Posts Tagged 'book'

I’m not where I want to be…

Published 27/03/2017 Life , Uncategorized 6 Comments
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I’m not where I want to be.  I’m far from where I want to be, but I’m closer than I was.

Two years ago I was on my knees.  Broken by the end of a twenty seven year marriage and just months later the death of my mother.  I had no idea how I was going to survive let alone live.  I’m not there anymore.  I’m so not there anymore.  I’m putting myself back together bit by bit.  When things get broken and put back together they don’t look the same.  The japanese call it kintsugi.  The art of fixing something that is broken and making it more beautiful. I’m putting myself back together and hopefully the new me will be better…..but I’m still a little bit broken.  Fixing some things takes time.

Lots of time.

In the meantime I am perfectly capable of constantly beating myself up about not being where I want to be.  Not being good enough.  Not achieving enough.  I know we all do it but I am the master of it.  Constant tirades at the mirror.  Moments of pure diatribe when I am driving.  Telling myself I should be better. I should be stronger, fitter, more capable, more successful. I should be where I want to be….but I’m not.  It’s too soon.

So in a quiet moment this weekend I wrote down all the things that I have achieved in the last two years.

I did 500 hours of yoga teacher training and passed with distinction

I started teaching yoga daily and in doing so making a difference to so many lives

I did counsellor training and passed with distinction

I did my meditation teacher training and passed with distinction

I started an online business learning about packaging, trademarks and countless other things

I started importing for my online business

I helped write a book that is about to go to print

I wrote my own book – well the first 60,000 words of it.  It still a work in progress.

I expanded my photography business

I went on a blind date

I buried my mother and dealt with her estate

I stopped watching tv

I increased my exercise and changed my diet

On a personal level I moved house, bought a car, opened bank accounts, opened cell phone accounts and learnt to do life on my own

I’m learning to deal with my anger

I’m learning to soften

With the support of some incredible friends I survived

I survived and I grew and I got to know all the broken parts of myself.

I’m not done putting myself back together.  I’m still hurting.  I’m still a little bit broken.

I’m not where I want to be but I’m closer than I was.

A new year…..with a suitcase from the past.

Published 09/01/2017 Life , Philosophy , writing Leave a Comment
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There is something wonderful about a new year.  A vast horizon of some three hundred and sixty odd days of emptiness waiting to be filled.  Pages and pages of days anticipating the arrival of stories.  Stories of summer nights and life changing experiences.  The sweet blankness of the unfamiliar.  So many new chapters of a book yet to be written.  Each of us with our own blank book and our own empty pages.

Somewhere, in the dark corners of my mind, I imagine that I am able to shed all the unwanted parts of myself and leave them, tattered and rejected in the past of the old year.  That I can begin the new year as a new person.  Glowing and unafraid with just a beautiful sunny horizon beckoning me to step forward and take the deep unhindered breaths of a fresh new start.

But it is not so…

All those tattered and intolerable parts of me step into the new year along side me.  Shadows.  The darker parts of my character dragging themselves along for the ride despite my deep desire to leave them, crushed and discarded on the forgotten side of midnight.  Is it that I did not work hard enough on myself?  Did I not fill the last 365 pages with stories of being good enough?  Did I not try hard enough to peel away the layers so that a new me, a me without the shadows, can start writing those magnificent stories.

I thought that perhaps I could step into 2017 unafraid.  I thought that my work there was done.

But it is not so…

In the first few silent hours of this brand new year I read this quote  ‘ There is great value in being fearless.  For too much of my life I was too afraid.  Too frightened by it all.  That fear is one my biggest regrets’.

I sat sullen in the guest room of my friends house and decided that if I am ever to cast off this murky war I have with myself I need to understand it.  I  need to break it down into little pieces.  Manageable bites.  I need to wrestle with the individual parts of it for as a whole it is too strong for me.  Otherwise it will win.  It will always win.

So I take out my brand new journal.  The one with the delightful, creamy, empty pages waiting for my pen to fill them with exquisite tales of bravery and success.  I think of this thing….this fear.  Of how it bears itself to me.  For I am not afraid of real things.  Snakes or spiders are not my demon.  I do not fear death or deadly disease.  I do not fear open spaces nor being alone.  Being alone is my friend.  No my fears are not so simple.

And so I write on those new velvety pages…

I fear I will disappoint myself.  I fear that I am not as strong or as brave as I think.  That I am not really the sum of all the intelligent parts and that the result will be breathtakingly short of all the infinite possibilities.

….. and so I fear that I am, after all, not enough, even for myself.

I fear my lack of courage.

I fear that trust is too big a mountain for me to climb and…

and I fear that this broken heart will never mend.

 

Don’t be co-dependent on your story.

Published 27/09/2016 Counsciousness , creativity , Growth , learning , Life , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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We all have our story.  Pages and pages of stuff we travel with.  Baggage we hold on to.   Each of us with our own piteous little pieces of our past.  Your father walked out when you were little or your boyfriend cheated on you once upon a time.  You never got that promotion you always thought you deserved or  your school marks didn’t reflect how hard you worked.  You were not chosen for the A team so gave up sport. That guy never asked you out and then dated your best friend.  He left you.  She left you.  Little traumas.  Notches in the bark of our souls that make us who we are. We are filled to the brim with them.  Overflowing with them.  You can’t get to adulthood without bags of the stuff.  We carry it around and blame our messy lives on it.

