Broken

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Island Blog – The Pretend and the Real

There’s a thing after a big occasion. It’s a bit of a down in the boots. The build up to something takes frickin ages, months of thought and prep and unholy panic. And, then, the day comes, as it always will, skidding in too fast, knocking those who aren’t prepared right over on their butts. We get through it, love it, hate bits of it, and then the night comes like a full stop to all that thought and prep and unholy panic. And, even though it is done for another whole year, there’s a wistfulness squirking around because for one day everyone got together, rising above the ordinary, the boredinary, the slough and chuff and scuff and dribble of the next bit, which is much longer than a bit. It’s going to work again, to school again, to facing the weather again without the lift of pretence. It’s like stepping out of fairyland and back out onto the street, wetter and colder than before.

I get it.

Oh, I know I am in Africa and Christmas was super hot and sunny, no need for a merry fire in the grate, no need for candles, which, by the way, would have melted into puddles by 8 am, but I still need to come home to the ‘street’. It wonders me, this whole shift, not just mine across timelines and a gazillion air miles, but for everyone else. Life will never stay still. Such a damn nuisance, that. But, it is how it is, and the slump after two days of festivities will affect all of us, no matter whom nor where we are. We love to celebrate, to have fun, to lift ourselves up and away from the pressures of our lives, to pretend, just for a short time. I believe this to be a strength, because I have met many, so many, who say MEH to celebratory felicitations. That saddens me. You, my friends, have lost the child in you, and that is a massive loss. We love to play, however stiff and starchy we may become, through pressures, hurts, wounds, damage and disappointments. Good news is that the child still lives in there, somewhere. And, the most playful people I have ever met, have always been the most broken.

We make resolutions. We break them. We set them too high, way above the beyond of what we can reach just now. We want to change, or we would never set these damn things, these Don’ts and Do’s that may never be us. I just decide to be more playful, to see the fun or to initiate it. To laugh more, to share smiles, to say hallo to anyone, everyone. To bring out the little girl I once was, before the pretend became a conscious decision, when it just happened because it was real.

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Island Blog – Lightening and Just Me, Just You

Same sound as Lightning, but with an E. It seems that just one E makes all the difference to the meaning of a word, spoken, that is. Written, all is clear. How confusing is that! When we write a text message, this can mean that, and ‘that’ can blow your pants off. We must be so careful with words. One message, meant to explain an inner drift, shift, split or maybe just inviting understanding, can send someone into a swirl of inner doubt, into childhood, when who I thought I was, wasn’t, pretty much. It thinks me.

I play with words, with wordage all the time, but I am canny, cautious, and still make mistakes. We all do, and, as we observe A. N Other living out their lives as best they bloody well can, who feel the ok enough to tell us about what they did with this, or him, or them, we might think before we text back, if we feel a judgement coming on. That damn judgement, that speaks in the voice of a long gone parent, grandparent, teacher. That is our own thing, and thus irrelevant. I always want to bring in an elephant here, I can see it, the mahout, turbaned and brown as a nut, and grinning through betel teeth, the elephant pondorous and on a steady trajectory, but that, also is irrelevant, for now.

How we did this or that, demands questioning. So many do not, question, and so the pattern continues patterning. Until someone stops it, just like that, in a lightning strike. Where does that intelligence come from, being as it is a newborn in their lives, in any life? It seems that, if we are open for change, asking for it because we are tired, so tired of living in a loop, meeting ourselves over and over and with no change in sight, and someone will just shout. SHOUT. And, as in a lightning strike, something falls.

Today I went to visit dear friends and we talked (or I did) for ages over tea and a beautiful dog and a view across forever, had the mist allowed. There was a lightening. I have known these two for a very long time, met them here and there, now and again, and yet, today, I was there with them, in their home and I felt so connected, so happy. We talked of dementia, of caring, of the village, of our beloved island, of bees, of woods, of trees, of the times we remembered dancing in the village hall. A lightening. I drove home in a different set of thinks.

