Author: Amanda

Contracts

Well it never rains but it pours, especially when the Universe is trying to teach me a lesson. This year has been an intense look at my friendships, where I think things are okay and then have received a stark wake up call to point out things are not quite as I feel. 

But today was interesting, a friend who was struggling with me, mentioned something I hadn’t really heard (or listened to?) before. She said I wasn’t vulnerable enough, I was too strong and strident in my opinions, not raw enough. 

I feel raw inside. I feel like I absorb the energy of others so much that I am battered and bruised and hauling myself off the floor on a regular basis. But perhaps I don’t show it. 

Then this afternoon I remembered a contract I made with myself as a teenager. My mother and I were in a terrible place together, communication was slim and often toxic and I can recall, so clearly, committing to not letting my mother see when I was stung by her words. 

‘She will not know how much she hurts me, I will not give her that power over me.’

Has that contract with my mother, over 30 years ago, stayed with me all this time? Has that part that I shut down, the instinctive response of pain expression, been giving people a different impression of me than I feel inside? 

I’ve always been fascinated by people whose faces don’t fully portray their emotions, I find myself staring at them, observing the disconnect between word and expression. Am I one of those? I have to confess I’ve often felt the opposite, that I wished my non verbal communication wouldn’t betray me in the way I sense, but maybe that’s all tied up together. And there again maybe I’ve become good at verbalising my feelings after all these years of personal growth and learning, but when I express my sadness with words, I’m still holding back the emotion so no one can read my heart. 

Heart to heart….. the very best form of communication and one I pride myself on, but maybe not when I feel the need to protect myself, maybe not when I risk feeling hurt. 

I don’t know how easy it is to write a new contract for myself, especially when I haven’t really been aware of its dominance these decades gone. But I guess I’m going to try….. 

First published on social media on 9th December 2022

Story Time

We can all make up stories about other people: why they declined our invitation, why they smiled strangely last week, why they stopped a conversation just as we approached. 

But how often are they true? Knowing when they are and when they are simply a projection of our own insecurities is a subtle art of intuition, experience and wisdom. Certainly I know if I’m annoyed with someone my stories will, more likely be a manifestation of those feelings I’m trying to deny rather than a clear interpretation of events. However when I am in observation mode, more detached from an engaged emotion, I can often see someone’s true actions as easily as if they had described them to me themselves. Knowing the difference is a skill to master. 

This past week I realised someone had been holding a lot of stories about me and spiralling into a bigger and bigger picture, one story feeding the next. Reflecting on that, I was looking back at various scenarios: family, work, landlords, friends and realising how often this happens. One made up projection beginning the cycle of feeding the next until a whole personality perspective has been created that perhaps is light years from the true spirit of the person. And I am as guilty of this as the next person but perhaps at least aware of it. 

It also crossed my mind and I wondered, are some people more susceptible than others to become the focus of stories? Do some people attract the projections of others? Or are they pretty evenly spread across the population. Do we all do it to each other, at varying levels, all of the time? 

My husband certainly thinks I attract more than my fair share and I’m certainly aware of many that come my way but is that a natural consequence of my personality or something a little broken that needs exploration and perhaps healing or boundaries? 

Is there something in my energy that inspires a person to imagine a negative motivation for my actions? Could it be as simple as a RBF (Resting Bitch Face)? I have a neighbour with one of those and I have to confess I imagine that she is pretty miserable and jealous, none of which I know to be true. Or is it deeper? My tendency to err on the side of blunt, curious and straightforward rather than cautionary or diplomatic, does culturally that make me an easy target. British vagueness fail. Am I too transparent with my non verbal reactions that cause others to see my subtle judgments or feelings that perhaps I’m not even conscious of? 

Or is it absolutely nothing to do with me and entirely a tendency within the projector? Am I just able to recognise them quite easily and so notice how often they fly past my orbit? 

A combination of all perhaps. Certainly I will reflect further on my contribution to these experiences, how much I can limit them or energetically boundary them but also allow each person their own journey, their own stories and know that even if I am the protagonist within their tales, it’s got very little to do with me. I am just a mirror for them to see their own reflection, except when it jars and I recognise myself in the glass too. 

First published on social media on 29th November 2022

Latticed Leadership

I was recently asked what my ideas were for a new government structure as I was so disparaging about our current western setup. And it’s made me think more deeply about my vision and wish to write it down for clarity and expansion. 

Twenty years ago, I read The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson and she describes the paradigm shift from hierarchical governance to net or latticed leadership. It made sense to me then and even more sense to me now. 