I am guilty.  A father who was indifferent to me at best and drunk a lot of the time.  A shabby english comprehensive that, were it not for the daily register, would not have noticed I was there.  My father’s job that made us move every few years resulting in no roots anywhere,  no sense of belonging, no real home.  These are just aspects of my childhood.  I would not dare to tread publicly into my teen years let alone all the diatribe that followed.  I would not dare to go on pulling out the relentless garbage of my life and laying it out and telling you ‘see….that’s why’. That’s why I can’t. That’s why I’m too scared. I couldn’t possibly because….

Here I am in my very adult years trying to lay down that heavy load of history.  The mountainous pile of the former me that I have dragged around year after year. The relentless hurt that the last few years delivered in breathtaking quantities.  I am trying, in tiny daily steps, to release any co-dependency on my past.  To believe that ‘I can’ despite a life of believing that ‘I can’t’.

It’s not easy.  We are comfortable in our co-dependency.  It’s a beautiful excuse.  It’s a beautiful excuse to stay in our sweet co-dependent state. It’s a reason to not.  A reason to not write that book or start that business or take up that sport.  It’s a reason to not be easy in that relationship.  It’s a reason to not open our hearts to all the incredible possibilities.

As safe and comfortable as this co-dependency is you are not all that has been.  It’s done. It happened but now is now. It’s not who you are in this moment.  Place all those bags of stuff gently down and move on. Let your heart gently open to all the promise and wonder of what life can offer.

You are not what happened to you.

There is so much to come.

My friend Jungle Jim

Published 02/12/2015 Art , creativity , Life , photography , Uncategorized , writing 1 Comment
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I find it amazing how the universe finds a way to bring people together even if they are either sides of the world.  How your vibration matches up with that of another even when you are on different continents.  The universe just decides you need to be in each others lives and it makes a plan.

I have such a friend.  We studied photography together from opposite sides of the world.  He was incredibly supportive of my work and we would compare notes and essays and eventually finished the course together delighting in our equally good results.  I loved his engaging open manner and we developed a sweet friendship that moved from just fellow students to encompass our whole lives.  It seems we had far more in common that just photography.

One day he emailed me the first few chapters of his book and one day I bravely emailed him the first few chapters of mine.  He would write each day will travelling his wet and rainy commute into London and I would write from coffee shops on warm sunny african days. Worlds apart and yet the same.  He of course is ten steps ahead of me and was near to completing his book.

Then on one of those exquisite sunny days a parcel arrived.  His book in all its glory.  I held it in my hands and ran my fingers over the cover.  In the pages between those covers I could feel every tiny atom of energy he had poured into those words.  I could feel his pride and excitement.  This was a big moment.

That weekend I was going away with a friend and as if the universe knew how to play this game the skies darkened and the rains came.  I lay in my bed listening to the drops fall heavily onto the roof above and the sounds of the lion call far away.  I took that precious book in my hands and as I turned the pages I was transported into the world of Jungle Jim.  To his adventures deep in the jungle with the rain coming in equal measure there in those pages.  I devoured it.  I was there.  I was her.  I was young and full of adventure.  How sweet that the universe made sure my world matched those on the pages.

I don’ want to give away the story.  That is for you to enjoy and I promise you will not be disappointed.  Jungle Jim is an adventure that captured my heart and imagination. Every one of those pages is filled with James King’s adventurous spirit and massively soft heart.

I am so proud of you my friend.  I loved this book.  I loved it’s energy and excitement.  I loved that it captured me so and I loved that it is so much a part of you.

James you have inspired and encouraged me.  You have listened when I needed a friend and you have entertained me with your adventures.  This book is only the beginning and I am eternally grateful to the universe for bringing you into my life.

James King’s Jungle Jim is available from http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=3512, Amazon and Kindle.

 

 

Who inspires you?

Published 17/09/2014 creativity , photography , Uncategorized , writing Leave a Comment
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There is a fellow photographer and writer out there, the other side of the world in fact, that I have never met, and probably never will.  He has however, with his sweet words and humble wisdom inspired me in a way that I find almost impossible to express.

I started out on my photography journey long before I even knew his name and then one day during one of my favourite pastimes of whiling away a few hours in a bookshop I stumbled across one of his books titled ‘Photographically Speaking’. Within hours I was home and had read it from cover to cover and was already in the process of messaging a fellow photographer in London telling him he had to go to the bookshop and buy it immediately.  The author, David DuChemin, had made me feel as if he was talking to me alone and that this had all been written for me in a beautifully crafted, exquisitely secret message that only I would read.

This is not the case of course and I am sure that hundreds of people around the world have read this book and hopefully many of them of been dealt the same card as I was.  I have since followed David’s blog and avidly purchased every one of his books. I have never been disappointed.

His latest offering titled ