This goes nicely with the heat we're having right now...

Soften ~ Listen ~ Move Lightly

Shadows ~ May 19

The Power of Vulnerability

Have a listen to this TED talk, it's just wonderful.

Brene Brown on Vulnerability

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston. She has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She spent the first five years of her decade-long study focusing on shame and empathy, and is now using that work to explore a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness. She poses the questions:

How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?

the most beautiful thing

 

 Jake being a banana tree

~

My boy, the most beautiful thing ever to come out of me, without a doubt, hands down, 

no contest.

I didn't really know what love meant, until I was given the privilege of being his Mummy. 

 ~

TheWeighing of the Heart

What does the heart weigh?

More than the pull of your small

hand on mine?  More than your head's

light heaviness on my shoulder?

Under the tender pressure of sleep

my old wool jacket becomes

your memory of consolation, comfort,

that ancient sweetness of love and tweed.

Remembering this, watching you,

I lose my place entirely, not knowing

whose the head, whose the sleeve,

whose the big hand and whose the small.

The Ancients measured a good heart

against the slightest puff of down,

in the gleam and glitter of delicate scales.

Like Thoth, we watch and wait.

What does the heart weigh?

Less than your head's tiny burden,

for lighter than a feather is love

and this the Egyptians knew.

- Maura Dooley

Want to read about other people's beautiful things?  Go here.

And to read Fiona Robyn's novel The Most Beautiful Thing, go here.  It's available for download for free for today and tomorrow only.  Enjoy!

Little feet, big feet

~ rolling up trouser legs and wading in a fountain in a park with your favourite person

On the gravel of the pavement...

a face in the skin of a crushed berry

The perfection that is Catness

Yoshi, who lives up to his name

Heart

~"There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in..." - Leonard Cohen

(The book is True Love, A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh)

this moment

~ wherever you are

a child's eye view

Walking to the playground, Jake stops to look at the sky.

"Oh look Mummy!  Those clouds are moving really fast!" and then, a moment later,

"Mummy, how does the sky float?"

Ermmm...good question.  Anybody know?  Apparently gravity (which was my answer) is not the correct one.

a blade of grass, a drop of rain (some beautiful things)

~ at the bottom of the stairs leading to the garden, a tuft of grass growing as if out of the concrete ~ on each blade, perfect orbs of light, translucent droplets of rain

the most beautiful thing

What's your most beautiful thing?

Next Tuesday 24th April, there's going to be a blog splash...a whole bunch of people will be blogging about their most beautiful thing, inspired by Fiona Robyn's novel of the same name.  I'll be taking part, and will be posting one beautiful thing each day until then.  How about you?

(Incidentally, I've read Fiona's novel and it's very good indeed.)

everything is acceptable

I have begun another project, a drawing one this time...

everything is acceptable

Fantasy wishlist: Dream Daddies

Just in case you think I've been gettin' too serious lately and suspecting that I don't know how to have fun...

My friend Kate over at beforeiforget wrote a blog post called The Daddy Issue.  I suggest you go read it then come back here...

Okay...so since I read her post shortly after my Scintilla post all about my Daddy breaking my heart (boo hoo), I was positively tickled by her list of famous Daddies she'd like to have in her life and was inspired to make one of my own.  Here goes...

My Daddy...Bill Nighy 

(need I say more?)

My Step-Daddy...Billy Collins 

(a funny poet, what's not to love?)

My Grand-Daddy...Gandhi 

(just look at that smile!)

And my Sugar Daddy...Gabriel Byrne 

(I've always thought he was a bit of alright and he just seems to get better with age...

now I think he may also be my fantasy therapist, after watching him in In Treatment)

I just want to say that I love my Dad.  Despite all the heartbreak, we have as good a relationship that I imagine we are able to have.  But hey, a girl's allowed to dream...and it's told me things about myself and the kind of men I'd like in my life...things I don't think I'd really thought about  too deeply...plus, don't tell me you aren't thinking up your own list...

And here's some more love

Two posts in one day....ooooh!  Aren't you lucky ;-)

There are many reasons why I love going to the cinema with my friend Mad...one of them is this: whenever I hear a gorgeous piece of classical music in the film, I can just lean over to her and ask, "What piece of music is this?" and she'll know it - just like that.

We went to see The Kid with a Bike yesterday - fantastic film by the way, and when I asked her the above question about the music at the end, she replied: "Beethoven, 5th piano concerto I think, the 4th one's good too..." Naturally, she was right.

Love love love...it never gets old

I don't care what your faith or religion is, what your name is, where your home is, whether you're enlightened, multi-talented, an uber being with a great mind and a great following, lowly or high in 'status', wear labels or make your own clothes, buy from supermarkets or pick your own peas, work in an ivory glass tower or sweep the streets...what good is any of it without love, without kindness? 

