First let me say another big thank you for all of you who left comments on my blog post last week. I'm sorry I've not had much time or energy to email a reply. I've been all out at work this week as I've been getting ready for a week off work. I just wanted you all to know how much I appreciate you being there so many times lately. If I could spend all of my time inside my internet world, that would please me greatly at the moment. However we can't escape reality can we? If I was honest I wouldn't really want to. But that is another story.
What has been happening this week?
I've been thinking about having less income. This didn't stop me putting more money than I could afford into the fire fighter's charity bucket after they cleaned my car last Saturday. Birds had had a pooping party above my car the day before(don't they say that's lucky to have a bird poop on you?). Surely that means that our luck is going to change soon?
These guys were collecting for the Fire Fighter's Welfare Fund. I was about to drive past, but my window was opened and they shouted at me that my car really needed a clean. Thank you birdie friends. These guys and the children they had helping them really made me smile on a not so wonderful week.
The week at work has been full of ups and downs. Trying to help people to take charge of their lives, whilst at the same time trying to help them avoid becoming homeless is sometimes hard. I often struggle with the system and how it has left our society. I struggle with those who, because of the way the system works, have to say no. I'm not good at saying no myself. I often find myself fighting someone's corner, when maybe I ought to just walk away and shrug my shoulders. On Tuesday I was on a stairwell trying to get hold of someone who needs help to get her new flat paid for. Her new flat is on the fourth floor of a very dreary house and next door to this.....
Mr Stayingawake is finding it hard to be unemployed, after working his whole life since age sixteen. Everyday I come home and he tells me which jobs he has applied for. He feels bad that he is not bringing any money in. I tell him it has only been a week and I love him and I know that he will find something. These photos show how his days are filled just now.
He went to the Job Centre last week and was given this booklet which I remember from last year when I was made redundant. Although I took it all in my stride, and knew I would find something else when I was ready, it was still a difficult process to go through. For him it will be harder, as I know how he is struggling already.
He feels so helpless.
And is so determined at this early stage.
I hope that he will find something soon. It hurts seeing him struggling so. Listening to this, new to me song today. It seems to sum up how good it would feel just to escape from reality for a while. Me and Mr Stayingawake.
I drove out of town with my son and marvelled at the blue skies.
We enjoyed some impromptu time together as he gets ready for a holiday, and I breath more easily as I see how well he has come through this summer's challenges. All the fear that everything, him included, could be taken away from me, has brought me to Autumn 2012 with a deep sense of thankfulness.
Of course, we do not need these challenges, to know that we humans are fragile creatures. Everything or something, can be taken away from us at any moment. At some point, sooner or later, we will say goodbye to everything we have.
"Everything we have?" This in itself is an illusion. We do not have everything. We have nothing. We have everything and nothing all at the same time.
Living our life can be heavy with "having"; with losing and with fear.
Or we can live our life with a light touch, a visiting, a sharing, a loving and a letting go; with joy and laughter.
As I welcome autumn, my favourite season, I am thankful for all that I share and have experienced. I am grateful for kind and thoughtful blogging friends, and for loving and caring family and friends in the "real" world.
I am grateful for this article on avoiding compassion fatigue by Operation Safe. Often I worry that I write too much about my own challenges on my blog, and that this is too negative and self-pitying. Lately and uncharacteristically I feel less sorrow and anger about injustices that once would have moved me to tears. I worry that I have become too wrapped up in my own problems. This article really helps me to remember my core values and beliefs, my dreams and aspirations.
While it seems that life will be changing and there will be more limits than I would like, this might bring a more creative way of being, and very welcome change. I am grateful for change and for reminders of our limits. Thank you to "brainpickings" for leading me to this video which talks about creativity being a way of operating rather than a talent; and also about the importance of humour and play.
I am very grateful for the Internet and the abundance of inspiration and human courage it opens to us. I am also so thankful for writers and thinkers who remind us of the wonder and miracle of life
Mr Stayingawake finally lost his job yesterday. It has taken about eight weeks for a decision to be made.
We are having to do a major rethink. I am trying hard to keep him feeling positive.
So when this came into my inbox today I had to share it with him:
Just when it looks like
life is falling apart, it may be
falling together for the
first time .
I have learned to trust the
process of life, and not so
much the outcome.
Destinations have not nearly
as
much value as journeys.
