Personal Moments – Page 7 – Soul Reflection

Slaying the Dragon

My heart felt that clutch of fear this morning as I turned on my phone to see that, by a tiny margin, we had left Europe; that our population had decided, in majority, to step away from our larger community.

I felt that brief panic of insecurity, scared for the future of my family. And then I breathed. And I remembered. There is always a gift.

In the darkest of days, there is always a light that starts as a faint glimmer, sometimes almost imperceptible, but it’s there; and it will get stronger and brighter because light always wins. Always.

So I reflected a little on why we have hit this point in our history together. Why we have chosen separatism over community. What I see is that we are divided in our country, that my friends and community all wanted to stay in Europe, that I barely knew anyone who wanted to leave and yet more than 50% of my country wanted this and I don’t know them. I am isolated in my existence by surrounding myself by only those whose thoughts and beliefs predominantly align with mine.

Here in lies the problem. If I want community, I need to reach out, to cross the borders that alienate, to find the common ground. It is easy for me to feel that my liberal views are inclusive but not if they are making other people’s views wrong.

So what is the gift of today for our country? To spend time seeking out those that we fear, that represent our darkest anxieties and our repressed shadows and find a way to love them, find a way to create a real community, rich in the diversity of thoughts and feelings. Only then can we manifest the global community that we crave, only when our own back yard is in order, when the fences are down and the feasting between neighbours commences, then we truly claim our liberal and loving titles.

We are a country built on legends not least that of George and the Dragon. It is time that we slay our metaphorical dragon, that of fear. Rise up Knights (of all genders!), rise up and face the challenges ahead by conquering our demons within and without.

Love and Light ALWAYS shine the brightest in the end.

Love Linguistics

2016 is the year of love, absent and present.

I started the year in a place in my relationship that, whilst knowing cerebrally that my husband loved me, I couldn’t feel it. I felt unloved.

Added to this ache was a gnawing sense that my daughter couldn’t feel my love, that no matter what I did for her she was tetchy and upset. I truly believe children can fare many life storms as long as they feel deeply loved, yet I was sensing that my darling girl felt empty despite my absolute adoration. How could this be?

Thankfully a dear friend directed me towards the work of Gary Chapman and his ‘5 love languages’ for couples and for children.

What a revelation! How could I have lived till nearly 40 (it’s the big one this year!) and not have understood these crucial love languages?

To précis his work (which I cannot recommend highly enough), each of us needs to have a full love ‘tank’ in order to be at our emotional best. This tank is filled by receiving love in 5 different forms, but, from age 5 upwards, we usually utilise one (or two) of these ways as our primary expression of love.

The 5 languages are quality time, physical touch, acts of service, gifts, words of affirmation.

Before even reading the book I had a moment of hallelujah when I read the 5 types. I am so clearly an ‘acts of service’ personality, I had even explained it unknowingly to a friend when discussing my daughter – how does she not know I love her when I get her to all her classes and desires on time with the right outfits, snacks and accessories! This was me showing her how important she is to me. But she is not an ‘acts of service’ love-receiver and here is the crux.

As Gary Chapman explains, once we move beyond our honeymoon love fest, both in relationship and parenting, and we settle into our own spaces and habits, we need to speak the same language in order to top up our tanks. Without this we end up like a Chinese man and a French woman trying to sustain connection without learning each other’s language.

Such a simple concept and yet so indefatigably important.

As with the Chinese & French couple, it is a choice they make to learn each other’s language. It may not be easy to speak, but if connection is desired, it is really the only way.

So I started to speak the love languages of my husband and daughter; and my husband began to speak mine.

The change in our household has been near instant. From feelings of sadness, desperation and alienation to connection, love, vibrancy and happiness. This. Just from dialling in to each other’s beings.

My daughter now comes and curls and folds herself into me just as she used to…. Absolute bliss. My husband and I are enjoying the lightness and humour of love again.

I am beyond grateful for this work and I wish is were a curriculum subject at school. I believe these linguistics to be part of the foundation of a happy society; connection across borders on all levels.

So let’s study on….. let’s Love on…….

Messy Friendships

There is a weird double standard that floats around in the world. There is an understanding that marriages and love relationships don’t always endure a full lifetime; that paths diverge; partners grow up and away from each other; there is an allowance for this to occur and yet, for friendships, there is a shame and disapproval when they hit similarly rocky times.

From my experience, friendships are not dramatically different from love relationships. There is always a honeymoon period, that time with a friend where you feel the soul bond, the bubbles of happiness in each other’s company, the hits of connection when your thoughts collide and that high of being ‘understood’. How long that lasts and what it transforms into is unique and varied but there is undoubtedly a pressure that, once a friendship has been created, it carries with it a veil of perfection that mustn’t be questioned.

In my relationship, if there is an ‘issue’, a moment of conflict, I am supported socially to endeavour to resolve it. ‘Don’t go to sleep angry’; if you carry resentment it will only rear its ugly head later down the line; best keep lines of communication clear and open etc etc. Apply this to a friendship model and it’s almost as if you are creating conflict, making trouble, rocking the boat.

I am that person who likes to clear the air, I like to talk things through when I’m pissed about something and try and figure out a better way for both of us. I think it is definitely a positive attribute in my relationship but in my friendships it makes them messy.

My husband will comment that I seem to have patterns of conflict in my friendships but when I step back and really take a wider view on it, actually I have the odd moment of disagreement. Certainly, compared to how often I argue with my husband, my points of disagreements with friends are few and far between (and rightly so, when we include the context of time spent together). However, they feel emotionally so much bigger, as if I have trespassed into forbidden territory. There is a fear of loss so much greater than in my marriage, where we hold a spoken and written commitment; in friendship there seems to be a stronger possibility of final separation.

