HelenzArt-life-musings

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  • On a path of self neglect.

    So between leaving junior school and going to secondary school, we were supposed to move so dad could start a new job with more responsibility and better pay. That didn’t happen, his boss found a way to keep us in the same place. He was where he wanted to be I suppose, I was just a kid that wasn’t told anything, which was simply the way it always was. My mum had been through various jobs from shop work to barmaid, trying out nursing was the next thing. My parents developed a social life, they started playing darts for a pub team in town. New friendships for them and I was often included in the extra social events that happened. So for me pubs were simply another place to be, part of growing up, talking to strangers or half familiar faces. Nothing felt as threatening in that environment. Rarely were there other children around, if there were then I played with them. If not, I wasn’t bothered as I would talk to the other people if they started to chat. Some did their best to include me.

    My brother was never with us, he was already going his own way. Sometimes in trouble, so the police would visit but he was often just a passing body.

    My mum left home for awhile when I was 13. Stayed with some female friends, I suppose she was trying to sort out her life. She came home. Within a year she was gone. In town for 3 weeks at a friends flat and then, poof! Gone. My summer of being 13.

    Now, I will admit that although I was probably seen as a ‘daddies’ girl, that was more because I spent most of my free time out in the fields and sheds where he was working. Yet, she was my mum. She bought me my first pair of ‘grown up’ shoes, small platforms that were the trend in the ‘70’s. We weren’t best friends nor was she someone to take into ones confidence. Yet she vanished off the face of my world. Never to be heard from again until I was married and had a girl of my own. I went back to school with that, my best friend knew. Huh! my only friend knew.

    To be brutally honest I wasn’t actually that bothered. Yes, it hurt, yet I wasn’t outwardly emotional. It certainly stung when my 14th birthday came round and there wasn’t even a card from her. Yet even then I had a matter of factness to it. A ‘that’s the way it is-ness’. Practical acceptance. My dad and me just got on with running our home together. He didn’t talk to me about her leaving, and I never asked. My brother wasn’t really home much so we didn’t talk about it either. A big, non-event. That unknowingly shaped my behaviour.

    I say unknowingly because I didn’t consciously think I would become a searcher of tender touches from where ever I could. It wasn’t promiscuity to start with. As I have said before I lost my virginity very early, to a semi stranger. Since then I had a couple of boyfriends at school, one was physically very mature, as was I, and we did take things all the way. The summer of being 14, I began a relationship with someone older by a few years. I didn’t disabuse him of what he thought my age was, though he knew I was still at school. Our school had sixth form years, to do ‘A’ levels, as they were then, so it was an easy assumption to make on his part.

    I sank into the fact that he was wanting to be with me, even if it did seem that there was always an expectation of sex on his part, and I willingly obliged. Why? Because that’s what I did, I never said no. Yes, on reflection the relationship wasn’t healthy. But I had someone who seemed to want me. He wasn’t keen on me being with my friend, or doing my own thing. I was to be with him and his friends. And yes, sex was an expectation no matter how I felt. I did what he wanted, that was how I thought things were meant to be. Our sex was unprotected so the inevitable happened. I was pregnant just after turning 15. I knew fairly quickly and went to my GP. I also knew that I couldn’t have a child and bring it up myself so I chose to have an abortion. The Doc called my dad to the surgery and the arrangements made. All very matter of fact. No, histrionics, little emotion shown. Again we had no discussions, I went to hospital, had the procedure spoke to a Doctor before discharge. Refused contraception and left. Did I feel guilty? Honestly? Not on the surface, but I did feel that I had done the right thing in that moment. It was just another thing that happened, was dealt with and then sank to some underworld beyond caring. Never raised as a subject between me and my dad ever again. No social workers came to talk to me nor any police. That my dad spoke to the police I did discover a few months later when the ex boyfriend caught up with me outside the school gates and began to make my life miserable!

  • What changes!

