gratitude

And through light, darkness is clearer

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First things first, this photo is actually from the previous holiday in which I started to feel that the black dog was starting to gnaw upon my doors once more.  I’ve known for a while that the signs of depression were creeping ever closer but I have been in utter denial.  Partially because I’ve been in the metaphorical hole so many times that I was sure that falling back in was impossible and partially, in all honesty, because I’m stubborn as fuck.  I have a tendency towards depression.  Always have.  Just writing those words makes me want to punish myself somehow but it’s true and always will be, no matter how many times I pretend to the contrary.  It’s a part of my make-up, these misfiring neural pathways and somehow I’m trying to own them.

I’m just back from a joyous few days in Portugal with an old friend who I knew I could trust with a bit of a meltdown and who wouldn’t judge.  I flew out with my daughter and was greeted with warm hugs and understanding and for the first time in over two years was able to fall asleep in someone’s arms.  It was so beautiful and relaxing and emotional to actually allow myself to just be held and sleep.  And that’s how the rest of the days progressed; playing with my daughter and beach trips galore followed by friend therapy, hugs and wine in the evening.  It took me all of 12 hours to start crying on him.  Sometimes, when you’re low, kindness is the thing that tips you over the edge…

Anyway, I must have known that this was coming as at some point, about a week ago, I got back in touch with my therapist who saw me through an extremely tough few years a long while ago.  In these times of black, she is almost the only person I trust and certainly the only person I feel I can legitimately sob to for an hour.  And that’s what I did today, on full moon, on Beltane on this turn of seasons and pagan festival of yore, I bawled my wee eyes out until we had a mini action plan and we had laughed that basically all I need to do for a modicum of sanity is plant some lettuce.  Sometimes what you need is really fucking simple.

Not that I’m saying lettuce is the answer to all psychological problems because you know, that would be ridiculous but actually, is there any situation that isn’t at least a little improved by getting your hands in earth and growing something?…  The thing is, I’m really happy as a mother.  I love my daughter, I love being able to spend this part of her early life with her and I’m grateful for every giggle and every snuggle.  I’ve just lost myself as an individual and have somehow allowed all of my tendencies to expect failure as standard to re-permeate my existence.  I have no job, I have no lover and I can’t even grow a fucking lettuce!

So, today, I see in Beltane with a whisky in hand and a tear in my eye and I pray that the blossoms of spring will carry me with them as they turn to the light and radiate it from within.  I search for surety within this flux, to know that I can reroute these neural pathways once again and to believe that I am worthy and I am enough and to run with the dreams I have and to believe that they too, are enough.  So for now, I’m taking all the Bach remedies that seem appropriate, sitting in lotus and drinking my national spirit and trying to access the strengths of ages past.  I do believe that recovery is entirely possible, perhaps it’s just time to accept that I need to balance potential relapse into my future.

Darkness is just the other side of light, it’s what comes before dreams…

IMG_3297

Exposed

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It’s been a long time since I’ve been held by anyone.  Just held and stroked and allowed to relax into a warm body and strong pair of arms.  And yesterday, it finally happened for me again.  I allowed myself to be held, to snuggle, to give and receive reassurance, to murmur whatever the semi-platonic version of sweet nothings are and it was so lovely.

The last time someone held me was when my daughter was around 2 weeks old. She’s just turned 2. The last person to hold me was my daughter’s father before he decided he really couldn’t bear to be around us any more.  So it’s been nearly 2 years in which I have been the giver of many hugs, have held and soothed and reassured and loved my daughter over and over again.

I wouldn’t change those years but the truth that remains is that I haven’t been able to let go in that time.  I’m never off duty.  Always there, always listening, always loving and at the end of the day it’s still just me, alone, listening to her breathe over the baby monitor as I watch netflix until I feel myself pass again into a numbness from which I could potentially sleep.

And always accepting that loneliness was a part of single parenting but never really allowing myself to feel it as a burden or indeed engaging with it in any way other than in passing. But after yesterdays cuddles with a man of whom I think highly, today has been filled with tears and longing and a real sense of exactly what it is that I’m missing and with no real idea of whether this will ever change.

