Tamlorn’s peach tree bloomed today. We hung the crystal from a stand with a wind chime and in the afternoon, it casts rainbows through the garden and the kitchen.
Today has been hard, flashbacks and anxiety, but full of love from people around us, and animal cuddles. We’ll get through this.
Rose is rough, I am rough. I’m holding the fort, for myself and with her too. Just holding on.
We’re swimming in trauma reactions and broken bits of our hearts. Deep wounds and deep grief. PTSD is incredibly hard, very unfair. It exposes when we most need protecting, makes us tremble with fear when we most need comforting, turns the world dark when we most need the light.
I’m trying to find a way through the stories – that this is real but also that the fear it brings with it – that this is permanent, is not real. There’s such a tangled web of truths and lies and fears it’s hard to find a way through. I find myself falling with relief back into the stories where mental illness is compared with physical – for all the problems with those analogies they also fit and give some shape to the pain we’re in, some way to make room for the suffering and argue for understanding. My poor love is devastated with flashbacks and I find myself debating whether I’d say ptsd or epileptic fit if I needed to explain why we needed help in public to a stranger… It’s debilitating and I can’t navigate the complexities of what has happened to us any more, I’m back to needing the basics of something I can fit in a sentence, something I can scrape clear of the rot and find a place to stand on. Illness. Injury. Whatever. A real thing, a powerful thing, that wishing or trying hard does not make go away. We are dealing with a thing that is bigger than us, and unfair, and very hard, and we are doing it the best we can and each day hoping tomorrow may be better.
And yet, as I drove up the freeway today, looking for a way to pass an hour without the darkness obliterating us both, I felt that knot of pain in me, the thing in my throat I can’t breath around, the indefinable thing that is and is not pain or fear or grief or any thing I can put a word to… just some kind of deep hurt that I can only recoil from – something unbearable. Which is bizarre to me, because I’ve been through so much that was unbearable. So much worse than this! And alone, and in agony, without hope – I’ve been here before and yet this is a new hell, unfamiliar, and I’m without assurance that I’ll come through it. I can’t feel that.
I wondered for a moment what it would feel like if I stopped doing all this to try and ‘get better’ or feel better, if I stopped the self care, the patience, the determination, all the ways I was approaching this pain, and let it be instead. Instead, in fact, made it welcome. And the knot came undone, in my throat. I could breathe for a moment, I was in pain but it wasn’t beyond bearing any more. It just hurt. I didn’t have to run from it or bind it up or try to heal it. I could just be with it. Recovery never looks the way people talk about it. Tonight, I’m feeling the black rain falling under my skin. I’m patient and mostly I’m holding the fort. Some moments, I slip into the slime and under the water I can hear the sound of my dreams dying.
Some moments I read blog posts like Celebrating my blog from earlier this year, and come across lines like “I’m actually starting to take some positive feedback on board for the first time since I was a child. I can see clearly what I’ve been doing all these years with this work.” and the contrast is so great it’s almost unbearable. How did I lose this? How completely I have lost it. Only the memories haunt me.
I have spoken with a few close friends lately about all the losses I’ve faced in the past few months, particularly around my business. So many wonderful things have been cancelled or rescheduled or not come to pass, none of which I can really talk about. I thought I was ready, and to the sound of enthusiasm and support and a sense of community, I’ve jumped. I tried to fly and instead I’ve fallen. Each loss or dead end or deferred hope alone was manageable, but my world has been full of them lately, and I simply can’t buffer them, not in my situation. Everything has an impact in my world, financially, and on hope and energy. I rolled with the punches for the first few, but somewhere back 10 losses ago, I lost key things I need to keep going and didn’t realise yet until there was no more world beneath my feet and I was falling into a dark place.
I am trying to send cards or letters to anyone who has supported me and I have managed one so far, which I nearly threw up with stress to do. So vulnerable, nerves scraped raw and heart broken. I simply do not understand why anyone would support me in any way, let alone a stranger or near stranger send me money. I want to understand it but right now I simply can’t process that what I’ve done has helped anyone or that people might wish to be as madly generous to me as at times I’ve been to others. It’s a simple equation I know, but I can’t make it come out right in my mind. I hope it will again.
I was talking to someone kind the other day and when I listed all the losses, one beside the other, of the past few months, they were shocked. “Deep grief” they said to me. “Of course you are worn out, that’s such a lot to deal with, and such a shock when things seemed to be going so well!” Shock. Could that be the reason the sun seems dark? The reason that people telling me, over and over, that I’m okay, that I count, that I’m enough, and that I’ve done some good in the world simply doesn’t make sense to me? Is this how shock feels on the inside?
“Stop asking what’s wrong with you!” one friend has said to me – “of course you’re struggling, it’s been such a hard year! You can’t take hits like that and not need a break.” And I think of life cycles and cycles of energy and of day and night and life and death and needing to stop and retreat and weep sometimes to find that joy in life again. I think of going on without stopping through one loss and then the next and the one after, still smiling and still hoping and still wringing hope from my heart while the politeness became and mask that slipped and gouged into me and my heart choked.
“Deep grief” I’ve written on my wrist in permanent marker, to remind me – this is why it hurts so much. There’s a real reason, even if it doesn’t make sense in my head. I’m not just broken or crazy or doomed. It will heal. I will see the light again. And this thing that feels unbearable, I’ll find a way to live with, like I have all the others, right. Right?
For now, holding the fort.
This evening has been better. I don’t feel good exactly, but I don’t feel bad. I can breathe and I don’t want to cry. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. I’m a little scared of going to sleep because the mornings have been hard. For about 3 weeks I wake straight into panic every morning. When I’ve tried focusing or mediation I go straight back to sleep only to wake in panic again a few minutes or half an hour later. It’s exhausting.
I hope tomorrow will be different. But even if it’s not, tonight was really nice. ❤
Rose and I are playing a new game called competitive depression… She’s got the jump on me in not showering but I’m pretty sure I’m beating her in not wearing trousers around the house. Plus I’ve eaten more chocolate biscuits.
Her flashbacks are impressive, granted, but I’ve a more glamorous style of self destruction. I’m looking at my life and playing dice with the pieces – what to burn down? Snake eyes wins the house.
Tired of feeling like a failure, even when I win.
“Now, Montag, you’re a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.”
“It was a pleasure to burn…”
-Fahrenheit 451
It’s been a full on week with so much going on I’ve been feeling stuck about sharing here… more than that, detached, disconnected from my online world which is so often my territory and my haven. Heartsick. I kept trying to write about Rose’s birthday party and finding myself feeling like I was writing spin when I only shared the good parts, or that I was omitting the bright things when I shared the tough parts. In the end, Rose suggested I write both as separate posts.
