connection – Page 3 – Soul Reflection

Know Thyself

I have just finished the first series of ‘The Sinner’ staring Jessica Biel and I was utterly triggered, re-traumatised and mesmerised by the storyline and intense portrayal by Biel. Her portrait of a young woman, innocent to the manipulations of darkness and yet cognizant of the power of her sexuality, resonated deeply with me and, with it, compassion, shame and sadness for my own young woman.

The story is multi layered with the explorations of characters swinging across the pendulum of shadow life, but to me there was one powerful theme that struck home hard.

Know Thyself.

Side stepping for a moment, there is a phrase I use with my kids frequently when they are struggling with hearing another persons perspective on their own story. I remind them to ‘know your own truth’. In their terms this often relates to incidents where their friends have colourful versions of events perhaps placing blame in unfair quarters, this is the phrase I whisper to them as they struggle with their righteous anger when their characters are being maligned.

It has felt important to me to equip them with this knowledge; that we cannot control another person’s opinion or perception but can only remind ourselves of what is true to us and our own soul and values.

Watching ‘The Sinner’ I saw with perfect clarity how Biel’s character became entangled in a deeply toxic relationship from that simple place of unknowing. She did not know who she was, or even who she wanted to be, she was wide open to another’s interpretation of her and followed blindly down a path of self destruction based on the power of someone else’s opinion.

I remember that vulnerability so clearly. Flashbacks of short lived love affairs and countless first dates. As a most innocent example, I recall being obsessed with one man when I was 17 who finally finally finally asked me out and then I had absolutely nothing to offer him in conversation because I had no value in my own story. It is an excruciating memory and a salutary lesson.

The more painful picture was that I was easily able to capture a partner by primal sexual fever but I could not sustain a relationship because I offered only a veneer of personality entirely created by what I thought they wanted. There was no part of me that believed my true self had anything to offer and worse than that I didn’t even know what my true self was. Was I witty, sassy, smart, ditzy, fierce, gentle, interesting, boring? A bit of everything?

Julia Robert’s in Runaway Bride was a more lighthearted versions of Biel’s trauma; but she too evolved through her partners rather than herself, at the end making eggs numerous different ways to see what was her true favourite, previously being whatever her partner’s was.

At the darkest edge of this all is the possibility of where one might be led. I was taken to places by family, friends and lovers that deeply hurt my soul and spirit, that have left scars and also golden lessons, but that I don’t wish for anyone else to experience. I have believed the truth of myself that has come from other’s mouths and I have thought myself to be the worst type of human, the most unworthy and the most unlovable. It has taken decades to unravel my truth from theirs.

I am writing this from the female perspective but, in this time of gender dysphoria, this is truly an issue that is gender neutral. It is of critical importance for every human to be in deep and loving connection with their own soul.

If we don’t know our own truth then we leave the door wide open for someone to create that ‘truth’ for us and whether that comes from an energy of love or darkness, the end is nearly inevitably despair.

Whether we are gifted it from a healthy childhood or have to spend the rest of our life exploring it, knowing ourselves is the key to our personal treasure box of happiness and a vital piece of our healing.

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.

Our Natural State

My husband and I are in the very midst of ironing out some of the bumps and grooves that appear in any long term relationship. To add to the fun, we are both in our early forties and hitting that developmental stage (yes, adults have them too!) aka ‘ the midlife crisis’ where all of our childhood wounds pop up with varying stages of intensity, to be faced and dealt with. To top it off, we are just through the very very early years of parenting, which is just one big fog, and now that the kids are at school there is space to face the shit.

It sucks. It’s hard. And mostly it is bloody painful. I think I have cried more in the last 3 weeks than I have in the last 10 years. And with this ironing, unpicking, rebuilding and connecting there have been some sweet and tender times, a second honeymoon of sensitivity and kindness. But mostly it hurts, just like any wounds do. We are digging out the detritus that has been left in over the years, the bits causing sores and infections, cleaning them out and suturing them up.

So whilst I have swung between grief, rage, love, hope, fear and happiness like some sort of rollercoaster on hyper drive, my grounding has been the understanding that our natural state is love.

