Personal Moments – Page 4 – Soul Reflection

The Empathy Trap

It is always hard to write a blog where I have to reflect on my mistakes as a parent. My ego screams to keep it silent but my spirit yearns to share and offer it of service to others. A mighty battle within.

My parenting philosophy is deeply embedded with the principle of empathy; of feeling and understanding my children’s perspective, in order that I can help guide them and support them through their journey.

I still think this is deeply important.

Yet I have discovered a trap in this idealised path… something that harms rather than helps my children on their journeys. It has been particularly highlighted by one child whom has a fight reaction tendency when misunderstood. When they have lashed out I have nearly always seen and understood the route to that explosion. I have watched and witnessed the unfolding of communication crashes and mix ups. And so I have helped explain that to others. I have spoken their feelings and shown how and why they have reached melt down. I did this to model to them how to verbalise their frustrations and recognise their own triggers.

And it has worked. They can verbalise and can recognise but they can also excuse themselves. ‘I hit because they annoyed me.’

And I have explained that excuses are not ok, there is no justification for violence unless in defence of life and soul. But they keep coming. These excuses. By fully empathising I have taught that there is some implicit permission in their reaction, I have fed this attitude of vindication.

So I have reflected. I have looked out into the world at the excuses and demands for empathy being thrown out constantly in society; I have looked within at the balance of compassion and discipline triggers from my past and I realise that on this honourable path of affinity I have let resilience slide.

Because resilience is a key tool for life. Resilience is the ability to carry on in the face of all adversity, including that of being misunderstood.

When I look out into the world and see the screams and cries of so many begging to be understood, to be re-labelled, re-defined and then crumbling and collapsing when others don’t want to, don’t have to, don’t like to; there I see a dearth of resilience. It is not for us to demand someone’s understanding, it is for us to know that we are still enough without it.

So now I have some work to do. My children are thankfully young and resilient enough to flow with my mistakes; we learn together. I hope the rest of the world can too.

The Real Privilege

My husband beings home the money so that we can raise our children with one parent as their solid continuum. Except he hasn’t been able to bring home the money for four months now.

The government has ‘supported’ us during this time of COVID-19 with less than a quarter of our monthly expenses (and I mean expenses not frivolity; food, bills, mortgage). We have taken a six month mortgage holiday. And we have had to swallow our pride and ask for money from family. Yet I still know how privileged we are, the fact that we have family to ask, that they are able to give. We are the lucky ones.

Not so a vast swathe of, not only the British population, but in fact the global population. Many of whom will now be facing dire poverty, starvation, homelessness and all the mental and physical health issues that come with those. It sickens me to my core to imagine how people who work hard, strive hard to support their families and loved ones have had this purpose snatched away from them with so little consideration for their plight.

It sickens me to hear people advocate for further limiting restrictions to protect their fears of illness and death. Even if we didn’t know at the beginning, we know now. This virus is over 99.5% survivable. This has been a lockdown of privilege beyond all proportion. It is for those that can comfortably exist without monthly income or can work from their laptops at home. It is for the celebrities hiding out in their estates and telling us to be good and kind people by following their orders.

The people who will come out of this farce and injustice unscathed are the most privileged people on the planet and they seemingly couldn’t give two hoots about the rest of the world. I don’t think I could bear to hear another ‘leader’ of our world pretend to care about the masses when it is so obvious that they only care about their own reputations and well being.

We have been discussing white privilege in society for some time now, but it is the same people that make a show of fighting for this cause that are now silent for those lives decimated by lockdown and the suppression of our liberties. Token gestures.

I am angry.

How have we come to this place where we can so comfortably destroy infinitesimally more lives than we have saved and still be convincing the general public to turn on each other in the name of common decency?

I spoke to six strangers at the farmers market today who were not aware of their rights around the ‘mandated’ rules and regulations. They were all in fear of fines and reprisals despite not approving of or believing in the ‘laws’.

I am fortunate enough to be tapped into a world where we remind each other of the ‘other’ truths, the other possibilities and options rather than that of the mainstream media. An industry that is dictated to by just five or six billionaires, so divorced from real life, it means nothing to them. We have become their pawns, to manipulate at will.

It’s time for the rebellion, for the resistance.

It’s time to explore your rights and hold on bloody tight to them without relinquishing them to the privileged powers that be.

Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!

