Resistance

 Brett, my friend on death row, wrote in a recent letter that he has been enjoying watching the sun rise and the sunsets; that they are some of the prettiest he has ever seen.

My son, who befriended a mature aged man who was in his Animation Course and finally finished the course after a number of years, made the effort yesterday to attend his graduation, a very special day for him.

My painter, a refugee from Afghanistan who came here on a Humanitarian Visa, noted to me that he had been enjoying my stash of camomile tea.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted to David Letterman in an interview that he had been enjoying the mornings; another day in which he had woken up alive.

A guest of Andrew Huberman who visited the Ukraine recently said to him that the people were still making delicious food; prided themselves on doing so.

The guest noted also that while it is thought democracy is at threat in the United States, when one visits the Ukraine, there is the realization that life in the United States is fundamentally stable.

When I am in the enclosed trampoline with my grandsons, that sits in their garden, they want me to bounce them, and jump with them, but my right knee sometimes tells me that it's a bit too much. So I sit in the middle and let them run about me. There's still plenty of movement but I'm not adding to it, or trying to stop it. I'm secure and know that eventually it will stop.

My youngest son, the one who still lives with us, sees that life lived with a worrier, a compulsive person like his Dad, is not easy. He has a quirky sense of humor, as do I.

'Mum, you do good work," he said pointing at me from the far side of the room just before he departed.

'You do good work', I said, pointing back at him.

We both laughed.

In a tough situation, laughter works. Zelenskyy agreed. He still likes to crack jokes.

When Deity died, but I was still unaware of his passing, there was a very still moment for me, complete peace, and somehow, don't ask me how, I knew his spirit was free.

All these little moments. The present moment.

As the world spins around us, chaos, even madness seemingly winning the day, we still have at our disposal the pleasure, and the acceptance of the present moment.

As one of my favourite meditation teachers likes to say, 'Everything that peace touches becomes peaceful.' 

I fulfilled a request by my painter from Afghanistan yesterday to construct a letter to ask about his sisters' application for a humanitarian visa to join him here in Australia. The streets of Tehran are very dangerous and even going onto the streets to buy food puts them at risk of being jailed should they be deemed a protester.

We sat looking out onto a lush garden as we talked of them on the streets of Tehran in possible danger.

It's been a wild, wild ride this year.

As a friend said to me via email just now, if I try to go against the spinning tree, it will throw me off, but if I let it stop of it's own accord, it will. 

Don't resist.

Ah yes, that special phrase of Carl Jung comes to mind, 'What you resist, persists.' 

'It is what it is.' Indeed.

And the most profound of all? Lennon's 'Let it Be'.

To be delighted

 I've been hungry for something lately, hungry for a dive into my own darker desires. Alone for an evening I turned onto 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. It was late and I was tired so I flipped forward, looking for scenes that might scratch the itch.

He's taken on a novice. She hasn't even thought about what he has been fixating on his whole life so it's a pretty hard sell. I think watching this time I was mostly aware of his frustration, and his patience. But how, with all that attention, could one not be entranced, even just a little?

This morning, I wondered how I might find some little morsel, a bite for my starving soul, when the thought occurred that I might go back to a time on this journal. I chose September 2009 and reading there I realized immediately that it was the interconnection with another person, the dance, that delighted me; a sweet morsel to have with one's chai tea, you know?

Delight. That's what I once had. And how delicious it was.

OCPD

 For years I have skirted around the issues of my life on this blog, trying to be discreet at the same time as I express myself as best as I can. However, it's been going on for so long and secrecy and discretion have achieved nothing. With nothing left to lose, I am just going to come out and say it.

My husband has some sort of anxiety disorder which affects many aspects of our lives but most importantly it is his anxiety about his health, and his deep distrust of the medical profession that puts me in a position where I sometimes feel I am going mad.

Whilst I was away last week interstate he experienced sensation such that my son took him to a public hospital in the middle of the night. They were efficient to the best of their ability and gave a diagnosis consistent with their findings, but my husband didn't agree with the diagnosis, highly suspicious of the woman in whose specialty it was.

All week he raged about the woman, fixating on the details of the middle of the night dash, not once entertaining the thought she might be right. Having gone past the point of simply agreeing with him, I suggested that maybe she knew a thing or two about her specialty and that it was worth the possibility of opening his mind. He remained unconvinced and undeterred.

This led us to the private hospital emergency this afternoon where it was quickly determined that, no, there was no heart arrhythmia.  However, they were happy, as you would expect, to run all requisite tests and confer with various specialists until he was satisfied and that's what they will spend tomorrow doing.

I want to be clear that if I can, I stay away from doctors and hospitals. My goal is to be well enough to achieve that end, doing sensible preventative tests, of course, but basically using the insurance policy of a balanced life to visit medical establishments as infrequently as possible.

However, when you need them, all their training comes in mighty handy, not to mention some drugs newly invented change and save lives.

My husband has a combination of fear of dying, of being very sick and needing doctors and a belief in his own ability to research conditions such that he can come up with the correct diagnosis and treatment himself.

Anyone who trashes his body as he does with lack of sleep, forcing himself to stay up late, along with a great deal of anxiety and stress hormones running through his body in an almost non-stop way, is going to experience illness, and he has been unwell with one thing or another for some time; bits and pieces.

The key thing here - and was so with Deity also -is that you can't help someone who won't be helped. If you insist a la Sinatra in going your own way, no-one can stop you. Certainly, I don't make a dent in my husband's thinking. 

If you could have a reasonable and fair conversation, things could be worked out together. There are solutions. But that's not something my husband is prepared to do because his black and white thinking means that I can't possibly be right, or a doctor can't possibly be right, when he is right. Do you see the issue?

I have threatened to leave him. I have tried living part of the time away from our city house in which he is bunkered. I have said he must get psychological help. Nothing moves him; certainly not my upset.

In many ways this is why I was able to tolerate Deity's stubborn nature; because I know stubborn natures up close and personal. I occasionally make the mistake of thinking I can save such people which I definitely cannot.

I am not trying to 'save' my husband in fact since I have no influence. I am trying to make sure that my husband doesn't send me to the funny farm, and all the kids along with me.

OCPDers think they are right and are to this end unaffected. It's the families that are traumatized and who is there to support them?

My take on Science

 You aren't meant to change anyone. That's the theory of living peacefully on this Earth. The argument goes, 'how much success do you have changing yourself, so good luck changing anyone else'. This is so.

The interesting aspect of a long marriage is that you would be pretty remiss if you didn't notice patterns emerge. I have indeed noticed patterns - good and bad. I try to be subtle about the bad ones but sometimes I go just for broke and state my opinion with no expectation I can effect change. I know I cannot effect change.

There are many times to be in 'bardo' - in the gap, in some intermediary state - in life, and sometimes in my marriage, I feel I am in bardo, just watching someone commit all those crimes against living a long life.

It's so interesting to me that intelligent people - let's call them educated people - can focus beautifully on their diet, their supplements, medical tests and all those 'adding on' elements of maintaining good health, but possibly fail to notice that they go through life as if a saber tooth tiger is chasing them.

Can you even begin to imagine what sort of damage a routine fight/flight response does to your nervous system? The heart, the brain can't possibly be saying, 'oh super, lots of supplements coming my way, plenty of kale, so that should protect me against the fact that the human body in which I reside is in a constant state of threat and angst'. I don't think so.

If you have ever seen a baby being born as I have several times, you know that they come into the world with only one thought: where's the lover of me?

If you have ever seen a person leave this world, is it not the very same thought?

