Amanda – Page 14 – Soul Reflection

I Broke Their Hearts

On Sunday we brought home a new puppy into our family.

Today, 3 days later, we are driving her to a new family.

When we were looking for a puppy we rang some rescue centres who said they wouldn’t release puppies to families with young children because they get returned too often. How odd, I thought. Why don’t they ask us some questions about our intentions, they’ll see we’ve thought about this, that we’re serious and committed.

Now I am that family. The one that thought I could do this and then released with increasing horror and panic that I really couldn’t.

I do this, I realise. I say yes because people I love really want something. I think how much it means to them and I think, ‘I’m sure I’ll cope, I’m sure I’ll manage’. I did if for our wedding, the people I loved wanted a big fancy wedding and I wanted a few people on the beach. But it seemed so important to everyone else, so I said ‘sure I can do this’. I did and I got really sick. I realise how much I do this in my own personality, I am more ‘acceptable’, more self deprecating because the truth of me doesn’t seem to suit the people that I love.

And on Sunday we got this puppy and I really thought I could cope even though, from the very moment I set eyes on her, my heart started to tighten into that familiar feeling of anxiety. But my daughter looked up at me ‘I love her mummy’ and my husband looked longingly at the puppy. ‘I can do this’ I thought.

I’m not sure how I can express my next two days apart from this total sense of invasion and overload. My house, my home was no longer my sanctuary, I couldn’t breathe if I thought for a second about the next 10+ years of my life. My husband asked ‘what did you expect?’

I guess I thought I would love her enough, just like my own children, that the practicalities of her existence would be an act of service. But I didn’t love her, I resented her. My world that had slowly started to expand again after the birth of my children had shrunk overnight to minuscule proportions.

So I broke their hearts. My husband, my daughter and my son. I raised their hopes to the highest level and then I took it all away.

Whilst I know I did the right thing in the long term, that my husbands travels meant I would be the one that had to be fully committed, I cannot but feel ashamed that I pushed away my intuition, my gut feelings yet again to ‘do the right thing’ and of course it turned out wrong.

Normal

I’ve just finished watching ‘This is England 90’, a raw and poignant portrayal of a community through the years. They face incest, drug addition, racism and violence in amongst the normality of friendship, family, love and courage.

I have found it painful to watch because so much has resonated for me. I may have been brought up in middle class luxury in comparison, but many of the events, the feelings & the pain are the same.

As I witnessed a character pull herself out of heroin addiction, as she came to terms with the history of incest and violence in her family, I wept. My heart surged at her heroism, her wish to come through it, to find a future for herself, and I had such understanding and compassion for why she was there in the first place; why heroin was so attractive to her; and why her choices kept bringing her deeper into shame.

You see I am normal now. A bit of a hippy and earthy weirdness might be some’s judgement but, by general overview, I am normal. 2 kids, suburban house, husband, play dates, school runs. Normal. But I am frequently plagued by memories of my childhood and youth, tormented by the shame of my behaviour that would not fit into ‘normal’. That if people knew the lines I have crossed, the dangers I have experienced, I wouldn’t be allowed in this ‘normal’ club, I’d have to be one of those that has suffered, or is unstable or is a cautionary tale. So I don’t talk about those things I have done.

And then tonight I watched this character be so like me and so like my cousin, who did not survive to make it to normal, and perhaps like my sister too who I never had a chance to compare notes with before her pain took her. I watched this woman and felt so much compassion for her history that she would always hold no matter how ‘normal’ she becomes and I realised that I needed to feel that for me too. To understand why I gave my spirit away over and over again, to understand ‘why wouldn’t I’.

Sometimes when I write on this subject the shame sneaks into my head and wonders if these words are self indulgent and dramatic. Then I think of all those others who are hiding behind ‘normal’, whose souls ache with the harming behaviours of their past and I know I must speak.

I am normal. I am wounded. Where I have been is how I have survived and that’s ok. When I stop judging myself for those days, for being broken, the world will stop judging me too. When I start loving that part of me, then I can be loved too.

