General News

Remembering sickness and loss

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments
I’ve been getting a painful up close reminder of how much being sick takes away from you. I still haven’t got through this pain flair up, I went off to the doctor yesterday who increased various meds, all of which have terrible side effects. I can’t get any decent sleep because the pain wakes me up all through the night and nothing much reduces it. It’s all a bit of a mystery, there’s nothing I’ve done to set it off, it’s not lack of self care or anything like that. There’s no reason I should be having regular flair ups. The usual story.

I find I can be pretty philosophical through a few bad days or weeks, but once it runs on too long or the pain level gets too high I start to run out. I’m spending half my time crying at the moment I’m so depressed and frustrated. Wednesday night was my sculpture class which I had to miss again. I have to cancel the rest of this week to keep medical appointments and have tests done. I remember this world, and even a small brush with it like this is terrifying. There’s so much grief in being ill, such a profound sense of loss.

Watching my peers go off to university while I was too sick to cook my own meals or bath unaided was an excruciating time in my life. Fear, misery, humiliation, and painful empty hope tortured me. Chronic pain is an evil thing that warps you, you notice yourself changing, becoming irritable, angry, losing your joy, and you watch it all happening and fight it with everything you have but you don’t always win. Then comes the shame, the fury with yourself for how weak you are, that if you only tried harder, you would be better.

You watch the toll it takes on relationships. You want to know the divorce rates when one partner has a chronic illness? Want to know the suicide rates? For the first episodes friends don’t take it personally when you cancel on them. After a while they decide it’s simply kinder to stop inviting you. It’s like watching your blood running down a drain from a wound you can’t staunch.

I remember this world. Going through a supermarket in a wheelchair and cringing under real and imagined glances of disbelief when you haul yourself upright to reach an item out of reach. Being taken aside to have whispered conversations “The rest of the students don’t understand why you’re using a scooter when you can walk”. Caught constantly between the pain of walking and the humiliation of assistance. Limping back to the car bent over the supermarket trolley handle to try and take the weight off the hip that is screaming. Biting holes in my lip to distract me. Staying home for so long the outside world became a memory, a dream. Tolerating whatever I had to do to be able to get back out there. But then, the feeling that my chair dominated me, that I didn’t have enough personality to fill it and radiate out beyond it, not enough confidence, that instead it defined me, caged me, engulfed me. I so badly needed another friend in a chair.

The assumption of personal failing, constantly having to deny that you have in some way done something wrong to bring this down on yourself, it’s type A personality, it’s about not enough sun, it’s because you don’t exercise enough, it’s because you exercise too much, it’s about blood sugar, about vitamins, about rare viruses, it’s all in your head.

“I hate myself” has been on loop for days now. I don’t hate myself. I just really, really, don’t want to be sick, I’m very tired and there’s a lot of bad memories in my head.

Charlie has a tree

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments
I’m still very under the weather with my pain flair up. I have a physio appointment soon which usually helps so fingers crossed. I was able to get Charlie’s grave finished the other day when we had some lovely warm weather, so I’ve planted a small bay tree over the grave by my back fence, and put a big black candle out there. I plan to print out a couple of good photos of him and put them up somewhere in my unit too, that will be good. Miss him like crazy, the place is so quiet without him! 

 And here is my lovely new outdoor dining set which I’m very excited about and can’t wait to start using when the weather warms up. 🙂 Once this flair up settles down again I’ll be able to sit out there in the cool, drinking hot chocolate and admiring my trees. There’s often beautiful cloudscapes or a lovely moon over the back fence to contemplate, it’s such a beautiful spot.

I have been giving a lot of thought to getting another dog and it turns out a friend rather urgently needs a new home for hers, so the plan is to have a trial period and see how the dog adjusts. I’m very excited and very nervous about it too. I am doing more and more talks which means times away from home so I need a dog that doesn’t mind too much being dog-sat by friends here and there and doesn’t do anything silly like howl the neighbourhood awake. Hopefully this is a good match and I’ll have a little hairy critter thrilled to see me when I come again. 

Abstract accepted!

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
Well, as I sat about today feeling like I’d lost a round or two with a boxer, into my inbox came a delightful email informing me that my abstracts for a 20 minute talk was accepted for the 25th Annual World Hearing Voices Conference this September! Here’s my abstract:

I hear voices as part of a dissociative disorder, and have done so since I was a child. I was diagnosed with PTSD at 14 and DID at 23. I now co-facilitate groups for voice hearers and people who experience dissociation or multiplicity, and chair a small Australian community group The Dissociative Initiative. Dissociation is often misunderstood and multiplicity especially is seen as rare and bizarre. My experience has been that multiplicity is a spectrum, and some voice hearers are struggling with dissociative issues and experiencing their voices as parts. I will share some of my personal experiences of how dissociation affects me, what it is like to have voices that are parts, and strategies I have used in my own recovery. I will also share a framework for making sense of the array of dissociative experiences, and how to understand ‘multiple personalities’ as a dissociative entity. For people who hear voices that are parts, there can be additional challenges to recovery such as when parts are able to control the body. I will explain some basic principles of working successfully with parts. I hope to inspire people to feel more comfortable and confident in navigating dissociative issues, and encourage people that it is possible to live well with voices who are parts.

The slight hitch is that the conference is in Cardiff, Wales. Which is a bit of swim. I’ve already made a couple of enquiries on the off chance my talk was accepted, but nothing has worked out so far. Now I’ll have to go hunting grants and funds and see if I can find a way to get there. Very exciting!