"For love is action.  It is not saying or wishing or hoping or longing.  And it is in the details."

"Any part of the world completely seen is the world.  When we come to glimpse being in this way, no one is surprised by the fullness and the emptiness of things."

"...we must begin loving everything by loving ourselves.  With breath we begin and end life.  With breath we feel another breathing next to us.  There are no thoughts attached.  We just do it.  Can you not also feel the breath that is more deeply in you than you are yourself?  It is love.  Breathe it and you breathe everything."

(all quotes from St Nadie in Winter by Terrance Keenan)

Heartbreak ~ The Scintilla Project ~ Day 10

Talk about breaking someone else’s heart, or having your own heart broken.

I wasn’t going to go anywhere near this prompt.  Almost all of the Scintilla prompts have made me wince at how personal they are, but rather than write something safe and not as meaningful, I’ve taken them as a challenge - to lean into my discomfort and try to understand what I’m afraid of, and write anyway.  There is something about revealing too much about myself, feeling exposed and vulnerable, a fear of being judged harshly.  The subject of heartbreak takes that fear to a whole new level.  There are a few too many stories I could tell about that but it occurred to me that perhaps all of our heartbreaks are a result of the original heartbreak, the one I think most of us experience and spend most of our lives trying to repair or get over or even deny – the first heartbreak(s) we experienced in relationship with our parents.  If I’m honest, when I really think, or rather, feel, about heartbreak, these are the two memories that come up straight away.  They are both connected to my Dad and they both occurred when I was in my teens.

I can’t remember exactly how old I was, I’m guessing 14 or 15.  We were visiting Thailand over the summer and we went to a “Dairy Queen” in Bangkok for some ice cream sundaes.  I remember the coolness of the air because of the air conditioning, I remember how everything was white – the walls, the leatherette seats, the formica tables.  I sat down with my ice cream and my Dad sat next to me.  Suddenly, he started to play with my hair.  It was so unexpected that I froze.  Both because it was so out of character – my parents were not demonstrative in the slightest and it was my brother and I who instigated hugging in our family when we were in our late teens – and because I was afraid that if I moved even a fraction of an inch, he would stop.  He did stop not long after and it was never mentioned. 

The second memory was from when I was 16.  We were living in Cyprus and my father was dropping me off outside the cinema where I was meeting some friends and the boy I was dating at the time.  He’d parked so that my door opened onto the pavement side of the road.  I didn’t look as I opened my door, but I wasn’t expecting there to be any traffic to look out for.  As I opened my door, an old man on a bicycle was riding by.  He collided with the door and fell off his bike.  He was a little stunned, but he was unhurt.  However, my Dad insisted on driving him home.  I thought it was all under control, so I said goodbye to my Dad and went to meet my friends.

When my Dad picked me up later, I asked how the man was.  My Dad answered that he was fine.  Otherwise, he didn’t speak, but that wasn’t unusual for him.  The next day, after I’d gotten home from school my mother waylaid me and took me into my room for a talk.  She closed the door and had her serious face on.  I immediately went into a panic, wondering what had happened, or what I might have done. 

She reported that I had bitterly disappointed my father, that he thought he’d raised me to be better than the selfish person I clearly was.  My stomach fell through the floor - my stomach, my heart, my blood - I felt like I’d been hollowed out.  I could not fathom what I might have done to deserve such a judgement.  Then she told me.  By going into the cinema to meet my friends the night before, rather than stay behind and accompany my father and the old man to his house, I’d shown myself to be utterly and wickedly selfish.  I was shocked.  Shocked that my father had felt that way but said nothing to me at the time.  Shocked even more that he couldn’t talk to me about it himself. 

My father rarely loses his temper and rarely expressed any disappointment in my brother or I.  When we didn’t do quite as well as expected with our grades or failed to complete our chores or any number of things my mother never let us get away with, my father was always more understanding, more encouraging.  So to receive this judgement from him was a real blow.  I felt utterly misunderstood.  I don’t think I’d ever felt so unfairly judged as I did then.  It was so upsetting to me that I felt like I’d been abandoned.  I felt my father’s disgust for me as physically as I’d feel a shove in my chest.  It was all the worse because he couldn’t even tell me to my face.  And by sending my mother to talk to me, I couldn’t even defend myself to him.  I remember trying, trying to explain to my mother and then feeling angry that I even had to explain and then I just started to cry.  Maybe I imagined it, but I think she felt some sympathy for me.  Because her tone was soft, and her tone was hardly ever soft.  I don’t think she enjoyed being my father’s messenger but she had a belief in his authority as a parent, even over her own, even though she was the one who always did the real parenting “work.”  I remember her saying that she would talk to him, but I felt deeply ashamed for a long time around him – ashamed and angry and disappointed.  I still feel shame when I remember the whole thing.  It was far worse than any physical punishment I’d received from him and it says a lot about our relationship and my long struggle to ever feel “good enough.”

