One word?

One word.  I’ve spent the Christmas break (in between barrages of exhaustive coughing) pondering on what my word is for the coming year.  Why?   Well, because apparently if one wants to change one’s life (presumably for the better) one should not focus on the externals (the new job, the new house, the new relationship, the new body, the new whatever) but on the feeling one wants.  It’s all to do with intrinsic, as opposed to external, motivation (or so the lovely Danielle Marchant says). 

Anyhow, it got me pondering.  What is my word?  What is it?  When in doubt, deflect the question (that old journalistic trick).  So I asked Kate and she planted her hands on her hips and said, firmly, ‘Strong. I want to feel strong.’ 

And I asked Sherry and she narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and then said, slowly, sensually, ‘Passionate.  That’s how I want to feel.  Passionate.  About everything.’   

And it was tempting to nick both those as it would be very nice to feel both passionate and strong, but they weren’t right.  Not quite yet anyhow.  So I asked Jane, who had appeared on New Year’s Eve bearing champagne, tulips and seven loaves of bread (yup, seven.  I’d asked if she could detour via Blackstock Road and pick up a couple of flatbreads but she had gone to Waitrose instead and basically bought up the bread counter).   ‘What is your word?’ I said, as we sat by the fire (she glugging red wine and nibbling nuts; me mainlining lemon and honey and chewing garlic).  ‘Hmm,’ she said.  ‘Happiness.’ 

‘Nooo,’ I spluttered.  ‘That’s too vague.  What does happiness mean?’

‘Contentment?’ she suggested, tentatively. I shook my head, firm in my conviction that there had to be more.  One shouldn’t settle for ‘contented.’  It’s just too…much like giving up somehow.  Isn’t it?  Maybe not. 

‘Nope, sorry,’ she said, opening another bottle. ‘I just want life to be easy for once.’  And I get that, I really do.  But it still wasn’t right.  Not for me.

And so I turned to images, as I often do when words defeat me.  And I found that there was a theme; that they spoke a different language – one, not of my usual earth and my beloved fire and water, but of air.  And I don’t usually *do* air – it’s not my element at all.  Yet there it was…

And I coughed again and had to stop myself laughing because, of course, what is a chest infection but a problem of air, or lack thereof?  I even wrote about it in The Natural Year, my book on seasonal living.  About how coughing is, symbolically, the body trying to expel anything it doesn’t want – not just mucus and phlegm, but old emotions – ‘of taking in new energy and breathing out the spent; of taking in hope and expansive spirit and breathing out everything that is stagnant and repugnant for the soul.’ 

And it came to me that my word, for now, might be Lightness.  I need to feel light again.  I've had enough of feeling heavy, and claggy, and generally golem-esque, a creature of clay, bound by earth.  I want to fly, to lift up, to feel free and joyous and light and bright.  

So.  Light.  That’ll do nicely.  For now. 

How about you?  

Dancing in the Shitstorm of Life

So.  Yes.  We went to the beach.  To Bude.  It’s about half an hour from lovely Waterloo Farm, the Cornish base for The Pause (check it out if you fancy a farm holiday – they have several renting cottages). 

It wasn’t the best day, weather-wise but never mind.  We spread out the blankets and looked at the sea and decided that, no, it really wasn’t warm enough after all for a dip, however bracing.  Danielle suggested we might want to go and look for a stone that spoke to us, a heart stone, that we might want to meditate with it, or paint it, or maybe not; that we might want to do something entirely different.

I wasn’t quite sure how I was feeling.  There was that sense of disappointment I always get at the seaside – that’s it never quite how I imagine it will be.  That old sense of waiting for the perfect beach day that never comes.  Old childhood stuff, maybe.  Who knows?

Anyhow, after a while I wandered off and sat down away from the group.  Needing some space.  Feeling a bit off-kilter.  I wondered if I might find my ‘special stone’, not by wandering along the beach and seeing what caught my eye but by picking out a spot and digging around, under the surface.  To find hidden strengths maybe?  So I picked out stones and found myself placing them in a circle around me.  A protective circle?  A magic circle?  That would be nice, but it was actually a small circle, a constraining circle, a hardly-able-to-breath circle.  And what did I find?  Small stuff.  Boring stones. Nothing special. Nothing juicy. 

