shapeshifting

I'm taking some time to be still. To slowly process the stuff that has happened and is happening to us. To find a way forward by listening not pushing. Too tired to push. It's a good practice and it's working. Slowly. We've moved on to one step forward and only one step back at least for a while. I am anxious and stressed and oh jesus h christ I miss Casey so much that it's a constant wound in my heart. But I know I have so much to be grateful for and so little to grumble about really.

To prove it, yesterday I was lovebombed by the sweetest of women.

From @SasLockey came sweet potions for my ritual of bathtime meditation and seeking of guidance. Perfect and so typical of her loving and practical self. Thank you Sas xx

From @mckinleyrodgers came The Wishing Year, a book I read some years ago when life was quite different and now...as soon as I saw it I knew that now is the perfect time for me to read it again. Perfect. Thank you Pen xx

From @creatingwings came Shamanic Reiki, a book that's been sitting in my wishlist for a long time. I read half of it last night and it's with me here now. Awesome, just awesome. And wait...the healing methods they describe...THAT'S WHAT I DO! Perfect. Thank you Meg xx

From @chestnutsfarm came an Amazon gift certificate. She knows I'd've spent cash on petrol or food. She knows that I usually have something bizarre that I really neeeeeeed right now. She knows me better than about anyone. She knows the freedom of choice is gold to me. She knows I now have - delivered today! - a desk easel and a hard copy of Do The Work. Perfect. Thank you Jackie xx

From @postcardsfrom came a tantalising email clue and some words that prove she sees in me what I am almost always afraid to see. Perfect. Thank you Leonie xx

From all my peeps and tweeps came such kind, sweet words for my birthday on Tuesday that I was overwhelmed. In a good way. My heart closed when Casey died. Not permanently but it needed to curl up and heal. You all helped speed that healing a millionfold.

I have some quiet but powerful wishes inside me for this next year. So powerful they're struggling to be contained. I feel, foolishly, that I have to get my ducks (chickens?) in a row before I hit the big Hawaii Five-O in two years. I mean WTF? How did that come around so fast? Still, I always did work well under pressure. I guess it just took more pressure than I could've imagined in order to get me to work. Yup.

Another long weekend for us this week: royal wedding and May bank holiday. The sun is here and I'm wishing for it to stay.

Enjoy yourselves this weekend.

x

This gets better.

Monday I woke up with a migraine. Welcome to my week off. Took a pill. Sometimes the pill just zaps out the migraine and I can function pretty much at full capacity. Sometimes the pill acts almost like an anaesthetic and I'm not really safe to be on my feet. As the pill is a constant, I guess what's happening neurologically in my body must change. Migraine takes many forms even in one person.

So there I am, not yet aware that I'm about to fall into a semi-coma. I have to meet my mother at the local Te3co Superstore (see H for Hell and Holidays), along with Evie and my 5 year old nephew who is lovely but all slugs and snails and hyperactive puppy-dogs' tails. She has some clothing vouchers that she wants Evie to benefit from and frankly, we can't afford to say no. Staying upright and responsible uses all my energy so I'm snappy and impatient. I drive home (I know, I know) and then it hits me full on. I go to bed for one, maybe two hours.

Later I try to download some photos from the weekend - and there are some lovely ones among them - and also, as it happens, the photos I took of Casey on his last day. Just before we headed off to the vet.

Something's wrong with the flash card. I can't copy them off it. I try everything, every method. Even data recovery software. Nope. They're there on the card but I can't have them.

Evie has reacted to the sunscreen she wore on Sunday. She has a livid, itchy eczema all over her face and neck, poor kid.

Charlie's boss comes over for the End of Trial Period Review. When he leaves we're down an income. Face-to-face charity recruitment is a tough game - sales of a worthy product maybe, but a luxury product all the same and this area is just being really hit by the downturn. Targets are nigh on impossible to meet. Charlie tried really hard. They don't care that this could mean we have to move to a one-bedroom flat in a rundown market town. Why should they? Most of the team he trained with have also lost out.

