Today's post feels difficult. When your working things out on an almost daily basis, the idea that formed a few days ago suddenly may not seem so easy. In fact it can feel like it's taking you right out of your comfort zone. Which leaves only one option perhaps afterall, and that is to proceed anyway!
Somehow I feel as though there are parts of me that I need to put out there. I'm not sure quite why but I think it's part of a freeing up process. These are old parts, but still make up who I am now.
This is the photo I have had out on my notice board this year. This is me aged five I think. I remember that head band and toggle like it was yesterday. I like the healthy and wholesome feeling that being five brings. I remember wearing the side bunch and the bobbed hair! I see the simple childhood assurances and confidence. The love that was around me keeping me safe and looked after.
I was an only child. I loved the house we lived in on a street full of other children. I loved our garden, with the big horse chestnut tree at the end. We played out in the front street, rode our bikes and went from house to house. I spent the next few years lost in the realms of Enid Blytons Famous Five books and The Secret Seven. I was always making lists of names for little clubs and I wanted to go on adventures.
But I also remember that my Dad was ill. In a kind of childhood hazy way. When I was four and he was only 36 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. In the days before the more modern treatments they have now. My Mum looked after him, even though things had been tricky before for them. I think we all stumbled through our days and three years later he died.
I just carried on in the way that children do. I think my Mum spent several years feeling quite fragile. I may have run a little bit wild, which was a continuing theme. Boundaries were never very strong. But I always knew there was a safe place to come home to. I spent many days up the tree at the end of the garden, or roaming as far away as I could on my bike or the bus.
So I learn't to travel and wander at quite a young age. I think having to make my own decisions and cope in a certain way made me more independent and resourceful. I would keep on moving on to new places and people. I didn't give myself the time to notice the hole that had been left inside of me. I would keep on filling it with other things. I found myself facing some horrible walls, which I couldn't get past. I noticed that several relationships and friends would be with people who had just experienced some kind of grief. As though I was trying to remind myself there was something that still some work that needed to be done.
I think I carried a certain amount of shock with me, that has perhaps always been there. I can be quite sensitive to undercurrents and I have to be careful not to catastrophize things. I have to watch out that I'm not trying to 'save' people. Because part of me thinks they might die otherwise! and that it might be my fault. Or that I am responsible for them. Or that they might reject me and leave me. You can imagine the unhealthy relationships that would come from that belief. I no longer need to draw angry people to me, because I can't face my own anger.
My mentor and myself have a little chuckle at the fact that in my bag I carry my own set of spare car keys, so I can rescue myself. Arnica, for shock and trauma and Rescue Remedy, everywhere I go. Because that's normal right?!
I hope I have learn't to ask for help now when I need it. To not try and work things out myself. I think I have done some of the work now, several therapists down the line. I'm not afraid to face those things. I have been unravelling my story for quite some time now....
♥