Yes, things need to be done in a day, often very important things. We need to jump hurdles. We sometimes need to do a sprint. Once that's done, returning to a state of homeostasis, of equanimity is incredibly important. 

Here I am. Breath in, breath out. Sound of a truck far away. Sound of a bird close by. Alive, aware, awake. Happy to be so.

We can get caught up about our health as if it's somehow not about the body attached to the head; as if what we put our nervous system through isn't involved; as if we can deny the bleeding obvious - sleep at night, get up in the morning and get sun in your eyes, move daily - and not pay the price.

I wonder if -aholics are refusing to acknowledge their own behavior. If, for example, the workaholic knew what he was doing to himself, and to the partner and family,  would he re-evaluate? I am not sure he would. The nervous system has been disrupted - what they often call PTSD now - and until that is addressed, it's just more of the same.

I think that's why Bessel Van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) puts so much credit on a yoga practice; it's an opportunity for mind and body to get back in sync and for equanimity to arise quite naturally.

I am all for the benefits of science, but a science that includes a doctor asking a patient about the way they conduct their life, and most importantly their inner life. Without that, you are just shooting darts at a board.

The Gap

I cannot say I have a great deal of experience with the loss of loved ones but each loss has been felt acutely. In the case of my father, it was a sense of regret that he was alone at the time of death. I had visited him a few weeks before his death but needed finally to return to my young family. And there was a mix up with contact details for my mother so they couldn't reach her. 

I felt sad about his dying, and when I returned again to Australia for the funeral I remember the weight of the feeling just as I was about to enter the Church; the Church where he had been married and I had been married. I recall it as a sinking feeling; like I was being pulled down and back.

Thinking about it now I felt he had a good life; the life he wanted. It wasn't a privileged life and he had his sorrows like us all, but he had a marriage that fulfilled him, largely, and work and interests that engaged him. Although he died relatively young, almost 77, it had been a life such that when he passed, there was a relative lightness about it; an end to the cancerous state.

I have lost others I was close to. The loss of David who I met through his blog 'Room at the Top' is still felt. We were chums and could shoot the breeze about almost anything. He had an old world charm about him, a man that shined his shoes, you know, and I appreciated all that. 

 

He was a darn good friend, and someone who offered sound advice lightly; respectfully and sometimes quite firmly. I suppose I just look back on all those conversations with gratitude and affection. Again, it wasn't a privileged or perfect life, but he had so much sense and he had made peace with the world and his world. The sense of his passing was also a degree of lightness.

In the case of Deity there is a sense of heaviness about the passing; that it should never have been this way. I am struck with this sense of weight about it at the same time as a sense of release; for him and for me. For whatever reasons, this world was too weighty for him and as I think about it now perhaps no one that finds the days so heavy should be asked to endure beyond a certain point.

To be clear, he had a sense of silliness that was light and breezy, but the darkness was never terribly far away. He just couldn't get out of its clutches. It wasn't like Churchill's 'black dog' at all; not depression. It was the difficulty that ensued when carrying the wrongs of the world; when searching for relief not easily found.

It has a sense for me of how I felt when my father in law died. There had been so much passion; so much angst, drama, anger, intensity; conflict; resolve, commitment, that on passing, the world did seem lighter for the passing; the warrior at rest; the battle over.

When we lose someone who has made up our reality, it's a new reality for us. Everything looks a little different. There's a gap and we have to decide what to do with that gap.  It's an opportunity to look out at the world with fresh eyes. We need quiet time to process the passing at the same time as we need to engage with this new life of ours.

It's a strange phenomena for me right now. As much as I know with absolutely certainty that Deity is gone and  will not be returning in that form again, I do feel him around me and I sort of want him to be proud should it be that particular cloud above my head from which he is peeking down.

Do you ever catch yourself walking down a street and looking out with a sudden understanding that what you see isn't actually 'real? I am not at all sure that here we are on Earth and there are the dead, somewhere else. Souls linger about, at least some of them; maybe those we want to linger about.

Maybe that lingering we sense might also be called the love that remains in the heart. As a Buddhist might say, rupture becomes rapture.

Addiction

 At the (Zoom) memorial service for D they referred to his addiction a number of times. I had personally known about the addiction for over four years and attempted in any possible way to assist him.

To that end I read a lot about addiction. I must have surely written about addiction here, although I see I have no 'addiction' tag.

In the past year I needed to talk about the situation with someone and my youngest son, living with us and being a particularly emotionally intelligent human being, would talk with me about addiction. This was important for him to do so too because as a young man he had come into contact with some troubled souls himself.

He had also been subject to a vicious verbal attack by a troubled young woman and for some time had a trauma response to those incidents and the false rumors she spread. 

We talked again this morning around the sense that the addiction can't be healed until the person shows some self-compassion. One thing I distinctly recall Tara Brach say about addiction was that she never saw someone heal who wasn't compassionate towards themselves. 

I would say this to D but I am not sure it registered. I think he had given himself some lofty goals to achieve in life and when he fell short of those standards, he blamed himself, along with others who rightfully deserved to take some blame.

From our discussion this morning I recall J saying something like 'it's about achieving balance' and I think balance was a tough thing for D. He went hard at life, at his goals, to the point of exhaustion, never resting on his laurels.

One day, he had achieved something pleasing, probably more funding for his not-for-profit and I remarked that was great news. But, no, it wasn't near enough, he said. I suggested to him, 'celebrate the wins. Celebrate the moments of your life'.

However, as one speaker noted at the memorial service, the song that came to mind was Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'. D did it his way and although I know, and for sure, that D appreciated my efforts, it didn't make a mark on the fact that he would always do everything his way.

I haven't kept chats or emails, and I did that with purpose. So, I have only my memories of what he said, or shared.

It's such a funny little anecdote but one that endures. He was holed up in a hotel in an extremely bad way after a shock that would destroy most people. He simply wasn't able to function and I got a bit bossy to try to get him to move.

"Where is that paper? You need to find it. You need to read it out to me."

"I am looking for it." 

There was some agitation in the voice but only slightly.

And then, as if an aside in a Shakespearean play, "She is so nosey."

I laughed out loud. In this desperate moment, he had made me laugh. Classic D.

At the memorial service the sentiment and some peoples' words were summed up in the notion that 'the addiction was beyond any of us', which is true. But, it is only true in the sense that it was eventually true.

I agree with Gabor Mate that addiction begins with unmet needs in childhood. We need to feel unconditionally loved. Any hint that we have disappointed our parents is a very heavy load to carry through life. D felt that. I tried to put a different spin on it; that fathers often felt the need to toughen up a son because they needed to prepare them for what can be a very tough world here on Earth.

From both his parents, he needed unconditional love, consistently. That love would have grounded him; given him a faith in his own goodness. He felt he carried darkness and to some extent, he did. 

Along with the darkness he carried great light. As his wife said, he was full of contradictions, a very complex man indeed.

There is something I say to my prisoner correspondent each time he writes of an execution, something that, of course, is deeply troubling to him.

I say, 'Remember, we are all just walking each other home.' (credit to Ram Dass)

When I was in Sydney in September Olivia Newton-John died. I heard of her death via D who sent a very brief email. We had stopped chatting at this point. I was emotionally exhausted by June this year and suggested we just email for a while. He thought of it as a "disposal". I said, no, you dispose of ice-cream wrappers not VIPs on your friendship list.