Tuesday means another pill but luckily no coma as I'm working with the Beagles. Since the death of their lady owner/breeder her husband and son (ages, I'd guess, 90 and 60) have soldiered on with my help once a week. They can't manage and so some dogs have been rehomed. They'd said goodbye to sweet Z a couple of weeks ago. Today I go in to find that one of my favourites, lovely T has gone to a new home and the grand old lady Beagle, D, has gone to be reunited with her owner. At 15, she faded out the way Casey did. So we're down to just four Beagles. Four sad Beagles. P, especially, has not recovered from the loss of her human. Today she comes and sits next to me - not on my lap as usual but just next to me. A sad little girl, leaning against me with a sigh. She is still much loved - I think she was a favourite of her owner and so husband and son are particularly attached. I think that T and D leaving has been a bit too much for her. I reiki her while we sit in the sun and she tells me about her sadness.

At home I hear from my sister that the two big employers in our neighbouring town - the two call centres that pretty much saved a generation from disaster when they opened in the late 90s - are closing. We will be flooded with young men and women with young families and mortgages and debt, looking for the few jobs there are available. One of them will be my sister.

Today, after a quick trip to the supermarket brandishing vouchers and reward points, I pick up Evie's best friend and bring them back here. Giggling, shrieking happy girls. I don't care that they're 'making potions in the bath' or destroying some part of the house...just let them be happy. I'll clean up later. While I'm out, the vet calls. Casey's casket has arrived back. Do I want to go and collect it? Well yes, but there's the small matter of having to settle the bill and I have £3 in my bank account. So he's sitting on a  shelf waiting for me to get my working tax credits so that I can pay to have him home with me.

...

Y'know what? I don't want to live my life like this anymore. I'm am so, so literally sick and tired. I'm done with this. I live in a beautiful place and I have so much that I am deeply grateful for but I am guilty of using it as a distraction. It is the opium of this person. I have to break the habit.

...

When I think about how put things right my brain engages and then fails. I know myself to be smart and resourceful and inventive but I got nothing. The very thought of trying again just makes me fall over. Oh I have ideas. Anyone who reads this blog will know I'm always having A Great Idea but now...now I feel paralysed by it all.

And so there is only one thing to do.

Surrender. Give it up. Let go. There is a real sense of things falling away without me even having to actively release them. They are not being 'taken', they are just falling away and I think that might be okay. I understand that it has to happen.

What I need to do is return to the practice I started at the beginning of the year. Healing, meditation, acceptance and space-clearing. Once that space is clear from anxiety and panic - even for a sweet moment of respite - I can hold it open for what comes next. It will come and so will my strength but for now it's just acceptance and practice. Easy to say.

Most of all, knowing that I'm done with the distraction of beauty (not the beauty itself, just the abuse of it), I'm ready to live my life the way I want to. The way I have to.

Part of that is writing about things that matter to me knowing that some readers will a) think I've finally snapped or b) laugh or c) both the above. But I'm done caring about other people more than I care about me. So I'm going to tell you that on Tuesday night I tuned into a drum and journeyed to meet my spirit animal. She's a young wolf and her name, she tells me, is Divna. We met some time back. I thought maybe her name was Irish but looking it up I find it's Hungarian for beautiful. She's certainly that and she's certainly a European wolf. This night I wait for some heavy answer to my questions but she starts dancing. And it's funny. She looks ridiculous and she's doing it on purpose. She's telling me to laugh. I see her dancing painted in broad strokes with energy shining from it

....

I've been trying, in snatched moments to return to Kathleen Dean Moore's Wild Comfort. I read half of it a month or more ago and now I'm back. On Monday I picked it up and randomly opened a page. Now, when I do this I don't usually get some profound sign, I get an advert for dentures or double-glazing. Sorry but it's true. I don't generally have good random-page-mojo but I did this day. This is what I read:

When you die, it's done, the chance is gone. So when you live? When you live, make it all. Don't wait for the rain to stop. Climb out of your tent with your mind engaged and your senses ablaze and let the rain pour into you. Remember: you are not who you think you are. You are what you do. Be the kindness of soft rain. Be the beauty of light behind a tall fir. Be gratitude. Be gladness.

Ever since, like a mantra, I hear, "You are not who you think you are. You are not who you think you are. You are not who you think you are..." and I may well still be curled up in my tent, but I'm looking out on a whole new landscape.

