For a Moment it Slipped My Mind....

As I pull on my favourite Fly London red boots

Bob waits on the other side of

the frosted glass back door

eager for pats and a run.

But when I go out

it's just someone's

size 10 black red bands

and the dog is still dead.

Nest

I have finally found time to curl up in a rug on this grey, cold, rainy day and to listen to the first session of Nest, another short course with Lucy. 

It was a real eye-opener for me. I was at first bewildered by the questions which didn't really make sense to me: the ones about when did my love story with nature begin? and childhood experiences? For me, there wasn't a memory of when it began - it was always there. Childhood experiences with nature? It would be far shorter to list the non-nature experiences!

My earliest memory is of riding on my mother's shoulders as she walked out into the surf at Kai Iwi beach near Whanganui. My childhood, other than the awful school hours, was spent playing in the swamp, or in the hay barn, or in the orchard, looking after the chooks, helping care for orphan lambs, or reading books in my favourite tree. Even the 5 mile ride to school was book-ended with stopping to pick wild roses, jumping in iced-over puddles, being chased by cows.

I have always been comfortable living in the natural world, but...... I have spent a ridiculous amount of life trying to fit into human 'civilization' and 'society'. Having a stroke nearly 2 years ago has left me with an inability to be around a lot of people talking: my brain crumples up, I stop understanding, then I stop being able to speak my words, then I stop being able to think my words, then my leg stops holding me upright - and as I write this, I wonder why this has bothered me so much - what a blessing it is for me to have an excuse not to be in situations that have always been so hard, so bewildering, so unpleasant and confusing!

My adult life has been one so filled with societal shoulds, I have spent most of it out of touch with the nature, gaia, that I knew so well as a child. I now know I am an introvert, but as a socially inept person I learned to constantly seek out other people to be told what to do, or what I was doing wrong, I could not rely on my gut feelings, my inner knowledge, because those were, apparently, unacceptable. Nature - sea, bush, garden - is where I go to soothe and calm, but I think the time has come for me to consciously make nature my home, and the other, the 'civilized / social' part of the world, just a place I visit occasionally.

Not-Xmas

This started out as a response to a post in the Facebook group associated with the short online course I did with Lucy. 

I have hated xmas for a very long time. I didn't like it much from age 16 when stopped believing in God, because for me the meaning was gone. When I had my first kid, it became a nightmare as we had to trek from one set of grandparents to the other with tired kid/s who had been fed food that hyped them up and upset them. When my oldest was 6-7 my parents died 9 months apart - my mother was diagnosed with cancer on 20/12, admitted to hospital on xmas eve, and died New Year's Eve, so that made xmas pretty miserable for years of remembering. Then there were the city-living years of feeling obliged to do all the xmas stuff so my kids wouldn't miss out on the things all the neighbours’ kids got. As they got older we cut back on the presents, all agreeing one year to give to Save The Children instead, just giving small presents to the kids. But the food, decorations and stuff - the husband and 4 sons all wanted that but didn't help more than extremely minimally. I got more and more resentful and bitter.

Eventually the kids were grown and I said, No More. But still my kids wanted to get together and so it has evolved: 25 December is Not-Xmas at our place, all day and into the next, for anyone who wants to come. BYO alcohol, bring food to share appropriate for whatever time you come. The only rule is, don’t use the C word (Christmas). Numbers have varied over the years, from 15 to 35, usually around 20, drifting through at different times. People who don’t ‘do’ xmas come. People who want to escape, come after overwhelming family lunches or dinners. People whose ex’s have their kids for the day, come. People bring friends I don’t know when they arrive. Young tourists far from home come. And I still make / buy extra food and drink, and do a bit of tidying and cleaning – but because it’s Not-Xmas, and it’s Not-Anything, I don’t feel the burden of expectations. It’s really lovely, and relaxed as we sit in the sun, and later sit by the brazier under the southern summer sky, and I guess it is, in its own way, a new tradition, almost ritual.

As I wrote about this, I realised that there’s a whole lot to be learned about listening to, and valuing myself, and about surrender. Having grown up learning that I was the least important person in the world, that everyone else’s wants and needs had a higher priority than mine, I lived (still do to a degree) in a state of resentment. When I believed in God, I found comfort in the belief that even though I was the least important, God still loved me, I was still important to him, but once God was gone, there was nothing, I was nothing.

I now realise that it is so important to be properly conscious of one’s own feelings and needs, and to acknowledge them as valid. If we start from there, it will be more likely that we can work out ways? compromises? (can’t find the right word, grrr) that work better for everyone. I can’t make other members of my family feel the same way as me about things, Christmas in this example, but there could surely have been ways to make it easier on me, rather than my doing it their way while filled with exhaustion, resentment and bitterness. A way that involved others contributing to the physical, emotional, mental workloads, and having agreed to that way, me surrendering lovingly to the compromise – a way that would then no longer be a ‘compromise’ but just the right way for our family.

The word ‘surrender’ when Lucy talked about it in the course, really stuck in my craw. I felt almost angry, listening to that session. And then I paused and went back and listened again.

At 68 I feel like I have spent most of my life ‘surrendering’ my life to others. But that is a different meaning of the word from how Lucy talks of it. My way of surrendering has been so negative, so grudging, so resentful, because I was giving up something of me that I wanted to keep, that I believed I needed. But by accepting the idea that I am a part of a bigger whole, I can allow my inner self to find ways to align to other parts of the whole – and for whatever reason, those words – accepting, align – feel more comfortable than ‘surrender’ which just has too many patriarchal, dominating undertones for me. And having acknowledged and written that, ‘surrender’ feels less intimidating!

Ah, I need to stop! And just sit with all this for a while – or rather to walk with it, as the wind has dropped, the rain and hail paused, and there is a little sunshine showing through the clouds.

I'm Broken - what glue should I use?

Last Saturday evening Mac and I went to a wedding and it was wonderful for the bride and groom, but a disaster for me. Most of the time people don't see me as being any different from how I was pre-stroke. After 1.25 hours at the wedding, sitting down most of the time, in a corner, noise cancelling device on, I could understand little anyone said to me, could only speak in a stumbling slur, and had to get Mac to go get my walking stick (which I haven't used for over a year) from the car. With stick on one side and husband on the other, I managed to leave the building barefoot - Mac had to carry my (not very) high heel shoes. Within a couple of minutes of getting away from the noise, everything came right. However, I am still so very tired and unable to do anything much. In the last year, it has not taken me more than 2 days tops to recover from event induced tiredness, and although this was the worst experience post stroke nearly 2 years ago, I did not expect it to take this long. So now I am wondering..... How do I know if this awful tiredness and bleak feeling is because of the event, in which case the cure is rest, peace and quiet OR if I have fallen back into depression, which has always had me feeling incredibly tired, triggered by the knowledge that I just can't go to celebrations like this ever again, (this week I have declined wedding invitations to two very special friends' celebrations) and for which the best thing is to get off my ass and force myself to work hard in the garden, go for long walks, and be (quietly) sociable with friends.

Either way, the wrong choice will leave me broken.