Although I have always known my place is here, my people are here, over past times, I have felt isolated, of my own doing. I look for both lightning and lightening, but it was dark. I made it dark. And, in the dark, for all its shadows and demons, an essential part of the damn process of recovery is birthing from any number of wotwots. Not one single one of us would choose to go through it again, but we have learned to believe than light exists, and more, that we are needed in that light show. Just on our own, limping, awkward, with our own broken hearts, just us, just me, just you.

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Island Blog – You Are the One

So here we are, again, in a new year, a new thing, a thing we might find weighty in our hands. Look at those hands, the ones that loved, protected, damaged, and controlled. They are your hands. They have immense power and can hold the weight, if lift is our thinking, and it has to be. Those hands need to shift their thinks.  The sink is all around us, the cruelty, the ignorance of so so many others. Recently, I was in the city, for cancer wotwot, and saw the pavement people, everyone walking by, sharp, fast, refusing. I realised that, since Covid, nobody has cash, but that is not ok. So not ok.

I have heard until, until I am fed up of hearing the voices of the ‘rich’, whispering that, if you give, your gift will be spent on drink or drugs. Do not listen. I don’t. And here’s the thing. Nobody on the street is warm, welcomed, fed, cosy. Not one. They didn’t come here from optimum choice, but from a place of loss, one way or another. Giving is what we must do if this broken world is ever to heal. 

Wherever you grow, bloom strong and petal wide, don’t hide, but spread your colour, blue, is it, red, or butter yellow, white? Be right with it, your colour, for it is yours alone. Hold your own. Your ground may be rocky, may be rich and soft, a mountainside, a beach path, garden, river bank. Give thanks for wherever you find yourself. Hold out your petals, let them fly. Reach and reach up to the light, breathe right. Your breath is life, in joy or strife, breathe on, breathe life. In shade or sun, you are the one. Make a difference. Have fun and look around you. Who grows beside or over there? Another soul with hopeful roots, just pushing through in fear, perhaps, a delicate heart, easily broken by careless feet or the lash of punishing rain, only to die. in silence. 

Cry out in anger, but stand your ground, for those who stand will remember those who fall. All of them. And share your light, your bright, your coloured heart, beating yet on the battlefield. Don’t yield, but glow with life, and, tender-fingered, lift a drooping head. Warm a faltering body, say I Am Here, and I will not leave you empty.  Share your mystery, your very soul. Hide nothing, let nothing cold you, hold you fixed in ice.

Notice every season, reason, but not too much. Touch another, lift, don’t drift, for Time moves on, fleeing like a thief in disbelief. Hold each blooming moment, roots in the earth, head in the sky. Let pain go by, toss it to the wind, the changeling wind with stories on her back. Remember this, don’t miss the chance to lead another to the dance. Share your light. Be curious, like Alice, and leave your smile among the trees for bees to honey up and sweeten. Reflect the sun, the rain, the moon, and do it soon, because winter always comes, and for some it never leaves. 

No matter your ground, make it better for your being there. Nourishing, flourishing, sharing, caring, thankfully placed. Just where you need to be. Let laughter fill your throat and let it fly out like birds or butterflies to lift a flagging soul up and out of sadness, to spin the bitter into glitter. A million rainbows lie within you, let them show, because you know that, no matter the chatter, you have the power to choose or lose out. Here. Today. Right this minute. Tick. Tick, Tock, they say, don’t look away, but stay, because this ground needs you and there are seedlings at your feet. 

In shade or sun, You Are the One.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.

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Island Blog – Ripples, Dementia and New Land

Two and a half years after ten as a dementia carer, the ripples continue, spreading out as if no land is there to stop them. Where is the land, the beginning, the stop point and also the start? Who knows when, after all those years of confusion, of accommodating the one with dementia, of twisting into knots in order to make things as okay as possible, landfall is an option? And, what land will be there? A strange new one, one that will require the carer to find her or himself? Yes a strange land because this carer is forever changed. Just untangling the knots will take years and then it is not so much a finding of who I was before, but more of building a new me, one I don’t know at all, not yet.

