A year of breaths

Dearest Stell',

I've taken a years worth of breaths.

When you left us so suddenly a year ago I could hear you from the in-between.

"Breathe Leis'.......just breathe."

So I did.

Not a single day has gone by this year where you haven't flitted across my thoughts at least once. Every single time I have sighed because I miss you more than I can ever express but smiled because I am so incredibly grateful to have counted you as a friend.

I've needed to talk to you so many times this year Stell'. There's been so many things I've wanted to share with you; things that would've made your face crinkle up with excitement in the way I loved so much.  I've wanted to ask your advice, get your perspective on things and tell you what I've been up to. It's been a rough year Stell'. I'm not going to pretend it hasn't been, but all throughout I've grown and learned and become more confident in my ability to handle what life's thrown at me. I've kept on breathing. Sometimes that's all I could do.

I'm getting proud Stell. Maybe not in the way people see the pride that you spoke about, but I've become proud of myself and everything it encompasses. I feel as though I've landed in my skin and finally appreciated this little body for everything it is rather than hating it for everything it isn't.  I'm alone, but I'm not lonely.  I thought I'd shrivel up and die being alone Stell, but I haven't. I think you'd be pretty chuffed with that news.

I can't ever see myself as being an outspoken and passionate disability rights activist as you were, but each time I am out and about being me, practicing my pride and doing things I love without hesitating worrying about what people are thinking, I know I'm moving forward. Sometimes change is small and comes from within. Thank you Stell, for opening my eyes to change.

I still smile like crazy when I hear Uptown Funk. I still feel you stroking my hand sometimes, especially when it approaches the anniversary of Chloe's long stint in hospital. I still feel your presence as I walk past the Art Gallery and remember the time you, Maddy, Sarah and I went to see the Picasso exhibition and one of the guards thought that Maddy was our carer. I still hear you shout out, "Crips ahoy!" when I see a group of people in wheelchairs. Every single memory makes me smile. To know you was to love you Stell.....and I really, really loved you.

I promise you that I'll breathe through another year, and then another....and some more after that. I'll keep practicing, I'll keep celebrating and I'll keep loving life, sucking the very marrow out of it (in spite of being a vegetarian!) in the same way you did. You may not have had many years Stell, but you LIVED. You really, really lived...and it's the thing I remember and loved about you the most. While you were here you LIVED.

Miss you Stell. Always will. xxx

Taking Stock - November

Well, here we are. The end of November. My goodness but hasn't this year been a doozy? I for one, will be glad to see the end of 2015. It hasn't been the best of years but it's also been interspersed with bright spaces of clarity and positivity which has stopped me from losing the plot completely.

I haven't been writing much. I know, I know, I know. I say that each time I come here and post. I've written wonderful words in my own head many, many times but when I come here to write it all down it doesn't seem to translate as well. I guess I'm trying to write feelings and they don't seem to translate well in black and white sometimes. As a result I leave it all unsaid so that it remains gold in my thoughts.

"Stay gold Ponyboy. Stay gold."

Time to take stock of the month that was November.

Making: 
Miss Maggie Rabbit from HERE.

All stitched up!

Details of Miss Maggie

She has been an absolute delight to make - so much so that I am in the middle of another one (just put the body together and ready to make her dress, shawl and boots!) and have also ordered her little friend Miss Juniper Kitty!

Cooking:

I'm pretty partial to this yummy Tomato and Lentil Soup right now.

Drinking:

Coffee - always coffee! I have one of these from Aldi and I LOVE it, but when I'm at work I get them from HERE!

Reading:
All the books in the Harry Potter series - currently reading Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. I read through Harry's story every couple of years. 

Enjoying: 

My solitude. Never thought I'd say it, but I do enjoy it. It's peaceful.

Waiting:

For money to be released from the outcome of the court case following the attack on my dog back in May. After the money is released I will be paying back my parents, my mother-in-law and finalising the rest of the account with Lort Smith Animal Hospital. 

Wondering:

What my leave time over Christmas will bring. 

Loving:

Learning how to simply flow with my creative side. 

