As I unpeel my onion, layer after layer, as tricky and uncomfortable as each one may be, I love sitting with the nuggets that are revealed.

 

I am close to the cages I clasped around my heart right now.

 

I clasped them quite rightly in need to protect.

 

And I know right now, in the grooves of my growing, the nuggets reveal themselves because ‘they’ know I’m ready to move beyond the darkness and infuse them with love.

 

In my unpeeling, in the layers of abuse that I’m slowly, so slowly, beginning to give space to, I see the devastation of my love. In the violation of my sacredness, in all the corners of pain and refusal, I see the crippling of my love.

 

I realised this week, in the whirlwinds that I tried to find myself and not be blown away by as a child, I see how the abuse of my love was probably the most damaging.

 

My hands and heart that wanted to reach out to the world and give, purely give, because I knew no other way, were, time and time over, paralysed with criticism, ridicule, indifference and rejection.

 

My rising, to connect with the world, be part of this world, time after time, sunk quickly down, hiding, where I’d kick myself for trying.

 

But I didn’t ‘learn’.

 

Like my breathe, my desire to participate, just kept rising. My love just wanted to give.

 

And so I learned to love like this. Reaching out, kicking back in.

 

It was never good enough.

 

It never made the mark.

 

I kept doing what I wanted to do. Love my family.

 

I kept being kicked back in.

 

I laced each one with a BUT and tried again but the response went on.

 

A learned pattern of love, they couldn’t receive it.

 

I learned not to receive it, this ventilator of love, a wall being built each time it tried to reach back inside into me.

 

And so a powerhouse of nutrition was demolished. And too a Yes to this life.

 

BUT

 

My pulse to love never diminished.

 

My pulse to connect, revel and dance always fought to go on.

 

Even though I was taught how not to digest it, it’s fire still burned so strong.

 

So the twisting of my relationship with our deepest companion, I can now, as I peel deeper my onion, meet a little more gently.

 

The denial, that had ventured down from generation to generation, is stopping here.

 

The value starts now as, brick by brick, I invest love into my defences.

 

It’s a gentle story. It’s not easy. I am an adventurer in new territory.

 

It’s taken 44 years, almost half a century, to uncover this battling.

 

44 years of this immobilising bruising.

 

But my pledge to myself right now is for the next 44 and beyond, I allow love into the crevices.

 

For the next 44, my own self-abuse I endeavour to be no longer.

 

Image: Linda Nielsen

 

 

 

 

I have TMJ. It translates to Temporomandibular Joint Disorder and, in actual terms, when occuring, a horrendous pain in my left jaw. Fortunately a few years back, to try help ease the discomfort, I was offered acupuncture on the NHS through my dentist. I love acupuncture and it can be very effective in treating TMJ, so I jumped at the opportunity.

 

I was referred to the Eastman Dental Hospital in London and from there onto the Royal Homeopathic Hospital for the acupuncture itself and, as with all courses of treatment, I was seen for an initial consultation. The doctor was a man, maybe ten years or so older than me, amiable in his professionalism. I completed a comprehensive questionnaire about my health and history of TMJ, which he then followed up verbally.

 

Now one thing I have learned over the years about the nature of my journey so far; it is akin to peeling layers of an onion. And, over the last two and half decades, each time I’m ready and able, a new layer of the onion reveals itself, which makes thus my journey of discovery and learning an ongoing one.

 

At one point, in discussing the history of my health with the doctor, I tried to explain this to him. He abruptly dismissed my thinking, responding that he believes everyone should go to therapy once to sort everything out and then it’s done and dusted. Realising he and I were on different pages and feeling somewhat patronised, I chose to keep my experience to myself for the rest of the consultation.

 

In the coming weeks I went on to receive treatment. It was wonderful to be in receipt of acupuncture on the NHS but I soon found the approach of the Royal Homeopathic wasn’t as holistic as I had hoped for. From my initial consultation that seemed to take a global stance of my history, albeit a very narrow one, the treatment was simply topical and, sadly, I found it less effective than the acupuncture I had received before. I soon stopped returning which was a great shame but, similar to the doctor’s response, I felt I needed something deeper to help me with the TMJ.

 

My daughter was a few months old at the time and in the years that have followed since attending the hospital, it is with much gratitude, MANY layers of my onion have been peeling back, ready to be seen. I can say now I am grateful but so often at the time, each one has been painful and raw and usually I’ve wanted to shift somewhere far more comfortable than where I have often found myself.

 

But, I truly believe, each layer presents itself when the time is right and, most importantly, when I have previously laid the ground sufficiently enough, for me to be able to learn and love through what is revealed.

 

Over the last two and half-years, light began to fall into a crevice that I never before had been able to crack open. It was less my intent at trying to prise it apart, more my falling apart that, over time, presented enough space to suddenly see inside. It’s a place that, unknowingly, I have hidden so deeply in my interior landscape to protect myself. But, over decades, it has knocked and knocked and knocked, wanting my attention and now, it seems, at last I am in.

 

Perhaps because of what I have learned as a mother in recent years or perhaps otherwise, increasingly more of this space I am able to connect to. It is still very tender, wholly tender, but for the first time I feel I am beginning to Peaceful Parent the little one within me who was violated so painfully as a child. The loving arms that I have learned to hold with patience and kindness for our son and daughter, I am now inwardly being able to offer myself. The same dialogues that I invite with our children, I am now inviting within. And, the little girl who for so long stood petrified and frozen, I am now able to hear.

 

It is very early days and it makes me think of our beautiful Ginger Tom. He was a birthday present for our creature obsessed son last year. He had been a stray who we rescued from cat home. A gentle chap, he was nonetheless a cat, whom like most, liked his own space. Sitting on laps or being held didn’t really happen. The kids have had to be patient whilst he has learned us. I’ve had to be patient as I too have yearned to snuggled him into me. Yet now, a year on, our boy loves lying in our arms, on our laps, around our shoulders. We gave him the space he required and, in his own time, he’s yielded into us.