I have just listened to ‘Travellers to Unimaginable Lands’ by Dasha Kiper on Radio 4, a series on dementia and caring and so intelligently put together as to explain the dichotomies, confusion, anger, demands and lack of understanding as to affirm exactly what I and other carers go through. The one with dementia becomes more of what he or she always was. Correct. People ask ‘How is he, or she?’ until we, the carer, grow weary of answering whilst feeling even more lonely and isolated than before. Rarely, oh rarely, does anyone ask ‘How are you?’ Why is this? Because, I believe, there is far too much still unknown about dementia and the devastating and long term damage to the carer; because a long term sickness is something to be compartmentalised, understood and run away from. It is messy and uncomfortable and what we want to see is a bright, capable, carer who doesn’t complain or fall apart. We want to hear about the good moments, hold onto them and even, in our kindly ignorance, encourage the falling apart carer to focus on those times. We don’t want to know about the details, the nightly horrors, the extreme lack of sleep, the anger, frustration and fear. We cannot process it, we just cannot. Please, their eyes tell me, keep this light. I’m just here to bring honey, flowers, a card perhaps have a quick coffee but I must get back to my own life. And there you have it, there I had it, there all carers have it. And somehow we cannot let our feelings out for fear of seeming weak and failing. So, we don’t.

The series, however, investigates and illuminates the feelings a carer will feel. Sometimes, the longing for it to end, swiftly followed by a tsunami of guilt. Sometimes the desire to hurt, to punish, to argue and shout. Sometimes the wonderful warmth that appears as randomly as the accusations, of an old companionship, a shared long-term agreement on what music we like, what stories, what memories we share. A glimpse of what was, the longing for it to stay a while, fingers clutching as it recedes or snaps shut like teeth, gone, forgotten, denied. The ensuing sadness, the rise from a chair I only just sat down in, my smile eager, say more, say a bit more, yes we did do that, share that, enjoy that together, then a lonely wander into another room as he clamped on his headphones and goes back to Casualty, something he would have mocked when he was the man I knew.

I am thankful for this series because although it was tough in parts to re-live those long years, its existence means that carers, unpaid or paid, just might find the support they need. Dementia is cruel and endless, or so it seems. As the person with dementia moves into unimaginable lands, they don’t go in a linear way, one we can understand and process. There are no uniform stages, nothing we can expect nor prepare for. As the sufferer’s unreality settles as reality in a damaged brain, there is no conversational flow, no logic, nothing to grasp onto. A carer lives reactively and that is upsetting, confusing and exhausting. Nothing agreed ten minutes ago is a truth, because a new ‘truth’ may appear, changing everything. And so the carer must accept this or fall apart. There is no opportunity for discussion, no way to remind a damaged brain of what was agreed, a trip to the shop, a cafe, a doctor’s appointment, because in his mind, that decision is my delusion, something I made up and never communicated to him. You always were flighty, fey, in another world!, making things up. A derisive snort, a turn away, and I must accept this without recourse to my own frustration, without expelling a fruitless vomit that would only make a mess, one I would have to clear up. To disagree is to bring on a 8 part series of accusations, rejections, sulks and criticisms, and all carefully, or so it seems, targeting my most vulnerable inner weaknesses, and poking at them all. He doesn’t mean to hurt, I tell myself, whilst I try to calm the feelings of rejection and the sting of dismissal, whilst I recall he could often behave this way as a healthy man. And, as he lights up like a Christmas tree when someone he is fond of comes to chat with him, the loneliness is crippling.

