tears of the giraffe

Tears of the giraffe is one of the wonderful books written by my favourite author Alexander Mcall Smith.  the title is explained in the following passage:

It was a traditional Botswana basket, with a design worked into the weaving.

"These little marks here are tears," she said. "The giraffe gives its tears to the women and they weave them into the basket."..."You are very kind, Mma", she said. "But why did the giraffe give its tears?"

Mma Ramotswe shrugged; she had never thought about it. "I suppose that it means that we can all give something," she said. A giraffe has nothing else to give--only tears." (p.226)

This morning  I started to cry; not the insane weeping for unknown reasons that precipitated this episode, but big fat tears rolling down my face in silence. Tears can be for all sorts of reasons.  Yesterday as I waited in the waiting room with other anxious mothers one of the mothers started to cry.  How I envied her.  I wanted to cry too but could not.  I just wanted to let out all the pain and sadness but I began to think that the anti depressants that helped me to stop that insane crying blocked my feelings too.  I could not react and cry properly anymore.  Over the last few weeks I have cried ocassionally but not tears of sadness, I have mostly cried out of frustration.  I saw in that woman's face the loss and pain and sadness and possible the need to just let it all out.  All the mothers in the room understood why she cried or at least knew that they too might be sitting in that chair crying.  This morning I got up feeling good but as sat down to hem my daughters new school pants I started to cry, big fat wet tears rolled down my face, I cried for the men I loved and lost, I cried for my children, I cried for all the sadness I ever felt and could not explain, I cried from relief, from all the judgements I had lumped on myself and others , I cried for my mother, I cried for my daughters' teachers , I cried for my friends, I cried for my lost friendships , I cried for the feeliong I wil not allow myslf to share with someone for whom I care deeply but does not care for me in the same way, I cried for the weight I put on in the last few months, I cried for the life I did not have, I cried for all the confusion and things I could not name, I cried for my dead pets, I cried for my lost toy duck, I cried for the friendships that I lost because I could not tell my friends that the things they did hurt me so much I could not speak, I cried for all the younger versions of myself that did not understand why they were crying, I cried for myself, the me that I am now.  It has taken me 43 years to be able to name the things I am crying for.  Perhaps like the giraffe sometimes we can only give tears but in the tears there is healing.  I cried healing tears for the first time in my life.  I did not end up in the hiccouping drained bereft grief stricken state that tears had lead me too before.  I wiped away my tears on the sleeve of the lovely new pink derssing gown I bought myself last week. I represents a fresh start for me.  I wandered around so long in my dressing gown that my grief and confusion seems to have been absorbed into it.  I no longer feel good when I wear it.  So while shopping last week I bought myself new night ware , just for me, with no man in mind or no ocassion, such as hospital or visiting relatives, or the winter, just a pretty dressing gown that keeps me warm and cosy in the cool spring mornings.  So I wiped my eyes in the frilly pink sleeve of my new dressing gown.  Took up my needle and thread and did the right thing, I sewed the hem and grieved for the part of me that answered to the beck and call of others , who sought to find her way by being lead by others, who needed others to tell her what to do, how to think, how to be, and could feel the feelings of others so strongly that she lost the ability to feel her own feelings and know her own mind.  Perhaps I dont know my own mind yet, but I know my own feelings now, they might be a bit of a mishmash but they are all valid.  When the anxiety starts to take hold I can understand that it is a feeling and can release it or help it pass.  When I am ready I can deal with the thing that is making me anxious and not push myself to do so while I am in the middle of a visit from the anxiety fairy. I can cry now and know why.  I also know that there will be times when I cry and dont know why but I have the tools to explore and release the feeling.  Feelings are not facts and well how real are many alleged facts anyway ? So much is distorted by opinion now that it is difficult to tell some facts from fiction.    