Anyways, we exchanged emails about Olivia, an icon and secret love for him, and then I asked how he was doing. He was doing well, he said, a dream job, a new girl. (might have said that already in the past week). And, he said to please look after myself; that there would always be a tender place in his heart for me.

I sensed danger, a danger I have only just now tapped into. I sort of challenged him; wanted to know what it had all been about. I basically wanted to keep him talking. He knows me so well, knows that I will keep digging. He replied very briefly.

"I love you. I have loved you for a very long time."

Now the danger was sky high. It was all sounding near the end. But, he said he was great. It was so confusing.

Some stuff after that; my protective nature abounding; his continual message of different kinds that he could look after himself. Such bullshit. He must have been so unwell; maybe sensed he had limited time.

My eldest son went to school with Sam. They met in the fifth grade and he was one of the lads that made up a thick and rich group of friends. Sam wasn't able to wing school like the other boys; to play hard, do a bit of homework and still get good grades. In response to this, he didn't try much at all.

Eventually the school thought it was time to move on and another very good school picked him up for the final year of his schooling. When he overdosed, after being clean for a good period of time and probably not really meaning to die, I secretly felt the Headmaster was responsible for the end of his life. What they had done was to remove his support; remove him from those who loved him; given him confirmation that he had not met expectations.

His memorial service was attended by hundreds of people; desperately sad for he was only in his 20s. I hugged his mother after the service. Sam had spent many a weekend with us. She said this: The boys didn't know how much he looked up to them; wanted to be like them.

In some way, addiction comes down to the relationship with the Self. Does one measure up to the expectations one has created for oneself and that those special people in a person's life has for oneself too? Is one unconditionally loved? Certainly, all the boys adored him. Sam and D had an almost identical cheeky boyhood smile.

Kim Eng said something interesting in the past day. She suggested that there are no relationships but just relating to someone in the present moment. In this way, we could avoid all the pitfalls of relationships; the judgments, the expectations, the comparisons. It definitely sounds more kind.

States of Mind

Whilst we all experience a range of moods and emotional states, some people experience, almost randomly, a heightened state of arousal. If you happen to be with the person when this happens, it's discombobulating. You can't be sure exactly what they are saying or why they are saying it, because it isn't particularly related to what happened just before their state reared itself. Most importantly, the sense of anger or even rage seems so out of kilter for the moment. My husband is inclined to do this; to be relatively at ease and then to suddenly speak fast and intensely about a subject. 

Last evening we were cuddled up on the couch, perfectly content, when at the end of the episode of a Netflix series we had been watching, he began to talk fast and emotionally with many, many f-words sprinkled into his language. The character's predicament was the trigger, I believe.

Of course, I know him (though don't necessarily always understand him) well enough to keep quiet whilst this is going on. He's not looking for conversation, unless it happened to be the words, "Yes, you are right."

I'm no Mother Theresa and I make mistakes and when he made a comment that seemed, to me, perfectly ridiculous and simply not true, I made a statement saying so. I didn't say he was wrong. I just stated what I felt I know to be true. This wasn't a good idea and escalated his sense of fury. I just left the room.

I've read enough about relationships to know that the ideal outcome is repair. Earlier in our lives, this happened a lot such that I said one day, "It's nice that you apologize, but I wish that we could avoid these situations altogether." Er, unfortunately that's not the way it went.

I believe that my husband sort of 'talks to himself' and by that I mean tries to do better in this regard. But, each brain is its own unique entity and it continues to be hard for him to stay on a even sort of kilter.

The next time we talked, this morning, he wants it to be as if nothing troubling happened. It's a new day. Not able to snuff things off quite that easily, I keep to myself.

For me, as much as I know it is part of his makeup to lose the plot with emotional hyperbole, I hate it. I try valiantly to not think about it, but I just do. On the nights when I can get through the night asleep after such a rant, I count as a great blessing. The norm is for me to wake up after a few hours or sleep.

I remember PP (the psychologist I saw a few years ago for a few sessions) say to me, "Look, people argue over spilt sugar", as if it was somehow my fault that I don't want these emotional tirades in my late evening repertoire. Hmm, maybe an insight into his own marriage.

I mention all this as a way into explaining my remedy...

There are different ways to meditate for different people and in different circumstances. When my interoception is high; that is to say when I am aware of my distressed emotional state and struggle to take my mind elsewhere, such as my external environment, the last thing I need is to focus on my third eye. Breathing exercises can be good, longer exhales than inhales, because that is calming at almost any time, but there is no way focusing more on what's going on inside me is a good idea.

If I am just awake in the middle of the night because something is vaguely on my mind, but not intensely so, Steven Snyder's 'Absolute Peace Meditation' does the trick. He takes you to a vast blackness, so black and so deep there are no edges. He then talks about the qualities there and the first one is peace. Everything that peaces touches become peaceful. And, so it goes. Blissful.

However, if I am stewing (I have a strong sense of justice and won't take the blame for things I didn't do) that's when I go to a Sound Meditation where it is a whole lots of disjoint sounds that mess with my  mind and simply will not allow me to think, at all.

When Deity and I got to know one another he did a bit of a research project on me and discovered - we both discovered - that I love to have an empty mind. He used to send binaural beats amongst other scripts.

Same goes for the people at the Ayurveda Retreat who quickly established that bliss for me was having someone pour a substance from above my head onto my third eye and then stroke it away. In fact, two women sat on either side of me doing this wiping away whilst I lay there like a person on a surgical bed with my veins full of anesthesia.

I mentioned it to the chiropractor last week and he said, 'That's a method for torture!' Well, not for me.

Earlier last evening I did a slow flow yoga class. The teacher is very gentle, has a gorgeous, soft voice and the class is as slow as a class can be. I said to her afterwards, "You are amazing. That hour always seems to me like 10 minutes."

I think one has to be aware of how one takes in information. I am a kinesthetic thinker. This was established when a meditation teacher asked us to listen to a script and raise our hands if we saw ourselves, heard ourselves or were there as ourselves. I was in the third category.

Hence, to move slowly in a meditative way is ideal for me. To breathe and move slowly in this way is to experience bliss, as opposed to moving fast, which also closes down the mind but in a more taxed way. (An example of this would be a challenging hike where the brain closes off but so too does common sense. I completely forget to drink water.)

I am very naturally drawn to experiences of deep peace (and a sense of connection), but it's more than that. I had to focus on them for my own well being under the circumstances in which I found myself.

Grief

 Grief, as we now know has various stages, not necessarily linear. When I first heard the news D had died, there was no 'I can't believe it' stage for me. I think that came a day or two later, when I wrote those words to his sister, 'I still can't quite believe it.' No, immediately, I knew it was absolutely true. I was gutted; quietly emotional; reduced to a flood of tears.

Of course, like so many other thousands of people who are or have been in grief, I played the 'if only' game with myself. If only I had been in touch on chat in the last few months; if only I had been more persistent, more loving. I finally realized that I don't have and never did have that sort of control. This sort of thinking and feeling is like the bargaining stage.

There was a bit of anger in the mix. Why couldn't he have taken better care of himself? I had tried in any number of ways to achieve that goal. Grief has a component of desire for something to happen, so I wasn't without some desire, but protected from that physical expectation that usually associates grief.

What I didn't have to contend with, as his partner now has to do, is the expectation that he would walk through the door sometime soon. I only had to contend with the fact that he would never answer my final email to him; that our chats were now over forever.

Depression is another stage of grief and I suppose my waking at odd times in the night is associated with that stage. I think it's all part of the acceptance stage and trying to make sense of these things that happen. In the right circumstances he had another fifty years to live, to love, and to achieve more great things for the communities he had served to date.

