You know the moments?

When you look outside at the cloudless sky and the sun hasn't even risen yet? And you can still see a star or two? And the freshness, the newness, the potential of the dawn threatens to burst out of your chest because you feel just so compelled to move towards it and get out amongst it?

When your existence - not your life (subtle difference there) - feels so full you actually appreciate the air you breathe and the clear dawn sky above you? And even though the invasion of work and family duty pressures await you, this time is yours to free-think as you will. And so you make it good-thoughts thinking time because you've grown to realise how much healthier you feel for it?

When you look around your dishevelled messy cesspit of a lived-in home and marvel at what you have created? And you're not actually referring to said dishevelled mess, but the piece of land that is yours to plant and nurture at will, with its quirky house, sturdy roof, painted walls, furniture that means something to you, happy toddler-drawn pictures, birthday invitations on the fridge, knick-knacks that hold great sentimental value because of where you bought them or who gave them to you?

When you glance over at your dog because she is is whining in her sleep and you see with great affection for her that has actually fallen asleep with her ball in her mouth? And you spend a moment pondering how happy and simple a dog's life is but instead of envying or begrudging her you soak it up a little and take a lesson from it this time? And in that moment, you see how far you've come in your own motherhood (and related obstacles) journey, that you are no longer envious... of a dog?

When you are shown your own strength in such an obvious illustration because you single-handedly took a piece of earth

from this...

... to this? 

And you feel like you really nurtured yourself there because it was something you wanted to do so you just.... did it? And you stand back and give thanks that you are not only able-bodied enough to grab that pick and work over the hard, heavy, bogged clay soil, but that you were clear in seeing through the vision in the first place, that spurred you on to completion? How good is it to complete something you set out to start? Something you did "just because" you knew how much joy it would bring to your weepy heart?


Yeh. All those right now. And more. I'm loving and appreciating all of them.

What moments are filling you up right now?

Spare me

In classic Me fashion, I am going to say (rather ambiguously) that I'm sorry but... I make no apology for feeling the loss of my dear friend deeply and fully. I suppose you only get a real sense of how much this dog did for me when you read my book. I promise one day more than a handful of you will have that opportunity! *pumping fatigued unconvincing fist to the sky*

Writing my way through this is the only healthy way for me to honour the devotion she showed me. It's what I do and it's what she did. And it seems it did not go unnoticed all this time by my family. The outpouring of condolences from them, the tears, the fondness in their recollections of her as a "lovely old lady", the happy stories of being held captive to play ball with a dog who could fetch and return far longer than anyone ever wanted to play with her have helped to round out the significance Steve and I have always felt about her place in our home.

To me, my dog was always home.

We rescued her from a shelter just two years after Steve and I moved in together. I was 20, Steve was 23, the day we went and chose her out of those 35 other full cages. Steve will turn 40 in April and I will be 37 this year. At our wedding 13 years ago, Rusty (his cat) and Pepper were immortalized by the Best Man in the speeches. Everybody knew who they were. Pep got about with us like "one of the buddies" and anyone who came over had to acknowledge the dog. If I didn't mention her and they otherwise didn't take any notice of her, Pepper would make sure of it at some point.

From the moment she let go of her last breath last Thursday, my mind has been flooded with all of those wonderful, rich memories of my faithful dog.

I am keeping my head above water quite well now. The past three days have seen me break down at least every hour. Today is better. I am distracting my tired brain with some excellent comedy podcasts and also Tina Fey's "Bossypants" audio book - awesomely funny! - because every song is too sad and leaves too much room for my mind to wander back to Pepper. No, I'll do it this way. With distract and deflect tactics.

Her life was my joy. I want to be happy when I remember what she gave me.

This will not be the last post on the subject. And again, while on the one hand I'm sorry for that if you a) don't particularly care for dogs or b) am already rather tired of my bleating on the subject, on the other hand I say.... it's a big wide web out there with a zillion other blogs. I won't be offended in the slightest if you can't read mine for the time being.

But like all other times since starting this space, I turn here to express myself and connect with like souls.

I have to do this.

For now, I'll leave you with an absolutely delightful video I found on the weekend whilst cataloguing every digital photo we ever took of her. Oh yes... a slideshow is a must. And it's in the works but might be slow coming to fruition, as much as my heart and energy permits me to work on it.


What an honour it was to have her in my life.


The following footage is typical Pepper. The slight "I wanna say something but I won't" huff. The doleful expression. The paw on me in thanks for me saying "good girl".... even though I wasn't talking to her this time. We were in the part-regretful, part-trying-to-be-firm transition phase of shuffling her off her top spot - she had to make room for the LGBB. I am doing a separate post on that soon, because it is a huge thing for the loyal animals of a long-term TTC'er (TTC=Trying To Conceive) to step aside.

In this video, you can hear me (embarrassingly using baby-talk with the dog) trying to break it to Pep that I won't always be talking to her any more when there are no other adult humans around....

oh and p.s. if you were wondering, "Reenie" as in Pepperini, was her nickname - she had several, but this one stuck (even Lol called her Reenie).

Tales from the #12wbt: Today, I made a weighty discovery

I found an expand-o-file thingy in the garage today. It contained a pile of papers and documents that basically chronicled the good stuff and praise I'd ever received in any of the four jobs spanning my 10 year-long office "career" I had before bearing my first (prem, ultimately not surviving) child.

I threw three-quarters of the paperwork out, easily and unemotively turfing it and keeping just a small handful of things for snapshot of workplaces in the 90's kind of purposes. It bore little significance to me now. So much so, for I had been so proud of it all once, that I had to step back and be gently with myself as I took stock of what had transpired in all the years in between then and now.

There were many times as I stood there sorting my office life where I recalled that forward-thinking Me as she slipped the documents into the archive file. She had put them there even as her belly expanded with who was to become our girl, Ellanor. She was expecting that one day, her son or daughter would like to know what his or her mother had been doing prior to becoming their mother.

Today, none of that seems to matter. The praise and achievements of a string of jobs that served only to pay off the mortgage - even though I put my heart and soul loyally into every workplace that hired me - are of no importance now.

It struck me deeply that I used to rate so highly my work-a-day jobs that, really, were soul-less. Why is it that I kept a succession of performance reviews with their studiously signed and counter-signed cover pages as evidence of having done anything worthy of this world, when I have been berating myself for the state of my body that has cleverly borne two live children and kept recovering through the loss of twelve others?

I didn't mean to write a post. This was meant to be a vlog only. I'll shuddup now. Here, watch me bare more honestly than I planned so please be gentle!:

A weighty discovery from Lolly Lovers on Vimeo.



Ok. Things I didn't say...:

• Firstly, I forgot to go back to my train of thought after Pepper kindly interrupted! Suffice to say, I realised that it was a conscious choice I had to make - to stop blaming my body gaining increasing amounts of weight seemingly unstoppable weight, stop blaming the pregnancies for affecting the hormones and making me a chemical jumble of a mess, stop blaming the IVF for setting up my already overloaded system, stop blaming every other external factor.... and stop blaming ME, possibly most importantly, for the decisions I was blindly, unconsciously making. Without that first step of ridding the blame, I couldn't have spurred myself into action.
• I have lost over 10kg so far in 2011 (I haven't stopped counting yet!). Although I have been told a lot in my life that I am "lucky" because I have no one problem area, it also means I have work to do everywhere! But it's true that whilst I may gain weight everywhere, I also tone everywhere evenly. Which is a blessing. So sometimes it's hard for anyone other than me to see I've gained or lost weight - a bonus, you might think, unless you're the one in a too-heavy body;
• No longer is it an effort to: climb out of bed, walk up a few stairs, get down on the floor to play with my child, squat to look in a low cupboard (my legs would cramp and ache within 30 seconds, so poor was my muscle "tone");
• After just seven weeks on this fitness program, my mindset is... well, set! It has been an emotional wasteland, that void between my head, heart and mouth (rather, willpower) - the realisation I had during this vlog (that I had given up) has really struck me.
• Plié (or sumo) squats with an upright row thrown in holding hand weights = killer! Ditto to a raised lunge (with front foot on a step). But these two techniques in particular, for me, feel oh so good. It feels so powerful knowing my thigh and glute muscles are working hard to raise and lower my upper body.
• I am feeling the familiar heady rush of adrenaline that I used to crave in the years when I went diligently to the gym and had a personal trainer. I had all but convinced myself in recent years that I didn't miss The Burn of working muscle and was too far gone to ever experience again. Amazing stuff when I know that just two months ago, I couldn't get off my couch without a LOT of effort and not a little bit of audible grunt to boot.
• No small thanks to Michelle Bridges' 12 week body transformation for the kickstart to my return to fitness.