 

And so, patience is my way forward for the little one within me, who has been so brave to reveal what she’s been longing to. I am learning to trust her words, rather than the stories of others. Those that were created to protect them and many of which, sadly, I took on myself. I am learning, when I don’t give her my presence and she starts to scream for my attendance, to peacefully and lovingly re-connect with her. I am understanding my patterns more.

 

Next time I put forth my peeling the onion and my readiness to do so theory and it is rebuked, I might argue my case a bit more. But I might again decide not to. I’m learning what I need to for my journey and, as rip-roaringly painful as it can be, I love it’s unfolding. It matters far less, these days, as I hold and love my own, what anyone else thinks.

 

This cat is coming home!

 

Image: Sylvia Karle-Marquet

 

 

 

A couple of weeks ago my daughter and I had a conversation. It went thus;

 

Mama, I don’t want to stay at preschool the whole day today. I’m tired.

Would you like me to ask if they could make a den for you so you can rest?

No. I can look after myself.

 

On hearing her words, I laughed to myself and thought, yes, you certainly can!

 

She’s very much like me in character. Independent, knows herself well, enjoys being in command of her world and my learning deepens each day of when to step forward and when to step back with her growth. But a question often lingers within. My own independence as a child manifested primarily in need to protect myself and I know there’s a keen difference between a child who truly enjoys forging her way forward with a tender gaze from afar and one who longs for a loving hand to hold but feels resigned to going it alone. I try to remain mindful of this, in our daughter’s declarations of self-governance, and make sure I don’t overlook the times when she might be calling for otherwise.

 

Over the last few days she’s been very poorly and this has been one of those times. Over 48 hours she was was burning with a temperature, pretty much constantly, and stayed in bed throughout. Yet lucid and not feverish, nonetheless it was the most unwell I remember her ever being.

 

We brought her liquids and medicine and food to nibble on but the majority of the time she simply turned away and pulled the duvet over her head. Mostly she wanted to be by herself and, throughout, I chose to trust her with this.

 

Then last night she asked me to stay. Gladly, I snuggled up beside her and held her in my arms. We lay together in the quietness and her inwardness and I was honoured to observe her journeying. Four years in age but timeless in spirit, I watched our beautiful girl do all the work she needed to do to come through her firing temperature. Shamanic in nature, I felt her energy from toe to tip and shooting through her crown, move freely and, most significantly, the breadth spiralling outward in the landscape of her mind. As the powerful current through her spine and beyond kept steadily flowing, I could sense her mind in multi-dimensions, conversing with all those she needed to, to bring her through and out of this state. Her raging hot body was integral, not alien, to the process.

 

She did not cry out but lay in silence, half here, half there, surrendering to something quite incredible traversing it’s way through her being. I lay there in awe and wonderment. And I wondered what I would see in her in the morning. I wondered what we might see fresh in her offerings. What transformation was unfolding and what new knowledge it might bring forth to her, and her to us.

 

And I thought of us, as older, ‘wiser’ adults. Plundering on each time we’re sick. Getting on, getting under with all that we pile on top of ourselves, literally fighting our body’s summoning to stop. And then getting so sick that we pump ourselves full of chemicals, still in a bid to ‘live’ this life.

 

Our daughter, these past few days, had us as her fall-back. She didn’t have to be anywhere, do anything, look after children, go to work and she had us to hold the space to enable her to do all the work and undoing she needed whilst unwell. As adults we rarely afford ourselves this luxury. But I dream of the day when we consider and greet illness differently. When we view it as a space to fall into, less get over and conquer. Why do we so easily want to fall in love with someone else but resist falling ill and into ourselves? And, what if we extend our arms and support when those around become unwell and help create this loving, healing space?

 

If we allow it, illness momentarily untethers us to gravity and enables us to travel through and assimilate worlds beyond now. What I saw in my daughter last night was magnificent to witness. I know of the lands she ventured. They are immense and not to be afraid of. And I am hugely proud that she was fearless in this process and courageous enough to trust her intuitive core in the vast stillness. What I learned last night is that next time a friend is ill, I will do all that I can, if they wish, to hold this simple space for them. So that they can fall and linger here without the need to attend to the seeming daily bricks and mortar of life and uncover the gold in being poorly.

 

For now, our daughter is curled up on the sofa watching Frozen. Undoubtedly another important factor in healing for four year olds.

 

Image: Sophie Anderson

 

Today. The richness of today almost overwhelms me and my words feel clunky as I try to articulate all that it means.

 

Today is not only International Women’s Day, which of course is wonderful reason in itself to celebrate, but, most importantly, it is our son’s birthday. And, for me, a monumental one to boot.

 

Today is the day our son turns seven. So spine-tingly significant today I shall I write it thus: Seven.

 

I remember myself Seven. I remember so vividly being Seven. It was like a key awakening within me as I began to find my sense in the shifting of space and time. I began to understand my self a little more in the world and absolutely loved what that gave me. I felt a little more grown up. Not in a desperate urge to become so. Just more in the universe showing me my evolving place. A certain tapestry of myself, that has continually fed me to now and will undoubtedly beyond, started to form. And I was in command of the needlework.

 

I began, at Seven, to feel a sense of my own personal dance between inner-world and outer-world. And began to get excited about what lay in between. Seven is where the seeds of this preoccupation, I remember, began to germinate. My love and fascination of this indiscernible space.

 

I remember before, I remember my earlier years, but more with life, stuff, being done to me. More, as if being carried, my feet not on the ground.

 

At Seven, I remember beginning to own, or possibly, possess myself with more stead, a natural assertion.

 

It was fraught, to say the least at home, as I grew up, and part of this very pertinent sense of my development, was, I’m inclined to think, part of my survival. And my husband and I together create a very different home from the one in which I was brought up in. And. Our son is not me.

 

Our son, possibly, does not need so quickly to gather such distinctness and, if he does, he may not cherish it as fondly as I. However.

