BFF lost her baby last night. So very very sad, and just horribly unfair. I still feel so drained from the last two babies we lost, that I haven’t found the tears for this one. I’ll cry when I see her on Thursday though.
Oh how I wish someone could make this recurring tragedy stop.
My iodine tests and thyroid panel came back this week. Everything is looking good. My reverse T3 has gone from 603, to 180. (Range = 140-500ish). This is more than I could have expected in the improvement stakes, so I am thrilled. My reverse T3 to Free T3 ratio has now gone up to 2. It needs to be above 1 to be ‘normal’, and previously was .75, so this is also great news. The rest of the panel is also better, but the reverse T3 situation was my main focus.
So it looks like I’ll go ahead with fresh embryo transfer on my donor cycle, which is one decision made. Finally.
My strict healthy eating and increased exercise has resulted in a 3kg/6.5lb weight loss over 4 weeks. I am also very happy with this turn of events. It is SO nice to decide to do something involving my body, and to be able to achieve the goal through sheer will power. If only I had as much influence over my reproductive system!
My new curtains are finished and are very well made (thanks to the help of a friend!) have a rod of the right size, and am waiting on some hooks, which, once found, will allow me to put those suckers up. It was a very satisfying project. Next I will attempt a few mending projects, and then I might get onto something more crafty.
Speaking of crafty, I have that felting workshop coming up on Wednesday. We are learning to make felt directly from animal fur/wool. I am using alpaca wool from a friend’s farm, and am intrigued as to how it will go. I am only used to felting with already prepared felt, so making it from scratch will be interesting.
Yoga this morning was lovely, and quite energising, which enabled me to whizz through some tedious chores before getting outside. Today was a big gardening day, with 4.5 hrs spent pruning, pulling, and heaping things into the compost before my friend comes, in the next few days, to turn it all over. Then I straw mulched most of the beds again, and planted out some long overdue Swiss chard seedlings which were sadly root bound, I had left them unattended for so long. Tidied up my potting shed, and gave the floor a bit of a weed. Spied some new asparagus shoots from the plant I trimmed (due to it seeding and me not wanting the birds to spread asparagus all through our waterways), so nipped them off and ate them for supper (alongside baked beetroot and roast potatoes also from the garden) with a roast chicken. Yum.
Tomorrow is Australia Day, and a public holiday for the nation. DH worked today (though he usually has Monday off) and will have tomorrow off instead. I think we’ve got another big day of around-the-house jobs planned. He’s going to put up the steel posts for the shadecloth, so we can measure out the exact area and get on and order them to be made. Then he’ll take the posts down again, and paint them, while we wait for the cloth to come. I’ll be cracking on with Grandfather’s memoirs, and maybe de-cobwebbing the outside of the house, plus the kitchen needs a jolly good clean, and then my counselling session is in the evening.
Also, I want to squeeze in a visit to BFF. She’s pregnant again, (5 weeks perhaps?) but spotting and cramping, and generally having a stressful time. This time I feel much more able to lend support than when she announced her previous pregnancy, which is a relief. I discovered in my last counselling session that I have a lot of conflicting emotions about her new pregnancy, and they are complicated and tangled, but I don’t have to sort them all out and make a plan on how to deal with them. It’s ok to let them be what they are, and trust myself that I can deal with feeling chaotic for a while. I feel “yay” for her; I also feel “oh no” at the spotting; I feel “God I can’t go through this again right now” at the prospect of another loss. And I feel a sort of dread about there being some feelings I can’t name, or point a finger at, just some free-floating uncomfortable-ness.
And all of that is ok. I’m not overwhelmed, I’m not furious or distraught, I’m not having panic attacks. I’m feeling centred and strong and ready to face what comes. Today I am content.
So much to say, so little to say. I want to write, I don’t want to write. Life has snowballed since the South African trip, with Christmas, New Year, playing catch-up in the house and garden after a reasonable absence. And my life is once again filling up.
I’m back at my exercise program, and feeling happy about it, though rather sore. I’m taking a hard line approach to my eating choices, with a view to being the fittest and healthiest I can be, come DE IVF (whenever that turns out to be). I’m meditating most mornings, doing yoga twice a week, fitball once, and I’m about to begin weight training twice a week, at least for the next month or two. I feel much better than I did a month ago, and as always, wished I’d started sooner, or perhaps just never picked up a chocolate box…
Weekly counselling is going really well, and I am ever grateful for it. Still going deeper and learning more. This weeks’ breakthrough was about discovering my internal critic had originally been set up as a self-protection mechanism, while still a young child, but now as an adult it is outmoded and causing me much more harm than good. Time to find a gentle way to let it go.
