I feel so lucky so why am I still afraid? It's called being a Mother I think, or maybe it is called being human.

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."

- innerfrontier.org