I took a deep breath and kicked the circle.  It wanted to open into a tunnel…no, not a tunnel…a funnel.  A retort, an alchemical vessel.  Had I been fermenting again, like smelly old sauerkraut?  And then it became a passageway, a birth channel.  Leading to?  The sea?  The wider world?

So I got up and walked out, looked around and…hellfire, out there was an exciting world, full of big pebbles, different pebbles, really exciting  pebbles!  WILD PEBBLES!   And not just pebbles, but rocks, and sea and sky and how have I got myself trapped in such a tiny tiny place?  With so few resources?  Without passion. Without my tribe.  How have I settled for something so godamn small and mean and mundane?

What do I want, I asked myself.  And the sea and sky winked.  I want to dance on the whirlwind.  I want to breathe deep.  I want to be true and wild and free and…

And I found my pebble…the perfect pebble.  One that fitted softly into the palm of my hand.  And on it?  A wild dervish-dancer spinning in the storm.

Except that…when I showed it to my mini-tribe, they laughed. 

‘Hey, look! It’s your crow shit!’ 

And, sod me, they were right.  It did look like a giant splodge of bird crap.  And then I looked up and over at my circle-cum-alchemical vessel and, would you believe it…

‘No!’ I wailed.

‘What?’ they said. 

‘That dog, that big retriever…it just shat in my circle!’ I said.

‘No way!’ they said.

‘Way!’ I said, and we all burst out laughing. 

So I thought again.  Hmm.  Life has been a bit shit lately and I am more than a bit of a shitty person (and that’s fine; it is what it is, no point denying it). 

Maybe it’s about time I started owning my own crap.  Maybe it’s time to break out and start dancing in the shitstorm once again.  J

Core wounding, shame and connection

Core wounding. Those deep entrenched, often hidden, beliefs that let us scupper ourselves time and time again. 

I first came across all this when I did a course of Rebirthing, absolutely ages ago.  I’d always felt that my ‘core issue’ was abandonment – and that it had kicked in when my father died (when I was ten).  I blamed my inability to form relationships on it – it was a handy tag. I'm not so sure about that any more.  

Rebirthing, however, looks for stuff that happened during or around your birth, or even before it.  I remember asking my mother if there was anything else I should know and she told me, very honestly, very bravely, a shedload of stuff that isn’t mine to share here.  But it sideswiped me.  Left me horrified and humbled.  And it made me realise that my core issue is probably quite different.  That, at heart, it was – and maybe still is - Shame. 

What does Shame say?  Shame says ‘You’re a mistake, you’re disgusting, you’re bad, you’re revolting.’  What does Shame do?  Shame makes one overly nice and giving, overly scared of hurting people, scared shitless of being exposed as a fraud.  Shame makes one a desperate over-achiever, a perfectionist, ever-anxious, ever-fearful.  Shame makes one a coward.

Actually we didn’t really look at core wounding at The Pause.  But something Danielle said struck a core-chord.  ‘Being more connected is a helpful way to be in the world.’  And that sense of connection was something that came up strongly for me at The Pause.  Being totally alone is bloody lonely – but it’s also safe.  If you don’t share yourself with others, if you keep hidden in your little hermit shell, if you push everyone away, if you tell everyone to fuck off (whether overtly or covertly), then you don’t need to confront yourself out there, do you? You can hold tight to your safe little world.  

Yet, though sharing is scary, it can also be a relief.  I was surprised to meet with such acceptance within our little group, amazed that they looked at me and didn’t see the monster within. 

Ach, psycho-babble, jibber-jabber , mindless mind games and so on and so forth, huh?  But still, I feel there’s something in it.  Because we’re little psychic sponges, we really are – and, even if nothing is said, nothing overt, we pick up atmospheres, we read the wind.  And, no matter how much you like to think you’re an island, this stuff does have an effect on how your life pans out, in particular how you relate to other people.  What messages did you pick up as a baby, I wonder?  What are your core beliefs?

