No magic pill...

 

The other day when I went to my doctor and listed my long list of symptoms one of the questions she asked me was whether I wanted to see a counsellor?
"No,of course not," I said.  "I've been there, done that and anyway, the stress I feel under right now will not be solved by talking about it".

For over 45 years I have been in therapy at one time or another.  All different sorts of therapy and all of them have had some value.  At the time I wasn't sure about some of the things I was doing or even why I was doing them, but looking back it has added up to a life of varied experiences and at least it's been interesting. 

Today I thought I'd spend a few paragraphs looking back at my therapeutic journey and where it began and how it's unfolded.  The first therapist I saw was a stuffy, uptight psychiatrist foisted on me by the State of New York.  Let me explain.  I was 17, in my second year of university and deeply, painfully unhappy.  No one seemed to notice despite what I thought were some pretty clear signals I was sending out, so I felt (in my disturbed adolescent mind) that all I could do was take an overdose to draw attention to my unhappiness.  I always did favour the melodramatic route, no subtle hints for me and anyway subtlety really didn't work in my house.  This led to me being hospitalised, my stomach pumped and the upshot was that I was required under state law to see a psychiatrist for assessment since I was under 18.

I remember sitting in front of a panel of psychiatric social workers and health professionals who first needed to assess whether I was a suitable candidate for therapy at all.  I remember feeling very nervous and panicked at the idea that they might find that I was sane enough not to need therapy.  After all, I had gone to all the trouble of taking an overdose just so I could eventually see someone to talk to and here there was a possibility that even these professionals might not pick up the strong hints I was dropping.  I needn't have worried.  The panel recommended I have four sessions with a psychiatrist so he could assess the best therapeutic route for me.  Thank god, I was crazy enough to finally get help!

My sessions with this male psychiatrist were fascinating and more than a little bit ridiculous.  He asked me standard psychiatric questions like 'what is the meaning of a rolling stone gathers no moss', name the last five presidents of the US backwards, what is the meaning of this ink blot drawing, and he then proceeded to ask me about myself and my life. I don't remember too much about our subsequent sessions except for one thing.  He wrote down every single thing I said and I actively disliked him.  He was rigid and appeared unfeeling and untouchable.  I'm sure now this was his professional demeanor, but to me then it just appeared icy and cold.I remember he had a strange little moustache, a bow tie and red hair - nothing like the Freud-like figure I had imagined I would see.

At the end of the four assessment sessions he asked me if I felt I could work with him? 'Absolutely not' was my reply and to my great relief he agreed that perhaps there wasn't a good match there.  Instead he recommended that I see a woman psychiatric social worker.  I liked her and I began seeing her twice a week for the next year.  At the end of the year she also recommended that I join a newly forming therapy group of people my age.  So there I was, just over 18 and in therapy three times a week.

I developed a tremendous library of knowledge as to why I behaved in self-destructive ways.  I began to understand myself and in my therapy group I developed a deep ability to empathise and work with others' problems.  What was lacking for me in this new found perception were any tools I could use to change my behaviour.  Understanding and  awareness were wonderful, but did not lead to much change. I was still very unhappy.

A few months before I left the States I met some people who became friends and invited Ralph and I myself to attend something they described as a 24 hour encounter marathon. I had no idea what this was, I only knew that I trusted the friends who invited us and it was a group in which I could express emotions. The group was organised by people who had recently trained with a therapist named Dan Casriel.  I had recently seen a play based on the work of Casriel with a therapeutic community called Daytop and was really intrigued so this seemed a fortuitous opportunity.

BINGO! Here was what I was looking for after about three years in psychotherapy.  Encounter therapy was my tool for change.  Here was a way to put together all my awareness and understanding with a means of acting on and expressing my feelings that helped me to change.  I really had found the Holy Grail of therapy and I explored this more and more over the next few years.  In England in 1971 I found a place called Quaesitor, a therapy/growth centre and continued my Encounter journey.

After a short time as a group participant I started training as an Encounter leader.  I cannot express how much this meant to me, the difference it made to my life and my happiness.  I was not just working with others, I was working on myself and my way of being at the same time.  I took to this like a duck to water.  I was also fortunate to have met some of the best Encounter leaders and therapists in London.

In an earlier blog I mentioned my friend and teacher, Veeresh. He was my Encounter teacher and therapist during those early years in London. At the same time as participating in Encounter groups,I was finding out about other forms of therapy - bio-energetics, primal therapy, gestalt therapy, co-counselling - all of these different ways of understanding and exploring feelings were essential to me and to my continuing journey towards mental and emotional health.

In the many years that have passed since those early pioneering years in London I have been in cognitive behavioural therapy, bio-dynamic counselling, rapid eye movement therapy, rolfing and many others forms of self-analysis and bodywork therapies.  All of these different ways of looking at myself have been helpful at different times of my life.  They have all led me to a much greater understanding of who I am and have helped me live a more contented life.

I have come to the inevitable conclusion that there is no answer to what makes me tick.  There is no magic pill, no instant panacea.  All the things I have experienced have helped me to grow as a human being.  I still find myself looking for the miracle cure, but only when I'm feeling too lazy to help myself.  I have to come to look on therapy and all its wondrous forms as a great luxury.  it is no longer a necessity as it was to me and my life when I was 17.  I've grown in mental health and learned to manage my emotional health so that I can live pretty well without an injection of analysis or therapy on a weekly basis.

So, on Monday,  when my doctor asked me if I would like to speak to a counsellor about my increasing stress, my response was no, since the stress I am feeling is directly related to my father's ill health and the distance I am from him.  Talking about this won't change it and I know that if it becomes necessary, I will go and see my dad again. In the meantime I have lots of tools to help myself.  I only need use them.

On the first day of Passover ...

What role does religion play in my life?   Does it play any role at all?  Everyone knows I'm Jewish. I don't attempt to hide it or cover it up.  I don't think I could hide it if I tried it's so much a part of me, but is it a religion, a race, an ethnicity?  I'm not at all sure. 

I know that it is not simply religion for me. I have never really spent too long thinking about whether or not I believe in god.  I don't actually think I believe in any sort of external god that sits in judgment of my behaviour or knows my thoughts.  I don't believe in the power of prayer in the way that my mother-in-law did - if you pray hard enough you might win the lottery, come through surgery, fly safely or arrive home on time.  I don't go to a synagogue.  I used to belong to a congregation and looking back I see that it was for the sense of belonging to a community I thought I would find there rather than a genuine belief in a religious way of life.

When I was a child my parents were very lax in religious matters.  There was no kosher home, no prayer and no rabbinical decrees to live by.  We never discussed synagogue attendance and the idea of living by the rules of orthodox Judaism was never a consideration.  Indeed, my mother's cousins who were very observant Jews were considered odd and a bit frightening.  I was Jewish by association, by heredity and through osmosis. 

What does this mean to me at this time of year? Passover is a special time.  For me it is not religious belief that causes me to mark this festival of eight days.  The historical story of the Jews having been freed from slavery in Egypt to wander in the desert for forty years is a powerful one.  The exhortation in the story of this exodus from Egypt to tell this story to our children and to tell it not as if it happened to Jews of generations past, but to tell it as if we, today, were freed from slavery, is an incredibly powerful and evocative one.  Every year, as we sit at our family table and re-tell the same exact story,  I am struck by the force with which this fact, that we are to consider this story as if we ourselves were enslaved and now we are free, makes me appreciate the life I have now.  It makes me aware of and grateful for, the freedom I enjoy.

