Month: April 2024

The winter that just wont go

Winter is my least favourite season of the year. I do love Christmas, cosiness and candles but I don’t love winter lasting for nine months of the year. Talk about hogging the time of the other seasons. As with life in general, I can resist and resent it when my least favourite season lingers longer than a rotten fart. (you know who you are)

Anyway, I think it was the old lady from Downton Abbey that once said something along the lines of,

‘Life is just a series of problems …’

This may not satisfy the requirements of the ‘positive thoughts only police’ but they are probably more helpful than any fluffier counterparts in preparing us for reality on its own terms. I am often reminded of these words when I’m wishing some problem, or another would do one without me having to do anything let alone the work of learning any lessons from it.

This current seemingly never-ending winter is a problem because I can’t get on with my love of gardening. This is because the frost is still threatening to kill off anything not hardy enough to survive it, including me. I am still struggling to overcome my resistance/tightness towards putting the heating on when we’re nearly in May.

My favourite seasons of nature and life are spring and summer when I begin to see the results of all that was going on underground in winter. I do not love it when any winter season overstays its welcome.

This makes me reflect on the past few weeks where aside from the artic air temperature (12 degrees in my house this morning; lounge not garden), there have been multiple mess ups leading to multiple melt downs in the at times farcical face of technological failings. Last night threw up yet another one of these when the meal myself and my friend had ordered was still nowhere to be seen over half an hour later. When my hangry beast enquired as to how much longer it was going to be, we were informed that the new technology system had somehow got our order stuck. Fortunately, before I could have a monumental melt down, my calm friend handled it! And we got our grub five moaning-filled minutes later. (my moaning not hers).

Thumbs down to technology. Yes, there are incredible developments but is it reliable or consistent? Does it really save time or make things easier? All too often, it would seem to me at least, that the answer is no, quite the opposite.

And yet after the helpful experiences of humans that I had in the past two weeks when technology consistently failed, I was encouraged. Then this week’s trip to the cinema led to what felt like a case of, the computer says ‘no’ and so do the humans.  This despite us trying to pay money for tickets to Cineworld, just not an inflated amount for wanting a human interaction.

Then there is the mother scenario, where the first hand I was dealt was a diluted continuation of the difficulties that have been passed down that maternal line. Yet I have enjoyed the gift and privilege of eight precious years with a beautiful spiritual mother who loved and encouraged me in all I do. At least until that horrendous stealer of life, cancer, took her. Currently I am fortunate enough to enjoy a fabulous and fun relationship with a wonderful mother figure with whom I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for over eight years now. (Lord, please grant us many more.) We share endless cups of tea, chats about anything and regular sessions of shape throwing. We did these in her garden during lockdown and we still do that when temperatures are a long way above freezing. Otherwise, we dance around her lounge. With a shared appreciation for soul music we also enjoy not-regular-enough nights out with the local legend that is The Soul man. How grateful I am to have her in my life.

All of the above reminds me that life continues to throw up the rough and the smooth. And I continue to respond much better to the rough than the smooth. While I prefer my peanut butter rough, I most definitely prefer my life smooth. And therein lay my learning. Groan.  

I must now return to the ‘keeping of cool’ drawing board.

Mothers; what we’re not supposed to talk about

Now that I have finally re-gained my equilibrium via hormonal management/trauma therapy, I am able to pick up the book that has been a lifetime in the making. This gets me back in touch with my experience of family. This is hard and it hurts and is not for here.  

However, my attention has recently been drawn to the relationship between mothers and daughters. These are as rich and diverse as each of us, with my work bringing me in to contact with all the differing experiences that people have; good, bad and in-between.

But what stands out to me is that most women unswervingly accept their mothers’ flaws and failings. Those of us willing to engage with the painful, life changing work of therapy do so because we’ve realised that we are full of our own flaws and failings, inherited or otherwise. There is also a realisation that there is more benefit in owning and working through our own flaws than remaining in the more comfortable position of pointing the finger at others.