Because now I have actual experience of it. Our children’s Steiner school is run in this way, there is no head teacher but instead a college created by a selection of teachers, refreshed yearly by those who wish to step into the circle. 

Not one person makes a decision for the school, everything is discussed and looked at alongside the philosophy and foundation of the school’s and Steiner’s teachings. There are plenty of differing opinions and yet  somehow a decision is found, by the intention they all share, which is what is best for the school and our children. 

Of course I am not privy to these meetings and I have no idea how easy or hard it can be to reach these satisfactory conclusions but I can tell you what it is like from the outside. I can tell you that there is sometimes frustration that we don’t have instant answers but have to wait for the weekly college meeting (but isn’t that just part of our insane instant gratification model of society?) yet equally it gives us the opportunity to approach any college member with our views or issues, rather than just one person who may not resonate with our personality. 

I can tell you that during these past years of crazy, it was amazing to feel the college work hard to accommodate the broad range of fears and needs of both teachers and families rather than a dictate from one ego. It meant that our children survived their disrupted schooling with far less disorder than any other school I have witnessed. 

And it makes sense. Why is leadership defined by one person? Why do we have health ministers that epitomise ill health in themselves and have no clue about the value of true wellness? Why do we have education ministers that know only the experience of their own schooling and nothing beyond that narrow border? Why do we have transport ministers that only want a foot in the door of government and so accept this tedious position with no thought to the environmental, social and retail impacts of their infrastructure. I could go on and on…. The leaders of our country are leaders because, more often than not, a bullish charm has pushed them ahead of their peers, not a passion for their subject or indeed, the subjects of society. 

What if we completely rethought what a government is? Not a small shift, not proportional representation or any such minor shuffle, but a throw it all up in the air and create something utterly new. 

Rishi, Liz, Kier, Boris… they are all cut from the same cloth. I want our country to be held by a circle of experts, passionate about their knowledge and their wish to grow the humanity of our society. A lattice, with no overall leader, but held by a movement of wisdom and expertise, intentionally conscious of the needs of our country and our people, wrapping us safely in the strength of their expansive connections and web. 

Can you imagine that? 

First published on social media on 30th October 2022

I Am Difficult

The topics that I write about can vary from parenting, to society, to truth speaking, to relationships, to introspection. How do I decide what theme to address? By whatever is haunting my soul. 

My writing is an exorcism, when a thought or experience is lingering within, sounding and repeating around my heat and heart; when it wakes me at three in the morning to ponder and dissect. Sometimes the only way to help myself is to write it down. 

So here I am at 4.30am, fretful and agitated, looking at a repeat pattern in my life. If it’s on repeat, I cannot ignore my need to face it head on and acknowledge what is mine. 

When I spoke to my mother during a therapy session, a number of years ago, I expressed the feeling that I felt ‘tolerated rather than loved’ and I received a nod and the line, ‘that’s because you’re so difficult’. In a reconciliatory conversation, it arose again, ‘even when you were 8 you were already difficult’. And even more recently, ‘well you just make people uncomfortable’.

This is the message I have taken into my system and that then plays out in various forms within my social dynamics, as all of our programmed patterns do. 

This past week has been a perfect example. Two friendships, two conversations, two opposing results, but all that lingers is that message.

For both, I felt something was ‘off’, the vibe wasn’t clean and, with a nod to my inculcation, I presumed I had done something to upset. To both I leave messages offering my willingness to chat and find resolution if there is something I have inadvertently erred on. 

From one I receive a beautiful, heartfelt response. They are overwhelmed, struggling, distracted. It wasn’t me, just life. She cries, I cry for her. We hug. All is well. And I am grateful that I took the courage to check – clarity, resolution and reconnection. This is when being ‘difficult’ can work – pushing me to make things right. Except when it doesn’t. 

The other friend did not respond to my overtures of reconnection and resolution and here I become fretful – was my message triggering instead of healing? Am I being difficult l? Have I made them uncomfortable? I make my husband listen to it, was there anything I did wrong? Nothing, he says, you’ve said nothing wrong, but you believe that you must have done something wrong. Yes! Because I’m difficult. 

What if this other friend is also struggling doesn’t want to share? What if I have pissed them off but they don’t want healing? Where does that leave me? In this repeat pattern, this intrinsic messaging – I don’t know what I’ve done that is so terrible to deserve this disconnect, I only know that it is because I am difficult. 