Another Day, Another War

‘The World can’t be “fixed” now — it has to be healed. And healing is not an event, it is a process.’

Marianne Williamson

Today, our country has agreed to bomb Syria, in the name of humanity and yet so far from true humanity.

Innocents will continue to die.

The discussion on social media is all about killing, how can we justify killing, ‘the greater good’, shootings in America, gun control, refugees. Every voice is strong, powerful, vehement and righteous. Understandably so, on all sides, of every argument.

And I think I know why.

I think we really need to start at the very beginning. I have a passion for understanding human psychology, my father was an eminent psychiatrist and he definitely passed this trait of curiosity on to me. I struggled (and still do in some ways) with anxieties, self harming, destructive patterns for years and, although through some of the worst of those years by the time I reached parenthood, I wanted to understand the psychology of our children enough to try and break some of those chains that bind.

So many parenting decisions, therefore, have been fed with the context of what effect they might have on the psychological stability of my children. It opened up an unfathomable new world.

Against our animal impulses, we are predominately raising children to be disassociated from instincts, security, attachment, intuition and solid foundations. This is not a blame or finger pointing exercise and there are huge variable for every individual but it is important to start seriously considering these influences on the lives of our future generations & communities.

In exploring the neuroscience (Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt) of children’s brain development and the repercussions that ignoring animals’ needs for security, survival & nurture can have, the world implodes. The hatred, violence, disconnection from compassion & humanity can be unravelled by understanding how our current view of parenting is shaping the world. Why are our descendents getting angrier? Why are they hurting so much that they are hurting others?

Because they are disconnected. If we leave our children’s cries unheard and unresponded to, then they never will truly believe that there is any safety for them in the world. If we control their behaviour to unreasonable, age inappropriate, expectations, then they will never believe they are good enough, capable enough. I damage my children, I scream at times and I witness the damage that does to their psyche in front of my eyes, the safety I provide shrivels when I am raging, when I am expressing my disconnect from compassion. Each of these elements is just a small part of an enormous whole. In America, women receive 6 weeks maternity leave, their babies are being left, their animal attachment is being severed way too early, way too soon.

Do we really think that if our children were brought up with a deep knowing and sense of their worthiness and trust in unconditional love, do you think any of them would be suicide bombers, or war waging politicians? Really?

That is where we need to start. We need to bring back the understanding of our small actions as individuals, as parents, as carers to raise each child with enough humanity to stop the wars.

Subtlety

There is a current and ongoing discussion in mainstream media around children’s education: reading ages, extended play, European differences, SATS, assessments, pressure, summer children.

Parents fighting for their children’s right to childhood cross checked with the government’s pressure to increase literacy, create constant childcare, push parents back to work.

In our little family, we are currently in the Steiner system for our children’s education. They play with wooden toys, hold strong daily rhythms, spend plenty of time outdoors until they are 6 or 7. Then they begin to learn their academics, slowly, carefully they are taught their letters entwined into magical stories, numbers have context, languages introduced subtly & playfully – learning is gentle, enjoyable, fun. It is not a perfect system but it is working for us.

My daughter (6) is loving her new foray into ‘big school’, she tells me with excitement all the new things she had discovered in her hours there. She cannot wait to read. And I am so glad she is waiting…

I have noticed many subtleties around this principle, the debate is not just about literacy and intellectual potential, there are so many other layers. I notice the loud words on billboards, the confusing messages at bus stops and on shop windows and I’m really glad that she can’t read yet. I’m so pleased that she has another few minutes of innocence before she is assaulted with ideas and concepts too old for her years. And there are even smaller subltleties; how we still get our evening moments when I read to her, where we enjoy our stories unfolding together. She has always loved books and as soon as she can read she will, like I did, disappear into a world of books. She will sit for hours, absorbed, entranced and away from us, that is what I predict. I cannot fault her is she chooses to do this, it is one of my greatest pleasures, to escape into another realm, but I will miss her so much. We will; her brother, her father and I.