These ancient stories give  form and comfort to our lives.  They help us make sense of a sometimes nonsensical world.  Being Jewish, by birth and race, has deep ethical meaning for me. It means that I do not get to turn away from doing right things in my life, from living a principled existence.  It means that family is super-important to me. It means that I question my values and hold them up for inspection.  Doing the 'right' thing is not the same as doing things right.  It's about being better than I think I can be and more caring and compassionate.

I love being Jewish.  It's a funny thing to say.  It's an immutable fact.  I could convert to Christianity, Hinduism or be a Buddhist and I would still be Jewish. Biblically, we are supposed to have been the people chosen by god, chosen for what, I'm not sure, but I believe that it refers to being chosen to live a moral and ethical life and to act as an example to the world.  Do I believe this. No, not really, and yet as a group, Jews are more likely to be found in caring professions.  We are often the doctors, the counsellors, the therapists and the social workers of the world.  There is a tremendous need in us to fix things, to make things better.

During the eight days of Passover we have always stopped eating bread as is the custom.  The story goes that the Jewish people fled from Egypt so quickly that they didn't have time to let bread rise, so they ate unleavened flat bread. Eating matzo for eight days is a nice change from our normal routine and a simple way to mark out this different time of year.  I get very inventive with cakes and unleavened foods.  Food is part of my being Jewish - we definitely have some of the best foods related to our culture.

So the question still is for me, what is this thing called Judaism. it is not related to Israel for me.  The country is not the same as the religion, nor is it the same as the cultural group I belong to and identify with.  It is the Yiddish language and culture.  It's just me.  I revel in it, I enjoy it and I also am aware of how dear a price my relatives paid for it.  It is who I am.

No cure that I know of today

This morning I went to see my doctor. I was picking up a prescription so I thought that since I was there and I had a list of symptoms as long as my arm (and involving my arm) I might as well take advantage of the trip and get medicated. After explaining all the big and little things going on and finally bursting into tears,  I came to the same conclusion as my doctor did.  No chance of a simple cure, since really all the aches, pains, symptoms and signs I am suffering from are primarily emotional/stress-related.

I hate this.  I would always rather have a physical symptom than an emotional/mental one.  Seems to me that the physical is easier to cure, but maybe that's also my mother speaking through me. Growing up in my house physical symptoms were taken seriously.  A cold, flu, gastric trouble, broken bones, allergies - these were all given attention and dealt with by getting the appropriate medication or treatment.  Emotional upset or psychological distress, those were immediately dismissed by a 'thank god, it's in your head, it's not real, therefore STOP now'!

So, what I have manifested throughout my life, but a combination of the physical, those things which demand immediate attention and even hospitalisation, and the psychological.  The difference being that the psychological symptoms are the ones that I don't really have the resources to deal with right now and are affecting me badly.

This is a list of my complaints:
1. Hair falling out - verdict: stress
2. Sleep disturbance - verdict: stress
3. Rapid weight gain- verdict: overeating, also related to stress
4. Back pain - verdict: stress since the back pain is exacerbated by weight gain ergo...
5. Lack of concentration - verdict: stress
6. Lethargic - verdict: stress
7. Lipomas all over limbs increasing and causing pain - verdict: ?

All in all the biggest symptom is that I seem to cry/shout/sleep at all the wrong times without much sense of control. As you can imagine, this creates a slightly discordant atmosphere at home not to mention that is playing hell with my relationship.  

It's not fair. The winter is over. We moved the clocks this week.  Daylight is lasting longer.  I am not supposed to feel like this at this time of the year.  Of course, I am aware that my father's sudden bacterial infection is making me a bit nuts.  I feel so unsettled and helpless.
Anyone that knows me will know I am not good in situations in which I am not in control.  This doesn't mean that I always know what to do, but I always need to think I know what to do and I like to be in charge. I can hear the knowing smirk of laughter already.

So, what to do?  I cannot find an immediate cure.  The doctor was sympathetic and made some medical suggestions that we both dismissed as not being needed.  She advised me to relax, not push anything right now and just take care of myself.  Good advice.  I must give it to myself at least every day and still don't know how to do this.

I feel pretty lousy right now.  It will shift.  Tomorrow morning I will get up, paint my face, put on my competence suit and go off to deliver a wonderful day of training. This is also the genuine me, so I guess the trick here is not to give more weight to the negative than the positive.  I just wish I wasn't so bone-achingly tired all the time.

Some days I even bore myself.

Losing things

Most of the time I have a rather casual way of storing things, to put it mildly.  Usually anything that needs to be kept from one year to the next stays around in the wrong place for months at a time and then often in a fit of frantic tidying I put the items away anywhere just to get them out of sight. This can lead to a last minute panic in trying to find something right before it's needed.

Today was a case in point.  We are attending the first Passover Seder at Ralph's aunt Geri's house.  Nice. Quite looking forward to someone else making the dinner and hosting the annual family gossip fest.  We were asked to contribute very little.  I offered to cook and help out but in the end was asked to bring the Seder plate on which all the traditional Passover symbolic items are held,the hagaddahs (the books that tell the story of Passover) and the desert. Great,virtually nothing to do. I made a cheesecake (any excuse) and a mixture of seasonal berries - desert done.  This morning Ralph found the books we needed, exactly where he remembered them to be, but the plate, where was the plate?  I literally ran from room to room, upending boxes, clearing surfaces of discarded clothing, looking under beds, in cupboards,in drawers, at the back of shelves, but the plate was nowhere to be found.

At this point I need to say that I have recently observed a new and unpleasant neurosis emerging in me when I lose something. I don't just feel puzzled as to where I put things, I get increasingly hysterical and run around shouting and, as my mother-in-law might have said, 'creating'.  This has not always been the case.  I used to take things more in my stride and was able to relax and stop the frantic looking for a while, certain in the knowledge that most things turn up.  Usually they are in the very last place you look. I know that makes no sense because that's so obvious, but it always feels like Sod's Law (in the US it's Murphy's Law).

With a rising level of hysteria I made my poor, long-suffering husband ascend into the loft to check if the plate had been stored in a box there.  As soon as the ladder was out and he was up in the loft, searching around, I knew with complete certainty where the plate was.  It was in the downstairs cupboard under the stairs.  I opened the cupboard and just as I thought, there it was.  Crisis averted, panic over. Breathe normally again.

My life is disorganised.  It always has been.  I have little ability and probably less desire to organise and systematise things and I have to admit that this is causing more problems than it ever used to.  In the past I could always rely on my memory.  I could remember dozens of phone numbers, credit card numbers, where I'd put my bus pass, passport, and pretty much everything I needed.  In the days before Filofaxes and iPods and computers I never seemed to need to write down dental appointments or dinner arrangements.  Now I seem to need to record information in more than one place to make sure I remember to to check what I need to do. I no longer carry so many telephone numbers in my head and this is certainly made worse by speed dial on my phone. I console myself by realising that there is no need to carry this trivia in my head, I can use modern technology to help me, but I also must admit that I don't remember things as easily as I once did.  Is this me aging, or me being too preoccupied with the minutiae of life to be able to carry all this unnecessary rubbish?

