Healing the Whole ...

This week I have moved house. It is apparently the third most stressful thing you can do (along with getting divorced which is why I am moving house!) but coupled with that over the last 14 years I have fallen in love with my house. And I don’t mean I love it like the inanimate object that it is or I love the memories I have made in it. I mean I am in love with it like you are in love with a person. It is part of me. It is my safety net. My comfort blanket. The one that is always there. The one that will never let me down. I know where I stand and it always delivers exactly what I expect every time. I could go on.  I have been through some very difficult times in my house but it has always kept me safe. I never witnessed nor was the victim of any violence in those four walls. It never gave me anything but support. Four walls of it. And a front door that locked and shut the world out. I have lost count of the amount of times I have been hiding in my bed while the door knocked an...

I have come to the realisation that I have a sensitive heart. If you met me, sensitive is not the word that would spring to mind I admit. I did some DISC profiling on a leadership course today and I am, as always, a high D with elements of C. D is for dominance. I am assertive, forceful, results-driven. But that is my mind. These profiles rarely give you an opportunity to delve into your heart. And my mind is strong as I have already mentioned in this blog. I am not surprised as I have spent years and years strengthening it. Being clever was my thing from an early age. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and being able to name every member of Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet as my party piece. I wasn't particularly pretty as a child (or teenager for that matter!) and although I liked athletics I was consistent rather than exemplary. I also wasn't creative in anything valued like art or music. As a child I shut myself in my room and read books and as a teenager I wrote dark poetr...

"You ok?" A stock phrase we often use as a greeting. See also "How's things?" or "What's up?" But in using them as a greeting I believe we risk forgetting what it is we are actually asking. And vice versa, when asked, we may lose the opportunity to respond honestly. In my new book, The Superhero I was Born to Be, I talk about letting go and being real. Giving away a small piece of myself in order to build my superpower team around me. Giving everyone a chance to build a bridge of trust. And accepting that some people will want to and some won't. I have started using the question greeting as an opportunity to give away that little something. Instead of giving a stock answer of "yeah, I'm fine" or "things are ok"; I will offer a real response. And often this is not what the recipient wants because they didn't really want to know if I am ok. They were just offering a greeting. For example, recently the man I used ...

I am in the longest period of continued darkness that I can remember for a while. It's now in its 5th week. This time it is different though. I am functioning well. Probably at about 60%. I have made all of my commitments. I have not shut myself away or spent days in bed. But I know the darkness is there. My anxiety churns over and over in the pit of my stomach. The darkness manifests itself in little ways: I am not using social media. So much so that people are messaging me asking if I am ok. And I should probably think this is nice but I don't. I want to be left alone. A friend went to hug me as we parted company the other day. I froze. I didn't want her to touch me. I felt my skin crawl as she embraced my stiff, tense body. And I am a girl who loves physical affection. But not when I am trying to shut the world out. I wanted to tell her not to touch me. It took a whole lot of energy to restrain myself and allow my body to be held. I am getting tension headaches e...

I am feeling a little strange today. Yesterday I had a very interesting experience. One that stirred up emotions I had buried last year. I guess it is the right time to process them. Last year my 6 year involvement with a local community group came to an end. Put frankly I was bullied. A fairly young, outspoken woman such as myself is often a target for criticism and I am strong enough to take that. But this was a different league. I do not want to go into the details here but yesterday I was asked to go through the timeline of events from June to November 2016. This person is compiling a narrative as, inevitably, the bullying group have moved on to others since and the situation is being taken to a higher level. In preparation I went through all the old emails I had on the subject and one particularly struck me. I had emailed the Chair of this group to inform him I would not be able to attend the Committee Meeting in November due to the unresolved bullying situation. I told him in...

I struggle with my command of our oral language when it really matters. As an English Literature graduate I could write all day about my feelings, but when it comes to speaking about them I am reduced to drivel. What I say very often won't make sense even to me. I am not sure why this is but I could hazard a guess that it is because I never learnt to talk about my feelings when I was a child. I wrote a lot about them, mostly through stories, but I never shared them out loud. I think I was about 7 years old when I remember feeling sadness and immediately knowing I had to hide it. The times we lived in perhaps. Certainly now I encourage my daughter to talk to me about any and every emotion. Especially anger and sadness. The difficult ones. And through her, I am learning to talk about my feelings. Not in great outbursts which can often be too overwhelming for the poor recipient; but in little snippets here and there to different people. Trusted people. People whom I hope won'...