So, I say, Hallelujah to this new understanding of how a carer feels. Hallelujah to the freedom that understanding and exposure brings. To shine a light on we who care or cared just might nurture us as we work through the chaos and the years, because it would mean we no longer need to pretend everything is marvellous when in truth our whole world is crumbling. It also might mean that we can find new land once the story comes to an end knowing we gave our very best, our falls from grace understandable, our sacrifice a gift, not only to the sufferer, but to ourselves. And, when we are no longer all at sea, we can swim with the ripples until a new land makes them stop. We can climb out, ragged and torn whilst knowing who we just might be able to become, curious, broken and beautifully lost. I got through it, I did, and, both despite and because of the memories, I am proud of that.

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Island Blog – If This Life

I love audio books. While I sew or cook or fanny about, I listen to those who know a deal more than I. If I run water for washing dishes or flip the electric kettle on to boil I must needs whack up the volume or hold my phone to my ear, but you could never say I am not committed. Is that a double negative…….?

My books could be scientific, factual or fictional fairyness. I love love both. This began during covid and isolation even before himself left the planet. I love to read an actual book and do so at night, pre sleep, but the thing about an audio book, if I like the reader voice, is that my brain absorbs it in a different way. I couldn’t tell you in what way different, but I am aware that the information I can take in from a very factual book is something I could never cope with as an eye reader.

So and thus, I can listen to some tricky stuff on audible. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate. Why Love Matters, Sue Gerhardt. Eish I could never read than stuff in a book, stuff I want to hear because even at my age, I am curious and keen to understand and to learn. The former book is on addictions stemming from childhood abuse or neglect. The latter on the effect of parenting on children and its subsequent manifestations. Yes, I know, tough, and most of us won’t go there because we can’t face the guilt, but what I am discovering is not what I feared. We do the best we can, clueless like every new parents are, as they always have been and always will be. I have felt sharp heart bites and warm yesses. I have remembered being present yet absent (aka distracted with guests, husband etc) and that hurts, but I hope I gave the warmth and love and attention to my children at the times they most needed that from me. We mothers are so quick to take the blame, the blood red tsunami of it, upon ourselves. I know this.

With my own mother and many of her generation, there was no desire to look back over the child rearing years. What happened happened. What was done or said was done or said, belonging only in the past and the past is dead as a dodo. My own generation initiated a change in that thinking, deciding to do things differently because we knew we were damaged by a Victorian-ish upbringing to some degree or another, and wanted our own children to feel more obviously loved. Although that old nonsense of ‘this will hurt but it’s for your own good’ still came into my head when some sort of retribution for a crime committed was required, I remember thinking long and hard about a kinder way of getting the same message across. I wasn’t always so clever. Kids drive you bonkers and always at times when your own chips are down. I lashed out in anger at times and the regret and shame consumed me. I learned to say I Am Sorry, something my parents never said. Keeping that regret and shame quiet is very damaging to the self, to both selves in fact.

Listening to these audio books and more besides is not doing me any harm at all. When I relate to something the writer says, something either painful in recollection or uplifting and empathetic, I have the choice to take any action required. The intelligence, backed up by scientific research on children (and I was one once) helps me to smile at myself as a faulty mother. It also kinds me towards my own self as a little girl who believed in fairies and happiness and who was astonished and hurt to discover that her own mother was also faulty and broken. I now know why but I didn’t back then. She, who never got from her own mother the love she needed, did not have the benefit of information available to me and to future mothers and fathers. Knowing this as I do now, affords me the chance to empathise with her, to understand why she was who she was and to love and appreciate her backwards.

It does take courage and the willingness to be vulnerable to read or listen to such information, but if this life is the only one I get, then I want to get to the end of it knowing I have understood myself to a high degree, to have made amends wherever I could and to have learned that we are all broken humans with a huge capacity for loving and understanding others and ourselves. And it is never too late to learn something new.