Let me put this into context, imagine having a flash point with your partner and instead of cooling down to then talk it through, you choose not to speak to them for 6 weeks and then when you do pretend as if nothing’s happened. Is that at all sustainable as a relationship model? Yet it is widely used in friendships. And please don’t think I’m preaching from a high horse, I have been completely guilty of this too, more times than I care to confess.

But today it just struck me as totally crazy. I want my friends to be just like my relationships, that we front up to our difficult moments, that we stare them right in the face and work it out, because I know that it brings me into deeper and more loving connection with my husband when I do this and I know it would be the same for my friendships too. It might be messy but it would definitely feel more real.

Anger

I recently got cross with a dear friend’s little girl. It had been bubbling a while, something that I needed to take some time to look at and also a reflex. I had spent the weekend being told a series of untruths, just as children do, but one came after too many and I had enough. I was angry, not wildly so, I didn’t say or do anything terrible but it was clear I was annoyed and cross. As many of us know, this a great faux pas. To be angry with another person’s child is a line that ought not to be traversed.

I apologised, and I meant it, both to child and mother but that line had been crossed and therein lies an issue.

I “shouldn’t” have been angry with her.

Except where there are ‘shoulds’ there are unhealthy shadows, more over it has been done, it can’t be undone, yet the focus is so often about trying to erase its memory, trying to find a way to discount it from our past. Why have we got such an aversion, such a stigma around anger? Of course, we can always endeavour to find the kind way, of course we can learn from our outbursts and try to do it differently next time, but why are we, as a society, so unforgiving about anger? If someone does something to upset you surely it is healthy to let that out? And even with the very best of intentions, sometimes that comes as an explosion. I don’t believe that anger is a bad energy, it is One of our energies and it is important to acknowledge it.

I look at all the sickness in the world right now and so much is spawn from anger; I am closely present to a darling friend trying to save her own life as she heals herself of cancer, and she has Anger. She has anger from her childhood, so buried within her system that it is making her mortally sick. And I can promise you, that anger is well deserved, I know a fraction of her story and she has every right to be mad as hell. I expect she has her moments of daily anger, she has a political rant every now and again, but she needs to get crazy angry for a moment, a real stomach churning, yeti screaming, puce face eruption of energy and get it out. But where can she do this? Where is there permission to do this? Instead she is supposed to move on, forgive, take the high road, have compassion. Well she does, she has all of those in buckets and spades but she needs her anger too. She needs is so that she can live to see her children grow up and so that I can make my way to Oz and give her a bloody big hug.

So I go back to this place I’m at right now where I feel so horrible for having been angry with this lovely little girl, I feel mean and ogre-ish and yet there is a tendril poking up through my shame that says, ‘it’s ok’, ‘you got cross because right then you needed to’, ‘you apologised because you’re nice too’ and actually I think that is true.

And I am grateful to this experience, as much as the fences that need building between me and my friend are hurting my soul, I know this reflection on my own anger is healing and positive. I know that I am going to take it into my own family and give greater permission for my kids and my husband AND Me to have our outbursts. That instead of shaming those moments, instead of shaming me for being perceived as imperfect, I am going to feel that energy course out of my system and return to peace.

Anger is welcome here.

Mother’s Day

I have not been kind to myself recently. I have been chastising myself for my failings as a mother – the usual thorny branches that we can whip ourselves with in this sensitive job role: impatience, raised voice, less then sympathetic reactions to my children’s demands.

I wish to be something I am not. I am fiery and passionate and despite my intentions and desires, my combo of conditioning and personality means sometimes (quite a lot actually) I’m scary mummy as well as lovely mummy.

I also, deep down, know this is the same for most mummies. The problem for me is that I read so many memes about gentle parenting, conscious parenting, wholesome parenting and they all talk about how important it is to be respectful to your children, to empathise, to speak kindly, otherwise we damage our children’s self esteem. True and also not realistic! Not for me.

This is how I roll….

Yesterday we went to a kids party in the middle of Richmond park. We had to drive to the car park and then walk down a hill for about 15 minute (kids pace). Within ten minutes of arriving my son had stepped into the pond up to his thighs…. Soaked. The weather is currently near freezing. The only option to avoid illness was to take my son back up the hill, car, home, change, car, walk and back to party. I was seriously annoyed. My son was crying, didn’t want to leave the party, was cold and wet and miserable. But I was annoyed. So my little boy cried his heart out whilst we walked back to the car and I went into self flagellation in my head because I was snappish and irritated instead of being compassionate.

But you know what…. I got there. On the drive home he told me how he absolutely had to go into the pond because there was a stick there that he needed. And he really needed it. And I heard that. And we talked about finding one of the (thousands) of sticks from the back of the car and taking that back with his new dry self so that he didn’t ‘need’ to go back into the pond again. And we laughed and had some rescue remedy and enjoyed the last part of the party.

And this is how I mother. I get there eventually. I might get mad, scream like a banshee, storm about, sulk and generally be a bit rubbish at times but I come back when I’m ready and we figure it out. And when I think about it I feel the same towards anyone else who does that too. They can be super mean to me but if they come back one day or twenty plus years later and try and figure it out, I’m going to hear that and welcome it. That feels more realistic to me.

So Happy Mother’s Day to all of us just figuring things out in the way that works.

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.

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