As I’ve been busy writing biographies which is like pulling teeth, and talk outlines, which are frankly more difficult to write than the talks, I thought I’d also update my pages here on the blog. The articles page is gone, collapsed into the New Here sitemap. I’ve uploaded all the PDF’s of articles into google docs and now just have to update all the links so they go to the right place. My Resources has been spruced up, and About Sarah has been updated. I’ve made a bit of leap in clarifying some of my diagnoses on that page, previously you had to know me or dig into the blog to work things out. Exposure is difficult and I’ve been managing it in staggered doses. Here goes, hey. 🙂

An unproductive Sunday

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
The weather is too cold, my home is too un-insulated, and my joint pain is flaring badly. I couldn’t get to sleep until about 7am, most of which was spent shivering in bed under all the blankets I own as my TMJ (pain in the joint of my jaw) reduced me to tears. I cannot tell you how much it sucks to have a chronic pain condition that also leaves you intolerant of most pain killers. The muscles spam in cycles, one moment I’m right as rain, the next I’m totally immobilised. I’m very depressed and feeling sorry for myself because I had much more exciting plans like making art and going to the beach. I am instead contemplating getting a new, faster phone with an inbuilt camera, which would make navigating a lot easier – google maps takes up to 10 minutes to load on my current phone, and allow me to easily post a picture and a short blurb on nights like this when I’m too trashed to post anything more coherent. I’m eyeing up a later model Samsung which should upgrade me about a decades worth of phone developments. 🙂 I’m looking at buying another electric blanket as mine is dying and on the setting 60C manages to get just past the sensation of ‘cold’ and almost into ‘tepid’ if you use your imagination. Considering that we’re only 10 days into winter technically, I don’t think I’m going to make it through to spring at this rate without some major improvements in my keeping warm approach. Curses!

On the plus side a friend dropped round today with a belated house warming gift of a little outdoor table and four folding chairs in a set with an umbrella, so that is set up in the backyard and I probably spent a little bit too long sitting outside in the cold just because I was so excited about it. It’s like having a little cafe setting in your own backyard. I hope to make a habit of eating breakfast out there when the weather warms up a bit. In the meantime, I’m back to bed.

Ray Bradbury died

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

On June 5th at the age of 91. He was one of my favourite authors and I deeply love his work. I first encountered him when I read Fahrenheit 451 for a school assignment and fell in love. He wrote about the world I saw and lived in and yet somehow lived in alone and could not share. He wrote about people like me, strange, and numb, and vulnerable to every breath of wind with hearts so painfully breakable. He gave me words to tell my own story, he made me feel less alone when I was so terribly alone, the only one of my kind with a heart like a net, catching all the flotsam of the world and a mind like a kaleidoscope full of lights forever falling. His characters were my friends, in the years where there were no friends. His books were hearths by which I warmed myself when all my world was cold. He spoke of life, and what it is to be human. He spoke in poems, my native language, spoke of sadness and the wind blowing through you, spoke of joy and the smell of cotton candy and the song of memory and nostalgia and nights that call you from bed. I loved him. When I’m lost in a world that isn’t mine, in a place of deadness, where all the adults are corpses of children and the day has sucked me dry and the night is without comfort and the rain does not come his books bring me home, his words sing me back into my soul, back into my body, sing my hands to life and make me weep. I loved him. Homeless, I took a book of Bradbury with me at all times, a tiny anchor, a paper bag to keep my heart safe, slept by it every night, where it went I was alive, where I lay it down at night I was home.

There will be no new books now, no more poems. I never told him how he saved me, how he wrote me into life, like a string through a maze when I had lost my way. Just a writer did this for me, broke the glass and whispered in my ear that I was not the only of my kind, not alone and not the only one. Gave me hope and set a candle in my heart that life is to be lived and not endured, that the moon sings us from the drudge of day and in the wind are wild longings that call us from sleep and float us through nights of endless stars. Sorrow, sweet sorrow and regret and love and blessings and books that grace my shelves. He who wrote with such compassion has died and I mourn him.

He wrote:

The good writers touch life often
The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her.
The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

He heard voices and wrote them into his books.

He wrote:

To all your inner selves be true

He wrote:

Once the years were numerous and the funerals few,
Once the hours were years, now years are hours,
Suddenly the days fill up with flowers –
The garden ground is filled with freshdug slots
Where we put by our dearest special pets
And friends: wind-lost forget-me-nots.
…
At night a clump of wisteria falls to the lawn in a wreath
Our old cats underneath in the loam
Cry to come into our home. We wont let them.
We let the wind pet them and put them to sleep.
…
It’s a nightful of ghosts, but then all nights are now.
It’s a long way on until dawn.

Too many fresh dug graves in my life too. Rest in peace Mr Bradbury, you made a difference to my world.

DI Constitution draft

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
Constitutions are kind of tricky things to write when you haven’t done it before! I have been really, really pleased with how the Dissociative Initiative (DI) groups and resources have been going running them from values rather than rules or ‘norms’ and so I really wanted to make sure the DI constitution actually laid out the fundamental values and principles of the organisation. I’m a writer and words and language are my thing, but the language style of constitutions is highly formal and for a poet that is kind of a stretch. 🙂 It’s funny how hard it can be to try and pin down things that are as invisible as values, things I feel in my gut such as the instinct to be caring or respectful, to try and tease out what has (and hasn’t) been working from a group or program and write it into the structure for the next one. I’ve been floundering a bit, trying to find my feet in this area that I’m new in. One of the things I did a little while ago was write off to various organisations to see examples of their constitutions so I could get a better idea of how these things are put together. My favourite inspiration is still definitely the work over at Intervoice which has such wonderful community values. Anyway! Here’s some extracts of our working draft so far, please feel welcome to get in touch if you have any feedback you’d like to give. 🙂 If you want to read the full version I’ve hosted it online here.

Purpose

To promote better life experiences for people whose lives are touched by dissociation and/or multiplicity (and other similar experiences) whether directly (through lived experience) or indirectly (through a social/family/support role); respecting the diversity of ways in which dissociation and/or multiplicity can be experienced and the role that trauma can play in these experiences.

