Personal Moments – Page 2 – Soul Reflection

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

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

Toxic Silence

‘Send them to Coventry’ is a phrase that found gravitas within military circles but swiftly moved into the echelons of military families and typically boarding school’s bizarre peer on peer punishment regime.

Just reading any old Enid Blyton reflects how, not only accepted, but rated and applauded such exiles were. Someone does something you judge to be wrong and you stop speaking to them for a period of time (days, weeks or even months) and be sure to actively ignore them too if they try to approach you. This is a celebrated technique with certain sections of society and it was only the other day that I connected the dots between my family’s boarding school history and this form of punishment that is so frequently and unkindly used.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been exiled. I now no longer attempt repatriation in the way I used to. I know someday there will be contact and no mention of the exile, or the reasons for it, will take place. This is the acceptance I have had to reach if I want both to stay sane and also to remain at least distantly connected to certain family members.

It is no wonder that I ‘over talk’, I wish to resolve things even if that is uncomfortable and messy and sometimes difficult. I will stay up all night with you or have the conversation on repeat for endless days or, even if it is too hard, I will at least tell you that I need space or time or a break until we broach the issue again. What I won’t do is ignore you and when we finally speak again pretend it’s never happened. I have ghosted people in the past, habits were trained into me, but fundamentally if I love you, I will fight for us.

Silence of this kind is toxic.

When my father died nearly a decade ago, my kids were both under five. They heard me say I was going to view my father’s body and asked to come too. I didn’t know the best thing to do, would this be healthy or traumatic? So I phone the undertaker and asked their advice. They told me that as the children had asked, the should come. They sagely said, children will make up far worse things in their head, if they are told they can’t, than the actual reality.

Such great wisdom that I have carried across many life moments with my kids and is so pertinent here too. The silences I have endured from childhood on, have meant that I have imagined the worst of feelings being thought about me. The reality of a tough confrontation always ends with a deeper understanding of each other, often more compassion and a broader perspective. Toxic silence just leaves a chasm of darkness and imaginings that linger and swirl.

I think the patterns are too hard to break in my family but I’m grateful to recognise their origins and my reactions. I am sensitive to even brief withdrawals of friendship and affection, easily triggered from this conditioning, but awareness is everything and now I can talk myself through it more sanely.

And as with all of these dynamic challenges

I am grateful for the gifts they bring, everything I have suffered through brings me greater soul wisdom and deeper expansion of my understanding and compassion for other’s stories. I am a better human because if it all.

First published on social media on 9th August 2022

Brutal

Ageing is brutal. I am determined to age gracefully, I look at the effects of cosmetic procedures later down the line and I know I don’t want that aesthetically, even if I could consider stuffing all those poisons into my body, which I can’t.

But these middle-ground years, before all those procedures take their hideous effects, my social peers are looking decidedly smoother and perter and younger than me.

Twinned with the bloom of my soon to be teen daughter, flawless, lithe and utterly divine, I am super conscious of my need for good lighting and flattering angles to find a picture that resembles who I remember myself to be.

Because I was pretty, not head turning beautiful, but enough to walk confidently through a bar and feel appreciated. I also used it, it was a tool, a manipulation, sometimes even a weapon. Before I discovered my greater passions of motherhood, health and truth, my looks were my validity in the world.

And so ageing is brutal.

Even though I don’t value my beauty through the same lens, it was still part of my history and my arsenal and to see it shift and change with Father Time, to catch that glance in the mirror and double take, because in my head I’m still twenty something, it’s hard.

I’m not going to lie. I struggle with it. Especially in the context of our society with the anti-ageing terrifying cosmetics that are marketed so intensely. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of them, but it’s hard to hold the faith and trust when all around are justifying the distortion of our features as empowering.

I know this is false, in fact it makes me cringe and laugh to hear these ‘feminists’ claim they are spending their money, time and body because they’re the ultimate version of empowerment. It’s all backwards and messed up. I know this.

And I used to be pretty, young and fresh. Even without this insane pressure, I think I would struggle to lose what was once my superpower. Superficial? Yes. But part of my trauma survival, part of the fabric that got me to today, yes. I can’t deny it, remove it, change it.

I can only keep learning to love each wrinkle, each saggy bit, each pigment change. I want my children to know that ageing is so much more than visual, that is brings experience and wisdom and compassion too. And I want to represent all of that in the lines on my face, the sadness, the laughter, the life well lived and loved. Because, honestly, when I see an elderly person with all of that, they are nothing short of beautiful.

In the meantime I have to ride out the transition. And I’m finding it a little brutal.

First published on social media on 3rd June 2022

Days Like These

Some days are like this…. When you break your new juicer by dropping a metal cocktail spoon into it! Or by scratching your car along the column of a tight car park. Or of hearing of the death of a friend from days long gone, but held dear, taken far too young and leaving behind a small child. Ooof some days like these are just too much and too everything and they are just to be borne with as much grace and calm as possible. Which I think is the only thing I did manage to achieve today, but there are still hours before bed for that to go haywire too. It was written in the stars and is the tapestry of life and I can’t wait for tomorrow’s sun to bring a fresh day.