Her party was awesome, and it was tough. It was a super child-friendly space but I didn’t feel comfortable letting my kids come out because a lot of those who came were not multiplicity literate. I did out myself ‘casually’ at one point, heart beating hard. In a year or two they’ll be more ready. I can be patient, I’d rather grow something strong than tip over the boat. So I took refuge in adult roles, feeling how my own sense of agitation dissolved as I sank into something familiar and reassuring and… bounded. I didn’t have to know anything or answer any of the dilemmas that were doing my head in, I could just be, and I could be good at it. There’s something to that, I think. I don’t know what yet. Roles can be dehumanising, and yet the lack of them can be… a kind of exile. Skinless and formless and falling into space.
Rose and I were both busy and the week leading up to the party was stressful with money woes and welfare issues and a lot of work… and this was our first month of trying to get pregnant again since Tamlorn died. It’s been so hard! We both thought we would ride it out okay, we felt ready and excited and ready to pace ourselves and ride out the highs and lows… instead it’s been incredibly tough. It’s brought back the loss of Tamlorn keenly. We’re both having nightmares about babies, feeling grief and loneliness and both feeling that we shouldn’t be feeling much of anything, that we need to hide our sadness and fear. It’s not an easy place to be. My cycle hasn’t returned to normal since the miscarriage either, so we started our ovulation testing and got a ‘high fertility’ result a few days earlier than expected and started doing insems. Usually I get one or at most 2 high fertility days and then I ovulate. This month, I got 8 high fertility test results in a row, and we did 4 insems before giving up. About 2 weeks late, I finally ovulated over the party weekend and was in pretty bad pain on that side for about 20 hours. We’ve noticed that I seem to have a pattern of less reliable cycles and more painful ovulation on one side – good month, bad month, good month… which should mean next month is better. We both know this, yet there’s such sadness at the same time, a kind of quiet despair that sits alongside, or beneath all the other things, all the joys and silliness and hopes. One is not more true than the other, one is not a mask to the other. Both are real.
Many of our friends are vulnerable in some way, and the weekend has been triggering for some of us. Rose had a major flashback that’s left her reeling, vomiting with stress, having nightmares, and needing downtime – pj days to recover. We are pretty good at dealing with these now, and so we’ve been going to sleep clothed and reading Harry Potter to her. One friend became too overwhelmed to make it down, another came but was overloaded in the aftermath. I was doing great until the last night when one of the more distressed members of my system woke to the sounds of a storm and then woke Rose sobbing… we ended up out in the wild wind on the front lawn, wrapped in a blanket and watching the dawn come in because when we were outside we were calm and centred, but indoors we were hysterical and about to vomit. We settled outside, reaching a place of acceptance: that she felt completely out of sync with herself, Rose, and our body – and deeply distressed by that in comparison with how others of us have been feeling lately, our awakening sense of connection and security highlighting her sense of being profoundly lost and in despair.
Out in the wind the pain eased and that part was different, freer somehow, more powerful… recently I was exploring some archetype cards with a friend, and each card has the shadow and light characteristics of each archetype on it… I wondered if we have lost sight of her light qualities, if we only know her in shadow, in trauma and disconnection and pain.
Finding a sense of safety and helping each other feel safe… these are such valuable skills to develop. They are a key part of what Rose and I offer to each other on hard days, of how we try to treat our friends and what we ask from them. Making it okay to be human and okay to take risks and feel pain, to struggle at times, to be wounded and fallible. One of my lovely friends sends me texts when I’m struggling that say “It’s okay to not be okay.” It seems to me these qualities are so often linked to ones that it’s easier to value… those friends I know that are struggling with the darkest depressions have such kind hearts. It’s not easy to have a heart like that in a world like this. But we’re all so used to being treated badly when we’re vulnerable and being made responsible for it – this mad idea people seem to have that we can make ourselves feel other than we do, and that this would be a good thing – that we conceal our soft underbelly and our broken hearts and our bad days, and those who would be gentle or understanding never see that side of us, and we never get to see or feel their kindness.
Sharing is vulnerable but also powerful… seeing and being seen. Learning to create safety for humans, in our relationships, our families, our tribes, within our own minds and hearts. It’s such a challenge and we can’t do it entirely alone. We weave it back and forward between us, in our listening and our not hearing, in our seeing and our willingness to be seen. In the way we step outside of our roles and are human, flawed, and vulnerable and imperfect, full of brilliance and insight and deep feelings. This is what it is to love.
Projects all around me, that constant sense of guilt over each one left unattended too long, each email I still haven’t replied to. My work is unconstrained and spills over in all directions, leaving my desk awash in paperwork and my mind bewildered. I’m don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing or where to focus. I can’t tell if I’ve taken on too much or I’m simply not organising it well enough. The pressure to make income is like a great weight, bearing down on me. I think without that, I’d be feeling merely scattered. With it, I work and I achieve things with a background of constant despair and a sense of unending, quiet failure. Nothing I do is enough.
Today was madcap. The Cat Who Must Not Get Out has taken to hiding near the door and making runs for it. She made it outside twice today, each heart stopping and horrifying. The second time she was determined to escape and we chased her, Rose and I, nearly in tears, around the house and over fences and part the neighbours before catching her and locking her in a room.
I spent the morning washing dishes and cleaning, remembering that this is part of my life too, keeping house and caring for my family, making sure there’s food and enough clean space to think in. I’ve put all our nuts and seeds in jars for cooking and snacking, the grease from our kitchen has made them all sticky, reminding me we need to sort out our terrible extraction fan that blows rather than sucks grease.
I write back to some emails at random, double check dates and make sure my diary contains the things I’ve promised to show up at. If it’s not in my diary, I’m lost. I write the first of the thankyou notes back to those who have helped me over the past few months, put my last stamp on it knowing it will probably be a week or more before I remember to post it.
I pull all the files out of an old magazine folder and rename some – projects, networks, college, hoping to help me find paperwork I keep losing. I make a mental note to buy more files. My to do list drops by two items, four more are added. Some days I start adding things to my list as I do them, so I can cross them out. When I emerge dazed several hours later it helps to have a record of what I did and how the time was spent. My computer is in the coldest part of my home and I’ve noticed I’m frequently chilled and highly dissociative while working. A heater and hot water bottle haven’t much been helping, I need an electric lap blanket or better – to plug the windy gaps around the door. Something else on my list.
