulting lack of being able to recover and instead to get going, fight, run, just deal with it. But........the sitting, the being and the calming down just never happened. What i am trying to say is that as a child and as an adult the happiest moments for me are when time passes, I am involved, I am absorbed, I am IN LIFE. This is the state that has eluded me, this is the state that I seek, it is driving my search for the "right" way to earn a living and it is the awareness that informs the way I deal with my life, my decisions. I have been far happier in the past, NOT to get involved, to skim past, delving in deep, but always for a short while, not the contented, constant, long lived involvement and absorption. The kind of state you are in when you get lost in a movie, or in a kiss or even dancing, driving....the state where you are neither asleep nor super alert. The state we should be in all of the time. I realise that our culture encourages the rushing from one thing to another and not being present, it is trauma that sent me off on this "way" an internal fear and nothing on the outside.

I was reminded of this state and my beliefs that if we release emotion at the time, we will relax again and not remain on alert, by a couple of things in the last day. A challenging piece of news that someone I used to live near died suddenly last year, aged 37 leaving three young boys without a mother. I could not stop thinking about the "state" they must have found themselves in, the state I guess I must know from the day my father died suddenly aged 39. It is hard to explain, but I did not catch up to what had happened, I didnt process the facts from the emotions, the implications, the changes, I adapted and I adapted in ways that were coping and not releasing and how ever hard I feel the emotions there is a button inside that is primed to respond with unease at the slightest provocation of a similar situation - well at least in my mind. The second prompt was an ex colleague of mine having remembered a conversation about my interest in the mind, body and emotional links and how therapists in the world of "mind" therapy are starting to understand that emotions are held in the body and that even if we talk it all through, the body has to feel and release the state. She is working with young people and I have every faith that in future, anyone experiencing a sudden fear state will release it at the time and not carry the response into their lives - it can get mighty confusing! For now, I am enjoying giving myself time and permission to experience the absorption of switching off and getting fully involved and for me this is working with my hands, my mind quietens and there is no need for analysing or speaking or wondering if something is about to "happen" in the back of my mind.

There have been many un-welcome surprises in my life, more than a lot of people I think and in some ways this has prevented me from really accepting that although some of my responses and adaptations were appropriate for the circumstances, some of my responses to other things are not, they are driven by my need to "control" and stay safe and really life doesnt have to be that hard - in the name of keeping myself "safe" or those around me or testing my ability to cope and deal with stuff I have inadvertently forgotten how to get totally absorbed in the enjoyment of living. Heres to a more easful future.

I am feeling more grounded and laissez faire than my last post. More letting go and more being in the present and more realising there is no need to TRY to be anything other than me. Ha ha, so how come I forget so frequently? Something will happen to throw me back into a coping way, a trying way, a should and a "have to" way. Habit I suppose and sometimes it just seems a little scary to just be myself, happy with that, what do you do then? Especially when you realise that most of what you have done to earn money required a huge amount of effort to do so, to adapt, learn new skills, fit in etc and most of the things I love to do, have not earnt me much money.
The secret I hear is to continue doing what you love and the money will follow.....so.....so be it.

I have been procrastinating, on being fully myself. I guess there was a lot of stuff to work through, to try out, to grow. Get that degree, make and break friends, have long relationships and ones where I didn't know what I was doing and why. To dream a little and wonder if I wanted a big life change, to consider children and then not have them. To re-hash unlived dreams.....mmmmm.....a mixture of stuff which I think is all par for the course at midlife.

Life has to change and our relationship to it, surely it would be a little dull if not, surely it would mean we have not learnt, grown, made mistakes and got to know ourselves if not? Surely it would mean we have not lived?

So, the saying in this picture. I would have said that was nonsense before. Trying is good, I have now decided that procrstination, even if it is about being fully yourself is a form of trying and its damn uncomfortable. Dive in. Say it, be it, write it, make it, that is doing or not doing and its much better than trying, fitting, coasting, dozing, letting each day pass you by. So I am not going to bother with try, I will either do or not do and I hasten to add that I will enjoy the not doing equally as much - life is not a test..........so....... to the sofa I go. !

