more than a hundred

This blog has been closed to public readership since late 2021/early 2022. During the two years since then, I continued to write my way through a series of events and circumstances that were nothing short of completely devastating, on many levels and for many reasons. Those posts were, more than anything, an accurate record of the intense suffering that I was experiencing, and it makes for torrid reading. 

I do not consider those posts to comprise a narrative that deserves suppression, however I am mindful of how distressing much of it is and I have no desire to further the negative consequences of what was already a devastating period in my life. Therefore I have chosen to preserve that content elsewhere, away from this public space. What you are reading now is a blog which has had more than a hundred posts removed. A hundred posts is not an insubstantial amount of writing, and I include this figure here to convey something of the scale of my experience and the extent of its impact on me personally. 

However, much content is retained. Be warned that not all of it is easy reading. Some of it includes detail about the abuse I experienced as a child, which came pouring out in the months after my mother died. Not all of it flatters persons who may recognise themselves in aspects of my critique. But I spent several long years at the mercy of circumstances involving significant failings and the indifference of many people. I wore the real consequences of that. Therefore I have erred on the side of including material that still holds some of the sting I was feeling. It is but a drop of the howling ocean of words that I originally wrote. Readers will note that I could not and would not reopen this blog until I had moved on to a better, more balanced space within myself. 

That day has now come. I am satisfied with the content choices I have made. If you know me, and any of this material bothers you, please reach out to me. There is nothing here we can't heal between us.  

Careful thought

Careful thought, today and in the coming days, about the content on this blog. 

There is a dilemma in it for me. Whether to preserve the accurate record of what was, and will always remain fixed in my mind, as a horrendous collection of experiences laid over the top of each other in one continuously awful period that lasted several years. Or whether to erase the fullness of my own cathartic expression of so many aspects of that, in order to preserve the blog's original intent and tone, as it was originally known by the few of my readers who know me or know my online writing. 

But there needs to be some acknowledgement that part of the experience rested in the suppression of my fullest expression, by myself but also, maybe, by others who wished to avoid the inevitable confrontation with the awfulness of my reality, either because they had some part in it, or because they looked away when perhaps they could have been more attentive to the circumstances that were consuming me. Even in my hour of greatest need, believing myself to be heard, here and elsewhere, I was not, and there's a resonant damage in that with the silence of my abused childhood. That trauma, reawakened, deserved a voice, no less so than the trauma of my more recent experience. But it was not a kind voice, and there was all manner of blame and powerlessness and fury expressed here that was rightly so at the time, but which may not persist beyond the final bounds of the experience. 

So now, with a little time and distance from the worst of that onslaught, and soothed by a more benevolent-seeming turn in my circumstances, I must now decide how much of this written record to preserve, here or elsewhere. How much of that honours the truest nature of my experience, and how much of it might unnecessarily distress readers who come late to this written account, and who might be shocked to read for themselves that way I unravelled, at least for a time. There is no easy reading of genuine despair, and it was the very depths of such despair that I laid bare here. I am mindful of the hurt that reading such despair may cause people who care about me, and that is why I took the blog down when I did, over a year ago. But a year on, a year in which there have been some small, beneficial changes in my life, it no longer seems fair to deprive myself of the joy and consolation of this space. And more than that, I feel the need to reclaim the better parts of my life, the parts that were stripped away during the worst of those incomprehensible times. 

A balance, then, is what is needed here. Not to expunge the more torrid narratives, but maybe to preserve them in a bracketed way, so that I can refer to them without exposing my readership to the fullness of the worst of it. But you should not, if you're reading this, expect to find a nicely sanitised version of the events of the last few years. I may choose to soften some of my writing, but I will equally permit the boldest facts to remain so they can speak for themselves. You have a choice, whether you read it or you don't. I have applied careful thought to my decision to curate my blog in this way so that I can open it to readership again. You too can apply careful thought to understanding what is written here, and why I have written it. 

Until

We cannot change anything until we accept it.

Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

~ Carl Jung

Forgetting is this

Forgetting is this:

It’s waking to the chilling nausea of realising you have forgotten.

It’s standing in a fog, with the dimly-lit shape of a fragmented memory so close that you know it’s important, but tantalisingly out of reach.

It’s a swirling mist that churns and eddies each time you grasp uselessly for what eludes.

Forgetting is this:

It’s failing, without realising, the good people who share your life, by not holding on to the truths they gave you.

It’s the flicker of disappointment you catch in their eyes.  Or worse, the silent kindness of the reaction they conceal.

It’s reaching out to them through your heart-space because you sense the hurt you have caused, without knowing what slipped away.

Forgetting is this:

It’s the clever details that leak away, so that you learn and lose, and have to learn again, always.

It’s the sudden flash of recollection that occurs slow eons after the critical moment you needed it.