Most of the time my chaotic lifestyle works but when it doesn't, as it didn't today, I get pretty crazed.  It's in those moments that I resolve to throw EVERYTHING away and clear my life of clutter.  The moment I find what I've lost, I forget about any resolve to do anything and once again carry on in my haphazard style.  I adopt the same attitude to my seasonal allergies.  When they're gone, they're gone and I don't take any action until I sneeze again.  Maybe this time by writing down a reporting of the state I got into looking for the plate I'll be able to look back in a calm moment and take some action.

Tonight I'm tired.  My dad is still not well in the States.  It's Passover and my immediate family is far away.  The state of my disorganised life is secondary to the feelings I have of helplessness and frustration.  I want to be able to make my dad better, to have my kids sitting next to me at the Seder table and to feel at ease with life.  And yet, I know it's also all going to work out.  It is what it is. There is nothing to be done.

Finally,for all  celebrating Passover, I wish us all a Happy Holiday and a reminder to remember how fortunate we are to live free, peaceful, contented lives amongst those whom we love. Live long and prosper.

One Hundred Days

The milestone of 100 days seems to be an important one. Barack Obama has just recently passed his first 100 days in office and the political pundits and the press are busy judging his accomplishments of the past days.  The general consensus is that the first 100 days have been alright but haven't quite lived up to expectation.

My blog is now officially 100 days old.  This posting marks the 100th entry and the general consensus (admittedly amongst only myself) is 'could do better'.  Reading through a number of earlier entries I am amused by what a self-centred amalgam of emotions I seem to be.

So, just as the experts seem to be advising the President of the US what to do next, I will attempt to distance myself from me for a bit and offer myself some advice for future blog entries.

1.  Don't try and sound smart or over-intelligent (who are we kidding here!)  Write what you feel and what you know.  You will surprise yourself by learning from you.  This is a valuable lesson.

2.  Don't try to sound too esoteric and airy-fairy.  You only embarrass yourself and it's no good pretending that you are anywhere closer to the illusive enlightened state you were in 100 days ago.

3.  Don't get too worried about the nostalgia - this is simply a function of age.  All old women do this.  Tears come easier when you're older.  It doesn't mean anything except your tear ducts are in great working order.

4.  Never, never, never say anything that will embarrass your children.  Your mere existence often does that anyway.  Let's not compound the problem.

5.  No more with the weight loss/gain/loss merry-go-round.  It is a fact - you lose and gain weight the way other people lose their house keys - you lose weight all the time, only to find it again.  Enough.

6.  Stop being embarrassed/defensive about writing a blog.  You do it because you find you love it and you love people reading it.  You like this form of distant attention.  It's OK.

7.  Don't worry about whether your life is interesting enough.  It is.

8.  Stop feeling guilty about taking time off to write this.  This is another form of meditation for you and it's working. Sitting cross-legged in the lotus position is not a possibility, this is.

9.  Accept that you are exceptional.  Accept that you are special and that there is no need for you to find reasons for this.  It just is.

10. Enjoy your many friendships and continue to value them and value the love they bring into your life.

11.  Carry on taking photographs.  One surprise for you is that you enjoy illustrating these entries with your own photos.

12.  Be kind to your family. They are always there for you, even when you are nuts and even when they say, "You read poetry, you never read me any!"

13.  Acknowledge how much you want and how much you get.  You very rarely say no to yourself.  Start saying yes to those around you.

14. Appreciate what you are doing in the moment, the opportunities you have, the path you get to walk, and always remember, that your time here is temporary.

15.  Take good care of yourself and those you love.

And finally, for at least the next ten thousand days,
       Enjoy every second of the journey.

All's right with the world today...

Oh lucky me, sitting in my sunny room, enveloped by wonderful smells coming from my kitchen, listening to Krishna Das chanting, still in my pajamas, contemplating the rest of my day and it's still only 9 am.

Passover is coming and the foods and feelings are flooding back today.  I've been awake since dawn and made some sweet and sour stuffed cabbage plus a big pot of chicken soup.
Cheesecake next. The spirit of my mother has been at my side all morning and I feel particularly close to her today.  I miss sitting in her kitchen and watching her roll the cabbage parcels and carefully skim the soup. Today I've had to content myself with having her near but just out of reach.

Sometimes I feel that I go through my life with people, dead or alive, near and just out of  reach.  I am often walled up in a world of my own creation and just as often, I don't have any desire to emerge. On a day like today, I want to share the calm and contentment I feel, but aside from Ralph, whom I trust more than I trust myself, I'm sure that there are only a small handful of people I would want in this space with me.

Throughout my life I have had what I have labeled 'transcendent experiences'.  Those times (occasionally assisted) when I have connected to an energy, spirit and feeling of worlds, universes, galaxies, beyond my comprehension, but in which I am also living.  This sounds strange for me to state.  Some of the people I know find this impossible, even bizarre and yet, the world I walk around in every day is also pretty bizarre.

Every day when I'm not working I make sure and get outside. On my walks I meet some of the same local people.  Some I acknowledge and some I just stand and silently watch.  The man dressed as a pirate always strikes me as an especially happy guy.  He literally has a swagger in his step and is just missing an eye patch for the outfit to be complete. He wears this outfit every day. There is also the man who always dresses in clothing that might have been worn in the early 17th century by English soldiers.  He also, my son tells me, poses for a nude life drawing class in a nearby school.  He jauntily gallumps down the high street with his white stockings, breeches and black buckle shoes.  What drives these people to get up in the morning and think, 'I know, today I'll be a pirate' or the woman who dresses like Frieda Kahlo, with hair in plaits, dark eyebrows, brightly coloured red Mexican style clothing and flared skirts? What spirits of the past are they connected with?  Am I missing something here?

Maybe these people are channeling the spirits of long departed ancestors. Maybe they believe themselves to be the incarnation of Charles I or Long John Silver (though I think he was actually fictional, no matter).  Strangely enough, I often wear the sort of clothes my mother would have worn and sometimes when I wear her jewelry I feel her approval, so maybe these people are only carrying this a bit further.

While cooking and cleaning and getting ready for this coming holiday I consciously welcome my ancestors into my home.  My grandmothers, who I never knew, would be delighted I think to see me baking cakes, making chopped liver and kneidl for chicken soup, and getting things organised for Passover.  Even though I am not in the slightest religious, I do celebrate Passover with millions of others in the coming week.

Customs are important.  Traditions matter.  This is part of the tribal collective memory we share.  There are things we do and the rituals we observe that connect us to an energetic strength that has served us well for generations. I am pretty cynical as a rule, and as a kid I even thought the origin of my name was from the word cynical.  It isn't but I'm still a great skeptic and I do still have a 'show me' attitude and yet, I do feel the hand of my mom on my shoulder as I stir my soup, mix my cakes and bake my breads. For my mother food was the real religion of the holidays.  It was what brought us together and frankly, kept us coming back. My mother was a really good cook.  I thank her today for passing that on.

The sun is still shining and the house smells great.  Time to relax and enjoy the feeling of fullness. Oh and by the way, I am freezing some foods for my great friend who is away for Passover.  We will celebrate together later, there's always time for celebration.

Poetry

When I was a child my familiarity with poetry was through poems I had to memorise for school homework.  I could never work out why we had to do this. Certainly it did not give me any greater appreciation of the poems and it didn't make me understand better what the poet might have meant when he wrote the lines I so laboriously rehearsed again and again.

