It makes a difference

Amongst the cards from our dearest of friends - plus one exceptionally exquisite gift which, on opening and smelling the beautiful cinnamon, lifted my spirits immensely and surprisingly - was a card from The Compassionate Friends. I had forgotten they cared. Of course they do.

I joined the group/mailing list late last year and spoke for some time to a really nice woman who runs our chapter of the group. She lost her toddler son in a drowning accident some years ago now. And she sent us a card. Something I wasn't aware I would fall on until I got to this morning. Thank God some people sent cards! That's all I can say. They were very appreciatively received.

We do not have to rely upon memories
to recapture the spirit
of those we have loved and lost -
They live within our souls
in some perfect sanctuary
which even death cannot destroy

From Nanushka by Nan Whitcomb

Eve

Tomorrow is the day.

The day the course of my life was forever altered.
When one moment I was just coming in like every other morning to gaze longingly for another long day but was greeted by a bizarre altered-reality type scene.
How I was known by others as a friend, a daughter, a sister, a cousin. An enemy.
How I knew myself as me.
How my future role as mother and wife was changed, for the better but also for the worse.
How my view of what can happen in the world was suddenly too incomprehensible to consider all at once.
The day I had to hear my father, lost for words. My brother, so consumed by shock that he threw his mobile away because he wanted to unhear my words... while I was still on the other end of the phone.
The chance to actively mother once again slipped from my grasp, even though it had been so close I was granted that brief month to smell, touch, see, taste it this time.
I lost my innocence. The most pure love of my life.

It was the day I gave her back to the world.

Yet still, "the world" doesn't understand why I can sometimes bite them without their expecting it. What I have seen and experienced - and lost - is forgotten in the moment. I never ask for forgiveness, I don't even ask for understanding anymore as it seems too far a bow to draw for some to consider it an effect of an event that happened "all those years ago now". It is as it is with some people, you can never hope to reach those who weren't meant to be reached.
So instead, I learn and I make note of those things that are deemed mistakes, faux pas' if you will, in some people's eyes but jewels of growth and opportunity in mine. They can kick me while I'm down and I thank them later, in my own time, for the chance to learn from my part in the scenario. But has it really served a purpose for them? And did they ever pause to consider where I was coming from? I wonder, but it's not my business to know. Another's growth will come from all sorts of things for their own personal betterment and not necessarily ever from an interaction (or altercation) with me.

I'm not too big (or small) to say I've been hurting. Am still hurting. Sometimes in tremendous amounts. It is hard to admit, when previously you have been a very capable, dependable person who went out of their way never to neither intentionally nor accidentally hurt another. I appear to have momentarily lost that knack. Honesty will do that to a person, I guess. I have lost my way a bit, especially when feeling the hurt on behalf of others. Feeling it and wishing desperately it would ease for them. It has gotten me into trouble on occasion, when speaking *for* others in the face of another's short-sightedness. But it has all helped to shape me and all the parts that make up the whole of me, where I stand today. Which is different to how I will be in the future. The experiences I have today will decide who I am tomorrow, step and repeat until the final curtain, I suppose.

Four years ago tomorrow, we said goodbye to Ellanor. But in another way, we also welcomed her forever into our hearts and memories.

Drop the boy

I was looking through some photos the other day of my two brothers. They were standing at the front of the congregation at my little brother's wedding. Both of them dressed to the nine's.

What memory pops into my head? The one where my older brother picked on the younger for liking that Bros song, Drop The Boy.

That was three days ago. Ever since, I have heard my brother's rendition of that annoying line - camped up for better teasing effect - playing over and over in my head.

"Drop the boy, drop the boy, ooooh-werrrr, I'm a man, yessiam"

It was twenty years ago! I am going mad.

Would. You. Lie. STILL! (sweet cherub, light of my life)

I know what it'd be like to wrestle an octopus into a nappy. When did it suddenly become a battle to keep those active little legs down and out of the way (and out of stamping in poo usually)?

I reckon any mother of a toddler would do that calf tying thing pretty well too, just quietly.

Honestly. If I had to explain the actual action of my arms to someone, I'd look more like I'm pumping water at a well than changing a nappy.

*Breathe in, let it out slowwwwwwly*

TTFN

C'mon, give it a go!

I can't believe nobody would attempt Mr. Tambourine Man (the Shat's version). You've no vision!