Values & Principles
Members of the Association acknowledge and value:

The principles of Trauma Informed Care

  • avoiding re-tramatising practices
  • respecting autonomy
  • supporting personal control
  • recognising strengths
  • healing occurs in a social and relational context

The Principles of the Recovery Model

  • person-oriented
  • personal involvement
  • self determination
  • hope

Equally the knowledge gained through lived experience and knowledge gained through training
Social Inclusion

  • Reducing disadvantage
  • Increasing social, civic and economic participation
  • People participating in decisions which affect their community

Building community by bridging divides and removing barriers to relationships
Collaboration with others to achieve common objectives
Diversity of the experience and meaning people ascribe to events and opportunities
Peer Work

Vision

We have a vision for a more inclusive community which understands and respects the experiences of our members

Objects (objectives)

  • Educate and raise awareness about dissociation and multiplicity
  • Reduce stigma and discrimination about dissociation and multiplicity
  • Support people who experience dissociation and their supporters
  • Create resources and facilitate access to resources about dissociation or that are ‘dissociation friendly’
  • Promote peer work and recovery
  • To directly address the disadvantage and distress experienced by those who live with dissociation and or multiplicity, and their effects on health and social inclusion.
  • To advocate for informed and ethical research that supports the further development of knowledge about dissociation and multiplicity and which informs recovery and or peer oriented practices.
  • To collaborate with other like-minded associations and organisations in the best interest of the Dissociative Initiative Inc.
  • To engage in any other activities which directly support these objects.

We’ve also had to try and define some difficult concepts. All the important terms in a constitution need to be clearly defined so that any reader can work out what you mean you use the word. I am keen to use definitions that are clear but also broader than medical/clinical terms because I know that different people have different understandings of their experiences of dissociation or multiplicity and I feel strongly that it is important to make everyone feel welcome and at home whatever frameworks they are using. I’m a little envious of the Voice Hearer’s movement in this respect because voice hearer is a neutral term, non-clinical and it presupposes no cause, diagnosis, or outcomes. Dissociation is tricky, poorly defined even in the clinical literature and clearly a clinical term. Multiplicity is non-clinical which is good but on the other hand reflects a whole spectrum of possible experiences which are also difficult to pin down briefly in a formal document. It’s really important to make these resources inclusive that they be defined around people’s experiences rather than diagnoses, but trying to capture that is not simple! Here’s draft one of attempts to do this!

  • “Dissociation” means a disconnection in areas which would normally be connected such as memory, time, senses which may or may not be distressing or disabling, but which impact on a person’s experience of the world.
  • “Multiplicity” means experiencing dissociative barriers between parts of self, occurring on a spectrum of degree, which may be experienced for example as voices, alters, lost time, a sense of being fractured or divided.
  • “Parts” may also be known as “alters”, have a separate sense of self and function independently within the one body, switching with or without amnesia.
  • “Voices” can be understood within the context of multiplicity as parts who speak to each other. Not all voices fit within the framework of multiplicity, and some voices can be parts who also switch.




New library resources

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
I woke up the other day to find a parcel tucked into my door from the postie. I love waking up to nice mail, it really makes my day. This morning it was a collection I’ve had on my wishlist for the library for awhile, a collection of talks from the 2008 Recovery from Psychosis conference in Perth. The set was selling for about $30 plus postage, then dropped to $17 with postage so I couldn’t resist any longer. Here’s what was in it:

  1. “Hearing Voices and the Complexity of Mental Health Issues from an Aboriginal Perspective” 

    2. Dr. Helen Milroy (Australia)

  2. “The Personal is Political” Jaqui Dillion (England)
  3. “Hearing Voices with Children” Dr. Sandra Escher (Holland)
  4. “Voice Dialogue” Dr. Dirk Corstens (The Netherlands)
  5. “Understanding Psychosis” John Watkins (Australia)
  6. “Making Recovery Happen: From Rhetoric to Reality” Ron Coleman & Karen Taylor (Scotland)
  7. “Recovery with Voices: A Report on a Study with 50 Recovered Voice Hearers” Prof. Dr. Marius Romme (Holland)
  8. “Recovery from Psychosis: What Helps and What Hinders?” Lyn Mahboub & Mariene Janssen (Australia)
  9. “Working with Voice Hearers in Social Psychiatry”  Trevor Eyles (Denmark)

If you’d like to buy your own, you can get it here.

My library has grown substantially over the past month or so, there are actually some books in there at the moment I haven’t read yet – most unusually for me! I mentioned the new additions in the latest Dissociation Link newsletter, but if you didn’t get it, here they are:

I’ll be posting reviews and recommendations when I have time. All of these are available to borrow for a refundable deposit, if you have any to donate or to recommend as an addition, that is always appreciated too. 🙂

I’m sick

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I’ve come down with gastro so I’ve had a very unpleasant couple of days. A locum doctor came out to the house yesterday but coundn’t rule out more serious conditions without tests, so I spent the evening in hospital having tests done and getting some water into me via a drip. The conclusion is that it is just gastro, nasty but not dangerous, so when my fever started to drop and on the proviso that I drink a lot of water they let me come home. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if I wasn’t needle-phobic, but I really hate hospitals, I hate needles, and I hate drips more than anything. The last thing you need when you have gastro is procedures that make you feel distressed and nauseous. Various meds are helping me keep water down so hopefully I will soon be feeling more human again. At least this didn’t happen last week I guess.

RIP Charlie

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Charlie died at 4.15 on Tuesday. The decision to put him down was incredibly difficult to make. It was very quick and very peaceful, I stayed with him the whole time. He wasn’t stressed or upset and was happy gobbling treats from my hand. An overdose of anaesthetic stopped his heart. I miss him terribly.

The last week we spent together was very precious to me. We spent a lot of time in the sunshine down at the local parks, going for walks, or snuggled on the couch watching movies. I knew at the outset that once I’d decided I could no longer leave him at home alone and needed to put him down that I wanted to spend a last week with him. I often waver on those kind of gut instincts, I feel pretty strongly about following through on things I’ve said I’ll do. I’m so glad I didn’t this time.

I wanted to get him groomed and cleaned before the end, it took quite a bit to find someone who could fit him in and checks back and forth with the vet about his health and making sure it wouldn’t stress him. In the end the lovely people at Doghouse Daycare bent over backwards to look after him and treat him gently. I stayed with him as he was washed and trimmed. This made it easier for me to keep him clean and dry over the last few days.

He was such a funny little chap. I got him when he was 3 years old, as his owners were moving overseas and couldn’t take him. I took him off to the vet worried about his eyesight because he was running into things – trees, walls, posts. They had a look into his eyes and did some tests and said they were working just fine. As they were telling me this, he tried to walk straight off the examination table! The conclusion was that he was just a bit daft.

He had a tendency to explore life with his face, stuffing his nose into everything. Because he’s a schnauzer cross, he has lovely long whiskers and eyebrows, which he would constantly fill up with prickles and burrs.