I have a master to do list and then an urgent one and then my daily one, and I have a calender to track my week which isn’t being used at the moment because there’s always something more urgent than getting it sorted… The mess compounds. Last week I sorted three boxes of paperwork and recycled half of it. I think spending a couple of days letting the urgent things go and just sorting the system itself – the files, the desk space, the storage, the calendar, will help pull things back together. It’s Wednesday already and I haven’t done any homework this week or bought my printmaking supplies for Friday. I can’t do that until I get paid on Thursday anyway.
I’m trying to understand and prepare marketing resources, but it’s impossible to market myself when I can’t remember what I’m doing or why. So much of life as a multiple is trying to track more than one stream of information, and my life in particular with many things on the go at the one taxes me to my limit regularly. I wake up and everything I haven’t done yet hits me in the face like a rock. I know I’m losing track and that feeling, that sense of things slipping through my fingers, of chronic guilt and uncertainty, of my underbelly showing to the world, it’s so destructive.
Most multiples work so hard to look like we’re not, we conceal switching and hide amnesia and suppress all the clues to our identities… I recall how exposed I felt years ago merely in deciding to put all our DVDs on display… In my mind I’d imagine profilers visiting and diagnosing me on the spot. This is that again, the sense of vulnerability and exposure, the cringing while I wait for the blow, the sense of inadequacy and unworthiness, and that I’m letting down everyone who has ever had faith in me or supported me. That at the end, I’m going to disappoint, fail, not measure up, turn out to be shiny with wonderful ideas but empty and rotten on the inside. Imposter syndrome. Alone, we founder.
What am I doing? It’s a howl in my heart every day. When I wake to the sense of crushing pressure and remember I don’t have to do any of this, I’m not getting paid to, I could walk away from it all… When I remember I’ve chosen to run networks and a business and push myself, that I’ve built this edifice, this creation that is killing me is mine… I feel crazy and stupid and lost. When I sit in Art college, trying to remember if my art counts as art and why… I feel blasted by my own expectations. I had all the answers only yesterday…
I meet with good people for lunch. The time is worth it, I talk, rapidly, face burning, showing both my work and my bewilderment, trying to find somewhere in the world I fit… I feel like the world’s worst business person and entrepreneur, an artist who doesn’t sell art, a builder of networks who feels alone, a teller of stories of hope and direction who feels lost. They are kind and let me see not just their kindness but their sadness, and I remember the cost of wanting to make the world a better place, I remember the sense of loss that’s part of all our stories. Did we make a difference? Did we do enough? What am I doing? What the hell am I doing? There’s a cost. This is part of it, the shadow of the success, the cost of dreaming. This pain and bewilderment, this sense of being small and skinless. To dream of something better is a very vulnerable place to be.
I’m sitting in the mall and I should go home and get to work. The wind is cold and the sunlight is white gold and there’s a busker playing a sad song on an electric violin and I can’t see through my tears.
Rose turned 30 this weekend past and we had a wonderful Harry Potter themed birthday party. I made her a Monster Book of Monsters cake, from banana cake and cream cheese buttercream (her favourite combo), with chocolate sprinkles and a minimum of fondant… Rose is a big fan of cakes that taste awesome. For such a massive cake we haven’t taken a lot home, which is always a good sign.
I made that crazy mouth from fondant and strawberry roll-ups. 🙂
Friends and family gathered for games and movies and campfire and sleep overs in the holiday home we rented down on the beach. It was beautiful. Many of those who came didn’t know the others and it was really nice to mix some of the different groups together in a safe, fun place. Rose has been planning this for months and put up all kinds of awesome decorations and activities, including crafts and a Quidditch pitch out the back with three big hoops and Zoe as the enthusiastic keeper… 🙂
Moaning Myrtle and spider trails in the bathroom:
A fire lantern on a string to stop it wandering… we also had little crackers that popped when thrown onto concrete.
I went as Trelawny, complete with a grim painted into the teacup I wore on my wrist… I had to take my glasses off for most the night though, because I could hardly see at all wearing them and fell over once! Long dress plus thick glasses is an issue. This was our dessert buffet – it has a chocolate fountain with fruit and marshmallows to dip, my monster cake, an awesome gluten free chocolate cake made by a friend, a bowl of Bertie Botts every flavour beans, gold snitches, chocolate spiders, and Weasleys Wizard Wheezes. It went down pretty well. 😉
The potions corner. 🙂
The owlery…
Our handmade wands – these were gifts for our guests. We made them from chopsticks!
One of my gifts to Rose. 🙂 She loves Hagrid, as do I.
It was a fantastic weekend. The weather was kind, we got to hang out with great people and have lots of hugs with younger nieces and cousins (and our huggier older friends) and play games and enjoy good food. Loads of people chipped in with time, food, organising, and helped pay for things. It was a really big tribe event and it felt good. It’s always a bit of a risk mixing lots of different crowds together and I think we did a good job of helping people feel comfortable. I did a fair amount of cooking and cleaning and keeping things running which felt very adult considering all the fun things we had around, but that was also good in a way, feeling like I could take on such a big project and help care for my peoples. I can see more big tribe nights like this in our lives, once we’ve finished recovering from this one, paying it off, and unpacking the van…
Rose has made it a long way, through a lot hard times. I’m so glad to know her and so grateful for all the people who loved her and cared about her and were there for her long before I came along. She is one of the kindest people I know and she touches so many lives. Her life isn’t easy, but it is full of love and silliness and small children, which is just the way she likes it. ❤ Happy birthday, love.
Wow. On August 1st in 2011, I posted “What am I up to at the moment?” sharing my artworks She Blooms in oil and New Growth in ink and talking about my plans. Funnily enough I’ve just started making prints of She Blooms and I’m working on gilding one for sale… Funny how life goes!
Four years on, and 1,151 posts later, here we are. Wow.
I’m really proud of this blog. Like nearly everything I do in life, I started it without having a clue what I was getting myself into, and felt my way along learning and adjusting as I went. Intuitive and process driven. It’s been an amazing experience! I now consider it a massive ongoing work of public art.
I’m often asked if it helps me to write a blog, or costs me to be so public. The answer is yes.
There’s a cost to it, like everything we choose to do in life. I’ve found myself feeling exposed, stretched, confronted, intruded upon, misunderstood, mocked, and way out of my depths at times. I’ve doubted myself and my work, accused myself of narcissism, hated my impulse to expose my vulnerability even when people are telling me to be more professional and only show my polished side. I’ve wrestled with the uncertainly of process driven art – feeling completely at sea at times – what am I doing and why?? I’ve had the occasional nasty comment, confronting discovery, challenging cross over of being out into a space I wasn’t out yet, and so on.