Come February I will enrol in another unit of painting, and my weekly bridge lessons will begin again. I’m still spending a few hours a week on my Grandfather’s memoir transcription, but with my little brother helping this time, we should knock it over pretty quickly. Hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles is the spectre of my dip ed prac. I’ve re-enrolled for September, but am thinking I’d like to do it before then. If I can motivate myself to open the two volume tome I have to read and write a paper on, then at least that can be out of the way before I begin. Whenever that is.
March the 4th is our final DE counselling session, and with any luck DE and I will both have been on the pill for a month by then, and in sync and ready to start. But no guarantees. I picked up our prescriptions this week, and now we are both just waiting for AF. Of course, I don’t want to do a prac right around transfer time (maybe April?). Nor do I want to do it around my 40th birthday time, the first week of May (in case I want to organise myself a party, which at this stage I have no stamina for) or the last three weeks in May because DH has booked them off work and I kind of hoped we could go to Europe then (if I wasn’t still doing a cycle). And I wanted to do a 10 day meditation retreat in September. And then October is always hugely busy in the garden, and the beginning of ‘visitor season’. So I’m left with the months of June, July and August, and it will take 2 of those months to do. You can see I’m so keen, can’t you?
As for the DE cycle, I have decided to go with a fresh transfer into my uterus, and not do a egg pick up cycle at the same time. The nurse said she thought it might not be legal, and was definitely too hard, and they didn’t do that sort of thing, so I scrapped the idea. Next week I’ll get blood tests for my thyroid panel and see how the medication is doing. If it isn’t helping, I may well just drop the idea of transfer and freeze whatever we have, in the hope that the elusive surrogate pops into our life. If we go the frozen route, my body won’t need to be involved at all, and thus I could do a prac, or go to Europe or even do the April meditation course. So, same ol’ same ol’ on the not-being-able-to-organise-when-the-hell-I’m-doing-what-I’m-doing-this-year front.
Meanwhile, back in the here and now, I have taken up sewing, on a shiny new Pfaff. I haven’t sewed, really, since I did it at school for two years, and have a lot to learn. Especially my way around a computerised machine. DH wants a set of curtains for our bedroom, so that will be my first project, and I hope to get it done by the end of next week. He has just completed the bench for the potting shed, and is working on the construction of shade sails for our sun-drenched north facing verandah, so we don’t melt in March.
Tomorrow I have the making of seville orange marmalade planned, along with mulberry jam (picked the berries this afternoon). Sunday I am going to stay overnight at a friend’s in Bunbury, who has air-conditioning and a pool, which is exactly where I want to be in the 40 degree heat. I’ll get a big whack of shopping done on Monday, in the big smoke, then head home, unpack, and re-pack, and head down to Denmark to spend two days with a friend who is in her final week of staying at her holiday house. I plan on taking the Pfaff, curtain material, and accoutrements, and sneakily getting her help. Back Thursday night, unpack. Friday morning clean DE’s house, go to pump class, have my shiatsu session then at 6pm head out to a local organic winery opening with a movie and jazz band.
The following week I have to start tracking down someone to render the outside of the building I manage, as native bees have begun to bore holes in the old mud mortar, creating a bit of a disaster zone. Sadly, a chap is coming to spray them on Saturday. I guess I could smoke them out, and I do feel bad about poisoning them, but they have to go, and spraying is the quick easy way. This week I chucked out a tenant (not with any animosity, just that his room was no longer available someone with a bigger priority wanted to use it) and he called to have a bit of a moan at me this afternoon. So it’s already been a big start to 2010 on both the work and home fronts.
As you can see, not much has changed as far as trying to do less. But at least I’m not feeling frantic about it. Much. And if I do feel frantic, that’s ok. I’ll just be aware that I’m feeling frantic, and not judge myself over it, and then see if I’d prefer to do something differently, and if I happen to change my mind about ANY of the events I’m planning, then that’s fine too.
And now it is time for pan fried Barramundi, with steamed fresh corn on the cob, broccoli and the last of the broad beans. Excuse me while I attend to the evening meal, and then watch House Season 5 while I consume it.