 

In the last six months, that have lead to this day, I have witnessed inside him a glorious maturity manifesting effortlessly bone-deep within. His sense of self and connection to those around has started to take new form, almost intangibly, yet I know, or at least suspect, the tone and poise it sits with within his cellular system.

 

The dynamic of this stunning growth is awesome to watch. And I have crazy excitement for how this new learning, it’s roots in the mud and small shoots that are now visible, will travel over the next seven years. And the next. And those all the way down the line.

 

For I am a great believer in Seven year cycles and I know, with ecstatic excitement with which I want to shout from the rooftops, that today I am beginning to venture too into a new one of my own.

 

From birthing our beautiful boy, to opening myself up in ways I only dreamed of before. From surrendering to everything unknown in motherhood and trusting, knowing this day would be here and I could look back and say Yes. Yes to all that I yielded to, even on the times when those around advised otherwise. Even on the times when I doubted my intuition and wobble in my own sense of being.

 

I had wanted to come here, as I do many tides into the future, and not regret. And, with gratitude, I don’t.

 

I feel also so keenly, the past Seven year cycle, that I have been gradually forming new from, is closing. I literally feel the circle, the ball of this magical energy drawing together and departing. I am being released and, like our son, who today is stepping, into his next stage, I too, am strongly aware of a different stage being set ahead of me to tread. With a little more knowing perhaps, a little more trust, that can only come from time.

 

I am excited too for our new chapter. He and I. Our foundation together that has lead us here now, and, from here, poignantly, individually. He, from young child, to now someone I don’t yet know how to describe. A little more savy? Together? Aware? All of these fall short of the harnessing that I see within him. He inhabits a land in between that is so worthy of a title for it is a proud and charming place to be.

 

And too, me. I don’t know how to describe these feelings of new and old coming together. I feel, after seven years of being a mother at home with our kids, now is my time, to spread my wings beyond our nest. My work with these beauties, I know, is not complete by far, but the energy of my attendance is shifting. I feel more able to have one foot at home and the other stepping into fulfilling myself through my career.

 

Until now, I haven’t felt able to do this, without knowing, whilst focusing, whilst listening to a working life outside of the home, that all my energy would keep turning back to our children.

 

I am fortunate, I know, to have been able to do this. We are graced that my husband has earned enough for us to get by to enable my work to be at home with the kids. Yet, our situation hasn’t been an easy ride. Our spending has had to be shrewd. Food and bills have been our prime outgoings. Luxuries have been minimal. We’ve taken a handful of holidays in the last seven years. We’ve dined out and treated ourselves infrequently and had to spend every penny earned very, very wisely.

 

But, personally, I feel we’ve chosen life-content over life-style. I knew, deep-down, we would never get these years back, the kids or us. And, despite the multitasking myth that as women we’re meant to be so adept at, my preference has always been to learn and concentrate on one thing at a time, rather than juggling too many hats all at once. Motherhood has been my choice and I know, for many, this is a privilege.

 

And so to Seven.

 

Seven years of our magnificent boy. All that you have taught me and enabled me to become, I am GRATEFUL, more than I feel I can ever fully convey to you. It has been wholly magical, in all it’s shapes, colours, moments of madness, stress, worry and joy. I SO look forward watching you enfold on the next and am so curious what our journey will bring.

 

Wow. What a gift!

 

Moving our family from London to Devon came with a mixed bag of emotions and those of mine that surrounded our daughter were predominated by guilt. Guilt that I was taking our wonderful girl away from the happy, nourishing life that she thrived in. She has a dear friend, whose friendship left myself and the child’s mother, in wonder and amazement every day. They’d known each other from birth and over the years gravitated towards other in magnificent ways. The love and maturity, for young folk, they demonstrated towards each other was incredible to witness. Rarely did her mother and I need to intervene if disagreements arose for the grace and respect that my daughter and her friend had for each other came with great ease. As well as the love, fondness and deep care.

 

They went to the same playgroup each day. We walked there every morning, her mother and I with the girls, after dropping their elder siblings at school. Play dates were many. As were the friendships beyond their union. The playgroup, to which my daughter had been to every day since birth whilst her brother attended there also, had a small circle of girls that absolutely adored each other. The staff were full of warmth and affection towards each one of them. And, on Tuesday afternoons, most of the girls went to ballet together where their hearts danced and twirled, smiles beaming like Cheshire Cats with each class. Effortless in formation, it was as if an advertisement for the idyllic life of a three-year old.

 

These days were rich and abundant and full of joy, even on the tricky ones, and my guilt lay with all that I was taking her away from.

 

Herself and her beautiful friend would have gone to the same school together, had we stayed. I saw ahead of them a friendship that would have grown in depth and holding and I felt terrible pulling them apart. I saw too the friendship that I had cherished at primary school, that stopped when I went to secondary and the one I came to realise, in all of this, I still had to grieve.

 

In ways, it would have been easier to stay.

 

In ways, I would have preferred not to disrupt this magical connection. I would have preferred to see it flower into the future knowing what it gave and stood to proffer years to come.

 

But I chose us as a family over our daughter’s immediate and potential needs. I chose us as a unit and I knew staying wouldn’t have enabled me to grow in the ways in which I have needed to deeply within. For years, I have wanted to find and create a playground in which we can all blossom and have known, in my heart, London isn’t that place.

 

I sensed, of all of us, the wrench for her would possibly be the most difficult. Resilience she has yes, but too a tender heart that I knew would mourn her loss. I was prepared for this before we left. Yet I wasn’t prepared for how painful saying goodbye to my own circle of friends, her friend’s mother included, would be for me. So as she began to meltdown and wail and refuse to get dressed in the morning, get out of the front door, get out of the car, scream she wanted to GO BACK to London, my own fragility was triggered. I had wanted to hold the ground for her as her known world collapsed, but I hadn’t anticipated that my own ground would prove so unstable in the first few weeks. Her and I were a clash waiting to happen as we landed here in Devon on bumpy, turbulent ground.

