Tag: hope

About Time

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 First published 1st March 2022

When I went through a major breakdown in my late thirties, one of the many things I struggled to come to terms with, as I fought my way back to functionality, was the sense of all the ‘wasted time’ that had gone into building a life that at that stage had come to ‘nothing’.

Roll on more than a quarter of a century, and I’ve had a significant shift in mindset. As each day unfolds, I feel a strong sense of being gifted with it; of having all the time in the world. ‘Making the most of it’ can mean anything I want it to mean, whether that be resting, walking, making something out of clay, washing up, doing housework, doing nothing.

So, how did I get from where I was to where I am now?

I’m not sure, because it’s all a bit of a blur, but I know I’ve done a lot of meditating, a lot of searching, a lot of turning myself inside out, of fighting the thoughts that threatened to pull me into despair, a lot of reaching out, falling, getting up again and trying something else.

Sometimes the last push is the hardest and coming to terms with things that I couldn’t change took some doing.  At around the same time that I had a counsellor who was determined to avoid the key issues that I needed to address, I came across a Buddhist teaching that helped me enormously: https://madhyamaka.org/how-to-accept-what-cant-be-changed/.

The lingering sadness associated with not having been able to form a family of my own has taken a different turn recently, in the form of a furry friend.  She’s not a baby; she’s an adult dog. However, she’s done something to my heart that’s filled a gap I never thought could be filled. Time isn’t about what’s past or ‘lost’, it’s about being here and now, with my partner, and our dog.

 

Day 19 – Going on

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Writing into Life

Photo by Vadim Bocharov on Pexels.com

After yesterday’s full-on day at the races, I was up at 7.45 this morning to take Lydia for a walk and then go on to a poetry group meeting.

This may not seem anything to write about, except that for me it is.  Just a few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to cope with the day at the races, with all it entailed, and it was a struggle to make myself go to a poetry group meeting once a month.

I know full well that I wasn’t the ‘life and soul of the party’ yesterday, but I held up pretty well, and today I was able to take an active part in the meeting, albeit in a low-key way.

There were ten of us there and, those of us who chose to, read out poems that we had written.

One of the poems presented by the organiser, another Maggie, was about poetry with the heading of ‘Trifle’.  It was a very clever and interesting poem, drawing on her own experiences.

I read out three of my poems:

Ambitions

Gleeful
Wild
Outrageous
Contagious

Cheerful
Fearful
Respectful
Disrespectful
Full

Mad
Sad
Glad

Cook
Read a Book
Make Tea

Dance
Romance
Work
Shirk

Naughty
Nosy
Silly
Me.

I first wrote that poem in 2000 and revised it in 2020.  The ambitions still apply, and I’m still working on achieving them.

Now

Now
at the Pinnacle
14-and-a-half per cent
proof point of my existence
I’ve reached the Nottage Hill
sub-station of my life
I haven’t got a Sauvignon Blanc’s clue
about what to do next
other than to ‘méthode-champenoise’
my way through and hope
that if the cork crumbles
the bottle won’t be blue
and the sieve will be fine
so that
just for now
I can at least
drink the wine

I can’t remember when I wrote that poem but it still applies, now.

The Beat Goes On

Pump, puff
Pump, puff
The beat goes on
The beat goes on

Pump, puff
Pump, puff
The lights are dim
The lights are dim

Pump, puff
Pump, puff
The night is young
The night is young

Pump, puff
Pump, puff
My body moves
My body moves

Pump, puff
Pump, puff
My arm aches
My arm aches

Pump, puff
Pump, puff
The air bed’s inflated
I’ve had enough.

That’s another one that was written over a quarter of a century ago, based on an experience of being marooned on a remote Scottish island, waiting for the weather to settle so that the ferry could come and pick us up. It was a wild night, and we had a bit of fun while we were waiting.

The theme for the meeting this morning was ‘something funny’ so I think I contributed some pieces that were at least mildly amusing.

We’re a mixed group and one person read out her first ever poem at the meeting today. 

It’s good to be part of this group.  And the beat goes on. 