Conversations with friends: The beauty of keeping it short

I am limping, guys.

I'm on a slow dongle (settle down) that's giving my laptop some pissy lame excuse for "internet connection" while we swap providers. I hereby solemnly declare.....

TPG, I promise, we will never leave you again

We left them at Christmas time because Steve grew indignant that we couldn't get ADSL2+ here with them (they took their time rolling it out) so we changed providers. WELL. Hasn't that been haphazard, to say the least? Let me just say, I know why their plans were so cheap. Down-time was a lot higher than what we'd previously experienced with TPG.

Now we're moving back to them and changing a few other home services around as well. But this interim period is going to be around twenty days long. I reached 50% of my limit in a DAY, folks! This does not bode well for blog posts (or visiting yours).

So please know that's why I've gone quiet. Bad timing, really, given that Blogopolis is just around the corner. I can't very well keep up with what you're all doing. Ack. Ah well, can't be helped. If you think there's something monumentous that I haven't commented on.... fill me in if you see me on the day. Yes?

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Now, to me being a winner:  No, really. I won something! From the very delightful and amusing Megan Blandford (she Writes Out Loud...). Thanks so much, I was very surprised to win the Coles Myer voucher. And very chuffed.

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I have a cold. I feel like shite. That is all I can say about that.

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My baby girl turns five on Wednesday. As with many of her milestones (and all of her birthdays), I am heading into the strange bittersweet balance-dance of being happy for her, proud of her (and us) and thinking about Ella. Not sad, not anything really. Just... holding her in my awareness more, I guess.

The other day, Lolly had a dear friend over. They played joyfully for five hours straight and both had eyes standing out on stilts when she went home. During the afternoon, I was doing dishes while the girls sat at the kitchen bench eating sandwiches.

I heard my daughter tell her friend, totally unrelated to anything they were nattering about.

"Before, in the hostibool, I had a sister. And her name was Ella. But her heart was a bit funny, so then she died in the ground."

I didn't turn around. Didn't weigh in at all, although I listened keenly to how her friend would respond. Lolly tends to throw this in at moments that don't seem to fit. But they do to her. And this is what I respect about her and the friends she will no doubt gravitate towards and learn to keep - for her friend merely said, "Ah" with a half-interested, half-"this-sandwich-is-yum" tone.


Simplicity, people. Simplicity is what I need to get back to. And ADSL2+.



So, I will see you when and where I see you! If you're wondering where I am, just imagine me under my pile of tissues, stalled by my grossly underweight data usage cap and struggling with my own self-imposed project to "keep it simple." Mark my words, though, I WILL be back with birthday cake photos some day soon.

To all you intuitive mothers out there (and mothers in the making/waiting)

Today, a book recommendation, something I don't do lightly.

This is an old post, dug up from my old blog - originally posted in March 2007 - when the LGBB was a mere 8 months old. Given that it is an age-old topic (new mother insecurity), I thought I'd repost here for any new mums out there, or those taking note for when their time comes. I do hope it reaches the screen of someone who needs to read this recommendation today. You're not on your own in this! x


Do you ever read something, like a book or an article, and think, "Hang on.... did I write this for myself and forget?" It's something so very inline with how you see things that it's as if your central nervous system has a spare body floating around that it uses to do things you could have done/said/written yourself. I do. Not often, but sometimes. Especially in written form, I get this quite a bit.

I have found the Mother *boom-tish* of all such books. I am only wishing I'd found it when the LGBB was about 7 weeks old and I was going through the motions with a fake smile plastered on my face. I was so worn down by sleep deprivation and had been hung upside down (or so it felt) for so long that to find my right way up seemed so impossible that I was quite happy to just hang there and wallow, thank you very much all the same, kind Sir.

I was so moved and my confidence in my own instincts so honoured as I read this book that I actually wrote and thanked the author. She's certainly taken the writer's claw out of my task - because I have been jotting things down as they come to me - it seems they're all here in this book. In plain English.

With a cherry on top.

It reminds me of one of my favourite, well-used Steve Martin lines (shit... was it Steve Martin? I can't remember! Noooooo! Damn you, baby braaaain! *shakes fist to heavens*): "That's just what I've been trying to tell these people", except in this case, "these people" is me. This book has somehow given me the confidence to trust what I already know. I am sure it would be the same for anyone who reads it. What a gift!

It's full of wisdom I've been trying to tell myself.

I have found Intuitive Mothering, for me personally, to be one of those nuggets that speaks to your core. That inner You whom you know, maybe very well but more often perhaps not so intimately - the authoress herself professes to not really know where the book came from and I find that fascinating as much as it is affirming that it comes from a divine and pure source, devoid of much of the ego you find in other books of its kind. I know exactly what she means because there have often been times where I will write something and go back and read it later, to find I feel like I'm reading it for the very first time. Ella's "Parallel Story" was written like that. In fact, both the stories about her that I wrote for her pages came from thin air (not to say they're not completely factual, it's just that I sat down, put my fingers to the keyboard, got up and went away and there they remain, unedited bar a few spelling errors, no reworking or the likes).

This book has given me the affirmation I really needed at a time I really needed it in order to stand taller and realise I don't need peripheral parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, friends, professionals... ANY outside source... to give me the proverbial pat on the back I thought I needed in order to make it the "right" or "correct" thing to do.

Mind you, the irony isn't lost on me that a book (in itself an "outside source") has led me to this conclusion!  Hmmm.....

I think the difference is that I feel far more empowered by seeing the book on the shelf (the slimmest paperback spine in amongst the other Parenting manuals, just leaping out and going "Pick ME! PICK MEEE!", having the follow-through to purchase it (I was on a "date" with Steve at the time and we'd just meandered in to a large bookstore and sauntered to our favourite sections - he Quantum something-or-other, me Parenting) and then realising what a pearler it actually is right from the first page.

It shines a truth. It speaks to my innermost mother instinct. Reminds me to trust what I feel is right, for me and the LGBB. It goes and sits and has a yarn with that real deep knowledge we all have that, without all the "assvice" and interference and uncertainty that builds up in you when you defer to others to tell you if you're heading in the right direction, you most certainly ARE doing exceptionally well for YOUR baby and everything is going right (despite what any general book or MCHN tries to tell you).

------------------

Just yesterday, I had a nightmare day: went for the LGBB's 8mth check. Was told I was sitting her too much and "that's why her legs are bent like a frog, if you keep doing it she'll have problems and need physio" and rah de rah de rah. It made sense, there were no "that doesn't sound right" alarms ringing in my head. I simply went "Ok" and began doing more tummy exercises with L from the time we got home. Don't think it's a coincidence that the poor kid had the most miserable afternoon - she cried and cried almost non-stop, big sorry-for-herself sobbing - and by the time she got to bed last night we were both exhausted. By the time I went to bed, I'd realised (again) that I'd allowed someone else to tell me what was best for my child. It resulted in an extremely uncomfortable day for both of us.

I always vow I'll never do it again, that I'll be more aware of it next time.... and I always slip! I'm not hard on myself for that, I am realistic about it and the fact that by my very nature, I aim to please/do right/do it well. But when I walk past that book on my end table, it snaps me back - the pendulum might get out of whack but if it swings back to centre, all is not lost.

