Purpose

 Due to some hypnotic work of recent times, I have felt calm, in spite of the turbulence, both close and far. There's no doubt that the trances worked for me and I know this is very special work because I hear hypnotists on the Internet in various places like Spotify and it does nothing.

Even so, I do have my moments when my world can feel like it is blowing up. My husband will return home from seeing his oncologist. He speaks to me matter of factly, and I sit there as his active listener. But last evening there came a moment when my body reacted in a way that I had to notice. I suppose you would call it a panic attack.

"Can I ask you to pause for a moment? My body is overloaded."

In fact, it didn't last long, and I was soon breathing freely again. I think by acknowledging the bodily reaction and giving it some attention, things settled down.

I am not sure whether to call it 'anticipatory grief', or catastrophic thinking or something else, but maybe it's just a natural thing to be a bit panicked about difficult news.

I am proud of the way my husband handles his cancer. If one avenue closes, he simply looks for a new route, all the while staying positive and believing that he can make a difference to the outcome. This makes it much easier for me than for many other spouses.

He is also remarkable in the way that he continues to enjoy all the little joys of life. I had moved the Fiddle Fig to the front of the house where it gets more light. He noticed the abundantly healthy new growth this morning and was genuinely excited about seeing the progress of the plant. He is an infectiously positive person. He has fallen too many times to count, got up and dusted himself off just as many times.

My life, our lives, may well have changed forever. My husband said he would like to return to our hotel in Bali. This is an ideal destination for a holiday because we can go to the Pyramids of Chi for meditations every day if we choose. I started to make arrangements, considered dates and so forth. He was keen but at the same time he sees the oncologist again in six weeks and he may wish to begin a new treatment that requires him being here. Scheduling something has become something outside of our control.

In the meantime, we work away at putting our lives in place. He's actually expanding his business rather than starting to close it down and this is in line with the fact that he has never thought the idea of retirement is for him.

I am completely aware that my life has always and will always spin around my husband. It's the relationship, our dynamic; the way that suits us both. There is no changing this.

There's a bit of a trick they use in psychology, in couples therapy, where they might get one of you to do the opposite of where they want you to go ultimately. That's what happened to me a while back. My submission was removed (I am here to tell you they can do that!). 

When I finally accepted that this is what had happened to me, not a trick of the mind, but absolutely a state of mind where I no longer had access to even my erotic fantasies, I screamed bloody murder. I did not go quietly into that good night. My submission is so very much an embodied and enduring part of me that I was rageful about it, until it was returned to me, at a deeper level. Then, I was fine.

I have had some pretty confusing and confronting situations over my life, but nothing was quite so confronting as those ten weeks when I felt like what maybe a regular girl feels like. No, it was worse than that. It felt like I was in a desert without water supply.

There's another trick of the psychology trade where they might put the work into creating change in the quiet one (comparatively quiet, that is). That also happened to me, this time at my request. When I changed, everything changed. Somebody has to be willing to stand up and say, 'I can do this. Choose me.' That's how a 'system', a marriage, can evolve.

In a few days it is Mother's Day here and I am fortunate to say that I have four children of which I am immensely proud and five divine dear grandchildren. 

Over the past few years, I have learned to let judgment go; to just consider that we are all doing our best, except the manipulators, thieves and cheats. They need to do better.

My purpose has been to love; nothing more, nothing less. I do what I do with that intention, knowing that to grieve is to love. They come to us cap in hand. That's the journey. That's the human experience. The sooner we understand this, the better.

Daily Maintenance Spanking

 A couple of weeks ago I was given an idea which I immediately embraced. Thus, a joint email was sent to both my husband and me. It outlined an idea which the kink friendly therapist we have been using, on and off, had found to be successful with several of his recent clients.

In essence the idea was for me to be given a daily maintenance spanking. We would be working towards five minutes a day. It was no problem to work up to that amount of time, but to cap it at five minutes. No other directive was given, except that if the spanking led to a play session or sex, that was fine.

I had mentioned to my husband to expect an email and once he received it, and I let the dust settle a bit, I asked if it was something he thought might work for us. He was fine with it, he said, so long as I was fine with it. I have noticed this pattern, that he wants what would make his girl happy, consistently.