Here are a few random pics…
Mostly the exotic garlic, with a bit of Australian Purple (left) that I’m saving for replanting next year.
shade house summer 09
Shade house seedlings: where it all begins
As promised, below, I have posted some examples of the Christmas cards I made this year. Now you can see why I needed a sewing machine. I had so much fun, I have ordered a sewing machine for my very own, and will (hopefully) pick it up before Christmas on my way through Perth as I come home from South Africa. Next year I might even sell some at the local craft fair. (Devil’s Hollow Designs) Ho Ho Ho.
Assortment of cards I posted last week. Sorry, but flickr just will not rotate this for me!
Some of the cards I gave in person to my local friends.
Christmas Cottage?
Next post – produce pics! (Devil’s Hollow Delectables)…..
I see I have not managed to make time for writing in over three weeks, and as each day passes I am less inclined to do so because it seems such an overwhelmingly large task as more things occur (in the world of self-development especially) and I fall farther behind. So I will just begin free associating and see what I manage to get down, and whatever it is that comes out before I get fed up and want to go do something else, is what you’ll get….
DH found the camera/computer cable so I can post pic of new haircut. Whether I actually do, remains to be seen.
Stood up for myself last night when irritating ‘bully’ friend tried to badger me (yet again) into attending the local hotel for New Year’s eve. …”Go on, it’ll be fun” Me:”yes, fun for you, I understand that. Not fun for me, I don’t enjoy that kind of thing” …”You don’t have to come for long” Me with bright smile and fake cheerful voice: “Actually, I don’t even have to go AT ALL!!! How great is that?”… “I’m going anyway, and am just trying to get everyone to come too because that way it will be MORE FUN” Still in jokey matey voice with smile on my face:”Yes, if you get the people who WANT to go to come along, it will. If you drag along the people who don’t want to be there, they will be miserable and sulk in a corner, and that will be dull.” At this point she gave up. I WIN!! I win because I didn’t allow myself to feel bullied, or like I was having to really defend myself, justify my position or even try to get her to see things from someone else’s point of view (impossible). I just took my therapist’s advice about practising making these kinds of interactions into a bit of entertainment for myself (shifting perspective from feeling trapped and defensive, to focusing on the other person and turning it more into a game that doesn’t really matter. Taking it less seriously and not as a personal attack on me). It worked!! Whoo Hoo!
Have done lots of fabulous gardening in the last few weeks: re-applied garden clippings, sheep manure and straw (lasagne method of composting) to the two ‘new’ beds (in cut-up old water tanks), so the worms can make them into functioning beds for next autumn; cropped my (disappointingly very undersized and slightly mangy looking) garlic, cleaned it and sold 3.5kgs to the local health food shop for 70 bucks. Today I’d like to pull the remaining heads from the orchard area, and hope to get maybe an extra couple of kilos there. The rest (42 good looking bulbs, plus the sadly small exotic varieties I experimented with this year) I have hung in the potting shed. Perhaps a pic. Maybe. I have also transplanted out the final summer plants (tomato/cucumber/zucchini) and made a big wooden box full of lettuce seedlings/mizuna mustard/rocket and coriander for the shade house, in the hope that the environment in there will prolong the ‘bolting’. We shall see. With any luck I will have a crop of salad greens waiting on my return from South Africa.
Off to South Africa on Fri 11th of December for a friend’s wedding on the 17th. Return home on the 23rd. FIL house sitting for us, fabulous chap. DH on call for Xmas and boxing day, so I will head over to the family home and celebrate with nuclear posse in the new house. Hoping for lots of chilling out and no explosions. DH and FIL may mosey over later in the week.
Going deeper with the therapy, realising it is time to examine the core of the operating system I’ve chosen to run on. Even acknowledging it is a choice was kind of illuminating. To see where that choice originated from (emotional manipulation, neglect, abuse, abduction, bullying) is interesting and useful, but only the first step. The work, if I want to change my operating system (and I do, because it is not serving my happiness nor supporting my self-care) is to, wait for it……. sit and listen to my feelings. Ha ha ha. There it is again, the old meditation and awareness factor. The reason this is useful, is because I have suppressed difficult-to-admit-to feelings (maybe such as terror, fear, utter despair etc) and sense them instead as easier-to-cope-with feelings such as frustration, anger, resentment. So I feel a LOT of those latter feelings, when in fact they are but a funnel for other, deeper feelings I am keeping hidden from myself. My much younger self, who began the program, was unable to deal with these deeper issues, so she developed the current, now outmoded, operating system as a coping mechanism in order to protect herself and survive with her sanity fairly intact. Now I have to find a way of re developing a new system that serves the adult me without letting the junior me feel like she is being attacked or left unsupported. [And giving it this overhaul without throwing the baby out with bath water. As it were.]
