binoculars, wool and crocheting together my life, pat on the back to me

I went to visit my mother for Easter Sunday, my ex-husband (long story) and my two daughters went too, my older brother was there.  It was a very weird day, I must stop saying that , I suppose it was a weird day because I had forgotten what it was to enjoy myself and I was only weird because it was enjoyable.  I found that I could not leave the house in the morning.  I finally had a night alone at home and there was no-one to hunt out the door except myself.  I found I could not muster the energy to leave so I went back to basics.  I went looking for the trail of bread crumbs I had left myself for such events.  I have been taking pictures, buying books, looking up stuff on the Internet, getting advise for many people, professionals, friend and random strangers.  All of those things are there at my disposal I just need to look for the right one for the situation I am in.  Remember to command the muscles, start by wriggling the toes, by commanding the muscles I get out of bed;pat on the back to me.

What is next, manage the blood sugar levels, perhaps it is not anxiety maybe it is low blood sugar, the cure, protein filled breakfast and sugary tea.  That worked; pat on the back to me.  Next the feeling that I am living in a bowl of jelly , that had to go so that I could drive, I bookmarked a load of sites on the Internet surely I thought there is one there that can help me leave the house.  And yes, you guessed it there  was EFT, emotional freedom technique.  I needed to release the bad feeling that had built up during the very stressful fortnight I had experienced, I needed to accept myself so that I was OK to be me.  So I followed the exercise., and again you guessed right , it worked.  Gradually by forming and remembering the habits that helped me get well again, I was able to cope with a potentially very stressful event, an hour long drive with my teenage daughter who was likely to use the hour of captivity(mine as well as hers) to vent her anger, try to part me from my money, get my approval to do all the unhealthy things I was trying to steer her away from.  the day was weird for me because it was perhaps my first day being truly myself with my family.  I enjoyed it.   I came away with the realisation that my life is good.

Transgenerational periwinkles

My childhood was not all bad, although I had recently connected with the parts of it that had confused my inner child.  Yesterday I connected with the many parts that had been good.  As my mother and I sorted through old patterns, oh  god that seems like a metaphor but it is not, we sorted through old dressmaking patterns, wool and fabrics, so that I could do some more crochet and dressmaking.  Currently I am crocheting a blanket for myself for the winter, more a comforter/rug than a blanket.  It is from scraps of wool I had and got gifted to me.  I am now embarking on the crocheting together the left over wool that my mother had kept from all the jumpers and socks and cardigans she knitted over the years.  It was a real exercise in memory to think of all the different fabrics we used to make the clothes.  My mother taught me to sew before I could even write and the skill was passed to her by her mother.  Now it is time to pass it on to my children, even if they do not learn by doing they might learn by watching.  I am crocheting what my teenager called the St Bridget's cloak.  Each day I work on it it grows alarmingly, by combining together wool of different textures and coulors I can blend a blanket of memories and warmth.  I may be a little childlike in my innocence at present but that too will pass and I will grow.

I also left with my dads binoculars.

I have such wonderful memories of looking at ships in the distance through them, jellyfish ahoy!, of sunny days in the summer gazing at beetles in the grass , when I was trusted not to break the binoculars.  My father cared for all his tools and possessions.  He always said to put things back in their right place when you had finished with them and look after all your tools properly by maintaining them and putting them away in their protective cases.  This is again not a metaphor, he was a maintenance fitter and his work was all about maintaining the pumps and fitting of the local waterworks.  His father before him also had the same job.  I suppose the lesson here is; I have the tools.  If I care for them, put them away in the right way when I dont need them, those tools will always be with me and I can pass them down to my children and grandchildren.  Beliefs are transgenarational, so are patterns of behavior but I have been passed on good as well as bad ones.  I was taught how to sew, knit crochet, tend a well, care for tools, cook, garden; all the tools to create a home.  So here I am woman, child, mother, lover, engineer, homemaker, artist, and part time philosopher, talker of psychobabble, writer of depression recovery blogs and haiku.

Happy Easter Monday
So go and find the tools you need to reconnect up all the parts of your life, good and bad.  You will be all the better and richer for it. Today's blog was written while listening to lyric fm , right now they are playing the Easter Parade.  We are all individuals.  So be yourself and have a :-)  Happy happy Easter. 

great expectations

Oh god did I hit a bump.  I feel the need to return to work.  I feel well enough to deal with most of the the normal day to day things, if I plan and manage my energy levels and reactions well.  When I decided that I would plan on a return to work it was as if I opened the flood gates of fear and trepidation.  The feelings of dread that I associated with work started to return.  The stomach churning what will go wrong today.  The who will give out to me, what ambush is there, how will I get my teenager up in the morning.  How can I live through the verbal abuse of each morning.  Will I arrive drained into work as I used to only to be greeted by a barrage of complaints and an endless flow of people clamoring for my attention.  Had I learned nothing from all this??????
I have learned lots.  I just need to apply the lessons to the world of work.  What did I do to get me to this happy place and how can I stay there.  How do I stay with myself and be healthy.  How do I transpose the lovely routine I have developed for myself into a similar one for work.  I Like to start the day with breakfast and music.  I like to take the time to greet the day with love.  I like to listen to the radio, to uplifting things and happy music, I love colour, I love to cook nice food for myself, I like to have a place to relax when I come in , a nice cup of peppermint tea, some fruit, a walk, take some photos create something nice, light an oil burner.  I used to wonder how one of my colleagues managed to listen to opera and have scented oils in her office.  It seemed so indulgent. now I realise it was a necessary part of her life, so why not do it at work too.  Look at Mick Wallace.  His pink shirts and huge debts.  He seems at odds with the world of how things have always been done.  His fresh eyes can give us all guidance on how we can look at our worlds afresh and not just do what has always been done just because it was done in that way.  I think it is time to realistically look at the things that cause me stress in the work place and in my life.  Just keeping going is not enough for me anymore. I want to live the life I have lived for the last month, one where I plan ahead, where I have dreams and expectations, one where I see beauty and have fun, one where I connect with people.  I no longer want to conform to my idea of the expectations of others.  What ever their expectations are I cannot know unless they tell me.  So no more second guessing anyone.  No more second guessing myself.  I have choices.  I can ask them what their expectations are.  I can listen to what they ask me.  I can ask them to repeat things if I am unsure.  I can tell people my expectations and if people judge them to be unreasonable I can check with someone I trust.

the joys of jellyfishing

Now that I can listen to myself I am ready to listen to others.
Happy Friday

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.