First published on social media on 28th April 2022

The Signs

So here is where I struggle. I struggle with false energy and by that I mean energy that is not authentic.

And then today I had this epiphany that perhaps I’m seeing things I’m not supposed to be seeing.

What if there is a natural layer of ‘etiquette energy’, where people communicate on a polite level with each other that is so intrinsic and accepted in society that we don’t even bother to scratch the surface of whether it’s true? What if the majority of folks live by these unspoken communication rules and that’s why they find it easy to have untroubled dynamics within their circles?

What if my hyper-vigilance, through trauma and/or personality, where I can gauge every nuance of energy within a room, where I can sense the raised eyebrows, the quiet sighs, the subtle step back as if there were neon arrows above their heads; what if I’m not really supposed to register those things?

I suddenly realised that maybe I would find the world so much simpler and easier if I just took the words and gestures as they are intended to be imparted rather than seeing behind each veil and psychological give away. Is that how most people live?

I can feel so drained and sensitive to all of these non verbal clues and I can interpret all the feelings behind them (not always without bias from my own triggers and history, I own that!) that I feel somewhat hesitant to engage in certain interactions and I can withdraw and step back from places that I had hoped to be welcomed. But perhaps I was welcomed, if I hadn’t read the signs.

And I don’t know how not to.

I don’t know how not to see the flashes of annoyance across the cornea, or hear the intake of breath, or the huff of disagreement. I don’t know how not to see their lack of interest in their shifting feet or their determined smile that hangs too long.

But I do wonder if perhaps I didn’t put so much weight to these subtleties that maybe I would be able to engage in a strata of society that has hitherto mystified me.

I wonder.

First published on social media on 24th February 2022

In Their Shoes…

This week I have been told that I am ‘inconsiderate’ and ‘unable to put myself in other people’s shoes’ by a close family member. It is a familiar pattern of criticism but certainly I think it’s important for me to reflect on it and see where my truth lies within it or indeed outside of it.

I know that I could turn to a friend or two who would say the exact opposite and hotly defend me to boot but that’s the way of the world anywhere isn’t it? There are always places where we can validate or oppose our views and beliefs, looking outside is simply seeking confirmation rather than creating a knowing.

So what is the truth within me? Once I would certainly have heard those words and believed them to be true; shamed and chastised myself for not being a good and kind person. Now I see them differently.

There is truth in them but not within me.

There is truth in them for the teller, their perception and beliefs mean that my actions and speech show those values or lack there of. I have not chosen the path that would reflect consideration for their feelings, logically that would indicate my inability to see their point of view, to step into their shoes.

Except of course life is far more nuanced and complicated than that. I have made conscious and thoughtful decisions as to why I will not choose that path that would be ‘considerate’ and indeed in the depths of that decision is, in my view, a consideration far more powerful and important that encompasses their well-being, their freedoms and my love for humanity.

I hope one day those will be seen but I recognise that it may also never happen. That I have to hold being judged whilst living my path with faith in my own integrity and also a humbleness to be able to accept that there is every possibility I could also one day be shown wrong in my perception.

Meanwhile I stand in my truth, which is to protect the freedoms of mind, body and soul for all of my family and for all of humanity. I do that without grandeur but with the small day to day decisions and choices that can seem so unnecessary, so petty, so inconsiderate without the bigger picture that I have in my eye-line.

So in the end I am grateful for the criticisms, they have forced me to reflect and have helped me clarify even more clearly that I stand by those values in the face of a thousand words of judgements. I will bear the bruising of those words because I know, in this moment, I am making the best and most considerate of decisions.

First published on social media on 24th January 2022

Freedom

My children know that sometimes our freedoms are threatened, that sometimes we have to stand against the tidal waves of majority thinking to discern the real truths and sometimes we need to gather our hearts collectively to create a tour de force.

So today they walked.

They walked and felt the support of men and women from every walk of life; our common ground is our belief in freedom, for everyone, freedom to honour and respect our own bodies, freedom to travel, freedom to speak and live our values. One of the best lessons I could ever offer them.

And as always such a privilege to walk with thousands upon tens of thousands sharing the fight for freedom; partcularly those NHS workers ready to lose their jobs and careers upon this hill.

First published on social media on 22nd January 2022

Pete

Pete is my Guardian Angel, we have communicated together for close to 20 years now and he is my connection to spirit, love, sovereignty and peace.

Until this past month I have never know him anything but fully vibrant and present to my call. I speak and he answers, most often with humour and naturally with grace.

These past few weeks he is different, just as available, just as wise, but his form is something else entirely. If I were to try and describe it with the limitations of our human language, I would say he is in a place of rejuvenation and strengthening. Where once there was always light and brightness, now is dark around him. The light emits from his centre but it is a dull glow that I can see is being charged and filled to reach its greatest and most powerful potential.

He tells me all the angels are doing this now, they are in preparation for the tsunami of loving and healing energy that is about to unleash itself upon our world. It is a battle that will be won by the light, but also requires a surge of power not seen for thousands of years.

Prepare yourselves for the coming of truth and love. It is on the horizon and shall bring a change to our human consciousness quite unfathomable and utterly Divine.

First published on social media on 9th January 2022