This is the state we come into the world, pure love.

So when my own or someone else’s behaviour, actions or words appear unloving or hurtful, my faith in humanity and our core state, helps me to understand that these come from a wounding that needs to heal. That our natural state of love is our instinctive place to wish to return to and our intentions are drawn from there. It is so easy to hear and be the worst of things, to use anger and coldness as a crutch for survival, but true connection, true living can only come from love; no matter how much it might hurt to get there.

Trigger Me Tantrum

I have been musing over children’s tantrums and how so often the initiating triggers can be unnoticed; the act of distress being so all consuming and energetically confronting that the source becomes lost in the moment. Sadly, when the catalysts are missed the opportunity for empathy, resolution, connection and growth are usually missed too.

My reflections have led me to narrow down what I believe to be the 3 key triggers that lead to emotional meltdown: diet, sleep and anxiety/fear.

Guaranteed that my children will flip out if over tired, filled with refined sugar or too much wheat and guaranteed, if they are unable to control events that cause them concern or are faced with an emotionally threatening situation, they will act out of character and generally become obstructive, unreasonable and sometimes hysterical. But, if I spot that initiator and manage to support them through it, they feel understood, heard and loved. And they grow to understand themselves better because of the complete process.

As I considered these flashpoints, I realised that they naturally apply to adults too. Maybe we don’t tantrum quite in the style of kids (maybe we do sometimes too!) but those places where we act out, where we are less patient, less tolerant, less kind, also predominantly derive from these 3 core triggers.

Sleep and Diet, whilst often in disorder, are more simply managed and controlled. By recognising the importance of their part in our mental wellbeing they can be adjusted to the appropriate priority.

Anxiety and Fear are trickier; far less control; the numerous possibilities of spontaneous and unexpected catalysts; and generally some of life’s more challenging obstacles that can be hurled in our direction at any given moment.

But knowledge is still power and in this case often retrospectively. At those time when I find myself presenting the less pleasant side of my nature, it is so helpful for me to investigate these 3 triggers and see how I can adjust or support them. If it is anxiety or fear that has reared up, I can take steps to learn to manage that better, to implement change in my life that can reduce that possibility, or even overcome them completely.

Empathy, resolution, connection and growth are created for me, for my children and for others when I take a breath to explore the source of the behaviour. No one tantrums because they think it’s cool or healthy, it’s a hard place to go and it deserves every effort to understand it.

Values

I was recently challenged to ‘contribute’ more to my family through the means of bringing in income. It was directed at me with the implication that all I do is live off my husband and swan about.

Naturally, I felt hurt and insulted.

I work hard. Most days the only time I get to sit down between 6.30am and 8pm is in the car to and from the school run and at supper; my mind is constantly flitting from one ‘to do’ item to the next and wondering how many I can multitask simultaneously. Oh and yes about once a week I will meet a friend for a coffee or a catch up, my rest time, because my job is all-day-and-all-night-every-single-day, so a coffee break every now and then is just basic essential care.

Many articles have crossed checked the monetary value of a SAHM (Stay at Home Mum) and have discovered that to replicate their input into the household would require a vast outlay of money on separate personnel. But I don’t want to compare my job to gold coins, I want to shift the perspective to our core values, money is certainly a necessary commodity but it is not the ultimate need.

In relationships we discuss whether or not we have similar values, rarely does this simply mean how much finance each partner will contribute. More often than not these values include honesty, respect, communication, parenting choices and family relationships. Do the values marry? If so, these are signs of potentially strong and life-long relationships.

For me, wholesome values are not just in partnered relationships but across the board in friendships, work peers, community connections and of course within our parent/child dynamics.

So when my ‘value’ as a SAHM was narrowed into the crude description as to whether or not I brought home gold coins, I felt a deep grief for all that I provide to my family, for all the non-material value that is unacknowledged and underappreciated across our societal norms. I felt that grief ripple out to all those individuals who offer their voluntary acts of service to our community to care for the young, old, infirm, environment and animals, who are whitewashed into the background because they don’t bring gold bullion back home. How distorted have our societal values become when my job, to shape, nurture and guide our future generations, is dismissed as luxurious and frivolous?