Anyway, despite all the unique stories, there is an almost universal struggle amidst these relationships. This is when a mother refuses to admit or acknowledge that certain behaviours of hers have hurt at best (inevitable) or harmed or allowed others to harm (avoidable) at the near worst. The growing numbers of babies being murdered by mother’s or the mother’s partners testifies to the truth and sickness of the ultimate extreme. That’s a whole other tragedy I won’t explore here but one worthy of acknowledgement.

Back to those mothers who hurt or blatantly harm or allow others to harm their daughters. It is the refusal to acknowledge this reality that causes the most harm. What is not owned or taken responsibility for is allowed to continue without recognition or respect for the harm impacted on the daughter. This can often be due to an unwillingness/inability to acknowledge the harm received by their own mothers and probably theirs before them. This is the maternal line that if left unchallenged or unexplored can simply be passed down between the generations. This may continue until those who enter therapy stop to do the work of exploring the past, healing from it and making a whole different set of mistakes!

When a mother refuses to take responsibility for her own hurts or those she inflicts upon her daughter, this can cause deep and lasting damage to the self esteem of the daughter, the mother and the relationship between them.

None of us are perfect or generally need anyone else to be but we all need those who have hurt us to acknowledge this so as not to continue inflicting the same harm. The failure to do so can lead to the severing of contact to prevent further harm. This is a real tragedy especially given it doesn’t have to be this way.

The result of my own experiences coming into sharp focus over the past few days was a large contributing factor to losing my sh*t in the face of the technology farce last night. I knew there was more going on than the frustrations of the tech but I needed time and space to go inside myself to acquire this INSIGHT.

Apart from the ongoing sadness that I live with about my own experiences in this area, I am also aware that if left unexamined, my own hurt can come out in unpleasant ways to those closest to me. While this is inevitable, what is optional is a willingness to stop, see it, own it, take responsibility for it, allow time to digest it, acknowledge the impact on the other and apologise for it.

Having given myself space to see what was going on and having apologised to my closest, I can now relax and have a brew with my fabulous Ju. This is the lady who refers to me as ‘the daughter she never had’. I in turn refer to her as’ the mother I never had’. Gotta love a two way win!

My fabulous feline-loving fellow counsellor also sent me a message and card that each evoked a spontaneous eruption of laughter. What healing balm to our souls those around us can be.

It remains true that it is within relationships that we hurt but it is also within relationships that we heal; not always the same relationships! It is as true in personal relationships as in professional that failings and ruptures are opportunities to learn, grow, heal, apologise, forgive and be apologised to and forgiven. For these are some of the richest components of living, learning and loving.

How encouraging that when I handle things badly, the Almighty awaits to accompany me on my explorations as to what inner reality is driving my outer behaviours. With His presence, I can commit to continue seeing and acknowledging my own hurts to allow deeper healing, quicker recognition of the hurting of others and corrective action taking. An exhausting but enlightening lifelong endeavour.

Th edge tipping tendencies of tech

Last night I had a wasted trip to the large, shiny, impersonal establishment otherwise known as Cineworld in Stevenage. Typically, I prefer the smaller, more characterful cinema experience offered by Letchworth’s The Broadway. However, on this occasion, the film wanted and the times available meant a trip to Stevenage.

On arrival, we were told that if we bought out tickets online they would be almost half the price of buying them there. Groan. I had imagined that the handing over of old-fashioned cash in exchange for paper tickets would have been a simple, stress-free act securing our pass to the cinema and our enjoyment of the chosen film.

With a heavy sigh, I resigned myself to the tech handling task required. Despite full bars worth of supposedly secure internet, there was constant buffering in between myself and all the information required. My attempt to leave out my email to save spending even more time every day clearing junk from my inbox was met with a refusal to go further. Reluctantly, I entered my email, credit card details et al. After about 10 more minutes of buffering, a page appeared reading, ‘Session Expired’.

This evoked an immediate expiration of my patience and uprising of annoyance. Something that was supposed to be fun after a long exhausting workday immediately became a source of stress and exasperation. With time moving swiftly on and my sense of humour nowhere to be seen, I approached the humans to enquire what the thinking behind this was, aside from losing customers. Their ‘we don’t know/care and it’s nothing to do with us’ reply did little to sooth my stress. So with the mood ruined and the will to continue having wilted away, we left. We planned a return to the ‘user friendly online service/not ripping you off for wanting a human to serve you’ approach on offer at our preferred cinema. There will be no more trips to Cineworld.

