Lydia has had a good rest this afternoon after a longish walk this morning.
I pushed her a bit, to go a bit further than she wanted to, although it was an easy walk for both of us really. Just over an hour on flat ground.
I’m tired too, though recognise I still need to push myself a bit as well. I’m tired but still not able to fully relax into the deep sleep that I need.
We had some over-ripe bananas so I made banana cake, with the addition of linseed, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, all-spice and ground ginger. I used my standard cake recipe – 4oz butter/margarine, 4oz sugar, 4oz flour and 2 eggs, x 3, although I used less sugar to allow for the sweetness of the bananas. I also added some rolled oats. It turned out well. Baked in two loaf tins at 180 degrees centigrade, initially for about 20 minutes, then turned down and baked for a bit longer, until they passed the skewer test, coming out clean so I knew they were done.
As usual, Lydia has been keeping me good company on a quiet rainy day.
She hasn’t had her tea yet but doesn’t seem in any hurry for it. Neither am I for mine.
Breaking big rocks into smaller rocks: the hard-core approach to mental health recovery was the title of an article I wrote in 2013. It was published in a journal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists:
I was surprised, though, that there was no follow up from that. Nobody from the world of psychiatry or related fields sought to make further enquiry about the approach I was taking to rehabilitate myself back into a relatively healthy state of mind.
I think maybe it was because what I was doing seemed quite bizarre: undertaking hard physical labour involving a large sledgehammer and a lot of rocks. And yet the improvements I found in my mental well-being were significant and lasted for several weeks after I returned to my day job, based in an office.
While I don’t believe that all aspects of my complex mental health needs would have been resolved by continuing to do rigorous physical endeavour all day, every day, the experience certainly had a part to play in my overall recovery.
And the principle of breaking things down into smaller chunks is one that I work with every day.
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.
Tonight’s Buddhist class completes the five-week course on ‘Embracing Change’.
Change can happen in so many ways, on so many levels.
In my experience, I have not always known why I have not been able to ‘let go’ and move on at times. I think, now, I have more insight into why, and it’s because of the deep inner healing that I needed to do. It’s understandable to want to do that in a safe way, at a safe time, so that when the wound is exposed, it won’t be subject to any more damage.
Sometimes, however, circumstances force us to push through pain on a survival basis. How amazing then, to be in those circumstances and somehow find that you have got access to the support that you need to heal, from sources that in the past you could not have even imagined existed, yet somehow, they do. That’s where I’m at now.
And, for now, I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing; different things on different days. Today it was painting, white emulsion on walls; tomorrow I’ll go to pottery in the afternoon. Walking Lydia, of course, in the mornings, is such a good thing, I’m pretty sure for both of us. Meditating, practising yoga and Qigong, listening to the teachings of Buddha passed on through the Kadampa lineage. Meeting up with friends, chatting with neighbours. More painting of walls until that job is done, then I’ll move on to do something else. I know this is all leading to further change, and I am becoming more able to embrace the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
I woke this morning feeling warm and rested, snug and toasty in bed, having slept for a good few hours. The symptoms of my cold are lingering, but I’m confident that I’ve past the point when it could have turned into a cough and possible chest infection.
After our morning walk and with Lydia suitably breakfasted, I make a pan of porridge for me and Trev, enjoying mine lightly salted and finished with brown sugar and some evaporated milk. I set aside a little of the unsweetened porridge for Lydia, so that she can have it as a bit of an extra with her tea. She has very few carbs in her diet generally, and I’m sure she’ll enjoy it for a change.
After going back to bed and resting for a while, I get up and resolve to make further inroads into clearing the garage. It does look a bit daunting when I open the door, but I make a start, and bit by bit make some progress. This includes demolishing a cupboard with help from my Dad’s old lump hammer that was handily nearby. The cupboard had done sterling work for me for many years, first in my old house and then as garage storage in this one. The shelves were starting to collapse and it was time for it to go, so I take it to the tip along with some other things that I know I am no longer going to need. After a bit of sweeping and reorganising, the garage now looks in reasonable order, with a few things lined up for me to take to a charity shop on Monday.
The physical effort was good for me and I’m lucky to be strong and fit enough to lift and carry the way I do at my age. I simply take my time, do things at my own pace, and rest when I need to.
So, this afternoon I have rested, leaving me with nothing much more to do this evening than to feed Lydia – she seems quite happy to wait for her tea at the moment – and write this blog. I took some chilli out of the freezer earlier, so Trev and I can have that with some rice when we are ready.
When I first started going to Sue’s Qigong classes, over 15 years ago now, and for a long time since, I struggled with concentrating at times. I could feel a sense of distracting emotional pain – deep seated – that I wanted to avoid feeling. I don’t feel that now.
