On Time To Myself

Time is a rare commodity in my life, as it is in the life of most women with children. I always seem to be time poor, rushing from one thing to another, often needlessly. I think that the rythm of my life, or perhaps my personality rhythm is just fast and rushy and I find myself foisting this particular habit onto my wee girl, as I did this morning. The reason for this unreasonable bustling and hassling was because today is my once weekly day off. I look forward to and long for my day off from being a mom, especially recently when we have been having a more challenging time with our beautiful girl. (Let's just say 45 minute screaming tantrums in the middle of the night and an abject refusal to sleep in her own bed (with one of us - never alone) and leave it at that). This combined with the inevitable tiredness and cumbersome physicality that comes with pregnancy, puts a damper on my enthusiasm to do anything and makes me long for some peace. And don't even get me started on the recent and absolutely unbearable heat. Anyway, I digress.

The problem with this much anticipated time to myself is that I can't settle into it in any truly nourishing or satisfying way. When I'm with Beanie, I'm dreaming about all the things I'll do with my bubbit free time. When she's safely in the loving arms of her Nanna, I come home and do buggar all. Mostly I retire to the bedroom, watch movies, read and eat chocolate. I feel the need to achieve more with this short precious time slot and it irks me that I'm too tired and unmotivated to do more with it. I have all of these projects waiting for some attention. I have creative pursuits I want to get into. I have things that I want to at least give some thought to and yet...and yet. I do nothing. Now, one might argue that it's nourishing to do nothing sometimes and I agree. Nothing is good when you are constantly busy and overstretched - which is how mothering often makes me feel - and it's not a bad thing in and of itself. And last week I watched three movies back to back (extravagant I know) while I sewed a friend's daughter a lovely green and white stripey sock monkey (it took me all day to do it - I'm so terribly slow!). It turned out great (I called him 'Minty') and her daughter loves it, but for some reason I feel like I should be achieving more. Today? Nuttin'.

I visit blogs like 'Angry Chicken' and 'Soulemamma' (not to mention a whole host of non professional crafty bloggers) and feel terribly slack. These women have all got children, often more than one, and yet they get stuff done. Stuff that must make them feel productive and creative and useful. And it's not just crafty stuff (because I am somewhat new and therefore handicapped in this area as yet). It's doing things that are good for body and soul like yoga and pilates and meditation. I want to do it. I dream about the benefits and how good I will feel if I do do it and yet, I don't. I slob around in bed getting fatter and more pregnant and feeling more and more tired while a whole host of things I dream about, gather dust on shelves. Why is this? Is this just not the time for doing but for sitting? I know. I know. I shouldn't compare myself to anyone else, but then, where does inspiration come from? I am inspired by these women. I am in awe of their time management skills when I can barely muster up enough energy to eat an icy pole.

And yet, even with the sitting, there is no stillness in it. There is a constant feeling of restlessness in me that makes me irritable and frustrated with everything. I cannot drop into anything even slightly resembling a peaceful state. I would love to go to sleep but can't. At the moment sleep is another rare commodity around here. Our nocturnally wakeful daughter sees to that. Plus bloody pregnancy hormones and the whole PND shennanigans make sleeping difficult. Bah!

And so. I am here. Trying to empty this itchy uncomfortable energy out of my body and onto the page. Seeking answers as always. Seeking, more than anything, comfort. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. I want peace. I want to feel comfortable with where I am at. With who I am. With what is yet to come. And I want to feel like I have a purpose in this life. I know raising a healthy, well adjusted child is a purpose but, I'm sorry to say, this does not fulfill the heart and soul of me. It is, on it's own, not enough. It is a good purpose and a heartfelt one and I am doing my very best to mother her well and find the journey in it all, but I need something that is just for me. Something that gives ME a sense of purpose and development. Something that feeds the creative in me and let's me know that I won't die with my music still in me. Because right now, I am stagnating.

Oh happy, happy post.

Sorry about that.