Thank you all for your comments and emails about Casey - they meant a lot. I know many of you have been where I was last Friday and the rest of you are an empathetic, lovely bunch so I was in safe hands.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what gets us through the bad days. Online and nonline (just made that up. When you see it all over the place by next week...it started here m'kay?) friends play a huge part, that's for sure.  And all my 'funny little ways' that I've - it suddenly became crystal clear - rarely taken seriously, actually do lift me upwards and onwards.

The little steps, the moments of lovely, the act of creating something however small, temporary or even imagined...they really do work. The rituals I've used to work with my own beliefs and understanding of life...they mean something. Something real. The healing energy? It actually heals.

(The day of Casey's death, Evie said to me,"Mum? What you need is a fire. Or even a candle. And you get really close and you tell it all the things you want to say to Casey okay? It really works." Now, a) lighting a candle is something I would do anyway for a travelling spirit and b) WHAT??? Where the heck..? Talk about My Little Shaman. Chip off the adoptive block or what? I'm so proud.)

I think I'm going to focus more on these things here. The things that help me, heal me and move me through the hard places. I'm not going to say 'dark places' because dark is a good place to be sometimes. Powerful.

Anyway...I want to put those things here. Along with random chicken posts of course. Chicken medicine is some gooood shit. Especially from random chickens.

Random Ninny does her best Diana Ross.

"You Can't Hurry l'Oeuf"

Born in a farm shop's packing box, nestled into polystyrene 'wotsits', Casey was the son of the local chocolate-box, tabby beauty and a devilishly smooth, feral cat from the neighbouring woods. He was less than 48 hours from birth when I first saw him - charcoal fluff, teeny triangular ears and eyes not yet open. A few weeks later, still under the care of his mother, he and his six chocolate-box, tabby siblings were living in a stable full of fresh straw. Invited in to see him - "Do you still want the black one?" - as I knelt down and reached out a hand the tabbies beat a retreat to the corners while Casey stepped forward and hi-5ed me with a swipe. And so the deal was set. I'd already known it would be.

When I last saw him, he was less than 48 hours from an exhausting, horrible death. Already in acute respiratory distress, he was drowning from the inside due to the fluid in his lungs. His big beautiful heart was worn out after almost 100 cat years of being awesome.

I hadn't wanted him to pass in a vet's surgery after a traumatic car journey but that was how it had to be. It was strangely in tune with the clean, chemical surroundings of his birth.

As Casey left his body, we were staring into each others eyes as I gently held his face and rubbed his ear. And then...there was simply absence. A fine old cat's body lay on the exam table but there was no one inside. His physical form was a beautifully tailored suit left behind by a dapper old gentleman.

It's hard to be sad for a life lived - bar a few hours - in its entirety. Free, happy, healthy, strong and loved beyond words, then helped to peace when the alternative was unconscionable. We should all have such a life. But I am sad. I miss him. I'm sitting at my kitchen table and I should be nudging him off the keyboard and writing with my head tipped to one side so that we can hold our faces together, me inhaling that glorious CaseyCat smell while he purrs and purrs and purrs. The part of my heart that is his will never be the same. It is broken.

That said, I am proud to wear the scars - matched by the more visible one on my nose, gained from foolishly trying to pick up a cat who was running from a big dog and hadn't realised it was me lifting him to safety.

Today I am overwhelmed by the honour given me. The honour of witnessing an entire life, virtually from start to finish. Who gets to do that? My perspective is changed. A whole LIFE. And I was able to love him through all of it. I can't quite comprehend the enormity of that.

Right now, CaseyCat is out of reach. He is held in love and light and he is resting, learning about his new surroundings. But I know for certain that he'll come and see me when he's ready.

We have a deal.

.

.

Chicka meets Idgie and Ninny at their front door.

See the beautiful blue/greens? Chicka likes to perch. They're perchers, this family.

MeiMei - always moving. Little Brown Hen. Sweetie.

The Flag of Chicken Nation from an original design by Evie.

Sweet MeiMei lays blue eggs. This was her first one for us.

Late afternoon. Horses in the field = Nell on a lead. #herder

I look at this and a sob explodes in my heart. Is he not perfect and wild and beautiful still?