Snags ahoy!

I always thought I would never again take for granted ANYTHING or anyone that was important to me. Not after losing Ella.

The thing is, the ongoing nature of life does slowly begin to cloud the very raw realisations you form. Forever changed by that situation, but at the same time very much moving away from the event by which your course has been altered.

We cannot remain open in that raw state. But it is at a time like that in your life when you are faced with the truth, the clarity, of what else is possible. What is unseen. What is a mystery beyond the veil. When squared up like that, particularly if it was unexpected and sudden, one can find themselves looking into a void. But it's a void where the important things are so easy to see. Stripped of the shroud of muck that society on the whole just blankets it all in. And to hold firm to that is supremely difficult, for if you stay in that state of mind you run the risk of being outcast, of being told you are not coping or moving on, or of simply feeling so unsupported (unless you are fortunate to find a solid base, something I do not take for granted and thank my lucky stars for daily, quite literally) that it is easier to shut up and deny what you've seen or experienced just to be accepted once more. Like some unruly child on the wrong side of the tracks who suddenly saw the error of their ways and rejoined the cult that is the human race.

So it's a dichotomy, of sorts. Strangely, you find yourself more aware than ever before of life's pettiness, of the seeming "ungratefulness" of someone else, perhaps of the way an outwardly apparent charmed existence is being taken for granted. And yet, as time marches on and the shockwaves disperse, you do move back in step with the people around you; to complain about those little things you swore as you held your baby for the last time in your arms that you would never ever find value in complaining about again.

Is it the way of human nature? That you can make those promises to yourself in your grief and yet, in order to box that grief and its resultant aching physical pain, your body urges you to move forward from that point. To go along with life and slip back in, at some point over the weeks, months or years. And in so doing, allowing yourself to forget all that which you promised you would not let get to you again.

Much of what I do and how I look on it is different, this is true. The framework was set in concrete on February 12th, 2004. But still, I have not been immune from getting snagged by what goes on around me. The opinions and actions of others that routinely catch me and reel me in again. For it is far easier to go along and seem agreeable (it's in my nature and that part of me remains unchanged).

The hardest lesson for me has been in growing accustomed to hearing conviction in my new voice. Being comfortable to actually have an open opinion. And I am getting very used to standing in my truth.

Time will just have to tell if sticking to this consistently is the way forward out of the mire.

Green day

Yesterday, I started the New Year right by taking up the colour healing classes from the beginning (once more, with feeling).

The first one I did was back in 2003, a couple of months before I conceived Ellanor (ooh, must remember to add that in to the book), and it honestly rattled my cage so badly that I vowed not to do another ever again. It eventually took the death of Ella and a further 18 or so months before I felt game and strong enough to be challenged and assisted by any more of this colour work.

Magenta fell just too close to home for me personally, in the beginning, and it took a few years to integrate and accept it from that first time around. I resisted all of the teachings in the manual and from the day. I did change, albeit slowly. What also ensued was an awakening that included the conception and birth, ultimately also the death, of my first child. I'm not saying it was because of the class that any of that happened. But in hindsight, I could have been much better assisted and supported by means of my own internal methods of healing - instead of looking outward for it everywhere I went - had I started the full course from the beginning and not just picking up mid-way through the year. Shiddappens, I know. And it all went right way, anyway. After all, in reaching out for several years needing support, I also began truly supporting others (where prior to this, I was almost without fail a rock for everyone else and didn't lean on anyone for any thing). It's just interesting for me now to note, having done several more and yet only just doing the first one yesterday, after four years, that there is an order to it all (this method of healing/work). I never saw it clearly before.

So Green Ray. Hmmmm. It was lovely, if not posing a challenge for the coming year (and then some). Basically, this is the Ray of the "true healer who works from hands and heart to heal hurt and to give hope". In the deficient state of the psyche, Green can actually manifest as something I have been feeling for quite a while - "I don't get enough" (enough from whom? For I have come to understand through some fairly harsh life lessons that you can't expect more from others than they are prepared to give, whether or not they are/should be able. So the "not enough", to me, means that I am constantly attempting to fill myself up via others - and that's just not on anymore, it's a redundant method of suriving that I can no longer attempt to use). In the fear state, it has the feeling of "fear of taking responsibility/fear of not being responsible" .. which, uh, many of my close friends would avow is me to a tee most often. Funny, I'm just realising that most if not all of my dearest friends have come about since the death of Ella. And so it's not lost on me that they don't know the "old" me. I'm getting to know me and all those changes at virtually the same pace as them, which is a bizarre yet beautiful aspect and what makes the connection I have with each and every one of them so very special and important (to me and who I am shaping into now).