 

With time, I am slowly starting to find my feet. As is she. And the arms I wanted to allow for her, in times of overwhelmed confusion, are growing stronger and firmer whilst she melts. And in this week, in those moments when life feels just too much for her, I’ve been able to sink to my knees and open my wings and heart to her vulnerability. I have enclosed her towards my chest and held the space for her to weep all the tears she’s been asking to.

 

And, in watching her this week, both in her buoyancy and in her disquiet, I have seen her striking, boundless growth. I have seen our darling girl, away from everything she held close, discovering new loves in her life. She connects to our son with new form, with a new freshness and warmth that is wonderful to see. She talks of new folk at pre-school whom she is finding her way with. And she talks of all the things that she is learning with such a gleeful passion in her tone. And. She talks and talks and, in these days, rarely stops. She has SO much to tell.

 

In this week, I have remembered to re-frame. I have remembered to set aside my thoughts and expectations for this incredible metre high stealthy soul and see life through her glorious eyes. And I have remembered how much growth comes from our ability to fall apart. When known and unknown interior worlds collide. When tantrums are re-considered and understood with the wisdom from our hearts. And loving ears and eyes.

 

Spectacular change can occur within our beloved metre-rules over the landscape of a day when embraced in this way. Mountains will be effortlessly conquered and galaxies splendidly climbed every time we surrender to their inner-turbulence. Our job is to remember to meet them on the ground as they crumble. Holding this space, in the seeming disorganisation, re-assemblence comes with our patience, enabling them to emerge new. Growing a little taller, wiser and gobsmackingly more bolder each time.

 

Illustration: Charlotte Gastaut

 

My heart has been heavy these days. Not in regret of our move. The opposite is true. But sadness has been purring it’s way through my cells, waking me up. Sadness in the goodbyes I made in the last month. I know these friendships have not ended. They are instead simply taking new form. But I miss deeply the frequent connections of lightness and joy I shared with beautiful souls each day in my meanderings. And others I know were fleeting, with neighbours, parents from school, with shop and café owners. I held many of these with great fondness, much for their spontaneity of repeated communing together with no agenda, hearts poured over cups of tea, chats outside our front garden, chewing the cud on the way to collect the kids…. Like birdsong, I absolutely adored these gatherings, miniscule in size, perhaps, but in content, sublime. I know new acquaintances will unfold, are unfolding, but this knowledge doesn’t stop my heart creating gingerbread jewels in my mind to follow the M4 and 5 back to London just to hang for a moment with my buddies, close and passing. Especially in the moments when I feel flooded with sadness. They form my mental escape route when all feels too poignant to hold. When I feel too caught within to allow sadness to just be.

 

But I am learning to sit with it and too to stay when it pierces into the tenderness of another.

 

This afternoon I reached out to a wonderful soul whom I know loves me deeply and dearly and who knows I’m in an exhausted pickle within. We spoke on the phone, as we do several times a week. I opened my innards and let my frustrations out, my wallow, and she listened intently. I know she feels worry for me. Her heart is so attuned she struggles to witness beings she cares for unsettled. At one point, in the midst of my off-loading, she said, ‘I think you’re not in your right mind’. She meant it in kindness, I know. She was sharing her thoughts. But part of me, within, took it abruptly. I felt insulted. How dare she say that, I thought to myself. Of course I am! How could I have achieved what I have within the last four months if I were not in my right mind??!!! Mutter, mutter, inwardly, I went on.

 

And then I paused and listened to her. Less her words, more behind them in her being. I was speaking the truth in my heart there and then and, for a moment whilst I sat with the weight of my sadness in all it’s icky uncomfortable-ness and my awkwardness from her words, I saw her and how I have known her all my life. This brave, passionate woman. Strong and determind. Sensitive and honest. One of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know. And I know how much, how securely she holds a lid on things, for her own wellbeing, her own self-management. And I know how much, in my pain and upset, she wanted to put it ‘right’. It dawned on me I was touching possibly too keenly upon where she could not go herself and, for this reason I suspect, could not acknowledge that maybe, in these moments, I am wholly aching and that really, truly is OK.

 

I am grateful for the shape of my learning. Twenty years ago, ten, even just five, hearing these words would have paved the way in how I dealt with my woe next. The shock of such words would have married with my self-doubt, anger and resentment. She thinks I’m mad, inside I would have cried. I am mad. I am! Historical modelling would have kicked in and my inner-quandary would be high on fire. Oh, I just need to vent, pour out and express my displeasure and unease with people, events, me and then, someone reminds me again, these feelings are too sticky, they do not belong. I do not belong. Quick, I must find my ‘right’ mind again. Quick, quick! Before someone else tells me, infers to me I am in fact mad. I would have been the White Rabbit in an unending search for an image of equilibrium.

 

And so the story recurred, over and over, until I started to discover those who aren’t fearful of this apparent mess. Those who know how to hold a safe space for the guts of a belly to be revealed. Those brave warriors who know there are no judgments necessary and if the dirge of outpourings pricks into their own, they know the territory well enough not to search for plugs to lessen the flow. And with this kindness, I am learning myself well enough to less get entombed by these centuries old phrases that time and again have abled you and I to keep our inner-worlds locked tight. That have enabled men and women alike to doubt their own minds, their beings. That have enabled the cost of ‘happiness’ to come at such a troubling price. They have served us at the opposite of wellness and negated clearer insight for both giver and receiver. For these well poised phrases indeed disable, far less enable.

 

I am, in this age, understanding the requirement of integration when disquiet calls. I am understanding more the how to just be, as easy as it may be not for I and you alike. I am understanding the contours of mine own landscape and by this of others with greater gentleness. I am understanding how to unclimb the staircases in my mind and when others say what is not meant for me. And, too, when I unwittingly set my expectations to be met too high.

 

I am enjoying this carving.