Might it be abandonment (nobody cares about me, I don’t matter, I can’t trust); inferiority (I’m not good enough, I’m stupid, I’m boring); rejection (I’m a burden, nobody wants to spend time with me, I’m unwanted); damage (something’s wrong with me, I’m a failure), or maybe arrogance (I’m too much; I’m right, you’re wrong)?  Something else entirely?

What messages were drilled into you from an early age?   It’s curious but there are some people who, from what they say, had idyllic beginnings – parents who wanted them wholeheartedly, who loved them deeply from the get-go, who were the epitome of Love and Caring and Devotion.  And yet…

Anyhow, just musing out loud again.  What do you reckon? 

True Love, primal yurts and the people who're airbrushed out of fairy tale books

While I was at The Pause I read Call Off The Search by Anna (Pasternak) and Andrew Wallas.  Why? Because Danielle suggested I might find it interesting.  She runs courses with Andrew Wallas and says he’s a good guy.  So I did.  It wasn’t as if I had anything else I was burning to read: I haven’t read anything lately that has rocked my boat, that has really made me think or feel. 

It seemed a bit familiar and then I remembered that I’d read an extract from it in a supplement when it first came out.  It had annoyed the hell out of me.  So I guess that’s one very good reason to read it, huh?  What annoyed me?  Well, the book is all about how you shouldn’t ever give up on a relationship; that you have to work through the fights and the anguish and the tough times.  That love relationships can easily call up your ‘core wounding’ – that early first pattern of hurt and disappointment we suck in with our mother’s milk – and offer a wonderful opportunity to heal at a deep, primal level.  Which is all very stoic and good except that…Andrew Wallas left his relationship.  He told Anna Pasternak she was a posh spoilt insecure bitch, got her sobbing in his yurt and then had this sudden ‘ka-boom!’ realisation that she was his One True Love.  So, what did he do?  He left his wife.  Just like that.   All very amicable apparently but still…

Marriage neatly dissolved, the whole book is all about how he and new ‘True Love’ Anna work out their stuff.  It's about how they fight and bicker and nearly break up all the time, how they love each other but also sometimes hate each other; and how that can all change in a heartbeat.  Bottom line, they just slog it out with brutal honesty.  Which is great.  I mean, good for them…but, but, but… all the way through I was left wondering ‘And what about his ex-wife?’ 

The relationship, he says, was ‘emotionally empty’.  So then, it’s okay to walk out of a relationship if it’s ‘emotionally empty’?  I dunno, it just seemed all a bit too convenient somehow.  How do you know if your relationship is ‘emotionally empty’?  Maybe emotionally empty is a manifestation of core wounding?  Bottom line, how do you know if it’s doomed, terminal, that it’s time to pack up your yurt and move on, or whether you should stay, drive in your yurt pegs a bit deeper and sledgehammer away at it?  A&A just don’t answer that question.  So I was left pondering it myself. 

Maybe it’s about a ‘charge’?  If a relationship still has ‘juice’?  As the saying goes it’s a thin line between love and hate but both are positive emotions, right?  As in emotions that have a positive charge, that are powerful, punchy, full-on.  I’ve always felt that the true opposite of love isn’t hate but apathy.  If a relationship has become apathetic, if the parties involved are just going through the motions, presumably that is what A&A are calling time on?  Can you give apathy an adrenalin shot?  Can you juice it up?  Or should you just sigh and move on?  What if your core wounding has left you unable to love?  

I don’t know. I really don’t.  All I know is that, all through the book, I kept wondering when we were going to hear about his first marriage.  I wanted to know what happened to his ex-wife.  Did she find ‘True Love’ as well, or is she sitting somewhere reading the book and shoving her fingers down her throat over each gushing paragraph?  How did she feel when he told her it was all over?  Was she gutted or secretly relieved?  Did she punch the air and go, ‘Yessss!  I always hated that fucking yurt!’ 