For me reality at the moment is a very untidy house in need of a clean.  That is my fact for the day.  So I am off to put my house in order and act like the adult that I am.  Doing the right thing is not easy in the short term but repeatedly doing the right thing leads to the formation of good habits and gives us strength.  Doing the wrong thing can have an instant and gratifying payoff but in the long term it damages us.  Today I said goodbye to just that.  Right now it is painful but eventually I will see the benefits .  I love myself too much now to be second best anymore. 

Happy Wednesday.

So next time you cry feel the wetness of the tears, the speed of your breathing, the saltyness, the heat and the relief.  Cry mindfully and be enlightened.

the little red hen revisited

When I was a child we had a black and white tv, there was not such thing as dvds, computers were what they used to send the men to the moon and records were what I loved to listen to.  My favourite was the story of the little red hen.  I'll do it myself was a real motto for me.  (I suppose as a child hens were an important part of life, my granny had a hen house and hens, her cousin had the most beautiful bantams you could imagine, so exotic looking.)  Anyway we were discussing a problem the other day, my ex, my teenager and me.  I was explaining how the problem could be dealt with and x was saying that it was impossible.  Teenager piped up if anyone can do it mam can.  I listened to this and asked her to expand.  She said she saw other people try to do things and fail and then when I tried I succeeded.  My dad used to say just tell her she cant do it and she will get it done in no time.  I love to undertake challenges of doing things other people would not bother with, I love to challenge myself, but I think that the fun I got from problem solving was nothing compared to the fun of not problem solving.  I have learned how to be the anti-little-red-hen.  Perhaps if I show her that even superwoman  can crash and burn, she will feel that her efforts are hers and that she does not have to live up to the ideal of being a perfect superwoman.  I did not know any children's stories about the joys of being an imperfectionistas a child, the joys of being average, or even the joys of being different but the one I love most that I used to read to my children is Giraffes cant dance.  I thought I could not dance, again not a metaphor, but when I was around 27 I went to two different types of dance  classes, traditional and modern and I found that I was a very passable dancer, I could follow steps but not freestyle.  

My children grew up with the idea that I was superwoman, mother and father to them for a while, so much so that she called me her unbearded father.  I am not superwoman.  I am not the little red hen.  I now have evidence to the contrary of that.  I can finally receive help and just as I am rewriting my life, I can rewrite the story and message of the little red hen.  I am not alone, I can ask for help, there is always someone out there that can help and is willing to do so.  Why was it so hard for so long to ask please can you help me.  the first time I truly understood that phrase was when my polish neighbour, who has not so much English, had no  water at Christmas.  His English was not very good but he was able to say please can you help me perfectly.  It must be one of the most important phrases we can learn in any language.  I can ask where are the toilets in 5 languages as this is the most important phrase I need when travelling and also, where is the train station, but why did I never think of that most important phrase Please can you help me.  
So for all of you out there that dont know how to ask for help here is a selection of the phrase in different languages:
An feider leat caibhru liom le do thoil?
Parsome galite man padeti?
Proze mozesz mi pomoc?
Sil vous plait pouvez-vous me aider?
os gwelwch yn dda allwch chi fy helpu?
Bitte können Sie mir helfen?




Today practice asking for help even when you dont need it just so that you can ask when you do.


Happy Thursday and go off and have yourself a bit of a dance. 

bubble therapy, the joys of bat watching and bubbles

I bought a bright pink sun lounger a few weeks ago in anticipation of the predicted good weather.  Today the fine weather arrived but I was too down to appreciate it.  I was in a tizzy trying to get to an appointment on time and had to stop for petrol.  Over the petrol pump there was a sign; large bubbles.  Given my bubble obsession I thought I was hallucinating, but no, the petrol station was selling large bubble wands.  I bought a few, went to my appointment and on the way back stopped at one of my favourite views of the coastline and cliffs with the intention of using my lovely bubble wands.  Most unfortunately a few other people had a similar ideas,(not the bubble bit, the looking at the view bit) so although I am enjoying a sabbatical from reality, I do not wish to draw too much attention to my bubble mania and just sat and admired the view.