But I’ve also had some amazing experiences. I’ve made a lot of friends, many of whom write blogs I follow too. (I’ve just added a blogs I follow widget which will show up on a pc!) I’ve had people write to tell me something I wrote saved their life, or saved a relationship, or helped them handle something really hard or feel less suicidal, which makes me cry (every time).
I’ve had people I don’t know come up to me in public or at face painting gigs and tell me how much they love this blog, which is surreal but wonderful. A couple of years ago the lovely Amanda came up to me at Feast and said you don’t know me, but I love your blog, and took a photo of herself with me. I wish I had a copy of that photo. We became friends. When she killed herself a year later I was heartbroken. I’m so damn glad I got to meet her, she was amazing.
I’ve had people reach out across the cyberspace and be with me, in some of the hardest and darkest times. People sending me back the same message I send out – I’m here. You’re not alone. You’re not the only one. You’re okay.
I’ve had people send me money. Recently someone has contacted me to let me know they value my work and are funding me monthly for the next 9 months. I went to bed and cried hysterically for a couple of hours, Rose rubbing my back. I ran out of money for fuel at a mental health conference out rural and asked for help and people rallied around me and I was breathless and wordless with gratitude. People are helping me with marketing, mental health research, higher education options, information and emotional support. I give and my tribe gives back to me.
Since writing this blog, a tribe has formed around me. Not some homogeneous unit, but a huge, varied, organically grown network of people in diverse overlapping communities, affiliations, passions, identities. They range from the closest of friends to someone who sent me a tweet sometime, or answered my question as a friend of a friend on Facebook. They connect with me, teach me, support me, need me, love me, learn from me, argue with me, and witness my life. I have come from a place of bitter isolation and loss, running from a world that was killing me and burning all the bridges behind me. I’ve endured and everything is different now. This blog has been an essential part of that.
So yes, I benefit from blogging. I used this blog to out myself, in stages as I felt able to. About having a mental illness, about being multiple, being bisexual, being genderqueer, being psychotic, being pregnant and our baby dying in my womb. About being ‘high functioning’ but still having bad days. About having physical illnesses, gynaecological disorders, invisible disabilities. Being out and public helps my mental health. It connects me to communities, it helps people understand me better and treat me better. It helps me find people like me.
I use this blog as a place to reflect. I use it as a place to be relentlessly human. I use it as a place to help other people feel less intimidated by the polished versions of self we present to each other in our lives, the imitations of intimacy and chronic dishonesty that characterise so many of our interactions with other people – online and in real life, with the burden of constant ‘professionalism’ and chronically degrading ideas about what it is to grow up and be an adult, with the misery of loneliness in crowded places, feeling broken and unseen and unknown, like the only one of your species. I write here because I need these things too, because they kill me too, and in creating spaces that are more authentic and connected, I thrive too. In making the private public, with care and sensitivity and attention to how and why, I am able to see and be seen, to see myself, to be present woth less anxious disguise and less unthinking obedience to cultures of taboo that keep the complacent comfortable and silence the different and the suffering among us.
Happy Fourth Birthday, Holding my childhood to ransom. You’ve been special. I love you. Thankyou too, all those of you who read here, even if we never cross paths or talk. Hope it’s been good for you too.
Ah, well I’m right on track in that case.
It’s been a funny few days. Up and down and bumpy. I’m finding the mornings are very hard, my pain levels are high and I’m fragile and feeling stressed. By evening most days I’ve settled and feel more centred. But it’s not inevitable. If I can’t find some peace in what I’m wrestling with, the whole day is given over to anxiety and distress.
Tonight I feel very calm. It feels like I’ve been hijacked recently, drawn by deep forces and pressed into powerful roles, roles with deep roots in memory and history. I’ve fought them but that entangled me further. In accepting them I’ve found a way to embrace them and step outside of them. It feels like climbing out of the rapids after a short, fast tumble through the white water.
I find thoughts surfacing and going back under without needing to be said or acted upon. Feelings arise and are accepted as gifts without being favoured or hated. I re read my posts about crisis mode on this blog and find them helpful. Mentally, I wrote myself signs to remind me: ‘Check in with yourself – how do you feel?’ and ‘Get out of crisis mode’ and ‘being human is beautiful’. I walked away from the crazy making pressure I’d been putting myself under and found life was much better without it.
I woke up feeling sick and fragile but less swamped by anxiety than I have been. So I took the morning very gently and focused on grounding. I cleaned the bedroom, then the kitchen. Made breakfast, which I ate in the garden. Then gathered a pail of weeds.
I re read some of my own blog posts about crisis mode and recognised the past week in them, my sagging efforts to haul myself out of the deepening pit of misery, dissociation, anxiety, loss of a sense of competence or agency or hope. I stepped back from the crisis and felt the pressure ease. I tuned back in to myself and did admin tasks I most felt like doing and even found pleasure in them. Stepped out of roles and made time to personally connect. Felt like I could breathe.
College was tough. I feel physically very ill, going hot and cold, getting moments of my heart racing. My face hurts, I think I have a sinus infection settling in. It took me forever to find a close park I could afford that would last the full duration of my class. I arrive late and flattered, only to find we were walking to the art gallery that week.
So I had to find and move my car closer to the gallery because I would not be able to walk all the way back to it in time. This took forever and cost me $11 in parking for one down the road from the gallery. I felt so sick it was hard to stay upright and I don’t think I took much in. I also felt that familiar sense of being heartsick that being around a lot of money and expensive things always gives me. I thought about how much I love art and my very favourite works by my favourite artists and I thought about whether I would save that work for the cost of a meal for a person and I knew I wouldn’t. I might go without for a couple of days, but I simply couldn’t starve someone else to hold onto it. I am often so uncomfortable in galleries. Maybe it’s not the art, so much as capitalism that’s stressing me.
Home again and much more content. My day has gradually improved. Rose is starting to feel better with strong antibiotics on board and we’re both excited to be trying to get pregnant again. We feel close and connected. Our little home is full of light and books and critters and people we love. It’s very lovely.
Today was epically awesome. My sister booked into a 4 wheel drive training course and was allowed to bring an extra person along… So guess who got a fantastic day out??
Dave, the guy running it, was from Adventure 4 Wheel Drive and he was a pleasure to see in action. As someone developing my own small business in art and mental health, I soaked up a lot from a day in his company. He was incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, and personable. It was a joy to be in the company of someone so competent, who clearly loved his work. I learned a lot!
