Disney style delights

This week I drove past a tree that had exploded into full blossom since I last saw it. It was pink and fluffy like something out of a Disney film! Its unexpected appearance took my breath away and bought a beam to my face. Sights such as these are such a tonic for all the non-Disney disasters happening the world over.

These days the news is often full of misery and horror rather than presenting a more balanced, whole view of the world. While some readers can’t stop feeding on the death and destruction that fill our newspapers despite feeling overwhelmed by it, others simply opt out of reading about world news altogether.

This week I was reminded of the importance of sharing the shinier side of humanity. A local resident shared a story about the kindness of a stranger on our Facebook page. In contrast to most news being bias towards the bleak, this stood out like a belisha beacon amidst a catalogue of complaints and concerns. And it lifted my heart and spirit enormously as I’m sure it did for others. How refreshing.

I am not pro pretending that terrible things don’t happen or that problematic situations don’t need addressing. I certainly don’t agree with the positivity police position of shutting down, shaming or sidelining anything that isn’t Disney-esque. I just believe that the two sides of life co-exist, giving balance and wholeness. If all we see reported in our newspapers is death and destruction, our ability to notice the Disney-esque may diminish. Balanced news coverage can support us to keep seeing all that is wonderful in this world despite all that is not.

The fact is that a glass that is half full is also half empty.

Life is full of Disney style delights, hellish horrors and the mundane in the middle. Neither cancel each other out, but each contribute to the whole picture.

The heavenly and the hellish will always be present in our personal and collective lives. The more we address what we need to, leave what we can’t control or change and seek to still see all that is Disneyesque, the more these systems of ours will settle.

Middle aged magic

Yesterday a hattrick of people separately told me in excited tones that today would see temperatures soar to 20 degrees. In March. How very exciting! I immediately got the towels and bedsheets ready for an overnight wash ready to hang outside to dry today. I know I’m middle aged when this is the sort of situation that sets my pulse racing!

Then this morning out of respect for my in-person clients, I faced off my shower dodging tendencies (and won). Go me.

Yesterday I was granted permission by the plumber to give the shower a wide berth. He had just changed my electric dribbler of a shower to a mixer tap higher pressured substitute. When he tentatively suggested I refrain from using the shower until that evening, I gave him some hearty assurance that I wouldn’t risk ruining his handiwork. I told him that instead, I would hold off from a hose down until today. Despite the unexpectedly hot and sweaty walk I hadn’t foreseen myself taking or the Pilates class with bands – I love it when we play with Pilates toys because I can find an absence of props more difficult, which means more likely to result in gut muscle pain. This can last all week which makes belly laughing painful.

Anyway, sometimes showering feels like one job too many in between me and immersing myself in all the exciting passions and pursuits of the day. Especially if my hair needs washing. I have a new understanding of my mother’s decision to cut my hair short when I was a child. She stated clearly that she couldn’t be bothered to wash it.  Something I seem to be feeling myself. But I’m not yet ready for a crew cut or is it pixie cut for a female? Nor am I ready to go grey or rather white and wiry … they started appearing when I was still a teen. And so, for now, I still force myself into the shower to wash my ‘short as I’m ready to go’ hair, when I can no longer get away with not doing so. But at least now it is quicker and easier thanks to in the installation of a non-dribbler of a shower.

In the name of increasing all comfort giving props throughout my home to respect my middle aging body’s changing needs, I also invested in a new bathmat. Not only is it pink and pretty to look at but utterly wonderful to step out of the shower on to its fluffy caress. This is in stark contrast to the previous one which was quite advanced within its second career as a pumice stone. Simple substitutes can increase pleasure and decrease discomfort! A win/win!

And now here I am in the garden, under the parasol, post clients and lunch, but pre the painting that every painting session reminds me I hate. But I am listening to the birds singing while watching the red kites fly lower and nearer than ever before. Wow. I love nature. It evokes a deep sensation of utter joy and appreciation in me. Or am I confusing this with procrastination from the painting? Or could this be the usual case of not this or that, but the other, aka a mix of all. Probably. Either way, it is utterly wonderful.