I went home and wrapped myself up in my lovely bright yellow fleece blanket and had endless cups of tea while watching the crescent moon rise lying on my bright pink sun lounger.  The smell of the citronella candles, the freshly cut grass and all the birds flying home to nest brought me back to summer nights out camping.  I stayed out long enough to see the bats on their evening hunt and hope to photograph them tomorrow night.  I love bats, they are such beautiful creatures.  If you ever get to hold and admire their beautiful ear structure please do.  They are like cute little hamsters with wings, a sort of a cross between a hamster and a blackbird.  Anyway eventually I had to go do the mammy taxi thing and as I unpacked the car I decided to indulge my desire to blow bubbles with my lovely little organic bubble machine(my daughter, one of many organic bubble machines).  So here are some of the beautiful bubbles.

land of the evening bubbles

The best bit is tonight I learned how to bounce and spin bubbles, such fun.  Hours of fun for €1.79.
Happy Thursday.

command the muscles

Very early on in my episode it was as much as I could do to get out of bed and sit in front of the tv all day.  I watched quite alot of rubbish, but I also saw some interesting programmes.  On one of the morning shows there was a woman describing exactly how I was feeling, particularly the anxiety.  I listened to her as she described a method she used to overcome the anxiety.  It was the Recovery Inc. method based on the work of Dr. Low.  It was like a miracle as she described how you command your muscles to act.  When you are stuck you need to change your thoughts to change your actions and vica versa.  I had heard that so many times but it was by connecting with my feelings, and by seeing someone who shared that feeling, and more importantly by seeing them on tv dealing with their very real anxiety that I understood what it meant.  So I tried it .  I closed my eyes and said move your hand, I moved my hand.  It became slightly more complicated the following day as I tried to get out of bed.  Who knew there are so many ways of getting out of bed.  I recommend you start by wriggling your toes.  Then stretch out your arms. Rotate your wrists.  Slowly sit up.  A few rotations of the neck.  The swing your legs to the side. Wriggle your bum over to the edge.  The the final push push against the bed with your arms and push against the ground with your feet.  There you go you are out of bed, was it so hard??

So from the small beginning of commanding my muscles to get out of bed I ventured further.  I started to make my bed every day.  When I was a child I loved to help my mother make the beds, especially on the bright sunny mornings when the dust flew up into he air and caught the light.  Again it looked like magical glitter to a 3 year old.  By making the happy association between the magical glitter, the happy feeling and making the bed i was able to turn a chore into an opportunity to feel better.  By commanding the muscle, by doing things in part acts I was able to piece myself together again and out of the blackness my soul reemerged.  It had not been fed for so long that it had withered.  Your soul needs to be nourished with joy and happiness, other wise  it will wither and hide.  Nourish your soul and life will be less bleak.

Happy Thursday.