And as I think about this, I realise how the subtleties of life are so often missed in amongst the warring, the shouting, the brash and constant conflict out in the big wide world. The subtleties of so many issues, breastfeeding, birth, ISIS, religion, feminism, all of these big topics have a gazillion subtleties that if we stopped and observed them could entirely shift the energy of discussion. For me, it is the idea of looking for the beauty, looking for the understanding, rather than fighting for the principle or the dogma.

The core guts that can mean so much but yet become the quiet, unspoken, unobserved aspects of our issues – the emotional role breastfeeding plays in a child’s development; the empowering rite of passage of a vaginal birth; the deeper ideology of religion that transcends ego; the space for humanity to usurp the need for feminism. These are all subtleties that are lost in the black & white sound bites of discussion, not enough characters in our tweets, not enough vavoom for a headline. Subtlety has been forgotten.

The Gift

I have spent quite a lot of today crying.

The day started well, I was calm with my kids as we prepared for school and all details that entails, the morning ran smoothly and I reached a crafting session in good time and in good spirits. I have been crafting these last few weeks to prepare for a community Christmas event, creating seasonally themed trinkets to sell at a fair.

I do not want to scour through the ins and outs of what happened next but the very brief synopsis is that one member of the group informed me that my crafting ‘standard’ was not high enough, not acceptable enough for sale. There are so many ways in which this could have been received, processed, handled and I can imagine there even could be a time when I might let it roll of my proverbial duck’s back; instead I was utterly crushed.

Somehow, and I genuinely don’t know quite how, I managed to stay an hour and give a vague air of togetherness. I left as soon as was polite (please note still needing to please in some form or other) and came home to cry, a lot.

I have cried so much today that it has not been something that I have been able to hide from my kids, even if I wanted to, so I gave them my story. I told them that I was really sad because the crafts I had been making weren’t ‘good enough’ for this woman and she had told me in a way that felt unkind to me. My son (3) has told me that he will hit this woman next time for being naughty to me (!) and my daughter (6) has suggested more tactful ways she could have framed her message.

But one other thing did happen at supper. Both children decided to cut up their scrambled eggs (why not?) and my daughter started to speak to her little brother and then stopped. She turned to me and said, ‘I almost told him he was doing it wrong’….

A gift, the gift…. my husband always reminds me that there is a gift somewhere in a difficult situation… I have asked my daughter so many times to let her brother learn in his own way, I have explained how she got to experience all her firsts without anyone telling her she was ‘wrong’ and how wonderful it would be for her brother to have that too. And my words haven’t resonated and she has continued, until today, until she saw how crushed I have been by someone telling me I’m doing it wrong.

So thank you to that woman for the gift you have brought to my family; it’s felt hard, but totally worthwhile if it helps us to remember to let us each find our own way.

Mid Life Crisis

I read recently that our childhood and early wounds begin to seep out as we near our 40’s; that we can no longer hold them back, no matter how determined. It makes sense to me, as the majority reach a space where either their children have reached school age or they have decided to opt out of parenting, our psyche can move beyond the survival it has created in order to enable us to reproduce and continue our species. It becomes ‘our time’.

For so many this has become a cliché, acting out life extremes – fast cars, plastic surgery, divorce, affairs, career upheavals, major illness… but what if we move to observation rather than reaction (conscious or subconscious)? Can this ‘mid life crisis’ instead become a respected time of great transformation and healing?

When I read about those seeping emotions, and as I approach my big 40 next year, I wondered what would unfold for me. This summer has certainly been the start. As I wrote back in July, in my blog Body Wise, my body has been recreating some of the mild illnesses of my youth as I dig out some unhealthy emotional roots. What I wasn’t expecting was to suddenly have a recurrence of my Ovarian Cyst symptoms from my early 20’s. Honestly, it totally freaked me out – first reaction.

Back in 1999 I had a large dermoid cyst removed that had complications in surgery and left me with (a retrospective self diagnosis) PTSD. I could not mention that operation for 2 years without crying whilst simultaneously only wanting to talk about it; so instead I just got drunk. Finally I stepped into action and had some progressive and regressive hypnotherapy to help me heal. What I uncovered in that process was the sexual abuse perpetrated on me by my father, in my early childhood, and this being a key factor in the manifestation of my cyst. The puzzle pieces of my life tumbled into place as I finally understood my relationship with men, with women, with my early sexualisation, with my reoccurring nightmares; me – I understood me.