I can still remember the first line of the first poem that sticks in my memory - "O Captain,my captain, thy fearful trip is done...."  Only now when I looked it up, did I discover that the poem running around in my subconscious is by Walt Whitman and metaphorically referred to the US Civil War and Abraham Lincoln. Who knew?  Perhaps if all this had been taught to me the poem might have had more meaning.  All I remember is repeating the damned lines over and over again to my poor  mom and dad and trying desperately to remember the lines, never the meaning.  I believe children are still required to memorise poems as part of their English lessons.  How much more meaningful it would be if we were to choose poems from the vast selection out there and create our own interpretations and meanings and bring that to school.  Maybe we could even choose music to match the poems and paintings too.  For me this might have worked.  I would have remembered the poems for the right reasons, rather than memorising in the same was as I memorised telephone numbers or multiplication tables.

Even though my introduction to poetry was through nursery rhymes and long-forgotten dry remembered texts I have always loved reading poetry and can well recall afternoons in my room reading the poetry of ee cummings and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  Like so many teenagers I was particularly obnoxious and thought myself very advanced at the age of 15.  I read voraciously since it was the best means of escape in my house. Reading was considered a really worthwhile past time so no one bothered me while I was reading.  I ran through volumes of poetry and eventually stopped to re-read ones that resonated with my mercurial moods.  This is an excerpt of one of the poems by ee cummings that I still remember 40 years later:

"here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"


Once I can remember, when I was 14 or 15 I illustrated a book of Shakespeare's love sonnets.  I remember flowers and butterflies and my beautifully careful calligraphy decorating page after page of sonnets.  I also remember being extremely distressed when the pundits announced that Shakespeare may have written these sonnets for his male lover.  Wait a minute, I thought they were for me, they spoke so loudly to me.  Even Elisabeth Barrett Browning and her melancholy, saccharine sonnets didn't escape my teenage romantic yearnings.  I devoured them all and was in awe of the poet's ability to express in words what I could only at that time imagine feeling. Poetry seemed to make sense of my scrambled feelings in the simplest way in just a few lines.

At different periods of my life I have also looked to poets for solace.  In the period following the death of my son I read a lot of poetry.  There was never a memorial service for him. There was a funeral and much mourning, but no memorial and yet I read poem after poem about death and loss and renewal and I feel inside that I had my own memorial.  The poetry expressed my sadness in a quieter way that seemed to help resolve something broken.

Poetry is more than words.  It is feelings with spirit, with wings.  The poetry that universally touches us all expresses all of our feelings.  The Songs of Solomon in the Bible express the sense of wonder of love in a much better and less embarrassed way than any of us can anymore. I am reading a book at the moment and the beginning passages are poetry of Rumi:

"The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,

they're in each other all along."

I am so very touched by these words and they express my own feelings and at the same time define them.  Maybe this is the real point of poetry, to define and expand my own thinking, the thinking I didn't even know was there until I read it.  When I read these few words by Rumi I was simultaneously touched and completely unsurprised.  Of course, of course, this is how I feel too. How wonderful to connect with others in this most simple way.

I finish today in unashamedly mawkish mood, full of feelings, sentimental and feeling truly connected to the wonder of life.  Here is one of my all time favourite ee cummings poems:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 

Sneezing

Try sneezing really loudly.  Now try it again and again and again and again and again, very quickly with little or no break to breathe.  Not great , is it?  A bit panicky feeling? Well, that's what I've been doing all morning.

Cynthia's sneezing- therefore, it must be Spring.  Hurrah!

Hundreds of thousands of sneezes have passed these lips.  I remember the day this started about 16 years ago, exactly and to the moment. It was the day of cousin Emma's wedding. If my memory is clear, it was a sunny, warm day in late May and we were all dolled up for a family wedding.  Just before we left the house, just as I was putting the finishing touches on my make-up, I started sneezing.  Violent, rapid-fire sneezes, accompanied by itchy eyes, runny nose and soon, runny eye make-up that showed no sign of letting up.  We drove across London to the wedding as I sneezed in the car and arrived at the wedding with me in a crumpled, drippy, pathetic state.  There were at least five doctors at this wedding and did one of them have an antihistamine?  No, of course not. I sneezed through the ceremony, the reception and well into the night. And so it began...  Soon I even gained a reputation at work as 'that American woman who sneezes'.

I cannot  begin to count the amount of money I have spent on trying to cure, relieve or just lessen these allergies.  I have tried acupuncture, homeopathy, acupressure, naturopathy, kinesiology, Tibetan healing, changing my diet, cutting out various foods, reiki and ordinary allergy medications from my GP and other allergists. I have even used special nose drops that involved me hanging my head backwards and upside down off the edge of a bed. I am still sneezing.

A few years ago my father, who also developed what my doctor called, late onset allergies, reassured me greatly by telling me that I would eventually outgrow them.  He said he did, when he was 75.  So, not long to wait now, only 15 years.

I always have a few months of dormancy when I don't sneeze and completely forget the miseries and self-pity of allergic days.  Unfortunately the few months of sneeze-free time coincide with the few months of the year when I want to hibernate.  During the deepest winter I can put on all the eye make-up I like and not look like a raccoon.  Of course, I don't really want to go out or see people much, but the moment, the absolute instant,  the sun shines and the earth reawakens I develop what are referred to as 'allergic shiners'.  These are the dark circles under my eyes that accompany my life.  No matter how upbeat I feel or how rested I am, there they are - the big dark under-eye shadows.

Once I decided to visit the Laura Mercier make-up counter in a large department store for help. Somewhere I'd seen an article that said that this particularly expensive brand of make-up had the best under-eye concealer so far developed.  Great, I thought, that's for me.  I sat at the make-up counter and literally, in between my sneezes, the poor 'beauty adviser' tried cream upon cream, powder upon powder, going lighter, darker, pinker, yellower, until finally, she looked at me and said, " I don't think we can help you, why don't you try another company'.  Oh my god, I had to face it, there was no help out there.  I can look forward to going through life looking like a panda.

So I sneeze.  I look a bit damp and deflated, but it has its upside.  When travelling on any form of public transport I find that people give me just that bit more space.  I do have to also put up with lots of dirty looks and often people offer me tissues.  In countries all over the world I have been stunned to hear strangers a fair distance away wish me 'Gesundheit' or other local variations on this exhortation of health.  Recently in America, a bookstore employee was kind enough to print me a sticker that said, 'I do not have a cold, I sneeze from allergies'.  This helped at the airport where I think everyone thought I was coming down with plague and backed away in queues.

Today's allergy attack involved me going out and running some errands in a total histamine-laden fog, coming home and dosing up with old-fashioned sleep inducing antihistamines and sleeping for a few hours.  The idea was to sleep off this latest attack, wake up relieved, ready to do some work and then write a deep,meaningful blog entry. The reality is that I woke up sneezed a bunch of times, felt awful and just about managed to finish this entry.

There must be a better way.  And so the search begins,  the seasonal hunt for an allergy cure and the stockpiling of  remedies. I wish I had shares in the Kleenex company and of course, I wish you all 'Gesundheit'.

Is it 'creepy'?

Writing this blog has brought out some interesting reactions in people.  I mentioned the other day how some people want me to process my feelings in private, but a few days ago I had a reaction that really surprised me.  It struck me as most odd.  The person I was speaking to described the writing of this on-line blog that others could read as 'creepy'.  I was a bit stunned and became quite defensive about my reasons for writing this.

