HelenzArt-life-musings

Category: Helens perspective

  • An idyllic start?

    The loss of a loved one causes a reflection on the past.  For me that was my relationship with Gavin and family interactions. Laughter, tears, hopes and wishes, his and mine.  When that has settled, and it does settle. That looking for purpose, arises again. Looking back over ones own life, my own relationship as daughter to parents and being a sister. Perhaps even trying to see where those influences of my childhood reflected in my own parenting of Gavin. 

    So what did I recall of my childhood. From my recollections, it’s wide open spaces, in a rural setting.  Playing outside for hours. Ditches and streams to build dams in. Clay delved out with a toy spade or simply my hands to craft mini cups and plates for the fairies and creatures that were my heart felt companions.    Living in a home that came with my dad’s job, mum worked for a while at the same place.  A plant nursery.  Summers of blue skies, tall grasses. The scent and sight of a rainbow coloured field of roses. Stretching row upon row along the fields. The out-buildings, old pigstyes, that now smelt of flowers and earth, derv and oil from the old tractor.  Echoing with the Swallows that nested through the heat and Robins that sang in the winter.  A short walk to the village school with my older brother.  Sunday roasts round the kitchen table.  No other children nearby, no play dates only birthday parties with school friends.  Idyllic!? Yes, in its way.  Dad, quiet and a dry sense of humour. His smell,  of earth and tobacco in a woollen jumper that itched a bit when he gave a hug.  Mum loud, long nails that she filed and painted. over powering perfume.  Occassional seamstress or knitter.  Smoker and failed dieter.  Brother who is 4 years older.  Clever, had a spiteful streak. Chinese burns. Dropped me once when giving a piggy back! Cracked my head on the hearth.  Yet I still looked up to him.  I love them all. They were family, I knew no different, I didn’t know any other families to compare them to,  even if I had a notion  that comparisons were to be had.  So I read my books, an avid reader, and those famous fives and faraway trees of fiction were the fiction of different lives to mine. I didn’t want to be like them. I just wanted to be in the adventures with them. Crayons and colouring, crafting and glueing.  Life was good, at least I felt so in those early, seemingly care free years of not knowing anything other than this was being loved. The safety of a bed in a room of my own, a toy or two, food on  the table, clothes, even if hand me downs.  Mum, dad, brother, dog, and other pets all as it ought to be for a young girl.  Things changed a bit when I got to 8. That is for my next instalment…..

  • Taking that step.

    Its odd when there has been such turmoil of emotion that there comes  a time where that flattens out.  The peaks and troughs of storm tossed seas lessen to swells. Not a calm but a bobbing up and down where ones  less likely to be swamped, still the occasional push under by a rogue wave that blindsides the heart. 

    In that calming, one rests,  as high emotions are tiring and perhaps to start wondering what is there to do, or be!  Where are the next steps in this life to head towards?  Because loss does that. It asked me to look at me and what I want.  I wanted Gavin to walk through the door and smile, and in a way he did.  I felt that his leaving was an invitation to walk through a door that his transition had opened within me. Could I take that first step? What was to change?

    The biggest habit in my life is being a smoker.  Never stopped when being pregnant, and yes, I know all the reasons why it’s not good for me, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Rationally, I know I shouldn’t do it, yet I’ve tried many times and not succeeded.  Perhaps it was time to give it a try in a different way.  I felt now was the time for a different approach. One not tried before.  Hypnotherapy.

    It wasn’t going to be easy yet somehow, I sort of felt that I had done the hardest thing ever in my life, and that was to say farewell to Gavin.  Now, given what I could recall of my early life, that’s saying something! I needed help, not pills or patches or replacements but a person who could help, and I happened to find one. Serendipity, Universal coincidence, Fate, Luck, Magic, call it what you like but I found who  I needed to, when I needed too and I’m most grateful.  

    So, in my coming writings, I’m going to share my experiences of what I thought I knew and what came to be rediscovered.  A voyage to the weird and scary, fantastical imagination or deep disturbance, yet simply my truth.

    I choose to share my experiences and my perspectives.  Feel free to judge them or not, comment or not, its always your choice. Share them with others if that feels right.

    My next blog will be what I thought I knew before therapy! 

  • How that first anniversary feels.

    To be honest the firsts of anything are hard.  The first Christmas,  mothers day, fathers day, their birthday etc.  We know it’s coming and there can be a sense of dread attached to that.  We found that to do something they would have liked, or to celebrate having known them rather than think of what we have lost is better for us. Remembrances of good times. Certainly better for me, and that’s not a denial of the pain felt. That is tacitly acknowledged,  a sadness that offers gladness to have been part of their physical lives and to be better for having known them. 

    When the first anniversary of Gavins death came round, we had already made a plan. To do something most extraordinary.  To overlay that sad with very special memories of family.  We went to Finland, the family of hubby and I, our daughter with her husband and our two grandchildren.  Snow, huskies, reindeer, the whole experiences that a wonderland of snow can offer.  Did it help, absolutely yes. 

    When we meet that anniversary now it’s with those memories of family. Gavin was with us as we fell and slipped and wondered at the experiences. He was still part of it in spirit of that, I’m certain. 

    On his birthday, I recall that bond of birthing that happened as I first held him. That soul thread attachment between us, welded and melded.  I am grateful that the thread hold strong to this day.  He is part of who I am, and will remain so through this life and all transitions.