There are things to be grateful for. I know. I am aware of them too. It's not a question of not being grateful. It's a question of knowing that I am fulfilling my innate potential and I have always felt that I had/have great potential, if I only knew what for. I guess that the journey isn't it.



Well, would you look at that. Time for bed already.

Ode to Winter

Guardian


It's been a while.

Again.

I've been resisting come here to be honest. Mostly because I'm still struggling with the same shit and nothing much has changed. I'm doing my best to address my 'ishews', but it seems to be taking an awfully long time for things to change. In the meantime, I keep making the same mistakes and feeling the same way about making the same mistakes. It's the very definition of madness. I just don't want to go on and on ad nauseum about it all. So there you go.

I am deeply embedded in the Winter and that brings me some solace. I am an Autumn/Winter girl and long for the snow the way a chocoholic longs for an oversized bar of Cadbury's and an uninterrupted half hour to demolish it in. I want to wake up and see the Earth dressed in her full winter splendour, glimmering in her best diamond white. I want to crump endlessly through thick snow. I want to upturn my face during a snowfall and catch the snowflakes on my tongue. I want to fling myself backwards and make snow angels. I want to watch the full moon rise over a vast expanse of ice white, making it so light that you can see clearly even in the darkest hours of the night. I want to bathe in that glowing silence and feel it creep inside and still my soul. That is what I want.

I truly love this time of year. It's beautiful up here in the Hills. It's misty and quiet and so cold you can see your breath. I love pretending it's so cold that I have to wear my beanie and my gloves. I take a perverse sort of joy in the fact that I hate getting out of bed in the mornings because it's frickin' freezing. I hide under my duvet, (yes, duvet - not bloody doona. This baby is 13.5 tog and filled with hollow-fibre fresh from hides of the Hollow-Backed Fibre beasts of Glen Coe. Me mum sent it over ), and nary a toe do I show until the heating has been on a good 20 minutes. Bless my man for having to get up early to go to work. Heh. Heh. Heh. Still, as beautiful as it is here, I'm a Northerner at heart. I like my cold days to lead up to the fun that is Christmas. I miss the brutish English Winters. I do. The crusty frosts, the bare trees, the icy streets, the way the cold sticks its frozen hands up your jumpers and down your jeans and makes your bones hurt. Winter means duffle coats, scarves, hats and gloves that you actually need to wear, because if you don't you could quite possibly get frostbite and lose a digit. All right - perhaps it just feels like that, but that's what I miss! You actually NEED a mulled wine whilst traversing Camden Market. And that hot chocolate is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE to replenish your fat stores lest you not make it through until Spring.

I guess I am just a sparkling Winter Witch searching for a snowy night to glitter in.

Bear Woman

And so, the days slow down and take me with them. I enjoy the early dark. I feel myself quieten slightly, even though the madness of every day life with my child continues unabated. I am at home here in this dark wizened season of quiet contemplation. Like the She Bear in her cave, sleeping, dreaming, waiting for that first touch of Spring. I am in no hurry for it. Even though I can see that life is quickening in the Magnolia trees and buds are appearing, I am not yet ready for rebirth. I want to savour this season. I want to enjoy the fresh mornings and the chill evenings. I want to light my fire, cook stews and soups and bake gingerbread men. I want to mellow, to shed my skin, to grow into myself and replenish before Spring demands more life from me. I am happy here in this frozen moment and want nothing more. Except snow.