Since then, I have kept this part of me very secret and on a ‘need to know’ basis; the few family members I shared with are disbelieving at best and the reality was I didn’t need validation from anyone else as the truth had exploded so clearly in me. My father and I had one candid conversation about it and, as close as we could, reached an understanding and forgiveness before his death 2 years ago.

So why was I having these unexpected and disturbing symptoms of another ovarian cyst?

After a few weeks of silent panic (my modus operandi), I told my husband and stepped into action. I made a GP appointment, scheduled a scan and most importantly booked in with my bioenergetic healer Emma, and my homeopath Anne. There was no way I was going to deal with this the same way as I had in 1999, but it was time to walk the walk of my strong beliefs on our emotions and our health.

My sessions with both healers were so valuable & powerful in their own right and after my last appointment, two days before my scan, I finally understood. Both parties assured me that the scan would reveal nothing, that I was fundamentally healthy, but what I now comprehend is how my body was manifesting the symptoms as a sign and prod for me to process that which is left unhealed. I may have made peace with my dad; I had not, however, made peace with how the molestation has affected my sexuality and intimacy.

I felt the ‘click’ in my body, the shift, when I understood why I was facing this again. I knew with certainty that my scan would at worst show the remnants of a cyst, that I was no longer ‘at risk’; at best ‘nothing’.

It did. The healthiest scan of my womb and ovaries that I have ever had.

I have come home from the hospital today knowing I still have some steps to take to finally transform this wound, but I am charged with verve about hitting my 40’s, about my ‘mid life crisis’ and the beautiful opportunities this time is bringing to step into my light.

With gratitude to those who have supported me during this time xx

The Psychology of Health

I haven’t written much over the summer. Long days with my children, kicking back and trying to take it all in. From next year, I think I’ll just make the summer months official time off. Let go of the guilt….

This week my daughter started ‘big’ school and in a few more months, my youngest will begin at kindergarten; for the first time in six and a half years I will be getting some daytime hours ‘child free’. I’m a little ambivalent about it just now, excited about unknown potential and sad to be away from them. I have, however, begun to mull.

I am mulling where I am going with my work, with my writing, with what I offer to the world. Over this last year I have had two clients on the down low… just some gentle correspondence to offer some support and re-engage me in this other part of my passion. One client has been primarily on an emotional healing journey and the other on the early days of parenting. Both of which touch my soul.

Whilst my public Facebook page (A Naturally Contented Baby & Child) and my next book are parenting led, my interest is more expansive than just that and today I managed to name this for me – The Psychology of Health. My passion for natural parenting is all about the effects our choices have on the psychology of our children – and my work with adults explores holistic health at all angles.

So if you are also interested in the Psychology of Health – exploring it with me, wanting some guidance, I am about to step back into the saddle and out into the world….

Email me directly with any queries – amanda@soulreflection.co.uk

Blessings xx

Awakening

When I was twenty two, I snuck into my grandmother’s bedroom and stole her bottle of sleeping pills.

I swallowed the lot.

At some point the next day, I woke up. Ravenously hungry. I seem to remember eating about four bowls of cereal, then I went back to bed and slept for the rest of the day. Eventually I woke up for real.

I woke up and realised that I hadn’t died, that I really should have. That no one had found me or saved me or discovered me but that I had still woken up. It was a serious attempt and well executed but I was still here.

There must be a reason.

I told my mother and we dealt with the practicalities of whether there would be any further side effects. Then it was never mentioned again.

There must be a reason.

I told my boyfriend and a couple of friends who added it to my catalogue of ‘crazy’ and never mentioned it again.

Life carried on. My addictions carried on, my crazy head carried on. But no one mentioned that I had just tried to take my own life.

There must be a reason why I am alive because I should be dead. So I decided to find out. I started my long and powerful journey on this road to healing and self discovery. It really is self discovery because what I discovered is that my true self had been totally and utterly buried under my assumed self, the one I thought I was supposed to be. Good and bad.