 

And so, in the hour or so after our call finished, whilst the ripples of the words that prickled me lightly ran still, I held an internal space for both myself and my beloved listener. Where I am. Where I have been. Where she was and is. And gloriously I didn’t swallow up my tears in a bid to reclaim my ‘right’ mind. For, I knew, it was not lost. Nor right or wrong. Yes! Detachment from the potential power of her words, as kindly as they were intended, came with ease. Unjust resentment towards her didn’t rear its head either. Neither the old story of my mad, mad world and my framing of it between myself and others.

 

So I celebrated with a small merry dance for my own courageous warrior within that is slowly, so slowly, trusting the how in welcoming that which we so often prefer much not to honour.

 

Hello Sadness, my old friend.

 

Image: Egon Schiele

 

I’ve been aching to write, these last few months. So many things to mull, chew the cud over, express. Then this last week a growing pang, from the depths of my belly, a yearning to sit here, at my screen and create space for the bevy of feelings that sit with me in these days. And now I have created that moment, how do I find myself?

 

Distracted. Easily. In part I want to switch to another gear. Avoid all that has lead to this pang, this discomfort. We have moved, finally, out of London. Several years in the making, the longing to leave, for a different quality of life. One more resonant with us, here, now. And so we are, here, in our new home. Temporarily renting until we find somewhere we’d like to buy. We hope. And, until last Thursday, I was riding a fine wave of busy-ness. Months beforehand, spinning numerous plates in the bid to find schools, pre-schools, a home for us to arrive in. Selling our house. Packing boxes, goodbyes to dear friends, more packing, more goodbyes. Then unpacking, finding homes for our treasures, our clothes, our chutneys and mustards and mugs and toys. Far too many toys.

 

But last Thursday, maybe with planetary alignments, maybe not, I woke misaligned. Not quite with it, feeling it. Twisted and knotted inside. It took the whole day, with Ms Buoyant and Bubbling Four in tow, until I found the stillness to connect to that which had left me feeling so disconnected all day.

 

Yes, it was my efforts. My 100% go, go, go efforts of being so terribly busy and occupied, in our departure and arrivals, to enable this great step for us as family to happen. I had created too few opportunities to pause and breathe in the preceding months and last Thursday, some beautiful and insistent part of my being decided it was time to unplug. Time to welcome this chink of sadness and sink into the unknowing.

 

So now I find myself in a no-person’s land. Between distraction and wanting to run away from a swirling in my stillness. Between our old home and life in London and the new one here, in Devon, just beginning. I’m re-learning what new means so freshly, almost painfully. I feel it’s keen, raw sensitivity. I feel it’s unlanded-ness. I feel everything within me that wants to do the just opposite and cement. I feel my desire to walk. To walk and walk and walk until my feet have burned neural pathways in my being to intimately know the new landscape of the land that occupies life beyond these four walls. I want to cover the walls with photographs, postcards, colour, with US. I want to find the shops to shop for fabulous fruits and vegetables and chop and fry and roast and make merry sweetness from onions and peppers and all their magical friends. My hands ache to do. My feet ache to connect. I don’t want to be distracted by my children. I want to veer away from their disquiet when it rises. I want to sniff and spray my scent alone.

 

And then I feel a heavy sense of responsibility for their settling. A desire kicks in to do more the day to day. To make our home homely. To make routine routinely. To fix and secure. To hold their tears and frustrations when they tumble in our new surrounds.

 

Betwixt one distraction and another, I haven’t quite known which way to turn. I learned as a child to make the best of a shitty situation and took this as my mantle, growing into adulthood. Putting myself into tight environments, most not feeling fully comfortable in, yet each time trying my best to make them and I twinkle and shine. And I felt this urge kicking in again.

 

But we are not in a tight position now, far from it. And I am grateful to the speed bump in my unfolding last Thursday. To the burning in my gut that said, STOP, LISTEN and FEEL. Soph, feel the newness in the air around you. It is there floating everywhere, like stardust. I know you see it, feel it. Some of it is, indeed, very slowing, and in it’s own, own time, settling but just be it and let it be. Don’t force it down. Sit side by side, darling girl, the sadness of all you have said goodbye to. Grieve the glorious relationship you had with London all those years. Acknowledge how it didn’t work out. Be with this pain. Be with the untying of the cord from the A13 to be there in support for your mother and sister. It is no longer required. You have been granted new freedom. Be with the woe this cord came with, the you of it, the they of it. Be with the liberation and what that means, the bright side and the dark.

 

And be with the passion and love and light you shone with as you carved the cobbled streets with your name in your youth. Be with the crevices that you dove into so courageoulsy and discovered yourself in. Be with the passage of becoming a mother, the joy, the fear, the splendid ongoing sense of arrival. Be with the colour and the dance that was 25 years in London and really, really be with the love. This is not lost. Allow your heart to falter enough that the tears can start fall and cry, cry for all that needs to be witnessed.

 

See this Machiavellian distraction, greet it. Yet know there is no need to ride it. Be brave now, when you can. Feel all that is not certain. All that is falling to ground but that, at now, is more happily in the air around you than finding land. Maybe it never will. Who knows. Be with now, my love. As painful as it can be, in the unknowing, in the no fixed points of reference, in the freshness of a newborn shrieking to the world Hello!, be with this all. Your responsibility lies for your children, not in enabling them define points to stick to, but in you taking your time to arrive. When you know that it’s safe to feel this seemingly few referenced place of being, they will start to know it well too. You are their reference my friend. Welcome the fear but try not allow it to predominate this experience. It has it’s place, yes, but so too embracing the unknown from the depths of your heart, even when it’s easy, easier, to pull away.

 

Be here now. In sadness, in grief, in bone-deep exhaustion and relief, in wide-eyed excitement and contentment. In growing up. The fragrant and magnificent kind, that doesn’t need to know every corner of things. I know it’s taken a while for you to believe this, but you friggin, hig-heartedly deserve this space. This growing out. Try not resist. Uncertain as it may seem.