Although it hasn't been a long time since his death, I have in large part accepted what happened. I think I had some time to prepare for this knowing what I knew for some time. I think, and I am trying to pry open the door of my subconscious here, it is why I didn't communicate so often in these past few months; I expected it and found it too painful to watch too closely. I wanted to believe the song I had been sung; that all was well and I could do that better with some distance.

So, my grieving is also about giving myself some self-compassion. I tried valiantly to protect and I failed. But, I did try and I did care. I find myself with profound compassion for those professional people who work with people who have experienced terrible things.

A final stage of grief has been added to the model of the five stages of grief and that is meaning. There is no meaning in his death but there was great meaning in his life. He loved and was loved by a great many people. He was frustrating at times, bloody stubborn in moments, but he was a very lovable character who vehemently worked to make the world a better place. His time on this Earth had great meaning for many, many people, including me.

He was someone who was tolerant of difference and deeply caring of people; particularly those underprivileged. I once told him it seemed he was trying to carry the weight of the world and maybe he needed to take a rest. No, no, he said, there was too much work to do. The world had to be made a better place.

As his mother wrote, he was overcome by beautiful women. It wasn't easy for him to see the entirety of a woman because he was besotted with love; not necessarily romantic love, but the deep caring a compassionate woman could provide. Mostly, I think he felt safe with a caring woman of any age.

We both appreciated Ricky Gervais's 'After Life' and discussed it one day this year in quite a lot of detail. He wrote to me, 'Do you know the female character that sits with him (Tony) in the graveyard?' Yes, I did. 'She reminds me of you.' 'Oh?', I replied, though I had a fair idea what he was meaning. 'She listens to him and she cares about him. But she calls him on his bullshit too.'

Of course, I smiled. It meant a lot to me. My more strident comments didn't appear to be well received and I didn't make them often,but I carried on when I felt the need. This was his acknowledgment of them as a form of my care and it felt good to be seen in that way.

All he ever really wanted was peace. When I would ask him what he wanted, and I must have asked a half dozen times over the years, it was always the same; just the one word, 'peace'.

May his ashes fertilize the landscape where he grew up. May he find the peace he so richly deserves

Deity

 In the kinky world he was Deity, maybe Mr D. For me, for many years, he was just D.

His words, many years ago, those written on his blog, struck a chord.

I wrote first. He'd talked about a sore leg, as I recall, maybe the dog too, and something made me reach me out and ask if he was okay?

Thus began an email and text exchange, and a sometimes complicated, but always rich and meaningful friendship.

Considerably younger than me, I sometimes 'mothered' him, or 'sistered' him, something he never appreciated but usually tolerated.

In latter times, when my worry about him would have me reaching out to his sister, he was angry with me. He could take care of himself, he said.

He was always sensitive; prone to feel the angst of the world so deeply. He would dive into the world of orchestral music for relief; meditated.

When he experienced grief a few years ago, he struggled to know what to do with it.

My concern would be relieved by a new burst of energy on his part and like this, it would go.

Worry. Relief. Worry. Relief.

It seemed a few months ago like his life was on track. We exchanged notes and he had a dream job, he said and was dating a "gorgeous" girl.

However, in the past few days I couldn't stop worrying about him, and last night I sent a note, please just write back and let me know how you are doing. 

How mysterious it all is. I experienced a stillness after I sent that note that was heavenly in nature. 

Peace.

I hoped to wake to a note from him but instead I had been sent an email from his sister with a link to his memorial service.

He was a complicated man, not easily understood and sometimes perplexing.

But he was a good man, wanted good things for the world and those he cared about.

He loved well. He had an extra good heart.

 Oh my goodness, but I will miss him.

Healing

When experiences occur earlier in life and are not felt and processed, they sit there in the subconscious (an untreated, unhealed wound) until something or someone triggers them. At this point, the person who has experienced and carries a wound from the past has a reaction. It may even be that they are, in a sense, transported back to the event or events of the past. 

Personally, I have had a few experiences with my husband where I felt that he didn't know that it was me with him. I felt that he was talking to someone else; talking to someone who had hurt him long ago. This was a very disturbing situation and I didn't feel I knew what to do. I stayed completely quiet and after the eruption, so did he.

In general, when my husband is triggered by something I have said, I tend to stop talking. This is a technique I decided to use after I realized that it didn't matter what I said, my words were not going to help the situation.

Aware of the trauma that sits in my husband's subconscious, wholly untreated, I have learned to take it into account.

Recently, a member of the extended family to which one of our children married into, was strident, outspoken and inappropriate with my husband when the subject veered onto politics. This was at a children's birthday party and my husband chose to close the conversation down, which the woman in question did not want to do. She was in for the kill and angry he wouldn't fight.

 My husband had no way of knowing, and I didn't know either, that the young couple were supporters of Trump and his politics right across the board. They don't believe the Earth is warming, for example.

Recognizing the quicksand he had landed into (and I have since raised it with a senior member of the family who admitted it is a difficulty being carried in their family), he made the fastest exit he could. But, it was too late. The woman in question, and now her husband, don't engage with my husband at family celebrations.

This is, of course, upsetting. After listening to my husband again recently explain to me what happened, I suggested that he simply engage one or both of them in a totally safe conversation - the weather, the children, football (we support the same team so that's safe, right?).

But, due to this trauma that sits in his subconscious, maybe him feeling that he made a mistake in some way, my making a suggestion wasn't a good idea. I know this but sometimes I see growth and healing in him that suggests we can go a little deeper in our relationship and that I can talk authentically.

It can be useful to make a note of what happens and what is said in these situations between us. In the past, I have been too blindsided by the verbal attack to remember (or even take in) what is said. The value of writing it down is to evaluate how the situation ensued and what the trigger might have been. It may never be helpful to him if we can't discuss it, but it is helpful to me to understand where the trauma sits.

It went like this in a broad brush way:

- He explained the initial event in detail.

- I acknowledged what happened but reminded him this was in the past, couldn't be undone, but maybe engaging one or both of them in a simple, harmless conversation might break the ice.

- He said to me, at least I remember distinctly these particular words, "Don't make things up?"

- I repeated the words 'Don't make things up' in an effort for him to see where his mind had gone - blaming me.

-He then said, 'I don't need your advice' and said between one to two minutes more of which I don't remember anything.

I stayed silent. After he was silent I picked up my phone to check the weather (a signal from me that I was going to start my day) and he got out of bed.

Event over.

I think a great many people understand now that marriage can be about a relatively safe arena in which trauma from the past is played out. I  know that I am married to a man whose soul/heart/Spirit (whatever you want to call it) is good and pure, but who has suffered trauma that he can't necessarily heal without help, which he refuses to access.

At the same time, I also know that I carry trauma from my past, emotional needs unmet. Thankfully, I have a brother and we are each other's witness. Just talking truthfully, whilst keeping it in context of two parents who were doing their best and were also carrying trauma, has helped us both a great deal.

I do also need to acknowledge that my trauma is not entirely in the past. I continue to experience difficulties living with someone who is carrying trauma. It's a juggling act trying to be my authentic self at the same time as I do my best to have my own needs met and to keep myself emotionally safe.

I do not run from the truth. I know that I am capable of being hurt and I know that I am strong. I have much to be grateful for at the same time as I have had much to endure.

I could have run away many times. I could have ended it and found refuge in aloneness; maybe in the arms of a man who felt entirely safe. I would be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind.