I guess I wanted to hear about how one lives when the projections of falling in love fall away.  That, to me, is the more interesting question.  A&A are clearly still madly passionately in love.  Will they still feel the same way in twenty years? Is that True Love?  What is? 

I wasn’t intending to write this blog post.  There was a bit in the book, a concept that intrigued me and I was going to blog about that but this came out instead.  But, hey, it is what it is.  What do you think? 

Dreaming on the starlit hill

So, there was a hill at The Deep Pause.  A gentle slope hill, not a hard slog hill.   At the top stretched a small stone circle with a fire-pit in the centre - a mini mandala.  A line of trees protected its exposed flank, dappling shadow-shapes onto the green green, grass-green grass.

The first night most of our group crashed early to bed but Danielle, Lynn and I sat around the fire and had one of those conversations that smack you sideways because you simply aren’t expecting them.  And it was all good.  Very good. 

Stretching out on the ground felt good too, and looking up as the stars stretched themselves out felt good, and listening to the myriad little sounds of the night felt good.  So good, in fact, that when the others went in, I didn’t want to follow.  I wanted to stay right there, in that sweet sweet spot, in the soft not-so-darkness and spend the night out under the sky, wandering/wondering through star semaphore.  So I curled up in my blanket (my snugly heart throw) and did just that.

Vague thoughts of vision quests arose, of confronting fears and wotnot but, really, that was daft because there was nothing out there to confront – the scary monsters and super freaks are all inside me, not rustling in the hedgerows.  My animal medicine was yet to come. 

It got darker and darker but it was a silky blue darkness, like rubbing your face in velvet. It felt so safe up there, so held, just me and the fire and the stars; the cool breeze on my face and the crackle and warmth of the fire on my back and the rough and tumble of the earth against my side, grazing shoulder and hip and head. 

It struck me again how insane it all is.  There I was, this little ant stuck to this little planet like a fridge-magnet, whizzing through space, roller-coastering through time.  Isn’t it crazy?  You'd think that, at some point, the earth would go 'Oh, just sod it' and let go and you'd just ping off out there, like a stone from a child's catapult.  For now at least, it doesn't but, while the body stays behind, the mind can go...anywhere, anywhen.  Can't it?  

I put another log on the fire and turned over to stare at the stars and dream and dream and dream. 

'Proper' report coming soon on Queen of Retreats.

Waterloo Farm is pretty magical - if you're planning a trip to Cornwall, maybe check out their website? 

The Pause and the Invitation

from www.lifebydanielle.com

I'm just back from The Deep Pause in Cornwall. It's a five day retreat run by life coach Danielle Marchant and I was there to report for Queen of Retreats. Funny thing, I wasn't even sure I wanted to go.  I was feeling low, on one hell of a downer for all sorts of reasons, and I just didn't feel I had the energy or the inclination to engage.  I felt I had nothing left to give and my life felt like such a mess that I really didn't think that something like life coaching could help in any which way.

Wrong.  So wrong.  It was a totally mind- and soul-blowing experience all told and I need to digest what went on for a bit before I splurge.  But, right now I just want to give heartfelt thanks to Danielle, to Amy (who did way more than just cook incredible food) and to Lynn, Caroline, Sarah and Hayley (soul-sisters one and all)...oh, and Dave (who played guitar - another story in itself).

But let me start with the ending.  Just before we left, Danielle read out Oriah Mountain Dreamer's poem The Invitation.  I have seen the poem around a lot but, you know, I haven't ever really read it, I haven't really listened.  This time I shut my eyes and I did listen, and it chimed. A lot.  So I thought I'd just put it out here for you in case it has passed you by or in case, like me, you have never really paused to take it in.

There are parts of it that are really harsh, that make me wince - for example, 'I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself?'  Ouch.   And many other parts that make me want to punch the air and say 'YES!'

(c) Oriah Mountain Dreamer - this image from TheChicSite.com

To be continued...hopefully.