The driving itself was brilliant! Scary but so exhilarating! It was so much fun! We would walk these mad tracks first and see some mud pit or step incline or crazily eroded path and just gasp in horror at the notion of driving into it. Dave would drive it first and teach us how to decide on the best route, speed, gear etc. And then, heart in mouth, guided over a radio, we would DO it! The sense of triumph coming through this seemingly impossible terrain was fantastic.
Even better, while hanging around watching others try it, my heart would slow back down again and settle. Far too much of my life is spent on a kind of chronic low grade stress where the anxiety kicks in but never quite goes away. Getting a good jolt and then calming down again throughout the day was kind of brilliant, felt like it was kicking my system back into a normal rhythm.
Being out in the country all day was almost as good as going camping. I felt the same coming home from Murray Bridge after talking to carers about supporting people with psychosis too, I just feel so much more at home out of the city. I feel so chilled out now. I love it. Best antidote to a stressful week isn’t always nurturing or comforting. Sometimes it’s gumboots, adrenaline, and enough mud to keep a few hundred hogs very happy indeed. Sometimes adventure is what makes it all worth it. 😀
My beautiful, kind, lovely sister broke up with her partner this week and urgently needed somewhere to stay. Rose and I have welcomed her with us. My family rallied and gathered to pack and move her and we now have three people, four cats, and a dog living in our 2 bedroom semi detached unit! It’s a little cramped but it’s also rather wonderful to have the chance to live together again. We all get along well and Rose and I have put a lot of time into our family culture, it’s healthy and strong and flexible, and probably just what my sister needs to recuperate.
Yesterday we overhauled the sheds, dug out our washing machine, and shifted a lot of my art supplies into drawers in the new shed. We’ve also been doing lots of caring and calming things to settle the nerves, the raw emotional pain of a breakup, and the bad memories that get unsettled. Camp-fires, games nights, online gaming, good home cooked food, music. It’s been beautiful to see in action.
Rose and I were talking about the sudden change in our circumstances and laughing that if we couldn’t deal with suddenly being a three person household we had no business trying to get pregnant, and that if we couldn’t handle sudden plan changes gracefully we were never going to cope with teenagers! 😉
One of our new residents: this is my sister’s lovely cat. She is so sweet and relaxed and right at home already. Zoe is desperately excited, Tonks is chilled out, Bebe is sulking a bit, and Sarsaparilla hasn’t come far enough into the house to have met her yet. He loves sleeping in the lounge room by the heater in this weather. (it’s freezing in Adelaide)
Her name is Kaylee with an Irish spelling I wouldn’t attempt unless I had it written down! She’s adorable.
We’re a family! We’re trying to get pregnant again the end of this month! And my business is blossoming! I have my first ever art prints back from the printer and they are so beautiful I cried! I have a buyer for one of my favourite paintings. I have mental health talks booking in. I have safe communities to nestle into – I’ve been getting to know the wonderful people in Community Health Onkaparinga, and I’ve just joined a trans and gender queer social activism group which was… Well it was like being in Bridges, the face to face group for people with dissociation and multiplicity I ran for a couple of years. It was magic, like being home, like being among my own kind, diverse as they are. I felt my heart open up and knew these are the places I need to be. This is where I put my energy.
College starts again today – a class on Installation Art that I’m so excited about I can hardly think straight!
I have overhauled my online home too, not as a finished product but to try and better reflect where I’m at and where things are going… Go and explore the menu, I’ve added new pages and rewritten old ones and nested a lot of my paid work information on this site with great care and caution and I’ll see how it goes. Tell me what you think?
I’m so bursting with excitement I got hardly any sleep last night. I feel like stars are burning so brightly in my chest that there’s almost no room for my heart. Someone wants to cry out with joy, loud! To weep with it. To pour it out of us like a river. My life is unbearably beautiful and I’m drunk on hope.
And someone else wants to be still. To sit and watch the bees in the basil. To sit under the cold winter sun and feel the wind on our skin. There’s children playing up the street, and the wind chimes outside our window singing softly. The breeze tugs a lace curtain into a kind of dance, puffs it up as if it’s a gown over a body so translucent I cannot see her, fae and trembling she stands by my window and drinks the breeze, and dances.
I love my sister very dearly and it’s hurt my heart to watch her struggle in a home where she was not well loved. I feel a fierce, deep joy to have her home, for a little while, to hold her close and cook for her and try to help her taste and feel again – this is what being loved feels like. So she can be nourished, so she has the sense of it alive in her, guiding her. It shouldn’t take such courage or cost such pain to pull back from places where we are not loved well. She, none of us, should have to be that strong. We should be well loved by those around us so the dance we must do around each others broken places is a movement from light to light, from home to home, from warmth to warmth, never fleeing into the night and the darkness, never broken by the cost. Always free. She’ll fly on again but we have a precious time where we’ll make our home together, where I can share the home I’ve been blessed with.
I’m not the only one sharing. I have been overwhelmed with donations the last month, often little amounts that I KNOW are costly to give, are, percentage of your income wise, very big indeed. I am buying resources for the networks, and paying for prints, and husbanding every dollar with care. A Blog reader contacted me recently to offer a regular gift of money over the next nine months. I took to bed and wept, Rose holding me gently. How overwhelming it is to receive such support, to feel such… Connection… Gratitude… Such belief in what I’m doing. You share my dreams! And like my art! And read my blog… And help with my networks.
I had a dream, back when I started this. To be useful in the world, and to express myself creatively. I have come through so much and learned so much in the pursuit of that dream. And Rose changed everything! Suddenly I’m dreaming of family and a baby too, my own tiny community within my much larger community. So I started dreaming a new dream, of being useful in the world, and expressing myself creatively, in an ethical and sustainable way. Transitioning my business and networks from a charity model to one of mutuality. I give and I receive, and together, we thrive, we dream, we bring more kindness and honesty and hope into the world.
Rose is brilliant at adventures. She’s renowned locally for her ability to find fun, wonderful, cheap things to do with kids (and the young at heart). Her bus adventures around Adelaide are the stuff of legend. I got to hear a bunch of now grown up kids reminiscing about trips they’d taken once and it was beautiful.
Today I’ve done some admin and now we’re off with our neices for a cubby building afternoon at a national forest. It will be muddy and fun and wonderful. I can’t wait. This woman is amazing and I love her to bits!
In other news, we have a donor back on board and will be trying to get pregnant again this cycle. We are both incredibly excited about it! Our family is a wonderful place. 🙂
So much is happening…
That’s been the observation for weeks now, and nothing is letting up, gathering steam is a better analogy.
The trip away to Whyalla and Pt Lincoln was exhausting and amazing. I learned so much, so fast and scrambled to keep hold of it and keep my head together. I took a big risk going there, reaching beyond my reach and needing a lot of help.