It is bland and generic and all encompassing. Without specifics it is all of me and maybe none of me. My self-protection is to prostrate myself energetically, open my chest and heart and beg to be told. I would prefer to hear the worst of their thoughts than this infernal and eternal not knowing – why am I so difficult? 

The power of our patterns, the messages received by parents, teachers, loved-ones that niggle and jiggle and play out over and over again until we stare them in the face and ask – are they true? Am I so difficult? Or perhaps, is it okay to sometimes be difficult? Can I still be loveable and difficult?  Because they have seemed so very mutually exclusive until now. 

I don’t know that I am ever going to stop reaching out towards reconciliation and connection because when I have those moments, like I did with the first friend this week, it makes the sick and scared feeling all worth while. But I have a lot of work to do on those that don’t want to meet me there, for all their very own acceptable and personal reasons and patterns too. I cannot force others to reassure me that I am not really so difficult; that must come from within. 

Goodness, it is a pattern I want to break; and boy, that messaging is super hard-wired. I can be pottering happily along having a lovely day only to hit someone’s energy wall and wonder – did I do that? Bam! Trigger! Messaging! Pattern! Repeat!

So now I will exorcise this pattern and speak it (write it) out loud. Remove the silent shame and shout: ‘I might be difficult and I am still loveable.’

And I’m going to put that on repeat instead.

First published on social media on 2nd October 2022

Tendrils of Abuse

When I was a little girl, before my parents separation and my father leaving home, I would have a repetitive dream. There was a witch living under my bed who had a hole that she would pull me through and force me to be her slave. I would have to cook and clean for her and she would punish me at every opportunity, sometimes that punishment would be sexual. The dream was shameful to me and I never spoke about it but it lived in my being as this disturbing secret. 

When I uncovered the memories of my father’s molestation of me, in my mid-twenties, the dream came back to me and suddenly made sense; how my young psyche had been processing what was happening  to me in reality, in my dream world. 

Having uncovered these events, I emailed my father saying that I had some memories that had been revealed to me and I would like to talk to him about them. I didn’t imply what they would be about and having, in the process of discovering them, also been able to reach forgiveness, my energy was quite clean and open. He didn’t reply but, unbeknownst to me, rang around many members of my family saying I was accusing him of sexual abuse and how crazy I was. None of my family mentioned that to me, it came out months later due to the suicide of my half sister. It was an interesting reaction. 

Eventually we spoke and he gave me an implicit confession ‘My mother played with my balls and there’s nothing wrong with that!’ Tendrils of abuse…. From her to him to me….

That was 17 years ago and nearly ten years since he died. And still my family have never spoken to me about it. I know they would prefer to think I am the crazy one, that it didn’t really happen and even if it did, best forgotten. 

But as I lay in bed last night, I became observant of my natural sleep position and suddenly realised that I sleep in a formation of protection. Tendrils of abuse. And I came to thinking about all the impacts that experience has made across so many lives. 

I know now that some of the childhood fantasy play I created with my friends was a result of this abuse, more ways for my little being to try and make it normal. I know that it hyper sexualised me so that, unconsciously, I attracted wounded male attention, far too young and inappropriately, not least from more of my mother’s partners. I know that it has affected the way I view intimacy with my husband. I know it has made me extra protective of my children. I know that it has made me wiser and more compassionate. I know that the tendrils reach out and affect people in all sorts of ways. 

Which is why, after all these years, I feel the need to name it. Secrets like this only hurt. They hurt those who have to hold them; those who’ve been affected by them; those who need to hear their stories aren’t the only ones. 

My father was a deeply wounded man, arising from a deeply wounded upbringing and I want to be part of healing those wounds by not holding them shamefully in me. I completely forgive him and my grandmother and whoever came before because they were the traumatised child that couldn’t find their way home. But I also won’t carry their secrets any more. 

My experience becomes my strength to carry forward, as I shed the layers and weight of abuse; I am finding my way home. 

First published on social media on 27th September 2022

Toxin Overload

You may have been led to believe that an autoimmune issue in your body is just bad luck, bad genetics or, at the very least, beyond your control. 

That’s the oft pumped medical belief. 

Except auto immune issues are intrinsically very healable. There are, of course, many layers to healing, which is why it’s so easy to say ‘such and such doesn’t work for me’. But a multifaceted and intentional approach is sure to deliver results. 

Firstly, and most simply, there is without a doubt an overload of physical toxins, be that heavy metals, refined sugars, non-organic & pasteurised dairy, processed foods, EMF radiation and sadly plenty of others. Bringing these toxin levels down to what you can control is enough to give space for transformative healing. 