After a bath when his coat was long, he looked a bit like a sheep with a static charge. The first time I got him clipped they did a very short cut all over and I didn’t even recognise him afterwards! He has a very fine pointed terrier nose under all that fuzz!

It’s been a very disrupted relationship, with the chronic homelessness I’ve experienced I’ve had and lost him many times. I gave up on ever seeing him again last year and was surprised to suddenly have the opportunity to get him back last December, and then horrified at the terrible condition he (and Loki) were in. It’s been really strange and stressful. I love him to bits but the bond between us got jammed. Mostly I felt overwhelmed by guilt and stress and wished I’d been able to give him a better life. I’ve known for the last several months that I’m kind of numb about him but I didn’t know how to fix it. This last week was very precious because it finally clicked. I haven’t been handling him very much, between pain, arthritis, incontinence and infection I’ve been fairly hands off. I mean, I’d scratch his ears and give him baths, but he wasn’t allowed on the couch because I’d have to keep washing the cushions, as it was I’ve been doing a couple of loads of laundry a week, most of them old soiled towels. He didn’t get a lot of cuddles and I don’t spend much time on the floor because my joints hurt. This week I threw all that out of the window. He got wrapped in towels and cuddled on the couch for hours. He went everywhere I went in the car. I sat on the grass in the park and played with him. I discovered he could still ‘dance’ when you played with him, pushing him over to rub his tummy. The extra affection really made him happy. He’d lie on the lawn in the backyard in the sun, chewing a bone and radiating contentment. When he was anxious he wouldn’t just come and find me, he’d learn against my leg and beg to sit on my lap. When I gave him a cuddle he’d snuggle his face against mine. It was like the difference between a baby who snuggles into your arms and one with autism who lies stiff against your hold. He felt loved and he snuggled, and when he snuggled all my numbness disappeared and I finally felt bonded. Too brief! But I’m so glad it happened.

Somewhere in the mess and pain of the last few years I seemed to have turned off the attachment part of me to stop being overwhelmed. But that’s not how I want to live, it’s eerie and painful to feel like there’s a layer of thick glass between you and those you love. I’m glad I accidentally stumbled onto what I needed to connect, even though I now feel heartbroken at losing him, at having so little time with him. I’m also so grateful. I’m going to dig back through the books and information I have on attachment. I need this back.

I dug (with help) a grave for him in my backyard. We filled it with autumn leaves and then covered him with flowers and buried him. I’m going to plant my bay tree there.

I wish we’d had longer, more years in the sun. Less pain and confusion. His life was harder than it should have been, but it still had value. He was loved, he is missed. RIP xxx

I can’t think straight

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
or see straight. I feel dazed and exhausted and hungover, keep going hot then cold, thinking in mad rapid spurts then shutting down so blankly I can’t work out what the next move is. Bone tired, with a hole punched in my chest, and the simple immutable fact that yesterday I had a dog who danced and today he is buried in my yard. Flashbacks to previous grief and loss, all these kind people who understand that he wasn’t just a pet, he was my dog and I loved him, so strange against the other times when my world has ended and I’ve mourned alone. Everything twists and tangles, memories collide, time distorts. I don’t care about any of it, I just want my dog back.

A poem for Charlie

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Hear my song of love,
little white dog
let me wrap you in a spell
where no time passes and
no sickness creeps
only you and I, and the grass and sky
the sunlight falling pearl-white upon your fur
silken-eared, faithful heart
wind in your face and your body next to mine
all of life yet to be lived and no rush to do it
that is my wish for us, little dog
that is the spell my heart would weave

But all things have their seasons and yours is done
long gone the boundless joys of youth
time to be free now, I’ll not hold you here in a world that’s darkening
no pain for you love, no long anguish
just the trust, the loving hand, the light on the grass.
Only peace for you, leave that broken body behind
come here, take up your place in my heart
never sick again,
never again alone or apart.

Getting back into cooking

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I’ve been doing a lot more cooking lately, which is something I used to enjoy a lot but kind of fell by the wayside when life got complicated about 18 months ago. Cooking is a good sign for me, a settled in, I-have-a-home thing. During times of crisis I eat tinned soup or sandwiches from service stations. I’ve recently bought myself a cheap 5 cup rice cooker, which is perfect for someone who lives alone. Here’s my first meal in it, chocolate, orange, and raisin rice pudding. These are awesome and can cook just about anything, I really recommend them. Certainly a lot easier than hand stirring a risotto!

I also cooked a batch of cheesy mini scones recently. I love scones, they’re so simple and tasty.

Basic one-pan cooking for the person who lives alone 🙂

And the ultimate lazy meal – a bit of everything tasty from the fridge or cupboard. Feels good to be preparing my own food again.

House becoming home

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Moving in is still a bit of an ongoing project, and there are a number of things that I’m working on to help me feel safer and more at home in this new place. I’ve recently been adding some more furniture to my place, which has given me enough shelf space to finish unpacking the rest of the kitchen boxes. I’ve been working on getting my kitchen set up as functional as possible to make it easier for me to get back into more cooking. This is a good thing both because I enjoy cooking, and because cooking often leads to eating more frequently, which is still a struggle for me.

Here is my DI library, on top of my paper file, on top of the lovely new table I found on the side of the road this week. I’m very pleased to get this lot off the ground and out of the dust zone.

Also new is this fantastic bookshelf that was a side of the road find a few years back. It’s not pretty but it si extremely strong, which is something to be valued when you own cast iron cookware.

This beauty was a gift from a friend who didn’t want it anymore. Possibly the prettiest bit of furniture I have! I’m quite thrilled to have all my lovely table ware on display. 🙂

Sarsaparilla approves also. He’s aware something is going on and has been sticking close lately, and sleeping on my bed every night. Grateful for that.

The lovely tea set I bought back from my trip to Singapore in 2011, and my favourite silver egg cups and egg cosies. None of my tableware matches in the strictest sense, I have found pieces here and there cheaply and assembled a collection. They are all united by my love of them and the medium, no stoneware, no porcelain.