Familiar Fields

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First published 13 April 2020

Turning the corner, the familiar fields and shelters come into view.

Open outlook, clear and calm; this is the place where past harms are healed.

Friends, old and new, graze on at steady pace. It’s never too late for needs to be met
just a turn of fate.

The familiar fields and shelters will come into view again next year. The way ahead may not always be calm and clear, but we can always come back to this place, this sanctuary, and marvel at the donkeys, stroke the pony’s mane. It’s always different every year and every year, just wonderfully the same.

It’s around a year ago today that my friend, Rosemary, passed away. She was 49.

I wrote the above piece after we had been to visit an animal sanctuary in Norfolk. Rosemary had introduced me to the animal sanctuary because she had adopted a Shetland pony who lives there, Sampson.

I suggested we go and visit which we did, and revisited a few times more, before it got to the point where it was too much for Rosemary. She found it too tiring, she said, which it was. It was too tiring because she smoked heavily and was an alcoholic.

Rosemary had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in her early 20s.  While she never opened up much about her past or about anything emotional at all really – I was told in no uncertain terms to ‘leave it’ if I prompted her in any way – she did tell me once that the psychiatrist who diagnosed her told her that she would never work again.

That may well have been the case in the conventional sense of what constitutes ‘work’ in our society, but if it was unlikely that she would ever do regular paid work again, that prognosis could have been presented differently, to give Rosemary a sense of hope of having a fulfilling life, even if not the life that she would have been hoping for as a young woman in her 20s at that time.

In recent times there has been a lot of talk about mental health and a lot of awareness raising in the media, but when it fundamentally comes down to it, has anything significantly changed to ensure that people who have diagnoses of extreme forms of mental illness can find some way of identifying themselves with a meaningful role, a sense of positive purpose, in the world? I’m not convinced that it has. 

Some people are fortunate to be partners, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, which can help to offset the stigma and isolation that accompanies their condition, but many – like Rosemary – do not.

Rosemary was not an easy person to get on with. She pushed people away, more often than not, and did make lifestyle choices – however hard and judgmental that sounds – that led to her limiting her own life in many ways.  But I have often wondered how different it would have been if, when given that diagnosis of schizophrenia all those years ago, she had been told about all the things that she could keep doing – and all the support that she would get in the process – to help her feel good about herself and her life, whatever form or path that took.

Having extra support at a critical time can make all the difference between us, on the one hand finding our own strength and resolve to come through with a sense of purpose and, on the other hand, wavering and floundering and – at best – just not drowning.

At times Rosemary pushed my patience to the limits and then some (and she knew it!), but I could only try and imagine what difficulties she went through every day. Somehow, through that diagnosis, and prognosis, and the position it placed her in, in the world, all her intelligence, her good memory, her dark sense of humour, her creativity, her kindness to animals and sense of fair play got devalued, not least by her.

Thank you for the friendship that we shared Rosemary.  For the times we spent at nature reserves and animal sanctuaries, the concerts we went to and the smile that you used to greet me with. 

I hope you are now flying high, with the birds.

Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random – Glad About Life:
https://amzn.eu/d/6Ptwe4S

A Woman, a Dog & a Blog – Writing into Life:
https://amzn.eu/d/6Ho21L8



			


    



			
				


 	

					
A Birthday Present
		
				

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I was at the funeral of a friend yesterday. He’d died unexpectedly at the age of 67.





As it turned out, the day of the funeral was the day of my 66th birthday.





A funeral isn’t the usual expected place to be on a birthday, nor is it where you would expect to receive an unexpected birthday present.  But that is exactly what happened to me yesterday, at my friend Bill’s funeral. It was a gift given to me by Bill’s grieving wife, Deb, in words that she spoke in celebration of her husband’s life.





Deb spoke about the ancient Japanese art and philosophy of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is about celebrating imperfection; not trying to hide what is broken but recognising the place of mending as a thing of beauty in its own right, and highlighting the mend with gold. She referred to her husband as ‘pure gold’. He was.  As was her gift to me in what she said, using words and with passion that I cannot even begin to emulate, nor do I think that I should even try. They were words that could only be spoken by a wife, grieving the loss of the love of her life. 





