Heart wounds.

A phone call ends and blood flows from the gaping wound left in my heart.  Eyes stare at those hopes, those much prayed for hopes as they burn leaving only ashes ahead.  Don't ask me how I feel, I don't know...... Angry? Furious? Tired? Resigned? Mournful? Sadness? oh yes, there is definitely sadness, I can feel it flattening me to the ground.  That is something I suppose, I can identify something correctly, practise makes perfect.

Thirty minutes before the phone call I was walking the dog, laughing out loud at her antics as she first got stuck in a stream and then swirled into madness as the squirrels in front of us suddenly all took off in different directions.

Madness....... I wouldn't have been giving that word any more thought now if the phone call hadn't come.  But it did, Madness, Mental health, Self Harm, Suicide, oh yes, more and more thoughts are tumbling out of their neat little boxes in my mind where I can usually keep them tidy AND under lock and key.

I could of course could just quickly vacuum all those horrid thoughts up, get them back under lock and key, hey! what does it matter if they are not neat and tidy in their little boxes. I'm so tempted, that way would be so quick, so.... I might need to wear a mask again for a while but who cares?

Actually I care.  There is also that gaping wound that needs dealing with.  A wounded heart needs attention.  A quick patch up job will fail, I know this and have some ugly scars to show for it.  What this heart needs right now is a healing touch, I need the hands of my maker to come and hold his hand over this wound.  He will stem the flow of blood.  He won't mind the mess, the redness, the rawness.  His hands will work with such care. His patience will be forever enduring. There will be another scar but it will be different. I'm learning from Him to have patience too. No human can say or do the right thing, right now. I shall just wait and wait some more.

New hopes will come too, in their own time.

Luke 12:7  Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Self Awareness.

There is one problem with becoming more self-aware - it makes it very hard to hang on to your negative behaviour!

You may have seen my last rant of a post and if so you will be pleased to know that my anger and frustration is calming down.

You see, I am aware it is MY anger and frustration.  And what I am learning is........sometimes it is better to just get it out there.  Blow what anyone else might think about it!  I have watched people I love sit on their feelings, refusing to acknowledge them and seen those same people completely self-destruct.

However, when you have spent most of your life relying on the affirmation of others, being real is exceptionally hard.

Trying to explain how I feel when I am still trying to work it out myself is also very very hard.  It takes me some time and an awful lot of thought and energy.

Does it really matter? Would it not be better to learn to just not let STUFF bother me in the first place, to just let it go..........  Or would that just lead me into a shallowness, where I was not really able to connect with others around me?  I suppose I am really hoping that by becoming more self-aware 'stuff' will not bother me in quite the same way as it does with all these hang ups, hanging around.

I have still not quite worked out how to try and mend the broken relationship with my niece - I think I am going to be letter writing.  Things will also have to change a little in our relationship, I was obviously giving far to much of myself for it to blow as it did.  She will soon be turning 18 and will need to rely on me less if she is to have any hope of getting any sort of independence.

Gah! life can be so scary................ what would I do without my faith.  Taking on the responsibilities of the world would most definitely be enough to squash me completely!

So as I go into this new week, I shall keep forgiving those that have upset me (I never seem to be able to do anything just once) and I shall keep giving thanks for the bounty of gifts that I have been given ......

970. Unexpected kind words from a friend.

971. Putting fabric through my sewing machine.

972. Blowing bubbles with each breath as I swim.

973. Watching my dog watching the world go by from the window.

974. Conversations with my daughter in the car.

975. The cup of tea made by my son.

976. Using up the meal, that was frozen from left overs.

977. Green foods, boosting my iron intake.

978. The smell of real fires in the outside air.

979. A hug from a new very little friend.

May your week be full of acknowledged blessings xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Mum.

So I should be saying Happy 67th Birthday today!  But I am not am I, you ensured you stayed 66 forever - that is an extreme way of not getting anymore grey hairs!

I cannot imagine how you thought suicide would be the answer. 

I cannot imagine how you could have thought that being dead would have had anything but a negative effect on your two remaining children and all your grandchildren.