This stunning blue set is also from Singapore, one of my absolute favourites. I love how the little tea cups have lids to stop the tea going cold.

My Asian foodware set, partly from Singapore, partly from here, and a lovely Arabic-inspired coffee set.

I’ve also re-organised my teas, coffees, herbs and spices to make things easier for me to find. I need visual reminders of what I have else I tend to forget about it and it languishes at the back of a cupboard. I like having my herbs, spices, and teas all close to hand.

I’ve also been getting a hand bringing over some of my garden, which is really exciting. I’m planning to turn the front yard (which gets the most sun) into a veggie patch and rose garden. I own a fair number of roses in pots at the moment, I’m planning to dig out some of the lawn and plant in the roses while they’re dormant over winter. That will make my life so much easier when it comes to watering things in summer. I expect that next year these will really start to shoot up and I’ll get some wonderful blooms. I’m really looking forward to tending a veggie patch again, it’s one of my favourite grounding techniques, both the hard labour and the magic of growing from seeds and cuttings. I also love to cook with what I grow, and I can’t wait to have my own thriving herb garden again. I bought some plants from my favourite herb lady at the Medieval Fair as usual, I have a lovely lemon verbena, bay tree and perpetual basil all waiting to be planted out. It will be good to get my hands in soil again when I feel ready.

Hanging out with Charlie

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Well, it’s been a strange couple of days. My head has kind of turned inside out and life has become very surreal. I take Charlie for walks but he struggles to walk in straight line and is desperate to circle clockwise instead. If I try to stop him, he just chokes himself tugging against the lead. We have this little system going where he circles around me as I change the lead from hand to hand. Crossing a road is rather interesting, and he now walks about 5 metres for every 1 metre forward. We make a bit of a sight. He still loves sniffing and piddling on all the shrubs so life is not entirely without its rewards.

I’ve also been taking him on car trips which used to be incredibly exciting but now not quite so much. When it’s warm enough to run the fan he still loves the air in his face. We can’t do too many walks so I’m trying to find other good things to do. The best I’ve come up with do far is being allowed up on the couch to watch a movie with me. So we are doing a lot of that.

I really wanted to take some off to spend with him and give him lots of attention, but its also feeding into some really confused thinking. I remember reading once about how suddenly bring treated extra nicely can be a warning sign someone’s having an affair, and it keeps going through my head. I feel like I’m betraying him, and deceiving him into the bargain. Like, be really worried if Sarah suddenly gives you lots of treats, she’s actually planning terrible things. Oh, and that my choices to do voluntary work I really believe in rather than paid work have actually all been selfish and if I hadn’t been so self indulgent I would have more money for treatment and wouldn’t have to kill my dog. Strange how your thinking mixes up under stress.

Still, I’m grateful for the time. He so deserves the love and attention, he’s such a sweet little chap. When I manage to surface from the overwhelming guilt (I’m a terrible pet owner, I’m missing classes, I’m letting my groups/co-workers/friends down, I should have got a real job, walked my dog more, spent more time at home, and so on) I’m actually enjoying spending time with him, lying on the grass in the park, curling up on the couch, watching him loll his tongue as the car fan blows into his face. It’s sweet. Love him to bits.

Saying goodbye to Charlie

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

It’s not a good week here. Charlie is near the end. I’m cancelling a lot of my appointments and staying home to spend time with him. The vet has said that either he has developed quite significant senility, or has a brain tumour. Either way I feel we’ve given him as much health and time as we can and it’s becoming inappropriate to leave him alone for long stretches of time as he can no longer navigate even small distances with ease. Hopefully  can make his last week a good one, I’ve bought lots of his favourite dog chews and treats and if the weather is good we’ll take as many walks as his arthritis will allow.

RIP Loki

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
Loki has been battling cat flu ever since he came back into my life in December last year. We took him to the vet and got him on a course of steriods and whatnot, and were able to put some weight back on him and get him in much better shape. But it wasn’t something he could entirely shake off, and this weekend he went down hill very suddenly. The vet said his kidneys had shut down and he was dying. We said our goodbyes and spent the afternoon cuddling him as he slipped further away. Then Mum took him back to the vet and had him put to sleep. It was very peaceful and she was able to hold him all through the process. He’s now buried under a pomegranate tree in her garden. Another part of my life is closed and finished.

He was a lovely little cat with a distinctive white moustache, loads of personality, and a penchant for sleeping in unusual places, like this bowl of pot purri.

He was born to a lovely starving stray cat we took in. We gave the rest of the kittens away, but kept him and his Mum with their lovely grey and white coats. He was about 10 years old.

He was very affectionate, even demanding. Insisted on his morning cuddle before breakfast.

Had a tendency to look like a grouchy owl with really hairy ears!

Here he is with me and Charlie back in December.

He loved to sleep tucked away in shelves.

Here he was with Charlie this afternoon:

Goodbye little cat, sorry it had to be this way. RIP.

The Medieval Fair

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So, more mail for the DI has arrived, it seems the tax dept was just softening me up before sending in about 10 lbs of paperwork. Not quite as excited this time around… But nevertheless!
My weekend away at the Medieval Fair was wonderful. I took my sister’s van up to the hills and camped out for the whole weekend. There’s a pretty awesome set up in the van, that’s my bed with a foam mattress, and some boxes that fit right under the bed. Very nice to sleep in listening to the rain, and a darn site quicker to set up than a tent. 

I love an efficient and structured set up for camps, makes life so much easier, especially when you’re trying to do things in the dark. Love this van!

The Fair was just huge this year. Apparently they had 6,000 people through on the Saturday alone! The displays were set up in areas, this was the village, where traditional skills and crafts were on display:

Displaying wood carving techniques:

Hand spun yarn, dyed with natural dyes such as mulberry leaves:

The knife maker showing his skills:

Those in the village often sleep overnight in their camp sites, so they are fully functional:

Even down to the cooking of meals. Love those big pots and pans 🙂

This was one of the big drawcards, a huge working trebuchet! Watching it sling watermelon over the nearby field was quite impressive.

If we were actually attacking a neighbouring village, these are the kinds of things we would be hurling instead. Very heavy!

I was able to have a fire every night to sit by and contemplate my life. And cook baked potatoes on. 