So maybe you should let
things fall apart at this
juncture if that's what's
happening. Don't hang on so
tenaciously. The nice thing
about things falling apart is
that you can pick up only the
pieces that you want.......
...and you know exactly why I
told you this today....."
This is true. I've been wanting to change things for a while. Maybe this is what we need. I'm not sure, whilst then again I am sure. When there is more than one of you involved it is not so simple. You have to consider the other. Hopefully you do consider the other. I wanted everything thrown up in the air and it almost is. Whilst he is not so comfortable and I am not so sure, maybe it is all good. I will keep you all informed. Blessings to you all whoever you are and whatever chaos might be happening for you.
"On this day of your life,
Jan,
I believe God wants you to know...
...that
nothing is ever solved, or created, by standing still.
Movement
is the process of the Universe. So move. Do something. Anything.
But do not stand still. Do not remain"on the horns of a dilemma."
Do not fence sit.
Put
your foot down on one side or the other, swing the opposite leg over
and start walking. You'll know before you take ten steps if you're
going in the right direction.
Not to decide is to decide.
Try
to not make choices by default."
Is making another "to do list" movement? Or is it more of the old habits of procrastinating, wishing, wondering, whining and wasting of time? I already made a list of 49 things to do before I turn 50 next February. I made the list in my notebook earlier this year, and then I shut the book and put it away. In fact I can't remember which notebook the list is in now.
For a few weeks now and ever since we came through the horrible summer of 2012, I've been telling myself that life (as it was, or a slightly altered version), can now commence again.
Initially I was too exhausted and afraid to very much at all, except to keep on going to work and paying the bills. Then we had a new situation start up just as the other one was ending. This one means that Mr Stayingawake might lose his job. So I told myself to "just wait until that is sorted" then we can get on with life.
Next I went to the Doctor's and asked her to feel a lump I found in my neck. She sent me for needles to be stuck in it, and then for scans. I was scared.
So I told myself that once the job situation and the lump situation were clearer then I would start life again.
2012 seems to have us in a permanent state of waiting and of fearing.
I watched the Paralympics and remembered all the times I've posted on here about Inspirational people and people of courage. How do people do this? How do they overcome such life changing events and restart their lives again? How do they just get up everyday, let alone win a gold medal or raise money for charity?
For years I've been "finding myself"; waiting until this happens or that; until I find my purpose; until I am comfortable in my own skin, and on and on......
I used to worry that I would get to the end of my life and be one of those who have massive regrets. Being someone who has allowed fear and anxiety to rule me for much of my adulthood, I have missed so many opportunities to live fully. The thing was I always thought that I had all of the time in the world.
I keep learning that I do not have endless amounts of time, that time will run out. Me of all people really should have learned this long ago. I keep learning to cherish what I have, to be grateful, to allow my light to shine, to love. Then I have to learn it all again. Do you ever find that happens for you? It must be a thing with us humans.
Anyway, whatever the situation with my health (and I will know more tomorrow), I don't have as much time as I did have. None of us do, do we?
"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows."
- Pope Paul VI
-
The reality is I am 50 next year. This year I have lost my first tooth(except for my baby teeth of course) and the Optician is telling me my eyes are much older than 49, and that I have the beginnings of cataracts. I feel the start of something new arriving in my body.Life begins at 50 these days don't they say?
This year, 2012, was the year I was going to "live alive", so maybe this is the year I finally learn what I have that is so precious. Maybe I am as close as I can ever become to living each moment as if it is the last?
Whatever the doctor tells me tomorrow, it is time for movement.
Time to do all of the things still on my list and more.
No more standing still and waiting until.....
No more being afraid.
Whilst writing this post I realise that I actually have few regrets. Life has been how it has been so far, and there have been many wonderful moments. It's about adjusting those old expectations of myself and of life; about looking at myself with compassionate eyes; about letting myself off the hook; about making the most of each moment that is left and giving thanks for my breath.
Thinking and talking about death need not be morbid; they may be quite the opposite. Ignorance and fear of death overshadow life, while knowing and accepting death erases this shadow. -Lily Pincus
"Won't you show me how to live every moment? Shine me the light of your soul. And teach me how to love like you do. Like it's the last day of the world."
"Television is a medium of entertainment which
permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time,
and yet remain lonesome."
T.S. Eliot
Whilst being aware that I watch too much television and always have; I am blogging about my passion for good screenwriting about the human condition. I have been inspired again recently by a series of four television dramas, that have been screened on BBC 1, and written by Jimmy McGovern.