So this evening for me is about watching a sad movie and doing the ugly crying and allowing myself to feel as utterly alone as I am.  Then I’ll wash my face, get some sleep and wake with gratitude for my daughter, I’ll resume pretending to myself that I’m not lonely and the show will go on.  And maybe, hopefully, someday soon, I’ll be lucky enough again to have a moment or three with someone who can throw light into the darkest corners and remind me where my edges are.

 

Still me, still standing

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Sometimes, being a single mother is gut-wrenchingly lonely.

I sit here, alone of course,  with face dripping as I finally release and let the tears flow.

Mostly, I just don’t find the space in which I can allow myself to fall into sadness, I have a baby to take care of and her needs come first and I don’t have the time to indulge in my own emotions.  But today, today has been different.  Today I realised that I was developing feelings for a man who has been messaging me daily for a matter of months.  Real feelings, real hopes, real me, real future.

So, the question that I have been avoiding because I didn’t want to pop the bubble, ‘how is tinder life going?’ I asked and he replied ‘Well, I went on a date last night and she’s still messaging me so I must have done ok’, I nearly threw up on the floor in Waitrose.  Spontaneous physical response to emotion is not a sensation I have experienced for a long time.  And despite the sensation of my insides heaving, even then, I found gratitude for experiencing such a real feeling that was just mine to breathe through.

Thing is, having a baby rips down all your barriers.  You are so in love with this little person that everywhere you go and in everything you do there is love emanating from you and you are free.  Free in the oddest sense really as on a daily basis my routine completely revolves around my child.  But free in the sense that there is a little person who needs you so completely and whose needs you fulfil so completely, that there is no need for the sort of barriers and walls that we all tend to create around ourselves when it comes to fully experiencing love.

And yes, obviously, the love one has for their child is of a different sort to the kind that one might experience with a significant other but there is a commonality.  And I found that I let this man in, which is not something I do as a general rule, in my entire adult life I can only think of one relationship in which I ever allowed myself to need.  It ended horribly.  Anyway, the point being is that I’m finding myself to be more open than ever before, because of the depth and nuance of the relationship with my child.  And what that means is that my barriers seem to be gone.

And so I’m hurt, a little deflated and lonely again.  But actually, I’m still happy, I still have an amazing child and somehow, I’m still able to experience all the joys and all the heartache involved in letting someone in.  I’m so unbelievably grateful for that.

I am grateful that I met this amazing guy who ticks so many of my boxes and I am grateful that he has let me down somewhat and I am grateful that I still miss him and I am grateful that this journey has led me to crying in my meditation practise on the living room floor.

I know that I’m alive.  I’m fucking buzzing with life.  And I’m excited to know which sensations this new me can experience next.

It’s now the next night and yes, I’m still fucking grateful for this experience.  I do, however, feel as if I’ve experienced a break up and so duly got round one of my oldest friends and drank two and a half beers and smoked three whole cigarettes.  Which was also fucking amazing.

I guess what’s really happened is that I’ve realised that I do still have feelings that are just mine and that don’t relate to my child.  I’m still me.

And that’s just the best revelation I could have asked for.

The circle of love

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I have had my faith in humanity restored so many times over since having a child and today was no exception.

I have probably dwelled on the somewhat cynical side of life ever since first researching acid rain for a school paper when I was 10.  That sense of pervading despair at humanity only heightened when going through puberty, and a lifetime spent working in the environmental sector is enough to sometimes make even the most hopeful feel like there is little point.

I would have called myself a pragmatic realist if you had challenged me on my cynical ways a few years ago.  Probably because it sounds kind of cool and probably because I felt in many ways that cynicism as a word seemed to have connotations of falsities not backed up by rational thought with depressed tinfoil hat wearers lurking at the extreme end of the spectrum.

Anyway…

Since then I have found yoga and had a baby.  Both of these have profoundly affected my state of mind.

I attended yoga classes sporadically for years but it wasn’t until an abusive relationship sent me pretty close to the edge that I came to rely on it for sanity.   But my practice gives me more than just sanity.  It gives me hope.  And clarity.  And peace.  Even when I was smoking a spliff on the way to class, listening to metal at high volume and then chowing on a mars bar before class began, I always found peace in the asanas and the harmony between breath and movement soothed my soul and gave me light in a a very dark place.