Several days went by. I admit I was a bit frustrated. I think he noticed that too. He came to me one morning out of the blue and said we would start now. It was a loving spanking, peppered with lots of soft and loving touch.

We got to Friday and that was a very busy day for me. We had had a lovely evening out together at a concert and by the evening I was looking for a shower and bed. He came to me at a low energy point, and I wasn't able to be sweet enough in my request for a shower first. He noticed. He always notices these things.

I got the rounds of the kitchen later. He made it clear that he was in charge of when things happened and how they happened. He was quite right about that.

The following morning the spanking was memorable, and my memory of that day is that I was quiet, co-operative, sore and present. It was far too soon to know what this daily spanking was doing to me, to us. Each day had been a bit different to the one before, in terms of a reaction, so I was in a 'just noticing' state. I noticed that I was a bit out of sorts but only in an internal way. Just, noticing.

The following morning, I asked if he was okay with using his hand. I had a feeling about this, and he admitted that his hand had acquired a deep bruise. He showed it to me. He is on a lot of medication, and I had already wondered if it was going to be an impediment.

It would have to be an implement, I assured him. I didn't want to see him hurt. That wasn't the idea at all. 

We both did a search of suitable items. He had a wooden paddle and a leather one. I had a wooden hairbrush. The cane wasn't going to work, nor the flogger, the strap or the crop. They were all there somewhere, but we only searched for the paddles. I wouldn't say I am not a masochist but nor am I an ardent masochist. I can be quickly brought to heel at the thought of a sound beating.

He selected the leather paddle, because he is sensible and that was enough of an upgrade from his hand for now. In truth, his hand hurt more the previous day, but the paddle induced sexual excitement almost immediately, and he struggled not to turn it into an instant sexual encounter. 

The man is on androgen replacement therapy so technically speaking what happened isn't supposed to happen. However, spanking can illicit these sorts of results. So, he did that and then spanked again later.

I think a threshold we have to get over is that I can't prevent myself from making a lot of noise when paddled and I think this can throw him off, as if I can't take the pain. It's not easy, for sure, but it's something that has to be worked up to, not at all insurmountable.

It occurred to me, as it would to any sensible person, that there are some issues to address. Is it not the case that after a few weeks of this, one is going to be almost constantly marked? And, what about sexual appetite? What about the ability to concentrate on other matters?

I went looking for material about daily maintenance spanking and found very little of use. One couple has partaken for the past 18 months every single day and has nothing but a glowing report (pun intended) of the practice. That's reassuring, but it does have to be noted we are talking about a self-professed intense sadist and masochist. I wish I could hear from others who are perhaps a little more mainstream in this non-mainstream practice.

So far, all is good. We have both agreed to this and what's important here is that we stick to our agreement.

One thing I have noted already is that it has brought out his desire for a dominant stance overall. We have an agreement that I don't start to eat my dinner before he takes his first bite or tells me I can begin to eat. We had takeout last night, a very rare thing these days, as I usually cook meals that suit his needs, and it completely slipped my mind. He noticed. I was pleased he had noticed. I definitely had erred, and he told me I had earned a disciplinary stroke. 

Ah, he wants to do that too. So be it. I am delighted. I want him to want this.

I think the thing about agreeing to something like a daily spanking is that it is an instant recognition of the polarity between us, an instant recognition of the power dynamic at play. Whilst I don't have months or years of experience of it to be able to recommend it, the initial results are more than satisfactory.

90 days

 I've not been a person who worries too much about New Year resolutions. It did, however, occur to me today that if I were to nominate a period of time, and the time in mind is 90 days, what could I achieve in that time?

In today's political world 90 days sounds like an eternity but in fact it's a rather short period of time - maybe 13 weeks. That's really no time at all. It might be interesting to record the goals, the challenges and achievements of a time period like this. Maybe not a lot changes on the outside, maybe it does, but most interesting, what might change on the inside?

In fact, yesterday I did a lot of work in a single hour. I was led into trance again and we explored the older me, the one close to death, who advised the 60 something me.  That was cool. However, it led to a new feeling, I explained, because my mother was close to the end of her life and beyond being able to say the things that I would love to hear. There was sadness around that.

