Playful Perspectives

Grief April 14, 2011

For the past few days, I have woken up with such sadness in my heart.  Yesterday morning tears trickled down my face, and I longed for a different feeling.  I didn’t understand what my body was telling me, in fact I thought the pain was about something entirely different.  I used some coaching techniques to ‘shift’ the place where I was, to somewhere else.  And yet this deep pain just kept coming back.  And I was longing for a different life, to be someone else, somewhere else, because there in that pit of emotion, you want to be anywhere but here.  However, there is also a numbness that comes with this discomfort.  It is hard to motivate yourself to do anything, a longing to be somewhere else and yet an inability to move.  And also there is a reluctance, or reticence to talk to people about it, because of the fear perhaps that they won’t get it, or they want to fix it, or they won’t honor the feeling you have.  Equally I have a longing for someone to see me, to notice my grief, to ask into it, to understand, to be with me in it, and to hold me.

I was asked yesterday well what do you want to do about this?  I didn’t want to do anything, I was stuck and yet the only thing I could think of doing was going through the mountains of paperwork that have built up over several months.  Strangely enough this was exactly the process I needed to do.  Eight different piles of paperwork,  I am a starter, so in fact it was easy to get going on this, gradually sifting through the piles and putting them into various categories.  Then I got bored, heaps of different papers, and some obscure piles that I didn’t know what to do with, overwhelm, and the last thing I wanted to do was finish the job.  Arghh… can’t someone come and finish this for me?   With a little encouragement I stayed to finish the process off.  And once again the paperwork was clear.  It was a relief, something about staying to finish what I started, and yet it didn’t seem quite complete.  Of course, there was a mountain of papers hidden in my desk that needed attending to, if I was really going to call this job complete.  And of course, in amongst those papers were perhaps the very thing I had been avoiding.  Photographs and letters from my Nana.  As I started to sift through my drawer, the tears just kept pouring and pouring down my face.  My Nana, died six months ago,  my father two years before that, and tucked away in a file somewhere near my stomach is the file named grief.

Grief is such a strange beast, because it seems to me it doesn’t necessarily present itself as a longing for, missing of, the person who has gone.  Naturally when someone dies, life doesn’t stop, and so you get on with the world that you are in now, not the world you were in, when that person was alive.  And, sometimes you don’t or feel you can’t get on with your life… I guess we all have different strategies.  So when a sadness or low level energy comes in, you don’t necessarily associate it with the loss or grieving process.  Perhaps you think that you have been through that process.   Perhaps you don’t want to use the grieving process as an excuse for why you are not feeling on top of the world.  Perhaps you are guarding yourself subconsciously from ‘going through’ the pain of loss and bereavement.  At Christmas I realized that you can set intentions to do things differently for all those things that you may be less than satisfied with in your life, but you can’t do anything about loss, you have to be with it.  And so yesterday, the file was opened.   And in a way as I opened that file, I actually created more space for myself.  I wasn’t consumed by more pain, but some was released.

perspectives April 12, 2011

It is a beautiful fresh Spring morning here.  The Magnolia outside my window is bathing in the sunlight, a fresh yet gentle breeze makes it look as if it is doing a little dance while the rose bush behind is moving more rigorously.  The tree behind it looks a bit like a long haired dog poking its nose out of the car as it enjoys the breeze clearing the hair from its eyes.  The leaves on the tree are all looking windswept.  Birds are busy gathering bits and pieces for their nests.  And Apple and Cherry blossom float around in the air.

It does look beautiful, and there is always more to notice.  If you keep looking there is always more.  It didn’t look beautiful to me this morning.  I couldn’t see it.  I was locked away in a familiar place, stuck deep in the labyrinth of my emotions.  They are deep and I am grateful for that, I have the capacity to feel deep grief and emotions.  I give myself permission to feel those consuming emotions of despair, hollowness, emptiness and pain.  A year or so ago, I thought that this was me.  Destined to go through life consumed with a tragic pain and destiny that was worthy of a Greek Tragedy.  Me and the rest of the world!

So what is the difference… well sometimes it takes a while for me to realize that I am stuck or disconnected.  Feeling so very connected to my feelings and the story I attach to those emotions.  And yet I can not connect to the world around me, I am consumed and my feelings or emotional body is owning me.  So there is a difference between owning and being owned by emotions and I think this was where I got to this morning as I travelled around in my mind and body and the world outside me, looking for other perspectives.