Plus, a spontaneous conversation with a fellow birdsong-loving female at church resulted in the acquisition of an app that tells you the name of the singer. I can never even remember the names of human singers much less identify which bird is singing what song. But this app listens then gives a name and a picture. Magic! In my case I got

  • Eurasian Blue Tit
  • European Robin

A spontaneous eruption of the lyrics,

‘I’m so excited … and I just can’t hide it’,

flew forth from my mouth in response. And no, I can’t recall the singer. I shared this dopamine dispensing moment of high drama with the one who introduced me to the app. It takes a lot for me to face off my ‘I want to scream’ reaction to the stress of apps, but I was mighty glad I finally remembered to do it this morning.

Oh what fun!

I am so grateful that I have emerged from the haze of hormonal hell that feels like living with an unreliable internet connection minus any let up in responsibilities that require it. Who knew stopping, being still and simply being in the garden, could be so utterly enthralling. Plus having the time and freedom to do this thanks to disengaging from any rodent featuring competitions. And having relinquished any desire to compete or compare with the Jones, Smiths or any other buggers.

This is contentment right here. The washing is drying (slowly) on the line, the outdoor cushions are drying off – they were so well decorated in bird shit that I wondered whether one was secretly living in my shed over winter. The birds are singing. The yellow butterflies are doing a flutterby and …  the painting is waiting …

Untwisting one’s knickers

As a member of humanity (on a good day), I am aware that us humans are prone to getting our knickers in a twist about all sorts of matters. NB, I am referring to men AND women.

What I mean is that recent experiences have highlighted how hard we sometimes find it to play nicely with each other. We are prone to looking around for fear that someone else is getting more good stuff than we are or that others are not having as hard a time as us! In other words, we do not always like, or know how to manage the differences between us, whether in circumstance (real or FB variety), position (real or imagined), beliefs or anything else.

Amid these differences sometimes we do not like each other or agree with each other. This is an inevitable part of being an honest adult. However, most of us did not learn in childhood how to handle disagreements or differences, let alone the vital emotion of anger, these can evoke, in any kind of an adult way. Subsequently, we each adopt whatever strategy feels safest. WHEN our anger gets evoked, the absence or lack of anger-handling-training in childhood usually leaves us unable to adopt an adult position on handling anger now.

Personally, I spent years fearing everyone’s anger including my own. This was because a certain family members’ anger was frightening and uncontained. I responded by depressing my anger or turning it in on myself through destructive behaviours. When I had the revelation that I was literally killing myself with drink and drug abuse, I realised I wanted to live. So, I got my backside (and the rest of me) into counselling. I have been fortunate enough to grow beyond my family’s limitations with the support of amazing counsellors. These held me while I have grown my capacity to handle this emotion in healthy, more adult ways (sometimes!). I am still learning; sometimes I do well and sometimes I do not.

However, every organisation full of people has its preferred approach to handling anger and conflict, whether this has been chosen passively, actively or even consciously or not. These typically tend to be total avoidance or overtly confrontational. Neither of which are healthy and both of which create additional problems.

As a therapist, I am of course bias, but I do believe that put simply, whatever we cannot talk about, we give permission to cause us and those around us avoidable problems.

The more we grow up emotionally (and humble ourselves to ask for help with this, when necessary), the more we can put our big girl/big boy pants on, to have uncomfortable conversations about matters we do not agree on. As adults we do not need to feel threatened by those whose life experience and subsequent beliefs, differ to our own.  If we can manage our fear, we can learn from each other. And as we are all learning, this process can be messy and made up of times of where we get things wrong and we need to practice bearing with one another.

