After grinding to a halt last year (when I was 64), I’ve had 12 months of resting and recuperating. It’s been great to have no time pressures, be able to catch up on household jobs and generally just ‘chill’. However, I still don’t feel like giving up on my working life altogether and have just started a new job. It’s part-time and temporary – just for a few weeks – and has tested my ability to keep calm in the face of new technology (use of a smart phone is an intrinsic part of the job). With some effort I’ve been able to keep my anxiety levels within manageable parameters – breathing through the stress and repeating my ever-faithful affirmation of ‘I choose to be peaceful and calm; everything is unfolding as it should’. There have been times when I have felt anything other than peaceful and calm but I seem to be settling in. It’s tiring, but I’m doing it.
When I was going through the worst of my breakdown, one of things I hung on to, to haul myself through, was the knowledge of how hard I’d worked when I was younger – dealing with anxiety without any coping mechanisms for a long time – to develop work skills and experience. I was determined that all that hard work would not go to waste.
I do believe that if more people had more help with anxiety and associated difficulties when they were younger, it would help to avoid the devastation that having a breakdown can bring. As a society we still have a long way to go before we can consider ‘inclusion’ a reality rather than a pretend game.
Lobster meat is sweet, I believe I tasted it once, a long time ago but I really don’t know if the clacking, snapping, pincer-sharp bite of the lobster-look-alike girl’s mind belies anything even remotely kind
As I sit watching her eat that lobster meat sucking her fingers with self-satisfied glee pouting and spouting out the debris of her clacking, snapping pincer-sharp mind and smile inwardly at the resemblance I see a wonderful, horrible thought comes to me
Wouldn’t it be great if a giant lobster loomed and ate her up after popping her into a boiling pot, while she was still alive?
This is the sea-bed of salivation upon which I feed and thrive turning the tables through poetry on the clacking, snapping pincer-sharp lobster-look-alike girl’s mind and her kind
2020
Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random – Glad About Life:
I’ve recently been fortunate to have taken part in a group poetry project.
Group experiences have been central to my mental health recovery for many years.
Some group experiences have an uplifting, energising and inspiring effect; others lead to alienation, isolation and degradation.
The poetry group experience that I’ve recently had was a good one, thanks largely to the enthusiasm and encouragement of the group leader https://mariafrankland.co.uk/.
In case you don’t want to buy the book, or perhaps as a taster (I’m one of 12 poets in the completed work), here are my poems from the collection:
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 dance
I can dance without moving my feet at all I don’t have to do the foxtrot or quickstep my way to any ball I can cry without moving my lips I can laugh without making a sound all I have to do is know that the earth is flat, it isn’t round The dance is mine to make up from the music of the wind a sense of something swirling in and around my mind I don’t need a choreographer an audience or loud applause I just need to dance in my own way and then I’ll dance some more I can dance without moving my feet at all on and on and on and on it is my dance my life my call
Here’s to Wealth!
Cheers my dear to the love that you bring into my life and though I never want to be your wife I want to share with you all the good things that life brings
I love it when you sing as I know it comes from within your soul and as we learn together to love each other something magical unfolds
The trees without leaves that you hung around my neck and from my ears help to take away all my fears of things undone of words unsaid the sadness of never nurturing a child upon my breast
Where once was hope and then despair becomes a sense of stillness in the air and from that place of breathing and of wings comes freedom to wonder and wander into the rich realms of being together feeding the birds with the wealth of our love
Instant Coffee
Heading for instant gratification no time to waste or spare I take my mug into the kitchen only to find a queue of people there
Halted, suddenly, empty cup in hand my thoughts spill over into the needs of others heads bowed or lifted as we together stand
I only needed coffee and soon the queue was gone my waiting time was over but for someone else it had only just begun
***
I’m also proud of the back cover copy that I wrote for the book:
A relationship break-up can be a difficult experience at any age. It isn’t always easy to see the opportunity beyond the heartache, and even less easy to find ways of putting the experience into words.
The triumphs of Maria Stephenson’s emergence into a new life as a writer and teacher are embodied in her collection of ‘Poetry for the Newly Single Forty Something’ (2017). Maria didn’t just stop at publishing her own collection though. She inspired others to explore their creative approaches to the theme, leading to this exciting anthology, which is more than the sum of its poems.
The words of each poet paint a picture of part of their own unique life story. Demonstrating diverse responses to life and writing challenges, threads of commonality emerge and unite.
What are you waiting for? Dive in, explore, share in the joy of words and wonders of life that these writers have explored and shared. These poems aren’t just about being newly single, or about being forty something, they are about being – essentially – human.
The reason for my pride is partly because I think it stands well as a piece of writing in its own right (and even being able to credit myself with that is a remarkable* achievement in its own right), and partly because of what it represents for me in terms of having come through what I’ve come through, still fighting, still writing, still reaching out.
* https://iamremarkable.withgoogle.com/ (#IamRemarkable is a Google initiative empowering women and underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond.)
After grinding to a halt last year (when I was 64), I’ve had 12 months of resting and recuperating. It’s been great to have no time pressures, be able to catch up on household jobs and generally just ‘chill’. However, I still don’t feel like giving up on my working life altogether and have just started a new job. It’s part-time and temporary – just for a few weeks – and has tested my ability to keep calm in the face of new technology (use of a smart phone is an intrinsic part of the job). With some effort I’ve been able to keep my anxiety levels within manageable parameters – breathing through the stress and repeating my ever-faithful affirmation of ‘I choose to be peaceful and calm; everything is unfolding as it should’. There have been times when I have felt anything other than peaceful and calm but I seem to be settling in. It’s tiring, but I’m doing it.
When I was going through the worst of my breakdown, one of things I hung on to, to haul myself through, was the knowledge of how hard I’d worked when I was younger – dealing with anxiety without any coping mechanisms for a long time – to develop work skills and experience. I was determined that all that hard work would not go to waste.
I do believe that if more people had more help with anxiety and associated difficulties when they were younger, it would help to avoid the devastation that having a breakdown can bring. As a society we still have a long way to go before we can consider ‘inclusion’ a reality rather than a pretend game.
Glad About 
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