Wearing:

Dresses. I am loving long, maxi-dresses. Yes, I buy them in the smallest size possible and then re-hem them. They are so comfy and, if I do say so myself, flattering. 

Noticing:

The beautiful "country smells" in my neighbourhood. Early morning smells like cut grass, jasmine and willow trees. 

I'm also noticing the sounds of the different birds and the times they send out their calls - particularly the kookaburras who love to sing their songs at around 6am and 8pm every day. 

Feeling:

Content. I do so love where I live!

Above all things......

(I had no idea that today was World Kindness Day when i wrote this!)

Be kind.

I know that it's most often thought that love should be above all things.....but I've been thinking a lot about that this morning. I've been thinking about it because of an incident that happened over the past couple of days.

I think it's unrealistic to love everyone. I'll openly admit that I don't.  How can one love a perfect stranger? There are people I know reasonably well that I don't love. There are people I'm related to in one way or another that I don't love. It's not that I hate them. It's not that I don't like them. I feel ambivalent. That may sound harsh, but think about it for a minute...is it really that bad? I am served every day by lovely people in the post office. They are kind, polite, pleasant and give me good service....but I neither love or like them or dislike them. I am polite and kind and pleasant right back....because that's the way I roll and everyone deserves people to be kind, polite and pleasant.

OK....so I'm sounding all Stepford....bear with me.

Over the course of this week my workplace received an email from an individual complaining at what they perceived as a lack of service and communication. Naturally this is going to happen from time to time. An organisation cannot please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Some people are irritated by receiving information and communications on a fortnightly basis, some people are outraged when the said information is sent monthly. There's never a happy medium.

What disturbs me however is when the person delivering the complaint targets the organisation as a whole and the employees within. They make it personal and write in a way to stick a knife into the heart of the employee reading the complaint. They don't stick to the subject of their discontent but they deliberately set out to tarnish an entire organisation and hurt those working for it.

I was one of the first people who read the communication. I was hurt. I was not the one to respond to the communication. Someone else was, and they drafted a response,  checked it with a couple of other colleagues, edited it according to their feedback before sending it in response to the person. The response was measured, kind, explanatory and positive.

The response they received was not so much. It was mean and once again attacked the organisation and personally attacked my colleague.

I was more than incensed. What was written was completely unnecessary.

The thing I wish people would remember is that there are people reading these communications. People with lives, who have their own struggles. Was that person to know that my colleague is dealing with things that seem insurmountable right now? No...but that is my point. You can never know what your fellow human being is dealing with at any given point in time, so the best thing, the kindest thing is to always be kind. Always. I felt for my colleague so much.  They're dealing with so much right now and then to get attacked by a faceless stranger like that..... *shakes head*

All of us here on this big, blue marble in space deserve a little kindness. We all don't have to love each other but we can at least be decent and kind, showing respect and dignity in everything we say and do. All of us at one point or another, struggle with something. It may be a struggle simply to organise oneself enough to get out the door on time each day. It may be a struggle with an eating disorder, anxiety or depression, or it may be a struggle to cope with the care of aging parents. Notice that none of the examples I mentioned would necessarily have obvious symptoms that people could observe. Often, struggles are invisible.

Be kind. Always.

Just be kind.

Memes and Musings

You want to know something that annoys me?

Smug posts on social media about the longevity of marriage being attributed to the couple coming from a time where people fixed broken things and didn’t throw them away.

Do the posters ever stop to consider that when a relationship ends the couple are not necessarily “throwing it away”? Have they ever stopped to think that for years and years and years at least ONE of the two people in the relationship (often even BOTH of them!) worked long and hard to try and “fix” it? 

Thousands of dollars may have been spent on counselling and therapy and going on dates and holidays, trying desperately hard to make it work because somewhere, deep inside, the both of them remembered why they got together in the first place and were reluctant to let that go!

But in the end, no matter how much the couple may have wanted it, no matter how hard they tried, the brokenness persisted because, individually, they were two broken people getting more and more broken by the day trying so hard to make it work and trying to “fix” each other.

So, instead of “throwing it away” they reluctantly “let it go” because neither of them wanted to see the other one hurting anymore and neither of them wanted to BE hurt anymore. They both loved each other enough to know when to set each other free to learn how to be the best individuals they could possibly be on their own.