    What follows in the next few blogs, is simply to set the scene of my landscape as a child, teen and young adult. The who, what and how of accessible memories of my growing up. 

    I say everything changed when I was 8, yet that’s not quite true. My life was   simply that, my life with family.  No seeing of things being anything other than they ought to be. No felt undercurrents of trouble between my parents. We were never overly huggy as a family,  I was just an ordinary kid in an ordinary family. My brother was  often in trouble with dad. Leather belt or a beating went his way. Not often but memorable. 

    So, as an 8 year old, I had to share my brothers room and bed because family were staying for Christmas.   I recall my brother asking me if he could put his hand between my legs!!  To which I said no, and that’s it.  No running to tell Mum and Dad. Taking it that he didn’t press the request. Going to sleep as if he had never asked, that it never happened yet it is remembered. An existent, on the surface, memory to be recalled should it be required that my brother had respected my refusal.  As far as I then recall is that I went to sleep.  It was the same year that I started smoking. Yes, I was young. Yes, I had 2 parents who smoked, and my brother offered me one!  I took it.  I guess I wanted to be on his ‘good side’ that I wanted to fit in, be seen as an ally.   I just did it, and there’s no thinking that this wasn’t good for me, or how cross my parents would be at me or him.  With the hind sight from where I am now,  it’s easy to see the people pleasing aspects that I was already cultivating, that I was already conditioned into. Along with a disregard of personal safety. 

    Apart from school, I didn’t have peer friendships. Most of my daily interactions were with other adults.  The casual summer workers that worked the nursery of roses. The older couple next door.  I don’t even recall much interplay with my brother, and those there were, were often of a mean-spirited Chinese burns type game, to which I never said no. Or me being in goal as he practiced at football one summer. Me simply happy to be included.

    So that sexual encounter wasn’t spoken of and pretty much wasn’t felt to be of great consequence then. It simply was. Our village school closed down and it was now catch the bus to a bigger town school.  Earlier start. More kids.  Doing well, I like to learn and like to please. I got on with most of my classmates, never not able to fit in. Though I didn’t really understand the popularity contests or the cattiness of some of the girls.    Nothing felt to rock my sunny nature.  Puberty comes all of a rush in the summer between junior and secondary school.   I see how adults react to that.  I see my brother even less now. He’s at school in a different town.  He’s drawn by the city too. 

    Settling in to senior school, start having independence to visit with a friend, go to the cinema.  A Sunday job in a newsagents. Have a close friend and we share confidences. Giggles about sex education, whispered desires and wonderings. Not sharing how I’d walked in to the living room to see my brother sat on the chair with his trousers round his ankles. Our pet dog reversed up to him!!  I dont tell anyone. I don’t recall any threats to keep quiet, so I just don’t feel the need to tell on him.    I spend time at her home, I get to experience family life other than my own.     Boys showing interest.  Older boys, men too!  I do like the attention. 

    The body develops at a different rate to the brain, exploring the sensual and sexual side of this pre-teen and teenage body that looks like a grown up, self-satisfaction to orgasm.  I lost my virginity to a semi stranger at 12 and a half. He’d always been kind when we met at the pub where my mum or my friends sister worked.   Offered me a lift home one day from the bus stop.. We chatted, and things moved along.  Was it consensual? Yes.  My body responded to his touch.  Did I feel unsafe or threatened? No. Did it feel wrong? No, not really, I knew it was legally wrong, but that’s all. Did I like having his attention? Yes.  

    Ahh, now it’s teenage years of change.  Abandonment, promiscuity, who cares? Seems like nobody does, not even me!!! Til next time.

     

  • 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. 

  • Where am I going!?

    When I was made redundant from work 6 months after our son died, I was in a better position to help my husband yet I intuitively knew I wasn’t there to rescue him or divert him from his grief.  I wasn’t going to be able to drag or bully him out of his depression or helplessness or any other feeling that he was having, regardless of whether he was intent on denying them or not.   I could only help myself. To carry on embracing my emotions, and to share that, or rather my,  way of being in his environment.  To share that it’s OK to feel helpless, lost, floundering in a sea of what’s the point. 