What a disappointment and waste of time and energy when both are already depleted.

But a reminder, that if tech tipped me over the edge, there must have been other factors involved in pushing me so close to it. And therefore, a none too gentle invitation to take time out today to allow myself to rest and my resources to recover. As well as exploring what else was making me so stressed and annoyed.

It’s exhausting, if rewarding (sometimes) being a human especially when fascinated with the ongoing business of learning and growing that are essential to maintaining a sense of aliveness.

And another thing, the last before I sign off, I promise … OVO; it’s been a year so far of about 60 phone calls and emails to sort out their ‘not-smart-at-all-metre’ and their mess ups with bills. It’s become something of a part time, daily interaction requiring job along with the jobs of maintaining health and navigating technology. No wonder I’m so bl**dy tired!

Rest is non-negotiable

I am disappointed to share that at the time of typing, I remain rubbish at rest. But I am committed to updating my schedule to incorporate rest. The frazzled headache I started my day with screamed at me, ‘Jo, you’re overdoing it again’, which is fair and true and requires immediate, corrective action.

The legend of a dad that I have adopted for myself, reminded me earlier this week,

‘Please remember as we get older, we need to rest more’.

What wise words. But if I don’t apply them in practice they are about as helpful as medicine that remains in the cabinet or a bible that’s gathering dust.

Earlier this week I met with my fabulous neighbour who always reminds me of the sort of wisdom I am prone to forgetting, as well as introducing her own. She commented on how people talk about working super hard to earn their rest. While there is a reality to this for anyone engaged in adulting, she made the point that we need rest regardless of how productive we have or haven’t been. We may need more if we’ve been super active but we need rest regardless and more of it as we age. This simply hadn’t entered my thinking before!

The other point was one my neighbour pointed out to me last year which was that we even need to say ‘no’ to doing things we love. I know I need to stop expecting my brain to multitask at unsustainable speeds for way too many hours per day. But I also need to limit and reduce time spent indulging in playful activities. To recognise the need to reduce work, despite loving it, is one thing but I’m really struggling with reducing play!

I still remember the first time I realised how utterly exhausting play can be. This occurred during my later-to-the-party-than-most gap years. I couldn’t resist going in the sea on an inflatable banana while island hopping around Thailand. The constant process of lurching through the air into the sea, swimming back to the banana, hauling myself back on to it and trying to hold up my bikini to avoid flashing my arse, was more exhausting than it looks from the shore!

Anyway, all these years later and I’m still struggling to accept that I don’t only need to reduce my working hours but also the playing ones. The only thing I need to increase is my resting time. Or rather, I need to start introducing it rather than just conking out if I sit still or when I lay down at night. 

While messaging a fellow counsellor and feline friend owner this week, I couldn’t resist sharing a photo of Monty boy sprawled on the sofa next to me. He sleeps more and more these days, I thought to myself, feeling slightly envious. And then I got it! Oh, he’s modelling resting to me as something essential as we age rather than the optional extra that I’ve been treating it as. Apparently, what makes animals different to us is that they don’t think. I know they feel because Monty is a master at all kinds of expressions, especially the nonchalant, disinterested look he freely gives to all my guests. Anyway, I remain unconvinced that an animal’s inability to think, puts them at a disadvantage. This is because an overdeveloped human intellect combined with underdeveloped instinctual feelings can leave us vulnerable to doing what our mind demands over what our body needs. There are some prevalent and insidious ‘shoulds’ that if left unchecked, can keep us bound to unhelpful ways of being, or rather overdoing. For example, there are beliefs that ‘resting is lazy’, or ‘self-care is selfish’. How deeply entrenched these destructive ideas can be. Although I’ve made progress, I remain prone to these. I will try to correct this situation with actions rather than more lip service.

To this end, I’m going to schedule some wall gazing, daisy watching, birdsong listening windows of time in my daily diary, moving forwards. My feline loving fellow counsellor wisely flagged up attempting 75% of what I think I can do in a day. There is definitely room for improvement here  as I’ve been  operating at about 125% in between conk outs!