Back I went down and created for myself a different end to this story where she expressed her love, her pride, her delight in having raised us and watch us live our lives. That was lovely.

This work is complete, we believe. There will be a check-in in 90 days and that has me wondering, what will I be like in 90 days? Will I have grown, will I be content, will I have some new endeavour in which to express creativity?

I am thinking of the Truman Show here and wondering what it would be like to wake up with no history? That's not exactly dementia. My mother has forgotten big slices of her life. She has returned to her childhood with her mother and lives quite happily there. She has taken a few things with her, like her dog who isn't alive, but in her mind, she is. It's all a bit jumbled but it makes sense to her and that's all that matters.

What if we lived in a universe where there was no remembered past and we woke up fresh every morning, ceasing the day? That sounds a bit like that strange series I started watching where the workers forget what they did at work. Hmm

What I mean is, imagine if there really was just 'Now'? 

'Imagine all the people living life in peace."

Anyways, enough ramblings, let's see.

The Unconscious Mind

 I heard someone say this week that when a baby cries and demands your attention, the baby is experiencing anxiety.

I also heard someone say this week that for some children, one of the few times they got their parent's full attention was when they were being spanked and therein lies the kink later.

I have come to know through my own personal experience, that we carry symbols in our minds for states such as anxiety. I am not going to reveal my symbol for anxiety since it is immaterial. You will have your own symbol, just as you have a symbol in the recesses of your mind to transpose the symbol that can enable the anxiety to be deactivated.

I will share that when this was revealed to me, I tried to kill the big angry thing without success and I tried to transform the beast into a sweet, kind, pretty little thing, also with limited success. It wasn't until around two days later, that I was told by the kind, pretty little thing, that the big angry thing roaring in my face wasn't real, it was just a soft, inanimate fluffy toy, that the anxiety lost all its punch.

All was revealed and in doing so, I suddenly have huge control over the anxiety. It's a weird story but also a true one.

It's not the whole of the story because part two of that story is that I got in touch, also in a symbolic way, with the wisest part of myself, and I lessened the control of the voice inside my head that thought she was helping me with her advice, but she no longer was. What had happened was that that voice hadn't taken in that I was no longer young. The advice was no longer working. When order was reestablished, when the Wise Woman was given the deciding vote over all the other voices, everything became clear. (Refer to Internal Family Systems)

Yesterday, being Sunday and a day when we were alone, my husband invited me back into the bedroom to play. He asked me to crawl into the room, something that in ideal circumstances would have been wonderful for me, but my heart wasn't in it. 

'I am sorry, I am not sure I can do this right now,' I said.

I was still kneeling on the floor when he asked me to explain.

'I would rather not,' I said.

I just didn't want a fight. I didn't want to trigger him into feeling some sort of negative state.

He was insistent, and I registered in his voice a real desire to understand.

So, I said it.

I explained about our different brains and how they take things in. I said he was inviting me into a messy room, in a house that he had neglected for years, and that my need for beauty and order was something he wasn't taking seriously. I understood that he felt he had other priorities, and I had been patient, exceedingly patient and understanding, but this was truly hurting my spirit.

'I am not certain you know what you have,' I said.

'Go take a shower,' he said, 'We will go out for breakfast.'

We walked; we talked. We were both calm and we enjoyed our time in the cafe.

When we returned home, he had decided on a home project; again it's immaterial what it was, but in the process of this task, something I had asked for previously a number of times, he began to get clarity himself over what we could achieve ourselves, spending very little money.

In other words, we began to be on the same page.

Was it the spirit and courage of the Wise Woman that had made a difference? It's hard to say, but certainly there was no animosity displayed by either of us.

It's the advice of the other voice (I call her Edwina) that has made me do all sorts of useless things - like fawn, like fight, like freeze; like allow my needs to be neglected.

Yesterday morning, I was just being authentic. I calmly, courageously and confidently expressed my thoughts and feelings and he in turn told me what to do (to take a shower) and I did it.

In a long-term relationship, a power exchange is not a scene. The dominance and submission weaves itself into the fabric of the lives of the people in the exchange.