For me, I hugely value the consistency and security my children receive to help their confidence flourish out into the world; to enable them to stretch their bungee ropes to distant discoveries and bounce right back again when they need. I know that my choice to stay at home is solely built on nurturing their human potential.

That potential is not about shaping them into the best lawyers or doctors, but to help them know their own happiness now and in their future, to help them have the courage to stand up for truth and honour, love and respect. And all that is a multi-levelled task; it covers presence, diet, response time, emotional well being, sleep, health & friendships.

My daughter recently described her future to me, when she would leave school, what her career would be, how many children she would have, the usual musings of the young and fearless! But what I heard in amongst her description what that she would take a career break to have children; she has chosen a career that she can step out of and return to when she wishes because she values what me being at home means to her and she wants to offer that back to her children too. It has been important to her, it has been of value.

There is a wonderful analogy in Heidi’s Children where the grandfather is on his deathbed and asks little Marta to go to the high pastures and pick him fresh strawberries. She does as he bids but, with the encouragement of her friends, instead of returning straight home, she sells them in the town and brings home money which she is told will bring her grandfather greater happiness. The grandfather is furious, for he had been looking forward to the succulent, refreshing strawberries all day, and he demands Marta bite the coin to see if it brings the same satisfaction.

This…

This is where our values are mistaken at times, there is no monetary replacement for nourishment, kindness and love and the most glorious thing about these is that they are absolutely free.

So next time someone challenges me to bring greater value to my family, I might just remind them that I gift strawberries not gold.

I Need A Man

There is a huge part of me that is sitting in anxious resistance to this title but I also know that now is the time to walk through this barrier and embrace a new paradigm.

I have spent 40 years of my life adamantly claiming that I don’t need a man to be happy or complete or to help or support me. It’s an added nicety that I’ve had one by my side for the last 13 years, who has fathered my children and kept food on the table (organic at that!) and a roof over our head. But in my head and in my speech I have still maintained that I have never ‘needed’ him.

In fact, in some ways that was a part of our success so far, the fact that I didn’t need him, but I did want him. Need is the ultimate vulnerability and hey I wasn’t going to give into that without a fight! My mother brought me and my brother up mostly single handedly from when I was 8 years old; she was fiercely independent, DIY-ed her way around the home and shunned the lesser skills of her masculine counterparts. She could do a better job and so often that was absolutely true.

But I have finally clicked. I don’t just want a man, my husband, but I need him too.

As much as I can take on most of the skills, often assigned to the masculine, there is one thing I absolutely cannot do for myself. I cannot create life.

No matter how I choose to conceive; in or out of relationship, with or without the actual presence of a man, naturally or aided, personally or anonymously, I still NEED a man’s sperm to unite with my egg in order to create life.

It was this flash thought that made me reconsider my stance on needing and wanting. In light of the energy of radical feminism, blanket equality and other passionate discussions on gender roles or otherwise, I realised how much my refusal to ‘need’ my man is damaging my relationship with him and with the masculine.

If I ‘have’ to need him in order to create life, I can either consider that need and minimise it to crude function or I can enlarge it to the more spacious picture of balance; two sides, two offerings, two parts to make one whole.

By allowing myself to need him, I can expand this idea into exploring where we can support each other within our own personal strengths and weaknesses; to be the yin to his yang and work as a whole unit rather than just as connected individuals.

All of this makes deep spiritual sense to me now.

How much have I been holding and carrying simply because I have refused to need him? Now we can share our loads with respect and harmony, acknowledging our united power and grace whilst balancing our souls.

I am curious to take this back out into the world and let myself openly need others too; to offer my willing vulnerability as a partnership in so many ways, with my children, with my friends and peers and, most significantly, with the masculine. Just because I can do and achieve something on my own does not mean it is the best or most enlightened way for it to be done.

Nature offers me constant visual reminders of the beauty, significance and necessity of duality and, as I choose nature to be my guide, I am proud to say how much I need my man.

The Phoenix Decade

It has started. The Phoenix Decade.