Paradoxically, out of this quietness rises my constant restlessness. I guess the slowing down stimulates it to pop up to get my attention. It is always accompanied by a frustrating need to be elsewhere. Possibly because I feel overwhelmed with my struggles here. ut I do realise that you don't leave your troubles behind when you move and I definitely have to take mine with me - she's only two! The Gypsy is alive and well and ready to hitch her caravan to the next wandering star. I've always had a bit of a yen to go and live in another country for a year or two. Maine, Canada, Italy, France - just to shake things up a bit. I've been in Australia for five years now and, though I love our house and I've made such good friends here, I'm looking for something that I haven't found here. Right now I can't imagine living out my days here. Some part of me is not fed here and I don't know if it ever will be. I miss the green rolling hills of home but I know, from experience, that when I am back, it's just the same as it was before I left. A bit grim unless you live somewhere beautiful. I have lived in many beautiful places because of this fact. No point in being there otherwise. My Soul needs beauty and the green of the earth and the sun and the sea and it needs them like my body needs oxygen and water. So the restlessness rises until it rattles my teeth and I feel ruffled and unsure of myself. Then I pick at the pieces of my life until they develop sores and I feel even more unsettled. The trouble is, of course, that whereever I go, there I am. I will be with me no matter what country I spend time in, no matter what house I live in, no matter what occupies my days. Whatever it is that sets this restless spirit a-wandering, is inside of me. So what use is there in going elsewhere? It will simply be 'same, same but different' won't it? I'll still be 'angry woman in charge of child' won't I, because that's who I apparently am. At least right now. What is that saying? If that for which you search you do not find within yourself, you will never find it without. The trouble is of course is in finding it within. It often feels as if I have looked forever and am still not any closer to the truth of who I am. I mean just how deeply can this stuff be buried? Why, when you are looking for something, does it appear to hide under ever-deeper layers of yourself? That's just plain rude. And so, I flit from one thing to another. Never satisfied. Never quite there. Restless even in this cocoon of winter. I just wish I knew what my seed was trying to grow into. Perhaps then I could help it poke up through the frozen soil of my heart and germinate. *Sigh*


Sleeping

And then there is my 40th. I want to do something really nourishing and spiritually significant for this transition. My other transitional birthdays have been dreadful. To give you some idea - my 18th was spent getting so appallingly drunk (because my best friend now hated me and her sister was sleeping with my boyfriend in the flat we all shared) that I fell into a glass table. My 21st was spent at a Driving School dinner with a whole bunch of complete strangers while a man in chequered golfing slacks and a lemon v-neck serenaded me with songs I was too young to remember. My 30th was spent with another bunch of complete strangers at some weird Asian food/karaoke bar. I drank too much and sang, rather appropriately, 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.' I had just broken up with my partner of 9 years, moved to another city and started drama school. I went home and did exactly that.

So, you can see why I would want to make this one a bit special. And not as in 'special needs'.

Trouble is, I simply don't know what to do with myself. I have harbored secret desires to go away to Hawaii for 8 days to do a Tantric Teachers course but it is simply too extravagant an expense right now and I feel guilty enough for not contributing financially to our lives. I was originally going to have a party but that feels flat now and I can't come up with a theme for it anyway. I have been looking at a Writers Retreat in Western Australia for a week and that feels pretty good but I'm not sure. Again, I flit from one thing to another, looking for an answer to what ails me. I want this transition to mark a change for the better, financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Obviously, I'm not looking for one event to do all of that for me. I simply want it to be something nourishing that will give me time and space to work out what I want to d and how to go about it. I want it to be memorable and beautiful and I want it to feed my hungry soul in some small way. I want it to give me enough juice to replenish my sorely depleted stores because I just don't have anything else to give right now. And I resent what I am already giving.

And so, before I start walking in those oh so familiar circles again, I'll leave you. If you have any ideas on what a creative gal might do for her 40th, then do please chime in. I'm all ears. Well, not literally. That would be gross and impractical. I will be having a sort of 'coming of age' celebration in the red tent of which I am the fond but slightly over it, owner. So that will kind of be taken care of. I want ideas out of the box really.

Oh and if anyone has a really good idea of a birthday surprise for my hubby who turns 33 in two weeks. That would be good also. I paid for him to have a hang-gliding lesson last year. I was hoping that there was some kind of weekend retreat for screenwriters here but alas no. So again, I ask for ideas out of the box. Something fun and nourishing for him that's a little bit interesting or different. I'm a bit stumped.