I don't profess that the book has ALL the answers or that it is for everyone, merely it is a bloody useful tool now for me to dip into - full of reminders I could have written to myself, but so nice to see it in print, published, as if anything written in a book is fact and "right".... except this time, with this book, intuitively, I know that for me, it IS right. Because it speaks to my truth. The comforting thing about that is, if it has been written by someone else, and yet it is full of what my deeper wisdom would have written had I not buried her with fear, cynicism, loathing and the best of intentions, then surely it is going to also make someone else's soul squeal with delight.

So therefore, I feel it my duty to pass on to anyone who considers it might be something they'd like to have on their own shelf.

I give you...

Intuitive Mothering by Lyn MacPherson, published by newholland.com.au, ISBN 174110352-5, available in all good bookstores...


Some small favourite extracts:

"Things" are not important to your child, but you are. If you are happy and around and interacting with your child, that will mean more to them than anything you could ever buy them.


The better we look and the tidier our house is does not reflect how well we are coping. DING DING DING DING!!! This is the gold-star sentence for me. I was blinded by the lightbulb that went off in my head when I read it. I look around and see others' perfection. It's SO NOT perfection. It is the illusion of same. Key here for me is: don't waste energy on assuming what you're seeing (in others and how they cope) and then using those assumptions to fill in the rest of the picture. And don't be ashamed of your own dirty floors/toilet/shower! They won't always be dirty. They might be today, but what needs doing today (or tomorrow) might not be cleaning them! Do what you want to do, not what you think you should do (see the next paragraph!)

Confronting and releasing expectations: Make what we "should" do what we "want" to do.. or don't do it. Another barrier to tuning in to your child lies in expectations. They are everywhere, from mothers to friends to doctors - and especially the expectations you heap on yourself. The key to liberating yourself from expectations is to take the word "Should" out of your vocabulary. Every time you hear yourself thinking you "should" do something, ask "Is this really something I want to do? I it the right thing for me and my child?" If you are able to say "yes", that is great - it has now become your choice - not something done because it is expected. If your answer is "no", choose not to do it. (If I had remembered this yesterday, my Bullfrog-Legged baby and I would have had a much happier afternoon, wouldn't we! I didn't listen to my instincts until last night, and I couldn't wait until this morning to start a fresh new day with her when she got up for the day)


Be proud of your decisions and choices. If you feel the need to reassess one of your choices, do so for you, not for others. Avoid the bombardment of influences out there..... Throughout your journey with your child, just be who you are. Do not expect to feel anything, just let yourself feel. Let it all flow. Neither of you have ever done this before - it's a new relationship for you and your baby. Every woman is beautiful and unique. If we were all the same, life would be very boring. Every child is also beautiful and unique and every mother is beautifully equipped in her own unique way to understand, nurture and raise her children. See the beauty and the mystery of the discovery, and the true freedom brought about by feeling rather than thinking.


'Intuitive Mothering' is more than another baby care book. It is a warm and friendly tool for the new parent negotiating the maze of apparently conflicting, prescriptive advice about parenting styles and approaches - Dr Bronwyn Gould, Chair, National Assoc. for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

Sometimes, a girl's just gotta...

...focus some attention on herself and know when to have some time out. Some real time out.


Take, for instance:


Exhibit A:  Jazz. 

"Oh, don't look at me with those awful cow eyes" - All hail Basil Fawlty

She might be overly manipulating your emotions with her doleful stare, but let's face it:

She knows how to put herself in the picture. 

Literally, every picture (the ones I try to take of Pepper, anyway). She knows when she might be missing out. And she makes sure she goes first. Her waggy tail comes a banging second. To everyone and everything else.

So, taking a slightly less forceful leaf out of Jazz's book, I am going to attempt to step back from online life for a while and put myself back In The Picture.

Exhibit B:  a little just-turned-2 year-old LGBB 

The last musk stick

When in doubt, let it out.

If ever there was a better reason to cry - the ugly kind - it's to relieve some tension. It's to remind yourself you're alive and that you feel. And that you don't have to share the last bit of candy just to "be good." Take it for yourself every now and then. It won't hurt you as much as continual denial of anything good will. Go'orn, do it! Or at the very least, have that cry you've been holding in.


Exhibit C:  Pepper's shut-out tactics 

"Oh please don't let her be there when I turn around..."

I can't hear you, I can't hear you, I can't hear yoooooo

There comes a time in every blogger's life when they have to stop criticising their own blog, their own writing, just because of all the brilliance and shining lights they see around them. This is always amplified when the blogs they read and comment on don't reciprocate. So much of this dance is "chance". There are fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants readers with no regularity to their visits or comments - I know this. I am one of those. There are also diligent, read-every-post-you-write because they adore you readers - I know this as well. I am also one of those. I have my favourites I never miss, my favourites I always try to keep up with but often fall abysmally short of visiting with any regularity until it becomes habit.

I adore finding those bloggers whose voices are so unique, so real, so consistent because of where they are writing from: their blinkered hearts. These are often bloggers with scarce "followers", no Fan Page on Facebook and no Twitter account. They don't seem to follow a large number of blogs. They are quality over quantity. They're rather rare gems. But find the ones that speak to you and you will discover you are mulling over things they say in their posts, smiling at words remembered, waiting for their next entry.

You can't be liked by everyone, you cannot make everyone a "friend" (especially not on Facebook, in fact it's recommended you don't...), regardless of how many blogs are in your Reader (I still don't use mine, shhhhh). But don't forget, you too are a Light. There is no other You. Hold your own torch up high and light your own way forward. Those who feel good in your Light will come find you. Don't worry!

- - - -

There is nothing quite so stifling to me as a writer than reading more than I write. And that is what I have been doing. I realised it last night.

For the next while (it could be a day, I hope it's not as long as a month) I am putting some breathing space between me and my blog. I will be creating, you can be sure of it. Writing, not blogging. Living, not reading. I am in a purging stage at home - our Ebay sales are about a quarter of the way towards my goal already! - and I can't hold onto all this as well as let go all of that. It's counter-productive.

So, off I go. Please promise you'll swing back past every now and then - why not play a game of Roulette and pick an archive post at random and give it a read while I'm gone? Better still, dip in or share the Infertility/Loss posts I have recently categorized. If you want to be super-ace, you can up my vote count with a single click just to make me feel warm and fuzzy... it won't help me win anything, that horse has long bolted... but oh, how I love a round number. Thank you if you are one of the lovely people who helped me tip the triple figure mark (allllmost)!

Guaranteed, I'll be unable to stay away too long. I hope to read you all soon.

.....Oh, and have the last musk stick. That's an order.

xx

p.s. How cool is this: I added a favicon to my blog. See it? Up there? A little tiny sunrise on your page tab!

Say what you mean, mean what you say

Closely related to the Dr Seuss quote, "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter"... I've been wandering around with variations of these two sayings in my head all day.

I got to thinking this week as I was trawling through some more editor's notes/suggestions on Chapter One of my book. This is the chapter that has remained largely untouched for the past 12 months because I was so sure of its already nailing it.... until I realised it needed an overhaul and had to send it back to be edited after I butchered it on my flight back from Sydney. So I got it back today, with notes. One of them stood out so brightly that it struck me as something I could really apply to so much (and so many others, not just myself):

"Is this what you really mean to say here?"

So simple. But I looked again at the sentence his note was referring to and was then compelled to dissect what I had meant when I wrote it. To me, it had made sense - at the time of writing and also on the eleventieth read-through - but now, through another's eyes, I could see plainly that it didn't sit right at all. So I tried to read it again as I had read it all those other times. But it was too late. I had heard it from another individual's perspective and there was nothing for it now but to reconsider my choice of words, if not better explain myself.

It's so amazing, the English language, how you can use words that are relevant and say what you are trying to say.... but dig a little deeper, or have another person reflect back to you what they heard (using your exact words!) and sometimes, all of a sudden, you are saying something entirely different.

More than ever, I see this editing process - this fine tooth-combing, nit-picky, gruelling process - is willing me to bring out what I really mean, and not just in terms of this book. What is my message? Where is my voice? Is my essence truly present in all that I say (let alone do)?

Funny thing is, prior to that plane ride home, I would have said yes, I was satisfied with Chapter One. But now? Now that I have chopped it, had it edited and been forced to look at it yet again in this new state? Now it is absolutely bloody awesome. Which begs the question...... could it be even MORE awesome? Twitchy fingers at the keyboard.