Here we go again....

Today is the kind of day I haven't had for a long time, the need to go deep within and find out what I need and feel. A day where I feel nothing is right, insecure and lacking in a sense of personal power. Behold the search ended in more grief. Tears shed not for the now, but for how someone, the past, the losses can inform my now but in a distorted way. So the true me, the true me has often only ever materialised as I express this grief, but also the joy and liberation that follow after I have. The everyday me has been a supressed version and for years I felt split, hidden, now I am more versed and skilled in expressing the emotions when they need to be expressed - my goal is for full integration, more of the joy expressed and the grief and sadness diminishing. It has always been the same, the pain and difficult feelings give way to freedom, joy and relaxation, security. Why is that? The effort of hiding the pain, keeping it stashed away is so exhausting and as I am trying (with not much success) to explain, can end up informing who you are and what your moves in life should be, according to these feelings that get handled by your head and before you know it you are bringing these feelings into the present, the inappropriate present. The feeling for me, belong to events in the past, the feelings make sense there, not so scary and certainly with no need to adjust anything in "real" life as it were. The trick I have to learn is to identify the feelings that are catching up and the feelings that are now and need acting on. Is this madness??? ha ha no, I think I know what I mean. Today I have been fearful, sensing powerless, the wrong path.....then.....I cried for the experience of losing my dad and all that followed after that, more loss, more misguided paths. Ten years ago I stopped, began this process I am trying (badly) to desribe, to get me in the present, MY LIFE, along with feeling the feelings and thoughts I had filled up with, letting them go and finding me in one piece. The annoying thing is......my true self contains these experiences, I cannot fix them, put them away, they ARE me, the happiness and freedom for me comes when the experiences dont overwhelm me, I dont deny them, but I dont live by them anymore, I think......my path is to express joy, but it will only come when I liberate myself from the hard things, the sad things, embrace them and then and only then will I feel secure in the here and now, in my own life. No more running, no more hiding, no more attempts to fix, just being, me, with the battle scars, the fears, the hopes, the escapes, all slowed down, integrated and somehow guiding me to express myself in the world in a balanced, harmonious way, feeling safe, alive and happy to allow the unknowns, to know, to strive and to let go and be wise enough to know what is right for me at every step of the way.

"And it’s my life. And though I can’t be sure what I want any more. It will come to me later..

Well it’s my life.... and it’s my life. And though I can’t be sure if I want any more. It will come to me later... ah, yeah"

The Sundays - Can't be Sure

Pebbles on a beach......look the same, all different

I am feeling like a pebble on the beach, I know that I belong and am here amongst others, yet today I feel that terrible lonliness which I can't decide whether is a need for solitude, grief for who I have lost or grief for what I can't let in, or isn't available to be close to. mmmmm.. I dont seem to have written for a while and I guess, perhaps that grief in this form had left me alone for a while. I have just moved house and it seems to have taken me into another stage of it all, acceptance maybe, relisation of my reality. There is relief and liberation in that, so much so that when my bags were packed and the "homes" were empty at both ends, I wanted to take to the road. Begin again, but somwhere completely different, because something in myself has changed, I felt like travelling, not resting, not staying in one place, a movement within oneself that when connected to loss of people is not easy to stay with, follow or even express. Tangible goals, hurts on a physical level, you can measure, see improvement. Emotional journeys are that much elusive.

Pebbles on a beach, oh how I wish I recognised more, I seem to be forever changing, adjusting and its hard enough to keep touch with myself, the relationship with me, let alone others get to know me. It all makes sense, if one is changing, perhaps lonliness is necessary. Really missing that feeling of someone just knowing me, of me knowing them, the quiet and effortless being that is such a gift - perhaps it is time to sit in these spaces with others again, the being spaces where there is nothing else to be done. Get the shiatsu mat out and the let the silence open up the expansive feeling that connects you to everything.