And even though they are no longer together there is still that yearning; wishing that somehow it could have been fixed.

So the next time someone wants to share one of those memes….give a thought to those who may have wanted “till death do us part” but parted so that they both could live.

Hiatus

It's been a while. No apologies. I needed the break. I needed to think. I needed to work out a few things.

I'm not going to beat about the bush. 2015 so far, can go on record as being one of the toughest years yet - in so many ways, shapes and forms I can't even recount. 2015 can simply go bite me! I've been spending some time down here in the pit entertaining some very dark thoughts. Not that they were the reasons I stopped writing...but they have contributed. Writing became too much of a minefield to negotiate as I tried to balance between being authentic me and writing so as not to upset people's apple carts.

In the end I realised that apple carts were going to be upset no matter how hard I tried not to upset them...so I stopped writing.

I stopped doing a lot of things.

Right now I'm not in a very good place at all. The world has become too big, too scary, too much. Over the past couple of days I have had to take things moment by moment. It's some advice one of my kids offered the other morning. She said, "Mama, sometimes when the world gets too big I tell myself, "Right now, my only responsibility on this earth is to put on this shoe." So I concentrate on putting on my shoe. Then I move to the next thing."

So, I've tried that. Over the past 24 hours it's gotten down to, "Ok, right now, my only responsibility on this earth is to take the next breath."

That's anxiety for you. It's a bitch.

I've been battling it all my life.

Those who know me see me as this able, capable feisty woman who seems to have everything in hand, despite life tossing her some curve-balls. That, folks, is a learned behavior. Keep on moving. In the words of Dory:

It got to the point where even though my body could, my mind couldn't.

These days I'm learning to take things one at a time. I've not participated in things I've signed up for (and paid a fair amount of money for - hello Tough Mudder!) but instead I've listened to my body and mind and worked out what I am capable of doing at a particular moment. It may mean saying no to things such as Tough Mudder and yes to Park Run. It may mean saying no to going to a party and yes to sitting in the audience of a theatre production my daughter is involved in. It may mean that instead of going to church I go to a Butoh workshop and dance some of the darker feelings out.

I'm learning that I need to be kind to myself, not to expect such a high standard of myself and most importantly, not to beat myself up for mistakes I made decades ago. Forty eight year old me needs to cut eighteen year old me some slack. She and I need to sit in a room together and have a healing hug. God knows how much that eighteen year old needed a hug back then! Come to think of it, 48 year old me could do with a hug right back. Yeah...I think that's what she and I will do. Sit and hug.

For the first time in my entire life I am living on my own. For the first time ever I am no ones daughter, no ones sister, no ones mother, no ones wife. I am faced with being just me. It's been a rough, scary few months as I've battled this awful feeling of being totally alone, not quite knowing who I am and where to from here. Much of my identity has been shaped by fulfilling a role. Now those roles no longer need filling I'm left with this question of what makes me me?

I'm not quite sure yet.

Momma on duty

There's one thing they (Who, by the way, is THEY? We keep referring to the ever wise they but never really acknowledge who They are!) never told me when I found out I was to be a mama was how much my soul would be knit to this tiny little creature.

They never told me that the knitting of these souls would never, ever be undone.

I kind of expected the love bit. That was a given. I didn't expect that it might need to develop though. I didn't necessarily feel this rush of maternal live for my firstborn infant. I kind of liken it to a fascinated curiosity I suppose. Who was this new little person that they'd just placed in my lap and said she was mine? And FYI c-sections under general anaesthetic suck - just putting it out there!

But this...knitting, I never expected.

All of a sudden I cared about someone else more than I cared for myself. My eyes could have been hanging out of my head, body unwashed, not being able to remember when I'd last eaten a proper meal, but as long as she was safe, healthy, warm, well fed, dressed and happy then my world was OK and I had everything I needed.

No one told me that when she was sick I'd walk through hell barefoot just to get her well again.

No one told me about the anxiety that would keep moths the size of eagles fluttering in my belly and chest when something wasn't right.

Or how much, when there were surgeries and sickness and pain that I'd wish I could trade places and do it all for them instead.

