new moon, new me??

The new moon has just passed.  I follow the moon for many reasons, I used to follow it as the crazy folk came out three days each side of the moon and I braced myself for the very very weird work phone calls.  Now I enjoyed life as one for a while I still follow the cycles of the moon but mostly for the tide heights.  The last few days have been very odd indeed and today was strange.  I have moved on so much from who I was and how I behaved this time last year that people who have not met me in a while still treat me as if I were the same.  I wondered for the last few weeks what that would be like when I started to leave my home and my cocoon of happiness here.  I forgot that to be well is to be able to express myself, to understand that I have control over my own life and that I am now assertive.  I can stand up for myself in a very polite and non aggressive way.  I can recognise the feelings others are experiencing but no longer instinctively feel the feeling of others.  Now it is time for me to learn all about appropriateness.  I am venturing forth into a world full of many different sort of people all with their own ideas and at different stages of their self awareness.  Today I am celebrating being well and being me.

Strange things will happen, people will do things that upset me, I will do things that upset people.  But I will hold with me the belief that I am OK as I am.  I no longer believe that other people matter more than me.  I will continue to treat people with respect however I will not allow them to treat me with anything less than equal respect.  I had some very foolish beliefs, when I uncovered them I was shocked at my own silliness.  For me it is important that I stay well and continue to do things that interest, entertain and amuse me.  I have decided to concentrate on organising my home and my life in a way that makes it easy for us all to be well and stress free.  Today I had an unexpected visitor.  I was having a very present lie in.  I had to get up and deal with teenage children stuff with him.  In the past I would have let him control the conversation but today I did not.  I expressed myself and my views with honesty and clarity and I was proud of myself.  I am not perfect, I do not have all the answers but today I realised the gift I got from the episode: the ability to forgive myself and others.  I thought of how we are all flawed human beings.  and remembered my favourite parable from the Bible,  Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

So today let go of judgement of yourself and others and forgive.

july scavanger hunt

Finally got a few minutes to upload these and nearly forgot tomorrow is 1st of August, Lunasagh.

Decided to engage in a photo scavanger hunt and put up the images as I found them or as it revealed itself to me. 

JULY'S SCAVENGER LIST:

• a flag
• a kite
• celebration
• fields
• flip flops
• ice cream
• red, white and blue
• seashells
• something that makes you happy (not a person or an animal!)
• stars
• strawberries
• stripes

Colombian Flag at the Tall Ships event Waterford 

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Beautiful pair of chinease kites just assembled
and awaiting their inaugral flight,
carfully transported from China by my brother
almost too baeutiful to allow crash to earth

Birthday celebrations , Dunbrody festival with Jedward

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  Fields: The view from the other side of The Vee

Cheating a bit here, strawberries and ice-cream together,
yummy and yes I did eat the narstusim;
flavours of my childhood

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Flipflops; the joys of summer living near the beach

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Red, White and Blue, (mostly)
part of my many works in progress,
my memory blanket

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Seashells not at the sea shore

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Something that makes me happy:
Days out with the children
and shadow hugs

Somewhere up there,
near the full moon,
behind the bubbles,
 hide the stars

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  Love the stripes,
  but just look at the expression on the glass cats face,
  such envy !

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where to now, the joys of getting lost

Well the day is soon dawning that I will be returning to work.  I started to feel like I was on holidays this week and realised that I am feeling well enough to do most things, including work again.  I still find dates difficult and pondered on this today. Why do I need to keep everything in my head, why do I feel the need to have perfect recall.  What used to be normal for me is no longer normal.  I used to be stressed all the time, I used to take things a bit tooo seriously, I used not to have fun, I lived a very compartmentalised life.  I felt that was normal for me.  I did not value my life, myself, my children, my friends, my talents, my skills, or my money.  Today I gained new insights into how my life is different and how I need to remember I am different now.  I have been thinking about the possibility that I will self sabotage but today I realised that will be difficult for me to do.  I have no longer got a defined picture of who I must be or where I am going.  Generally I find the most interesting places when I get lost.  I generally allow an extra hour on long journeys for getting lost time, as I frequently get lost.  Maybe I need to add a little getting lost time to my life in general.  Where would I be now if I had not got a little lost, still in that gloomy place never having fun or enjoying the wonderful things life has to offer.  So what if it is all a little mundane.  To me the mundane is a reminder that I am alive and well and able to do the small things in life that really matter.  Reading bedtime stories, making hot chocolate and doing it with love.  I am so glad now that I sought help when I did, and even happier still that I accepted help and it worked.  It is just over a year since I started to slip down the slope of depression, desperately trying to hold onto my sanity and find a way out.  I lost my grip.  The slide down was very very unpleasant but I did not know what was happening or how to stop it.  Now I have developed a huge range of new skills that I am confident that I will recognise the signs, I trust my instincts that I will be able to prevent the huge slide I had.  And most importantly I have put down my baggage and I now live a life unencumbered by guilt.  