If a submissive doesn't speak up, (in the right way and when the opportunity presents itself) I think the dominant runs the risk of steam rolling the submissive. He's busy, he's productive, she keeps life humming along for him in a day-to-day way. Where's the problem? As in, where's the problem for him?

I'm not exactly sure why it worked yesterday. I think it was when I talked about beauty and my huge struggles with ugliness and disorder. I told him I wouldn't last in his office for a day. I couldn't sit amongst millions of pieces of paper and files over every surface. My brain would revolt.

I can't see into his mind but I think he saw that first of all, he needed his submissive to see that he was willing to take her feelings into account; that this wasn't a time to ensure obedience but rather this was a time for assuring her that he had respect for her need for beauty and order; that the state of her home mattered to her and always would.

I was told, on good authority, that my anxiety had been removed permanently. I had reason to believe that this had been done before, actual proof. I was hopeful but it seemed too good to be true.

And yet, these changes do seem extraordinarily profound. Each day brings new opportunities to be optimistic and to move forward with confidence.

Thank you, my clever, wonderful unconscious mind. If only I had befriended you before, but it is never too late to learn.

Attachment and containment

 'It's not my job to supervise you,' he said to me. 'You know what to do, so just do it.'

Why is it that the submissive mind, or is it just my mind, wants to feel the firm presence of the dominant?

Because it feels safe. 

There's some ancient, primal, neanderthal part of my brain that wants to know that he notices.

- I put on my bracelet each morning. 

- I take the cocktail of vitamins he insists I take each day. 

- I ask for permission to eat something sweet or to have a glass of wine (I suggested this rule). 

- I turn down our bed each night.

- I refer to him as 'Sir' in play situations and when he is cross and wants to enforce my place.

- I advise when I am leaving the house, where I am going and when I will return.

- I wish him 'Good morning, Sir' each morning.

- I wait until he is ready to eat before I begin to eat.

All these things I do, that sit beside all the other many ways I serve and assist him, and of course, all the ways he serves and assists me in more overarching ways.

The goal is not to fight, but to discuss calmly what needs to be discussed. He has the ultimate say.

In his very late 60s, he is busier than ever. We were at dinner last night and I took the listening position as he got off his chest and processed all the myriads of things currently on his plate. I knew he needed to do that. 

In between, he told me off for getting flummoxed earlier. 'Just do what you know to do. I am not going to supervise you. But if you need it, the cane still sits in my cupboard. If you need a couple of stripes across your ass to get the message, I can do that.'

I momentarily put my hands over my face. We were sitting in a restaurant, and I didn't instinctively do that because I was embarrassed. I did it because I knew I hadn't behaved well.

It has come to my attention (I research stuff, as you may have gathered) that I have a somewhat 'disorganised attachment' style. I get anxious and I get fearful, and I don't necessarily always have control over those outcomes. My emotions can be felt very keenly, and I can't always self soothe my way out of them.

Containment helps. Knowing somatically that I am safe and that the fear is more in my head than it is real, is something I work on every day.

Yoga is my therapy. Bessel van der Kolk of 'The Body Keeps the Score' fame is entirely correct in my opinion. The trauma is held in the body and bodywork is needed to release it. I will be doing yoga until I simply can't do it anymore, I go to a trauma informed yoga studio. I wouldn't go anywhere else, and I practice the art of being at peace within myself, even when things get hard. This is the whole point of yoga.

Every day is a bit of a challenge at the same time as it is a blessing. 

Ceasefire

 I said to my husband this morning, "I feel like I have been through something, and I feel like I have come out the other side of whatever that was". It's hard to explain it further because I am not sure myself how to put words around a feeling I had that I had been asked to be something that I simply cannot be.

I tried. I really did. I had been asked, as a form of marital therapy, to become more of the person who initiates; more independent and autonomous. I felt a big fat loser for failing to become the aggressor, the more self-directed person - until - I remembered something that Deity had said to me more than a few times...

'Can a kitten suddenly transform to a tiger?' (He didn't say exactly that but that's a fair example of the things he would say to me.)

To digress a little, he would also say, "can a table have thoughts or feelings?' but that's another story for another day.

My husband has been wonderful over the past few weeks sitting with me, over a late dinner, or together on the couch, listening, listening and listening some more.

