Shapeshifting

When the sun shines

Full pictures here.

Wild at heart

I'm revisiting, after a lot of years, Clarissa Pinkola Estés's Women Who Run With The Wolves and oh good grief, this time it's personal.

I only got as far as the third page of the intro before I cried.

Although I did not call her by that name then, my love for the Wild Woman began when I was a little child. I was an aesthete rather than an athlete, and my only wish was to be an ecstatic wanderer. Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees and caves, for in those places I felt I could lean against the cheek of God.

Substitute hedge for cave (we don't have many caves in Wiltshire) and Nature for God (I had no awareness of who or what God was supposed to be until I was way older) and that is me. Finding a personal truth like this is one of the few things that get me instantly doing the squirty tears thing. The last time it happened was during the meditation I did for Susannah's Inner Sage exercise. Similar trigger. Big, spontaneous, snotty tears. Tender, this inner wild woman.

If I'm supposed to be de-cluttering my mind, body and spirit, I need to get away from the computer and outside a lot more.  We are all so stir crazy after the cold, cold winter and so ready to get back into the fresh air.

I have veg beds to plan, flower beds to create for bees and butterflies, chicken coops to build and of course my dogs (and me) to get back into shape. Evie needs more exercise and time spent outside. I'm looking forward to introducing her to my old friend, the Wild Woman and in the meantime, 'ecstatic wanderer'... how purely beautiful is that concept?

I think I'll dwell on that a while.

This is it. Promise.

I'm not quite done with the set up yet.

I'm still processing and most of it can and should stay in my head but some of it needs to be explained before things change here too.

Also there are things I can talk about now that I couldn't before.

Charlie has been home for nearly five months, I mentioned that. He was off work with stress-related depression. Twenty years ago he signed up to work for an airline as cabin crew because it meant he could go birding (birdwatching) all over the world for free. The job was so-so, he was promoted, conditions changed, blah blah blah and now the job is rubbish. Well-paid rubbish for those who signed contracts decades ago, but rubbish. Unbelievably stressful mentally and physically. Especially physically. Twenty years of jet lag is an evil thing.

But it has brought us a small amount of financial stability. Not a lot, but some. It has allowed me to work part-time through Evie's preschool years. It has allowed us to move here. And it's been living here that has led Charlie to a place where he can no longer spend seven months of the year in a plane or hotel. 'Right there in your back yard' etc etc.

These last few months have been very hard. For Charlie but also for Evie and me. For Evie, life changed enormously, hot on the heels of a house move and temporary reunion with her twin sister. For me, I came here to the place I love most of all - this healing, special place that nourishes me - and then believed we would lose it and everything we'd built.

I work things through inwardly and bide my time. I believe that things work out in the end and that sometimes you just have to put your head down, grit your teeth and get through the bad days but it got harder and harder to do as I sank into my usual winter blues. Yeah, we were The Happy Family.

Charlie sought help and got it and eventually it had an effect. He has risen to the huge challenge of sighting his dream life - the life he both deserves and has to have for his own health - and going after it. He has moved personal mountains and achieved great things. The path to this new life is now clear, if still quite long.

I have fought my own internal battles (always internal with me) and firmly believe it contributed to my weakened immune system and endless sickness and fatigue. But mostly I locked myself into position and tried really, really hard not to move (I am a Taurean after all). Fought with all my might to stay in my comfort zone where I had the freedom to float about a bit ...flitter ...dream ...procrastinate. Lucky me.

Finally now I think I'm learning the meaning of surrender. Give up that comfort zone and something more precious, vital and important will follow. Let go of my utter devotion to independence (that ironically allowed for financial dependence) and acknowledge that you are in nothing alone. You are never and can never be unchanged by the influences at work in the lives of the ones you love.

Am I making even the slightest amount of sense? It doesn't feel as if I am.

Here I am. Looking at a better, brighter, more meaningful future for our family than I imagined in our 3 Year Plan. Or maybe I imagined it but was so deep in the habit of not bringing things to reality that it never occurred to me that it might actually happen. Or that when it started to happen it would be difficult and painful and stressful and oh...by the way, freaking MAGICAL.

Because life is. Magical. And I've learnt that magic is an organic, messy, smelly thing sometimes. And it's viral.

Remember my crappy immune system? Uh huh, couldn't withstand the magic either. But it's changing me beyond my control. I have no say at the moment so I'm just letting the shapeshifting happen. I feel skins shedding and (this may be the week off and the sunshine speaking but I'll go with it) it's kind of exciting.

My name is Jo and I'm a control freak. I like to be in control of my surrender. Heh. And this time I can't be. I just read Ken Robinson's The Element and found that I think I know my element, but not my medium. Maybe I'm being led to that medium now. I hope so.

In the meantime, with regard to my last post, I'm getting started on decluttering myself.

Vegan breakfast.