So I am off to bed to dream happy dreams of tidal powered desalination plants, bubble machines, balanced rocks and the perfect carrot cake.  My main failing in life currently is my inability to bake carrot cake and keep the house tidy and long may that continue. 

confusion fluffiness and taking time to have fun

I have moments of confusion.  I feel like I am in a cloud and I cannot see or feel anything around me.  A cloud of confusion descended on me the other day. I learned to recognise the confusion a few months ago and found a way of working through it with inner child conversations.  This time it did not work.  This time I worked through the confusion by expressing my confusion and difficulties to anyone who expected me to work to their time-frame.  I gave myself the time I needed to get through this.  I took things slowly and focused on how I felt.  

I returned to the wonderful book of Dr. Claire Weekes.  Early in the episode I lost my ability to read.  I could not concentrate on the words and I could not remember what I read so it seemed pointless to read.  I still bought books.  I even forgot that I bought some of them and found them as I got well again.  The only book I could read at all was Self Help for the nerves by Dr Claire Weekes.  It was simple, practical and repetitive.   Pretty much a few basic concepts repeated over and over again in different ways.  AND a description of how I was feeling,  I was amazed at first that there were other people who experienced this and there were people who understood how to help us recover.  I carried her book around all the time and became quite agitated if I could not find it.  For me it was like a rabbits foot, a good luck charm, an amulet or talisman, a compass to point me towards a future, a future in which I would be well again.  She gave me hope and without hope I would never have recovered.  

So now I recognise when I am lacking in direction, energy and focus.  Time becomes a little meaningless.  Dates elude me.  I need help staying on track.  Home caring suffers and I do not cook properly.  This time I was fully aware of how I felt.  I knew I had commitments to fulfill and I focused on those.  I asked for help and I explained to others what my limits were.  I recall how I used to behave when I felt like this.  I pushed myself and MADE myself do things.  Usually by telling myself I should do this or that, and that this is how I must do things.  I heard my mother say those things to me this week.  If I were trying to fix a physical problem I would not resort to forcing it.  If the round peg would not fit in the square I would not bash it with a hammer until it did.  If I had a machine in need of oil and maintenance I would not try to get it to work more efficiently by forcing it to work faster.  So why do that to myself.  I am far more complex than a round peg in a square and yet I treated myself far worse.  The bubble metaphor I found to help me connect with Dr Weekes principal of floating is something I return to alot.  In moments of confusion I blow bubbles.  A little crazy sounding but this bubble therapy worked for me and as I still have children I can at least give a nod in the direction of normality by pretending the bubble are for them.  There was a bubble wand abandoned in the garden when I went out to have my breakfast there yesterday.  I tried to blow bubbles but it did not work.  I gave up and felt that there was something the matter with me.  Then I went back into kitchen and spotted another bubble wand and tried again.  This time loads of beautiful rainbow bubbles.  The mixture in the first one had gone off.  Wow what a realiseation.  It was not me at all.  I suppose it dawned on me that it I am not responsible for everything.  And so I could go on and get going.  I ended up having such a fun day and I was able to explain to the children what my limitations were.  We could not do all the things they wanted to do that day but we could enjoy the things we did do and a great day ensued.  By being patient with myself and accepting my limitations I floated through the day.  I also showed the children that we all have limits and no one is perfect.  So what that I did not get my daughter to the early bus, but she still got the bus.  Instead of being unhappy and upset on the early bus she was happy and calm on the late one and went off on her visit grounded and centered knowing that I love her enough to listen to her.  So what that we did not go on the rides at the festival but we did go to the festival and concert and had a great time.  There is time to do all the other things.  I do not have to do everything at once.  I am trying easier again as trying harder is silly and ineffective.  I learned how to reduce my stress and ask for help and I know that I do not have to stay in a helpless place.  My children and their friends do not need me to be a rigid Sargent major constantly checking if we are on time and if we have worked hard enough.  I am a mother first and foremost and I have reconnected with my mission of creating happy memories and rearing contented confident children.  I found an astonishingly limiting belief I had around motherhood and let it go this week.  It did take some time to refocus but here I am now.  Out of the cloud of fluffiness and taking the time to enjoy the journey.  

So today give yourself the time you need to work at your own pace and stop taking a hammer to crack and egg.  Life is for living not just for getting through and surviving.  Once I left survival mode and realised that I could have fun my life became a thing to treasure not something to waste or something that I could dispose of readily.     