I am still uncovering it. As I approach 40 I have reached a new layer. A layer of ownership.

I have realised that up until now, up until this very blog as I write and unravel it, I have believed myself to be inherently wrong. The bad one. The one that has had to do therapy and workshops and write and share because I am troubled and damaged.

I am, in part, troubled and damaged, though I wasn’t born this way and I don’t intend to die that way. I am a little broken still but other people have played a part in that and some still do. I have protected those people by believing that it was ‘just me’; I have protected their reputations and facades by being the ‘difficult one’.

Just this week I broke up with a friend because she decided to throw her judgements at me in the name of love. And I realised that that is what I have accepted for nearly 40 years. All in the name of ‘love’.

Except now I have really woken up. I have woken up to my truest self that was born full of pure love and joy. I will no longer be the black sheep or the fall guy. I will no longer accept judgments in the name of ‘love’ & ‘family’ on my life. I am stepping out from these bonds and into my freedom and it feels invigorating and amazing.

And also deeply sad. I have lost my sister, my cousin and two friends to suicide. This awakening has brought new perspective on their passing and that of so many others. Our wounds, that which create the pains, some so great that only death seems to be the answer; these wounds are created from our lives and from the unhealed wounds of our families. This is not to place the burden of blame on any individual but nor will I carry on protecting the damaging acts of others. For me, my desire for death and escape was not because I was ‘genetically malfunctioning’, or ‘in with the wrong crowd’ or even because I was ‘a troubled soul’, it was because the open spirit I had arrived on earth with had been utterly crushed.

Ownership means I will take what is mine and heal that. I will no longer carry the infected wounds of my ancestors. I do this for me and for my children so that when they come to me in 20 years and say ‘I hurt’. I will be able to say ‘let us go and heal together’. For my children’s pain is mine, somehow I will have been part of creating it and, to be complete & loving with them, I choose to also be part of healing it.

Better to Bless?

So I don’t agree in trophy hunting beautiful lions. I think it sucks on so many levels, BUT I also don’t agree with naming and shaming the hunter on social media. It’s so easy to make this man the scapegoat for all the ills in the world and lambaste him over and over. He killed a lion and that doesn’t feel good to me AND he is probably a really great guy in so many other ways. This is one small part of his life and how many of us can really look in the mirror without regrets of our own from our life in retrospect?

I certainly can’t. I have a bucket full of shame and that’s how I know that shaming is such a damaging energy for everyone; so destructive instead of constructive: so devisive instead of healing. Many moons ago I read a wonderful book by Pierre Pradervand called ‘The Gentle Art of Blessing’ and he articulates so beautifully the transformative possibilities that comes with blessing the hardest of moments or the most testing of relationships. Honestly I had forgotten a lot about this as the years have passed but right now this ‘Cecil vs Walter’ global hatred story has brought it all tumbling back. I don’t want to hate this man, it’s too easy and I really don’t think love erupts from hate very smoothly, so I’m going to bless him instead.

Bless him for his passions in life, bless him for his adventures. Bless him as he faces this maelstrom from the world. Xx

Body Wise

As I tumble back into an exploration of my childhood and the subtle plays that have affected me now, I begin to experience it all over again in my body.

I am a great believer in the intricate and indubitable relationship between mind and body, how the energies of our emotions create the dis-eases that torment us or heal us; the gifts of our ailments that can unlock the buried feelings of yester yore. I track any illness that arises with my Louise Hay app to remind myself where the deeper healing needs to happen, not just the extra vitamins and sleep.

And now, in simple but beautiful creation, I am not only mentally revisiting these old moments of pain, but old sicknesses are bubbling up too. Quirky pains and irritating body reactions that I have not recalled for years are rattling me but I am grateful for their reminiscing. I am grateful that their reappearance is indicative of the healing that is happening, that their absence has been not of cure but of being buried too deeply and now my body is taking this opportunity to offer the signs up again, tap tap tapping at my consciousness…. it’s time to unblock…. it’s time to heal.

Oh I am grateful for my wise wise body.