I learn experientially through the multiple making of messes and mistakes. And God, in his grace and patience, works with me to work through, learn from and clean up these messes! I always feel so much better when I accept his help to clear up my messes rather than leaving them to fester and grow. What an amazing God he is!! And the bigger the mess, the bigger the potential for learning. Every cloud.

Part of what I am currently learning is that when I feel judged, misunderstood and even subsequently punished, I feel angry. While anger is a sign of health which indicates the presence of sufficient self-esteem, what one does with this anger can be healthy or unhealthy. When I rant, rage and judge those I feel judged by, it doesn’t take long to realise I am doing the exact same thing I feel so repelled by the other doing to me!

Having the honesty to see and acknowledge this is SO liberating when we can reign our necks in enough to do so! And it disarms the whole ‘my way is better than yours, I am right – you are wrong, I’m elevating myself to an imagined position of self-righteousness’, that we seem so compelled to promote ourselves to!!! Instead God leads us beyond my way, or yours, in to a third way, which is His and ALWAYS better than ours (or at least mine!)

I wonder whether the God who created our humanity finds all our hypocrisy as hilarious as I do! I like to think he does because he has the most incredible side-splitting sense of humour of anyone I have ever, not even met in person! And as one who has been gifted with a shit hot sense of humour (if not humility), I am also prone to swift, sense-of-humour failures. Especially when I get sucked in to playing the self-righteous/self-delusional game of bullshit!

Part of my own ongoing emotional growing up process is sharpening my ability to smell bullshit; my own or others. This is hugely aided by paying attention to the nudges of the Holy Spirit; what a gift this is when we have the courage to acknowledge it. Even more true when we accept it, even when it says something we dislike or find uncomfortable! Growing pains peops!

When I can reign in my roar of anger that was never safe for me to feel, let alone express, while growing up, I recognise that underneath there is often a cry from my heart. When I strip away the anger and bullshit that I have used to protect the vulnerability of my heart, I can see that I feel sad when I am treated a certain way by others. Historically I have responded to being misjudged by a particular people group, in certain organisations, by shrinking back, silencing myself and/or shutting down the flame of fury and with it, of life. This was what I learned to do to feel safe as a child.

The time of me doing this is now over.

God has taken his huge blowtorch to the dying embers of my dampened fire and lit it up with such power that I now need to learn how to put a fire guard in place for the protection of myself and those around me. The flames of passion and at times of fury, are burning brighter than ever before. As this is the polar opposite of shutting down, this new experience offers a steep learning curve where failing is an inevitable part of the adjustment.

I am now committed to learning how to work with handling this roaring fire without burning anyone, including myself. And how to protect these flames from being dampened or put out by the behaviour of others. To this end, I have recently started working with a new and fantabulous body psychotherapist. My ongoing commitment to learning, healing and growing is THE most fundamental part of what I bring to my own practice. And given that the first session ended with us galloping across the room together, Miranda stylie, I am loving it!

But I am also starting to acknowledge that part of me is scared, because I know from personal and professional experience that if we commit to sit in a space with one qualified to hold it appropriately, we do not know what will emerge within it. When all parts of us feel safe enough, this is where the magic happens. The scared parts can become transformed through the sacred gift of acceptance that is fundamental to growth and integration.

Just like the world around us, when we go inside of ourselves to seek insight and change, there is always more to be discovered for those willing to find it.

How very exciting it is to be a human committed to staying alive enough to be challenged, confused, lost and ultimately able to keep unlearning, as well as learning, growing and healing.

Not to mention, learning how to untwist our knickers, when we hear ourselves getting all high and mighty about something, by reminding ourselves that we are NOT judge and jury – God is! And I for one am incredibly grateful that he is such a patient, gracious God who constantly reminds me how much I need his patience and grace – I think his hope is that the more I receive these from him, the more I may extend them to others. (A hope that is not always fulfilled!)

But I am learning and practising when to put my big girl pants on for tricksy conversations, in addition to when to untwist my knickers quickly. This leads to practicing playing more nicely with others irrespective of whether they are wearing their grown-up pants or have their knickers in a twist – that’s a matter for them and God, just as me and my pants/knickers are between God and I.

