Our spot

Balnarring Beach

Maya and I love this little spot, so much so that we think it's Paradise. It is Maya's most favorite spot in the whole world - although sometimes I get the impression with Maya that her favorite spot is where ever I am. Oh the love of a dog folks! It is just so pure and simple. You are just their whole world, their everything.

Maya knows when we are going to the beach. She senses it even before we leave the house sometimes. I don't do anything to indicate to her that we are going. I don't pack a towel. In fact, when we are going for a beach walk all I take is her lead and the car keys. That's it.

But she knows.

I wind down the window for her and she stands up and sticks her head out, ears streaming behind her, big smile on her face. We turn down the road leading to the beach and she starts to whimper excitedly. She smells the sea air and she's just one little bundle of pure joy.

At low tide we love peering into the rock pools that are left behind. 

On the beach she becomes happy and energetic. Lately she's been giving out short, excited yaps and bouncing about.

"You want to run, don't you girl?"

So we run a little way...and for a short while she seems like that energised puppy all over again. Her heart murmur that normally makes her heart thunder in her chest seems to have given some reprieve and she is able to run with me. We don't run far - not even 100 metres - but for that short time it is just Maya and me again, running for the sheer enjoyment of it.

She even loves paddling through the water with me - especially in the water of the rock pools. She won't go in for a swim, but loves a paddle.

I decided last Friday that every Friday for the next 12 months Maya and I will go to the beach - rain, hail, storm or shine. Maybe I'll take the camera with me. Maybe I won't. When we are on the beach I am enjoying being totally present - no phone, no camera, no Facebook, no Instagram. Just Maya and me, enjoying the sun, the sea, the smell of the salty air, the sound of the sea birds and the gentle waves rolling in.

I can't believe I finally live where I've always wanted to be - in a small country town near the sea.

Up high

I love being up high.

I remember when I was a little girl I used to love being up in my Daddy's arms. I would look around and down to the ground and think there was no higher place to be. The world looked entirely new and different.

I wondered what it was like being up that high all the time.

Even now when I'm doing things up on a ladder I like to just pause, look and wonder at that different world.  What would it be like having that view as your normal every day?

One day, I'd like to climb Everest. Can't get much taller than that.

Up in the highest seats in the dance studio.

Acorns

I've always loved acorns.

There's so much potential wrapped up in an acorn. Just imagine! Those enormous, shady trees coming from this sweet little parcel. 

Amazing!

They always remind me of little faces with cosy hats. Sometimes I find my hands longing for a black marker when I pick one up. I want to draw a little face on it...and find a way of fashioning a little body somehow. 

When I was a little girl I loved picking up the little acorn "caps". I would think they were bowls for fairies. I'd fill them with flower petals and leave them under trees, imagining that the petals were sweet honeycomb that the fairies could eat. In my mind I could see fairies and imaginary woodland creatures wherever I went. I believed that the fairylands that I read about in my Enid Blyton books truly existed. 

Secretly......I still do.

But acorns hold a very special meaning for me. 

After my son was born, his Granddad (my late father-in-law) was holding him. He was holding his sweet little starfish shaped trident hands - which is a feature of achondroplasia. As he was holding my son and looking at his hands, my father-in-law said to him in the beautiful, quiet way that was just so him......

"He's a little acorn.
Remember what little acorns grow up to be Tim.
They grow up to be mighty oak trees."

It was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever witnessed. 

Skinny shaming

You know what I'm getting tired of seeing?

This:

This:

And this:

Seems "skinny shaming" is a thing. For some reason I'm really noticing it at the moment. I see stuff like this in my Facebook news feed and quite frankly it's annoying...and hurtful. In my mind,  skinny shaming is just as hurtful as teasing someone for being overweight.

I guess you could say that I'm skinny. I find it hard having an objective viewpoint on this due to the fact that achondroplasia makes it look as though I have "junk in my trunk" no matter what I do, but I do know that I am lean because I work out regularly and eat well. I work hard at maintaining this level of fitness. I'm not going to deny that. It takes commitment and work. I get up at the crack of dawn two mornings a week to go swimming, I lace up my running shoes a minimum of twice a week to go running. I push my body to test it's limits, but I do it because I enjoy being healthy. My drug of choice is that naturally high feeling after I've completed a good run, a decent number of laps in the pool or a session of yoga. I love the feeling of vitality and energy coursing through my body. It's worth it! 

The only down side to being lean is that I've lost curves and I'm flat chested - but I'm OK with that. I've learned to be happy in my own skin. 

Looking back, I've never had a problem with my weight and, apart from pregnancy, I've always been on the leaner side. Good genes maybe? I remember my mother saying when I was a young teen that if I was average sized I would possibly have the same body type as one of my slender sisters. At the time I heard that with the ears of someone who was struggling with an eating disorder and my mind turned it around to mean, "You're fat". She didn't mean it that way at all, but my illogical mind took it that way.

Silly goose.

Good metabolism? Possibly. I've always been interested in and committed to being as physically healthy as I can possibly be, maybe that's it? I'm committed to being active. I walk a lot. I choose the stairs at train stations and in shopping centres rather than escalators. I like to move. I don't like eating junk or drinking soft drinks (soda). It's both a preference and a choice. Maybe my metabolism has adjusted itself according to these choices. 