And it still does.  On the worst days, being on my mat for even just a couple of sun salutations brings that lightness of being.  Even if it feels as if it disappears the second the mat is rolled up, I know that it doesn’t.  Because I am different now.  I find hope everywhere.  Sure, I’m still cynical about politics but that really is pragmatic realism!

Sometimes trying to maintain a daily practice is difficult but I read a quote from someone that has helped me ever since I read it.  It went something along the lines of;

“It’s still yoga if all you do is sit in child’s pose for 10 minutes”

When I read that, my life changed.  Sure, some mornings I go all power vinyasa and break out the arm balances and feel all kinds of awesome but, I have learned to not judge myself for the days where I really can’t be fucking arsed and instead, to thank myself for getting on the mat in my pj’s and snuggling into child’s pose.

Which leads me to my child.  She brings me into the present all day, every day.  I have been shown such kindnesses from total strangers since having her that my formerly cynical heart is being cracked open in a way that no relationship has ever managed. Nobody told me that having a baby could make life this wonderful.  I know that sounds all Disney and like I don’t ever cry in the shower whilst manically rocking the pram because the baby just won’t sleep, but honestly, life has never been so good.  I have never been so good.

Today, after a long walk around town, I was weak on my feet and stepped into a cafe to sit and recuperate and feed the baby.  This cafe had two booths with benches ideal for allowing the baby to lie on and several small tables with stools.  The booths were both taken and I looked around despairingly as I knew that the small tables wouldn’t work for us.  I turned to leave and a woman called after me “excuse me, take my booth, I’ll sit at the bar”, I asked if she was sure but she was already on the way to the bar.  She just smiled at me, said that she was a mother herself and she understood and not to worry at all.  I will be forever grateful to that woman.  And if I am ever in the same situation a couple of years from now, then I will do the same and I will pass the gift of understanding and appreciation to the next mother.  The circle of love.

A few weeks ago, whilst I was sat in a beer garden drinking a half pint of ale and breastfeeding my baby, I felt a little like I should be being judged.  Perhaps I was judging myself, I always was my own worst critic.  Anyway, just as I was getting ready to leave, I saw an elderly lady approaching me.  My stomach kind of dropped, I was expecting judgement.  This lady came up to me and said “Dear, I just wanted to tell you well done for being brave and breastfeeding in public.  When I had my children 56 years ago I used to get told it was disgusting to be feeding my babies and that I should be doing it behind closed doors” she paused and then said “I was discreet just as you are and it was a shame for me and my children but I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you for doing it here”.  And she walked off.  Leaving me with tears pricking the corners of my eyes as I felt that somehow seeing me feeding had helped her put some demons to bed and by speaking to me she had helped me to feel proud of myself even in a beer garden.  It’s the circle of love.

Two ladies who I couldn’t pick out of a line-up even now and yet, they have both touched my soul and I will be eternally grateful for the kindnesses they showed me.

Show kindness to strangers.

Grow the circle of love.

 

Samprati Hum

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I am gratitude and I am grace.

I really am.

I am in such an imperfect situation yet every single day I find myself counting my blessings.

My daughter laughs and I am happy and I am grateful.

My daughter smiles at a stranger and engages me inescapably in the outer world and I am happy.

I walk under trees wearing my daughter and as she gazes up through sun-dappled leaves with an expression of pure wonderment in the moment, I am happy.

She brings me to the present in every moment.

And I have never felt so at peace.

I find time for yoga twice a day and for that I am grateful. In the morning I do a few rounds of surya namaskar b with my daughter on her playmat beside me. My expression of downward dog is apparently hilarious for her, which makes me giggle and somehow, being forced to giggle through my morning practice allows me to relax into asanas in a deeper way than the morning practice would normally allow.

Because I’m happy?

Because I’m grateful?

Either way, by the time I have put her to bed in the evening and find myself back on my mat, I am so filled with love that my practice seems to flow deeper than ever before.  I find my mind is far more in sync with my body and as breath and flow combine I am grateful for all that I have and for all that I haven’t and for all that I am in that moment.

And when she cries mid-flow and I have to attend to her needs before mine, I realise that somehow, her needs have become mine and I am humbled.

And I am happy.

And I am grateful.

I am love.