This week, Jake and I were Skyping him and my Mum.  At the end of the call, when my parents had to go, Jake suddenly got really upset.  Usually, he’s quite happy to say goodbye to them but not this time.  This time he was absolutely sobbing and wailing that he wanted to stay with them a bit longer.  I did what I usually do when he’s upset – I held him and kissed him.  Sometimes he pushes me away but this time he let me hold him.  In the meantime, I could feel my father’s extreme discomfort about Jake’s crying.  He started by saying that he had to go because it was getting dark and he had to go for a swim before the mosquitoes came out.  Naturally Jake has no idea what any of this means.  Then he went into the awful good boy speech.  “You’re a good boy aren’t you Jake?”  My heart broke when Jake nodded, tears rolling down his cheeks.  “So, if you’re a good boy, you should let people go when they want to go, right?”  My heart sank.  Jake, to his credit, shook his head.  “Oh, so you’re going to be a bad boy then?”  At that point I held Jake very close to me and said to him, “You are a good boy Jake.”  Jake was looking at my Dad’s face on the screen, sad and confused.  So I started to try and talk to Jake about why he was crying.  I said, “Are you sad Jake?  Are you sad because you’re going to miss Grandma and Granddad when they’re gone?”  He nodded.  So I repeated that to my parents, telling them how he felt in the hope that they would acknowledge it and reflect it back to him, so he would feel heard and understood.  But they said, “We miss you too Jake but we have to go now…”  He just carried on crying and shaking his head and saying, “Please, I don’t want you to go, please just stay a bit longer.”  Then my Dad started making stuff up – saying that Skype were sending them a message saying that they had to go because they were going to close the office and cut off the connection.  “You see Jake, it’s not us, we don’t want to go, we have to go, they are going to close the office.”  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  But at the same time, I remembered that my father’s like that, that he’s always been like that.  Jake carried on crying and looking confused.  Then they said, “OK, we’re going now” and ended the call.  Jake cried harder, grabbing the mouse and saying, “No!  No!  Call them back, call them back!”  He frantically directed the mouse to the “Call with video” button and clicked on it and managed to call them back.  They answered and the whole thing went on again for a bit longer.  Then, as I held Jake in silence as he sobbed, they suddenly fell silent.  For a minute or so, we all just sat in total silence.  It felt powerful.  I felt hopeful that they’d be able to just sit with his feelings and their own without running away from it.  But it didn’t last.  Soon after I had this thought, they ended the call, this time without even saying goodbye.  Jake cried again and frantically tried to call them back.  This time, they didn’t answer.  Jake was fine after a few minutes.  I just held him and kissed him and then he was fine.  Me though?  I felt heartbroken by the whole thing.  I felt that it wasn’t just Jake I was holding through the tears, but my own 3 year old and 14 year old and 16 year old self.

~
(NB ~ Even as I post this, I am wincing wincing wincing.  This feels like such raw exposure.  And I keep hearing these voices in my head laughing at the triviality of my pain, saying, "Jeez, you think this is heartbreak?  I'll show you real heartbreak!"  But hey, this is my post and this is what I have to say.  So bite me.)

Surprise ~ 100 word moments

Yesterday, walking through the marshes with Jake, away from a park full of couples and families belonging to each other, a bloke rode past on a bicycle, trailing a sound system under a huge yellow umbrella.  Through the chilly sunshine, Frank Sinatra sang.  I closed my eyes…Someday, when I’m awfully low, when the world is cold, I will feel a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight... Yes you’re lovely, with your smile so warm and your cheeks so soft, there is nothing for me but to love you…

Why does longing always take me by surprise?

~

If you can, go grab someone and dance...

23 for The Scintilla Project ~ Day 9

Write a list of 23 things...

Here's mine: 23 titles from my bookshelf to be used as prompts for 230-word micro stories

1. Skin
2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
3. Thaw
4. Apples
5. Emotionally Weird
6. Stitches
7. A home at the end of the world
8. Until I Find You
9. When Memory Dies
10. Map of My Heart
11. Fun Home
12. Out
13. Disgrace
14. What if?
15. Small Wonder
16. The Tattooed Map
17. Sleepwalk
18. Holes
19. One True Thing
20. The End of The Affair
21. The Lover
22. Wild Things
23. Bad Behaviour

Right now

I'm feeling a little sad and I wanted to say so.  I don't know why.  Sometimes, when it's been a lovely day or I've seen something beautiful, it makes me sad.  There is a magnolia tree in somebody's front garden in my neighbourhood.  I love magnolia trees.  When I saw it, for a moment, I thought it was full of quiet pink birds perching.  It made me stop, its beauty clutched at me.  And then I felt sad.  I didn't see it today but when I thought about why I might be feeling sad, that is what came to me.