The Beginning of Everything…

When I was twenty my right leg would start to sporadically swell. If I stood too long or sometimes just because, my calf would get tight and uncomfortable. I went to a lot of doctors, overnighted in hospital, and got no where. I was told I wasn’t dying, so…..

Two years later, I ended up going to a doctor in Dublin, where I was living at the time, for pain and discomfort in my lower abdomen. He palpated and told me I had a cyst. They took an ultrasound. This is your womb, they pointed, and that is your cyst…. they were the same size. I needed an operation because there was risk of it bursting or twisting and then I could die. Unlikely to be cancerous, but who knows until we’re in.

I came back to the UK, found a private gynaecologist (because the NHS said I would have to wait six months for surgery) who told me the cyst had been the cause of my leg swelling. A common occurrence, he said.

Key hole surgery, out later that afternoon and feeling good again in 24hrs. That was the plan.

Except the plan went wrong.

I bled out. Keyhole turned to emergency incision and four blood transfusions later, I survived.

And that became the beginning of everything….

I began to wake up to myself, my body, my health, my potential. Was it someone’s else DNA flowing through my blood? Was is the shock of trauma? Was is the closeness of death?

What I have come to understand for myself is that my health crisis was my awakening and I believe it holds that potential for many. My womb was infested with trauma from childhood abuse, it took a few years, but it has been cleansed and healed to become a bastion of rich womanly health and creative energy.

This moment in my life inspired me to understand health on levels far beyond the current model of mainstream medicine, restricted to symptoms and short term solutions.

What if we can allow all of our health crises to become the beginning of everything instead of the catastrophes of fear? What if we re frame disease as a call to reclaiming health and empowerment? What if each of these ailments is a gift of discovery?

Can you imagine the permission to be solely in charge of your own healing?

…. it’s the beginning of everything.

Anarchy

‘The one who tells the stories rules the world.’

Hopi Indian Proverb

About twenty years ago, I read the Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson, a manifesto for personal and social transformation and, within that, I loved her call for a paradigm shift in social governance.

She called for a complete rewrite on the hierarchical structure of government, to be replaced with a lattice network of expertise. Whilst I believe in a natural hierarchy within communities based on skills and wisdom, I don’t believe or support our current model of hierarchy based on power and money.

So if we move from hierarchy where do we go? Anarchy?… If hierarchy is a body of authoritative officials organised in nested ranks, anarchy becomes the state of society without an authoritative governing body. It is popular to associate anarchy with chaos and confusion, but like most mainstream narratives these day, that’s a fear definition rather than a truth.

I think I was born an anarchist… either that or trained quickly before being consciously aware! Whichever way, I have always pushed back against authority for authorities sake. I deeply respect wisdom and experience and I am so happy to sit, listen and learn from those teachers, but following arbitrary rules for the purpose of control and order, under the opinion of someone I might not respect, doesn’t sit well with me.

So I have walked my own path of peaceful anarchy for many moons. I stepped out of the expectation of defined career and indeed also of further education; I healed myself without drugs; I birthed my children at home; I refuse to inject them with toxins; I arm myself with knowledge of health rather than bowing to the authority of medical dictators; I don’t social distance in times of viral epidemics because I believe human connect to be a better protector of health.

I don’t reject or conform to any party line out of principle, but out of instinct, personal education, experience and choice. I am my own person within this global tribe of connection. I don’t believe any of my choices have harmed anyone, I am conscious of my community and loved ones but I will not give my power away.

If change is required, I will endeavour to create it without asking some body of ‘authority’ to do it on my behalf. I will not wait for permission, the only thing I will wait for is clarity, wisdom and the right moment. What I have seen this year, 2020, is a whole world waiting for permission for their lives and all I want to do is teach them the power of anarchy.

‘We have to accept personal responsibility for uplifting our lives.’

Chögyam Trungpa, Tibetan Lama

Disappointed

One word keeps hitting me throughout these days of lockdown.

Disappointed.

I keep trying to push it back. Reminding myself that everyone has their own unique journey, that each person has their own truth, perceptions and understandings and the best, most constructive approach is compassion.

And then the word hits me again.

I feel such deep soulful disappointment right now.

This current global lockdown is a mirror of our individual disempowerment. Disempowered in the knowledge of our own bodies and our own health; where we can be imbued with such fear from outside that we surrender all autonomy, personal freedom and potentially medical freedom to the powers that be.