And I got it. I understood so much more about how a tribe works. I feel so grateful and appreciative – to everyone who helped me. Thankyou deeply. It’s so important to me not to be swept away but to stop and acknowledge you all. You believe in me and what I’m doing and support me. Thank you! I will be saying thank you individually too – but thank you publicly! I can’t do this without you all, you are helping me to get a message of love into mental health, to speak out that people with multiplicity are real people, not stereotypes, and that art is essential for life.
I had experiences that I would call ‘psychotic’ except they were so beautiful and so peaceful and so lovely it would be like calling love making ‘rape’. I sat by the water and watched the dolphins and wept. I felt so alive and so connected it was onerwhelming. The sky was so beautiful I was falling into it. An inner eye opened and was so dazzled by the world I’ve had to let it partly close again. And a model of mental health reform turned up in my head. I’ve filled a notebook with it. I had the most amazing conversations, feeling like I was really out of my own mazed mind for the first time, able to see people clearly – not just other people like me, in the clarity of intensity and rawness, but all people. Every conversation left me feeling that I had been given profound gifts of insight – not me but everyone -, that everywhere people were throwing away the most incredible observations about the world and none of us listening to each other. I don’t have words for what I’m going through but the closest I can find is ‘spiritual awakening’, or would be if my system felt more universal towards any kind of spirituality. I feel… transformed.
I got home to chaos. Both inboxes overflowing, hundreds of urgent tasks needing doing, no structure or priorities, just an avalanche of information and opportunities and contacts. I threw myself into it and got swamped immediately. The first day I worked for 13 hours to just start listing all the things that needed doing. My mind fried, like an abuse victim near the abuser, all my thoughts tangled into knots. Feelings of deep shame and overwhelming anxiety welled up. My productivity crashed, it would take 3 hours to write and send an email that was coherent. Most of the things I had to do were ‘scary’ things, out of my experience or comfort zone. Things that took great courage, or needed me to change gears to sympathetically listen. I could tell I was so overwhelmed that even the simple things were becoming impossibly difficult.
The more inconceivable it is that you take time off, the more essential it is.
After two intense burn out days of doing my head in, I went back to the new plan and adapted myself to Rose’s work hours.
It was hard and I didn’t get it entirely right but after a couple of days working sensible hours my head was clearing and I was able to think better.
I was still bleeding out though, every hour taking me further away from feeling centred, grounded, calm, feet firmly planted. Rose could feel it too, that wildness and destabilising anxiety in me. I was losing the ability to be in sync with her longer than a couple of hours. I’d find a few hours of something different and connect, but each time I was coming back to a gradual slide down a steep hill. So we packed me up for a night at the beach.
At 3am, alone in the dark (isn’t life strange, I used to hate that and feel hurt by it and now I drive two hours into the night to find it – I’m reminded of a couple where one always complained about the other snoring and now they’re dead and gone, and the other partner can’t sleep without the sound of snoring, the quiet of the house too much to bear) I find the heart of my terror – a message from my anxiety that I’ve too many demands on my time and need to push some things back to next year. It’s a hard message to hear, but as soon as I accept it – not problem solve it, not resolve it, just listen and accept it, the whirling franticness calms and the ‘click’ I listen for when I’m out in the wild places, out under the stars, happens. Choosing between my passions and projects, for a multiple, is incredibly painful. But just recognising this message brings peace. I spend a day listening closely to my needs, tuning back in to the small voice of my soul.
I come home deeply centred again.
Into the maelstrom! My inbox is overflowing my desk, the emails keep piling up, letters from welfare that require urgent attention, I still need to do my tax. And family in trouble needing help. Why bother with all that connectedness and calm, I asked myself, look how quickly I lose it! I gathered all my lists of things that need doing back into one list. Every time I find a new task I add it. It’s several pages long, over half are urgent or beyond urgent, seriously overdue. I tackle an hour of rapid housework and get down to it.
I take half the morning sorting out my enrolment to college. Half the information I’ve been given is, as usual, plain wrong. One of my term long classes turns out to be actually be a semester long class, and several hours more commitment each week than I’d been told as well, making my workload much higher for this year than I’d planned. But it’s a rare, special, elective subject about a topic I’m absolutely passionate about and as much as I’m overwhelmed about doing it, I’m desperately trying to hold onto it.
I gather 10 of the other most desperate admin from my master list and work on them in small doses over the day, adding in little notes and messages here and there to friends so I haven’t dropped out of conversations completely. There’s a great analogy about to do lists, how every list has at least one thing on it that you’d practically rather eat a frog than deal with, and that if you tackle this thing first, the rest of the list will be much clearer and easier. That’s my take on it anyway. My short list is entirely composed of frog. Everything on it is stressful and challenging and makes my heart race and me feel sick.
I get three done, run off and tell Rose – I’ve eaten another frog! Then go and cook food. When there’s crisis is important to have good food easily accessible. I make carrot and ginger soup with half the $2 bag of sweet baby carrots we bought from the market together. The house is clean – we are mastering how to use systems and routines together! I pick the list back up in places over the rest of my day, in between helping family pack and move. At 11pm, Rose is exhausted and wants to go to bed but is sitting near me in solidarity as I tremble and curse my way through a few more frogs. I ‘hear’ a sense of being able to engage with another box of frogs from my main list, which surprises me, so I set to it and tackle changing gears to genuinely respond to the DI email inbox from the website – a task almost unbearably daunting since I discovered I’d missed an email from May and felt so bad about that I’d almost rather set the computer on fire and leave the country than reply to it.
I eat a lot of frogs. Rose is very encouraging. After each frog she tries to celebrate but I still feel so sick and overwhelmed I can’t breathe. Late at night, I get the last, big frog off that list and everything transforms. I’m giddy with happiness. The rest of the list is suddenly manageable! My life is suddenly manageable. The family crisis is manageable. My projects are exciting again! I’m looking forward to my week! I can think straight, can make plans again. Rose and I plan a sleep in this morning, a lazy start to the day in pjs, and waffles for breakfast. Everything feels wonderful again.
So much is happening…
I’m reading a book called Wishcraft by Barbara Sher, recommended to me by the awesome artist behind Outspiral, and it’s so relevant and brilliant I cry in nearly every page. I have been doing a lot of looking and listening lately – who else is doing what I’m doing, in some way? How did they pull it off? This book was a wonderful suggestion.