For those of you that do not know his name, Jimmy McGovern is a BAFTA award winning script writer for English television. His writing for television, first became part of my life in late 1982, when the soap opera "Brookside" first came to our TV screens. "Brookside" was just another TV soap to many, but in it's early days and particularly through the writing of Jimmy McGovern, who wrote 24 episodes between 1982 and 1988, it started to help me feel less alone in my views about society and the politics of the time.
I was living in London at the time, and my memories of my tiny bedroom there, are all wrapped up with images of the Falkland's War on my portable black and white TV, and of watching the first episode of Brookside.
While researching him today, I discovered that Jimmy and one of the most prominent actors from the early Brookside cast, Ricky Tomlinson; both left the series due to the producers refusal to tackle certain current events of the time in their story line. This was a programme that had been unafraid to push the boundaries of what issues could be covered, but it seemed that some things were still off limits.
Jimmy later went on to write about one of these events. He was asked by the families of some of the people who died in the Hillsborough disaster to tell the story of what happened. His docu-drama Hillsborough was screened in 1996.
In the nineties, already a reader of crime fiction and always fascinated by what brings people to make certain choices in their lives; I became possibly the biggest fan of Jimmy McGovern's crime drama series Cracker. I couldn't fail to be engaged by his writing, which brings us closer to the perpetrator of the crimes and their motivations. The key character Cracker, is a forensic psychologist who is both horrified by the acts he investigates, but is also full of compassion for the person sitting before him and how they reached this point. In his personal life his human weaknesses and mistakes, make him a character full of contrasts. The barriers between people, the judgements of good and evil, that lead us to feel separate from each other, are blurred; and the writing constantly raises questions. We find ourselves standing in the shoes of someone we thought was very removed from ourselves, and having some understanding of what it is like to be them.
Always controversial, Jimmy's writing for television always brings us closer to understanding each other, the human motivations and conflicts that occur for individuals in the most difficult of situations. Compassion and understanding are always there. We may be alone when we watch the TV but with Jimmy's writing we feel closer together.
So I am writing today to shine a light on Jimmy's current TV drama series, Accused. This is the second series that he has written, of four single drama's, which all begin with a character who is in the court room being tried for a crime. At the beginning of each drama we, the audience, do not know what the crime is, and we are led back in time to witness the events leading up to this moment.
I have loved all four stories so far, but the first one "Tracie's Story", was just so moving and I felt, very important. The fact that it was screened at 9pm on a weeknight, peak time and had Sean Bean playing the central character, a transvestite called Tracie, made me celebrate. It is not often we see a story of a Transvestite on our TV at all, we do see gay characters more often now since Brookside in the 80's, but not really transvestites or transexuals.
I thought of all of the people watching and empathising with Tracie. I thought of all of the people with similar lives to Tracie who were watching and feeling less alone, more understood. In the eyes of the people watching, someone like Tracie, might now be seen as a person with a history and feelings, instead of simply a figure of fun and someone to direct their hate, fear and anger at.
It made me think of the T.S. Elliot quote above and how, in fact, television can make people feel less alone. Times have changed since television was only a medium for entertainment, now it informs, educates, inspires, creates action. I hear you all who are shouting at me now, and agree that for most of the time, television today is full of absolute rubbish, the purpose of which only appears to be to numb the masses, to stop us thinking too much; not to increase our compassion or to bring us closer together. However, here is a jewel amongst the dust.
Sean Bean as Tracie
Each one of these dramas has been just incredible. The writing and the understanding of human motivations and difficult choices, is simply astounding. If I had ever fulfilled my dream of being a writer, this is the kind of writing I would aspire to. Totally my hero, Jimmy McGovern. Hearts.
The story of Mo and Sue, episode two of this series, was another smasher! Whilst very shocking and frightening, it brings to mind the saying "there but for the grace of god go I". It's about how we are all human with the same capacity for behaving in the same ways. We are all prey to weaknesses, but some of us have factors in our lives that help us when we have difficult choices to make.
This episode is the story of two mothers of teenage boys, growing up in an area badly affected by gang violence. Two boys who were friends and subject to the same pressures. When one is found to have shot the other in a gang initiation, his mother tries to protect him and hides the gun. The words of the mother of the dead boy at the end of the drama, stay with me. She, understandably, cannot forgive her friend and judges herself and her son as being different, and if the situation was reversed, as being able to make better choices. A very sad story indeed but very interesting, to wonder what makes one person act in one way and another person, given all the similarities, in another way.