Back at the fair, I always try to bring home some tasty treats from my favourite vendors. Honey for my collection from the lovely people at Buzz Honey, Muntree chutney, chainmail… This lovely delicacy was Cinnamon tea from the Middle Eastern stall:

I also buy something every year for my birthday from one of my favourite dress sellers. These lovely ladies spend the year making amazing velvet gowns, shirts, and coats. This year I came home with a short sleeved red dress. My dishwashing machine fund took a bit of a pounding!

Yummy roast sweetcorn with garlic butter mmmmm…

Gorgeous bellydancers entertaining a big crowd!

It was great to take the whole weekend off and spend it all outdoors and offline. I also find my sleeping hours tend to re set a bit when I spend time camping, which is a fantastic bonus. While sitting looking at my lovely fire, it occurred to me that someone as dissociative as I am isn’t well suited to living in a brick home. I often have to work hard to experience my life, to be able to smell and taste. When I pass a lovely display of cakes and think I might buy one, I check in with myself first to see if my dissociation level is low enough to make it worthwhile. Eating cake you can’t taste is miserable. This is a normal part of my life. I love the outdoors and the weather, rain especially I delight in. I love noticing wind, stars, sunset. I hate living an indoor life that disconnects me from all these grounding experiences. In some ways, I actually did better living in a caravan that was sensitive to every breeze, and like a drum under the rain. I’m going to look for more ways to create this in my life.

I am also feeling inspired to take up more physical activity again. I haven’t decided between dancing and fighting yet, but both really appeal to me. I loved watching the bellydancers, I used to really enjoy lessons when I was taking them. I have also tried and really enjoyed martial arts. At the Fair, I had a chance to practice some sword fighting which was truly awesome. I love something challenging and graceful, it’s good to really occupy and own a body that is so often in pain (I have a chronic pain condition) that I disconnect and numb to get through my day. Settling into it to dance or fight is a really powerful experience for me.

First mail to the Dissociative Initiative

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I was very excited to come today to find the first ever bit of mail addressed to the Dissociative Initiative! We now have an ABN, and are one step closer to incorporating. I’m very excited! I took a photo of it before I opened it. 🙂

I was planning to write you a lovely long post about the Medieval Fair with lots of pictures. I did have a really great time, and I promise to tell you all about it soon. I am in a nightmare cycle again at the moment so although I am getting sleep, it’s not very restful and I feel extremely tired and have a headache most days. I also have a very busy week with three full days dedicated to the film bootcamp on top of my other studies and volunteering. I have actually been waking up screaming the last couple of nights which is pretty unusual for me. So, the distress level is pretty high and I’m feeling pretty ragged at the moment. Short posts for now but I promise not to go away entirely. Certainly very lovely to come home to nice things in the mail box – and there was a new book for the library from the Book Depository on my door step too. So I can’t complain too much.

How are the critters?

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Adorable as always. Sarsaparilla is going great, very healthy and sweet, although still painfully shy around strangers. He’s taken to snuggling up to Charlie in the cold weather and keeping him company which is lovely.

Charlie is hanging in there. His ears and eyes are free of infections and his skin is clear. His pain level is down, which is wonderful, but he’s becoming quite senile and I’m afraid things are near the end for him. His inability to navigate is causing him a lot of problems, he’s never had a very good ability to ‘map’ and work out where he is (Charlie is blind). He’s been having trouble getting lost in the small garden shed outside where he sleeps, and I’ve been sleeping him indoors during the wet weather, which isn’t ideal. The incontinence means he needs access outdoors at all times, and I’m not all that happy about sleeping with the back door wide open.

So, recently when the weather started getting wetter I bought him a lovely raised dog bed.

It’s nice and big and quite sturdy. This way he wont be able to drag it into puddles the way he has a bad habit of doing with his mattress and blankets.

I’ve also used my trundle bed base to block off most of the shed so he can only walk in the door to his bed and food bowl. This means a lot less space for him to get lost in, it’s been a lot easier for him to find his way from the bed to the door, but he’s still tucked safely out of the weather.

I had to empty and mop out the shed first because he’d started toileting in there when he couldn’t find the door, but with the new smaller area he’s stopped doing that.

Here he is, lovely and dry and warm and out of any puddles. Sarsaparilla comes and sleeps in it too often, which I always consider a good sign for the warmth and comfort of any bed!

Charlie’s difficulties with navigating are steadily getting worse. He has a lot of trouble walking in straight lines as the senility progresses. He really struggles with circling when he thinks he is walking in a straight line. He can no longer find his own way into or out of a room, and struggles now even to find the shed in the backyard as he hopelessly spirals around in circles on the same spot. I’m going to talk to the vet again and of course keep him comfortable and clean and dry and well fed, but I don’t think he’s going to be with me for very much longer. I’m really glad that I’ve been able to clear up all the infections and pain for him and give him a good time with lots of company and walks and good food. He’s been such a  friendly and faithful little companion and he deserves a really good retirement.

Medieval Fair

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment
Hello all, I am off for the weekend, to the Medieval (See What’s On page for details) and may or may not have net access during that time. I will take lots of pictures! Going to have a wonderful weekend away from it all 🙂 Have a good weekend yourselves, all of you. 🙂

Film making bootcamp

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I am up to my eyeballs once again in projects, this fortnight a big new one is a film making bootcamp by the Media Resource Centre and the Mental Health Coalition/Mindshare. I am stoked to be involved, we are learning how to make a short film from start to finish – scripting, filming, all the way through to post production editing. I am in a small group with three other people learning and one experienced filmmaker facilitating. We were assigned the topic of “Community” from the perspective of mental health, and have to make a short film, about 4 minutes in length.

On Tuesday we met up to work on our script, listen to some free music we can use as a soundtrack, and learn a bit about the camera we will be shooting with. Our story has a lot of close up shots in it, so we will be shooting with a digital SLR with an amazing macro lens. I am very excited about it!! The only downside – and unfortunately for me it is a big one, is that the five days overlaps with group time, so I’ll have to miss out here and there, and also that they start early in the morning, in the city with no easy parking available. So I’ve been turning up pretty shattered and not having very much to offer until after midday when my brain starts to wake up. Next week for me is simply horrendous with every day packed full and I am dreading it already even though a lot of things are fun things I’m looking forward to. I wish I could get to sleep at a reasonable hour! I’ve been working on it a lot and I’ve been able to bring it back from about 5.30am to about 3.30am, but that still makes a 7am start pretty rough going. I’m also trying really hard to keep three meals a day happening, but that’s not always the case either. The week after this bootcamp finishes I’m going to spend a lot of time sleeping!