Writing this started as a bit of fun and has become a sort of lifeline for my psyche.  The revealing of myself, in small sections, feels like old-fashioned burlesque rather than full-on striptease.  I get to decide how much of me to slowly give up and how much to hold back.  It is always in my control and the friend who found it 'creepy' didn't seem to understand this.

How much of ourselves do we hide from others?  How much do we easily share?  Why do I write this blog and why daily?  These are questions I never even considered when I started writing this.  I never imagined that I would still be doing this 97 postings later, much less have to answer questions about the whys and wherefores to those who don't even read this, never mind don't want to understand.  Admittedly I have set myself the questions and now feel I should make an attempt at the answers.

Certainly writing this daily has made my life a bit more difficult.  It inevitably happens that I am typing away when Ralph comes in from work.  He sees me sitting in my usual seat on the couch, with laptop in front of me, typing away with great interest.  He would like me to drop everything, jump up into his arms and greet him like the long lost hunter home from a day of working hard to provide for his family. Usually, I look up from the typing, say 'hang on a minute' and then reluctantly get up and say hello.  I have to admit, it's tough being jealous of blog time, but I do love writing this and the discipline of daily writing has been a revelation.

Writing is absolutely new for me.  I never wrote anything on this scale.  I did write all those letters 40+ years ago to Ralph before we were married and this is close to that means of expression.  There is an intimacy I feel when writing though this time round the intimacy is with myself.  I welcome the 'me' that emerges from the page and over the last three months I have begun to find my writing voice.  I still don't think I have much to say, but, boy, do I like saying it.

What am I learning?

I've learned that my dad is a remarkable man.  This sounds ridiculous.  I've been my father's daughter for over 60 years and yet, it was only through writing about him and his history that let me clearly see my father and his journey through life. I've been able to see my parents in a very different way.  Writing gives me an immediacy about my feelings but also a distance from the people I write about so I can see them in a new light.

I've learned that I have the capacity to control my feelings more than I ever realised. Writing down my mood swings and almost graphing their trajectory has meant that I have had to become conscious of how easily my feelings shift and how little advantage there is in hanging on to them. Even the high points have shown me the foolishness of becoming attached to feelings.  Things change.  The highs and lows are just part of my routine.  I have to admit I like them, they give me a sense of aliveness.  I am able to begin to see that there is an addictive quality to the drama in my life. 

I've also learned that there is little about me that I am afraid to reveal.  I'm not too complicated and I have few secrets.  I have things I don't need to share with others and things that are mine and mine alone.  We all have those small secret areas that we don't share.  Sometimes the small secret areas become loud, shouting voices, demanding to be listened to, to be heard.  Through writing this blog I have found a way of not just listening to my inner voice, but also answering that voice in a positive way.  Does this sound crazy?  It doesn't feel it.  It feels incredibly sane.

I've learned that I am creative, loving and beautiful.  I've also learned that I'm lazy, apathetic and self-centred.  So what else is new.  I have learned that my friends and family keep me here and keep me alive.  The overwhelming thing that comes through from writing is gratitude.  Mushy, sentimental gratitude, for a life lived fully and well, for a life of painful times and joyful times, for a life full of opportunities that I sometimes have been able to grab with both hands, and for times when I would have willingly let someone else substitute for me.

I feel very lucky to have found this new way of expressing myself.  Is it 'creepy'?  I don't think so. I think it's great.

Aimless day

When I woke up this morning I rolled over, looked at the clock and saw that it was 9 am.  Late, I thought, putting on my White Rabbit persona.  Late, late, wait a minute, late for what? No plans, no arrangements, no food needing to be bought and no people to see.  In other words, a completely free day.  Now the question was what to do? 

I thought for a few minutes and discarded the idea of going back to sleep.  This seems a waste of a day.  I have no trouble sleeping at night and just to loll about in bed all day didn't appeal.  The sun was shining for a bit, but seemed to have disappeared, so I really didn't fancy a walk in the woods.  To be honest, I rarely fancy a walk in the woods.  I am not a natural nature lover.  To my shame because I know I should be in touch with my nature-loving side, but I would much rather walk down a High Street in a city than tramp through untouched woodland.  Now, the sea... there's another story. I love the sea and the beach but unfortunately my house is hours from the nearest coast line.

Finally, after a long, leisurely shower, I decided to do the one thing that was outstanding - to return the trousers I inadvertently stole a few days ago and subsequently paid for.  In the end, they were too big.  "What on earth did you expect?" was the comment Ralph made and he was right, though it always irks me to let him know this. So today's task was going to be returning trousers.

I drove to the nearest shopping mall to return the trousers.  The twenty minute journey was relaxing as I sang along with my music and enjoyed the signs of Spring everywhere. When I got to the shop I was seduced by the many sale racks and plucked up armfuls of clothes to try on.  Again, as the other day, no luck.  I tried everything on and even took my boots and trousers off to do this, but fancied nothing. At least no fire alarms went off, but I was on high alert nonetheless.  I almost knew I wouldn't buy anything when I went into the shop.  Today was not a day to buy.  It was a day to wander.

I bought myself a frozen yogurt and wandered from shop to shop looking at all kinds of possibilities, from shoes to kitchenware and feeling very blessed to already have everything I needed. I did end up doing an errand for Ralph who needed thread for his students, so I could legitimately justify going out shopping since I had to buy eight spools of thread.

I realised when I was out that I very much enjoy having the day to myself.  I have friends I could phone and meet for lunch or tea, but today I preferred to be alone.  More and more I see that I like to be by myself.  I'm not sure why.  I used to be 'Miss Congeniality' and would invite people to my home or make some sort of social arraangements at the drop of a hat.  In recent years this has completely changed.  I still love seeing people and feeding people here in my home makes me very happy, but the need to constantly be in the company of others has fallen away.

I can't pinpoint an exact time when my socialbility gene started failing.  I do know that as I approached my menopausal years I beccame more and more withdrawn.  I think I would have spent whole months not speaking if I hadn't had a husband and son living with me.  I know this drawing in was not unique to me.  Every woman I know has gone through a similar pulling away from people and a need to spend time alone.  Maybe it is a natural way of transforming.  After all, caterpillars weave cocoons round themselves in order to eventually emerge as a butterfly. I think woman go through a similar metamorphosis during their middle years. 

At about the same time I has surgery to correct my spinal scoliosis.  This was a time of huge vulnerability for me.  I spent three months in heavy pain and this meant I rested a lot.  I was on my own for long periods and enjoyed watching the leaves arrive on the big sycamore tree outside my window. I didn't much care for visitors and began to jealously guard my alone time.
 
Even before these times, when I was 19 I went to Europe from New York for six weeks of travelling on my own.  This was in 1968 and I'm pretty sure it was an unusual thing to do.  I knew that I couldn't imagine traveling with someone else and not having arguments or disagreement over our different needs.  I've always been pretty self-sufficient and often travel to the States on my own..

To come back to my day, I bought thread, apples and nothing else.  I achieved nothing, did not change the world, effect the environment or fix anything.  I just had one of those nice, easy days that are so easy to let slip by and yet are actually quite precious. 

The Power of Song

How often do you raise your voice in anger? How often do you shout at others in irritation?  I would bet that for most of us, myself included, we exercise our voices more in anger than in the pure joy of singing.

For the past two years I have spent the first weekend in September at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York along with 450+ others, singing and chanting for four days, from morning till late in the night.  I cannot begin to describe the pure, unadulterated pleasure this brings me.  How often do any of us give ourselves such a total break from our daily routines and just sing, sing from a space of delight and joy and meditation, from an inner core of beauty that is suddenly open to anyone simply by being in the room and experiencing the simplicity of chanting?