But, even in the darkest of moments, it's the Buddha's words that I hear. They keep me in the game.

'Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.'

Protector

 It was Friday night. I remember specifically because it was our Australian Football Grand Final the next day. 

I had a nightmare. 

With the benefit of hindsight I can see what happened. I had read recently that people pleasers (like me) were generally attached to some form of guilt.

Guilt!? That surprised me. I pondered. What did I have to be guilty about? What kind of guilt would lead me to a life of wanting to please people?

It's so interesting and mysterious how the mind works. My mind had dreamed up a scenario where all would be revealed.

In this terrible dream I found my father crouched by his car parked on the street. He told me that there were criminals looking to kill him and I said to him that we couldn't stay where we were. He was too exposed and we needed to find shelter.

Right across the road was an apartment, several apartments that he owned and rented out. Since he had the key I said we needed to go into one of them and hope the tenants weren't home. They were home and so we made an excuse that we were checking something. 

We couldn't stay there, eventually had to leave. My father was ahead of me just enough that when I turned around to say goodbye to the tenants he was already out on the street and making his way to the car.

Incidentally, my dream had used a whole lot of truths. My father did go to collect rent from tenants in his earlier life. And he did tend to skip ahead across roads, quite proud of his ability to speedily get out of the way of a moving car or perhaps an incident.

As soon as I saw him on the other side of the road I realized his vulnerability and I ran towards him. But it was too late. The bad guys had been hiding around the car, threw a sheet over him and pulled him into the mob. In spite of my efforts to get to him I didn't stand a chance and he was gone from me; out of my life.

In my efforts to get to him and save him, I had to wrestle with one of them; a strong, well built man painted up like a clown. (There's context from his life around that too.) He had me horizontally on the floor although we were moving quite fast, as if on an electric cord. I was slapping him in the face, trying to get him off me but he was far too strong and simply laughed in my face.

I became aware of police officers, American police officers standing in a huddle, either oblivious or disinterested in what was going on right before their eyes. I tried to scream but no words or even sounds came out. 

It was at this point that my husband very gently shook me, 'cindi, cindi, you are having a bad dream'.

I couldn't shake the dream in that I was haunted by it but sort of awake now and I lay there quietly, weeping.

Eventually I got up to pee and then went back to bed and enveloped myself in my husband's arms, told him about the dream and I remember I said that all my life I tried to protect my father in a myriad of ways.

I am not sure quite when but some time soon thereafter, after a little more sleep, I had an epiphany.

This was grief; 31 year old grief that hadn't found expression before.

My father was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor when I was living in the USA and bringing up my young family. His diagnosis had been held back from me until they could hold it back no more. 

To my mind, though I could never have expressed this before, I wasn't given the opportunity to protect him; to save him, as I would my mother a few years later. And this had played on my mind all that time without my having consciousness of it. 

(Well, not quite. I have many times replayed the feelings of being told and being upset; of calling the surgeon; of coming home to see him; of speaking to him for the last time on the telephone when he was in the hospice; of deeply regretting that no-one was with him when he died.)

Even more poignantly, I came to understand that under the sadness I was feeling after the dream, I felt something else - a fierce love for him. And that was a very good thing; to get in touch with that feeling, elusive to me for many, many years.

Over the years, I have come to understand that rather negative titles can be directed towards me, quite legitimately; people pleaser, codependent; caretaker.

But what if we could look at it another way?

Today, I did look at it another way.

I'm a protector. A fierce protector of those I love. 

Today, I am proud of myself for that.

The passing of the Queen

 Although we knew the Queen was clearly very unwell, her death seemed to be sudden. When I went to bed, I noted that the family were gathering to be with her and that the end of her life was approaching. Maybe at 4 am I woke and checked only to see the article renew and to disclose that the Queen had died.

It's my intention to note my feelings, as part of an overall plan to simply be aware of my internal experience, rather than gloss over it. So, I noted the sadness and sat with it. Very quickly I began to softly weep and eventually I got up and washed my face and blew my nose before I settled back to sleep.

I think seeing her so frail 48 hours ago, still working, still caring, still trying to do her best, and then passing away from this world last night really exposed my heart; certainly not a perfect human, a thing that doesn't exist, but someone who tried and never stopped trying.

As it is for so many thousands of people, the Queen has been a constant in my life. My grandmother was very keen on her and took me to stand amongst the crowds when she came to Melbourne in 1963, and of course magazines had her on the cover regularly throughout my life.

So many families have their share of conflict, and the Queen's family was no exception, and yet there was something particularly poignant about a daughter-in-law creating the most awful rift in the Queen's family at the end of her life. As people who put their duty to country first, all those podcasts and interviews airing dirty laundry, expressing only one side of the discord,  must have felt so ugly and alienating.

I noted too that I kept my sadness this day to myself; came here to express it rather to a person. I noted it as odd that I did that and looked up a book that I use often to see what it said. People who 'caretake' someone do this; keep their emotions to themselves because those who they 'look after' don't like emotional displays. They are the ones who do emotional displays and caretakers are the ones who stay calm.

Still, I am not made of stone but rather a vast cacophony of emotions many of which are experienced privately. This is the training.

As I lay in bed in the middle of the night absorbing the Queen's death, not just as a sense of sadness in my mind but in a somatic way, as a bodily experience, I came across this sense that nothing else truly survives but love. We can feel it, not that hard to do for most of us, but can we be love?

I believe with all my heart that the vast majority of us are doing the best we can - that there are wounds that prevent us quite often from being our best - but given the wounds, doing the best we can.

It's that thought, that acknowledgment of the human experience, that allows the heart to open deeper and tap into an unconditional love - not expecting more of someone than they are capable of being, but loving them anyway.

I wonder, perhaps if only momentarily, the Queen's passing may tenderize our hearts.

Validation

 In small or large ways, we have all experienced trauma. Some traumatic experiences seem to settle in the body, take residence in there and won't shift. It's as if they lodge. This doesn't necessarily effect every minute of the day or even every day. Some days are fine. Some days aren't so fine.

I think, when we have an issue, we look for the solution, as if there is a solution; some miracle cure that will exterminate the trauma.

In my experience, it doesn't work like that but rather there  has to be a fairly consistent approach to working with the trauma; small but consistent baby steps; without some sort of expectation that one day you will wake up and it will all be gone for good.

I think acknowledging yourself as a person living with trauma is a good start on the road to recovery; to feeling better. I don't say this lightly or flippantly. It's no small thing, for me anyway, to be able to write these words.

I find myself here sitting at my laptop writing into my online journal, aware that unless I say something deeply truthful there is no use writing here at all. The truth is that I feel quite emotional saying this, that I am someone that lives with a sense of trauma. It was probably perfectly evident to you the reader for years, but even so, it's quite the revelation for me.

If I can be helpful to the reader here, perhaps I can offer something that has helped me quite a bit lately. I take my hands to my chest, one hand crossed over the other and I hold them there. I close my eyes and I am more aware of the feelings of this sensation. If you try it now you may well become aware of a deep quiet not just inside yourself but outside of yourself too, like a protective shell. There is something deeply affirming about this action.

You might say quietly to yourself, even out loud, "You're okay." It might not feel right, right away, but maybe you can add another time, "I approve of you." or "You're a good person."

Sometimes in life, when we aren't given something we very much wanted as a child, there's a sense that even if someone were to give it to us, we allow it, perversely, to slide off us like jelly. We just don't let it land.

I am suggesting that maybe you, and maybe I do receive validation at times but maybe the validation we need is our own validation. Maybe the love we need most is to love ourselves.