Well I'm here to tell YOU. Those little bundles just grab your heart and soul and mind and they never, ever let go. Ever. They might be adults, with lives of their own and they still have your heart. It matters what happens to them. It matters when they're still so sick that they can barely sit up in bed, exhausted from the effort of trying to cough up a lung during the night and, in fact, throughout the previous three nights. It matters when they suffer a disappointment or a heartbreak or the frustration of trying to move forward but having to battle ridiculous government bureaucracy and red tape.

It matters, and will continue to matter. I know that now.

No one told me that one of the hardest parts is knowing the right time to take your hands off and let them work it out on their own. I wish I had've recognised that earlier. My own fear held them back. I know that now too. They had the potential to fly sooner. It was their mother that kept their wings from unfurling.

No one told me that parenting is a never ending field of discovery for the parent too; that when you become an adult you don't always feel like one. You're still learning, figuring it out on the fly. You make mistakes, sometimes big ones but you just have to get back up and keep working it out. Sometimes there are days where you just want to sob into your own Mama's chest and stop being an adult, even just for a few brief moments. And you realise that all along, your own Mama possibly had times just like this too.

I'm now way closer to fifty than I am to forty, my kids are all grown and yet they still hold my heart so tightly. It still matters that they are well fed, safe, healthy, happy. Their well being still takes precedence over my own.

I think that's the way its supposed to be.

Rub it out, start again.

Hi there readers.

I know I've been AWOL. As a blogger I'm acutely aware of this. I've been thinking a lot. During those times I've had periods where I've just wanted to grab the keyboard and write and write through an inspirational stream of consciousness. There have been many other times where I've just wanted to pull the plug on this blogging business....well....this one in particular. I find that I don't know how to write my experiences of being a person of short stature because...well...it's just me doing life. Doing life at 117cm is pretty much the same as it is at 185cm...I guess. Nothing much to report really. My spine is doing great, no tingling or numbness anywhere - which is pretty cool considering my age. Still...I never know what's around the corner but I'll cross that bridge if ever I happen to come across it in my travels. 

I've been thinking of simply rubbing all this out and starting again mainly because the biggest journey I have taken is the journey towards wellness - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually - and I want to talk more about that. This is a journey that I think everyone can relate to so maybe I will just be adding to the myriad of blogs out there dedicated to the same things. I don't know. There have been times I've thought about rubbing all this out and not starting again at all. I'm not a consistent blogger, I don't stick to a theme, I don't network. I suck. 

I keep thinking of the concept of Girl Interrupted. It's certainly felt like that for me. Girlhood was interrupted at the age of nineteen for me, and now I've had the chance to start agin in my 40's. I'm discovering so many new things, confronting a lot of old things and working out exactly who Leisa is without all her props - standing alone. Should I write about that? Does anyone want to read about all that? Should anyone read about all that? Is this journey simply a private matter? All of these questions I ponder often as I run, commute or stare off into space. 

Just so it's out there, I'm in therapy. Two lots of therapy to be honest. One to work on just me, the other to work on....other stuff. I gotta say that personal therapy has to be the best thing ever invented. I've been seeing this particular therapist on and off for the better part of fifteen years and each time I head in for another group of the allotted 10 mental health plan sessions (Because the 11th Commandment states that: "Thou shalt be mentally well and sorted out after 10 sessions or else!") it's such a relief to know that I don't have to waste time going through all the background junk because.....you know, TEN SESSIONS ONLY! Whose got time for background stuff?

Anyway...my therapist has well and truly gotten the impression that I mean business this time. I think he worked that out by session one when I came in with something I'd written and read it out loud to him. I could see him mentally pulling up his sleeves, rubbing his hands together and saying, "Right!" It's good to be able to talk with someone objective; whose not emotionally invested. You can say whatever you need to say without fear of upsetting anyone, offending anyone or treading on eggshells. Because of this, you gain clearer insights, start to see a way forward, work on your own goals and formulate strategies on how to get there. 

Why people are afraid to say they're in therapy or counselling is beyond me. It's such a positive and powerful thing to do. Nothing to be ashamed of. 

Thanks for listening.