So, being aware of feelings of frustration, letting them be, and inquiring as to whether they are frustration or if something deeper is being masked. Trusting that going into the previously unmanageble feelings won’t kill me, and sitting with those uncomfortable feelings until they pass. The most difficult part of the process for me is, knowing now that this is what I have to do to get where I want to be, that I have to refrain from turning the process into making a plan of attack, drawing up ways to do this, monitoring my progress, making milestones, achieving a goal in a set time frame. Because that’s the paradox of the whole situation. My plan-making success-monitoring self must, in order to achieve this ‘success’ let go, take a back seat, and just be. This will take as long as it takes, indeed, probably the rest of my life. The other thing I discovered (through counselling) is that in creating a new self, I cannot merely abandon my old self, or my new self will be brittle and crumble easily under duress. (This is why I am feeling SO frustrated and powerless in the current, impossible planning process for next year’s donor egg cycle). I must incorporate my new self into my old self, build upon it, and this will create more grounded-ness and stability. All the while doing this for my present self (and past self) rather than my future self, who will never really exist. I have to admit that all this existentialism is making my head hurt.
The counselling session with donor egg friend went well. We all ‘passed’, and now have a mandatory wait period of three months, then a final counselling session (booked for 4th March 2010) before we can proceed with a cycle. For those of you not in Australia, egg donation is entirely altruistic here, and our state, for some reason, has passed this extra ‘cooling off’ legislation, ostensibly to protect the egg donor from coercion. Not all states have it, in fact I think most don’t. But ours does, and I didn’t know about it earlier and there is no way around it, so there we are. In some ways, it is totally fine with me that I wait. I can use that time to decide A) if I cycle as well, and retrieve own eggs B) put own embryo back in me C) freeze own embryo and find a surrogate D) put DE embryo back in me or E) freeze DE embryo and wait for surrogate. Helping me make those decisions will be blood test results for thyroid issue, and the longer I am on the T3 treatment, the more reliable those result will be. Also, the longer time I have in which to find a surrogate and start the hoop jumping for that process. Plus the longer we have to save up for all this stuff. So that’s the positive side.
The negative side is that I really wanted to go to the UK and Europe and spend my 40th birthday with my dearest friends. I have also been planning a trip to visit them for about three years now, and every year, this baby making process gets in the way, in some form or other. This time it is the fact that we can’t know exactly when I’m going to get the DE cycle underway, or whether I will even need to be there for it (using my eggs? my womb?) So I have to wait and see, and plan to make no plans. This is frustrating and tedious, but also, these may well just be the surface feelings. The deeper feelings reveal themselves in imagery from the descriptive words that fall from my mouth as I describe feeling “trapped; like a hostage; hog tied; caged; pinned down;” I feel powerless to make decisions about things I really want to do, held back by a person who doesn’t even exist. And I feel resentful towards that person (people) who has held back my life for the past 6 years. Through him/her/them ‘refusing’ to come into existence, I have been hobbled, some important plans for my life have been scuppered. Left hanging around on the off-chance that the ‘what if’ may occur. However.
Recently, I have attempted to clear a few extra hours of ‘doing’ out of my week, and I have been successful. The quiet time with nothing planned has left me feeling relaxed and free, but also somewhat uneasy. Like I can see something out of the corner of my eye, catch a glimpse of a feeling, but not quite put my finger on it. I know it has something to do with the absence of deeper meaning, that sense of life-purpose that I am missing, that feels like a big, scary black hole. That all I currently ‘do’ amounts to nothing more than tinkering around the edges of life, entertaining myself and trying to have as nice a time as possible. That stopping and listening would mean I have to pay attention to the void, to hear what it has to say about its existence, my existence. And I resist.