I have been called a bitch because I am lean. That was kind of hurtful. I didn't really know what to do with that comment when it happened. Being a bitch for being lean and healthy? I didn't get it at the time...I still don't get it. Why?  If you're not happy with your own body and wish it were different, then the choice is yours. DO something about it, but don't call me (or anyone else) a bitch in the interim. Please. 

I wouldn't dream of insulting someone because of the body shape they inhabit - whatever shape it is. I feel concern for people who are unhealthy but to make personal remarks or insults is just not on! That WOULD make me a bitch. 

For this year

I know, I know....2016 started weeks ago and I haven't blogged yet. Normally I would have written about my theme of the year by now....but I've been thinking about a lot of things, and when I think about a lot of things I normally retreat into my cave and just, well, think. Don't worry...my cave is a nice little cave, filled with wool and crochet hooks, books, fabrics, music and movies, but it's the place I retreat to when I've got a lot on my mind and I don't come out until I have to....or feel like it.

Over the past few years I have had a theme word for the year. As I was meditating on a word for 2016 this verse kept coming to me. It wouldn't leave me alone....so in the end I decided that this entire verse would be my theme for the year.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. 

(Philippians 4:8)

I've been intentionally keeping away from  watching, reading and listening to the news for quite a while now. I can't handle the doom and gloom, the violence and hatred filling my screens. It brings me down, makes me depressed and affects my outlook on life. I start wondering if the world really is a horrible place. I start making generalized statements, such as "People are horrible," and therefore it starts affecting the way I relate to the world around me.

I think it was Mister Rogers who said that when he was a child and saw terrible things happen on the screens, his mother would exhort him to "look for the helpers". Helpers were always there, making bad times better. It helped him form a better outlook on life.

With all the therapy I have had over the past twelve months where I have unlocked some of the past and realised the root causes of why I do what I do, why I believe what I believe and why I think the way I think, I realised it could have been very easy to just dig a hole and spend a lot of time blaming and wallowing and being angry. But with this verse going over and over in my head like a soothing mantra I have been able to turn a whole pile of things around and learn valuable and insightful lessons from everything. The greatest of these is that people did the best they could with the tools they had and with the very best of intentions.

Sometimes people react out of their own stuff. Sometimes someone says or does something that touches sensitive trigger points in my heart and mind. It's up to me how I look at that and respond. Do I go the "easy" way and simply react, blowing up and causing more damage - both to myself and the person who touched a trigger point? Or do I stop, breathe, think and search within to work out what is really the issue? Did that person really mean it the way I took it or have I just reacted out of some unresolved issue?

All of us, each and every one, are fighting unseen battles. I think the kindest thing we can do for ourselves and our fellow human being is to remember that and grant each other some grace.

After the lights fade....

Rehearsing the nightmare. (photo credit: Jennifer Tran)

It’s addictive, the adrenaline that comes from performing; the collaborative process of taking an idea brought to the floor by one brilliant creative mind and then exploring, pushing, creating, experimenting, trying things out, recycling, rehashing and playing together.
Of going places in ones mind where you open up the Pandora’s box of daydreams and nightmares, secrets and desires, sorrows, joys and imagination; discovering aspects of yourself that you either never knew, were too afraid to explore or that you hid away because they were so precious that you needed to protect them from the scrutiny of others.
But in the safe environment, away from all that, you find a place where you can dare to give form to those dreams. You get to.set free that dancer, that diva, that beautiful creature you’re secretly proud of and want to show others.
The lights come up and there she is - open, unafraid, bold even. She is there in the light, the shadow and the darkness and invites others in to glimpse part of her soul. She pours the whole of her being into the character she inhabits, being a totally different creature to the person she is in her everyday life while at the same time knowing full well that in that moment, she is being everything she actually is. There is a stripping away of the roles she is expected to play - the dedicated mother, the wife, the daughter, the executive assistant, the friend - so that she can explore the light and the dark of who she is. Dancer, dreamer, envious bitch, wistful wanderer, diva, fashionista, lost, haunted, dreamer of nightmares.
Other beings inhabit that place with her and together they move and pulse giving and receive energy to and from each other as they weave together a world that is both familiar and foreign. Time and space cease to exist. The only places are those circles of changing light in which they stand. 

The energy is electric, the air alive with imagination. Dreams take form as they move through the space together; slowly…and in stillness. They discover together that stillness has it’s own energy and they learn to be still and just feel the dream unfolding.
The music carries them through the dream, evoking stillness at first and then leading them to a crescendo of chaos where bodies collide, writhe and give release to a shared energy. It’s easy to get carried off in that moment. Carefully rehearsed ideas can sometimes be forgotten in those moments, but the audience remains oblivious and the players just carry on, finding their way back to where they should be. It all becomes part of the dream anyway.
Then the music fades. The stage lights dim. The house lights come on, and she finds herself in a line with all the other beautiful creatures, taking a bow and feeling so high on adrenaline and endorphin she wants to do it all again. 

The dream is over but the memory remains - even in the exhausted muscles of her body she remembers.

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