I suppose the most valuable lesson I have learned is not to take it all so seriously and have some fun.  Forget about the usual role models, The Pope, the Dali Lama, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Eisenstein, Plato, Rembrandt, Michael Angelo, Let Jedward bring you the inspiration for your life.  Let your hair down (or gel it up in this case), just have a laugh and don't take your own dear self too seriously

letting go of fear of judgement

How many times do we stop what we are doing for fear of judgement.  Today I have plans but am too nervous to get going because I fear the judgement of others.  It is my own need for things to be perfect that drive me and my fear of the judgement of others is just a projection of myself.  I am being very critical because I should have done certain things before now.  I forgot to endorse the efforts I have made.  I know that should is a self critical word and I need to praise rather than critcise myself.

Why do we all forget to praise ourselves, Catholic guilt is mostly is what I blame, but not learning how to set realistic goals, taking on too much, lack of proper planning, having too high an expectation of our-self, failure to prioritise.  All this is a learned behavior which I am unlearning and replacing with behavior which contributes to my wellbeing.  I know what is triggering this slip and I am going to do what needs to be done to stop it and get back on track.  I never allowed myself to relax after stressful or demanding evens and had the mistaken belief that I am superwoman.  So today I will remember to try easier not harder.  I will be gentle with myself and others.  I will put my practice into action and remember that my well being is my main priority.  So today I will let go of judgement, of myself and others and let go of my fear of judgement.  I have all I need to be well and happy and I praise myself for my progress and ongoing efforts to stay well.  Having fun is an essential part of life.  Life is as difficult as you make it for yourself.  

I worked hard on making my life easier and it is.  I just need to remember to stick with my own plans and desires and not listen to those who say you should do this and that.  I can do everything I need to do easily if I remind myself that I can. 

So I am off to have another easy day of fun and laughter and let go of my fear of judgement and the straight jacket of other peoples expectations.  I am still me and loving it.

resilience

One of the key features of my episode was my complete loss of resilience.  And now one of the key features of my recovery is my ability to identify and express my feelings.  It is strange that I went through some many years of ignoring my feelings and compartmentalizing myself and managed to keep going for so long.  I experienced a feeling yesterday which I tried to identify, initially it was surprise, then it was fear, then it was panic, then it was shame and then it was confusion.  I was having lunch and someone i knew from a while back passed the table.   I greeted him in a cheery way and then began to feel odd.  He had said some very unpleasant things to me in the past.  My reaction yesterday was a remembrance of that feeling which I had to release by relaxation and meditation later in the day.

I realised that as a child I never learned to express my hurt and confusion and I have carried it around for years.  Last week I was stood up.  If you are reading this you know who you are.  Hmmmmm was not a happy bunny initially and felt hurt.  This time last year I would have reacted badly, I would have cried and bottled it all up.  Instead I rationalised it and let it go.  I did not project.  I realised that I was regaining resilience; an essential component of myself which was missing.  It is amazing to free of the feelings of shame and inadequacy that haunted me for years.  On the outside and to most people I was capable and strong but to the few who met me at my worst and those close to me I was an ineffective and weak.  I have learned that no one has all the answers or even all the questions.  We change constantly, others change, situations change.  It is only by staying with yourself and with your own feelings, by valuing your own worth that the essential component that was lacking from my life returned.  I am still upset by mean and hurtful comments but I do not have to carry them with me.  I can trust myself again.  I now know when I don't feel safe and can understand why that is.  I wonder how much more realisations will come to me over the course of the rest of my life.  I keep thinking this is it I am better now and then I fall down again because of some upset.  I recognise that I must work every day on my well being and by doing so I will help my children value themselves also.  My daughter displayed remarkable self respect recently and I am very proud of her.  She would never have allowed herself to be that powerful had I not shown her how.  I hope that one day I can forgive my parents fully for all the things that happened to me that I held onto well into adulthood.  I know they were not perfect, as I am not, I just hope I have learned in time to listen to my children in a way I was not listened to and to help them to become resistant and happy adults.  My journey is never ending but today I feel like I can pause briefly to reflect on how far I have come and to give thanks for experiencing the episode.  I am now the me I have always wanted to be.  I feel no shame, no guilt and no fear today.  I do not need to feel these things all the time and can leave them in context.  Those emotions are there to guide us and not be a constant part of our person.  I have learned to use my emotions to guide me rather than to control me and it is like walking down a sunny path through a meadow of bright flowers, instead of a bed of fire in a scary woodland.