So, maybe when you cross your hands over each other and hold them on your chest (I personally do this high on the chest close to the collarbones) you might say to yourself, "I love you". See how this feels.

I don't offer this as a remedy for the trauma. If the trauma lodged, it may not be ready to depart so easily. And yet, it's quite something to note after offering oneself this little act of kindness repeatedly that acceptance softens the trauma.

It's almost as if, when one stops being 'brave' and denying the trauma; when one acknowledges and offers compassion to the being that has experienced trauma, the trauma settles down. There is a quiet whisper...'finally, you've welcomed me'.

Worthy

It's interesting to maintain a dialog with oneself, and I think very beneficial to a person. You find yourself noting changes in mood, patterns of thought, feelings and triggers.

I think the most obvious trigger for me is anger. If I become angry I am curious about that. Since it's an experience I loathe, I want to know what instigated that feeling in my body. The answer is that I was triggered - that the thing that was said or done or seen or experienced somehow stepped on a trigger point - a wound - that still sits there deep inside and out of sight.

To put a name to this trigger point, it would be 'unworthiness'. It could be a feeling that I am unworthy of love, or unworthy of attention, or affection, or care.

It's simply not the case that any old person could touch this trigger point. I am not expecting care, or affection from someone I meet casually in the street. Although, I offer that when someone in the street is caring that's a particularly lovely experience.

So, the experience of a difficult emotion such as anger comes hand in hand with expectation, I think. There's an expectation that a few chosen people in your life will take the time and make the effort to provide a sense of attention, affection, care and love.

It's this expectation, or perhaps hope, that one will be cared for by another person that can make some romantic liaisons so sticky. If things started out so beautifully, and then drift into only random moments of care, or words of affection, the memories of the beautiful experiences can lodge into the brain and body and not allow someone to see that the landscape has changed for the good. 

Even then, the body does throw up signals that all is not as it should be - that these are painful experiences that are remarkably like those already experienced in one's youth. Unworthy of love. Unworthy of care. Unworthy of affection. Unworthy of attention.

I used to think that I should fight against these triggers - be the better person, you know? I used to think that if I tried hard enough those triggers would evaporate.

But, I found a thought coming up lately...that maybe those triggers, the anger, was there for a reason, alerting me to the fact that whatever had brought up that trigger need not be tolerated; that the emotion need not be vanquished. Maybe there were just some experiences that should be sidestepped.

So, as an experiment, I tried this side stepping of a situation that led to trigger points for me; a lot of unworthiness; a lot of wishing it was different; a lot of longing involved for something that was out of range. In summary, I took a reality check of what I could control and what I could not control, and I decided to control that which I could - to avoid the triggers.

The result has been, so far anyway, a greater sense of quiet in the body and in the mind, which I like very much.

And...an acknowledgement lodged deep in my mind...that, aside from these trigger points from childhood, there isn't really anything wrong with me at all. 

I am worthy. 

I'm just going to sit and let that thought soak in.

Thoughts on the Depp/Heard case

 Like millions of other people, I got swept up in the Depp:Heard legal case where Depp sued Heard for defamation in an newspaper article she co-wrote saying that she was a victim of domestic abuse. I very much wanted to believe her. Even now, I don't know and I don't think the court case made especially clear what actually took place in their relationship.

For sure, they said mean and ugly things to each other. For sure, they both found the union to be sufficiently disturbing that, ultimately, there was no alternative but to split.

Whether he caused those bruises on her face, kicked her, slapped her in the face over and over, (as a witness testified), I don't know. 

What we can know is that the jury and the world, generally speaking, was of the opinion, that none of these things happened, because if even one of those things happened on any given day, the jury was obliged to find for Heard. 

If she suffered not physically but emotionally, then that too would count as an acknowledgement of Heard's vindication for writing the article. The jury determined that she was not emotionally abused.

Or, maybe the jury felt that they were both emotionally abused by one another and so it sort of amounted to a cancellation of abuse.

There was very troubling testimony and had I been on the jury, I would have wanted to explore that fully. A young man who became close to Johnny testified that right after their wedding ceremony he made a statement that went something like, 'Now I can legally knock her around.' I found that chilling.

I also would have wanted to explore the fact that victims of domestic abuse often want to protect their abuser and that this was in line with Heard not wanting to talk to the police after they were called, and I think they were called after a friend heard a very troubling encounter between Depp and Heard on the telephone. (I didn't see the whole trial so that may not be entirely accurate)

My point is that there was evidence that domestic abuse of one kind or another appears to have taken place and has been corroborated by other people. Maybe the jury thought these people were lying too.

It's strange, because I am of the understanding that it is a crime to give false testimony and it seems odd that so many people who gave testimony have been accused of lying on both sides. It throws into  question the judicial system and the willingness of people to lie.

I was a young woman in the days of the trial of Lindy Chamberlain who woke one night whilst on a family camping trip in the Northern Territory of Australia to find her baby gone. It was a similar situation to the Depp:Heard case from the point of view that the judicial system and people at large got involved, with nearly everyone having an opinion one way or the other. (You may recall that Streep played Lindy.) Most people, and the courts, came down on the side that Lindy must have killed her baby.

I found that proposition absolutely ludicrous from the moment I heard about it. I held onto that position for years until that joyous day when baby Azaria's jacket was found, corroborating the fact that a dingo had taken her baby.

In the meantime, Lindy's life was destroyed. The (innocent) woman was in jail when she had her second baby. Can you imagine how devastating it could be for a human who loved her baby dearly to be accused and convicted of killing her? A witch hunt, indeed.

So, I wanted to believe Amber. If those awful things happened, and she made it out of there in one whole piece, then I wanted to support that strength.

But, things niggled me. For one, I would never write a public article that would destroy the life of the man I proclaim to still love. She supported him, she says, by not wanting to talk to the police, and yet she wrote the article. There's a problem there.

The 'malicious intent' that the jury believed in was a surprise. Really? She maliciously intended to hurt him? Well, yes, thinking more on this, I suppose she did write it with either the intent to inflict harm on him or else she was naive as to the repercussions of the article. 

One article I read shed some light on the power dynamic of the couple. Sure, Depp was richer and more famous, but Depp came across as a codependent who couldn't navigate such deep (narcissistic) waters.

Who knows?

I do know that this trial in some way struck a cord with the world at large much like the Chamberlain tragedy which took place long before social media was a thing.

When a relationship begins wonderfully; when a person is provided with much affection that they so sorely need, and then things start to become a bit emotionally abusive - intermittent validation/affection; tactics that confuse the other person but keep them enmeshed in a relationship that is troubling - it's hard for the brain to figure out what has happened. Wasn't it once a great relationship? Wasn't he or she once so loving? Maybe, if he or she tries hard enough, they can get back to that?

I don't know what happened in that relationship exactly and I am not sure if the participants fully understand the dynamic themselves. To be sure, they were both right to go their separate ways.  Unfortunately, that was not done quietly.

Honesty

 It occurred to me earlier today that we are almost forced in life to be actors in a play. There is the student hat and the teacher hat, the therapist hat and the client hat; one person being in a hierarchy higher than the other. I noted twice earlier today mention of seeking wisdom, from one person further along the path of life or of growth than the other. It's all normal; all good.

But, what happens when we are forced to hold in thoughts just because the other doesn't want to hear them; or gets mad about hearing them?

It's all done for best practice a lot of the time - we don't want to offend or to pry or to overstep the mark. So, we keep our thoughts to ourselves.