For me it has been the ultimate punch in the face, you wanted to be with your other daughter and not me.

Did you have any awareness that this is how it would leave me feeling?  I hope not!  That way I can fantasise that this is just my own interpretation of how I am feeling, not how you were feeling.

There are days when I want to slap you round the face and remind you that you chose to have children - so why did you bring me up feeling as though it was my own fault that I existed?????

Then there are days when my heart bleeds for what you had to go through as a child, and for the support that you did not get from family, friends or counsellors.

I know I am so very fortunate.  I have an amazing husband, and beautiful loving children.  There are friends surrounding us that are there to support and hold us when we need it.  To leave us be when we need that.  And to make us smile and laugh when we need that.

I do hope seeing me striving to break the mould has not made you sad.  I do hope that you can see that we are trying to nurture individuality and freedom for our children.  Yes  this means there are times when I have to let my children 'Show off', but who are they harming?  Yesterday when A was walking down the street holding her arms out walking like a catwalk model, I could feel you cringing besides me and chastising me for letting her do it.  But she was having fun, she was playing, she was using her imagination to live out fantasies.  She was enjoying herself!  She knew this was an extra special treat - time with me.

There are only three memories that I have of you and me spending time just the two of us, maybe more will come back to me with time.

One was off us shopping together when I was probably 12 or so, but we were shopping for you.  I remember you constantly telling me this.  I had known that is why you were going but had still wanted to come with you with the hope that you might treat me to something.  You didn't, you just got cross that I wanted to look at things that were not what you were looking for.

The next was when I took you for lunch when you were visiting your mum in Kingston.  It must have been when she was in hospital, before Sally died as otherwise she would have come with us.  That I remember being a really pleasant pub lunch.

The last memory is of your birthday present last year.  Do you remember I got us tickets to see a west end show - something you had never done.  But you hated the whole experience.  Even telling me this while we were eating our lunch out in a lovely restaurant.  That hurt me so much.

So today is a bittersweet day for me.  There is a part of me relieved that I no longer feel responsible for trying to make life worth living ( yes I know that I did not have to do this, but it is how I felt).  Then there is the other part that had so hoped that living closer to each other would mean spending more quality time together, maybe even getting to know and respect each other more as we grew older.  For this I grieve.

False Memory Syndrome

Did you know that it is possible to truly believe that something has happened to you when in fact it hasn't?  That you might have flashbacks and nightmares that are your mind has created because of other trauma that has occurred?

I have been doing lots of reading about this recently as I am currently having to deal with allegations being made against people I know and love.  Unfortunately it seems that the only way of ever getting to the bottom of false memories is by getting all parties to talk about it to find where the distortions of memory may have occurred.  For my situation this is not possible as there are no mentally reliable people left to talk.

Most of the reading I have done seems to centre on sexual abuse by parents or grandparents, the majority of stories and research also centre around poor therapy where abuse may have been inadvertently suggested.

However there is a smaller body of evidence that seems to show that it is possible that people are able to start to recount false memories or flashbacks in order to avoid looking at real trauma.  This is not done on purpose but is a coping mechanism of a damaged person.

I am now tasked with finding a way of living with the information that I have been given.  Reading this article has helped.  This encourages the focus to remain on the person who may be having false memories and remembering that they are occurring for a reason, even if it is not the reason they might believe it to be.  What I am surprised by however is the lack of conversation that has occurred with any professionals that we are involved in to discuss False Memory Syndrome at all.  I have stumbled across it (and the fact that there is a British society of it!) because of deep gnawing feeling and some pretty reliable evidence that suggests these allegations are not true.  I had presumed that they were just lies - but now I can see that there is far more to it than that.

I do not know whether there will ever be a conclusion to the situation that I am in, I have been told not to expect one.  It has made me turn whole heartily to my faith in God, it is a burden far to big to be able to bear alone.

Matthew 11:28  (NIV)

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Amen to that! 

All Change.