Billy my dog invited me to bathe in the warm sunshine with him.  It was enticing, and yet from drowning in a sea of emotions, I felt the sudden shift that had me, say pull yourself together, you are far too distracted, and you’ve got too many things to do to sit around and bathe in warm sunlight with your dog.  A different perspective and a different feeling, certainly a ‘better’, more comfortable, feeling than wallowing in the deep stuff. However it had a frenetic, tense flavour to it.  It wasn’t possible to stop and pause there, only to start spinning off into the place of ‘doing’…. urgently.  Another uncomfortable feeling.

Last week as I spent a great deal of time with good friends, I noticed how there is always a flip side to ‘good’ feelings…  the joy of having intimate friendships, means that you are open and vulnerable to other stuff coming in.  And that doesn’t feel ‘so’ good.  Its almost like I have a longing for feeling constantly good, and if I don’t, if something comes up that is uncomfortable I want to run away and hide, retreat within my crab like shell.  Of course, authentic intimacy, authentic relationship doesn’t always ‘feel’ good.  Not in any relationship… and yet ‘love’ and ‘friendship’ is ‘supposed’ to feel good.

So there is waking up that is happening here.  And there is a slowing down.  Connecting to self, others and the world.  And it is good.

Smile April 1, 2011

“Always be the first to smile.”  Its funny when this message came into my inbox this morning: I was not smiling.  In fact the grey, bleak morning was a real reflection of how I’ve been feeling inside.  (I’ve got to write this quickly… because already the sun is trying to peek through those bleak, grey clouds!)

There is a story here…  I have some great ideas…..  AND I am very good at enrolling people into the idea.  However I can never find people who will pick up on what I can see and help me get to where I want to be. I underline never because that is a very ‘telling’ word for me.  It highlights a story that I am making up, or a struggle that I am wanting to hold on to!  Anyway it feels like that… and its not true because I have got loads of people who want to help me, in their own way or in their own time.  The frustrating thing for me .. controller / critic / judge is that it is never enough.  I want ‘exactly’ the right person, and ‘exactly’ the right help.  And in many ways I want ‘exactly the right person to take my idea and run with it exactly the way I want it to look’!!!!!  .. So … smile….  and see the world you are creating here!!!!!  It sounds like one of the tantrums my daughter has.  Her way, NOW.   Funny, in a way as I write this I know that one of my deep held beliefs.. a nasty little root that taps me to the ground is that ‘I am not enough’.  So here we have a little internal struggle.  I am not enough, and because I have these great ideas I want to implement some of them…  then I will be enough, and because no one else is enough, no one else can run with my ideas!  What if its enough to have the great ideas?  You have great ideas Emma… thats great…..  AND is it enough to have great ideas.  Surely unless they are acted on they are just thoughts or dreams?  Is it enough to just have thoughts and dreams?   It is certainly fun to have thoughts and dreams… I like living in that world. And yet there is a huge frustration that they don’t turn into something else.   So.

This is what I want…  I want to create a fundraising scheme for the community museum/visitor centre which fills an information gap in the community.  This would enable all the different societies and attractions in the area to partner and work together, which in my belief will raise the profile of those different societies AND be of benefit to the community.   It is a great idea…

I want the Glastonbury Festival to launch the Four Years. Go Campaign at the festival.  Three days of the video being played in between sets with U2 and Coldplay and other bands endorsing the Campaign to awaken people to the urgent need to take a stand to make the world an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling place for future generations.  I know these are the values shared by the founder of the Glastonbury Festival Michael Eavis, so it seems to me to be an obvious connection to make.

I want the Olympic Games to run the Campaign.  Where 15% of the Worlds Population watch the opening ceremony,  where potentially love rather than money could be one of the key values that we promote, as the world comes together to celebrate sport.  Why can’t the values of love be promoted at the games too?  Love of the World we live in, Love of our fellow human beings,  Love and respect of belief systems.  And why not?

And I want people to get healthy through play.  At every level, I want them to reconnect to their hearts, minds and bodies and their world, with a reconnection to the simple child like thrill of playing and letting go.  I want to create giant playgrounds of adventure, quest and challenge for adults and families to play together.

Of course in amongst these great ideas, I have other jobs to do…  and I am not enough to get all these things done!  And this is where the struggle takes over….  because it doesn’t seem to be enough to just hold the vision… I am longing to make these things happen.  I am longing for someone to come along and say, I know how to do all these things… let me help you!!!

So yes I am smiling…  smiling at the way I complicate things… smiling at where I get stuck… and smiling because I know when I let go, and open my eyes, usually the telephone number I need, or the path I need to take, becomes blindingly obvious.  So really smiling at this incredible universe we live in!