But my real point to writing this post was to just share what I was pondering deeply this morning, on my return from kinder duty - as you do - and ask how you feel on the subject:

Do you really say what you mean? Or do you just think you do? Do you say one thing but hear yourself think another? How do you self-edit as you go (in writing and in life/spoken word)?
As always, you don't have to answer! I know sometimes I throw out the curly ones. Questions, cheeky reader... that'd be questions I mean.

On the importance of Friends and Online Connections

Over the past week or so, I have been thinking back over the past ten or so years of my life. Specifically, looking at the friendship and/or support circles I have been amongst and how these have grown, evolved, shattered and, ultimately, become something I am able to be genuine and my authentic Self amongst.

The brief rundown goes like this:

• High school - never properly fit in. I eventually found a group of 'safe' girls (who still had moments of excluding me and I was never "in" with any of the groups in any way that I felt properly safe, never to be "dropped") and we muddled through to the end of our school days together. Mostly at high school, I was the target of the bitches. I don't know why. I suppose I was a bit of a soft/easy target. When I was cut with their words, I bled noticeably. When I defended myself, I was ridiculed even more. It was not a comfortable time for me, high school.
Note to self:  Remember to execute healthy level of detachment from personal memories of school when helping the LGBB through her school years.

• Post-school years - My first job didn't yield any more personal friendships. I worked with Steve for four years during the mid-'90s. It made the two of us tighter, but my 'circle' didn't increase. Those same high school buddies were my only friends during those years, but I rarely saw them. Mostly due to our vastly different lifestyles. I had the house and the picket fence already, by the time I was 21. My friends were house sharing in the inner city and studying. Their first jobs were highly paid and saw them spending as much money on a pair of shoes as I was putting towards my share of the mortgage for the week.

• By the year 2000, I had had and lost my first pregnancy. This shot me right out into the stratosphere, way beyond my friends and their concerns. They couldn't understand if they tried (and I'm not certain they did put much mind to it). In my youth and confusion, I withdrew from them completely and we parted ways. It was long overdue, but I finally admitted that we just weren't in the same place and my friends, therefore, probably weren't doing me any favours (nor I them, being a bit like a dragging ball and chain already amongst their partying, uni-style, carefree youth).

• During the years between 1998 and 2003, I held jobs that brought me a few very firm, enduring friendships with co-workers. Several of these remain to this day. Some of them did not outlast what was to happen to me in 2004. And that's okay.

• After we lost Ellanor in early 2004, reality kicked in. After spending 12 months floundering in a sea of unknowns - who was I now, how difficult was I to be 'friends with', how the hell could I go back to who I was before knowing Ella and, therefore, what did that mean for existing friendships and relationships - I emerged in 2005 with a refreshing new arsenal:  The Internet. Forums. Blogging.

• Firm friendships formed from expressing myself online. And while I lost a relationship or two along the way through that same sharing and expression, the benefits and return have been inconceivable. Far more than I could possibly have imagined. What began as an investigation into what I was in for with my first IVF cycle in early 2005 turned into membership of an online community/forum that sealed the friendships of at least half a dozen wonderful people who, to this day, I call my friends.

People who know my struggles, are willing to stay in touch and go through them with me - many people who have themselves lost a child or been through miscarriage/s - and don't see me as some social leper because of all the loss I have experienced.

These are women who, although a year had passed since Ellanor's passing, treated me as they found me. Used compassion, a sense of knowing innately what they would have wanted if it had been them in that situation. They matched me better. We fit. It was worlds away from what had been my reality for the previous 12 months - which was, basically, "get on with it, I can't keep listening to you, I have to talk about me and my life and my children... you're, frankly, cramping my style and boring me with all your infertility and loss talk... come over and play with my kids, entertain me! Entertain them! Like you used to... Oh, what's WRONG now??" My newfound, unexpected friends sent me little gifts in the post, I arrived home to flowers on my doorstep on Ella's birthday in 2006 from several people, I got to start meeting some of these fabulous fellow online buddies, some of whom were following a similar path to me, others sharing only the similarity of desiring another child and chatting the days away as we all waited.

The point is, where once I was conditioned to think that I was not a decent friend now that I had too many burdens and opinions to share, I've actually made the healthier choice. This is not to say that I haven't had a baptism of fire - I've been burned and have burned others with some of my choices and opinions - but I have grown from this. I am very grateful to have seen this early on, even through my grief-stricken, low self-worth eyes, because had I not, I would have closed this blog and run away from this online life forever.

But I have stayed. I have learned. And I have grown.

And now, I have so many cherished blogging friends that I can't possibly link to them all! Some are very dear to me for personal reasons, others are dear because they are always here with a helpful word or dose of reality, a unique perspective on something I have written, or a bloody good laugh (and I always love doing that!). I was only able to meet up with and spend time with a very small portion of those bloggers - some of them were unexpectedly kindred and they were some of the most pleasant surprises of all to come out of the Conference for me - but I learned to let go and accept my Self even more after that weekend in March.

Me (left) with adorable Seven7Cherubs, the inimitable Glowless and the ravishing Diminishing Lucy

If you read my blog, you pretty much know who I am. Blogging has helped me stay on the straight and narrow. It has shown me so many things about myself, most importantly how to get real with my writing and expression. About the reality of not knowing ANYTHING about anything. About broadening my love and acceptance of All - my Self included ;-) - and about the things that keep me ticking. I know more about myself now, having been through this weeding out of my close circle and have come to realise a few things that I need to do to remain balanced in my life.

To keep writing

To keep sharing and expressing

To always remember the Bigger Picture

To get off the computer and get amongst the reality around me (whether it's a messy kitchen, a weed-filled garden, a needy house with four pairs of eyes following me wherever I go - that being, my child, the cat and the two dogs...)

To never, ever write anything here (or in comments) that I would not be comfortable saying out loud

To never forget why I started this in the first place and to be thankful, eternally, to that guiding light of mine. Wherever she is now.



So, what about you? Have you ever had a complete friendship cull? Have you shed the layers of your outer reality and found that your real Self needed to seek more like-minded souls? Have you never done it and perhaps grown together with the same people you've known since childhood/early adulthood? 
I'd love to hear from you! Email me instead if you wish, I always love to learn more.

Here's me, getting going

This is not a Flamers Invitational. Not intentionally, anyway. But I am speaking to them, particularly after reading this. If you are squirmy in your chair as you read this...... then it could be time for you to assume some responsibility. Ready? Then read on!


You know, at first I wasn't going to write "to" this. But then, as the replies in my head that I wanted to write in various comments sections on several blogs amounted to post-size, I felt compelled to put it here (if for no other reason than to save other blogs' commenters from having to scroll so far to get past mine).

I'm sure whatever blog you read, in whichever community, you are going to identify with the scenario of death or similarly game-plan-changing event impacting a blogger's life so immensely that they do what they've always done:  they write about it. They write through it. In fact, they're compelled to write because they were born to write and as they have their blog already at their disposal, sometimes it's the only method of expression that does two things when they need to get it off their chest in doses: -

1) It puts a protective buffer between the writer and the receiver, mostly protecting the writer (as it SHOULD - it is, after all, their blog).
Case in point: It can be incredibly uncomfortable, for instance, for the mother of a dead baby to speak about the events surrounding the day her child died - they are captured forever on the movie reel in her mind like photographs that never fade, filed under "Archive Until The End Of Time" in her cellular memory, so it becomes sort of almost normal for her to describe the images her head and heart won't let her forget. Even though for her it is cathartic and healing to hear her own voice tenderly describing the final moments of her baby here on Earth, it can leave the person she's telling literally squirming in their seat or wanting to run out the door. Now, if the mother has reached a point where she notices this is almost always the reaction she is going to receive while she is doing her damnedest to heal (by communicating, as that is what comes naturally to her) and does not want to see the pain in another's face when they're hearing what she has to say, she'd rather just write it. From there, whomever chooses to read the blog has a choice (and a personal responsibility) to read or not.