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Island Blog – Three Keys in My Hand

I have one, no, two meetings this week. One on Tuesday, a zoom with a writer friend, and one on Wednesday with my counsellor. In my opinion, many of us need to find someone just a bit more above things than we are. I have always found that a hand reaching down is a huge help, despite the initial shame I felt at asking for it. And there’s a thing. As this lockdown keeps us stuck/imprisoned/safe, there are many who are finding it super tough, whose mental stability is being seriously challenged. I get it. As one who has always been mentally turmoiled to a degree, and who sees that last week was Mental Health Week (as if one week would ever be enough) I am more than happy that the world is getting it, or, at least, the slowmovingrulemakers are thinking wider, perhaps. In my life I have met many who could flower but cannot flower within the confines of stigmatism and of what is socially acceptable. Hence the hidden pain. And the most destructive judge of all lives within. We are all flawed, broken to varying degrees, doing out very best to fit in without sticking out in ways that might draw attention to our faults.

Looking out upon the natural world is key, but we must also look within. As I have been a student of self-improvement for decades, I have absorbed a million positive phrases and still found myself not quite at home with myself, no matter how bright the epiphany. However, I am finally beginning to understand that time holds the second key and time requires my patience, my faith in the strength of a human spirit and my trust that the goodly gods are working for me, and not against me. When the world demands something I do not want or cannot give, I need this trust. If we were all meant to be the same we would be mere automatons. We are far from that, thank goodness. Although we are currently required to live as such, it will pass eventually. Confined to home, required to wash our hands a hundred times a day, separated from loved ones, stuck in the wrong country and so on, we have this time to reflect on who we are and on the life we want for ourselves once we are freed from the chains that bind. Think on that.

I watch the young birds fly through my little garden, feathers awry, all ruffly spot and unsure of where to land. New life learning old ways. For them, survival is the teacher. They cannot suddenly square up to a cat or challenge the dive of a sparrow hawk without almost certainly turning into lunch. But we can. If we consider our predators, our demons, our self-doubts and our fears to be in control of our lives, then they will be. Noticing every thought and questioning it is key number three. Even if I am uncertain of my path, my voice, the strength, or lack of it, of my own human spirit, if I decide to turn this thing around, to turn myself around, then wonderful things begin to happen. I don’t need to run from my doubts and fears, my thoughts and worries, I just need to about face and question. Do I really think this or is this thought thinking me? Then, if it isn’t useful, I say cheerio. I don’t need you. Every time I do this, I empower my true self. I am not controlled by my thoughts. I control them, and in this uncertain life when a single day can throw a tidal wave over my carefully constructed sandcastle, my thoughts are the only thing I can control.

I know what it is like to be in the darkness of depression. I know how overwhelming life can be. I also know how to rebuild my spirit and I am thankful for all my guides over the years. Not everyone finds their way. Some souls are lost. Most of our illnesses come from inner stress, manifesting in the physical body, sometimes destroying it. This time of reflection is a gift to us all, not only to make new ways to live for ourselves by taking a long hard look at our core values, our life choices, our work and our families, but to look and to see others who may need our clear and open friendship. Those, whom we might have dismissed before as misery guts or gloomy or bad tempered. Nobody wants to live like that. Nobody. But everybody needs somebody to lift them at some point in their lives.

There are less of us still breathing in the world today. This virus is greedy and it isn’t done with us yet. Let us make sure that the ones who will emerge back into the light of ‘normality’ even more broken, even more damaged and even more fearful of their futures, do not have to walk alone.

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Island Blog 113 Secrets and Mindfulness (plus donkey)

2013-11-22 16.18.16

 

 

 

Inside us lies a world of secrets.  Secrets we share with one or two trusted people, and secrets we never ever tell a soul.  There are secrets we won’t even share with ourselves.

I am learning the wonders of Mindfulness.  What it asks of me, this Mindfulness thingy is that I pause long enough to notice my responses to any stimulation, any event, any person, any words aimed at me, and so on.  For instance, if you say to me something like ‘ I wish you wouldn’t always kick my donkey when you walk through his field’ I might respond angrily, especially if it wisnae me in the first place, but just some woman who bought the same red jacket last Autumn. If I did kick the donkey, then I might respond defensively, maintaining that the donkey is bad tempered and sly, watching out for me crossing his field and making sure he whaps my shin when you’re not looking.