It’s the surge of shame that burns hotly in the swift oxygen of recognition and understanding.

Sometimes, forgetting is this: 

It’s remembering clearly, just as well as you always did, while someone spoon-feeds you the revisions and half-truths they think you’ll swallow down meekly.

And sometimes you call them out on it, and sometimes you don’t.

But it stays with you, and burrows into the deepest part of your consciousness.

And, always, it’s this:

A loss that, unlike the memories, always returns in vivid detail.

But, forgetting is also this:

It’s seeing the world, again, with fresh eyes.

It’s relinquishing ten thousand tiny details that don’t matter, and never did.

It’s learning to accept kindness, and trust in goodness.

It’s placing your ego to one side, and surrendering to the wisdom of intuition.

It’s letting go of time, and dropping mindfully into the spaciousness of Now.

It’s understanding that everything is energy, and energy is never lost.

Out of my hands

Current earworm:

Guess then these troubles are out of my hands
Guess then I'm free to use them to clap and dance

Yanging my yin

And isn't it pretty?

Since my last gloomy offering, I've been busy yanging my yin.

This has consisted of getting sunshine, fresh air and as much activity as I can withstand.  Which, sadly, amounts to not much.  But it is nonetheless movement, and essentially yang in nature, which is what is needed.

Part of the process has been getting on top of a situation that I have been in total denial over for some time and which had very nearly reached a state of complete disaster.  (Denial is a very yin place to be).  So a big dose of yang helped me to swallow a bitter pill, and then ask for the help that I've needed all along.

So, to celebrate this incremental shift in the right direction, and to keep inviting the right kind of energy in to my life, I've given Spirited! a makeover.

The beautiful background art, so alive with colour and light, is by Chiaralily over at Flickr.  The rest of it was me clicking and twiddling with the blogger template designer.  What do you think?  I'm not entirely happy with the title fonts, and I wonder how legible the pink and purple is.  But I love the colour and the feel of it, and I hope you do too.  

Anger

I’ll admit it.

I’m angry.  Very angry.

I’m angry at the influence the military has had on my life.

There is nothing wrong with the path of the warrior, lived honourably, with respect for himself and his adversary.  With calmness, fairness, justice and propriety.

What is wrong with this military is that it does not pay this basic but essential respect to its own members, and particularly not to their own families.

The result is systematic and systemic disempowerment, and in many cases, damage.

But the man I love possesses free agency.  And if I want him to share my life, this anger is something I need to learn to coexist with, instead of denying.  I need to learn to sit in the room with it, and see it, until it is just something else in the room, but doesn’t fill it.

Clear And Present Danger

One clear and sunny afternoon, I am hurtling home along the eucalypt-green corridor of the busway. I am listening to music, and checking in on my favourite online communities, when this song drops into my ipod (click play to listen):

Clear and present danger - by Mattafix (Signs of a Struggle)

I open a post from one of my breast cancer sisters. T is a delightful woman who I know to be witty, compassionate, strong, honest, funny and always completely supportive. As long as I have known her, she has been living her biggest life, seizing the day, and following her joy, and encouraging us to do the same. So I am shattered to read that she is has been diagnosed with secondary disease. A scan has revealed metastasis to her humerus. A very un-funny bone.

While many women are able to live with secondary disease for many years in relative good health, it is considered to be a terminal health condition, with the attendant physical decline and pain, life limitations, and the unfathomable anguish of knowing the sorrow that will visit your loved ones. I don’t really know what this diagnosis means for T, and for all the other beautiful women who face advanced cancer, except that it will distil the best and worst of life experiences into a premature timeframe.

As I sit there, stunned, staring out the window but not seeing the world rushing past, I am washed with impotence at the onslaught of suffering. Cancer spreads, a child runs in front of a car, a house burns down, a gun goes off. So many people in so many lives, all open to the scathing wounds of disease, grief, injury, personal tribulation, or acts of unspeakable violence. We go about our daily industry, completely unaware that our fortunes, our health, our most crucial relationships may be upended, suddenly and irrevocably. We teeter at the brink of our own vulnerability and none of us are immune.

Sorry for the hurt
Sorry that the destiny
Seems to be the ever
Clear and present danger

It is our normal urge, when faced with evidence of someone’s suffering, to want to turn away, to escape the terrible details. We insulate ourselves from the fullness of pain in our midst, by ignoring it, by diminishing it with stereotypes, by drowning it out with distraction or noise. I am torn between turning away and turning up. In the context of online community, this is the difference between opening a thread and absorbing it and replying from the heart, instead of clicking away. Those true heart-felt words are a conduit of energy and support that reach into real lives. I hope that sometimes I am big enough to stand with another person in that place of their pain, and really acknowledge the truth of their experience, so that they can let it be. Our only defence against suffering is our acceptance. Our only weapon against our fragility is our love.