This is not as off the wall as it might sound at first.  All of us have had glimpses of this kind of joy.  Maybe it was in the choirs we were in as children or in church or synagogue, or for me, round a flagpole or campfires in the summer as a teenager.  Singing like this connects us to a heart space that is normally difficult to reach in our busy daily lives.  It's as if by chanting and singing all the usual busy pathways in us are suddenly empty and we can directly connect with ourselves easily , or at least that has been my experience.

I came upon this purely accidentally. I used to enjoy singing as a kid in summer camp where we would sit round a campfire, or sometimes just sit round nothing and someone would bring out a guitar and my friends and I would sing folk songs of the 1960's. Wonderful protest songs by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger and we'd also sing in Yiddish.  It didn't really matter what we sang, just doing it in harmony with others made itspecial.

Many, many years later I went to The Findhorn Foundation in Scotland for a week and the group of residents who were in my weeks' intake had a free evening together. I figured that since I was in Scotland, in the Highlands, home of whisky distilleries, the only sensible thing to do was to buy some malt whisky, find some music and an old piano, get pleasantly tipsy and have a mass sing-a-long.  This was tremendous success and caused some uproar in normally sedate Findhorn, but my memory is of a wonderful, warm evening.

For my birthday last year I had a karaoke party.  Wow, what a surprising success it turned out to be, despite the reluctance of my family to initially embrace this idea.  We sang in English, Italian and German. We sang the Supremes, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and lots of others.  We sang individually, in pairs, in trios, and as a group, all joining our voices together, not to sound good, but to feel good. And boy, did it feel good to sing with friends.

The music I listen to at home is usual kirtan chanting - the musical repeating of mantras, ancient Hindu, Hebrew, Tibetan and other languages in song.  I find this wonderfully stilling and to the consternation of those around me, I usually join in and sing along.  I love this.  For me it is like finding water in the desert.  When my nerves are frazzled and the day is just too chaotic, just hearing this wonderful music is enough to bring me home to my quiet heart again.

So, this year I am debating NOT going to Omega and passing up my four days of pleasure.  Why?? I'm not really sure. It's primarily a financial decision, though leaving home again for a week or two feels not right. I know I haven't earned enough to justify the expenditure.  Flying to America is expensive and I'm just not sure.  Last year the generosity and kindness of my friends helped me along the way as my birthday gift.

Do I want to go, yes.  Will I go,I don't think so.  Sometimes the daily priorities of life take precedence.  I'll just have to keep singing and I'll find that joy anyway.  It's all inside me in any case. I might just join a choir or keep singing in my car - at least that way I don't have to worry about how I sound, just how I feel.

What makes a weekend?

Now that I am working so much less I have many week days to myself to fill however I please. This is quite a luxury and I am in no doubt that it's a wonderful thing.  I love having these week days as the rest of the world struggles on trains, cars and buses to get to the office, the shop or the school.  I get to lie in bed for that bit longer and contemplate how to spend my day.

Yet, even with all these days off, I still have a different feeling about weekends.  Weekends are extra special.  Ralph isn't out at work, even though he often spends time working at home, and there is less self-induced pressure to get up in the morning and start usefully moving about. As most long-time couples we have a sort of routine to our Saturdays and Sundays.  They usually begin with a discussion about who's turn it is to get the weekend newspapers.  A few years ago we decided to stop getting our daily newspaper delivered.  A needless expense and also neither of us had time to read the paper before setting off for work.  So now we get lots of newspapers at weekends.

Breakfast is also different.  We often eat the same thing as we do all week - two slices of my yummy home-baked wholewheat bread toasted with orange marmalade and a cup of espresso for Ralph and often porridge with blueberries for me, but we eat together at the dining room table surrounded by newspapers.  We each read our preferred sections and I usually interrupt Ralph's reading to share interesting bits of news.  I love the slow pace of the morning and the quiet companionship we share.

I remember a Simon and Garfunkel song that went:
"Slow down you move too fast,
You got to make the morning last...

Even though I could sit quietly and read the papers and slowly savor breakfast on other days it just feels lovely when I can share the time with Ralph. After over 40 years together and countless weekends, I still love the Sunday morning feeling.  Lying in bed, planning the day, jettisoning plans,and delightfully going back to bed after breakfast for a sneaky late morning snooze, just feels great.

There is a group called Slow Movement (http://www.slowmovement.com) and their philosophy is about slowing down our lives and living more mindfully. The thought is that we live our lives in such a high-pressured and stressful way that we don't take the time to stop and notice any of the positive delights or warning signposts throughout our daily lives. The consequences of rushing about in this way may simply be that we live a life of stress and pressure, but we may also fall prey to illness and general unhappiness that can impact on all the areas of our lives.

Sometimes I can remember to stop and connect with the world around me.  At other times I run around in a fog of stress and can't connect with anything, much less an inner core of self that is always still.  This slow down philosophy is about this connection.  The one place that is always at its own pace and is never in a hurry is in nature. Whether it is at the sea or in the forest there is a timelessness that I can experience, but that often makes me conscious of my own time-bound existence. The slower and more gently the world moves, the more aware I am of my lack of stillness.

At the weekends I would sometimes arrange to go out early on a Saturday and do the shopping while Ralph showered and generally met the day at a pace I judged to be too slow.  I do this less now.  I prefer to also slow down and wait for him, or rather do things I enjoy .  I see that there is no need to rush out and buy groceries since we live in a city with 24/7shopping.  I can go out anytime, why rush in the morning?  It's a hard habit to break, but I'm working on it.

As life gets slower, food also gets slower.  There is a slow food movement to counter the ubiquitous fast food - things that take time and care to produce as opposed to assembly line rapid fire food that we have become accustomed to.  I was waiting in a coffee shop  a few days ago and realised I was irritated with having to wait an extra minute or two for my coffee.  What a nonsensical situation - an extra minute of waiting being a cause of irritation.

Living slowly and mindfully involves me in a complete shift of consciousness. At least I can begin to do this at weekends.  Saturday and Sunday seem ideally suited as starting points to relax, turn over, sleep more, eat slowly, walk not drive and enjoy the world.

The saga of the stolen trousers

Sometimes life's events are so ridiculous that all I can do is stand back and  enjoy the show.

This afternoon was my usual pleasant visit to the hairdresser. Despite the thinning hair, I still want it to look good and I felt more alive today so I traveled down to Covent Garden for my hour in the chair.  On the way down I figured that I had about an hour to window shop and enjoy the big city.  The first thing I saw was a big 50% off sale sign in Marks and Spencers.  Now this was an invitation too good to pass up and as quick as a shot I was in there.

I love going through sale racks.  'Sale' is always my favourite designer, right up there with 'Reduced'.  I enjoy the feeling of hunting that this brings out in me.  I enjoy it even more in foreign countries, markets and secondhand shops where I have no idea of what I might find.

To get back to the story - Marks and Spencers seemed to have a lot of nice clothes in my size.  I guess this is an advantage of being large in a country of skinny women, or at least skinny women who frequent this chi-chi Covent Garden branch. Happily loaded with armfuls of clothes I found the fitting room. First sweater -nah, second shirt - ugly colours, now for the difficult bit - stripping off my boots and jeans to try on the trousers.  This is my least favourite thing to do when out shopping.  I do not enjoy the sight of cellulite-laden thighs in full-length mirrors, especially mine.  Well, this is where the story starts to get interesting.