building my happy place and other projects

I am a very visual person.  I think in images.  I find words hard to use to describe unless it is in a series of visual metaphors so when I initially started to move beyond the awful despair and crying associated with the early days of my episode I looked to pictures to try to understand what was happening to me.  The first image I worked with was a black well surrounded by grey stones in a dark place, without light , without colour.  I tried in so many ways to colour the picture but each time I closed my eyes all I could see was the bottomless pit.  I was now fortunately kneeling at the top of the pit looking in, previously I have been hanging on by my fingernails trying to claw myself out.  Thankfully the help of family and a very good doctor pulled me out of the pit.  Time and counselling have turned the bottomless dark well into a very pleasant place.  Now it is a lovely stone labyrinth that I can journey through to an inner sanctuary of calm, the pit is now a beautiful still pool in the middle of the labyrinth .  It is surrounded by a wild flower meadow.  In my new found sanctuary it is always summer.  Not the sweltering heat of mid summer rather the beautiful early summer weather in May , just hot enough to lie out in the sun.  Where the ground is warm but still sit has the slight springyness of the damp winter rain.  I have added it to my projects: to build that beautiful sanctuary in real life so that other troubled minds can find a place to revive and renew themselves.
I started this post in order to describe how I started to overcome the despair.  Essentially I sought to visualise a happy place to counter-act the dark pit I felt I was in.  I tried to find images on the internet, then I tried to take photos and piece them together, I tried to draw it.  Eventually I started to collect images from books magazines and the internet.  It lead me back to my love of art.  I found that I have sky arts on my tv and started to watch art programmes.  I was inspired by the film The gates.  I had forgotten how much I loved Christo's work as a teenager, his wrapped landscape was so different from my previous view of art it was inspiring.  What drew me to the film was the total vision he had and his inspirational self belief.  This film should be compulsory viewing for the depressed.  Pure joy was what he created.  How long had I lived a life without joy, where I sought pleasure rather than joy and happiness.  I did not even recognise the difference until last week while reading the art of happiness.  Pleasure is fleeting but happiness comes from within and does not depend on pleasure for its existence.  So I started to compile a list of projects that I would like to complete.
The first was a collage of Gustav Klimt: The kiss.  I spent days and days looking and examining the image.  For me it represented the pureness of female submission, something I had explored last year.  I was still at odds with my desire to be submissive and could not reconcile it with my intellectual belief that I was equal with men.  Who knows where this exploration will end up but for now I am working on the collage.  at present I am collecting things to use in it.  I examine the image form books and from the Internet.  I have plans to go view it.  Next year or later this year is a significant anniversary of his birth, 150 years and there are a number of exhibitions planned so I hope to travel to see them in reality, possibly by train but who knows yet.

The second project is a bubble machine.  I love bubbles.  As I looked out into the garden while washing up I thought how lovely it would be if there were bubbles blowing around in the garden.  At the time I was reconnecting with my interest in kinetic art so I made the connection that I could make a wind powered bubble machine to blow bubbles for me.  I have an endless permutation of possibilities.  So far I am collecting different shaped bubble wands and drinks cans to make the anemometer-like windmill to power the fan to blow the bubbles.  I decided to make it out of objects I find or that I have lying around so it could also even be from parts of old bikes , I love bikes and the rotation of the wheel on the bearings is so pure.

my bubble farm created by the organic bubble machines(children).

  Again a work in progress but such fun to think about.  I love the concept phase of a project where different ideas are considered.  I love the initial creation stage and also the construction bit.  work projects are just no fun for me anymore since it became all about money and paperwork.  I miss the early days of my career where the creation of the project was the aim, not the keeping the stakeholder happy, not the balancing of the books but the essence of taking an idea and bringing it to its conclusion, then admiring the achievement.  Hopefully my art projects will bring me the pleasure I lost in my work.  Perhaps they might bring me the happiness of expressing myself through the creation of things.  Or is that even possible.  


The most important project is to start a business so that I can use my talents to create an income for myself that does not rely on paid work.  I dont want to be defined by what I do for a living anymore.  I invested too much of my time and effort doing things for others now it is time to do things for myself.  Finally I know what I want in my life.  I want a simple happy life, one that I can look back on without regret, one in which I create things of beauty, the life I have always wanted but put aside as I did all the things that I thought I should.  The only should I need to keep in my life is I should take care of myself.  


While writing I always listen to music.  This post was accompanied by Leonard Cohen.  I am off to read my book of Leonard Cohens poetry now.  