Our 40’s are a time typified by the clichéd ‘midlife crisis’: fast cars, affairs, career change, divorce and unexpected death.

Sadly, our society seems to sneer and judge a lot of these changes rather than embrace this as a natural life transition and of course that judgement comes from the fear of ‘us’ and ‘them’, separating the shadow and placing it in someone else’s court. But the truth is, our 40’s are the time for our spiritual renaissance.

Biologically, most of us will be coming to the end of the early years of parenting, the dance of mating and conception taking up so much of our 20’s and 30’s. And with those elements ‘in the bag’, there opens up a space in our lives to observe ourselves in greater depth. Our children and loved ones will be offering mirrors to the darkest parts of our souls through their triggers and button pushing and it is here that we have the greatest opportunity to dig out the roots of our deepest wounds and raise them up into the light.

This is the decade of philosophical thinking, of reflecting back on our own upbringing, how we might do things similarly or differently; exploring the aggrievements that have entrenched reactions and personality traits that may no longer serve us into true maturity and adulthood. It is the golden ticket for change and transformation, to allow your past to die and your renewed and invigorated self to rise from the ashes.

As I look around my peers, I am seeing sickness that is shaking souls to their very cores – cancers, strokes, depression; I am seeing relationships flounder and stumble with what appear to be unbridgeable chasms of disconnect; I am seeing denial where materialistic choices are covering the voids of love and connection. For me these are all symbolic gifts to face the Phoenix.

For myself I know I was close to great sickness. The levels of stress and discordance that I was carrying in relation to my mother were putting a burden upon my system that was unsustainable. Despite my healthy lifestyle, organic nutrition and conscious living, I could still feel the poison of unhappiness in my body. I had early warning signs singing through my nervous system, twinges, aches, pains, exhaustion. That was why it was so necessary for me to face that relationship head on and take the space I needed from it. I could have sat in the dynamic continuing our mutual unspoken discomfort and pain, I could have pretended it didn’t really exist, it wasn’t surely that important, but I didn’t want to die. And that was what that choice felt to me, that my body could no longer carry such a consistently high level of stress, something would eventually crumble.

So I am walking into this decade of the Phoenix with my eyes wide open. I want to face the shadows that will twist and turn out of the ashes; I want to address what needs to be explored. My husband and I will look into the fragile places of our love and relationship and dig out the dirt and attempt to replace it with light. I will stare into the mirror of my children and try my best to listen to their messages of reflection, to own what is mine and to return what is theirs. I don’t imagine that this decade is going to be my easiest, moreover because I am also having to witness my dear friends as they uncover their own phoenixes and the joy and suffering that that can bring. But I am also full of the excitement and possibility that this decade of renewal offers. I am excited to release the shackles of my past and to step fully present (with the best of my intention) into the second half of my life.

I will rise out of the ashes and I will soar.

Maverick

This week I watched ‘The Darkest Hour’ with Gary Oldman playing Winston Churchill. One of the core pieces that I loved within this film was how clear it was that Churchill was an emotionally messy individual; by all accounts an alcoholic, perhaps without financial savvy, fractious, demanding AND alongside this a brilliant mind, a wordsmith, family man, and the one who determined to save Great Britain from Adolf Hitler.

He was a maverick: ‘an unorthodox or independent-minded person’

When my brothers and I had to decide which three words we would have on my father’s gravestone, I pushed for Maverick. I can’t even remember now what the other two words are but I knew I wanted a word to honour his fuck-ups and his genius all at once. That is who he was to me.

What I saw from the film was that it took the character of a Maverick to save us from invasion, it took that single minded belief, that ability to walk against the tide, and a little bit of ‘crazy’. I watched the film and I saw my father.

My father did terrible things, he sexually molested me, he paid little attention to the emotional needs of his children, he was frightening in his temper. And he did wonderful things too. He transformed people’s lives both through his psychiatry practice and his generosity in bringing in to his home those in need, including the homeless. He invented psychometric computer programs that are still used globally today (he just forgot to patent them!). His mind was brilliant and broken.