2) It gives them a personal timeline through their (sometimes cruelly slow) stages of bewilderment out the other side to something resembling a normal life again. Some might say, "well, a journal on their bedside table will do that just as well, why blog about such morose stuff?"
Case in point:
There is no more isolating a place than in grief. Even when standing alongside someone who has lost equally to you (again, in my own situation I am just one half of the couple who parented a now deceased child so my partner lost just as much as me), the aloneness you feel is stifling. It creeps up and threatens to choke the life out of you. There is no happy. There is sometimes moments of laughter, but they are followed by "Oh SHIT, how could I ever laugh again?" moments, that seem to last months on end. Years, sometimes. It's a process that cannot be rushed. There is no time limit to this. But so many well-meaning people - who have NEVER lost what you have, nor the way you have - assume responsibility (incorrectly, I might add) to tell you and coax you, coach you, through your grief. Their impatience with you is harmful. And they don't even know it. When you tell them, they are defensive. This will never do. Writing in a journal just highlights the loneliness. But connecting with nameless, faceless others? Who have boundless capacity to support?  It is fucking PRICELESS, let there be no mistake. To me, it is better than the best therapist (although I hasten to add that the two in conjunction were what saw me through in various stages through my first 5 years from losing my daughter).


You know, what's next? Sueing a blogger because of personal injury or loss of life? Because apparently "sticks and stones will break my bones... and words too on your blog, you should have been more editorial on your own aching, bereft ass"??????

I don't think so. Come on, people. Get responsible. The world hurts. It doesn't stop hurting simply because a mother stops being real with her audience. If that is what she's always done, death and/or the destruction of her world as she knew it is not going to alter the nature of her bear-all soul. Why would it? Where would the tremendous gift be to everyone, including herself, in avoiding the hard stuff on her blog?

When I was down there myself, in that pit, so devoid of any will to live that I felt no pain, there were no tears, I had no rage, and certainly no thought of follow-through effects on my loved ones - I actually, honestly believed I would be doing them a great service by removing myself from their lives, seriously thought without a shadow of a doubt that I would not be as missed as my alarmed and terrified husband told me I would be, when I advised him quietly "I'll just be going now" - I would safely bet everything I own today on the fact that no blog in the blogosphere that had been writing about suicide, for instance, would have been the decider that brought me to do it if it had already been on my mind. In fact, it would have served to do the complete opposite.

I'm not sure I remember what snapped me out of suiciding in 2004. I think it was just a gradual incline out of that hollow hole. If a blog like Lori's had been around - I didn't get into blogging until I started my own in late 2005, and was a complete novice to such things as online support groups until a full year after Ellanor died and left me here to live what I hoped one day would be a very short life without her - I know without a doubt that it would have helped beyond any measure I have today, able-bodied and far removed from that scary pit of no-worth, no-pain, no-nothing to keep me anchored here. Even reading her words this week on those final moments for her dearly beloved husband, I have been snapped up straight. That was me. That could have been me. And him. My dearly beloved. Except I would have been the one he found. It makes my head spin... How close. How close I was. So accepting that I knew without any doubt what I had to do to make things right for everyone, least of all me.

So, what am I saying?

I'm saying, cut the crap and call yourself out on the masks you wear. If you feel compelled to write something that is genuinely intended to be compassionate and "just looking out for everyone" or however you have justified it in your own reality, I'd hope before you do write a comment that you have a water-tight reason/case. Simply sprouting off half-baked prophecies on how readers could be "triggered to do bad things to themselves or others" because of what they read is, in fact, incredibly irresponsible. It's not to say there is no validity at all, I won't go that far - mostly because I don't assume to know, either way - but it needs to be pointed out that all we have in this life sometimes (particularly when extremely, lower than low, low) is choice. If you have self-checked your reasons for meddling in such a fashion in someone's healing (for that is what it is), then why not also ask yourself these questions:  Have I got any power, let alone right, to alter the course of a stranger's life?  What am I really offering here that is useful? Is it just sensationalist of me and, if I think it's not, am I really being truthful with myself? Is there any possible way that this comment of mine could cause hurt?

And the big one: Would I honestly be willing to say this, with compassion and heartfelt care, to the person directly if they were right in front of me? I don't think many of these "do-gooding" (for I'm sure that's how they see themselves) anonymous angels of slightly-tinged malice would really be able to say what they seem so willing to do under the cloak of anonymity, if they were physically in front of someone already down there in the trenches of their grief.

Mind you.... I have met a couple in my time who have no Self-Edit button. So I wouldn't willingly suggest this as an exercise, not unless the bereaved had a cheer squad of clear-thinking supporters behind them to help them reason a case. For that is how it can be with blinding grief; it can render a previously level-headed adult to their knees, not know which god forsaken way is up. Despite their protests otherwise, sometimes they bloody well do need help and support and care around them. Hmmmm. Anonymous dissenters don't really fit that job description.


On the other hand, I'd like to change focus just finally. Let's not forget that whilst online it's easy to pass them off as "just trolls" or "flamers", saying all manner of hate-filled 'they can suck it's back at them in retaliation, we just feed the vortex. The lack of genuine care. From the outside looking in, we know they don't really care even when they have convinced themselves quite firmly probably that they do. I'm sure most of the comments of this nature, on personal blogs, are not done for fun or to inflame. They are done because they think it's clever they've thought of this twist that nobody else has mentioned yet. And I would also hazard a guess they'd be the first to feel shock and hurt (and tell you too, given half the opportunity) that you could have taken them "that way" and turn it all back around on you for calling them out on this when they were "only trying to help" or "think of other people" (where you obviously weren't... oh, shame on you for grieving so honestly, you dirty girl).

The crux of it, for me, is this - retaliation with venom is not how I prefer to do it. I'm not a hater. Even on the haters. It takes an inordinate amount of loathing for me to be moved to say I "hate" and even then, it will always be something not someone. Saint? Me? No fucking way. Seeker of truth? Yes. Believer in everyone's good? Yes, that too. Hopeful that delusions can give way to real, honest, soul-connected living? NOW you're on the money!

Look, call me naive but the only way to minimise this sort of pain - and it's been an incredibly painful lesson in family estrangement, etc., for me to learn - is to work on our own selves. Our own social masks and insecurities (there are plenty of them to choose from to start working on, privately). I'm a big supporter of lashing out when in pain, I really am. I advocate it and recommend it highly. Done it for years, myself, and not just quietly most of the time. I did it blindly once or twice and that's all it took for great offence (to me and the truth I had to speak about, as I saw it) to blow my life even wider apart. And all I had then, and now still, is my own truth and behaviours to work with - ie. I couldn't then and don't try now, to control or silence others (even though at the time I felt that was the obvious solution: they should just have shut UP ALREADY about how we were going about our grieving). But it'd be too easy for me to retaliate angrily. I've tried that one on in my early years, trust me, and it didn't sit well with me. To each their own, but I need to implore here that there are other ways than reacting with impulsive and sometimes (if I'm honest when I've done it myself) equally hidden motives, even if these are so hidden that they are hidden to me too - in my opinion, the best thing here is to say nothing in those times. Otherwise, if you're not sure where the depth/boundaries of whatever view you're expressing lie within you, chances are you're going to emotionally maim someone with it. So .... shuddup! Until you know better why you're saying it.

But there does come a point where the pain dissipates and you don't feel the need - and when that time comes, we're still just back to our living, breathing selves. Much better for the self if you hold true to your truth - that great sword of truth - without actually cutting swathes with the sword. If it is truly your truth, you don't have to go brandishing it about. It will act in genuine accordance with who you are: a brightly shining light standing as a beacon to others who haven't found theirs yet and who are too scared to look at your light.

Is this my (very long-winded) pageant wish for World Peace? Wonder if I'd be booed off stage if I were on one. Nothing like standing stark nekid in the light of your own truth. Far King scary, have no doubt!

So go gently, those of you who are writing through your rage and pain, whatever your situation and however well-read your blog is. But do keep going. And to those of you who are too afraid to stand in your own truth for fear of being cut down: Just do it. Speak it, live it. It is never wrong if you are really, genuinely speaking your truth from a correct stance (and not intentionally wishing to attract harm to yourself or others).