And so, if I am honest with myself (which I generally am, to a fault) I then have to admit that it is not the ‘non-child’ that is holding me back from realising my dreams (what ARE my dreams???). [Although, it is holding me back from realising my dreams of motherhood. And if I am honest with myself again, making the dream of motherhood front and centre of my life is just a ruse part of me employs to distract the other part from examining anything deeper.] I do need to see, and not just out of the corner of my eye, but facing directly head on, that void. Because either in that void, or through facing that void, is where I will find that connection to myself that will allow me to feel ok about being in the world unconditionally. It will allow me to find the purpose within myself that is not reliant on having a child, a job, a label, whatever.
And especially because the very last thing I want to do is tie the responsibility for my emotional well-being on to my child (born or unborn).
And that, my friends, is where it’s at.
A lot of rain has fallen here in the past week. We have had over 50ml in the gauge for November so far, which is very pleasing. The trees we planted in winter (revegetation, plus woodlot, plus truffle oaks, plus assorted conifers and deciduous in our arboretum) are loving it. I have had the week off watering in my summer vege crop seedlings, and the big replant we did at the surgery garden on the weekend is getting an excellent start to life. Whoo Hooo!
I visited my best friend on Tuesday afternoon. We sat in her shed (house is only 1/4 built) with tin roof and the rain pelted down, then eased, then pelted down, then eased. I said: “this rain is like grief” she nodded: “comes in waves”. We just sat and held hands. She showed me pictures of her tiny boy, and told me of her amazingly spiritual experience of giving birth to him. I am finding great courage through her grace. I always felt as though if this situation occurred to me, I would break apart forever. But seeing her go through it, take every joy available and face the darkness head on, I see that I could do that too. What a great gift for her to bring me, the release of that terrible fear of stillbirth. She told me that my latest loss had helped HER accept the outcome of this pregnancy – he would come, or he would not, and that’s all there was to it. So she determined to love every minute of it and not dwell on what could be. Which means now she has 17 weeks of wonderful memories to bring with her into the future, even if she doesn’t get to watch her boy grow bigger.
None of this means that she is any less sad about the event, the loss of a person, and all that potential. But it won’t kill her, and she chooses not to search for something/someone to blame, not to ask “why me?” because in the end she knows that as hard and painful as it is, acceptance is actually easier, and the quicker way through the quagmire of grief. And so do I. Which is why, as her loss stirs again the strings connected to my own, both recent and long past, I am letting the feelings come. Naming them, acknowledging them, allowing them to rise up and out. Knowing that those feelings of sorrow will always be in attendance in some form or strength, ready to burst forth when the moment is ripe, and not being scared of them, or angry that they are still there, is healthy for me. I am glad to not have to set myself expectations of “I should be done with this by now” or “when will this be over? Why does it have to come back to me now?”. To just accept these feelings for what they are, whenever they come, gives me a great feeling of freedom and peace. I suspect that a similar attitude is what is sustaining my friend this week.
So we sat and we talked, and we sat in long silence, and we wept a little, and hugged and decided we had a full choir of angels now, on high, and always with us. [Between us we have lost eleven children]. And the rain came down. And still, it comes.
For those of you wanting to recapture the heady days of the Go-Betweens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5CRiS8bRTw
This weekend is the Blues Festival. The town is throbbing with music, dance, gaiety and thousands of people. The vibe is mellow and happy. We have DH’s sister and her partner visiting, and are planning a day out wine tasting in the region, with maybe a small game of boules on the lawn after lunch. All should be well.
Except it is not well in my heart. BFF, at 17 weeks yesterday, lost her baby and laboured all day to give birth to her third child that will never breathe, smile, or call her Mama.
I am beyond devastated for her and her husband. I wish I could give them respite from that overwhelming initial relentless pounding of the tsunami of deep soul-wrenching grief. And give them back what they have lost. Why is it that some people get to swim in calm pools of tranquility, riding the odd wave, while others must endure endless harsh dumpings in the rough, savage ocean of life? I know not.
It ain’t why, why, why – it just is.
Today I found my tail. You know, the one I’ve been chasing for a month or so now. It was there all along, just buried so deep under a pile of life that it wasn’t visible. But now I have finally caught up to myself and it feels good. Thursdays I do try to keep free for creative pursuits and self development, but recently they have been sucked into the morass of chores for one reason or another and it feels so nice to have today to myself.
This morning I made some ice cream (the very popular passionfruit/vanilla/lemon curd flavour); put the 2L of indulgent leek-heavy chicken stock I made yesterday into the freezer; watered the seedlings I transplanted yesterday with worm poo juice; made the pine-bark mulch delivery man a cup of coffee and chatted to him while my semolina sourdough mixture was resting. It is now in tins, and will hopefully rise by 3 or 4pm, then go into the oven and out again in plenty of time for us to leave the house for a friend’s dinner party.