 

 

 

Maybe this lifetime,
Maybe past
Haunted,
Hung
With a mighty,
Wretched remorse
Hiding,
So long
In the shadows
Of fear, blame
Rage

So laden with earth
So heavy in bones
These black sooted sacks,
Cradled in calcium
Darker than night
Choking on ghosts
Real,
Imagined,
Protecting their Queen

Knocking,
Always knocking
This seemingly impenetrable
Choosing

And the sacred
Inspiration
For the gift of this fire
Encumbered
With dense preoccupation,
Embittered
In it’s breath
Morbid
In it’s giving
Guilt swinging
From it’s neck

Woken to the rattle
It’s form
It’s command,
With great distraction
To rise,
Here now

We have known this long

Conversations
Have been many
All of whom refused
To cease

It takes just one
To wholly be heard

And,
With salt water awakened,
Years lost
To the sleepy eye
Dissolve
In cellular mystery
As love witnesses
The crippling secret,
Sodden with blood
Drenched in guilt
Buried in grief,
Laid bare on this table

Revelations, all those
Revealed
The heaviest of burdens
The darkest intentions,
Inviting charge
Dimension
Poise
Life

Take these lungs
They are now
Forgiven
No more
A being that runs
From the weight
Of this sorrow
No more to sit
At the alter
Of shame
No more
These hands
Too dirty
To hold

The past lies behind
Our mourning,
Deceased
We see
No further request
For investigation

To this solemn investment,
Farewell

Only a prayer
Remains
To the pulsing beat
The most precious organ,
As joy
Captured in laughter
It’s glorious anthem
Unfolding,
A flame graciously
Ignited
For the carriage
Of this soul,
Turning in it’s carnation,
Be forever limitless
In amongst Earth’s wisdom,
In this naked
Magnificent dance

Image: Unknown

Sinking down today, I am preparing for the changes my family and I will be making over the next couple of months.

---

Sinking down, today I make space to feel the depth of my sadness at saying farewell.

---

Sinking down today, I am connecting to old goodbyes that I can’t yet put into words but those I know left me feeling fragile, powerless and lost.

---

Sinking down, today I can go no other way.

---

We are moving. Out of London. After years of talking, dreaming and aching, finally it is happening. I’m excited and scared. In the last week I have observed myself starting to quietly unhook, detaching energetic lines from elements of our life here. I’m preparing. Today is another day in which all I can do is weep and feel the heaviness of my heart.

---

My romance with this city started at the beginning of my adulthood. It is where I began to fully learn me. One friend, many moons ago, called me “The United Colours of Sophie” and London, in all her beauty and darker sides, has been my playground for the last quarter of a century to explore the colours that I am. I have cherished the city for this. I have cherished the hundreds of souls I have been fortunate to encounter who have strode with me, and I with them, in these days with no end.

---

But I have struggled to embrace London with children. It has changed so significantly in these last years and I, with two small folk in tow, haven’t been able to ride this wave. Since austerity, in which London “lifestyle” is governed by an incessant need to spend. Since the Olympics, in which the city capitalised on all being uber. I can’t run with it. It goes against me. With my choice to stay with our children in the early years, I feel we live in a bubble. A different choice would have meant a two-income household, which could have afforded the pace of life that leaks coffee, croissants and cocktails, from every crack in the pavement. We could have then maybe kept up with the pressure to keep up. But what we might have gained in acquisitions and mini-breaks every weekend, we would have lost in connection with the two most important people in our lives.

---

Already I wish I could pickle them. Six and three years are such glorious ages. I want to cement them in this magnificence. Every big eyed smile and sweet words my daughter gurgles I drink, drink, drink it in because, as so many wise folk have whispered before us, blink and this time will be gone before we know it.

---

So, as much as this city has fed me, as a mother I have outgrown it. It serves me less well. Still, it’s crazy beat beats inside my heart but our rhythms are less aligned. Oh how I have loved finding myself, losing myself, finding myself here again and again and again. In it’s sprawling mass, in the backstreets I have learned in my awe of Black Cab drivers, in the nights that have led to dawn and friendships in all shapes and hues, my gratitude has been immense. But now I struggle to meet myself as I hanker for somewhere calmer and a more harmonious life-content.

---

East London was my spiritual homeland for many years. My forebearers had been it’s inhabitants not so long ago. Moving only three miles away, five years ago, I grieved deeply for a place that had so nurtured me for the first two in our present dwelling. So today, with this lesson understood, I understand what is to come as we adjust to a new life and make space for my tears. And know this place west, that has called us since the start of the year, beckoning us to move, was too the place of earlier forebearers and I sense them urging me home. I feel them paving a way for me to truly sink into my colours and, with wider spaces around and sea so close, to find a new refuge for myself and beautiful family.

---

Illustration: Inga Moore

I lay awake last night feeling intensely overwhelmed. Our daughter had woken and ended up in our bed and, as I lay beside her whilst she settled, I felt a huge outpouring of love towards her. I feel this daily, for both her and her brother. Some days it floats merrily within me. On others, my fear of loosing them kicks in. As for us all, they are the most precious to me and this worry has been present since our son’s birth. Would he survive his stay in neo-natal? How would I survive when being admitted to hospital weeks after our daughter’s birth? What if something happens, an accident….??? Lurking in the shadows, sometimes loudly, sometimes with less voice, has been this constant anxiety and last night, after the sweet closeness with our daughter, I felt once again the taste of it’s presence.

And, as I sat with it, suddenly I felt as if I was swimming in amongst a sea of illness and death. Last week, very sadly my father-in-law passed away. My husband was able to take a couple of days of compassionate leave in the days that followed which enabled us to saunter, take a swim, a leisurely lunch, a stroll in the autumn sunshine, whilst the kids were at school and playgroup. All wonderful food for the soul but too the familiar-ness of our meanderings left me feeling uneasy. We trod these same footsteps, of momentary nourishment, twice last autumn, after my mother’s then my grandmother’s passing. And had done the same just under two years ago when my sister-in-law died.