I thank Jimmy McGovern for writing such drama, that leads us to ask these questions, and makes us stop and think before blindly judging and condemning others for their actions. Please can we have more and more often?
"I do not write to champion a group of people. I come to
tell their story with conviction and truth. But you need permission
from the person with ownership of the story, and their version of events
may clash with what really happened."
"Sometimes the very person or situation you find intolerable is there specifically for your healing! Ask yourself "What is being triggered?" "What old belief or past hurt is ready to be healed?" This may not make the situation tolerable, but it will guarantee that something will change. And you WILL be healed."
6.30 pm Saturday. It is quiet here. Everyone is out. The sun is still shining through the blinds and through them I can also see the leaves on our friend tree, moving in the wind. I am lying on the bed. I want to write about how lucky I feel, how lucky I am, how relieved, how afraid, how shaken, how glad.
I pinch myself. Am I dreaming? Will I wake up to find we are still in the middle of the horror? Or is it really over?
Since the end of spring and for almost the whole of the summer, I have been afraid.
Now that the awfulness is over, why do I still feel so fearful?
I am not feeling sorry for myself. It's been two weeks now but some days I still feel in a sort of shock.
I know that I am lucky. We are lucky. We have come through to the other side and the nightmare is over. I am even afraid to write those words...."the nightmare is over"...just in case the monsters hear me and come back!
----------------------------------------------
My life really has been very blessed. Sometimes I forget this.
I remember when this was my song:
I still believe that this is true. I have had so many near misses. If this hadn't happened, or that had happened, then things could have been very different. Much worse than they in fact were. I might have not been so lucky.
I remember when I was the optimistic and hopeful one. Someone said to me once that she admired me because I always "worked with hope." Recently I have reflected on this and feel that I was rather naive back then. I am more realistic now. Maybe I am less hopeful too. I've come through some times when I have felt very bitter and alone. Where am I now?
Sometimes, in recent years, I have heard myself saying "My life wasn't meant to be this way."
That was before this summer's horror. Now I just want for us all to be safe. For this peaceful, quiet time to last for the rest of our lives. Life isn't like that. I am braced for the next horror that will come. It feels as if nothing could be as awful as this was. I guess even this could have been more awful. We might not have come through it as we have. Things could have gone this way....or that. The horror was so close. We are lucky.
On Friday one of my clients said those words to me. "I can't believe that my life has ended up this way. I can't believe it. My life wasn't meant to be this way." she said.
I looked at her and felt compassion. I wanted to fix her sadness. I wanted things to be different.
I tried to tell her that so many people feel this way.
I couldn't tell her that I sometimes feel this way too. I am lucky.
She looks at my life and sees something of what she misses in her's. My presence reminds her of what she once had. "You've got a good job, " she says, "and I miss driving my car."
I look at her and even as I feel so close, I also feel so lucky. She reminds me of what could be for any one of us. I try to find the words to tell her that I know, that I am sorry, that life is just a game of chance in so many ways and the wheel spins round and round.
"Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows."
I don't know what to tell her, and she isn't listening anyway, she is in her own world and locked into the unfairness of it all; plus she is unwell, her mind does not allow her the peace that mine allows me.
More often than I used to think, my mind does allow me peace. It allows me joy. My mind can still be troubled when my outside world is not. Even when things are calm and peaceful outside, I can still have episodes of depression.
However these days, I am still more peaceful; even whilst knowing that my life has brought me to this place and not that other one, imagined in childhood. I am more peaceful and thankful than I was before the summer.
I am lucky.
Somehow the events of the summer have left me feeling a little of what someone who has been physically attacked must feel. I feel as if there has been a relentless physical attack on my body and on my family. I feel shaken and afraid. In shock. Fearful. Expecting more. Relieved but mistrustful. Hurt. Injured. Attacked. I feel ATTACKED.
This is how someone must feel after a mugging, a rape, an assault, in a war zone. Only so much more. I am only feeling a fraction of that. I think of Katie Piper, who was raped and then attacked, having acid thrown in her face. I think of children who witness their parents tortured and murdered in war zones. I think of women and children who suffer repeated abuse or domestic violence. I think of all of the hurt and frightened people trying to recover from such horrors. I feel closer to them. I have always felt compassion. Now I can truly feel something of what they must feel. This is a blessing. I recognise that it is so, even whilst wanting to feel nothing.