So I mentioned in my last post that I had made a big decision.  It is something that has been rumbling away for a few months now.  As my regular readers may know I have a condition called rheumatoid arthritis.  It is a condition that is always just there.  I'm fortunate enough to have great medication which has kept it reasonably stable for about 3 years now.  However, as well as aching joints always just there and preventing me from doing anything too active, the biggest effect it has on me is fatigue.

I will have had this condition for 16 years come this autumn.  It arrived 6 months after I got married (it's our 16th wedding anniversary tomorrow).  I don't very often think about what life was like before hand, that is one thing that can really bring me down.  Suffice it to say, I was very active, I used to run several times a week, go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, walk and swim, just to name just a few acitivies.  In fact just weeks before I first became unwell my husband and I brought our first ever mountain bikes.

As well as having this condition I have also had 4 years of enormous stress.  This started with my sister suddenly dying, then becoming a kinship carer for her only almost teenage daughter.  After two years of constant anxiety while we tried to care for an extremely damaged child along with our two younger children we had to make the decision to hand her over to local authority care.  Then my father died, then my mother had a mental breakdown and spent 3 months in hospital, then my grandmother died in January this year.

Amazingly my arthritis has not got much worse during this time however the fatigue has.  For the last 4 and a quarter years I have been working my 20 hours a week as a children and youth Pastor for our local parish (2 churches).  I did take some time out to have knee operations 3 years ago and also 6 months unpaid leave to help with my recovery and the changes to home life with my niece living with us.  The parish I work for has been amazingly supportive, through much of the times of great stress (eg, my mum in hospital) work has been my escape.  It is something I felt called to do almost 10 years ago.  It started in a voluntary capacity for the parish where we live and after a short period of working for the local council when I decided to go back into paid employment I was offered the current parish in a neighbouring parish.

It has not been all plain sailing in the post, it has had plenty of challenges, however it has always felt like a Gift from God and I have always tried to treat it as such.  For the last few months however I have been having to come home from work and go to bed for several hours every day as my fatigue has increased.  Whether it is pain that increases and causes the fatigue or the fatigue that makes me more aware of the joint pain I have I don't know, but my joints are presently very very sore.  My breathing has become poor as my fitness levels are falling.

Being away on holiday in Orlando, Florida was great, what was not so great was the fact that I had to use a wheelchair for all the days out that we did because of the pain and fatigue my body has.  God has been speaking to me.  I finished 8 months of counselling last month, during that time I have been learning how to listen to myself without the critical voices that roam around me head interfering.  This has also enabled me to listen more carefully to God.

I am currently on sick leave from work and last week I finally realised it was time to stop working.  I know that if I don't have a go at getting fitter and loosing some weight now as I amble towards my mid forties, it is only going to get harder.  I might manage to loose weight and get fitter and still be in as much pain and suffering the same fatigue, but if I don't try then I will never know.  The way things are heading at the moment I feel I am going to end up spending more and more time using a wheelchair, if there is anything I can do to prevent this I have to give it a go.

So last week I had my resignation accepted, they have very kindly wavered my 3 month leave period due to my current health issues and so I will finish at the end of May.

The only problem I am now left with is how we are going to manage financially.  My work did not pay all that well, but it did pay for all the little extras we have come to enjoy.  The occasional spontaneous meals out, spending money on our holidays, buying extra things for the home, garden and the children without having to save up - all these things and probably a lot more are where my wage was spent.  Giving these up, and learning how to live on our reduced income is going to be a challenge, thankfully I do feel that God is with us.

So it's all change, on the whole I feel quite excited to see where God is going to take us and this new journey.  Hopefully it will include keeping on blogging :o).

Remembering Discovery Cove - Florida 2012

At the end of March it was my daughter's 11th birthday.  We booked our long trip to Florida purposely to fall over her birthday as this was the first one she was going to have by herself for some years.  Until  May last year we had my niece living with us who turned 15 years old on the same day.  Wasn't that clever of my sister and I to both have our baby girls on the same day!  After all the trauma of particularly this last year, this birthday needed to be different.  I ensured that my niece would be getting a good day with at least one visitor back at home.

