Having a stroke …

Well where to begin. On 3rd February I had a stroke – never been ill before, no medication, no warning. I was very lucky as I was in London at the time taking the tube to my hotel for the night and all of a sudden I was on the platform wondering what was happening to me. In a period of a few hours I was tucked up in bed in Charing Cross Hospital having discovered I had had a stroke.

Why am I going to blog about this? Perhaps it will help other people and it will certainly help me keep things in perspective. The question I have been asked consistently is “weren’t you frightened?”. The answer is “No”. That thought just didn’t come into my head. Whist I was in hospital they kept me pretty busy and even brushing my teeth was a challenge, funny and took most the morning to start off with. I was very lucky to have two amazing girlfriends look after me whilst there alongside my extraordinary sons;  one literally by my side every day and the other, half way round the world, phoning me every day.

Even when I was transferred to Kings Lynn things were ok. The issues started when I actually came home! I was overwhelmed by the love and support by family, friends and clients BUT I needed a fighter on my side. I didn’t have any fight in me and my experience is it is the moment you leave hospital you have a battle on your hands. That battle probably started just before I came home – a pattern of a life time, I looked weller than I was. Within days of being home I was in agony. A day at a time I haven’t felt a victim and most importantly haven’t lost my sense of humour. You have to hold onto that humour even through the tears and anger …

This is probably a good place to stop and I will post the next blog soon …

Happiness

Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives, when we focus on ‘being more’ rather than simply having more.

Daisaku Ikeda

 

At some random moment in the Summer still pondering of whether I was procrastinating or not this year, I signed up for a MOOC. No, I didnt know what that was either – it is a Massive Open Online Course. Yes, it turned out to be MASSIVE. It started two weeks ago and 100,000 people are taking part from all over the world and the subject is The Science of Happiness. Just the the thought of 100,000 people wanting to explore what happiness means to them made me happy because it is giving me hope.

The Science of Happiness | Positive Psychology | edX

https://www.edx.org/…/uc…/uc-berkeleyx-gg101x-sciencehappiness-14…

The Science of Happiness” is the first MOOC to teach the ground-breaking science of positive psychology, which explores the roots of a happy and meaningful …

What else makes me happy? Well it could be something as banal as finding just the right cake tin. What increased the feeling was that I found it on the Thursday Market in Fakenham reinforcing what I say about my home town: “if I stand there long enough, I always find just what I need”.
Web
Seeing this beautiful spider’s web on a wet and dreary morning made me happy, if it hadn’t been wet and dreary I wouldn’t have noticed it.
On the course I was reminded that we change 1% of our cells every day. If I can breathe in those feelings of happiness, perhaps I can make that 1% really worthwhile. My family, my friends, my work, my environment all bring me happiness and one of the questions I have is how can I sustain it realistically. I have a feeling that working on that 1% is part of the key.
Many different meditation practices can also be part of that key and one that comes to mind is Loving KIndness Meditation (Metta) where you give loving kindness to yourself, then someone you love, then someone you are not particularly fond of and finally someone you dislike. Then you send the kindness out into the Universe. This meditation is becoming more and more popular and again that brings hope and happiness for our future.
I was very happy to randomly meet a friend on the platform the other morning and we travelled down to London together. I love the apparent “random” happenings in my life. Being with a like minded person for an hour or so makes me happy and he told me about this funny and moving Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson which I am happy (oh dear!) to share with you as the subject is close to my heart.
Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity | Talk Video | TED.com

and so my happiness increases just sharing this with you…

In the Meantime … procrastination or not!

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Someone asked me last night about procrastination and I was wondering what exactly to write about and there it was! Two famous childhood sayings come to mind “Procrastination is the thief of time” (Edward Young, The Complaint: Night Thoughts) and “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” (Lord Chesterfield letter to his son). Paradoxically, I also found in the dictionary: deliberateness, unhurriedness, deliberation, absence of haste or hurry.

All of the above reminded me of a question I was taught to ask myself by a very wise friend as opposed to berating myself: IN THE MEANTIME? When I ask myself this question, I very often discover that my perceived procrastination is an intuitive process which is working at a subconscious level. I am waiting for a key element to click into place that will pull all the threads together. A little bit like this post in the sense that if I hadn’t delayed posting something, I would not have been able to think about this so clearly until I was unexpectedly asked the question last night!

When I am truly procrastinating, I am now actually aware of it and it is usually about not having the enthusiasm for doing something or feeling ill equipped to do it, lack of trust or faith that I can achieve what I need to. Or, more importantly, I am dancing to someone else’s tune or their perception of what I should be doing! So what helps me disentangle all these possibilities?