In both these cases I am holding a secret.  The first one will be that I think you are a stupid smug donkey-owner and I never liked, nor trusted you one tiny bit.  You are a gossip and probably spreading no end of rumours about me down at the shop.  I don’t tell you this, of course but hold this secret within my soft interior, a secret that rises like bile in my gut every time I have the misfortune to meet you in the road.

The second one could be that I do sneak about kicking donkeys, even if they do mind their own business and are astonished any time my boot makes contact.

I appreciate that the above example is a tad silly, and I would also like to state, for the record, that I have never kicked anyone’s donkey, even though anyone’s donkey most certainly has kicked me. But that’s another blog, another time.

My thoughts, my private thoughts are my secrets.  I like them, but there are times when I must allow them to fly away because holding onto them will harm me.

Anger and resentment for example will make me ill, or, at the very least, bring me lower back pain and plooks. Oh I know, absolutely know that people who say anger is a bad thing have never been angry enough.  Fear of anger, my own or just anger in general gives the powerful emotion very bad press, and quite wrongly so. Anger is an energy, creating adrenalin and heightened strength, and, mindfully employed, can achieve remarkable good things – lashing out with sharpened weaponry not being one of them. If I can accept and be thankful for this surge of anger and think about why I felt it so strongly when all you did was break my favourite coffee mug, I will eventually be able to understand the root of it all.  In the current climate, someone will probably tell me it’s all my mother’s fault, but I must look beyond her.  Although she is a convenient soft landing for the punch of blame, she won’t be the whole reason I can promise you that.

My over response to unkind words, or of being abandoned, rejected, accused or blamed will have its roots in childhood. Could be at home, at school, anywhere in the playround of youth.  Often, the lineage of those roots is untraceable back to source.  So what?  Mindfully I can accept this and move on, but not move on and hold onto them.  I must move on and let them go.  I don’t need them, they weigh me down and make me secretly kick donkeys and over-react to broken mugs.  I know I don’t like unkind words, but I also know that you may not have meant them they way I heard them.  I know I don’t like the accusing gossip in you, but you very probably don’t like much in me either and, as we don’t have to meet, let’s not. I don’t want to be rejected or dissed or ignored or abandoned, but life is going to throw all of them my way at some point.  If I am mindful of my response to any of these as they cross my path, I am going to hear my own secrets.  Instead of pretending that it is all ok and that I don’t hurt at all, I will be able to honestly allow anger to rise against the pain and deal with it all by myself.  I won’t need to snap at anyone, or kick a donkey.  Then, when you break my replacement, replacement, replacement coffee cup I will be able to say (and mean it) that it doesn’t matter one jot because it’s only a cup, and can be replaced (providing there are any left), whereas you are irreplaceable.

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Island Blog 95 Broken Circle

broken circle

 

 

What is the shape of disappointment? I know how it feels, and how it looks on another’s face, how it infiltrates the hours that follow, how it changes an opinion, a truth, a person, but if I had to pick a shape, to visually explain it, I think I would opt for a broken circle.

A broken circle tells me it can’t quite arrive. It began, quite the thing, knowing it was heading for Circledom and then stopped short of completion. Therefore it is no longer a circle, because there is no such thing as half a circle, or a bit of a circle, or, even a circl.

We like to know what lies ahead, or as much of it as is possible through the cloudy eyes of a mere human being. To know everything would surely require considerably more A levels than I ever took, which, by the way, was none. Well, I never got the chance once I was expelled.

And so, we strain to see as much as we can of what lies ahead, completing the circle as we mentally arrive at our destination, factoring in room for the unknowns and unforeseens, but still confident to varying degrees that we will, indeed, arrive.

But what happens when everything changes in a heartbeat and our circle is broken? Not because we faltered on the journey, lost heart and turned back and not because we changed our minds about setting off at all, but because someone, or something took it all away.

Pouf! Just like that.