Last night I went to the opening of the exhibition of work from my art class (and other classes who share the same teacher). I didn’t submit anything. There was some good stuff there, and I would have bought one I particularly liked if I had $250 to spare. Which I don’t. It was lovely to see people’s creative efforts, and realise that a small group of people made it happen, and made the experience of art classes available for the whole town. A year ago, there were no classes here, just one evening class in a town half an hour away. A friend of mine wanted to learn to paint, so she got in touch with the teacher and the TAFE department, and rallied around town for students to join, and hey presto three art classes a week for different levels were available, and thirty people presented works last night. At least quadruple that could have if they’d wanted to. I think that is such an incredible achievement, and yet another reason why I love living in this community. People just band together and make things happen, instead of complaining about “‘they’ should have this” or “‘they’ should do that”.
Although I would still like to file a complaint about why ‘they’ can’t make it possible for me to carry a child to term. I really hate the powerlessness that goes with not being able to achieve something you so desire, even when you do everything you can and slog your guts out to achieve success. It really sucks.
Further to this topic, we have now booked the counselling sessions with our donor egg friend (and her partner) for 28th November. After that, we have to wait the mandatory 3 month cooling off period before we can cycle. I’m bummed that I didn’t discover this information earlier, and made the counselling sessions happen sooner. But I guess realistically, given my last pregnancy, we couldn’t have done it much sooner as I wasn’t in any fit mental state to go forward anyway. Sigh.
It also transpires that the new doctor I recruited in Perth recently (who was great, by the way) won’t take my donor on as a patient because she doesn’t have private health cover. So I spent a day ringing around the other doctors in the clinic to discover most won’t either, and of the three that will, two did not have even initial consultation appointment slots free until March or May next year. The last one is the doctor I just left because I didn’t like him (and he is also the one that deals with all the surrogacy issues). Again, sigh. I think I will stick to Dr Thompson and my donor is ok about going with Dr Mazz, she just needs to book an appointment date now. So, we can think about cycling March 2010. Between now and then I need to decide if I am cycling and doing a retrieval at the same time as my donor, and still keeping my ear out for a surrogate.
Meanwhile, I am into my second week on the T3 treatment. I spent a week on 10mg daily, and then upped it to one tablet in the morning, one in the evening. At least half to two-thirds of the time, I feel like I have more energy and less groggy. I also notice that I am RAVENOUS a lot more often through the day, and am eating at least 4 meals, sometimes 5 (not all big, but more than a snack).
My saliva test results for adrenal function came back and morning AND evening cortisol levels are higher than the lab would like, though still within ‘normal’ range. Just not ‘optimal’ range. Which would indicate my adrenal gland is working harder than I want it to, and I need to cut out caffeine, sugar and alcohol for a good while to see if that helps it any. Also, I have been meditating 6 mornings per week and will continue that practice, to see if that lowers my stress levels.
And further to THAT topic, I have had 4 sessions with my new counsellor over the last 5 weeks, which are going really well. (Thank you, thank you!!!). We began by sorting out some major issues around my problem with BFF’s pregnancy, which was great, because now I can see her on a weekly basis and ask about the baby and not have a sulky tantrum. I even bought her some maternity clothes for her birthday. I still do cry a bit and say I wish I was still pregnant too, but I think that’s pretty normal and valid and she wishes the same for me also.
The other issues we’re working on include identity (especially around societies notions of adult females = mothers, and how left out of those groups I continue to feel), notions of adulthood, and how I don’t quite feel I am one, lacking a full time job/label and the children that I feel might distinguish me more as an adult. Connected with this is the idea that being driven into adulthood through wanting to escape a shitty childhood and adolescence means you haven’t flowed into it gradually and found your new identity, you’ve just kind of rushed in and stuck the outfit on, hoping it would make you seem ‘real’.
Interestingly the other thing that came up at that session was the guilt (which produces anxiety) that I feel if I don’t fill my day with productive things and make sure everything is perfect. So I am again ‘driven’ to avoid the guilt/anxiety by being unkind to myself through overwork and exhaustion. And where you are driving, there is no room for flow and relaxation. So, the same themes seem to keep cropping up again and again, the more work I do on myself, the more the answers tend to point in the same old direction. Amusing, no?