And today's head-clearing exercise will be following the lead of Rachelle and Tracie and taking a long hard look at my online time. I not only spend too much time faffing about (and not all social networking is faffing, I remain a huge fan) but I also spend to much time comparing myself to others and feeling inadequate or distracted or influenced or wistful.

So I'm off to clear out Google Reader and Twitter. Not because of any disaffection for the people involved, but because if anything I love them a little bit too much.

That's my Friday. Thanks for reading. How's yours?

Still here

So where to start?

Here's the thing: Spring is coming and I'm getting all powered up with thoughts and ideas and about 10 days ago I thought to myself,"Hey, I should blog this on Shapeshifting."

Then we got hit with WinterMalaise.04

Or, more specifically, Evie did. Major growing pains at night - or Restless Leg (thanks for the tip on that Carrie) or something. No sleep for any of us. I'm talking awake until 4am.

In the fleeting moments where I had lucidity and space for thinking about something other than staying awake and/or holding down a job, the things I'd been mentally chewing on went supernova and suddenly I felt as if I had a whole book to write, forget the blog post. But can I get to it? No. Not yet. And I'm having to be alright with that. Maybe even - gasp - mentally edit down that book to a few good blog posts.

So...nothing on Evie's blog because she's been suffering and to add insult to injury I packed her off to nursery today, dressed in red and reciting 'Xin Nian Kuai Le' and it's not new year until NEXT week. Put another fiver in the therapy jar. Last Friday I got pulled aside by the nursery owner because Evie had said a (not very) rude word at Circle Time. This week it'll be because of Parental Cultural Idiocy. Wicked \m/.

I got The Weekly Bean up on Wag Bark Love but my plans for cranking things up there have gone the way of everything else this past week.

And yet, I feel inspired by the lighter afternoons, the snowdrops, the rediscovered life in Charlie's eyes after his personal long, dark Winter and, just yesterday, by standing deep in the magic of a pine wood.

The tall trees all whispering the same language, all singing the same ancestral songs that I could hear only inside my head reminded me that I am small, my life is small, my worries are small. But the strength to be found in connection with the natural world is vast.

And that's a good place to end. I'll pick up right here when I can. So much more to say.

Happy Friday (,Saturday and Sunday)

x

Jonesy & Me

This blog has turned into a place where I occasionally post long rambling missives. I stopped wanting to post about being An Adoptive Family a long time ago because, at least for now, it's not a huge part of our lives. Or rather, it's not a remarkable part of our lives. Of course it's there every day but it's Evie's and ours and it's just who we are. End of.

However, I do love to share pictures and videos of my girl. And she's loving the idea of having her own website. So we made one. She dictated the first post and the signature really is hers but I took the photos. And while I pay the Typepad fees I get to design it. We've called it Jonesy & Me because Jonesy is the name of a glove dog I made her and he goes everywhere with her.

I know some of you are only here for the cute kiddo. So this one's for you :)

Jonesy & Me

Cupcakes à la 4 year old

Some xmas cheer and..er..maths.

A song and some sums from Jo H. on Vimeo.

Gone magic-making. Back soon.

A couple of weeks ago a friend and I were comparing memories of having our first reiki attunement. We agreed that one thing is almost guaranteed, your life is going to turn upside down.

In my case it wasn't pretty. It was 11 years ago and the friend I'd been sharing a house with (her house) for six years fell further into her alcoholism and got nasty. Twice she stood outside my room door in the night and threatened to kill me. She was holding a big knife at the time so I wasn't too happy. I took to sleeping in my clothes, shoes too, and twice legged it past her passed out body into the night with Nell under my arm. Then a couple of weeks later the PR firm I was working for was sold and we were unexpectedly made redundant overnight. Turned into work. Sent home. Home with the alcoholic.

Not long ago I started listening to Fabeku Fatunmise. Not content with feeling 'stuff shift', with seeing it rise like silt to my surface, one night I decided it might be a good idea to combine the soundtrack with a reiki self-treatment. Immediately that old inner voice said,"Woah there, you should know that if you do this it's a powerful combination. You do know this. You know this'll cause all sorts of crap to happen." I knew. I thought I was ready. I thought it would be cool.

It's not.

It's so not.

It seems that whether it's connected or not, I've hit the SAD wall at top speed. Actually that's wrong, not top speed, a crawl. I already had three flat tyres.

Charlie is not well and is struggling with his own stuff. We're trying to find a way forward with that and we will but it's not easy. Doable. Just not easy. And these short days take my strength and my energy and my motivation. As I lay in bed - on a work day - this morning I realised how much I have let everything slide. The house is a mess, my work is not getting as much attention as it should, my health isn't either. Our diet as a family has become 'convenient' but not nourishing in any way. My dogs aren't getting the exercise they need even at their advanced ages. My garden looks neglected even for this time of year. I'm not even blogging so it's not an interweb issue. Most importantly, the relationships between any permutation of our family of three are strained. Still filled with love, but strained. I see all this and all I want to do is crawl under a duvet and hide. There is too much to worry about. Too much at stake. Too much that I can't control or fix.