From previous changing room nightmares I realised that if the trousers I wanted were wide-legged enough I could usually tell if they were going to fit by slipping them on over my trousers and boots.  This way I didn't have to get undressed as I always feel a bit too vulnerable in those changing booths.  I carefully pulled these great black trousers over my boots, pulled them up and lo and behold, wonder of wonders, they fit and they looked good.  A tad loose I thought since I still had my jeans on underneath, but pretty good, nothing that a little alteration couldn't fix.  Just as I was admiring myself in the three-way mirror an alarm sounded.  Ignore it, I thought, but no, it went on and on and a moment later the shop assistant shouted 'everyone out, right now, FIRE! Leave the store NOW!

So picture the scene - there I am, two pairs of trousers on - looking pretty nifty, I must say, debating as to what to do.  Should I take the trousers off?  This would take more than a moment and when I pulled back the curtain to my booth to see other people's progress out of the shop, I was the only one in the fitting room. Or should I just run out of the shop wearing the two pairs of trousers?

I chose to run.  I was the last person upstairs in the shop by this time. I ran down the now defunct escalator, through the food hall, all the while smelling smoke and wearing two pairs of trousers.  I got outside and realised that in effect, I had just stolen a pair of trousers.  I stood around with the other ejected customers very conscious of the trouser situation and considered my choices.  I could wait with all the others until the fire alert was over, but by the smell of smoke and serious Fire Department presence I guessed this would take some time.  Also, how to explain wearing the trousers - for sure it already looked like I intended to steal them by putting them on over my clothes.
Meanwhile I was going to be late for my hairdresser appointment.

So, I walked away and decided to first, take off the second pair of trousers as soon as  possible because I felt like a total idiot and it was very warm.  I walked towards my salon and passed a McDonalds. Thank goodness for public toilets! I eventually peeled off the second pair of trousers and there it was - the security tag!  I was officially a thief. I went to my hairdresser and told him this story.  His view was 'steal the trousers - why not?  You already did'.  He reckoned that my husband being a teacher with a classroom full of technology tools, could find a way to remove the tag. I reckoned bringing obviously stolen trousers to work would not do my teacher husband's reputation much good, though it might add to his street cred with his students.

I decided to take the trousers back to the store and pay for them. It was the decent thing to do and would surely earn me points in the afterlife.   Disappointingly there was no fanfare for an honest customer, or congratulations for me on not being a thief, but I paid for the trousers, the security tag was taken off and now I can try them on tonight without jeans underneath and see if they actually do fit!

This has to have been one of the more outrageous days I've had recently.

Permission granted.

I have been writing this blog now for about three months and it's interesting that I've had really different feedback on it.  A few of my friends follow it and some of my family.  Some people are a bit disturbed that I reveal myself in this way,  feeling that if I need to write a diary I should do so secretly and 'process' my emotions in private. Others read this and I have no idea what they think.

I feel like I've spent my entire life processing things in private.  Outwardly I appear to be an open book.  I am reasonably gregarious and sociable, except during the winter months of isolation and hibernation.  In my work I have been told I am dynamic, funny and confident.  These are qualities I own and like in myself.  I also know that I keep many things secret or hidden.  Few people are aware of the depth of the depression I carry around with for so much of the time.  Yes, I can let it go sometimes and of course do let it go, at least publicly, but much of the time I do feel like there is a cloud over me and I get through it by busyness, chatter and smiling.  I've done this for as long as I can remember.

Princess Diana once gave an interview in which she talked about the state of her marriage.  She said it was difficult to have a relationship when there are three people in it.  Well, I certainly don't have three people in my marriage, but the depression and malaise that I carry with me is having a similar effect. Sometimes it is like having a third person or shadow self between me and the world. I know it's tough being married to me - I am sure of this because it's tough being me too.

I just went out for a few hours.  The sun is shining and the weather is turning warm. Our little front garden has daffoldils and crocuses in bloom and the magnolia is about to flower.   I feel so slow and lethargic - no spring in my step.  I did buy a beautiful small handbag perfect to take to a party for a great price.  Seems that no matter how depressed I feel the secondhand buying me is always poised and ready.  I talked to a few people, bought some groceries and enjoyed driving my wreck of a car.

And yet, all this stuff that I do seems diversionary. Underneath all of this, underneath the surface ok-ness, I am not too great.  I want to sleep a lot and talk less. Maybe it is just feelings being processed and the emotions of the past weeks taking longer to settle than usual. Whatever it is,it isn't common or garden SAD, unless that happens in every season and it isn't fun.

Writing this down is my way of letting myself and others know who I am and exploring what I feel.  I could do this behind closed doors, under the covers, but I choose not to .  There is nothing special about my feelings. I am special. I am talented and creative and courageous, but my feelings - well, we all have them and to diary them alone in a corner doesn't feel right.  If anything it gives those thoughts and feelings more power over me.  Revealing them, airing them, expressing them, dissipates a lot.

This may be read by others but it's my own way of meeting me.  I am loving the writing and intend to carry on for some time.  I actually feel better already!

Woe is me...

Today I feel old.  I feel tired and dispirited.  Interesting how these feelings come and go.  Sometimes they are way, way at the back of my life and hardly merit a consideration.  At other times like today, the same feelings seem to be much bigger and right in front of me.  It's as if the feelings just bubble and up and refuse to be ignored. The sun is shining, the days are getting longer and the winter is finally disappearing.  This should be a cause for rejoicing. Today the rejoicing feels a bit muted.

The question I ask myself is whether or not it's worth giving this any attention. There is no real reason for these feelings to come now. Maybe it's those rays of sun shining through the dust shouting 'clean me'. Maybe it's having gained some weight over the winter and maybe it's just that I feel a bit like I'm drowning in melancholy and sadness right now.

Recently seeing my father is part of this sadness.  No matter how often I might be able to visit him or how far away I live, there is nothing I can do, he is slowly leaving us.  I have written about this before and I'm a little shocked at how painful I am finding this. I was able to be so strong with my mother during the last months of her life.  Why does this feel so different? Why am I so different with this?

My father was always the quiet one in my house.  He left the visible parenting to my mother and busied himself with the business of working and supporting us. He was generally easy-going and didn't outwardly worry about much, but he took life seriously and his duties and obligations even more seriously.  He was never unemployed, never took more than a couple of weeks a year holiday and carried on working until he was in his late seventies.

He also was always there for me to lean on completely whenever there was a crisis.  In any sort of crisis my mother, who appeared to be the stronger of the two, or at least the more vocal, fell apart. She always looked like she could cope, until the crunch moment, and then it was my father who took over. Even though my dad was never as Americanised as my mum, could never have a real conversation with my teachers or even speak great English, he was my protector.  I always felt safe with my dad.

I never really felt safe with my mother. I always felt like I had to take care of my mother. She was very needy and had lots of neuroses that I'm sure were exacerbated by her war experiences. I often wonder if she was a  fearful child and I think I remember my uncle telling me that as a child she was nervous and hesitant. I guess she never really changed and her life experience just reinforced her fears.

I have a lot of my mother in me and I know that my children have often felt that I was the one who needed mothering. I am so sorry about this and hope that over the past few years this has changed. I know from experience it's a heavy burden to carry. I also know that I have a lot of my father in me too. His strength and humour are two wonderful qualities that I have in abundance and I guess that on the days when life just seems overwhelming I should be connecting with my dad's energy instead of my default setting of channeling my mother's depression.