Reflection is a helpful tool, looking back at past achievements and how I got there.

Talking it through with people I can trust.

Looking at my fears, remembering that fear can stand for False Evidence Appearing Real.

What are my true priorities right now?

Trust the process. If it is meant to be, it will happen or it might not be exactly how I envisaged. It might be different and very possibly better!

Meditation. If it is something I truly feel in my heart and would like to do, meditate on it regularly and ask for guidance.

Finally, don’t be my worst critic but ask myself the question “In the meantime?” Another question I ask myself is what is in the compost heap?

So in January I had great plans create a Meditation E-Course, make a film on Life & Death and start a new book! Has any of this happened, NO and it is now May. In the meantime, we had to suddenly move house which is in a lovely setting and I have magically acquired a cabin I can convert into a workshop/studio space as well as a meadow with a great pond I have permission to go to. I did several E-courses myself which have all produced a very rich compost heap, inspiration and meaningful connections with new and old friends. I was able to get some film material in the can and, as I mentioned before sometimes there is a key element missing. In  this case, it was fairly recently, facing as a family and individually, issues around life and death. There has been time to reflect on what exactly is the aim of the Meditation E-course – it will happen. As far as the book is concerned I received literally just now some missing information I need through some good people I have connected with in closed groups on Facebook. I have also learned more and more about social media and how it can work for the good.

My priority has been to spend quality time with my family as I have two new little granddaughters who have had a bumpy entry into this world as well as four little boys. Whilst I was with my family in Tokyo my daily meditation was to connect with the beauty of nature and symbols in the city. In fact this reflects an aspect of the E-course and the form of meditation which will underpin the intent of the course. As well as family, I have dear friendships I need to nurture and maintain my practice as a life coach/psychotherapist. Taking stock of my actual life is another tool, what is a realistic expectation and what isn’t. So I will continue to give time time and see where it takes me…

 

 

Pilgrimage

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[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/81321020[/vimeo]

As my blog is about Spirit of Place and how everything is interconnected, the word pilgrimage has been whirling around in my mind for a while. Looking up the origins of the word what jumped out to me were the words foreigner, beyond the country… The implication is that the person has travelled far. There are many different responses to the word pilgrimage: a quest of some kind born out of desire for something different (perhaps sometimes to escape the mundane world), it is an internal journey of discovery and reinforcement of spiritual faith, it is a physical journey to a sacred place like Mecca, Jerusalem, Machu Picchu and Stonehenge for instance, it is an adventure based on curiosity about other places in the world. A common factor seems to be the importance of what happens on the path and how that affects us personally.

Recently, I watched Simon Reeve’s programme on BBC2 on Pilgrimage which covered Christian pilgrimages from Lindisfarne to Jerusalem. Two things struck me: one was in Istanbul when a guide at Hagia Sophia said that the memories of what people had seen would eventually fade and what they would remember was the feeling of peace and Simon said something along the lines that he thought that peace was the rock upon which our future could be founded; the second was the expression during medieval pilgrimages about women that “they left pilgrims and sometimes returned whores”! Two very contrasting statements around pilgrimage.

So do we naturally gravitate to places that feed our deep desire for peace and can that journey be so challenging and arduous that we fall by the wayside as the price is too high? Are we too dependent on that external feeling of peace and the belief that it might rub off by visiting certain places? Are these places imbued with other people’s faith?  Does it matter?

To me it does matter, otherwise I wouldn’t be mulling this over. There is an image in my mind of the world being crisscrossed with pilgrimage pathways, sometimes incredibly long and sometimes short , but somehow they are all interconnected. I have a theory, shared by others, that the physical pathways were already there and that many sacred sites where built upon node points that naturally possess a sense of peace.  I have to say that, paradoxically, there are places that give me a sense of unease and pain and in hindsight they are often places where something painful or disruptive has happened.

I can see all this as a metaphor for both my internal and external quests. So as not to fall by the wayside when the challenges surface, I have learned that I need to do what I would do for any form of journey – prepare! The preparation is both literal and energetic and there are many different ways of doing this. The challenge for me is I realise I am always going to be on that pilgrimage on a daily basis and that my desire for peace is my rock, if I lose that I am lost. I once heard a shaman say that one of the most effective ways to visit sacred sites is firstly to go there and then in the safety of your own home revisit them through meditation and truly absorb what you need; the great advantage is you can do this any time. Meditation is a fantastic form of internal pilgrimage to feed our soul and the sacred space is then securely within us.