Winter Caravan

*Illustrations by Jackie Morris

The Stillness We Seek

I was lying alone on the huge sofa in the living room of my boss. He was overseas doing what Shamans do and I was taking care of his house and looking after the business. I had built a fire in the huge hearth and, as he had no television, had been listening to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The CD had finished some time before and night had fallen but I had been too busy staring at the theatre of fire to notice. It was so quiet. I became gradually, dreamily aware of a strange sensation growing within me. It was unfamiliar and yet not entirely so. I felt calm in a way that I had never experienced before and yet I knew this place or at least, I did once. This vast stillness expanded inside me until I knew only peace, only safety. I felt as if I were lying below the surface of a fast moving river. The surface of the river was covered in dead trees, leaves, debris from the banks and fields around it and I had a strong sense of knowing that life was like that debris. Lifes troubles, struggles and woes were like the flotsam that floats on the surface of the water but our truest nature, our deepest self was like the current that moves strongly but slowly beneath the surface. I knew in that moment that no matter what my life held, no matter what unhappiness I felt pulling at my heart and mind, if I could just remember this feeling of being held safely in the strong, slow pull of the deeper current of my life, all would be well. It was as if a voice had spoken to me from deep within that silence and stillness and said simply,'This is truth. Remember it.'

I'll never forget that experience because it is a place I long to revisit. I had never before and, even more sadly, have never since, felt that peace, that simple reassuring stillness in which I lay that night. Maybe I have simply never been that still since. I know that I am someone who finds it hard to be quiet, I move almost as ceaselessly as I talk. Even when my body is still, my mind is burrowing into ideas, issues and problems like a fat childs hand into a candy jar. I never really stop. Hell, most of the time I never even slow down. I throw myself into bed at night like a big man might throw a dodgy hitcher out of his still moving car. There is no stillness apparent. Yet I know it's there - not even out of reach just out of mind. And, even more frustratingly, I can often feel it hovering on the edge of my consciousness whispering to me, 'Slow down, be present and feel the hard edges of life melting away. Just flow on down stream.'

What was most magical of all about that night was the ease in which I found myself there. There were no months spent meditating, no soul-grating suffering in order to achieve a place of mindfulness which comes before peace, no tearing apart of the fabric of my reality in order that I might find 'truth'. There had been nothing out of the ordinary happening in my busy life except coming to terms with the ending of yet another unsuitable relationship and my tussling with the feelings that accompanied that. If anything, that should have really kept me way off centre and far away from any experience of peace. And yet, doesn't Rumi talk about that 'broken open place' within us and how through simply being with that experience, that rawness of spirit, we might reach God. Certainly, I have learned more about myself when I have been split apart by life, alone and sorrowing into the darkness, than I have by attending any number of workshops designed to enlighten me. All I know is that despite myself, my never ending mind chatter, my ceaselss, restless spirit - I attained a state of grace that night and felt safer in my life than I had ever felt before. There was a feeling of inexplicable happiness that accompanied it all. Not the jump for joy, wave fist in the air type of happiness like one might find on a tv commercial for tampons, it was like the smile of the Mona Lisa - mysterious, yet no less heart expanding.

I think it must have been listening to Oriah Mountain Dreamers 'The Call' again that brought it to mind again. The idea of surrendering oneself to the stillness and the silence at the heart of life. Of actively listening but without trying. Of becoming with all that 'trying' to change. In this place of grace I am loved and accepted, exactly as I am, with all my armour on, with my head a mess and my heart jagged and sore. I didn't have to be anything other than myself and I got there by being just that - me. The challenge is in remembering to be present IN the present. In remembering that 'doing' often prevents us from 'being' and in following the thread of our breath, in and out, until we find ourselves lost in the beauty of an open fire and, ultimately, found again.


This aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives.
This freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth.
To be one with the truth for just a moment,
Is worth more than the world and life itself.
Rumi

May stillness fall softly into your hearts like snow and stay there long enough for you to make snow angels.