We booked the holiday back in August last year.  The idea for what we did to celebrate this birthday did not come together until just a month before we went.  My mother gave us a special monetary gift just at the time when we were trying to decide whether we could afford to do this special thing or not.  When we told her about it, she was delighted that the gift would go towards it.  So what did we do?  We swam with dolphins.

Discover Cove opened in 2001.  I have heard lots of very mixed reports about it.  The cost is one thing people always comment on, it is very expensive, however being there convinced me that the money is being spent well.  Keeping the dolphins working and captive is another report I had heard, however many of their 44 dolphins have either be born there or are rescued from other zoos/parks/rescue centres.  Back in 1998 my husband and I swam with dolphins in the Florida Keys and we knew this experience would not be the same as that.  This was part of the reason why we did not try and repeat that experience, we swam in very deep water, snorkeling to keep up with the dolphins, which would have been far to difficult for an 11 year old.  So what did our experience consist of.......

All food and drink for the day is included in the package, it is all buffet style and there was plenty of choice (even for us fussy vegetarians!).  We therefore arrived at 8am ready for breakfast, we had to queue for a while to get our photo passes completed and our time for our dolphin experience to be booked in.  Then straight to the restaurant to eat pastries, french toast, cereal, yoghurt and fruit.

Our time with the dolphins was to be around 12.30pm, so we found a nice shady spot and made up a little camp for the day with some chairs and sun loungers.  Then it was time to go and get changed and measured up with either a wet suit or vest for the day.  I opted for the vest (the easiest to wear by far), but I encouraged the others to wear wetsuits as this gave them good coverage to protect from the sun which we would be in all day.  We picked up our little bags, containing snorkel, mask and dolphin friendly suncream and we were all set.

There is a large lazy river/reef that goes around the park.  This is shallow enough for fun snorkeling for the children and challenging enough with deep areas in the river to stretch their swimming skills (though floats are available).  It was a lovely 30 degrees temperature (the same as our pool at the villa) and was terribly inviting.  The children spent most of their day in here, no wave machines, or slides, just snorkeling fun.

 There was also a beautiful aviary area, with lots and lots of very unusual birds, there were pots of food available and we saw many people with birds on their hands having their lunch.  I watched mesmerised by one very small bird that managed to eventually get through a whole grape which was probably bigger than it's head!  My husband managed to catch this wonderful peacock in all his glory:

The drinks,slushies, icecreams and snacks that were on offer kept us well topped up so that we decided we would have a late lunch after our dolphin experience.  We had been watching other people having their experience and so the children particularly could see exactly what they were going to be doing.  We were given an allocated time to go to a particular area where we had to sign disclaimers and watch a safety video.  This briefing was very well done and I was most impressed with their care for the animals.  One large family in our group had their time delayed because one of their allocated dolphins had gone to sleep!

We were paired with another family of four and led to our area in the large lagoon.  The trainers were very knowledgeable and we were able to ask all sorts of questions.  The dolphins were gently introduced to us by swimming along in front of us all and we were encouraged to put our hands out to stroke them.  We were in water that was waist/chest deep on the children, it has to be said it was very cold even with wetsuits on, this is obviously what is necessary to keep the animals happy.

We were then given the opportunity to watch the dolphins do a few movements and to give them instructions on how to do some as well (like splashing us all).  There was then the chance to give one of our dolphins a kiss, we had an older one and a teenager swimming with us, the teenager did the fin pull swim with us, while the older one lay on his back letting us rub his tummy!

Here are a few more pictures:

There was also another lagoon full of fish and rays, I didn't go in here, swimming with fish is not my idea of fun, no idea why dolphins is okay and little fish not but there you go.  My son and husband went and swam in here and said the experience of gliding above rays whose fins stretched out as wide as their arms was amazing.

This is not the sort of treat that we would try and do again soon,  I hope one day when the children are older they might like to either go and do this again or do the experience that we did down in the Florida Keys.  For the healing and memory making experience we wanted this to be - it far succeeded all we could have imagined.