See the film we made here.

A wonderful day

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It’s been a funny kind of week, great but also very stressful! It was with considerable relief that the weekend arrived. Considering my stress level I’ve decided to take most of this weekend off, catchup on some sleep, do some housework, and enjoy some play time. I’ve been pretty short of sleep and not eating enough so I’m hoping to re-set those routines quickly. Last night for the first time since I moved in to my unit, it occurred to me that I could swap out the lace netting in my bedroom window and put up some curtains instead. I plan to replace all the curtain brackets so that I can have both lace and curtains installed, but the ones already here will only hold one curtain rod. I’ve been getting woken up early every morning by the dawn and getting back to sleep by using an eye pillow. It’s not doing a lot for my sleep. So last night I put up an old pair of lovely green velvet curtains! And then, I took a sleep-inducing antihistamine and slept for nine straight hours for the first time in a very long time. I am thrilled!

So, this afternoon when I woke up 🙂 I decided to head up to Hahndorf. Earlier this week I took my lovely knife set up there and left them at The Cutler’s Cottage to be sharpened. During this week I realised that I actually do not own any other knives, not even a steak knife, so I’ve been unable to chop anything. It was raining lightly today and the leaves on the trees are all turning red and gold. Perfect for a drive up to the Adelaide Hills. So, I picked up a friend and drove up through the mist and collected my knives, then had a hot chocolate and a cup of fresh strawberries drizzled with melted Belgian chocolate, and wandered about for a while in the rain. It was very beautiful and peaceful. I stopped in at a gourmet continental shop there and bought a jar of rose petal jelly (jam) which is perfect with scones and cream, and a lovely big stick of garlic mettwurst, which is now hanging from the curtain rod in my kitchen.

The owner was very helpful and when I asked about how to store it, told me that I’d been doing the wrong thing by keeping it in my fridge. Apparently if you hang them or keep them in a cupboard they continue to dry out and stay delicious and safe to eat. (just cut off a sliver of the exposed end) Delicious! Snacks this afternoon was mettwurst and cherry tomatoes.

My new rice cooker is wonderful, it made perfect brown rice for dinner last night and I am quite thrilled at how little effort it took. It doesn’t matter how zoned out I am, I’m not going to be able to burn food in that! Now I’m looking at a lovely recipe book for risottos and other wonderful things to make in it without having to keep a close eye on them.

This evening I celebrated having my knives back and sharp by making a big pot of potato and leek soup. I am at heart quite a foodie and the tinned soup and cereal lifestyle I’ve been living for the past couple of years really isn’t my preference. I’m quite passionate about cooking but it does require some space in my brain and the energy to cook and clean up. Hence, the saving for a dishwasher. 🙂

Leeks were on special at the supermarket this week and I had a big bag of potatoes left over from my last campfire night that needed the green parts peeled off and to be made into soup. So I dug up this lovely recipe by Donna Hay, who is one my favourite cooks and tweaked it a little to the quantities I had and viola! Soup!

Cooking the potato and leeks

Blending it with milk

And served it with freshly grated nutmeg, my favourite! And then washed all the dishes and cleaned the kitchen too.

I am finally starting to settle in just a little bit here. The faintest glimmerings of feeling like I might be ‘home’ are appearing. Starting to cook again and getting back into my garden are big parts of that. Also, hanging my curtains and putting up my posters will make the place feel more like my own. I’ve been working on organising and unpacking and each step helps just a little bit. I have the new studio table delivered but it is phenomenally heavy and I am waiting for a strong friend to come along and help me assemble it. Then I’ll have a functioning studio space again, and I am incredibly excited about that! It’s very nice to slow my pace down a little and spend some more time on my home and hobbies.

My birthday present to myself has arrived in the mail too! New books from my favourite online store the Book Depository. A new Patricia MacKillip book, Ombira in Shadow, and the first four books of Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea series (I already own the fifth). Lovely, lovely. MacKillip is one of my favourite authors, her writing style is lyrical and poetic, and her plots are mythical. The Earthsea series is one of my set of core books that are re-read at least every year. Reading very quickly has many advantages, one of which is being able to read many new books and also have time to re-read old favourites. I have quite a healthy looking library of books here, although I’m confident I will need more bookshelves sometime soon, that or an e-reader. 🙂 I think this is the first time I’ve had a bit of money and a home at the same time. It’s always been one or the other, I can buy socks and fix my car but I’m transient, or all my money is going on rent. (or the vet) It’s quite novel to have a home and some money to buy things like rice cookers and tasty morsels from Hahndorf. I like it!

It’s my birthday!

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Whee! It’s here at last. I made it. Phew!

Birthdays are tough for me, I was bullied at school and birthdays were always hard. Having my life thoroughly derailed with sickness and homelessness etc has turned birthdays into a painful time of the year when I reflect on everything that isn’t how I was hoping it would be. The last couple of weeks have been very up and down with some great times, and some major stress in a relationship, and a few really memorable meltdowns, with the underlying stress of my birthday approaching.