Meanwhile, when he’s not looking out of his cat flap wondering if the rain will ever stop, Monty is enjoying a nap upstairs on my bed.  Maybe I’ll even let myself join him later!

App aversion

The words, ‘have you got our app?’, are amongst the least favourite words to come out of anyone’s mouth and into my ears. I have an ongoing dislike for technology. I’ll admit, when it works, it can be great. But it seems to me that the levels of consistent reliability of app’s in particular, are lower than that of the average human, including this one.

Recently, I was horrified to discover that the local pool has introduced an app for booking a swim. I have always loved the water with its stress relieving benefits and time out from tech. The instant exasperation and escalating sense of stress that the app news evoked in me, saw me miss my swim for the past month. This is because my forte is people whereas life is becoming increasingly full of machines, app’s and passwords/codes. These feel like they stand on guard as frustrating, time stealing, blood pressure raising obstacles in between me and what are often supposed to be relaxing, stress relieving activities.

My trips to the pool have already been taxing my ability on the fathoming machines / tech front. If I drive, I must engage with the parking machines that sometimes work and sometimes don’t while the patrolling parking man always seems to be working. If I can succeed in working the machine and avoiding a fine from the ticket man, there is a gate that blocks your entry to the pool, just inside the reception. This gate requires you to hover your card above the reader to activate it opening. However, this occasionally works but mostly it doesn’t. I end up hovering my card half a millimetre in every direction before standing on one leg, reciting a poem and doing a jig before finally admitting defeat/exasperation/diminishing will to live and asking the humans for assistance. ‘Is it me?’, I ask them. ‘No, they assure me, it’s the machine’. Given the accepted unreliability of these machines, I thought I had been doing well to navigate the parking machine and the ‘I like playing silly buggers’ gate, every week before getting anywhere near the pool. But the introduction of an app was more than I could cope with and I lapsed in to total avoidance.

However, following an uplifting weekend away and a little encouragement from my partner, I decided that today was the day. I got a handle on myself, psyched myself up, put my big girl pants on, prayed, asked a friend to also pray and then started this dreaded task. I was very relieved that when I called the pool, 1) someone answered, 2) they were extremely helpful and 3) assured me of their assistance upon arrival at the pool. Phew. Encouraged by this exchange, I got myself down to the pool, faced off the car park ticket machine without incident and proceeded to the pool reception. I was then pleased to discover the helpful individual I spoke to on the phone was there as per their word. Their presence, professionalism and patience helped me through the twenty minutes worth of problems in between me, the gate and the water. During this time, several others came and went with various other issues that also needed resolving. But, I was finally granted access through the gate and to the pool. Halleluyah! I was re-united with the water and one of my favourite forms of movement. Winning, finally!

Encouraged as I was by my success, I decided to have another go at adulting/tech navigating by attempting to book a restaurant table online. Having succeeded in doing just that for this restaurant a week ago, I felt what turned out to be prematurely confident. Two attempts, a bit of head scratching and a lot of huffing and puffing later and I gave up. A little later I rang the establishment in question who confirmed that, ’yes their tech was playing up today.’ This was said in a relaxed tone as if this was perfectly normal and to be expected.

In both scenarios, the humans have been extremely helpful for which I am grateful. But I am concerned that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do anything anymore without first having to engage in the sort of technology that is about as predictable and reliable as a middle-aged woman’s hormones, especially mine. Which reminds me, it’s been a month now since I’ve attempted to get my HRT prescription. That’s 4 phone calls, 2 online requests and 2 in person conversations and still counting and still no prescription. I am the first to admit that if anything is going to give me a sense of humour failure, (aside from hormones), it’s technology, or rather, unreliable technology. The progress above has all been despite technology not because of it. It’s been the humans who have got things done.

And all of this is before I get started on the manslaughter motorways with their missing layby’s, that this weekend reacquainted me with. I can’t help but wonder how much the ‘powers that be’ sold their souls for, to allow these.

I am aware that I can be a moaning, middle-aged dinosaur but …is all of this really progress?

Eyes, ears and the consumer of cake

How grateful I am to have finally granted myself permission to take my foot off the gas. Or rather, I have been forced to over these past few years and eventually, I have accepted the need for less speed. I have even begun to overcome my initial shocking attitude of anything but gratitude.