So if your issues have recently flared, can you imagine what might have triggered them? I have noticed a lot of peers have had terrible flare ups in the past year or so, in alignment with a heavily pushed, recent and experimental medicine. Toxin overload. 

Secondly, there are the emotional toxins of repressed, suppressed or denied feelings. Trauma stays in our bodies unless consciously released. This is often the common stumbling block to complete healing. As a society we have developed a pattern of ignoring or camouflaging the difficult and uncomfortable, but emotional healing can take as little as speaking or writing your pain out into the ether. By just acknowledging even the most heinous of acts the portals open to release emotional poison. 

A simple look at a complex picture but if you’ve had a recent flare, it’s a place to begin. 

First published on social media on 1st September 2022

The King of Knowledge

Sometimes I’m not sure how certain books arrive in my ‘to read’ pile. But I accept their intrusion and, following my own rules, they must be read. 

This is one such mystery: a Hare Krishna commentary.  I have vague memories of the Hare Krishna community hanging out in Kentish Town where I grew up, handing out food, chanting and wearing orange tones. I may well have been palmed it at some point then and it’s taken twenty (plus!) years of house moves and adventures to reach the top of my pile (most books take a year!). 

From wherever it came, the universal timing is all in perfection. As my young teen is reminding me clearly right now, those years are not about absorbing the spiritual aspects of life! I wouldn’t have really resonated with the deeper perspective that I can welcome now, in fact I can quite imagine myself being quite dismissive and derisory about it. 

But now I love reading about different faiths and beliefs. There is so much compassion and love as the foundation and I enjoyed learning much about the world of Hare Krishna. The Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads are still working their way to the top of my pile and it was fascinating to be reading a study of this ancient wisdom, wetting my taste buds for the originals. 

As with most of life, whilst I don’t chant the exact song sheet of this text, there is more that resonates than doesn’t. Faith and love being the core of existence, all the tendrils that flow from that are so nourishing and inspiring. 

And now, instead of remembering a slightly bizarre cult on the streets of my London neighbourhood, I can reframe that memory to one of charity, grace, joy and generosity. Such is the power of knowledge and understanding. 

First published on social media on 26th August 2022

The Zahir

Paulo Coehlo is probably the most significant inspiration for the creation of my writing passion. I adore reading across genre but Coehlo’s work has always spoken directly to me, not always comfortably but necessarily, and how he imparts wisdom and induces questioning is what I aspire to in my own work. 

The Zahir is no exception. It has come to me twice, desperate to be read, waiting patiently to rise to the top of my pile. And here I am, with the spiritual space (bar the near constant requests from the kids!) on our first overseas holiday, after two years of guarding and protecting our freedoms, where I can breathe those anxieties away and reflect on what needs shifting within. 

Coehlo’s characters manage to exemplify those portals into my being which I simultaneously yearn and reject. This book looks at how we carry love through our lives, how we let it stagnate, dwindle or die in ourselves and our relationships, and it pulled me up sharp on numerous occasions. 

I have, by choice, let go of so much of what sparked my soul whilst the dive into parenting set me alive in different ways. But I recognise now that the time has come to rejuvenate those embers, remember who I am outside of meals and school runs and hugs and awe. I want my children to see me alive in ALL ways, I want to model that for them but most of all I need to do that for myself. 

In my mid twenties, pre marriage, pre kids, I can remember so clearly those moments of absolute connection to divine love; holding wide the doors of new opportunities & adventures and recognising the signs and messages from God. 

That has never fully left me, but so many layers of extra have piled on top, most wonderful but plenty unnecessary and stifling too. The Zahir has reminded me of everything important and everything unimportant wrapped up in disguise. 

Love is everything. Letting it flow through me unhampered, just as a baby without a lifetime of stories hindering the energy, that is my focus. Not an overnight transformation but a post-it on my forehead for the rest of my days. 

First published on social media on 23rd August 2022

Sovereignty

First time abroad in 3 years. Never did I surrender the sovereignty of my body or that of my children. We took no poison; we refused invasion and toxicity of testing; our faces, communication and breath were never hindered by suffocating cloth. We were prepared to miss the travelling that we all love for as long as it took for us to be able to move about with freedom.

And now we are here, feeling the sun on our bodies and the salt of the water as we bathe. Exploring, visiting, travelling.

Freedom is most definitely worth fighting for.

First published on social media on 19th August 2022