I'm struggling a bit with this change over into Spring. No manic, takeovertheworldness this year. I'm feeling depleted and beaten. Weary and full of ennui. I know it will pass.

A lesson came to me this weekend about the strength, power and comfort to be found in the dark. I took myself into it and was told things that have left me back at the beginning. I am the new girl in class for this life lesson. I hesitate to write about it because I have no vocabulary that fits, that does justice.

I'll be honest, the thought of another new lesson, another revelation about life and my place in it fair exhausts me. I feel as if I have no more space in my brain to weave these new threads into who I am. But my intuition knows that they are not new threads, they are the old ones and I am just now remembering them. Feeling them and their pull.

In the past I would have rushed to unravel them. Examine them and proclaim the truth found. Not now. I seem to be in a place where the thing to do is sit and listen. I'm not required to do anything other than that just yet. The outside life is noisy - ironically we've spent the weekend being bombarded by our neighbours' loud music - and hearing this lesson is hard to do but I know it's important and I have time.

Here's the core of it: each life on this planet is part of a whole. Each life is a conduit for the voice of the planet. Each life is a unique song that She sings. When we let go and relax, we open to that song and life can flow.

Do I sound crazy? Sitting here, on a Monday morning, at a desk in a brightly lit office, typing about being the song of Gaia when my life is as chaotic and tense as it is...yes that may appear to be crazy to some.

I prefer to think of it as a line in the first verse.

P.S. Casey is good. He has no idea that he's supposed to be dying. He has this cumbersome swollen leg and he's just skin and fur and bones but he's still Casey, still totally with it, comfortable and happy. Eating for Britain, enjoying the sunshine, getting and giving lots of kisses and headrubs. His song is still rich, melodic and beautiful.

I noticed yesterday morning that his paw, on his dodgy leg, was swollen and thought maybe he'd injured it. I tried for a home visit but they recommended I take him in just in case they needed to give him treatment. The vet said it wasn't infection, it was oedema and that there are three usual causes for that. She started at his heart. Listened. Looked stunned. Stood back and said quietly,"His heart is incredibly arrhythmic." We discussed all the invasive testing they'd do on a younger cat and medication they could give to a younger cat and I said that while making him comfortable with something to take down the swelling was something I'd like (not really possible as diuretics might throw him into renal failure) I would not put him through tests. She agreed with me and pointed out that "in cat years, he's knocking on 100".

She spoke of his heart as being a "timebomb". That he may die in his sleep and one morning I'll find him gone. That he may suffer an embolism that will travel to his heart or brain and he'll go quickly. That the same embolism may end up in his kidneys or liver and cause excrutiating pain in which case he'll need help to go and he'll need it quickly.

At 1AM I came downstairs to cuddle him and we stood and looked out at the moon together. The garden looked magical - the perfect place for a perfect black cat and his human.

I left him to sleep in his normal place in his normal way next to his (not so) normal dogs. I went back to bed and continued to send Reiki and Reiki and Reiki. He's on a Reiki drip and as a level 1 Reiki cat himself, he has good flow.

This morning the swelling is down a little. His breathing is laboured but he doesn't care. He's tucked into his breakfast, he's head-butted us all (with special attention for Jackson), he's miaowed for some cheese and he's gone for a kip.

I know that he will always be with me, regardless of whether or not I can see him. Strangely, the thing that reduces me to tears in a nanosecond is the thought that I will not be able to smell his head - he smells so wonderful.

For now I am focusing on having him prove us wrong. Maybe the leg swelled up because he landed badly attempting a jump that only a much younger cat should attempt. Maybe his arrhythmia has been present for years and he just copes. At this moment a purring cat is climbing into my lap. At this moment nothing can take him from me.

When, hot on Christchurch's exhausted heels, came the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the daily details of my life seemed trivial.

It sounded so trite to talk of human spirit and positivity and I winced at tweets and status updates and blog posts (including mine) about pretty stuff and meals eaten and the ever-expanding mass of How To Be Awesome Because You're Not Now e-courses.

Then I got my head out of my backside.