Every knock on the door makes me start in panic. Every unexpected ring of the phone causes my stomach to lurch and my eyes to widen. I am waiting for more. I expect more to come. I am afraid. How do people ever find the strength to carry on? How do people ever stop being afraid?
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”
- Ambrose Redmoon
This cannot carry on. This fear. It was a near miss. We escaped.
We feel relief. We cannot celebrate that it is over. We feel exhausted from the onslaught. But it is time to feel joy again, to laugh again, to let go and be free again.We cannot let fear win.
Katie Piper in her book, "Things Get Better", writes about counting your blessings as being an important step in healing;
"When things were at their very worst, when all seemed lost, I would work hard to think to myself: at least I am not blind in both eyes; at least my attackers are in prison now; at least I live in a country where such an act is a crime and where we have excellent medical care; at least I am alive."
- Katie Piper
I feel lucky that my loved one was only hurt by someone telling a lie, yes it was a very dangerous lie that could have ruined his life, but I still feel lucky that the lie was found to be just that; that my loved one did not harm himself; that he sought medical help when he was at his lowest; and that now he can recover. His life was not ruined by this. He is a good person who deserves better. I have faith and optimism that life will be good to him now. He feels vulnerable but he is out there now, being himself, and trusting that the bad times are over.
Even as I write this, I think..."Please"...and my eyes look upwards.
Katie Piper also talks about faith, belief and trust as key in helping someone recover and find strength:
"There was a moment when I was in hospital just after the attack, when something from somewhere made me believe that I should carry on and keep going. I personally believe it was God speaking to me, though of course I know that other people will have their own opinion on that. Whether it was God, a higher being, something deep inside me or an angel, who knows? But I listened, and for the first time tried to have faith that things would not always be like this and that my health, my life, my mind would get better."
- Katie Piper
Whilst it was all going on this summer, I remember praying that it could be me instead of him. Normally I do not pray. I do not know who or what I was praying to. I asked that he would not suffer for anything I had done to bring him to this place. I asked that it be me that suffered.
We are tied together still. Always. When he suffers so do I. I suppose that me suffering would hurt him too. However he is young and would gain strength and go forward I am sure, if that were ever the case.
Anyway. Enough. It is over. I can breathe again. We can smile again. He can be free again. We are lucky. We are blessed.
Like another blogger friend whose post I read today, I would like to find a place of Equanimity.
Whilst it is peaceful here now, and my mind is becoming more peaceful too, I am afraid that I will not be able to find the strength to deal with whatever might come next. I had a glimpse of the quality or state of equanimity during the summer, but did not have the stamina needed to maintain this whilst things were spiralling out of my control.
I need to practice and work on that which brings me closer to that state again; so that when the world spins into chaos again for me, I can remain in this place of love and peace rather than spin off too, into panic and hopelessness. So that I can remain the person I wish to be in each moment whatever comes, and know that we are all safe and at peace in the timeless space.
"By definition, everything
in time eventually ends. Our bodies and those of all we love grow ill,
age, and inevitably die. All our material possessions fall prey to time.
Our raging emotions of the moment and the situations which give rise to
them are entirely forgotten in a week or two. Equanimity, however, opens
us to the timeless, the deathless. Indeed, equanimity develops through
our contact with that part of our soul that resides
in the timeless. This peace from the
worlds beyond time, embraces the world in time."
Very hastily drawn yesterday with a Pitt pen. I'm not used to drawing in ink. It's frustrating that I cannot erase when I see a wonky line or not quite the shape I was after. Still it was completed quickly and that is what I am seeking in this challenge. To fit some creative activities into my busy days again, without having to find a great chunk of time or energy!
In the spirit of Every Day Matters I have still posted my wonky drawing, despite(as usual), being embarrassed by my childlike drawing skills.
" Summer is ending. The end of August is just an artificial marking of the process of time. Yet if we tune in to ourselves, there is almost always a feeling of loss and sadness inside us when August ends. We are facing shorter days, colder days, and a change in what we wear and how we live. It's good to acknowledge these little griefs."
- from my Page A Day Calender August 31st 2012
Early Morning - August Break Day 28
End of Summer flowers - August Break Day 29
Modesty is overrated - August Break Day 30
Last Day of Summer - Memories - August Break Day 31