I was not really able to see my father this way until after he died, until then our relationship was just too painful. In watching ‘The Darkest Hour’, I was reminded how important Mavericks are in the world and how an individual can be two parts simultaneously – dark and light.

There is a cleansing going on in our western society right now, where anyone who has ever faltered, made a mistake, royally fucked up or, worst case, been severely abusive is being silenced and shut down. I’ve seen on social media something to the effect of: ‘it doesn’t matter what good they have done, abusive behaviour wipes all of that away’. Does it? Should it?

I just don’t know if life is this back and white, that right and wrong is so clear cut. What if someone can have blurred and damaging boundaries and also create magic in the world? My relationship with my mother is super toxic but she is also a wonderful friend to others. I worked with Jamie Oliver once upon a time and I personally found him difficult (others found him inspiring) but I also hugely respect his drive to change the health of our children through food. My experience of someone can be diametrically opposite to someone else’s. I can also dislike one aspect of someone and appreciate another. One person can experience abuse another healing at the hands of the same person. So how does this tally? How do we bring abusers or fault makers to justice without cleansing our society of the inspiration and necessary change that they sometimes bring?

It makes me wonder how Einstein, Marie Curie, Van Gogh, Michael Angelo, Mother Theresa, Alexander Fleming, Emmeline Pankhurst, Jesus or Mary Magdalene would fair on social media today? Would we celebrate their achievements or chastise them for their failings?

How I reached this place with my father, of being able to respect his achievements whilst not accepting his abuse, was through conversation. Before he died we spoke about my accusation of molestation, he said his mother had done the same to him and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. It wasn’t an apology, it wasn’t really even an admission; soulfully, he still had a long way to go before being accountable to his actions. Yet from that conversation I could understand that he had been taught as a child that this behaviour was ok, that to look at it from my perspective (and indeed much of society’s) was something quite unfathomable to his psyche. He was acting from trauma. I have compassion for that.

And before I am shouted down from the rooftops, yes I still believe abuse must be called to account and appropriately dealt with. But that is the extreme end of our current cleansing and there are multiple shades of grey in between for all the characters and individuals of the world.

I am a flawed and loving person, which part do you see?

Alone, at Last.

Last week, my husband took my beautiful children camping for two nights. It was an adventure that my husband needed to explore with them, without me there. A moment for his relationships to strengthen and bond. And the kids were super excited, camping is their absolute favourite!

But it wasn’t only a big adventure for them but also for me. It was the first time I had ever had a night away from my children and I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it.

Certainly in the lead up to the trip, I ran through a gamut of emotions from terror, excitement, anxiety, curiosity, sadness and joy. The day before, as they erected the tent in the garden to try it all out and jumped around with the unfettered joy that only exists in those depths of childhood, I felt tears and rage at not being a part of this. And woven into those intense feelings, was the knowing of how important a moment this was for them and for my husband. With that, I bade then farewell with conscious lightness, ease and blessings. Wishing them the happiest of journeys and discoveries together.

Then I turned back into my house and embraced my alone time, at last, over 8 years since the birth of my first child. 52 hours of me.

I loved it. I loved walking into town at my own speed; I loved wandering around the shops without a schedule to return to; I loved coming home and turning lights on that would otherwise have woken the babes and reading a book before bed without using a torch. I loved waking at 8am (!) just as my body asked rather than being dragged from slumber by pokes, prods and requests. There was so much that I loved, yet I missed them every minute too. And I realised how much I adore their company even with the bickers and the ‘why’s’ and the pestering because mostly they bring just the extraordinary joy of innocence, discovery and love. And whilst I loved my 52 hours I would happily have swapped it for 52 hours with them.

I know that these 8 years have flown and so will the next 8 and soon after that they will be leaving. I have plenty of time to be alone in the years ahead and instead I want to be witness to as much as I can of their childhood. Yes, I will bless them in their adventures, I will not hold them back in my arms when then want to fly, but whilst they are here, I will savour every precious minute: happy, challenging, sad or funny. Each one matters to me before I really am alone, at last.
** The picture are the gifts they brought me. Heart shaped stones and one they found with a letter F, for ‘family’.