Our thoughts, of course, aren't necessarily right or wrong. They are just thoughts and some aren't worthy of being shared. 

Some thoughts need to be corrected; modified; adapted. We are just learning. I think we try on thoughts to learn; to learn what is in our head.

Some people are like a wack a mole game; remember that? You say something and they wack you down without a thought. If you are lucky , they politely explain that that's a tender subject and they are a bit precious about it right now. Of course, you back off immediately.

I have spent a lifetime holding onto the vast number of my thoughts. You probably have too. We have thousands of thoughts every day and we couldn't express them all if we tried.

The problem for me is that my internal definition of intimacy is that I would be able to express nearly all my thoughts. I am not necessarily referring to a sexual relationship but rather to a relationship where we are safe enough with one another to share practically any thought.

Sometimes in my marriage we do share a thought where it gets close to the bone - could, in another moment, cause some upset - but it's said and shared and we respectfully register an intimacy of the mind and heart. We've tread close to a landmine and neither of us blew up.

We are not always so lucky.

So, here I sit with a trillion thoughts that I have held onto; unshared thoughts.

At times, I come into contact with people who work in odd spaces - past lives, for example. They say that that's my story, my lives - my keeping my thoughts to myself. If it was history, some period of time even more gender defined than now, chances are I had no choice.

I kept a lot of thoughts away from my parents too, especially my mother. 

As soon as you know it is not safe to share your thoughts, well, naturally enough, you safeguard them in a spot that is safe - deep inside.

I shared with someone recently that I sometimes write down my thoughts. I don't read them back. I tear them up and throw them away.

Why? Because, they aren't  sometimes that nice and not meant for the consumption of others. I might be registering anger; contempt; frustration. I could sit in meditation and let them pass through. That would be fine. But sometimes, writing them down very fast and furiously is very freeing.

Once upon a time, if I had these not nice feelings about my husband, on occasion I expressed them. It seemed honest. And, it seemed fair because it was his behaviour that led to those thoughts.

But I came to see that he saw them for what they were: passing through. It didn't alter him or make him do something at all. He dances to his own drum whether I speak my truth or not. So, often I don't bother. I don't need the whole 'fight or flight' circumstance for my body that would ensue.

The man in prison that I write to...I came to see that he is happy to speak his truth and I am a safe place (as safe as you can be knowing someone probably reads all our letters). That's a great honour to me; to be able to be that person for him.

When death might come knocking on your door by way of a court ruling, it really does focus the mind. There's so much less allowing one part of the mind to cover over another part of the mind, so that so many thoughts can't be thought, felt, shared, or heard. I love the honesty of the exchange.

I noticed in the last letter I wrote which I am about to walk up to the Post Office that I responded to his thoughts and at the last moment noted that all was well on my end. I can't imagine anyone really buys such a broad statement but in comparison, of course, of course I am fine. My job is to be fine: to be the vessel in which he pours his thoughts. At least, that's the way I see it.

Here on the blog? Well, I do monitor myself, yes, it's true. You know I have been at times that person who said of someone on the street, 'She would be so much prettier if she were a little thinner.' It's a true thought but one that my family felt I shouldn't say. So, I stopped sharing those thoughts.

In the Johnny Depp trial it was claimed that certain tests can pick up when someone is adjusting answers to make themselves look good. I wouldn't be surprised. Isn't that what we do on a daily basis ourselves?

Personally speaking, I find, more and more, complete honesty so refreshing. Maybe one day, it will be a thing.

Self Help

 I have mentioned a couple of times in the past that I attended a 14 day Ayurveda retreat a couple of years ago. I loved it and did what they told me to do for the period of time I was there. I felt great! 

When I came home the effects lasted for a period, much like a good holiday has a lasting effect for a few days or weeks. But, it wears off. Life takes over.

When I began to see a chiropractor a month ago, based on a glowing recommendation, I noticed the charts around the wall and it didn't take much effort to connect the beliefs of a chiropractor with the beliefs of Ayurveda.

It was this experience that led me back to the notes given to me on discharge. I am Vata Kapha in terms of the energy systems, with a Vata imbalance. This could be described in many ways but to use my own words, I tend to be on the go, a bit scattered in my approach at times, in my head. I am capable of being grounded, spiritual, able to be still (that's the kapha in me) but there's this tendency to have an imbalance of too much Vata.

In Ayurveda terms much of this imbalance can be sorted out through food choices. I recall they were a bit dismayed at my tendency to eat salad at lunch. This was all cold food (adding to vata). I think I ignored/rejected their warnings because in the West eating salads is seen as such a good thing that I felt they had to be wrong about this. Besides, I love salad.

I now know, and in my defense they didn't explain much at the Retreat but rather just told you what to do, that much better choices for someone with a Vata balance is the nourishing choices of soups, dhals, curries, soft fruits like berries. Eating three meals a day is also encouraged along with warm drinks like tea. I've reverted to this way of eating and I have to agree with them that I do feel better nourished and thus more grounded.

The chiropractor, after taking x rays and photos and feeling all around my body, prescribed at least half an hour walking a day - am loving that. When I come home I do my exercises and after a month he took more photos and said I had made a great deal of improvement and now had upper strength to work on.

Living the day in alignment with the sun and the moon is considered the right way to live and in one week I have had six great nights of sleep and one night where movement and noise awoke me in the middle of night. There was that Vata imbalance showing up...lots of active thought that I had to calm down with oceanic breath to get back to sleep.

It's taken quite some time but what I have come to see is that it is vital that I go my own way in terms of a daily practice. I am meant to rise before 6 am, before the sun, but I am definitely not close to that yet. Still, I rise earlier than usual and go walking. I get to bed earlier too but there is still improvement to be made. I am meant to be in bed by 10 pm and I want to get there because it is the right thing for me.

All this, by the way, is in line too with the self-love notion of daily caring for oneself. When one has nourishing foods, meditates, does some yoga, walks, self massages, this is a way of providing oneself with self care; love.

I think the stars aligned somehow with all this self care. I received an email alerting me to a volunteer position (and maybe funding to pay later) with a woman whose organization is providing care to people with a new cancer diagnosis, getting them  meditating, and I instantly sent an offer for my time. This really excites me.

I can't deny that I would have loved a marriage where my husband and I were aligned: awoke together, for example. But, he insists on being up very, very late and I can't do that and nor is it right for me. So, I have reconciled myself to doing what works best for me and seeing the benefits.

At the Retreat it was groundhog day. Every day was the same. I reveled in that. I reveled in living my life in a villa on my own, dancing to the beat of my own drum; receiving the touch I so needed, every day for 14 days. Yet, I also need variety. 

I think that's where the Vata Kapha comes into it. I need to be grounded in daily practices but not so grounded that there is inertness. I need the daily practice of walking and yoga; achievement for the day of one sort or another, but not tiring myself to exhaustion. It's feeling into the body and getting the cues of what the body needs.

One final thought: My chiropractor is a committed, honorable, knowledgeable and experienced practitioner who talks a lot. I only have to ask a question and I get a whole lot of information about the human body in evolutionary terms. Remember we used to be animals and then became upstanding humans? Well, there is research being done right now to try to figure it out but it seems we might be evolving back into animals. All this looking at screens, particularly phones is bending us forward and creating mayhem for our bodies down the track. Why not get outside and take a good look around you, the way people used to do? Your body will thank you.

No more 'trauma' study

For a couple of years now, I have been drawn to material - books, articles, podcasts and videos - about overcoming trauma. I wanted to know everything about the topic; what made for trauma, what trauma looked like and most importantly how to overcome trauma. 

