HelenzArt-life-musings

Tag: Finding meaning

  • To sit in the cool of late winter….

    To sit in the cool of late Winter, seeing miniscule signs of the Spring to come.  A leaf bud, a nodding Snowdrop is to feel a hopefulness.

    I want signs of hopefulness as I  feel that this work with Chris is going to plunge me deep within.  To take me beneath my surface of understanding and perhaps unmade what I think I am.

    Why would I feel that?  Because I have felt a depth of my world where there is no bottom, that walk to the deepening slope of a swimming pool where you begin to float. Where only you can save yourself by starting to swim.  Yet all I actually have to do is surrender to the water, allow myself to enter the flow and trust that by relaxing into that I will float or atleast not sink. 

    That’s a scary moment.  Can I trust myself with this?  I feel  that I can, and that is a hope. 

    I’m still edging round emotions  about my mother and brother.  Perhaps a way of becoming accustomed to seeing them in other ways. 

    I’m brought to memories of the split with my husband.  The lonely, desperate race through the streets to reach a shelter that may give me a room to stay in.  Trying to get to the office so I can get social help to feed myself.  Adamant that my husband has done the right thing to protect our children and himself.  Such overwhelming feelings of total loss of all I knew.

    The body can only sustain such feelings for so long.  Become exhausted and shut off or down. Yet the thinking in the head can be so continuous that there feels little respite.

    Once I had a room and a little money.  I started to sort through things, and I was drawn to journal for awhile.  In that, I returned to what I surfacely remembered of my brother.  That was as far as that went yet it was like an invitation to feel deeper which I denied as I was so consumed with setting things right for my family.  I’ll admit that suicide was considered, and strangely it came quite easily to make those considerations of How’s and where’s.  That too was denied. I needed to take the consequences of my actions of fraud. Stand up and be the right person.  In that fraud I did have sensation s that this was being done by a different me.  Of being in a sealed room whilst another signed the papers. Lied and made false bank statements to show my husband.  A more remoteness of action. 

    In my next session with Chris,  I took me to this time of my life, or rather my subconsciousness did. This time, Chris asked whether my subconscious has a name.  He said it didn’t matter if it did or not, but she does. Eileen, it’s good to know that.  It allows a familiarity.  She shows me how things then might well have surfaced, yet I hadn’t been ready then, but seeds had been planted that are pertinent to what arises next. 

    So in that session I revisited those feelings of having lost it all. The overwhelming substance of having nothing.  Tears and sobs. The shame and guilt for having done that to my world of family. To hear the disappointment in my father’s voice. The pain in my mother in laws words.  The husband that can’t bear to look at you. 

    So much pain. Yet survived. Perhaps that was the purpose of the session to see what one survives.  Preparing me to revisit so much and yet understand that it was survived then, and will be again in any revisiting. 

    Again, the utter relief of spent emotions when returning from inner world to Chris and his safe and comfortable room.  It’s a lot to take in and needs time to sift and sort.  The skipping in time frames was surprising, though necessary to my inner world and I will go with that. I trust that.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Why the guilt?

    I’m angry, so why did I feel guilty too? With all the emotions that were being felt in waves, there was always the sense that I was feeling guilty too. It was an under current, yep I’m back to my ocean analogy! In fact my mother-in-law said something that was reminiscent of guilt when we told her of Gavins passing. She was in hospital having had some stents fitted. She simply stated that it should have been her who was taken, she had lived a long life and it ought to have been her passing not Gavin. He was too young, with a life ahead full of potential. Yet we all said that’s not the way it goes, he was called and she wasn’t, not yet. Maybe that’s where bargaining can come in when it’s someone young who has a potentially terminal or life changing disease, yet something like an embolism isn’t necessarily foreseeable. Though Gavin did have symptoms that were misdiagnosed. 

    So why guilty? For me it was expressing regret and wishing I had done more. Yet once more I come back to that being a mother who was allowing him to be the man he had become. Still my boy, but old enough to make his choices, to make mistakes and learn. The apron strings were loosed. Yes, I could express concern yet it was still his life. I felt guilty of failing him, of failing in my role as mother. Yet a mother has to stop mothering and smothering. That is not to stop caring but it is to stop interfering, as too much of that can be detrimental to a healthy relationship. There’s also the guilt at not going to his home and finding his body earlier. He went silent in the Tuesday, my husband went round on the Friday. In all likely hood he died either Monday night or sometime on Tuesday. The thought of him laying there all that time is difficult to bear. Yet bear it I do, I made the choice to allow him privacy and space as I have done as he was growing up. As I chose to do when he was at University, I never needed or expected daily contact. That we spoke regularly was enough. To be honest that has always been my way, I didn’t speak daily to my dad once I left home. 

    There’s also the looking back over events through our life together as mother and son, nurturing and disciplining that may prompt a guilt that perhaps if.. .. Yet that past can’t be changed, no matter how much one may wish it. If I could have done things differently I would have. Over the 5 years since his transition I have have transitioned too. That guilt is part of who I am, its OK to feel it so it can find its place. It doesn’t ‘eat’or ‘nag away’ inside, because its accepted as having a place within. I give myself permission to feel all that needs to be felt. Opening up to the learnings they offered in their time. Gavins departure gave me a gift, and yes we all like to find a meaning to events in our lives, yet this was more than just finding a reason to his passing this was finding a pathway to living fully in what is left of my life.