    So, I cried when I needed to cry, and I still do that. Its not often but I do have the heaving sobs and snotty nosed cries and always feel better after.  Emotion is energy in motion, it needs to be helped in moving through.  That’s perhaps why laughter is good for you, it moves all of the body with joy. 

    Obviously I wasn’t going to hang around my hubby waiting for his next time of needed solace. So where was I going, there’s only so much busy-ness a body can do, house clean, laundry done, dogs walked etc.

    I began sitting, looking at a golden soul thread that was pulled by my sons departure. I didn’t know that I was pondering on that, but in hindsight, that’s what it was. An invitation to find a different path. To perhaps weave a different cloth in what may remain of my life.  To step out of being daughter, sister, wife, mother, all those facets that have kept me in a seeming place. Doing what I have always done, try to fit in to what I thought others wanted or needed, ‘people please’, so as to find worth from others as I had none in and of myself. Though that too is an hindsight.   How can loss shape such thoughts? Grief,  tears one apart, dismantles a lot of what one thought one knew, opens up those darkened and hidden spaces where we have hidden from ourselves.  That is an opportunity to reorganise, to fling wide the doors and windows and really have a good look into those shadows, and maybe shine a little light.  Maybe with the loss of one purpose perhaps one looks for another and at my age, the patterns can change. Survival needs change. There is a roof over head, money available, children grown.  There is less wanting to climb the social ladder,  seeing that we have enough stuff and perhaps it’s time to gather up the inner treasure and make more or better use of what is already here.

    So,  where was I going? I was going to begin finding me.

  • Seeing some light.

    This painting came into being in 2022, whilst waiting for my mother-in-law to transition from this Earthly world to some other state of being. Its part of a series I call the ‘Waiting Room’ and can be found on my art website.

    http://www.helenzart2021.com

    Yes, that’s how I see and feel the passing on of a bodied person is. A transformation of beingness from this bodied person, within which is a spirited soul, and the release of those Earthly ties to set a spirit free.

    I started feeling this when the overwhelming pain that Gavins’ death engulfed me with had begun to settle. Whilst sat in the moments of stillness, which come after the releasing of emotional energy through sobbing those copious tears with body wracking heaves, I felt those tugged threads of continued connection. Those heart strings that sing at the memories of his smile, the quiet laugh at a wry comment. His voice, that deepened from childhood to manhood yet always him. A felt knowing that physical presence was not all that he gave, that what was of essence within that body was still in existence. Still held in my own soul spirit, woven into my own fabric of existence, of beingness. So what was I to do with this awakening of connection.

    Like many humans, I began to look beyond the survival needs to ponder on purpose. When feeling purposeless seems to be a result of losing a loved one. Especially one that has been a central part of ones caring. What even is a purpose? Is it to simply be mother, daughter, wife, colleague, and friend, in many cases that is enough. Yet what if there is more to be found. A potential to see that whilst those are important, there is more to being those parts and roles that to be all, and yet none of those is to be more whole. What was to be done by me to bring my potential wholeness to the fore. To be a better version of this bodied person living fully now.

    That sudden loss was bringing the realisation that there is no future for certain. All could be lost in the blink of an eye. Gavin had achieved much in his 28 years, things that had allowed a fulfilling of some of his dreams, and I felt proud and grateful that my nurturing of him in those early years had been a purpose of mine. Where now to place that nurturing spirit that wells up from within. Where indeed!

  • What a difference a year makes!

    What started with the loss of our son, Gavin, became a whole different direction once that embracing of emotion was allowed to takes its own course.

    There’s no denying it was extremely painful in moments, even long moments, yet they were transitory. The allowing was in flow, coming and welcomed, ebbing to and fro. Those inbetween times were of the ordinary and yet were leading me towards extra-ordinary. The feeling that the loss of his physical presence had some how pulled a thread, a soul thread from with in me to be examined. To look for where this soul of mine was hidden.