I know there is a huge swathe of society that has been suppressed through economy, racism and separatism and I really compassionately understand how much harder it is for these people to step into their power without permission and support. But I’m not talking about them.

I’m talking about circles of supposedly empowered leaders and advocates. People whom I used to hear daily, speaking up for truth and health and autonomy and freedom who have utterly surrendered to this suppression in one fatally easy step. These people have disappointed me. They were once people I admired and aspired to, whether in friendship, as peers, mentors, guides or elders. I feel let down by their willingness to accept control governed by fear, not only without a fight but with an inverse righteousness towards anyone who is challenging this horrendous power play.

I see clearly that I am having to let go, that this disappointment has pierced so deeply that those relationships will forever be tainted with it and many will not survive.

A new dawn has broken and there is a profound clarity within me as to which path I must take. I can still feel all the love and compassion for the fear these people are carrying but I can no longer hold them as aspirations or role models.

I have withdrawn myself from two significant women’s groups, which were my foundation stones on my personal development journey, to let go of these was something I could never have imagined. But I know if I cling to those bodies of fear for reasons of sentimentality, I will be absorbing that energy myself.

I will sit through this disappointment, allow it to suffuse me and move through. It is time for a cleanse like no other, to empower me to stand in my passionate truth and speak up for our global and personal freedoms.

Not Wrong, Just Different.

I have previously touched on the principle of requiring a circle, or village, of relationships to fulfil our needs. The idea that just one or two people should or are able to hold and carry the multifarious requirements of one full lifetime of human experience is perhaps the crux of many problems.

In fact this principle has become such an obsession that the trend on social forums is to instruct each other on how to respond or be responsive towards each other. There are plentiful descriptions about ‘how to be a good friend/partner/parent/boss’ with minute instructions on what makes you good or bad; pass or fail….

But what this neglects to take into account is the principle of difference. That we are all wonderfully, uniquely varied in our gifts, attributes, strengths and, naturally, weaknesses and flaws too.

One of the most resonate compliments that my husband gives to me is that I am someone who always believes there is a way through; that there is a solution somewhere, somehow. And I do. I really believe nothing is insolvable, more deeply on an emotional level but practically too! So whilst I have realised that rescuing and saving people is dis-empowering (okay, I still do it as a sideline occasionally!), I am a great person to come to if you need some ideas, some guidance about what options might be out there to help you on your journey. If you don’t want any of that, if you want just to be heard in total silence and reverence… I might not be the best fit for the job. But here’s the critical point… that doesn’t make me wrong. I am not going to be Jack of all Trades, good at everything, nor do I want to be. I want to be really good at things that come naturally and instinctively to me, I want to hone my skills and work towards mastery.

So what happens if you are in need of someone who is not going to even think of voicing a solution but is killing the strong and silent thang… then find that person.

Create the circle, create your own village.

I have one friend who talks nineteen to the dozen, I can barely get a word in edgewise and she is not someone that I am going to go to when I really need and want to be heard about soulful shit! But I adore her company, she is light and engaging and kind and funny and zingy and all sorts of wondrousness…… she is very much a part of my circle and I need that energy in my life. Imagine if everyone in my life was an intense as me?! Insanity!

Now imagine if I made her wrong for being that way… imagine if I said to her ‘you never really listen to me’, ‘I don’t think you are being sensitive to my needs’, ‘please could you reflect back to me my words so that I really know you have heard me’…. I believe it would crush her and it would certainly crush our friendship. I would be trying to mould her into something that really doesn’t fit in her skin, trying to create her into something else whereas I could simply be accepting and enjoying all the gifts that she does bring.

Of course this doesn’t mean we can’t ask for what we need, consider each other’s perspectives and feelings and reflect on our own behaviour, but within that there is a place to see whether our specific needs of the moment are going to be best met and by whom. I once asked a friend, who had gone silent on my for 6 weeks, that if next time she was pissed with me she could just tell me about it rather than hit the mute button; she told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t ask her to change or be different. Fair enough, she was not going to meet my needs or requirements in that side of our friendship. That was actually a deal breaker for me, I do need my circle to be upfront and clear about when I’ve done something to upset them, and I chose to walk away from that friendship for that reason, but that wasn’t about making either of us wrong, just that we weren’t a good fit.

I used to ask too much of my husband (perhaps still do!) under this principle of ‘he who must be able to support every which side of me’… until I realised what absurdity this truly was. I started to widen my circle and increase the array and variety of friendships, mentors and crazys who help all my facets sparkle as I hope I do in return. And with this choice, there is the potential to free my husband from feeling like somehow he is failing me, or not enough for me, and instead allows his own highlights to shimmer.