One thing I've learned from the less easy parts of my history is that we all deal in our own way. We each have our role to play in a dark time and thankfully, some of us are light-carriers; the ones who sensitively and with much love, ease us forward into moments of levity and flight.

Having remembered this, I was overwhelmed with appreciation for a) the light-carriers around me and b) my own ability to carry a torch for life. The little things may not appear to matter some days - and of course there are bigger priorities at times - but they do matter. They are the tiny steps that build a path to better times, to the future. And besides, I may feel sympathy and compassion but how exactly has my life been affected by these disasters? It hasn't. I'm lucky and it's supremely tasteless to wallow in another's pain.

So...to this future...I have another job to add to my portfolio. Back in November I interviewed for, and got, what seemed to be an ideal job for me. They told me that the work probably wouldn't start until Christmas but the job seemed worth it. So here we are in mid-March...nothing. Not even an email to say,"Sorry this has happened." I've chased them a few times and got fluffy, empty responses but I'm not doing it anymore. Let's leave that there shall we?

In the meantime of course I've been Beagling. I replied to an advert in my local paper that offered work with dogs. I found out later that the day I called was the day their owner died unexpectedly. I found out even later what an extraordinary woman she was (read the second part). Her dogs are wonderful and I love them; her husband and son are great people. Working with the Beagles reminded me how I love to be physically busy and how everything is better when there's a dog involved. So this week I emailed a company who do dog-walking, dog day-care, pet-visiting and so on. Their regional organiser came to see me yesterday and despite having CaseyCat do his usual "I will seduce you by head-butting your face again and again and again and then I will sit on your paperwork and dribble" routine, she offered me a job. A job I can do whenever I have time. I can keep my deskjob three days a week, and the Beagling, and do this other stuff on my days off. Apparently demand is high at weekends.

I will get to be outdoors and busy and with dogs and paid and we will get to stay clear of the Poorhouse. I'd toyed with the idea of doing this kind of work for myself a while back but seriously, in this situation the company takes care of all the admin and the booking and the insurance and the terms and conditions and contracts and security and advertising and marketing (although I can be paid to plug us too if I so wish) and I still make pretty much what I'd've been able to charge as a one woman start-up. I figure I can do it through the spring and summer and come the wetter, muddier, colder months, if I lose my enthusiasm I can find something else. But I think I'll probably just keep going if the work is there.

I have paperwork to complete and a client waiting already. Perfect for a terrier lover like me.

This has happened since I decided to back off and let me be me. Stop trying so hard. Just 'let the soft animal of [my] body love what it loves'. In the days since, I have been happier, more creative, more at peace than I have been in a long time.

So that's my little bit of light for today. What's brightening your day?

x

Together we've lived in five homes and seen many other four-legged loved ones come and go*.

He loves Nellie Bean - theirs is a 14 year friendship - and attempts to be nice to Jackson but neither of them are really feeling it. Jackson was half Casey's size when they first met and still gets his bum swatted as he walks past the cat, but he has good 'cat manners' and they live happily together.

In 1998 Casey was attuned to Reiki and has wonderfully healing paws. I also think it has something to do with his fine age.

He will only eat Whiskas sodding supermeat - chicken flavour - despite my attempts to tempt him with better food.

He loves teeny bits of ice cream and cheese and dog food and was once seen to indulge in some chicken tikka masala (not mine).

He loves flowers and sunshine.

He's scared of the chickens.

He is retired but went out to 'work' for many years, leaving at 8.45, coming home for lunch and then disappearing again until 5.

His miaow never really worked and when he's lonely he howls.

He is my Familiar.

This photo was taken a couple of years ago and now he has freckles of white fur all over his face along with the occasional white whisker - très distingué.

He was once a force to be reckoned with and filled the hearts of neighbouring cats with fear (he was a serious badass who would *chase other cats under moving cars) but age and arthritis took him out of the ring a few years back. Thank goodness.

He is a people-lover who likes nothing better than to rub heads again, again and again.

He had lived eight lives by the time he was about three and of course now he is immortal.

Just looking at this photo makes my heart fair burst with love for him.

If you look in the dictionary under 'awesome' you will find his name.

Happy birthday my CaseyCat. Many, many happy returns. I love you.