    At Gavins committal service there were people there who we knew that knew Gavin and some that we had no idea of. His death meant something to them as did his life and interaction with them. His life had touched theirs in a way that we could have no knowledge of. So his soul thread had touched the fabric of their lives and secured his beingness to theirs. His going had tugged on their threads to move them towards something else. Be that a realising that life is transient, that removal from this physical life can happen no matter what age one is. A facing up to and conversation of death and seeing that there is a purpose to how we do, what we do now, rather than next week or next year. To try to live fully today in this moment. Who knows if that stuck or not, and it is up to them to feel it.

    I simply felt that tug to become more ‘now’, to be the better me in each moment. How wasn’t fully formed yet, it would sift through in the quiet moments, and that is OK. It’s still OK to not really know or understand as the feeling is all that’s needed. Threads, strands of spirit have become a curiosity to me. That life tapestry that is poetically thought of as part of life and so much more. I feel the warp and weft that interweaves through all things.

  • Seeing through the darkness

    This is a recent painting of mine. When in the depths of grief, there often feels a lack of light. Yet the light is still there, remembered as the good times of laughter and love that we shared with our loved one, who has now transitioned to being elsewhere. The light glimmers and seems out of reach sometimes. Yet it only takes a moment to step into that darkness to see the light. To allow that light to fall on the shadow cast over the heart. Yes for a while it may seem as though that light of remembrances hurt and perhaps even deepens the shade. Yet when we hold those good times near, give ourselves permission to laugh or simply smile a little, cherish the memories that those loved ones have left as a legacy, the light will shine into those corners. Shift the grey to a brighter hue.

  • What does life look like after a loss?

    For me it pretty much looked the same though coloured by the emotions of the loss. We still needed to eat and keep clean. Chores to be done, bills to pay, dogs to walk and tend to. Work to go to, though with a phased return, offering the proviso that if I felt the need to take an unscheduled break I would. 

    Going back to work was actually easy, my closer coworkers had been told of my circumstances but there were others who didn’t know and even after afew weeks I was able to speak about it with out feeling overwhelmed. 

    It’s funny how we try to be tender with other people’s feelings at these times. To make it easier on them to deal with that knowledge of someone’s suffering. Yes, I would often go for a quick weep or deep breaths in the solitude of my car, that being my way to embrace the emotion and not deny it or save it for later. The return to everyday things can make us feel guilty too, perhaps. That we are carrying on as ‘normal’ and the grief and pain looses their grip a little. It’s OK to feel it. It’s survival.

    In that first 6 months I watched my hubby fall to pieces. Trying too hard to be ‘normal’ struggling to express his emotions. Saying yes to work when he ought to say ‘no’. His work asking to much anyway given the circumstances. I had to leave work a couple of times to go to support him as he tried to make sense of world so unfamiliar. It was heart wrenching to see him slumped on the stairs, purposeless and hurting. Yet all I could do was support. Let him know and hold space for him to feel all he was feeling. I felt deep down that I couldn’t rescue him from this. That all I could do was hold his hand as he found his own way to heal, walk his own path to safer ground. By my sharing and showing that grieving fully was OK, that I was willing to share our grief, together, with ugly sobs and snotty noses. That neither he nor I had to be strong and calm for the other, simply be there and hug.

    Why did I feel that to embrace all was the right way? It simply did feel right. A deep knowing that surfaced, and was going to bring support for me and those around me. If they couldn’t do it for themselves, I could show them how. 

    A serendipitous event then came my way. A reshuffle was happening at work, and redundancy was an option on the table. The payout would support my financial contributions to the household for a year, and so I took that chance. I would be able to support my hubby through his own stages of grief as well as begin my own explorations about purpose. that were starting to sift up. Percolating through the emotions and senses that our/my loss had shaken loose within.