So today go off down the sunny path and say away from the scary woods filled with lions and tigers and bears.

fields of bravery

view from the vee

I took a different road to collect my daughter from her friends house yesterday.  We ended up passing a place I had not been since I was her age.  Last time I was there it was raining and we were all crammed into my dads van eating egg sandwiches and drinking tea out of a flask on a family day out.  Amazingly the view has almost not changed.  I would never have driven the road had people not convinced me that there was now a barrier all along the area where there used to be a sheer drop.  THEY LIED.  But happily I managed to drive (at around 20mph) along the bit with no barrier and no wall.  The views were really amazing and it is listed as a place to visit on a nice day out with a picnic, minus egg sandwiches, with plenty of insect repellent. 

We passed the bottomless lake, site of the alleged drowning local witch who allegedly faked her own drowning and escaped to England,  It looked so green and luscious I almost turned the car around and brave the migies to go for a swim in it , but it is apparently way way way too cold to swim in so perhaps another time .  It is important to overcome our preconceived notions of what we can do, and push our boundaries to experience more of what the world has to offer.  Be brave and ignore that little voice that tells you that you cant do it because you know what - you can.

Happy Tuesday.  

Photo scavenger hunt, something that makes me happy

Decided to engage in a photo scavanger hunt and put up the images as I found them or as it revealed itself to me. 

JULY'S SCAVENGER LIST:

• a flag
• a kite
• celebration
• fields
• flip flops
• ice cream
• red, white and blue
• seashells
• something that makes you happy (not a person or an animal!)
• stars
• strawberries
• stripes

Something that makes me happy : Hugs make me happy 

Hugs make me happy

We spend a great day out, doing more free stuff. A great day out and a small bit of tree hugging, but more air hugging, and shadow hugs.

Oh and more flipflops 

almost sisters

http://www.overtheriverinfo.com/index.php/media-coverage/colorado-state-parks-board-approves-agreement-for-the-over-the-river-project/

http://www.overtheriverinfo.com/index.php/media-coverage/colorado-state-parks-board-approves-agreement-for-the-over-the-river-project/

July scavanger hunt- work in progress

Decided to engage in a photo scavanger hunt and put up the images as I found them or as it revealed itself to me. 

JULY'S SCAVENGER LIST:

• a flag
• a kite
• celebration
• fields
• flip flops
• ice cream
• red, white and blue
• seashells
• something that makes you happy (not a person or an animal!)
• stars
• strawberries
• stripes

A flag

I spent ages trying to get a photo of the flag on the Colombian ship in full flow, but to no avail, will have to narrow it down to one eventually.

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• a kite
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• celebration

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• fields

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• Flip flops
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After a few weeks of neglect decided to treat my feet to a deep conditioning treatment.  Usually done at night but as Monday is the day I clean my bedroom did not want to ruin lovely fresh bed with cream tonight so I had the brainwave to wear socks, and then then I needed to hang out the washing I had to put on my flip flops   Apologies for appalling pedicure, but its a work in progress.  Sexy socks or what????

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• ice cream
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• red, white and blue
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• seashells
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• something that makes you happy (not a person or an animal!)

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• stars
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• strawberries
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• stripes

work in progress-becoming what I cant think of

Currently I am a work in progress.  As I looked around at the heaps of half finished projects I started to look at them in a new way.  Not incomplete merely works in progress.


a human  doing
living in hope of being
a human being

Well I will perhaps always be a human doing.  I can just keep on doing what I do best.  Working on just being. My favourite bit of yesterday was the trip to the bog introducing my daughter and her friend to the joys of catching grasshopper.  Yesterday was a magical day.  We are still poor in my children's eyes as we cannot afford to do the more costly things.  Instead we are doing free or almost free activities.  Yesterday we went to see the tall ships leave Waterford Harbour.  I almost cried they looked so free and beautiful as they sparkled their way out to sea.  I am now tracking them on Marinetraffic.com and thinking that I should not have left my early experiences of the elitism of sailing spoil a potentially wonderful activity.  I listened to an interview on radio this morning where the interviewee spoke about MTV editing , where the retina needs to be kept stimulated with constant images.  I realised that in order to counteract this phenomenum training in concentrating and stillness is needed.  My powers of focus and concentration were clearly developed by the many not tv/computer/internet based activities I did during the course of my life and giving up TV was perhaps the single best gift I gave myself in the course of my recovery.  By being present in nature and in the real world I experience reality.  At last I can finally feel the point collage I abondoned months ago, so I can now work on it again.  I need to free my mind so that I can think again and make all the decisions I need to make so I can go out and earn more money again.  wirestripping to create the hair for the collage will certainly do that :-)

"If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already.. the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of." Cindy Sherman

I am now what I cant think of - having liberated myself from my projection of other peoples judgements. 

tall ships visit