The most wonderful part of it is the author normalising this roller coaster for me. It’s not me! It’s not me being ‘mentally ill’, easy as that assessment is to make. It’s a trauma history and a lot of years of being alone, up against me seeking my big dreams and finding my place in the world. It looks messy because these things are very hard to do – to dream something wonderful and pursue it is very scary and wonderful and you need a good support system more than you need personal attributes like confidence, she says. I love her. It makes sense and it’s all gelling in my mind. It’s possible! I’m excited.
If, ten years ago, some kind soul had given me hard information on how to turn my dreams into realities, instead of just assuring me blandly that it could be done, it would have saved me an incredible amount of time and anguish. As long as I kept trying to believe in myself and reform all my bad habits, I kept crashing – and blaming myself. It wasn’t until I gave up on every fixing me and tried to improvise a set of aids that would work for me anyway… that I stumbled on the real secret behind the scenes… it’s not superhero genes and a jaw of steel, like the myths say. It’s something much simpler. It’s know-how and support.
I’m going to keep reading it and if anyone else wants to read it too, we could discuss it together as a kind of book club. 😀
This is a good guide to help me find my way through all the possibilities and opportunities suddenly open to me. I’m putting a lot of thought into the kinds of support I need, and I’ve actually published a rough draft. It’s only a work in progress as I build a better framework around me, but it’s a start and I’ll keep working on it and clarifying it as I learn more. I’ve actually replaced my Donate page with a Support Me page because I’ve realised that there are many ways to support me and I don’t like to make it sound like money is the only thing, it’s helpful but it’s only one way. Check it out, I’d welcome any feedback. 🙂
Rose has kindly explained to me that people have no idea how to support me most of the time, and no idea what my big dreams are or where I’m heading, and that as I’m a bigger picture person which is not that common, and I also share a lot of my strong feelings through this process, which is likewise not common, there’s a lot of anxiety out there around what I’m trying to do. That makes sense to me. I’d noticed it in the general feel of things – the more I’ve been winding up and making bigger plans, there’s been this sense of an indrawn breath around me – what are you doing? Are you nuts? So I want to start to find ways to communicate more, and more clearly, what I’m doing and where this is going and how people can be involved if they want to – if they share the dream too.
Life is amazing. 🙂
I’ve taken a key step in my life as an artist – I’ve found a local printer, Black and White Photographics who were happy to walk an anxious and print illiterate artist through the process of converting original works to quality prints. This is a project I have been wanting to get off the ground for a long time, but struggling to find resources and information. I visited many different local printers and none of them knew anything about art prints or could refer me. The urgency was rather increased as someone wants to buy one of my oil paintings and I can’t let go of the original unless I have a high quality digital image of it, and I also want to put it into a better frame. A friend referred me to these folks over Facebook, and Rose took me to see them yesterday morning. I asked a lot of questions and was given a lot of information I hadn’t known about how it all works and how to deal with the reproduction side of selling art.
Then we got back into the van and I cried. It’s exciting but overwhelming! Even leaving my originals with the printer was stressful and strange. It’s so different from poetry and writing… with those, I can win an award or publish a work and I still have it! Usually I still even have the original handwritten version in my journals. But with art – you let it go. And my work is… well, it’s kind of pieces of my heart. Parts of my life story. They are incredibly precious to me. I’ve saved my art collection from several bouts of homelessness and other major crises, even from my own impulse to destroy them (most common when I’m feeling chronically suicidal). Holding onto them has been a kind of expression of… value. To me. That I think what I do has value. Even if I’m the only one. That we promise we won’t destroy each other’s work, even if we hate it or it scares us and we have to hide it from view. Creation has been part of our “those who don’t build must burn” approach to life, something integral that helps to keep us alive, keep our heart alive, document our story.
Other people’s reaction to my work is a whole different ball game. Selling it, different again! The printer told me my work was under priced and estimated a retail price at about double what I was asking. This is the work I was told several times was over priced and would sell easily if I would just drop it down. I stubbornly held onto it. I knew what it was worth to me, I caculated i’s value to me in paint – what would I be willing to bear parting with it for? Better paints, and enough for another few works… I’ve only let go of three original works (apart from those I’ve given as gifts, before I pulled my focus in tighter – more art, less craft, more personal, less generic) and in all cases I don’t have a copy or a quality photograph and it hurts. I stopped selling them and only made an exception for my best friend, knowing I’d be able to ask for it back to get a print done once I figured out how and where I could do that. In my last solo exhibition 2 years ago, I was told the works would not be offered for sale, which suited me… On the opening night, three different people were keen to buy the same ink painting. I took their details and promised to get back to them and never did. How could I? I knew every detail of that painting, where I was when she was born in my mind, what dreams I was having, what was going on in my life, where I sat to paint her, how I mixed the inks, chose the paper. She’s part of me. So I’ve slid quietly away from every offer since. I put up works of ‘backup work’ not finals, for sale in another group exhibit for people with a disability, priced them modestly, sold a couple, and again was told – I’m pricing too high. People would buy much more if they didn’t have to pay $40 for an original. Again I resisted the devaluing, calculated their worth to me in a kind of trade – I want another bottle of ink ($30, with postage), I want to buy a better quality brush ($60), and I’d part with the Blue Rose for a brush I guess, and that dog for a bottle of ink, but not less.
A number of people have contacted me over the last week about buying prints of their favourite work once I’ve arranged that. A few want the originals once I’m ready to part with them. I have two art exhibitions in the works I need to find a gallery or exhibit space for. (and time to arrange!) Rose is helping take on some of this side of things for/with me because I’m out of time and out of my depth. I need to get hold of a website designer to help me set up a beautiful online gallery. Rose has believed I would have a professional art career since she first met me. I’m just able to see it now, as I’m learning about the incredible diversity of arts practice, as I’m finding words like Community Artist and Hybrid Artist that fit what I’m feeling my way into… as always for me – I do things, moved by instinct and guided by values. After I’ve done them, I stop and reflect – what was that? What am I doing? What does it mean? And I have to find something to reflect upon, a language to think about it. Sometimes that takes many years!
So yesterday, I sat in the van, crying, and so exhilarated I could hardly think straight. We went on a trip to Victor Harbour through the mad stormy weather. (Rose drove) I was so crazy silly in the petrol shop the cashier burst out laughing and thanked me for brightening her day. When it hailed on us I was so flooded with joy, the sheer childlike pleasure I was laughing and crying out and felt like my heart would explode. My paints are calling to me and the night is calling to me and the storm is calling to me and my beach is calling to me.
We had a great day and I didn’t explode. We spent it with friends, playing games, eating good food, talking about our lives and families and the futures. Talking about Tamlorn and donors and how sad this path can be, how hard it can be. All day I tugged on people’s shirts in quiet moments to say, in bewildered joy – ‘someone wants to buy my art’!