Emergence

Here comes a "fluffy" post, one that come from something I found that connects me back to a special time in my life around 5 years ago when I was discovering a relationship to myself as a women that was entirely new and that I am being reminded that I have not fully embraced, I have shunned this part of myself....again.

A combination of co-incidences a post on a friends blog asking if women were ready to step into the light, that was the question that I took from it, then I found a letter to a teacher of mine, written around 1994. We had been asked to find a goddess or a symbolic person who might represent the qualities in ourselves we wished to bring forth. I chose the Norse Goddess Freya - Goddess of the North:

[She is Goddess of Love, of prophesy, and of magic while at the same time, a Warrior Goddess ruling over the Valkyries and claiming her portion of the battle-slain, These are the aspects of the Great Mother Goddess, the ruler of Life and Death. Without death, there is no life.

So, on one hand, she rules over sensual love, marriage , fertility and childbirth (she is above all a Goddess of Women), On the other hand she is the Goddess of War and of Death. As she weaves the sky she also weaves the fates, the future, although she can change nothing. A Goddess who keeps us in touch with our intuitive nature and helps us make transitions and new beginnings, keeping our lives in touch with our spiritual selves. A strong symbol of a womens empowerment over her own body and mind as well as of the creative energy in us all.]

My response to identifying Freya as significant to me was this:

There is much fire within me right now and slowly I am learning to support it with logic and earthly stability. I can feel it begin to find direction and a channel for realisation beyond my inner world. I am beginning to recognise and appreciate my sensitivities as well as embracing my power. From this I have clearer understanding of my needs for a lifestyle that reflects my true nature and that of the world around me. Relating to my potential, a little afraid of what this might look like, un-known and un- chartered waters.

This blog started off as a place to get onto paper many of the themes and conversations I have had with myself over the years and many of them continue to have resonance. This particular storyline continues and i feel I am still distracted from embracing this fundamental part of myself. Like the article that partly prompted this writing, I seem to NOT be ready to step into the light as a whole self, which is the only real way that I would truely be visible to myself as well as to others, I have had many roles and realise I have been in the light many times, but not in the way I describe, as my true self. I still aspire and dig deep for the skills, courage and guidance to do this.

The Future

According to Oscar Wilde, "Youth is wasted on the young". Mid-life can provide tremendous opportunities for personal growth and positive change. Many people acquire a wisdom, maturity and self-confidence they lacked earlier.

I read all this the other week and it sums up my current quest as I negotiate a couple of major transitions, age and losing my last parent and a general sense of my landscape changing and deciphering what in me has also changed, what is emerging from my self and what I can let go of. It's all been a bit of a muddle and confusing time, leaving me with the need to just sit and be with the changing thoughts and feelings and "plod" through the daily routines.

Now I feel a new kind of loss, the loss of my energy, verve and desire to connect socially, create and generally express myself in a more alive, natural and free way. I have felt guarded, protecting myself, healing and nurturing and now I open my eyes and look above the parapit and low and behold, a lot more has moved on, whilst I was moving through all of this! Damn, yet more disorientation.....reminds me a bit of starting University, entering a new world, intact, only yourself, a quick succession of decisions to make, this house to rent, these housemates, which spot in the canteen, which events to go to, who to make friends with, what to do with your grant money??? A time of new beginnings, a time of launching, testing out, becoming yourself. These are heartening memories for me to draw on, if I had not had these experiences and similar ones, i wonder if I would muster the courage to spread my wings into life once more, as there is a temptation and its not too hard, to remain coseted and "safe" when you feel the urge to step out but are too nervous.

At least at university there was no going back, it was easier somehow, there were lots of people doing the same, you could ride on the successes and benefits you saw others receive from "finding their way". After bereavement, in mid-life, there is nothing so tangible, not a clear step to take, a series of steps out and standing still, but noticing the urge is a good start and I hope I will find open doors to try out and equally create some of my own to give a go!