I do, however, want to acknowledge those words in this post, feeling broken as I continue to feel inside as I continue to hope and try to heal. I realise now that I don’t have to aim to heal back to how I was before I was broken; that the broken parts and the process of healing – that includes reaching out to others who are also struggling – are the pure gold of life.  So I’ll continue to live it in the best way that I can, cracks and all.





As it turns out, I’ve been making some pots recently that are basically balls of solid clay that may well fall apart in the kiln.  I now hope that they do – so that I can mend them in the Kintsugi way.  Amazingly enough, I also got another birthday present yesterday – from another friend. It was a Kintsugi kit! How weird and wonderful is that?


			


    



			
				


 	

					
Poetry Rule No. 3 Establish (and maintain) good relationships with other suppliers – providing the bases are reciprocal
		
				

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Red

Red was the colour
of your jacket
on the chair –
with slender, tender fingers
curled around a tumbler –
as you waited for me there
on our first date

Red was the colour of my jacket too
there was something about you –
the mark on your cheek
the way you held your head –
it wasn’t love at first sight
but I was happy for it to be
something else
instead

Since then our jackets
have become
a pair –
your slender, tender fingers
hold me now
in bed –
but I’ll always remember
our first date
when you and I
both wore
red

2017 & 2021


			


    



			
				


 	

					
Being 65
		
				

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Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com





In one sense, this post should just be entitled ‘Being’, because age is irrelevant.





I interact with the world essentially as a being, and don’t need a label.





On the other hand, I do have history, and the ways that I have worked through that history impact on the way that I interact with the world – and other beings in it – on a daily basis.





It isn’t always easy to put the past behind us, especially when heavily loaded with emotions associated with trauma and grief.





Accepting things that I cannot change has been a hard life lesson to learn for me, helped by meditation, affirmations, and Buddhist teachings (including one in particular by Gen Togden of the Kadampa tradition).





Not having had children is a major regret. Raising this as an issue with a therapist recently, still needing to work it through, I was met with a profoundly uncompassionate response: “So you decided not to have them then, did you?”





At one level, she was right. I made choices – decisions – that led to me being in a state of extreme mental and emotional turmoil in my late 30s and 40s. Decisions that I made as a struggling, vulnerable young woman in my 20s were mine, and I was an adult. But should I really have had to pay such a high price in later life?





Shit does happen though, and doesn’t discriminate. Thankfully, I have had previous experiences with other counsellors/therapists who’ve approached my distress with humanity and empathy.





Even so, some things take a long time to work through. Some ‘stuff’ from the past has just come up that I thought I’d put behind me, or at least wanted to. It doesn’t always work like that though, and I’m sure my brain dredged it up now because I hadn’t properly dealt with it previously.





Now I’m in a much better place than I have ever been before, living with a kind, loving, supportive, funny partner. Being 65 is a starting point for me, and it’s never too late.





If I can send out a message to anyone who’s going through personal difficulties – whether recently experienced or long-term endured – it is to say: “Don’t give up.”





We don’t always know what we’re made of until our backs are to the wall, especially if we’ve oriented towards ‘flight’ rather than ‘fight’ in early years.





Fighting for survival is a primary motivator and there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Even if you can’t see it for yourself, let someone else – a friend – see it and hold it for you until you can.





I’m only 65, and I’ve got all my life ahead of me. So have you.


			


    



			
				


 	

					
Poetry Rule No. 37 Recognise a cry for help when you see one
		
				

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Cry

A cry goes out
but no one hears

The Act is almost
done, no tears

But then another cry
is heard

That stops the Act
before the end

And so it goes on
and on
and on

These are the pages between the sheets of our lives

Blank. Black. White. Dirty. Torn. Cornered. Folded. Plied.

These are the lives that we limit to live
These are the cries that we’re frightened to give
These are the days that we count on our clocks
How soon will it be before it all stops?

© Glad the Poet 2020