This material is out there in abundance and I inhaled my share of it. I didn't want to leave any stone unturned. It felt to me that I had to keep reading and watching because what if the gem that I was searching for was forever lost in material left unseen and unread?

One day not so long ago, I noticed that I had no interest in reading any more of it. If an email had the word 'trauma' in it, I deleted it. I had lost all interest in the subject material. I remember once reading that if this day came, that was a very good thing.

This is not to say that I in any way turned away from the need for trauma recovery in the lives of many people. That's a journey many people must make.

It is to say that the good news is that there is an ending point for the journey of trauma healing.

When things happen quite suddenly as this happened to me, the wish is to go back and write down the recipe and then print it for all to have. 'Recipe for ending the need for any further trauma recovery'

Alas, I don't know why I reached this point, except to say that I got bored. It felt like the material was on repeat and that everything was saying the same thing, just another well meaning person giving the material their own unique flavor.

Maybe I just reached a point where I knew what I knew and I didn't need to know any more.

For what it is worth to you, I offer this:

- At some point I came to see that the narrative I had built around my life was a bit of a fabrication. I had a lot of unprocessed feelings to unearth and investigate.

- On investigation I came to see that the nurturing and care I needed as a child, I didn't get.

- The lack of nurture led me unconsciously to seek out nurturing as an adult.

- At the same time, as so many people in my situation do, I chose a partner in life who sought out success (like both my parents), which meant he wasn't nearly as available for nurturing experiences as I would have liked/needed.

- This situation led to suffering which led me to explore myself and to ask how I could help myself.

- Exploring my nature led to a consciousness that I hadn't really had a childhood and that my 'inner child' or younger self was stuck. I befriended the smaller part of me and this process started to make a shift in how I was feeling. In order words, I starting nurturing myself.

- I befriended myself through bodywork - yoga, especially yin yoga and restore yoga were especially beneficial, but so too were other modalities. Shaking is a great way to start the day!

- I acknowledged that my situation was as it was. My husband has no foreseeable plan to give up working hard at his desk. Regular holidays, now that that is possible, is a requirement. He is as he is.

 I think it was an understanding too that I must recover; must make my peace with the circumstances. My body was showing signs of distress such that I found myself at a chiropractor and week by week, I am getting strong again.

For some time there, maybe a year, it was very noisy in my head. It took a while to realize that I had a vicious internal critic who was blaming me for everything. Once I realized what was happening, and the craziness of accepting that blame, she completely settled. I think you have to talk back to internal critics.

Now, I see it all as I see the way the planet has come to this moment in time. It's not the doing of one person or three people but the unfolding of a long history that spans back generations. It's many, many decisions, each one leading to another decision, leading to this.

This makes acceptance entirely achievable.

Did I ever tell you about my psychiatrist acquaintance? We met in retreat and she told me she thought she must have murdered her little brother...until the child that was never acknowledged as once being in the family wrote to her and told her the story of his mother and what she had done. She closed the practice down. Since the mystery was solved she no longer needed to look for answers in the world of the brain. She wasn't the bad person she thought she was after all.

That's a bit how I feel. Why go on reading about trauma when you have followed the path to its logical end?

Now, I look at the world through different eyes. I made it. I am strong. My days are to enjoy.

-

Gratitude

 Until today, I was of the understanding that a gratitude practice involved taking a minute or two to think about a few things for the day, or maybe the week - a period of time - for which you were grateful. So, a person might think a little about it and come up with something like - I am grateful for the meal my wife cooked for me...I am grateful that I had my raincoat with me because it rained...I am grateful to have beautiful and kind hearted children...I am grateful to have lost no-one to COVID-19.

A person might be grateful for the little things and for the overarching picture of one's life, and anything in between. And that's not a bad thing. It's nice.

However, according to the science, it's not nearly as good as developing a script about gratitude that you can write, rehearse, embed in the mind, and bring up for a minute or two on a regular basis.

I'm writing this from memory, no notes, and it was a long podcast I was listening to, but here's the idea in a nutshell.

First, we sort out lives best when we have a narrative. We like to have a beginning, a middle and an end; protagonists and antagonists. We like stories. It's the same for gratitude. It's too broad and random of strokes for us to come up with a little list of things for which to be grateful. We need some structure around it and creating that structure is straightforward.

So, sit quietly with yourself and cast your mind to a time near or far when you felt gratitude for something that someone did for you.

Alternatively, or as a second story, think about a time when you did something for someone else and felt the receiving of their gratitude.

Now, write yourself a little script. It could be bullet points but get it down on paper, or go through the motions of the experience visually in your mind.

Here is an example:

In October 2016 I returned from New Zealand where I attended a 7 day retreat, mainly experienced in silence.

The next day my family celebrated by birthday at a lunch held at a restaurant they knew I loved.

When we returned home after lunch they gave me a gift. There was a card and inside the card were two air tickets to Bali for my husband and me.

I instantly began to weep. This bamboozled them until I managed to get out the words, "I am so lucky to have you."

The gratitude I felt was a whole body and mind experience and was expressed in tears. My heart welled with gratitude and spilled over. I felt loved; lucky; appreciated; heartfelt gratitude.

So, there's a little script that I can use; would probably take a minute to conjure and feel through.

Apparently, it's this kind of minute of gratitude, repeated a few times a week, at any time of the day, that releases a positive emotional state that can effect a human in many optimal ways. Should you feel space in and around your heart I think you can take that to mean you did it right.

Etiquette

 Someone referred to me recently as "cautious"; that is, neither introverted nor extroverted, but cautious. I had never thought of it that way, but the more I thought about it, I came to the following conclusion.

I enjoy people, as a general rule. And, I enjoy time alone. I need both.

I don't need people to give me energy, like a light bulb requires energy. At the same time, I don't need, and don't want, to have energy sucked from me, or carry the negative energies of other people.

There's a distinct difference here which I am trying to put into words, mostly for myself.

My prisoner penpal...he's in a very rough spot and I don't expect him to provide me with energy (although he sometimes does), or even curiosity about my life. My positive energy, together with a keen listening ear is what I give to him. The correspondence we share is meaningful to me and I would miss it were it to come to an end.

I am very open to providing a listening ear in any number of situations and again, it's a gift I willingly give.

At the same time, I am subject to the ups and downs of being human. No-one can get away from this, unless you are an enlightened soul. Maybe the Dalai Lama can get away with it.

My nature is to be calm and positive; to work with momentum to move forward in life. I have built resilience to adapt to circumstances as they have unfolded to date.

Having said all that, I shy away from being brought down. Since the comment was made about me being cautious, I became aware of the fact that if I determine that an interaction or being in the company of someone in particular will bring me down, I do my best to avoid the circumstance, most especially if it happens again and again.

Years ago, I bought a book about living gracefully. It's somewhere on the book shelf. The writer made the comment that sometimes she isn't feeling her best and that when that happens she consciously chooses to keep her own company, rather than inflicting her negative mindset on someone else. 

As I was writing here today I was aware of reading the comment at the time and thinking this a good strategy. 

It's one thing to be a good friend, or spouse, or mother of an adult child and to offer them your ear. Generally speaking, that's the right thing to do.

However, to expect someone else to take on your emotional life in the moment - your frustration, or anger, or insecurity - much as they might ask you to wear their coat since they are overheated, is asking too much, even of an empath, or someone willing to give more than they take.

It's such a shame that the etiquette books of yesteryear are out of vogue. They contained much wisdom.