I can be a judgemental hypocrite

I think there must be a hierarchy of judgement prevalent in the human condition. Or perhaps different levels of it, for I have been thinking about how I judge (consciously and unconsciously) and how it not only affects me but shapes the way I see the world.

There are times when I wonder if I'm not snarky enough, which renders me feeling inadequate because I don't join in. Or if I'm entirely too stabby and overblown about things, with some subjects that ignite me so much that they cause me to speak out. I usually these days keep to myself because if it's so important to me that I feel the need to state it, I sometimes then get protective of my opinions and can tend to be slightly defensive about them (and, therefore, don't want to be disagreed with).

And this is not even to mention the fact that I sympathised with someone just this morning at the shops who was assuming the position of authority on someone's personal business - by merely standing there and nodding with compassion, I was contributing, but my conscience told me at the time, "As long as you keep your mouth shut, you're not doing any harm." Fact is, I was doing harm. To me, if nobody else (but I know it wasn't just me my actions/inaction was affecting). I didn't do what I innately felt was the right thing (for me) to do, which was kindly but firmly steer the conversation away and not let the person keep going on about it. And why did I do that? I wanted the information, of course. I wanted to be privy to what the townsfolk are doing and saying, be kept in the loop, feel included, not look like a wet rag or that I can't have fun or that I don't like a joke, under the guise of it being "in whomever's or whatever's [in this case, the community's] best interests" because, oh, what a grand scapegoat "the others" are when they're all doing it too. You may as well join in, for if you can't beat 'em, isn't that what we've been programmed to do? And that fear of not being liked, of being seen - judged - as someone who takes everything seriously or has to put a dampener on things.... that's a big one that keeps luring me back in.

"Do as you would have done unto you" - I like this wisdom, for I would like to think if I keep my judgements to myself I'll not be judged as often (or unfairly). But I think I'm fooling myself, really, for although I hope for a world that makes judgement of others extinct, I know there will always be excuses made for the goodness and rightness of judgement - I allow myself to make them all the time, despite being wary and aware of the harm it can do! - and fair points they'd be, too, for who am I to judge?

There's not much that inflames me, not these days. It doesn't make for grand blog posts, that's for sure, because much of the time, by the time I've formulated arguments for/against whatever it is, I've reached the conclusion in my head that 'to each their own, judge not lest ye be judged' and so forth. Ultimately, I can't spare the energy to be so passionate about anything external to me and my experiences because it just seems to fall into the big Gossip or Judgement basket. I do not believe it is fair or just or correct to judge. And yes, I still do it all the time (even if only in my own mind) - I am working on curbing this, as a thought is as good as spoken in the energetic world. And that just contributes to nothing constructive or positive on the whole.

However..... you must have known there was one coming......

This morning, I read a post on Mama Mia's blog about toddlers having their eyebrows waxed, all in the name of a beauty pageant. I think we must surely be far past the oft-touted statements of the parents of these little girls (and boys) who claim their children love the the competitions and they have so much fun, when the parents begin inflicting quite a serious amount of pain on their child, all in aid of being judged for how they look. Wow. Way to perpetuate the crazy, often unattainable without an airbrushing, ideals of the magazine/celebrity industry. And involving such small, malleable minds too.

Far be it from me to judge, as I've spent the past few paragraphs saying, but seriously..... WHAT THE HELL???

This is not some far off country. This is happening here in Australia. I find this just wrong, wrong, wrong. Now, I have chosen to have my eyebrows waxed for nearly 20 years and it STILL hurts. I'm a grown woman who's given birth twice. I know pain!

Deliberately and systematically administering this pain on your own child is causing untold damage to so many areas of that child's life. These are the formative years. I shudder to think what harm it must cause emotionally. What a way to condition your child to submit to unnecessary, avoidable, pleading-to-make-it-not-happen pain at the hands of someone who loves them. The idea of a child having to endure that at the hands of her mother [well, her mother's chosen beauty therapist, but still] leaves me cold.

Perhaps these parents [I'm guessing it's only the mothers, though, who go this far, although shame on any fathers who allow it to happen, no matter what the excuse] ought to go through some sort of counselling to (re)discover their own self esteem issues before forcing their children into some perceived superficial ideal, for subjecting their children to this sort of idiocy has surely got to stem from something deep-seated in the parent??

At the least, this is short-sightedness at its very worst.

Right. Now that that's out of my system, I want to just address a brief tweet that happened to grab my attention as it swiftly moved down my timeline. Along the lines of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban lacking priorities for leaving their brand new three week-old baby daughter (who knew?!) while they went to a party. I began to enter into it, citing a case of someone I knew who left their eight week-old so they could go on a two week romantic 'reconnecting' holiday, and implying this was surely worthy of some perspective - after all, the most amount of time that new parents could go to a party would only be a few hours - but then stepped back.

I was asking for judgement of the new parents to be suspended (no matter who they are, I couldn't give two hoots if it was a couple from up the street or the most famous, or rich, couple in the world). And yet, here I am just a few hours earlier, ready to rip shreds of someone else I've not met and know nothing about because she's beautifying her daughter.

They're hardly in the same league, I know - one is causing pain to a pleading, begging child and (to my mind) is abuse, and the other is a newborn who probably stayed asleep for the entire duration of her parents' attendance at that party, save for possibly a burp and bottle.... But I'm still being rather hyprocritical.

See? I'm bothered by it. By the waxing horror and by the fact that we can so freely and easily judge (with a cute Twitter hashtag to soften the blow sometimes) those we are likely never to even meet. I vow to continue looking at my own spoken/written words and conscious/unconscious thoughts with regards to how quick I am to judge or prejudge people and their decisions.

I think I'm starting to realise why my posts have been lacking of late. More and more, I am seeing that unless I can find a way to make it productive or upturn it to the positive, I don't want to be questioning the morals or actions or decisions of others because I'm just contributing to the group mentality that it's okay. In reality, other people's business is none of my business (unless they offer information directly and seek feedback/opinions) and pretty much no matter what the situation, there's always learning in there somewhere - the only part I have control and responsibility over, therefore, is my reaction to becoming privy to these situations.

Back to posts about picking on my cat for me, I think *sliding rock back over head*

My neighbour is pregnant and it's upsetting me

Since my last miscarriage (what number is that now.... I think it was #11) four months ago, I have had to endure the blossoming belly of the woman next door.

I found out she was pregnant during an exchange we had at my front door on the day I was suffering the loss - they are virtually par for the course for me now, it was my second miscarriage in 2010 alone - when she had come over to invite the LGBB to play with her son in his new sandpit. Nothing wrong with that. All terribly neighbourly, etc. And really, she's an ace girl. The kind you could throw back a few drinks with, I'm sure, and we have spent ages chatting over the past two years when we pass by the fence.

But on that day, when I said it would actually help me out if Lolly went over for a play because of my current circumstance, I was really disappointed in her that she chose that moment to say with a laugh, "Well, you don't want to know we're expecting number two then!"

Since then, it's been ringing in my ears. She knew and I knew it was inappropriate to say as soon as the words left her mouth. But there it was. Hanging in the air. And now, every time she walks through her backyard, past my kitchen window where - let's face it - we tend to spend a lot of time gazing out on the world, I have to see that belly. That beautiful, growing bulge beneath her increasingly tighter tops. I'm not sure how far along she is now but it must be third trimester. Often, I look away (or walk away) because I want to just shut it out. But I realise that once the little person is here and they're all out in the backyard, I won't very well be able to see past it.

It's had me thinking hard the past few weeks as the belly has been prominent in my eyeline.

Am I really so not over losing all our pregnancies (and Ellanor) that I am reduced to this? I thought I was much more emotionally okay with pregnant women. I've self-checked and know that there will always be residual pangs of remorse that we don't have more than one live child. Perhaps it's as simple as witnessing this person's growing life even though I am in my safe haven, my home, where I usually feel protected and able to recover from whatever confronting pregnancy-newborn-related conversation or situation I find myself in on any given day. I know that my miscarriage talk makes people uncomfortable, especially "the pregnant ones", and my needs have long since dissipated to a point where I am able to compartmentalise my angst so that I'm not bothersome (I've had women physically recoil from me when they have asked and I have divulged some of my pregnancy-related history.... it's not exactly pleasant when they react in that way).