All I can do as I write these words is take a long and mighty sigh. To let it out. It’s a lot, sometimes too much, for a heart to hold. And last night, as I felt myself swimming, I bumped up against each death and illness that has followed us for these years. My aunt passed away from cancer at the age of 53 whilst pregnant with my son. When he was months old, my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and soon after my uncle. Thankfully, then, both went into remission, but not long after, my sister-in-law was diagnosed. When she went into remission, both my mother and uncle were diagnosed, he from a different form than the first. Another nearly perished when his home burned to nothing, him inside amongst the rising flames. And so the story continued, these falling dominoes coming to ground or almost, until now.

There have been friendships along this road that have evolved and changed and handful are no longer. My health too was very fragile for a good few years which, surrounded by this all, sent shudders through me for my own mortality. I am much stronger now, in health and spirit but the fragility of our beings and the weight of loss still haunts me. And I feel it far too frequently as I hold our children in my arms and witness their smiles and radiant inner-sunshine. The background of my mind mulls with the ghosts of our families that we have lost and last night I felt small and lost in this sea.

And, then within my awareness, I know my risk adverse behaviour that has increased over the years with our kids, with my own sense of my internal delicateness, with the losses that we have bared, I felt myself being a child again. The disbelief in my strength and resilience as I was wrapped in the cotton-wool of fear of breakages. I grew up always fearing I would break and I now see, without blame, where this came from. And how I am transferring this to my kids. Preventing them from falling. Not since the start but in the last few years, I know more so of this tendency. To hold back and overly protect.

And, in these days, I have been following, scanning, again in the background of my thoughts, the places where physically I have been caught. Holding. Holding loss within me. Holding anger. Holding fear. In my face, my jaw, my chest. My voice. My heart. And the more I have ventured into these spaces gently, inviting my listening, my compassion and care to pour inside, I have felt the twinklings of love and light within. And I realised, this light and love, is life. I haven’t been seeking to ‘Get my life back’ but, instead, calling LIFE back into me. It reminds me of one of my favourite Leonard Cohen lyrics, “I ache in the places I used to play“. I found these words so poignant as teenager and for now, I see where I have stopped playing. Taking so much so seriously, so intently in my adult, parenting self these last few years. Yes, we’ve had much to process but I think now is of the time, whilst I continue to dialogue with these points of holding, to go PLAY! To underline the preciousness of this life with some yielding and dancing into this earth. To allow the weight of sorrow to also be accompanied with some lightness and gratitude.

It’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot not to feel pulled down on days. Some days it will pull me right to the bottom of an immense sadness. And some to the fear of our here-ness and the unbearable fear of losing those I hold most dear. But if I let it eat me, I will inhabit more death than life. And I will forget of the majesty of the gift that was bestowed upon us all.

It gives me hope to remember this. I want to sow the flame of this breathe into into me more. Continue re-igniting life within. Not to run from the grieving that needs to unfold but in a desire to marry it will the magical pulse all around. I don’t want to forget this, for myself. Or my children.

Illustration: Arthur Rackham

---

---

Come,

Sit down, with Me,

She beckoned, demanded

Come!

---

Unable

Jaw tightening,

Vocal chords constricting

Paralysis seizing my being

Energy numb, frozen,

Her invite

Laced with all that I feared

---

No,

My whole said inside

No.

I can’t. I won’t

NO!

---

But then,

Doubt wavered in

Not of her

But of I

For my need,

my longing,

my uncertainty

Yearning to connect

To an Other,

An anchor

To this life

---

So No collapsed

And lost her footing

And watched something young,

With refusal,

Who couldn’t, wouldn’t listen

Walk forth

And sit,

despite No calling

---

And there was I,

Caught

Between compliance and violation

all at once,

Fossilised

For the child I was

Wanted to be held

In arms, in minds,

In hearts.

---

Great time has passed

Some wounds filled with care

Others still aching

For their attendance

Yet I will no longer quarrel

No longer insist,

Persist,

They change.

---

As I learn with my own sweet children

My child, inside, sweet and golden,

In her hurt, her pain,

Her woe

Requests my kindness

My gentle love, grace and guidance

Yes!

---

So I can keep banging

And scolding

And raging

When I can’t get in

To all that lies buried

But, it is of now

I realise, Yes

Now I may sit

With the torment,

And welcome the violence

That had long ago devoured

My organs

---

And the more I stay,

dropping down,

with quietness and presence,

yielding

The more I see

The anguish

And despair

Of the woman who bestowed

Upon me

Her deepest sorrow

The more I witness her own raging, petrified child

Within

---

The one that needed bearing,

Loving,

Beholding

Just like mine

---

Terror pervaded my cells

For the violence that haunted

this heritance

These long, uninhabited years

Yet for now,

I choose

to be with us, her and I,

Not run

But allow compassion,

Yes, instead

To flood

The horror

And fear of our legacy

For now, I can imagine

No other way

Illustration: John Bauer

In the summer of 1991 there was a revolution that woke up my world.

My boyfriend at the time and I spent the college break in London. I worked making sandwiches in a wholefood café, leaving early morning and returning home by lunchtime with buttery soft hands. He worked at night in a video shop in which there was a ‘World’ section. This meant we could hire films for free and indulge in one of our passions; watching every single film by Godard, Roeg, Tarkovsky… The avid art students that we were.

Yet, this was not the revolution. Next door to the café was a health-food shop ran by Desmond. His wife ran the café. And above the café there were two small rooms, which were the pursuit of Desmond’s brother. I can’t remember neither his wife’s or brother’s names but I do remember the lovely family that together they were and the unique-ness, at the time, of their establishment. His brother was an alternative practioner. Maybe chiropractor, maybe a homeopath. I can’t remember this. But he also hired the rooms out. And on a Friday evening he started to rent one of them to Shiv, a very quiet, humble guy who had converted to Sikhism and was running Kundalini yoga sessions.