He could see I was confused, discombobulated, far outside the state I love best, equanimity.

No-one's patience is eternal and eventually he started making observations and asking questions. 

"Do you think you are regretting some behaviours and decisions?"

"Do you think you are being fair in your assessments?"

Honestly, we navigated a lot of territory, so I can't remember all that much of what he said and what I said, except that I felt a whole bucketful of shame for being me; some great qualities, some not so great qualities, like us all, but as well, a sense of shame for wanting what I want; union.

Lately, I had realized that I was bashing my head against a brick wall, the way someone might do when the frustration overwhelms. I came to see that was a useless exercise. My head was hurting, and I wasn't getting the result I wanted. The brick wall was still a brick wall. My head had had no effect on the brick wall, and it never would. Something had to change but it wouldn't be the brick wall.

Then, this morning, as I lay there in the dark, silent, it occurred to me. The revelation was this. I am sick of trying to be better than I am right now. Sure, we can all grow, bit by bit, but I don't want to fixate on this right now. 

Instead, why not focus on skills - to be a better cook, a better writer, a better gardener. Why not focus on that?

The moment I did decide to do this, it was as if my mind did a rejig, the way a washing machine will rejig to get the clothes balanced, and I began to feel calm and settled. It was almost as if all the 'parts' inside my head breathed a sigh of relief at once and said, 'Thank God, she's going to give herself a break. She's going to just be herself. Put down your weapons. It's a ceasefire.'

For the past few nights my husband has come to bed at the same time as me and he quietly massages parts of my body - arms, lower back, shoulders. It's a piece of heaven for me. I fall asleep like this, and I stay asleep until morning.

I want and I need, his solidity. When I have that, I feel submissive down to my bones. I feel me and I feel authentic. I feel whole... I feel wonderful.

Needing more or needing less

I bought myself the book titled 'Healing Developmental Trauma' by Laurence Heller. In this book, it explains the various responses to early developmental trauma. From memory there are five categories, and I feel confident in saying that I fall into the 'attunement' category. I have a longing for connection, to be attuned to someone else.

This falls in line with my submissive nature, I believe, and with my desire for a very strong connection with my mate, perhaps stronger than I am going to find in a vanilla marriage. I felt this as a young woman, well, as a teenager actually. I saw 'The Story of O' and resonated on a number of levels. It was profoundly arousing to me, absolutely, but it also felt like a slice of heaven to imagine having that deep sense of intimacy with someone else.

I think my husband's developmental trauma fits into the Trust category and whilst I hadn't thought about it like this before, he struggles to be dependent on someone, the opposite of my response to early developmental trauma. He lost his mother as a teenager, it was a shock, and it makes sense that the unconscious mind should decide that he cannot afford to need someone who could be taken away at a moment's notice, again.

So, he does depend on me for consistent support and simply being here, but it would seem from that chapter, he doesn't want to be so dependent on me as a deep D/s structure would require. Depth, in and of itself, maybe is something that he somatically resists. This chapter made sense to me as I know him and as I know his history. In this way, there is only so far we can go in a D/s dynamic. 

His (undiagnosed) ADHD is a factor as well. He needs a lot of time alone. He would say he needs the time because he has a relentless pile of work to get through, but it's more than that. I have noticed this need for as long as I have known him and that's almost 50 years.

I took quite a bit of time to consider this. What exactly would be the point of insisting this not be so? Can I, frustrated with the weather, stop the sun from bearing down this February, or insist that the Rain Gods do their job?

I did a flow yoga class last evening, not especially good, I thought, until Shavasana, when you lay like a corpse and absorb the benefits of your practice. I was calm, enjoying the heat of my body starting to reduce, when I noticed that thoughts were almost gone and instead there was a white light in front of my closed eyes, a bit like fog.

There is a person in my life that I thought about, someone close to the end of their life whose face came before me, putting the fog in the background, sort of encircling the face. My mind seemed to stop, and then the face dissolved into the fog; gone. 

It reminded me of a thought I have often had; that all our little worries dissolve into the past when we are gone. The worries were some sort of illusion, the world didn't need them and wouldn't be hanging onto them. In that moment, it felt like the needing more had also dissolved. At least, I had a taste of it.