The meds I take to deal with my seasonal ups and downs are working but not as they should given that the strain is greater than normal. The lack of daylight and serotonin is playing havoc with my ageing hormones and I get weeks of PMS and killer migraines. And now stress headaches too. Woo hoo.

But this is not a poor me post. I have a doctor's appointment made. I'm going to be gentle on myself and my family and try to ease us back to health. 

The holiday season is not far off and then I have 12 days without work. I have the new year to  look forward to and it's looking like being a great one. I love the reassessing and reaffirming that comes at this time of year. I love xmas with my sweet girl who needs her mummy and daddy to be happy and strong.

I'm going to take a web break. Not because it's taking too much of my attention because it isn't. I just want a break and I've been sort of taking one anyway. I'm going to check my mail as little as possible. Try to stay away from everything else until January. I may change my mind next week but today I think not. Today I think it'll be fun to come back all fresh in three weeks.

Back to 1998...

The redundancy money I received gave me the deposit on a flat. A garden flat where I could get another dog. Jackson. My ex-boss took me on as a freelance features editor/writer working from home. I found my way back to the life I should have been leading before things went crazy a few years earlier. I found happiness on my own and that gave me the strength I have today. The upheaval was tough but ultimately it brought me things I'd always wanted and needed.

I'm going to trust that this will happen again. Back when I was running scared at 2am I ran here to GC where we live now. My mother lived up here then and the manor and its grounds were my sanctuary. When I needed a new home I tramped around one of the estate fields with Nell, chanting affirmations that came absolutely true. I'm in the right place to make some magic happen for my family. And this time I know what I'm doing.

My child the genius, part 125

Yesterday, Evie was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing and cutting. She put something in my hand and said she'd made it for me. I don't have a photo but it looked just like this:

Now, I can do this easily enough but I was just a little surprised to see someone who is only just 4 doing it. I asked her if someone had taught her. She said,"Yes, Mister Maker on the telly." She must have seen it demonstrated once.

Scary kid. Next up...the origami mobile she can make me for xmas.

#dearUniverse

I can't remember who it was who started the idea that the Universe could be reached via Twitter - I think it was Sister Carrie - but the #dearUniverse hash tag has become very useful. And, y'know, why not?

So a while back I used both that and #puttingitoutthere to tweet that I was in need of a two seater sofa for the kitchen. Yesterday, such a sofa came up on our local Freecycle and the lovely Estelle agreed not only to let me have it, but to deliver. For free. Thank you Estelle and thank you Universe.

My tongue was just slightly in my cheek with my thanks to the U - even though the aforementioned Sister Carrie tweeted that the U showed enormous common/universal sense in not granting me the faux cream leather when I have a 4 year old and a cupboard full of marker pens. Instead we have a very attractive dark blue fabric. Nice. I decided to decide it was a gift to me from the U and accepted it gleefully.

This evening, after all was set up and cosy, we settled in the kitchen. The heater had been mysteriously turned off in the living room (it charges overnight and so won't be warm again until tomorrow) so for once, Charlie gritted his dog-loathing teeth and joined us downstairs. We have one room on each of four floors with a nice, big kitchen on the ground floor where the dogs live when they're not charging around fields.

For a while, he and Evie shared the sofa while he blogged and she chattered. I sat at the table and listened and helped draw SpongeBob and Patrick.

After she was safely tucked up in bed asleep I came back downstairs to the kitchen. I curled up on the new sofa with The Secret Life of Bees (which I finished and loved) and drifted off to the world of the Daughters of Mary.

Then at one point, possibly stopping to think about getting some chocolate from the fridge, I looked up and saw Charlie sitting on the floor next to the sofa, back against the heater, laptop on his outstretched legs. Between him and the sofa, near his feet, sat Jackson, either rapt in thoughts or zoned out (yep, the latter gets my vote too). On Charlie's other side, eyes fixed firmly on me, lay Nellie. As my eyes met hers she jumped up and lay on my feet.

This may not sound extraordinary to you but trust me, it was. My dog-loving ways are anathema to Charlie. He loathes the two (three if you count the cat, and you should) animals who have been with me for years longer than he has. Does not understand the love I feel for them. Avoids them as much as is possible.

It's okay. If he was a dog-lover I may have to kill him for being too perfect. Every mill needs its grist, right? As long as that grist doesn't hurt anyone, two-footed or four. I've got used to having the grand canyon wind its way through my heart with Charlie and the animals on separate sides. Evie flies between both with such grace and passion that it kind of heals the gash.

I don't expect it to become a regular occurrence. I doubt it will ever happen again, but for a moment there, I saw that the sofa really was a gift from the U. For a moment there, my life was perfect and how many people ever get to have that? 

Today I was given a dream evening at a time when I really needed it. Maybe the Universe, maybe a stranger's generosity, maybe both. I'll take it and go off to bed with a big smile on my face.

Happy Tuesday.