I am much more present for most of the time during the class now, with only occasional distracting thoughts. That’s not bad, I think, considering the ‘stuff’ that’s going on in my life.
I’ve worked through – felt the pain of – a lot my grief and though I can still feel ‘crap’ going through my system, it does feel like it’s on its way out, slowly softening and dissipating. I know I need to continue to focus on the priorities I’ve been focusing on for some time to promote health and wellbeing; that I’m going in the right direction, even though I don’t know where it’s leading. Providing I can continue to deepen my sense of calm – a sense that is growing although interspersed with periods of not being calm – then I feel confident that we will be OK. I’m working at it – hard, very hard – every day and some days are better than others.
Today I got out of bed earlier than I have been doing recently. It was around 8am rather than the 9.30 ‘target time’ I’ve been setting myself. After a shower, and taking a more mindful approach to getting dressed than I usually do, I went downstairs, had a couple of cups of tea, meditated for a while, then Lydia and I headed out for our walk.
We did the woodland walk again. As I pulled up in the car, I saw the man who owns the small-holding next-door walking across the field towards us, with a black dog on a lead. I haven’t seen him with a black dog before; he used to have German Shepherds. After a brief chat, he introduced me to ‘Bomag’, a rescue, he said, his German Shepherds having now, sadly, passed away.
Lydia and I did just one circuit of the wood today, before heading back for her breakfast and – for me – a welcome cup of coffee. I didn’t have breakfast until a bit later – lemon curd on toast did it for me.
Between yoga and Qigong this afternoon I went to the local tip to drop off the result of my recent cupboard clearing exercise. There’s still a lot of rubbish clearing to be done, especially from the garage, and Trev took a load to the tip today as well.
Qigong today included the movement ‘Eagle soaring in the sky’ which we built up to under Sue’s instructions and demonstrations. I really did feel a bit like a soaring Eagle for a few moments. Those were good moments though.
Home now, Lydia has had her tea, ours is in the oven, and I’m going to finish this post, then sit and savour the evening, cool as it is, with the back door open and my dog nearby. These are good moments too.
I wake this morning feeling lighter of heart than I have for a long time.
To celebrate, on the way home from my walk with Lydia, I stop off at the shop and buy the ingredients to make cake.
When I bake, I bake big, and I make lots of lemon and vanilla cake, including one for our new next-door neighbour. So far, I haven’t properly introduced myself, although I did give him a friendly wave when I saw him in his car while I was out doing some work in the front yard last week.
Trev’s out so Lydia and I have some quiet time together while the cake is cooling down enough to sandwich layers together with lemon curd and vanilla icing. I can tell it’s going to be exceedingly good cake.
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.
The woodland walk this morning was wild and windy for Lydia and me. Winter seems to have suddenly arrived and missed out Autumn. Hopefully it will revert back again, at least for a while.
It was good to have yoga and Qigong to go to this afternoon.
I’m also keeping up with my meditation practice, on a morning before taking Lydia out for her walk. I still have dips into negative thought patterns, but am learning to recognise them for what they are.
Body work, breath work, mind work. I do feel I’m continuing to make progress with my mental health, sticking with the things that work for me and repeating them in cycles that also work for me.
Today I’m considering rule no. 3: Establish (and maintain) good relationships with other suppliers (providing the bases are reciprocal).
Not all friendship relationships are reciprocal. I like to think that I can and do reach out a hand of friendship and support to people without any expectation of return. I do, however, have friends where the relationship is one of mutual support. These relationships help to sustain me through difficult times and I do what I can to sustain my friends through any difficult times that they might be having.
Coming, as I am, through a period of emotional and psychological burnout, I don’t have a lot of giving energy available at the moment.
I am, however, gaining spiritual nourishment and sustenance from an increasing commitment to the Buddhist faith.
‘The Liberating Prayer’, composed by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche, includes the following two verses:
With folded hands I turn to you Supreme unchanging friend, I request from the depths of my heart
Please give me the light of your wisdom To dispel the darkness of my mind And to heal my mental continuum.
Basically, that’s what I’ve been working on for a long time without knowing it but – more recently, since I started reciting this prayer – with growing awareness of what I am doing and why I need to: to dispel the darkness of my mind and to heal my mental continuum.
To know that I can do this, using methods through meditation and putting the Buddhist teachings into practice in other ways, has been like a hand of friendship is helping me to pull myself out of a deep well. I still have to do the work myself – and it’s taking a massive effort – but I’m not stuck and I’m not on my own. That’s friendship.
I also feel an increasing sense of friendship with members of the Buddhist teaching group that I go to. It’s good to have friendship groups as well as ‘besties’ in our lives.
Having just given Lydia a good ‘rub-a-dub-dub’ tummy rub and chest massage, and knowing that she looks out for me and Trev too, in her way, it’s good to know that we have our own friendship group here at home.
Glad About 
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