I've been in a cycle of having a permitted experience with it all, though, which is my take on it, for a number of months (perhaps even a year or two). And I think it's come full circle now and in being available yesterday - as well as being able to sort out care arrangements for the LGBB - for the first time to do this particular Ray (the same 13 colour ray classes are done each year in roughly the same month of the year and I have never made myself available for this one at the beginning of each new year), indicates to me that 2008 is going to be a big one for me. For my healing. And dang.... I have to heal myself. Doesn't that just let everyone else drop off the hook? I'm so relieved. I'll bet "they" are too.

It's time to hone and discipline my gifts and abilities. I am vowing to make this year the year it starts to really pull together too. The new house has such a great energy flow, the property itself is extremely powerful - possibly due to its positioning as much as to do with the earth itself in this pretty part of the world - so I have a wonderful nurturing space to start unfolding it all. The visual I get is an artist rolling back his cotton sack to reveal all the brushes and tools for a fresh canvas. It's very exciting.

When I went and meditated this morning - outside here for the first time and it felt awesome, so safe and protected - Spider came to me. A big floating spider, very joyous and free-feeling. When I say "came to me", I don't mean some hulking great spider plonked on my head (although the passing thought occurred to me at the time that, had it not been in my mind's eye but rather .. er, on my shoulder or somewhere else on my person .. I wondered if I'd have been so open to the message!).

After I'd had that time to myself, I came in and looked up Spider. Here's its deal:

Spider
Many cultures consider that it was the Spider who wove the primordial alphabet and that the angles formed by the weave of the web are what gave rise to the letters. Spider was thus considered the first great language teacher. When the Spider weaves its orb web, it weaves safe radial tracks, or scaffolding threads, of non-sticky silk from the centre tio the edge of the web, thus forming a wheel which relates to the Wheel of Life. These radial threads are the supports for the circular sticky silk threads of the web. The Spider travels back to the centre again and replaces the non-sticky silk with sticky silk which it ties to each radial thread, moving the weaving ever outwards in a circular spiralling pattern. The Spider "twangs" the spiral threads to form the "gum" into sticky beads. The sticky spiral threads snare the insects on which the Spider feeds. Spiders are able to travel around the web via the non-sticky radial threads and, with the use of claw-like bristles on the end of its legs, it can hold onto the sticky threads without becoming caught. Should the Spider come in contact with the sticky part of its web, the oil from its body will prevent it from getting stuck. Spiders have a great abilits to repair and rebuild any damage to their webs. If a web is broken or knocked about one day, then in the light of the morning dew the following day, you will be able to see it rebuilt in its full beauty and integrity.

When Spider appears, it asks you to look at the web you have woven. Look at the language you have used to weave to get your way through life. Is there a need to mend broken lines of communication with those close to you? You may need to revise the language you once used and find more compassionate threads of interacting. Spider suggests that, if you are feeling stuck or unable to move forward, you may have become caught in someone else's web or may be snagged by your own negative thoghts or words. Re-evaluate what you have created for yourself and those around you. Spiders feed on insects which can represent negative thought forms so it is prudent to check what energy you have been projecting via your thoughts. Are you getting more attention than you want or need? Is it perhaps time to untangle what you have been weaving? Have you been running around in circles instead of taking a more direct path to where you need to go? Have you been beating around the bush instead of getting to the point? Now that Spider has approached you it may be a good time to review any damage or weak areas in your network. Discard the old that no longer serves you, pick up the threads of value and re-weave your web in a renewed direction. Spider wisdom reminds you that it is human to get caught from time to time, for that is what the Wheel of Life is all about. However, Spider's appearance will encourage you to look for what you meed to clear out or change. There may be new opportunities waiting on the edge of your old web. It is time to clear the way for a new expression of yourself to grow, weave new integrity into your old patterns and so let the beauty of a new and truer you sparkle in the light of a new day.

I just love the beauty in the animal wisdom I've so far come across. It's always so very meaningful, as long as you are aware of how and when they are coming to you. And that it is always there for anyone, so long as they are willing or prepared to look.