I would love to see this embracing of each other’s gifts and strengths replacing the homogenising pressure that social media is trying to instil through shame directed memes and articles. Yes, walk away from those who don’t support you, whilst being careful not to dismiss those that might not be what you need for right now yet their gifts and skills might be everything to you come tomorrow, the new moon or the new decade. We are all personally responsible for seeking out our own joy, friendship and healing rather than insisting it is performed for us by the demands we set on others. Let each of us shine and glorify each other and celebrate the magical complexities of human nature. We are not wrong, we are just different.

The Voice of Reason

In a recent discussion with a therapist it was suggested that I was, at times, too reasonable(!). Not only that, but by being too reasonable I was actually hurting myself.

My husband raised his eyebrows when I told him this, clearly he did not agree!

But I have been sitting with it; churning it over in my mind and of course as a result I have had the most unreasonable couple of weeks I could ever have imagined.

Everyone and everything has felt desperately unreasonable.

One days notice from a teacher at school that the cake ingredients rules have changed as I prepare for my child’s birthday. Unreasonable.

Car insurers wanting me to provide information that they know better than me. Unreasonable.

My child wetting the bed twice in one night. Unreasonable.

My babysitter cancelling a two month standing booking less than a week before. Unreasonable.

The resident permit zone being arbitrarily changed so that our property is no longer granted a permit. Un-bloody-reasonable.

And then there’s the bigger stuff…

the school mum throwing her unmet needs in my face
my husband having a ‘moment’ and wondering if I’m really the right one (yes that happened!)
my mother refusing to take any accountability for her behaviour

These are the bigger life hurdles when someone else’s choices can feel so utterly and desperately unreasonable and yet I am very good at making them reasonable. I am very good at looking behind the gauze and finding the reasons, the pain, the whys and the because; and understanding why everyone’s behaviour or choices are the way they are.

A good skill? Compassionate? Able to hold the bigger picture?

I need to segue a moment… when my friend Kim was dying, we talked about the emotional trauma that may have contributed to her illness. Kim was utterly reasonable. She always found a way to walk on a higher plain, she didn’t want to stoop to the level of those who had wounded her so deeply. And that is so honourable and so ‘right’, right? Except that all that justifiable anger and pain stayed inside and perhaps it is what killed her…

So I have sat with my flair of fire, this rage of witnessing the unreasonable and I have held it in conflict with my desire to be so thoughtful and measured and kind.

And then I exploded.

My husband lit the touch paper and I vomited out my rage at all the holding I do for everyone else’s ‘unreasonable’ choices.

And he held me there.

He held me there when I poured out my anger, my grief and my own unreasonable demands.

And he listened, and he heard me. And for the very first time, I felt safe.

It is the hardest thing in the world to hold someone in their pain, just hold them, not fix them, not wrong them, not right them or join them. But just to listen and be with that flow of emotions. And I love him more than ever for being courageous enough to do so.

Because sometimes the emotionally healthy thing to be is utterly unreasonable.

I needed that exorcism as part of my own healing and now I am calm again and able to bear the weight of all of life’s reasons….

The Death Temptation

I am writing this from a basis of my truth, something that is deeply true to my beliefs and understanding of the world and also knowing that this is not a place or a belief for many people. (It maybe wiser for some to stop reading now…)

I believe that sickness nearly always has a deep emotional cause. To be clear this is not karma or punishment, it is not that we have done anything to ‘deserve’ our sickness, but that events or situations that have created trauma in our system are the roots of dis-ease.

Therefore as part of healing it is important to treat not only the easing of physical symptoms but also an awareness of the energetic emotional block that is part of the whole story.

In this vein, I recently stepped into a curious space of feeling myself manifesting dis-ease within myself.

I had stepped into the Death Temptation.

Despite my classic moments of crass insensitivity, I do also empathetically resonate to others’ pain; tears well easily to stories of heartbreak and I feel others’ fears of loss and sadness deep within my system. So it should be no surprise to me that at times I carry the energy of my friends’ and loved-ones’ dis-eases too.

I am nearing mid life and as such, conspiring with the heavy toxicity of our western lifestyle, there is cancer and illness at too many doors right now. One in two the statistics say. I have been holding the fears and news of many and it has been hard not to hear the ‘what if’… knocking at my own door.

