shapeshifting

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.

After confessing my new year overwhelm I felt like a bit of a loser. I know, the point was not to feel that way but still, I did. And it was a good thing. It made me step back and see that I've really been sliding into the gloom since the snow melted and I lost the big buzz I was undoubtedly getting from the bouncing light.

I have a serotonin issue. I know this and should be prepared. Migraine, PMS, seasonal depression..all serotonin stuff. I take a daily dose of an SSRI to help with that but at this time of year I need to either up my dose (and I don't want to do that) or take other action. So I decided, I may not be able to plan for a year but I can certainly come up with some ideas for the next month.

• Step one was to procure a lightbox. I didn't plan ahead and get one in October but that doesn't mean that the next two months have to be utter misery. Lightbox rental is an awesome option and hopefully mine will arrive tomorrow. Not as pretty or as natural as snow, but hey, way more practical.
• Step two is already underway and I'm doing daily Reiki meditations and self-treatment.
• Step three involves a hoop and finding somewhere to practice indoors because it's bloody cold outside. In our cottage the rooms are v. tiny and the ceilings v. low but I think I can do some basic hooping in the kitchen.
• Step four is making use of guided meditations. I have this book by Steven Farmer and really like the first two on the CD. For Reiki people, the Reiki Evolution meditations are very good.
• Step five is to cut back on the coffee. I'm going to try to limit my intake to two a day and the rest of the time I'll stick to redbush or - an old favourite from years back - white tea.

So nothing earth-shaking but strong, positive things that will help me move forward. I also really need to get this back on track because a barrel of personal issues and, dur, the lack of light in which to run around here in the Winter (we don't do streetlights out here) either before or after work, meant I completely missed my target. I was so very grateful for the donations made towards my fundraising for BCDH and I'm ready to gently get back to meeting my challenge.

I think that will do for now. I have something quite exciting lined up for March but I know anything could happen between then and now so I'll keep it under my woolly hat.

x

I should be outside and I will be outside but before I go, some things I want to spill onto the page:

• The thing I demonstrated in the vlog is for scattered energies. When you're overwhelmed and can't get a straight thought out of your head. Do it 2-3 times a day and feel everything click back into order. Seriously. I have another for you too. Which means..uh oh...another vlog on the horizon. I might brush my hair this time.
• I fought a migraine for three days and won. Sleep, sleep and more sleep.
• I dug out an old sketch pad and drew. And didn't judge the results.
• I took my camera out at 10pm with my dogs and took some beautiful photographs.
• I picked up my hoop last night for the first time in a very long week. I needed to feel good and it never fails me. I side-stepped (or rather didn't, heh, hooping joke) the walking spin and tried something else. I span the hoop on my hand above my head (Wild West) and then I dropped it down over my shoulders onto my waist and kept it going (Float Down). I KNOW! I did the same from an overhead spin on both hands at once and it felt amazing. I also learned how to spin the hoop on my neck. This morning I ache like f*** and have bruises all over my hands and can't wait to get started again. Except this time I'll try not to bash myself on the nose with a 44" hoop.
• At some point yesterday I was thinking about wildness and how when I was younger my wild side was in her element when she was leaping about to very loud music. Namely the music that she felt in her bones. Namely the guitar sound of The Edge. And then overnight the Universe did something amazing and Tor tweeted about it and I cried happy tears and it was awesome.
• And Tracie mentioned she'd been listening to Black Prairie and I loved them too. Perfect summer night listening (apart from Edge and Muse, natch).
• Also, I read this:

Wolves never look more funny than when they have lost the scent and scrabble to find it again: they hop in the air; they run in circles; they plow up the ground with their noses; they scratch the ground, then run ahead, then back, then stand stock-still. They look as if they have lost their wits. But what they are really doing is picking up all the clues they can find. They're biting them down out of the air, they're filling up their lungs with the smells at ground level and at shoulder level, they are tasting the air to see who has passed through it recently, their ears rotating like satellite dishes, picking up transmissions from afar. Once they have all these clues in one place, they know what to do next.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This has been my weekend. I hope yours is/was as fulfilling.

Let's keep it short and to the point(s) shall we?

• Susannah has her new look website and blog launched today and it's very lovely indeed.
• The planned meet-up for my blogging girlies and me didn't happen as two of us were sick and one was swamped in post-tipi adjustment.
• Evie spent the day with Auntie P anyway while I lay on the sofa, took pills, watched the amazing and hypnotic Fur, then managed to pack a lot of pictures, photos and ornaments thus rendering our house officially 'temporary'.
• The BNP still make me sick.
• I decided to keep a separate record of my return to reiki practice (see the link off the navigation bar) because some of you may find it to be a bit too woowoo for your tastes (even though I don't think it's woowoo at all) and I like having a little bloggy corner to retreat to.
• This is not acceptable.

So far it's Monday all over. Bring on 9pm and the wonderfully distracting and third series-winning Ashes to Ashes.

Helping my brother to move home over the last couple of days dragged me out of denial and into a state of er...deeper denial. But it's a new month and June is when I start packing. We're moving This Month.

Also, Evie's twin and her mum are arriving in a little over three weeks. My heart flips when I think of this and then scurries back into thoughts of packing and where to hang pictures. Oh yes, I can spin several denial plates at once.

Also, Charlie's job is seriously under threat. I wonder if the umbrella plant would like to live in the bathroom or if it may be too dark?

Also, I thought I knew about migraine and then Brambly put this great podcast onto Facebook and opened my eyes even further.  So wait...migraineurs have some over-sensitive pathways in their brains? And this dysfunction, among others,  is present even between attacks? So, a week or so ago when I had thoughts that I was maybe a bit crazy in a 'my brain isn't functioning properly' way, I was probably right? Well halleluja.

(c) Mark Moledor

One of the contributors talked about learning to respect migraine and I realised that I do not. Nor have I liked it. I have held it at arm's length and considered it an intrusion and an inconvenience and a sickness and something to be (if possible) ignored and trampled over in the name of  'carrying on'.

I listened to this podcast lying in bed with a sleepless 3 year old lying on me. Forced to be still and not be distracted. I thought maybe I should learn to embrace my migraine. Not just respect but like them. I once wrote a blog post called 'Migraine is not my friend'. Maybe it should be. Maybe I need to stop thinking of it as somehow separate from me. It is not a parasite. It is not 'it'. Maybe it is not a dysfunction but rather just the way my brain functions.

I have migraine.

I am a migraineur.

Crikey, I already have this huuuuge list of things that will magically begin to happen once we've moved. See: exercise, better diet, more time outside, growing vegetables, decluttering, simplifying life...and that's just the start. Now I'm adding in migraine lurve? Which will mean some major changes all on its own?

STOP.

And at this point my quiet mind, tucked away in the back of my brain away from the traffic, pollution and bright lights, reminded me of Eckhart Tolle. Reminded me that this endless chatter is largely just my ego and my ego is really just another 3 year old for me to deal with. Only he said it better.

And breathe.

It's Monday. My child is happy. The future is bright. The sun is shining. I have work to do. I am a privileged woman with more choices than I know how to make.

And I am grateful.