What I am working on, (and have already been and probably will always be working on!) is awareness, as often as possible, of my choices. Not trying to hurry away from the bad feeling by making a choice that is not kind to ME. Sitting with the bad feeling and waiting until I can identify a choice that is kind to myself. Letting the ‘judge’ or critical inner voice tell me I am lazy and selfish and accepting that voice, but not acquiescing to its demands. Reinforcing the centred, relaxed, flowing version of myself, rather than the impulsive, reactive, hard taskmaster version. The hard thing is to believe (being worthless and all – see previous posts) that I DESERVE to choose kindness. But I think the best bet for now is to just steamroll over that, and whether I think I deserve it or not, do it anyway. A fake it til you make it, kind of approach.
And segueing from that topic into this – my counsellor has offered me a new version of presenting myself to people in public. In the past I have shied away from gatherings of new people because conversations about who I am and what I do and whether I have children tend to produce a lot of anxiety for me. I haven’t felt I’d anything to present that would meet their expectations, and they would judge me as lacking. Here is the new idea: present myself as something I believe in, as something I am choosing, as something that sounds fantastic, and as though I am enjoying my lifestyle. It is all in the manner. Right now I say nothing, so they take the lead, and I get defensive and wish they wouldn’t barrage me with a hundred questions I don’t want to answer. But if I was more proactive, and repackaged the product, the outcome would be totally different and I would feel much more empowered.
For example, on the topic of children: “I’m afraid that’s a rather sensitive topic and I’d rather not discuss it at the moment. I’d be grateful if we could just steer clear of the whole subject of children – yours or mine. But I’m really happy to talk about ……” GARDENING!! COOKING!! etc.
And what do you do? “Well I am fortunate enough that my husband’s income supports us so I am able to spend my time running an organic, sustainable smallholding. Last year we put in an espaliered fruit orchard and this year we planted several truffle-inoculated oaks and hazelnuts. I sell some of my produce to the local health food shop and enjoy cooking with my seasonal vegetables, making my own bread, jam, pickles, ice cream and quince paste, among other things. It keeps me pretty busy, and in my spare time I manage the building that my husband works in.” There, now. Doesn’t that sound so much better than “oh nothing much, just housework and a bit of gardening.”? Much more impressive. Don’t you just want to be me now??? Ha Ha Ha. And then if I find out they don’t garden, I can say “You don’t have a GARDEN??? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU*??!!!!”
So there you have it, the last few weeks of my world in a nutshell.
To catch you up on things I might have mentioned in previous posts a while ago:
1. My yolates class has been cancelled because my teacher is pregnant.
2. Our dining room table is now complete and in situ and is bloody fantastic.
3. Our solar hot water has been running like a champion and even on the cloudy days recently, we have not had our booster on in over two weeks.
4. Our solar power is up and running and mostly meeting our daytime power needs, except when we get cloud cover for the whole day. Even then it still meets at least half. In ten days or under we should be connected up to the grid, and will be able to sell the surplus back to the power company. This is making me rethink all my power usage – I am now avoiding doing things that will “eat into my profit” like washing at night, or leaving the pantry door open with the light on.
5. I am about halfway finished getting my summer crop of veges in the garden. Next week…
6. I sold 25 globe artichokes for $25 to the health food shop this week, and printed out a sheet on how to prepare them, adding in several recipe ideas. I hope it takes off!
7. Next up today: making Christmas cards. I started them in Perth two week’s ago, at my creative friend’s house, sewing scraps of Christmassy looking material together. Now I will machine sew them onto coloured card I got from the post office last year (red and green) and turn them into Christmas postcards.
8. On a similar note, while I was in Perth I also did all my November birthday, and Christmas shopping. That feels great.
9. I am thrilled with the fabulous pieces of clothing I scored at the op shops while there.
10. My hair has been cut again but I don’t like it as much this time, so you’ll have to wait for my December cut for a pic.
I sometimes wish I posted more often, and then my readers may get a series of smaller posts. But I imagine, in actual fact, if I did post more often, you’d just get more long waffly posts. So. Anyway, you’re all caught up now. If you got this far.
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*A response someone once gave to me when I told them I didn’t have children. Except they didn’t say garden, they said children. Obviously.
Today is Pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day. I am thinking of and remembering each of you who have lost precious children. And honouring all of my own brood who never lived outside my body.