And, WHEN, we get things wrong or handle situations poorly, as I regularly find myself doing, especially during this new flame management process, let us practice putting our paws up, owning our errors and apologising appropriately and swiftly. If we need help to put our big girl/boy pants on to do this, I can vouch from repeated experience of God that he is very willing to do so! For what God is teaching me is that he is the God of the WIN/WIN which is not WIN/LOSE.

How I love learning!

Thank you, God, for being such an amazeballs teacher who helps all of us children learn how to play more nicely together, by focusing on the state of our own under garments! This makes for a less pants experience for all involved. And they don’t teach you that at school … at least not in this context!

These mood boosting blue skies

Since my return from the stunning seascapes of Cornwall, the sun has shone here like it did there – yahoo!

Last Saturday’s sunshine eased my unpacking/washing/sorting process enormously when I got home. I threw the back door wide open, hung my washing on the line and inhaled lunch under the big, blue sky. Magic. And what a contrast to those long, grey, days of Winter where I’ve been huddled under a blanket to keep cosy. It’s as if Spring checked the diary, saw it was March and immediately came over all Spring-esque. Most welcome. But apparently isn’t here to stay, yet.

I tend to make a point of upping my ante in Autumn to manage my mental health not to depend on the presence of something this country is renowned for lacking. And not just in Winter. This on the understanding that ‘Winter’ can last about eight months here too (on a good year)!

However, I still absolutely love it when the sky is blue, the temperature is conducive to being outside bearing flesh and I can return to using the parasol to protect my skin from the orange leathery look. I love being outside in nature feeling the gentle breeze on my skin with the birds singing enthusiastically in the background. It would seem that I am not alone in this as I’ve lost count of the conversations I’ve had this week about the difference this weather makes to the general mood of the masses. Whether tradesmen or friends or teachers or anyone else, we’ve all spoken of the great joy of the return of the warmth bringing sunshine!

It is as if Spring has Sprung into being, all of a sudden. While the snowdrops in my garden are now past their best, the crocuses are in full purple bloom. And the trees outside my bedroom window are now sporting little buds of new life – so very exciting!

As I walked into my Pilates class this week, I was gasp inducingly wowed by the orange glow of the night sky. I commented to my peers that it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen all the signs of Spring before, they never fail to evoke great excitement in me!  Lighter evenings, bolder birdsong, blossom on trees and flowers budding all around. I love these! We reflected that we may be particularly appreciative of all things Spring having endured a particularly long stretch of sun hiding weeks.

When I drove home on Saturday, I was reminded of the reality that the sun is always there whether we see or feel it. I started my drive while still in darkness as the sun hadn’t yet arisen from down under. But as I drove, the sun began to peep over the horizon in all its orange glory until it gradually rose enough to become a whole glowing ball. Then in the time it took to refuel the car, grab a cup of caffeine to refuel myself and pay for both, it literally turned from night to day. How very quickly things can change.

As I continued my super long drive, I drove through patches of sun-covering fog or cloud before each cleared to reveal that the sun was still there, as were further patches of fog and cloud.

This driving experience was such a reminder of the parallels with being a human. Sometimes we can’t see or feel any warmth during cold, hard seasons, but when we just keep going, things can improve suddenly. The harder warmth-withholding times do keep coming but so too, do those warmth giving ones. And every time I come out into the sunshine after a sun deprived season, I appreciate it even more.

However, the arrival of Spring does mean the sneezing has started, huge wasp/bee’s have begun appearing in my conservatory, as if they don’t have enough room outside and my grass has started whispering louder each day,

“I need a haircut”.

But hey, this is life, we cannot have the joy of Spring without the minor irritations or additional garden-based jobs! We all must find a way to manage the rough with the smooth, the work with the play and the sun with the clouds.

But for me, I love, love, love this time of year.