HelenzArt-life-musings

Tag: Beinghuman

  • 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! 

  • 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.

  • Misuse of new learnings, being human.

    That’s the thing with being human, we learn new stuff and then apply it historically to events. 

    How does this apply to guilt? In my observations and conversations with my hubby over the last few days, the question of guilt relating to events of our sons death and the hospital visit prior to that my husband feels a guilt for taking him to emergency care at the hospital rather than calling an ambulance. On that night Gavin was in alot of pain around his back and shoulder. Unable to get comfortable and having trouble breathing and a rapid heart rate. He was usually able to recover his heart rate through experiences and techniques learned for endurance cycling. Yes, he was scared and between him and my hubby they chose to make their own way rather than potentially wait hours for a paramedic crew. So they made a choice given what they knew and supposed in those moments, a considered course of action. When Dave found Gavin dead, and paramedics turned up Dave was asked about the previous circumstances and here’s where the new information comes in. As paramedics they often get called to those sorts of scenarios and blood clots are usually seen as presenting with Gavins symptoms and that is communicated to the hospital for when they hand over the patient. Being human and a dad, Daves brain shifts and says, ‘I know this now’, and applies it to an event where he didn’t know it in the past. Hence he now feels guilty about taking Gavin for a hospital assessment that wasn’t fully considered or delivered. This is the human bit that makes a sweeping generalisation, as we happen to do over many things. One sour experience, can put us off trying something similar. 

    As a kid I felt guilty through experiences with my mother. Guilty that I wasn’t what she seemed to need of me. That became a guilt that I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s company or love even. It shaped a self perception and behaviours to people please and seek out validation from relationships with others.

    Guilt is often misplaced because we aren’t taught any other way, and self learning through experiences seems empirical proof until something else, other experiences, change that. My feelings of guilt around this loss and the grief is always that I should have done more to help Gavin through his depression, that he wouldn’t perhaps had medication and the one he was changed to, where blood clots could be a side effect. Yet as time has moved along I can accept that I used my own experiences with depression and self learning that until some one is ready to step into changes by themselves no one else can force a change in them. It could have been quite damaging to have continuously ‘nagged’ for him to ‘pull himself together ‘seek counselling’ etc. I would tell him that he had my support for what ever he needed to do, I always told him I loved him when ever we parted, as I did the night I dropped him home a day before he died.

    Atleast that’s one thing I don’t have to feel guilty of, I didn’t have ‘unfinished’ business. That’s often another big guilt tripper when a loved one or estranged loved one has passed. We can’t go back and change things, yet we can still say sorry, or speak our piece and bring a peace. They can hear us still!