So it was very nice to wake up this morning feeling a bit sleep deprived but otherwise good! Happy to be alive in fact. And very nice to have phone calls and facebook messages from friends wishing me happy birthday. I have had a cup of tea and two M&M cookies for breakfast, and gone and sat on my spare bed which I have assembled in my back yard under my peppercorn tree. It is almost like having a tree house, very peaceful and a perfect nook for reading. It is really nice to be starting to feel like this is my home. 🙂

I was pretty trashed yesterday, two talks in two days was a lot of preparation work and not enough sleep. And yesterday’s talk about Dissociation was really good but also personal and exposing and I do find that very stressful. On the way home I dropped in at Coles and spent a couple of vouchers I had for groceries. Eee! It’s very exciting, I have fruit and vegetables and fresh bread and milk and chocolate and tinned soup and I also splurged and bought a rice cooker. I have bought a lot of packets of pre-cooked meals for nights when I’m too tired to cook, but they need to eaten with rice. The problem is that when I’m too tired to cook I’m also too tired to cook rice. The other night I actually managed to burn FOUR batches of rice in a row because I was too dissociative to keep an eye on it. So, I have a rice cooker now, hurrah! I am also still saving up for a bench top dishwasher. They don’t use very much water, and you can catch it to put on your garden. I figure if I can make cooking easier I will do more of it, and  more cooking will hopefully mean more eating. I’ve been too anxious to eat much over the last few days which isn’t helping. After the blogging talk I spoke at on Tuesday night I was given a whole platter of leftover food! Grapes and crackers and cherry tomatoes and whatnot, yum.  That’s been dinner for the last couple of nights. 🙂

So yay, made it through another year. Working hard, building a good life. I have a home and a dog and a cat and friends and art and causes I’m passionate about and today the voices are all calm for the first time in weeks. Hurrah! Many happy returns of the day. 🙂

Blog!

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Righto, well I’ve been busy today working on putting together a talk for this Tuesday’s free Blogging Workshop. I’ve discovered a useful little chrome add on that easily lets me take screen shots and modify them. Then I can upload them to a powerpoint presentation so people can walk through the process.

I started a new test blog to show people each step of the process. Somewhere in all of that I changed this blog template to this fancy shmancy new setup called ‘Dynamic Views’ which basically gives you, the reader, the ability to change how the blog is presented to one of a number of different options depending on what you like. (see the top left) You’re supposed to be able to easily revert this process but that button isn’t working at the moment, so welcome to my new blog template, at least for now! I think I prefer the little flipcards to the old format, this way it’s much easier to glance over old posts and work out what you may be interested in. It also loads more quickly which is a nice bonus. And it reacts to the ‘Ctrl +’ keys that normally zoom in on the net – in this case the page rearranges to make the flipcards and all the font sizes larger!

All the information that used to be on the left hand side here, like the archive, the followers, the topics etc – these are all in a little fold out menu on the right hand side now. Just hover the mouse cursor over the dark tab and the options will appear. Feel free to tell me if this is a pain in the neck.

Righto. Life has been very busy lately. There have been a few meltdowns, various stressful things happening I won’t talk about here that are taking some effort to manage. I’m completely nocturnal and bouncing between much needed time off, more work on my house/yard/studio/kitchen etc. a number of art commissions banking up a bit (yay!), and working on mental health stuff/Dissociative Initiative things. I had been thinking that maybe next semester when a lot of my study has finished I could take up a number of additional classes in Art and bump up to part time in the bachelor degree, but considering how run down I’m feeling after this mad start to the year, I’ve been rethinking that plan a bit. After this semester I could do with some more ‘walking the dog’ time. I need to make it a habit to have at least one day off a week and spend some more time on stress reduction things – poetry, reading, inks, camping, cooking, gardening, or my head is going to fall off.

There are some exciting new developments happening in both the peer work side of things as I keep working on Dissociative Initiative resources – we have a facebook page now! Feel welcome to join us at The Dissociative Initiative Open Page but please be aware that like this blog, everything there is public and visible to anyone on the internet. It’s a trial run to see how it works, open for anyone with an interest in dissociation – personal, professional, whatever. It is not a venue for hostility or abuse and anyone behaving disrespectfully will be removed.

I seem to be adept at making work for myself. :S

There are also some new exciting projects happening in the art field, I am working on producing my first art prints of ink paintings, ideally available for sale much cheaper than the originals. I am also working on publishing my first art booklets based on various talks I have given. Very exciting! I need a good few weeks clear to really  make progress on these big new projects. Perfect weather for this. 🙂 I’ve also bought a new table for my studio second hand from eBay, it’s arriving tomorrow. I’m very excited!! Pictures to follow. Double the table room! Eeeee! I am a very fortunate person. 🙂

Studio

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I’ve been taking advantage of the easter holiday to work on my studio area. I’ve been struggling a bit lately with nightmares and rashes and whatnot and I’ve figured out that one of the problems is that my studio area has been totally neglected lately and has become a dumping ground for boxes that I’ve moved out of the rest of the house. By Thursday last week I was losing it a bit so I decided to have a holiday at home this long weekend and I’ve ignored all my email and not picked up the phone for the duration. It has been good to have some uninterrupted time to focus! There’s always an awkward transition period for me in the immediate aftermath of being incredibly busy when suddenly I don’t have all these huge projects occupying my brain and everything I’ve been ignoring wells up and threatens to capsize me. Busy suits me a lot, my brain is like a big dog that needs a lot of exercise else it gets bored and restless and starts chewing on the furniture and digging under the house.So, in my usual obsessive way, I’ve been face painting (more pictures later), thinking, writing, crying, and sorting out the house. Occasionally I remember to eat. My sleep patterns have reverted to my ‘normal’ which is waking hours between noon to 3am. That’s going to hurt when Tafe starts up again. But, it’s been needed! Here is what my studio looked like a couple of days ago:

I wanted to sort things out properly, not just rearrange them out the way so I still wouldn’t be able to find anything. I like to box up different supplies and tools in shoe boxes and tins. This keeps everything related together, helps to stop me losing small items, and makes it easy to stack, locate, and lift the boxes. It does however take a lot longer when you’re still setting up. Today I got in my second shelf which is great and will get a lot of gear off the floor:

I’m using the built-in wardrobe are to stash more supplies, particularly those that are sensitive to light exposure such as rubber stamps and paint:

Labels!

Paints!

I sorted and hung clothes until I ran out of coathangers. How does one lose coathangers when moving? I am mystified.

I’ve also got in a cabinet for the dining room area. This gets all my linen off the floor and will look a bit better once I’ve put all the doors back on it. 🙂

So the upshot of all this is that I’ve found all my brushes, my fabric paints, and I’ve washed and dried two new pairs of shoes that have been ordered to be painted, ready to go. I can now walk into my studio without falling over which is pretty awesome and I’m looking forward to getting down to making some more art. Happy. 🙂