Anyway, one of my growing reasons for finally appreciating doing less and being more is the issue of maintenance. It feels to me that ever since the mayhem of middle-aged hormonal havoc began its reign of life altering activities, it has become something of a part time job to maintain my system. And that’s not just trying to get a GP appointment and then another one with someone trained on menopause and then get a prescription for something that is then out of stock. That’s a separate story that I can’t be arsed to tell right now as it would dampen my mood more than these January, February, March and April showers.

So, back to the eyes, ears and cake gnashers; this year I have had them all cleaned, unblocked and checked for signs of anything sinister. I am pleased to report that aside from the expected wear and tear associated with middle age, I’m apparently looking healthy. I am very pleased to hear this as I am a very visual person and one who listens for a living. Tick, tick. And I’ve even stopped complaining and getting the hump about the ever-diminishing size of the font on anything that I really want or need to read. Upon seeing me squinting at a menu through one eye in the way I used to watch the TV back in my inebriated days, my partner offered me his glasses. To my surprise and delight, I could then read the menu using both eyes minus the need for squinting or winking. Subsequently I had to relent and buy myself some of those supermarket stocking magnifying glasses that I always swore I would never wear. Oh how things change! I once said I’d never own one of those awful garden gnome things yet there is one looking at me from my own garden. I know, I can only assume I bought it in one of my many moments of madness. I blame hormones; the more I learn about them, the more I understand they are responsible for virtually all the body’s functioning, or in middle age, malfunctioning. True story. But, if I ever hit the three ducks on the wall stage, someone have a word.

Anyway, I can now see and hear again which is a big bonus as per the above. And of course, as a baker and consumer of cake, I need to keep my gnashers in good shape. Even more so now that I have recovered my ability to bear them in a smile rather than a grimace or growl. I find it ironic that I have such super strong teeth that I’ve never had a filling (honestly, despite the cakes), yet I’ve always been prone to weak gums. If these are not maintained sufficiently, they can recede so far that my teeth, irrespective of strength, will fall out. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour. Either way a set of falsies does not appeal. Of course, should these gnashers of mine do the off, I suspect the desire for cake will cause me to change my mind about this too.

However, what I do apparently need is a protector for nightly gnashing. Like many of us, I am a serial clencher and grinder of gnashers. Apparently, my back canines are no longer so sharp having been ground down by a lifetime of poor stress management. I know how they feel! While I have reduced stress, I cannot know or control what my body may still be doing at night in this regard. The outcome of my need for a tooth guard was an invoice that I was presented with upon departing the Dentist. Fortunately, the instinctive teeth clenching manoeuvre prevented the words, ‘Ow much?’ from flying out loudly. It was the price of an overseas holiday. Last year I wasn’t well enough to go overseas and this year I may not be well off enough! Luckily for me, I’m still revelling in the gratitude of feeling way better this year than I have in recent years!

All in all, maintaining this aging system of mine is now my new part time job, which isn’t overly enjoyable but is utterly essential. This despite the pay being crap and the cost being high. I suspect the cost of not accepting this job, would be higher still.

According to an older friend of mine, this maintenance business becomes a full-time job in retirement. I’ll need a pension then so I can retire and accept that job should God grant me those years.

The keeping of cool

How easy it is to look back after a trying time and wish that we had known back then what we know now, ie how the trial will end. If we had, we may not have lost our sleep/peace/mind/cool/sh*t or anything else that comes in handy during a trial. Typically, we only really relax when we know how things work out.

As humans, we are generally a bit crap at not knowing. This could be not knowing how things will work out, not knowing what to do or say or not knowing anything else that we want to know.

Just this week, a friend remarked how they know from experience that things usually work out. However, last week while going through some challenges, they got stressed because they forgot that things have a way of working themselves out. I could totally relate! How easy it is to wonder what we were getting in a state for, after we know how things work out. At least when they work out how we want or in a manageable way.

It is of course a different story when things don’t work out how we want or do work out how we really don’t want.