And all those wise sayings about how Disappointment Will Pass and how it Makes Us Stronger can just go and flush themselves down the loo, because I have a raging miserable fury inside of me right now that just might boil up all over you if you tell me once more that I’ll feel better soon, because I plan never to feel better, ever again.

I remember my first big disappointment very well. Early days of motherhood, dressed for a party and looking forward to it overly much.

We can’t go, he said. The corn dryer’s broken down and I have to fix it.

And then he went back out on the farm.

I sat down on the bed, in my pretty dress and sobbed until all my face had melted into my palms. Then came the rage, which was dark red and black and full of forked lightening and thunderous door slamming.

The circle was broken. I know it was only a party but for a young mother, just to dress up and go out was such a big deal and had meant days of a champagne anticipation.

And nobody let me grieve, including myself. I was spoilt, petulant, selfish with nothing in the fridge for supper.

Disappointment is not allowed to show its face ravaged with tears and mascara, nor can it open its mouth and roar into the sky, because, firstly, there is something alarming about a woman with her mouth wide open, spraying anger and deep grief all over the place; secondly others share that sky and have seats at the top table and, thirdly, we’re British, with all our lips buttoned up tight.

So what do we do with it, any of us?

Well, I have learned that disappointment is indeed part of life and that the jagged wound it makes, does heal, although I don’t want to hear you tell me that. I’ll discover that for myself.

I have also learned that the only person who can deal with the grief I feel at a disappointment, is me, and if I want to roar into ‘our’ sky, you can just block your ears.

You might consider practising the odd roar yourself.

Clears a whole pavement in seconds.

by

Island Blog 69 – Aground

Island Blog 69 - Broken back shipThere’s a ship in our harbour aground on the rocks, a big and very stuck ship.  It was on its way from Belfast to Sweden with a load of timber.  I don’t know what will happen to it, or the timber, or the waters in the harbour, but I do know that it matters to me when anything bad happens at sea, because the next part usually involves one of my men.

In the early days of living on the island there was no lifeboat, and the local seamen became auxiliary coastguards.  I remember not infrequent calls, especially during the summer months when every loon with a dream of the wild ocean waves, took to the sea without a clue of tidal rips, wind direction or the rise and fall of the tides.  Add to all that ‘complicata’, those dodgy times when the wind argues with the direction of the tide, creating a real stooshie, when your little craft, so safe, (you thought) begins to screw tail in the boiling soup and runs the very real risk of tipping right over if one big wave comes at you sideways on.  Then there are those razor sharp rocks just below the surface.  You can’t afford to marvel at the wonderful views anywhere near land, because land is not where you think it is.  Land goes on into the sea and says nothing much.  It just blows a few bubbles that can look dead cute if you don’t check your chart.

I’m not saying the skipper of this massive hulk didn’t check his or her charts.  With a ship that big, stopping at all must be planned a mile away, and turning round quickly at the last minute when bubbles reveal their teeth is quite out of the question.

Anyway, back to what I was saying about my men.  The old sea dog had to turn around quick sharp often after a tourist trip to the islands, or out to watch for whales, if a call came through on the radio.  Out he would go, spotlight on the waves, if it was a darkling time of day, to search for a dingy, or worse, a person in the black soup.  It is hard enough to find a huge whale in the sea, never mind a little person with only a head showing.  He has towed sailing boats off beaches and rocks and stayed to reassure folk who had to wait for the lifeboat to arrive from the mainland.  He has helped people be airlifted out, and seen many back into safety.  Now we do have a lifeboat on the island, one with big twin engines, and our son is deputy cox and sometimes the whole cox.  When a storm rises like a bully and when the wind roars and the night is black as a witch, I wonder what he might be called out to do.  There have been some really tough times, but the team is tight and experienced and they know the rocks like teeth just under the surface of the sea, of old.  But still, we women and our imaginations can take the facts and spin our spin and hardly sleep a wink for the pictures in our fluffy little heads.

The sea is a wild thing- unpredictable and demanding respect.  Nobody can be her master and nor they ever will be.