But the death temptation is not just about carrying the fear of physical death it is, thematically, a more deep rooted emotional block. It is a reaction to disappointment, heartbreak or loss; a battle against life itself. Death in this form is a, conscious or subconscious, power struggle towards self destruction. The message is that death is perhaps the only thing that could end the pain and exhaustion.

And this is where holistic medicine works so brilliantly for me. In the last few years I have experienced two enormous heart breaks, I have heard myself speak the words out loud ‘my heart is broken’.

Twice.

And for two very different reasons. I remember the ‘heartbreak’ of my teens and twenties, all boy related of course (!), and they were real but oh so very gentle compared to this grief that has consumed my body and soul.

And I thought I had processed them well, and I had, but not enough. I have reasoned my way through these processes and not allowed myself to acknowledge the true depth of pain they have caused within me. So when my body started showing me signs of physical discomfort that resonated with all this fear and reality of dis-ease around me, I took myself to my extraordinary and wonderful homeopath who treats the soul and heart alongside the body.

And she enlightened me to the Death Temptation, this space of choosing death over life because the pain has been to much to bear.

And she showed me another way.

ReBirth.

It is time for me to rise through the pain of loss, to claim my rightful place in the world; to live, to learn, to teach, to love.

I have faced the temptation of death and I choose transformation instead.

As always with endless gratitude to Anne .

Today Only

My kids, like all kids, are moment to moment peeps. If they are in the middle of a game, or need to put five cars in a bag, or plait their hair before going someone, those things take priority over and above the consideration of being on time and potentially missing something that they really don’t want to miss. No matter how much I explain, the movie won’t wait for us, the party will already be started… using things that would be important to them ‘in that moment’ none of it is going to take them out of THIS moment.

It drives me absolutely potty AND I want to be like them.

Today Only

Yesterday I was talking with my incredible homeopath & friend, running through the anxieties that were causing me physical and uncomfortable symptoms. ALL of them were anxieties about the future. Do I need to do x now in order for y to happen then?… what if I don’t feel like this when that happens?… etc

And she reminded me so beautifully that every choice that I am pondering and worrying about is a day to day decision. Today, does it feel right to be in no contact with my mother?; today, does it feel right to be cosleeping with my children?; today, does it feel right to be living in this country?; today, does my relationship feel right?; today, am I doing the best that I can for myself and my choices?

Those are the only decisions I can consider. The future it unknown. Life happens. And suddenly I feel the energetic release from my body as I realise I don’t have to know who I will be in 20 years from now, nor even tomorrow.

All I can do is Today Only.

Like for Like

When I was a teenager, my mother and I would get into vitriolic arguments, on a not infrequent basis, and I remember very clearly reaching a place where I said to myself ‘I will not let her see how much she hurts me’. I quickly learned how to respond to pain with a cold, hard exterior.

She was no longer able to see the effects of her words and actions on my soul, as much as they still wounded me internally. I felt more protected, safe and in control when my shutters came down and I could bat away the slights.

I needed to do that then, I didn’t have any other tools and it was a question of emotional survival. But during the recent weeks of upheaval in my relationship, I have realised how ingrained that technique is in my psyche and how disconnecting and triggering it has been to my partner.

As my awareness on this grows, I’ve noticed how many people hold similar traits, how natural our defensive hard stances are in response to perceived attack. I observe how the current representation of feminism seems to echo this too. Our societal responses are cold, hard and super boundaried.

And I get it, I haven’t been cold and hard to my partner because he’s an innocent bystander, we have created a dynamic between us that ping-pongs back and forth between our defence mechanisms. It is understandable that we have wanted to protect ourselves, sometimes from real threat, more often from projected theories, but it has not helped us to grow, to learn and discover our heartfelt truths.

In these past weeks when I’ve been unable to even pretend to protect my raw feelings, when my heart has been cracked open, I have also been seen and witnessed with restorative love and gentleness. As my defences fell, so it allowed the whole structure of defences between us to crumble and for total vulnerability, total truth, to be revealed and explored.

The mirror of our souls is a tenant of my belief, that like reflects like, but that is easily forgotten when it feels so natural to create protection from harm. If my walls are up, I may be safe but I am also disconnected, so it becomes a choice to risk the pain, risk the vulnerability, in order to have the chance for a more magnificent life than one that is simply safe.