Intrigued, I started attending his classes. I loved them. There were only a small number of us that came, five or six. Sometimes Shiv’s young son, about three years or four, would join and practise too. There were no yoga mats and we wore whatever we felt comfortable in. The classes ran from 6.30 – 8pm and soon he started to run a second on Tuesday evenings. I used to go to both. Over the course of the year that followed he lead us through the chakras, slowly, simply, and, with great ease, I started to develop a daily practice at home. There was no mystifying going on. No big ego. Just the work. The chanting. His gentle wisdom to guide us and no should’s or should not’s.

As is me, I worked intently, passionately in my practice. But as I did so, as energy started to move, so too an old identity and this reflected in my work at college. I spent much of my second year in tears, wandering around the studios, not knowing what I was doing. Later, I learned to embrace this not knowing, but, at the time, there was pressure, intense pressure, to ‘perform’, to be ‘certain’, to be ‘clear’. I was at Goldsmiths’, studying fine art textiles and we were following in the swathe of Damien Hirst and the like who had not long left. Saatchi came around the degree shows to cherry pick the new bright things and many were swept up in buzz of celebrated future careers of stardom. Steve McQueen, the now film director, was in the studio next door. He was a peaceful soul, wore his satchel over his shoulder and kept himself to himself. He found his limelight many years later, but through hard graft and dedication. And possibly with a bit of good fortune here and there.

But the revolution did not lie in my college course. It lay, instead, with Shiv and his weekly offerings. As we worked through the chakras over the months, we came to the third eye. He led several classes in which all we did was simply sit for 90 minutes and work with our eyes. Circling, with lids closed, in figures of eight and, with our attention, observing the points in which we ‘jumped’ over or pulled away from in our awareness.

Yes! Here lay my revolution, the one that has never left me. Instantly, I became fascinated in the points I erred away from. Mightily curious at what sat within, mightily intrigued at what pulled me away. What was this ‘something in between’? I wanted to explore. And my questioning soon began to feed into my college work. My degree show was largely formed of it. The place where we are and were we slip and disappear to. Away from. This in and out of space, seemingly inhabited, yet seemingly not.

Shiv stopped teaching the classes before my final year but I continued to practice at home. And I started to practice in the water too. Breath of Fire, chanting Sat Nam, Hari Nam…. My energy grew vibrant and I started to see my future. This exploration was my future. I had a magnetic pull to whatever it was that I pulled away from, in that place of somewhere in between.

It’s almost twenty-five years now of this pondering, this preoccupation. Wow! That’s a mighty almost quarter of a century. I have changed greatly over that time, as of course, as do we all. I have learned a lot. I have brought my awareness to a lot. And I have pulled away from a lot. I have too pulled away from the yoga-mat lead craze that exists in what seems every warehouse corner. I have found one or two teachers since my time with Shiv that I have resonated with, though neither taught Kundalini. Many talk too much for what I enjoy most in a class. I really enjoy the space of non. The space in which I can climb inside and discover. I have practiced at home, sometimes. Usually a combination of Qi Gong, Body Mind Centring, Alexander Technique and bits. And there are times in which I haven’t. Sometimes I like not to attend so greatly. But whether in attendance or not, what caught my fascination and curiosity so magnificently in my early adulthood has never left.

This year, in grieving for my mother and grandmother, I have wanted to enquire deeply and adventure inwards. It has been necessity. It too has been a year in which I am immensely grateful to have come upon a facilitator who has enabled my understanding to grow, as well as rest, in my internal reflection. Joanna Watters, who ran the Grow the Grown Ups programme that we participated in May, is currently holding a monthly group in London. If you could witness my insides now, you would see my jig of delight as I write this. Her level of questioning and investigation, voices aloud the one that I inhabited in many ways before we had children. I LOVE her guided questions. Soft and filled with compassion, lightness and non-judgment, they form the invitations to gently converse with the blind spots, the ‘somewhere in between’s’, currently sitting within me. Some are of old, some new. Some shouting loudly for attendance, others hiding. All longing, in their ways, to be seen.

This week was the first session with her. I arrived full of beans and excitement, and left shaking. Within the two and a half hours, we welcomed much of what we often would prefer not to witness. We sat with ourselves and our own possible reservations to journey in. And we moved physically, slowly, with presence, waking up spaces of resistance, with open hearts and kindness. We repeated the words, ‘I see you, I really see you’, followed by, ‘This is enough’. For me, this genuine beholding was full of silent beauty but the three words that followed, painfully challenging. I had learned these words as a child in their negative connotation and every time I spoke them within, during the session, whether in speaking to myself or listening, I heard a charged bitterness and scolding from my mother. And experienced in turn, my pulling away.

Yet, in my bouncy rabbit keenness to attend Joanna’s sessions, I also held an awareness that I would bump up against, bound into these walls. For, it is part of this indefatigable, quietly insatiable, curiosity to venture in and knock on them. Ideally, knock them down. And I feel fearless of being in a space in which I can safely do so, which wonderfully is the space in which she creates.

In the days since the session, which are only a few, in the moments I have had an opportunity to reflect, I have learned something invaluable. In my years of contemplation, of sometimes with a great verve of inquisitiveness and of others of feeling stuck with no way in, I had not yet arrived at this. The ‘something in between’ is ME. That which I was seeking to unearth, to reveal, is ME. Yes, I exist in this space. Not the I of physical identity, nor that of my mind caught in thought, but the spirit of me. My spirit, that sometimes fleets and runs but so furiously wants to inhabit and create voice, resonance and, possibly most importantly, peace. Yes, this bewildered spritely spirit wandering, trying to inhabit, land, arrive on, in this earth.

For now, before I run again, I say, Welcome, loudly. And Hello! (And do another little jig inside).

Yes! Vive this slow and unfolding revolution. The one in which I am finally coming home.

Image: Self-portait, screen-wash print on cotton, 1992