Driving home late that night, through the squalls and gusts of wind and I’m impossible. I feel like a great, wild creature in me that has been chained has suddenly been freed, and it’s gambolling in bursts in every direction and snapping teeth at everything, it’s feet, the stars, the wind, so fiercely joyful and unbounded and un-contained it’s impossible to be anywhere near… and Rose and I talk about our split desires, how deeply she loves home at the moment, sinking roots into a stable home, planting trees. And I talk about how free I felt in the van, how alive I feel when I sleep somewhere I can feel the night and hear the rain. I am sad and torn and full of wild dreams. I dream up a mad studio for my back yard – a four poster bed, covered in canvas to keep off the rain, with an easel that swings over it for painting or poetry writing and a covered candle lantern for light the wind can’t blow into a bed fire, and netting to keep away the bugs… I can see myself in it some nights, out the back under the moon, the bed like a boat on the night sea, my speckled dog with me, and the wildness in me runs free and howls through my veins, such splendid joy. All the wild things in me turn their faces to the stars and howl, a cacophony of sound, a deep solidarity, a yearning and a coming home. No more the shadows. No more the whip and the bridle. Unchanged and unbroken. Free to be as they are.
I cannot contain such joy. I cannot bear it or hold it in. I am swept along by it, by the intense self awareness – “all things pray by being themselves” – my life no longer devoted to the breaking in of my wilds, to the conforming of my madness. My day people are finally the stewards of my night people, finally unpicking the locks and letting the whips lie still. Even just for a night. I am so alive. We are so alive it is unbearable. I cannot know it, and be unchanged. Everything sings to me. The night calls me home.
So much is happening at the moment!
I’m hoping to learn more about these topics – if you have some experience or knowledge, please get in touch and share it with me 🙂
Story City is coming to South Australia! Seeking Writers, Illustrators, Digital Artists, Musicians and Composers to bring an exciting new digital platform to Adelaide.
http://www.storycity.com.au/story-city-adelaide-eoi/
Posted by Dulwich Centre Foundation on Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Most of the winter Rose and I have been cleaning our clothes at a local laundromat and using the dryers rather than hanging them out. It’s expensive and time consuming but as we don’t have a washing machine hooked up at home, necessary. Last night I went to try and set our washing machine up in our back yard, but it was completely buried under boxes in the shed – several more hours work than I had time for. So my Mum took our dirty laundry home to clean at her place. She would hang it out to dry and I’d pick it up today around 3pm.
Cue the first rain we’ve had in weeks, ha ha. Yup, clearly our fault! So it’s 4am and I’m sleeping on the couch because there’s thunder and Zoe panics. I tried music and a light on first, but apparently the only way we’re not all going to die is if she’s curled up on my legs. The mad black and white cat Sars has also decided he doesn’t want to sleep on the porch tonight anymore so he’s here too. Rose has a job interview tomorrow so she needs her sleep. I got up to make up the couch to sleep on and Rose murmers to me “you’ll make a good Mum”. Yeah, listening to and meeting the needs – good skills to have. I’m working on it. Sweet dreams all.
It’s been a good day. I’ve cried a lot, washing out the emotional overwhelm from the past fortnight. I’ve come home to email inboxes totally out of hand, to do lists running into 5 pages, and so much coming in at me that I can’t process it. It’s hard for me to filter it or think clearly. My first couple of days back followed my usual impulse in such circumstances – work on it obsessively in a highly unbalanced way all day and night and become very dissociated from myself.
I’ve gone back now to the plan I was working before I left, where I work when Rose works and rest when she rests. It’s less than ideal from the point of view of those waiting to hear from me, but all I can do to look after myself. I can’t think very clearly or make sense of much of it yet.
But, this weekend has been lovely.
I’ve planted a lot of seeds and cuttings. Gardening is so grounding for me, I love getting my hands into soil.
Our lilies are blooming, and they are stunning.
Rose and I found this beauty in the side of the road for free. 🙂
The garden in winter is less spectacular than summer, but there are still treasures like this black pansy.
We have a healthy patch of nettles for teas, they are high in iron. Rose and I are enjoying a shared love of growing and tending.
Tamlorn’s peach tree was looking overgrown and unloved so we’ve weeded and laid down cardboard mats.
We had a beautiful morning at the markets buying fruit and vegetables together. We’re working on reducing our food cost and increasing our unprocessed food intake. I feel very inspired to be more green. We currently compost our green waste via a council bin but I’m looking into my own composter or worm farm. I’ve made my own cleaner by soaking citrus peel in vinegar.
Staying in my van on the recent trip brought home to me how deeply I love to be connected to nature. I was unhappy about throwing away fruit peels and food scraps into the general bins and I think I’ll try and set up a bokashi style bucket for my next trip. I was also… Liberated. Living more simply calms my anxiety. I feel more at peace, in balance, in harmony. Remembering that I need so little to really meet my needs made me less afraid of loss, able to be bolder and braver. I drove to Port Lincoln without (as it turned out) enough money to pay for the fuel back, and my tribe – you guys, my friends and family and people I’ve never even met, and my new tribe out in the country, you guys supported me, repaid my courage, helped me to fly instead of fall. Brought me home again.
I feel… So humbled. So grateful. It’s hard to find words. I’m part of something. I want to say thankyou, in some way. Not to rush on into the busyness but to pause and really let it sink in, and to really see you.
I may not be able to repay, but I can pay it forwards. I got home to discover that my most difficult to live with neighbour had suffered the loss of her cat. Her deeply loved pet had been hit by a car. So I went over to say I was sorry to hear it. One of my cats, Sarsaparilla, has partly adopted her and often sleeps on her porch. I offered him to her, with all his papers and so on, if she wants to have him. She cried. She said she was sorry for being mean. I forgave her. I think we are slowly starting to rehabilitate our street – the one where near fatal stabbings, arson, vandalism, drug and alcohol issues, and cruelty are so common. We might not be enough to turn the tide, but at least we can acknowledge the deep woundedness beneath the violence. At least we can be kind.
Love. How simple, how difficult. We who have the biggest dreams, who want to change the world, who cry out in fear and pain – how? Well, this is how I’m doing it.
I live with chronic illnesses that affect me in many ways, at various levels of intensity from year to year. I have at times needed a wheelchair or electric scooter for mobility, been house bound or bed bound, and experienced multiple food sensitivities. I manage chronic pain and have learned what I need to live well.
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I don’t work in a vacuum! I’m a passionate reader as well as a good listener – I’ve learned a lot from others.
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Sarah K Reece 