Happy Wednesday 

the day it glittered

We all remember days when the world seemed perfect, the perfect man, the perfect cup of tea, the perfect temperature of the sea when you go swimming.  The day started very cold.  I was successful in getting out of bed that day.  I had stopped the endless crying associated with the awful episode.  I felt my spirits lifting.  The weather was beautiful.  As I still had no real depth perception I was still too scared to drive so we walked.  That was the start of the road to recovery, one of many small steps.  That day was the only time in my life I saw the kind of frost we all are programmed to envisage as the crisp frost of Christmas.  The night before a rapid frost had coated all the trees.  As the sun rose it started to glitter.  Slivery specks of glitter started to fall from the sky. Oh dear I thought those damn hallucinations have finally moved out of the house.  (As an aside, perhaps the language was a little more colourful and my vision was a bit shaky at the start of the episode.  I would sometimes think I could see black dots moving on the floor, they were of course just the marks on the floor boards shaking because of my very very jittery nerves.) Anyway to make a short story long it really was glittering.  As the air heated up the lumps of frost were falling from the trees.  It looked like someone was shaking silver glitter from the trees like in a glitter globe.  the angel of the sun was so low that it made each speck of frost shimmer all silvery and pink. I was not hallucinating I was seeing the beauty of the world.  There are so many beautiful things to see.  That day I took out my camera and walked to the beach and wondered at the beauty of the world.  Had I been well and able to drive I would never have experienced the day it glittered.  How many other things do we all miss.  

Be still and notice the beauty of the world.

Happy Saturday.

symbiosis or co-dependency ; the search for completeness

As I left the doctors the other day with my daughter she commented how handy it was that the chemist is so close to the doctors and as I explained what symbiosis was to my daughter I started to think about how it differs from co-dependency.  Lichens are the classic biological example of symbiosis but when does symbiosis cross the line into co-dependency.  To the best of my recollection symbiosis is when two organisms coexist and each one contributes to the well being of the other; mutual benefits.  Co-dependency is a relationship in which that benefit is replaced by dependency.  Perhaps what at first seemed like the perfect balancing of our flaws by the strengths of another and vica versa in what seems a symbiotic relationship is in fact codependency.  Perhaps it was my inability to distinguish codependency from symbiosis that has scared me.  In symbiosis each organism must exist in its own right.  Each person must compliment the other not seek to complete the other.   I shall aim for one and one making two rather than a half and a half making one.  I am no longer looking for the other half of me.  I am whole.  

Happy Friday 

if waterslides are this much fun why did i wait so long to try one

If water-slides are this much fun why did i wait so long to try one???????????????????

This question is the basic question I need to ask myself when I start to slip away into the dark place again.  I have put my duty, moreover my perceived duty, before my enjoyment of life for so long.  I forgot what fun was, well good clean fun anyway.  Sex and drugs, and sausage rolls well perhaps they are fun but they can be emotionally damaging if used in the wrong way. 

Yesterday i went down a water-slide for the first time.  I learned many lessons.

1)  I admitted I had not experience of how to do something and did not know how to do it i.e. go down a waterslide- overcoming the belief that I must have all the answers.

2)  Ask for help or clarification if you need to :such as could I get stuck- Here the lesson is to admit my fears, I am a size 16 I think that I am quite fat and this stops me doing things for fear that people will laugh at me, I did genuinely think I might get stuck, I know many people would think that was really silly but now I know that would be impossible.  By asking you are inviting others to help, and the nice helpful life guard explained to me on my second go just how much more fun it could be if I went really fast and showed me how to hold my body to do that. wow fantastic.

3) Let go of fear: I started to panic a little when I gathered extreme speed, yes I did follow the instructions on how to go really really fast and I managed to zoom down - but having learned to let go I let go of my fear and enjoyed the ride.

4) The best lesson of all was you are never too old to have fun- the sight of an overweight middle aged woman screaming her head off with pleasure in public half naked is an image of myself I had not considered never mind been comfortable with.  Its important to consider:  Do I want to have fun or conform to an image I imagine other people expect of me. Maybe I can learn to project better expectations onto others and maybe they might just want me to live up to those new images: of slightly overweight odd woman likely to so something fun.  That is a better image to me rather than serious career woman with no sense of humour. 

5) We all can choose to change when we are ready to do so.  I spent an hour under the water jets massaging every single knot of tension out of every single bit of my body.  So when my daughter asked me to go down the water slide, normally I would refuse as I would be afraid of pulling something or putting my back out, I could find no reason to refuse as my body was so relaxed and felt so good. I was ready to go down the slide and have fun. 

So give up your oul limiting images of yourself and have some good clean old fashioned fun. 

Happy St Patrick's Day