The following statement jumped out at me this week,

‘Fate leads us on a winding path and despite how bad a situation may appear, we can never really know how it will turn out. I’ll try to remember that, then maybe I won’t get so upset when things don’t go my way’.

This is from The cat who taught zen, by James Norbury.

The fact is that sometimes things go our way and sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, we may learn things we don’t learn when they do. These may be things we wish we didn’t have to learn and yet we do learn and we do come through. Or we don’t learn and the lesson comes around again (and again). One way or another (short or long), we continue to come through. Until we don’t because we will all die in the end. Keeping our heads up our derrieres about this doesn’t make it any less true, it simply stops us seeing, savouring and actively choosing how to play whatever cards we continue to be dealt.

Life is a series of beginnings, endings and middles. In the middle we know only what has been before and not yet what is to come. How we navigate the not knowing that precedes the new knowing will determine how enjoyable or otherwise, these middle times of transition will be.

Like all other muscles, the only way any of us can develop and strengthen our ‘keeping our cool’ muscle is by being in situations that challenge our cool keeping capacity.

Practice doesn’t make us perfect but it can make us calmer during the trial. Allegedly!

Easter; a timeless three-part template for modern living

As I reflected on the significance of this day, I noticed a few things. When life looks and feels like it’s turned to crap, it can be extremely hard to remember the life generating powers of fertiliser. During the hardest times of my own life, I easily forget that I have come through many dark tunnels before. That’s because when I’m in the middle of a particularly long tunnel, I can’t see anything in any direction, let alone the light that could otherwise direct me. This means I forget about all the tunnels I’ve been in before or what I thought I learned in them. And when I can’t even see which way is forward it becomes incredibly difficult to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

These tunnel traipsing times require me to exercise a faith that can evade me when I need it most. One that goes beyond the words of my lips or my laptop, to reach the steps of my feet. This is a faith in myself, my lived experience and the God I can’t always see, hear, feel or understand.

As I often forget any helpful truths while deep within a tunnel, I am grateful for the annual reminder of Easter. Not for what Jesus endured but for the truths it reveals that still stand today. On Easter Friday it looked like a serious case of game over. Yet by the Sunday it became apparent that God is indeed a man of His word. He is also the unseen worker behind the scenes, no matter how grim the front stage looks. And he turned the ultimate low into the ultimate high within three days. Three really is a magic and holy number.

Back to our own present day lives where the tunnels can last a lot longer than three days. This in turn can make it a lot harder to keep trusting that things will change or that we will feel something other than sorrow when it looks and feels like we never will.

Therefore, every Easter reminds us that no matter how bleak any situation is, God is working in ways we cannot see or know, to help us come through to a new reality. That’s all well and good when the new reality is one that we’ve longed and prayed for. These instances are easy to follow up with celebrations.

But if it is a new reality that we did not want or even actively and fervently prayed not to have, it requires a whole different level of faith. Fortunately for us, in the face of the unfortunate, the story of Easter reminds us that God promises through the act of Jesus, to always BE with us. We don’t have to go it alone. And there’s no better teammate than the Almighty. He doesn’t promise to always DO what we want him to and even warns us that we will have trouble. But he also encourages us that he overcame the worst experience imaginable. He offers to help us do the same by trusting His promise to always BE with us; as the unseen source of strength and support. I know when I’ve been stuck in the murky depths of despair, I haven’t always wanted to trust Him or turn to Him. This is because I have felt hurt and confused that He had allowed a situation that broke my heart to happen. Yet whenever I come through a tunnel and turn to look back, I see a myriad of ways in which He was with me every step.

Like the disciples, I often don’t believe what God says about Himself until I begin to see and sense it for myself! And even then, I can give that great doubter Thomas a run for his denarius. When my own Day 1 hits in whatever form, I can easily get stunned into a state of stuckness in the tunnel of Day 2.  In there I lose sight of the God who promises me that Day will 3 come. And so, I think my own challenge now is to try and actively take God at His word during the equivalent of my Day 2 tunnel experiences. Maybe then I would lean on Him enough to let Him carry the load. Maybe that way, together we could utilise His tunnel vision and even reach day 3 a little earlier. Time will tell.  Hopefully quite a bit of it before the next tunnel please Lord!