And then, something happened last week to a fellow blogger that sent me reeling. Totally un-pregnancy-related, this was the death of Sarah's (of Ah! The Possibilities fame) beloved cat. As the grief process continued and her family decided they needed a new cat,  I was shocked at a Twitter response that came to my mind at one point and I pulled myself up sharply.

I had thought, "You want a cat? Take mine... please!" Where the hell did THAT come from?!?

It was about as ghoulish and ill-thought out of me as the moronic offers Steve and I used to get from other people to take their children - "Take ours! You can have 'em!" - as if it was some sort of easy thing for them to do, not to mention that they assumed it would be as simple as us taking their children and then our pain and problems would be solved.

Immediately, I berated myself. And then I was left to consider how similarly quickly those quick-witted quips, designed to add lightness to a moment, must have entered the minds and rolled off the tongues of the people I used to encounter. I had to concede that I had unfairly condemned these people, long since in my past now (some of them barely even acquaintances), as being uncaring, unthinking twit-headed meanies. Does that mean I am one too? Or does it mean they were not then? I guess that's all relative.

To minimise the natural processing of shock over a death and grief resulting from the loss in this way is highly insulting, belittling and demeaning. But how quickly it is absorbed back into daily life and how swift we are, as a society, to joke things all away and smooth them over and pretend we can joke along. Because if we don't, we're seen as morose or not coping or "hard work". No. What about, "we're grieving"! And "it's an individual process"! And "we'll be okay if we're not hurried with the flippant comments"!

I could tell you comments that were levelled at us (and others that I've heard over the years) that would make your hair stand on end. One amazing statement came just two months after Ella died - I was told that I needed to watch that Steve didn't "spiral into a pit of depression" because this person was worried Steve was sad every time they talked to him. Ermmmmmmmm, hellooooooooo. I haven't the words now and I didn't back then either, in reply. So it was just said to me and that person went off thinking they'd done the right thing.

It has taken me a number of years (and lots of soul-searching and counselling methods) to broaden my perspective and relax my thinking about those whom I have in the past deemed to have acted incorrectly. It is ignorance, despite my forgiveness. And I was the ignorant one in that moment, when I thought of suggesting I bundle off my cat (even in jest, for I wasn't really going to do it - I knew it and Sarah would have known it, but that's hardly the point). It was a really shocking lesson for me to learn, that I could allow my mind to go there so quickly that if I hadn't been more thoughtful, I could easily have spilled the thoughts out of my brain and into my Twitterstream.

If I had not had my experiences with the loss of Ellanor - after which time I was authoritatively told by people, even strangers sometimes, that it was "probably a blessing in disguise" - and the feedback I have had to endure from people (many of whom have been parents themselves) telling me my miscarriages have been "for the best, there was obviously something wrong with it and you wouldn't want a child with problems"... and even more beauties than that, then I may not have considered twice the prospect that grief is linear. That is, I see that grief has no hierarchy, no boundaries, no exclusions.

I realise there is a time when most of us naturally start to feel better after a loss, no matter what that loss is. But we can either be helped or irretrievably hindered along the way by people turning their thoughts into words.

It's been one of those weekends

I ran away from a class for the first time yesterday. Strangely, it was "just" etheric head/neck/shoulder massage (have you ever had a good head massage? Divine!). But I couldn't handle it. I think it was the close proximity to others, coupled with the deep and vast emotions I was feeling. They swooped in on Friday evening - I am heading into my third week of my parents in-law staying with us (three down, three to go...), so I am feeling quite justifiably like I'm handling a hot potato at the moment anyway - and had fully descended on me by mid morning Saturday.

The crash engulfed me, finally, on my lunch break as I sat and cried floods of tears to match the flooding outside the car (I was over two hours' drive from home, in the thick of an unseasonable band of storms across the middle of the state that have caused road closures and some havoc). And I made the call and left the message that altered the course of the rest of my weekend:  "It's me. I'm not coming home."

Yes, I went there. I was lower than I have been in a long while. Desperation calls for desperate phone calls, in my books. But then, after I'd hung up, I realised..... I had nowhere to go! It was bucketing down. I was a few hundred km's from home (not that I was going there, apparently, anyway). There was nobody I wanted to be with, nobody who would want to see me like this. No one who would truly understand.

And then I turned on the car* and did what any self-respecting girl with any of her mettle left would do: I drove towards Dad's house. FINALLY, his living two hours' drive away came in handy for I was now only ten minutes from him. And I sheltered in his home after navigating the precariously flooding driveway, and accepted his particular brand of bear-hug.... noticeably more frail now after all his health issues and scares. He told me he's at considerable risk of heart failure. But not to burden me, mind. It was almost an after-thought, as if he was just running things through his mind, out loud, and I just happened to be there. He only found out last week. I hid my fear amongst the rubble of my already crushed heart and took his tenderly made cup of coffee for me.

Then I went with him to work on his house. He should NOT be doing this work on his own and for a moment, I cursed the person who should be most aware of this fact for allowing him to say he can do it when he obviously can't. I'm like my father in this regard; he will kill himself trying before saying he can't do it.... He carried three empty boxes up a short flight of stairs and couldn't breathe. This, from my capable, unstoppable father. I turned a blind eye to my terror as he admitted his heart rate flips from 30 beats (far too slow) to over double its normal working rate. The solution is not an easy one for his specialists to find.

And I am crushed even more, knowing this.

I used the surety of his love and safety as an opportunity to calm myself before the drive home, by talking things over with my father as I packed boxes and boxes of his journals and publications - his life's work passing from the bookshelves through my hands and into archive boxes - I felt less insignificant again. More heard again. More worthy and vital.

Taking a warm hug goodbye and a parting piece of fatherly advice - that all I must be concerned with is myself first, and then my daughter and Steve and "the rest will pass" (referring to the current melting pot that is sharing the house for this extended time) - I stopped the car on the long driveway. I gazed up at the old house through the trees, trying to feel something familiar. It used to be so welcoming, this house I was leaving for the very final time. It had become cold towards me, long before my father and his partner packed up and moved to much smaller dwellings in a nearby town. I waited until I made sure Dad had backed his ute back safely into the carport where he had insisted I had parked out of the torrential rain. I saw the reverse lights go on and his little beat-up red ute shifted slowly backwards. He was good for now. I sensed a process taking place for him as well, doing this work all by himself in his now empty, once grand home.

All things must pass, I thought, and shifted my own car into gear again.

From here, I drove home and into the arms of my once-familiar man. The boy I married, eleven long, hazy, crazy years ago. No, it's not our anniversary. But when things are strained for an extended period of time, I suppose one gets misty-eyed and melancholy for "the way we were".

This song is for the two men who anchor me in my life and keep accepting me - no matter what. This song is because one of these men absolutely adores Kate Bush and the other... well, the other is the man with the child in his eyes to me.

It can be a rare thing to receive this sort of ever-replenishing love once. At the core of all that is in turmoil, I know I am ultimately supremely lucky to have it two-fold in one lifetime.










*that's not a poetically licenced exaggeration, by the way. I drive a car that you literally only have to hit a big button that says 'Start/Stop'. No keys to turn, it just.... starts. And stops [handy, that].

Illusions

Have you ever had something so monumentally life-course changing that you look at everything differently? How long has it taken you to swallow back up the farce that goes with being 'in community' with others? Or did you quit the commercial/consumerism way of life for good? (in which case.... how are you reading this because shouldn't you not have a computer or internet?) Or are you a little like me and oscillate between being blinded by it, back to realising it's all an illusion of who we really are?

Recently (as in.... last week), a personal event blind sided me. Absolutely knocked me and my energy for a six. Before I could get my breath back, and while I was at the bottom of the pit waiting to see a way forward out of this, I found myself looking at everything the way I did right after Ellanor died. Without my Blind Human Nature goggles on.