The videos in this blog are also forms of pilgrimage one a literal journey to Kamakura in Japan, another into the wonder of the minutiae in our garden, and thirdly part of the collective pilgrimage forming a field of peace on We Are All Cranes of Peace. Writing Healing the Ouch of Disappointment has also been a pilgrimage through my life and the lives of others http://amzn.to/1bxxbgn.

To finish, I had a fantastic gift today which was a reminder that I am a Third Culture Kid and there is a book called Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds by David Pollock & Ruth E. Van Reken.  I have a very varied DNA enhanced by living in many countries, travelling all over the world tracing my roots, at times feeling an outsider and misfit. Some of you may resonate with this but I discovered we are a multicoloured tribe.  I can value this interesting DNA today and feel at home anywhere in the world as long as I live in the day. It makes me smile to think that this great reminder was given to me freely on my pilgrimage into Facebook – a journey I have resisted for a while. A bonus is I got a great cure for my cold too…

 

 

Avrum Frankel made Vegetables come alive

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/73631032[/vimeo]

Perfect imperfection and growing where we are planted.

There I was on a mission…. Proud Mother going to support my son Avrum doing a cooking demonstration at the Holkham Food and Drink Festival this week-end as he is Head Chef at The White Horse at Brancaster Staithe.

Even tweeted (a new found tool) that I would be proudly videoing it and announcing with great confidence to their lovely PR lady that I would be on the case.

It all started so well – bristling with pride, full of confidence in my “new found” video abilities, basking in my son’s success, having my lovely grandchildren by my side. It would be perfect this time. I know, this is quite cringeworthy on my part! Hmmmmm.  Of course, we sat in the front with my supportive demeanour shinning out. What could possibly go wrong …

Is it any wonder that at a crucial point the whole thing started to unravel…. my IPad told me with great delight it was going to stop recording. The Universe certainly works in clever ways but without missing a beat I switched to my phone. Phew!…. it was only after that I realised that I had cut Avrum’s head off almost throughout, I had also recorded my youngest grandson being very assertive about his need to pee – he is in full flow of being potty trained and my rather terse tone saying “in a minute!” In my defence and combined with his willpower, no accident happened.

Avrum sailed through all this singing the praises of all the local producers with heartfelt passion, naming them all saying how fantastic they are. Really celebrating the Spirit of Place. He made vegetables come alive and what shone through him was his love of this part of Norfolk and what it has to offer. So the video you can see is just a taster of what is on offer. He certainly embodied the phrase grow where you are planted. As a family we certainly love where we live.

VegetablesPerfeck Pork

What I have learned over the years is to laugh at myself when it all becomes about me and at least the Universe meets me half way and mirrors the error of my ways. I can laugh with delight at perfect imperfection and a shortened video is more than enough, less is more …

Crush

 

The Jigsaw of Spirit of Place

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For me connecting with Spirit of Place is where I can resource and have a sense of home and belonging.

A while back, I was in the doctor’s waiting room with my grandson when I started to observe an elderly lady waiting anxiously for her turn. Someone was sitting beside her talking, but she only seemed to be half listening. I then noticed another elderly lady go up to her and ask “Do you remember me?”

Her anxious face broke into a smile and she replied “Yes, we went to school together”.  From then on they sat companionably together, holding gnarled and slightly shaky hands exchanging occasional rheumy glances. Their combined energy was incredibly peaceful and so touching that it was possible to feel it spreading throughout the waiting room. I realised as I sat there that shared history is a form of Spirit of Place.

This week I went to a friend’s funeral which was in a tiny village church and she was buried under a beautiful copper beech. It was a celebration of her life and there was something incredibly comforting in the quintessential Englishness that surrounded us .A sense of everything was exactly how it was meant to be.  A part of my childhood was exactly that “quintessentially English” and I understood that it was still very much part of me despite having lived abroad for many years, a French education and feeling genetically a mixture of backgrounds and spiritual beliefs. Interestingly old friends were there too and we companionably held hands every now and again.

Whilst I was in France recently I made a video of the village where I reconnect with the French side of me and when I came back to England I had a great urge to find some bluebells in an old English wood. Spirit of Place for some us is quite simple and for others like myself it is a jigsaw of different places, feelings and memories.

Really connecting with the Spirit of Place of Fakenham has started a heart warming adventure of putting the jigsaw together. As a friend once said to me “we need to grow where we are planted”….