As the evening draws in I can admit defeat today and start again in the morning. Tonight before I fall asleep I'll try and remember to programme myself to wake up mindfully and greet the day with optimism.  I'm so delighted that I always have tomorrow.

Living with 'man flu'

All of you woman out there, have you ever had a cold? the flu? stomach bug?  How have you dealt with this? Maybe taken some sort of painkiller, decongestant, herbal tea? Maybe we have even taken to bed for a couple of days, struggling to the kitchen to make tea or a couple of slices of plain toast. Generally, no big deal.  These minor illnesses happen, we deal with them and then they pass.

Yesterday my husband came down with a cold.  This clearly was an illness of tragic proportions.  The number of moans, groans, requests for hot drinks and demands for sympathy were extraordinary.  I was even berated for forgetting to tell the poor man to take paracetemol for the achiing muscles he had.  Last week my brother had one day (!!) of some sort of stomach bug.  Oh my god, within minutes he was labelling it the norovirus. I believe the diagnosis of something as formal as norovirus sounds much better than I have what my dad sweetly refers to as a 'loose stomach'.  Both of these dreadfully ill men are now better.

Women do it better. Of this I'm certain and yet the medical profession does not take women as seriously when they present with symptoms of illnesses that may be difficult to diagnose.  My mother was feeling extremely unwell for about a year before she was eventually diagnosed as having colon cancer.  She saw her doctor and complained of extreme tiredness and exhaustion. She was 74 years old, retired and generally in good health up until that time.  The first treatment she was given was a prescription for anti-depressants.  By the time she had the correct tests and the accurate diagnosis her cancer had spread and was terminal. My aunt was treated in a similar fashion.  So was my mother-in-law. 

Would men be told that their symptoms were connected to their moods?  Would men accept such a diagnosis?  I think there is still a difference in the way men and women are treated by the medical profession and women always come out worse.  Maybe we should all start making more noise, complaining more and certainly demanding more.  Not necessarily from those we live with, but from those medical gatekeepers to treatment. 

This brings me to my most recent vague and irritating lapses of attention. I arrived back from NY last Wednesday.  I was jet-lagged and pre-occupied.  It took me a few days to land in London and I still don't feel really here.  Annoyingly I forgot that I had booked and paid for non-refundable tickets to the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy. Great exhibition apparently.  All booked up now.  We missed it last Friday evening.  Then there was a phone call on my answering machine yesterday.  I missed a dental appointment.  Completely forgot all about it.  Write these things down, I hear you say.  I do, but then I forget where I noted them.  Was it on my iPod, my computer, my old-fashioned filofax? I am going to start writing things down in three of four places to make sure that I see them.  I certainly can't trust memory.

My memory is actually not bad.  It's my concentration that's not great.  I find that I can't do more than one thing at a time.  Something inevitably suffers, so I've started being very male and single-minded about things.  No more multi-tasking pretence. 

Just had to stop for a minute - I just burned the lamb curry.  I forgot it was still cooking.  I'm sure if I went to my doctor about this I would be prescribed anti-depressants.  Who knows???

The Humaniversity

Throughout the past few months, as I have been writing down my ramblings and jumbled thoughts I've been aware that in the background supporting me are many, many friends. Some read these writings, some don't and many know me well enough to know the 'me' that scribbles -  my self-doubts,my passions and my delights.

When I look at my life and try to identify the meaningful places and people I have known the place that comes to mind is the Humaniversity in Holland. Many of my friends will know this place, but I would like to explore for a while what the Humaniversity means in my life.

The Humaniversity is a community of people in Egmond aan Zee, Holland who have identified themselves as "working with people for a better world".  Quite a tall order.  As an institute it has existed for over 30 years and has provided shelter, therapy and friendship to thousands of people. My connection to the place and the people who live there goes back further than that.  It goes way back to when I first met my friend and teacher, Veeresh.

Veeresh is the director and founder of the Humaniversity and the Rajneesh Therapy Institute that preceeded it. I have written about him before and his importance in my life as a teacher, mentor and most importantly, friend.  He started his life in New York and sadly became addicted to drugs very early in his adolescence. Through his commitment to himself and the help and huge support of many people he overcame his heroin addiction and eventually came to England at the request of the Maudsley Hospital London, to set up Phoenix House, a drug-free therapeutic community. Eventually Veeresh started working with ordinary, everyday neurotics like myself with a view to helping people to fulfill their lives and help create worlds where friendship and care for each other is paramount.

Friendship and love have always been the foundation stones of the Humaniversity.  I believe it is the most successful 'friendship university' in the world, if not the only one. In the early years of the Humaniversity the regime was based pretty tightly on the therapeutic community model and 'residents' lived in quite a hierarchical structure, confronting themselves, their behaviour, feelings and attitudes, always with the support and reflection of fellow residents. Now the Humaniversity has moved on to a softer, more meditative approach, though there is still a hardcore commitment to looking at yourself and discovering who you really are and who you really can be.

Many years ago, Osho told Veeresh to train the best therapists in the world and the Humaniversity has a therapists' training programme that is run in a number of European countries.  The graduates of these programmes are some of my closest friends.  Going through thetherapeutic process of encountering each other and ourselves in such a supportive way has meant that there are few secrets amongst us and an honesty and directness that makes our friendships so much deeper. It is very reassuring to know with certainty that my Humaniversity friendships are so strong that if I were to shout for help, these people would stand up and be there.

Over the last few years we have also been there to share our celebrations.  It is one of the great advantages of living in Europe that within and hour or two we can turn up at a significant birthday or anniversary celebration. This makes the celebrations all the more sweet. I don't want people in my life who are only good to me in an emergency. I also want friends who share in the joyous moments and rejoice with me.  My Humaniversity group of friends is just that.

Veeresh once said that he wanted to create a world of misfits - people who didn't fit into our impersonal society because they wanted to relate through friendships from the heart.  He has been incredibly successful in this.  We are misfits scattered throughout the world bringing the idea that 'love is the answer' everywhere.

Veeresh also helped teach me how to be in a relationship. In the early years of my marriage he acted as the glue that helped bond my relationship to Ralph.  That glue turned out to be some sort of permanent, superglue and I am thankful I met him when I did. It wasn't just my marriage that he helped cement. It was the lessons in friendship that came as such a surprise.  It was the understanding that the more I can share of the inner me,the deeper and more important my friendships become.  Quite a gift!

Over the past 30+ years the staff at the Humaniversity has changed many times.  People have moved on to all corners of the planet.  I still maintain connections with those distant, much loved friends.  The people who have stayed at the Humaniversity have transcended my idea of friendship and have become family - cherished, beloved members of my clan. No, they are not perfect, but this makes me love them all the more.  I'm not perfect either (!) and we can accept this about ourselves and each other and love each other even more.

The Humaniversity itself is sited in what used to be an old children's home on the North Sea coast of Holland.  The staff and residents have spent years beautifying an austere and functional environment and largely succeeded in creating a peaceful oasis in the dunes.  It's always such a delight to visit the strange little seaside town in Holland that the Humaniversity has invaded.  The sea and the dunes are wild and windy and the welcome I get, regardless of who is there, is always open and warm.  I am so pleased this place is in my life. If I had to invent a fairy tale about friendship I could not have written it any better.