It struck me first as I was driving along to my class at Peace Space the other day - I am currently studying the Esoteric Spiritual Tarot and finding it awesome as a complementary divining tool for my work and daily life (anyone wanna line me up with a question? for real? I need practice, email me! but serious questions only, from regular followers, please ;) - and anyway, I was zooming past the back of a large estate as I made my way further into the countryside.... And all of a sudden, it dawned on me. In light of my current situation on that day, I saw as if for the first time that those houses were all adorned with things to beautify them. There were gargantuan cars parked in manicured driveways. Huge pillars adjacent to big front doors. Really big houses. Really big representations of just what we have the potential to fill our lives up with.

And it's all, really, at the end of the day, nothing. I thought about it and got it in a split instant, which only happened so fast because I was definitely in a very pained, fragile and vulnerable state - something I never take for granted if I feel that way because of the blinding light it sheds on my "reality" and where I can make adjustments to my current way of living if I've gone so far off track from what's truly important in my life... and it's not pillars at my front door or an immaculate, enormous house.

None of this means anything if I am not loved and cannot love in return. Nothing means a damn thing. At the end of the day, I am one big soul full of love. But I bury all that purity and fill myself to capacity with daily grind, fear and loathing, burden and begrudging tolerance.... I just begin to lose track of all the goodness in my life when I begin to slide back into that pit. Why? Well, I think it's a number of things, but mostly I believe (for me personally) it has everything to do with being seen to have a thick skin, to be keeping up with the Jones's (dang, I never know the proper plural for that bloody family! Jonses just looks WRONG), to be able to keep up with the cynical, witty, cutting banter that I see more and more around not just the life in front of me but on blogs around the globe.

I don't know. Shrug. I know what I need to do to keep myself close to that light (and lightness) in myself. What about you? Do you ever have these feelings? I know, I know... another D&M from me. But come on, if you've been following for more than a week, you should be used to this by now here!

Here we go: Family Lore/Law and healing patterns

Hello! So huge is this that I have to divvy it up to try and make it palatable, not only for you lot reading but for me as I catalogue it all in my time - this blog is a time-stamp for me as much as it is an outlet.

 This post is just part of a thread of thought/learning pertinent to cross-generational childbirth/loss and patterns of behaviour that I am going to have to split across all three of my blogs. There is a lot of personal family information - but incredibly pertinent to my discovery (which relates directly to my own healing and understanding of the burdens of my journey) - which I want to discuss on the private blog in due course. 

There are also a number of different realms and realities associated with what I am uncovering, which are probably best suited to the Earth Healing blog (where I am, after all, trying to collaborate and consolidate what I come across, like an index of sorts). 

And, of course, there is the continuing story of me, the person, which you have come to know through this blog - and this is where I want to begin to unravel not only so I can share, but also so I can understand and get my head around this most amazing story that has been unfolding. I would be delighted if you visit all three places, to gain a more rounded insight, if you feel moved to do so! Otherwise, I'll be sharing public thoughts here. As always.

A little preface:
I am writing about this in the spirit of sharing, in case this little snippet of my ongoing discovery might cause a spark of recognition for someone reading. This is a story/awareness not unique to me. And the experience that has journeyed me through this awakening is the vehicle by which I can explain how, by healing the family patterns from generations dead and gone, a remarkable and unmistakable healing - a pardon of the past - can take place.

My story is a rather extreme version of this occurrence/possibility. I am getting used to the fact that it is this way because it serves to highlight to me, personally, where I have had opportunities to discover, uncover and learn more. Constantly shifting and lifting all the drift wood. If I did not have this hugely impacting succession of the same lessons, I would not have persevered to learning the truth about my generational patterns of abuse, neglect and loss. It has been an enormous package, so huge in fact that I am struggling to fit it all into words. I possibly never will. But I am trying to describe it because I also realise that this is not something for me, alone, to simply discover, heal and move on with. That has never been part of my social cause. I get that now.

Getting to the crux of it:
All of us have the same opportunities to heal our family patterning - after all, we are all borne of families generations in the making somehow (even when we are adopted in to families, although this creates a really intriguing sidetrack). Whether this is through dissolving redundant but, regardless, still prevalent family lore (the family stories, traditions, anecdotes, "just the way it is in our family") or discovering ways of life that have amazing similarities to those of your ancestors, even when carried out 50, 70, 100 years apart.

When I had my first pregnancy, I did not even contemplate its connection to any sort of "bigger picture". When I lost my second, third, fourth and then fifth, I didn't think I was incredibly unique. I still did not really think about my place "in all of this", my humility didn't allow it.

My sixth pregnancy produced Ellanor. With her - and this is putting it very briefly!! - I was delivered a gift of glimpsing life beyond life after she died. If you doubt, I don't blame you. And if you doubt, all I can say is..... trust and faith and a healthily skeptic open mind is what saw me through the next six years (and counting). Trust me ;) Heh. So, I spent this pregnancy devoting much time to contemplating my grandmother and her own losses - of which I believe there were at least two, possibly three or even more - in her second trimester of pregnancy. BUT this is as far as I thought my connection to her went. I thought, at this point, and for all these years since, that I truly understood the kinship I felt to her the instant she died (my grandmother and not Ella). And that this posthumous kindred spirit, for want of a better explanation of it, was what I bonded with during the months of not only conceiving but then carrying Ellanor (for Ellanor came in to my awareness some seven months before I fell pregnant with her). Little did I know that this was just an introduction to really getting to know what my Grandmother had been all about, and her mother before her. AND, the most mind-blowing part of all, that the multiple pregnancy connection that I thought was the thing we shared (and her mother before her as well, who had a total of twelve live births before dying aged 38 when 7 months pregnant) was actually a ruse. That this female energenetic connection I have with them was merely the hook, ensuring I really understand them on this level in order to get to the real crux of all the scandalous running around that really went on, starting at least as far back as turn of the last century London?

My seventh, eighth and ninth pregnancies netted no result, or so I thought, but a dashing of hopes and now numbed and incomprehensible grief and pain. Sorrow and sadness were dancing within me beside my belief, belonging and will to strive/survive. But....

At this point, I also began to develop a real sense of belonging to a greater, much larger tapestry. Me and my failed pregnancies - and, indeed, the dear soul Ella - were but a miniscule part of it. However, without us, there would have been an undeniable hole in the overall picture. So the picture not only required me and my journey with these babes, I relied on it (completely unknowingly, unconsciously until only last week) to seek my Comeback, my homecoming and my calling.

I am floored to discover, only after pregnancy 10 (which gave us our blessed relief in the form of our second girl, Lolly), and then pregnancies 11 through to 14, which I of course lost last week, that there is NOT a curse on me but a course. Through me. And through me, my paternal female genetic line has been patiently, fervently holding. Waiting for this moment in time to be discovered by me. The pregnancy last week reminded me to keep seeking answers - I had stopped, foregone that duty, as getting pregnant is not on my radar anymore and the game of chance and two lines on a wee-stick is not one I am actively playing anymore - and I received them.

Like a bolt out of the blue. Or, hey, a burst blood vessel in the leg. Whichever ;)

So now, I am going to throw it over to the Earth Healing blog where, if you are so inclined, you can go catch up with the workings/"mechanics" of healing a family pattern. Or, indeed, how to discern whether you have one to heal. Give me a few days (maybe even a week or two) for this one, as it is huge and I need to get it as 'right' as I can in my head and heart before I can post it. As well, I need to get some of the more personal jot-points down and out quickly, before I forget and lose the essence of my great-grandmother (in particular), and I want to do that behind the veil of my private blog, for the protection of my family still living more than anything.


Phew. Well, I feel a tad lighter, getting that out of my head. Thank you for lending me your eyes, if you went with me on that. I hope it wasn't too hard to follow? If anyone has any questions they'd like to ask for the sake of clarifying in their own field of awareness, please ask. It may help immensely in shaping future posts on this subject of energenetic (family pattern) healing and for that, I would be ever so grateful for the cerebral stimulation from those interested in learning more. If you catch my drift...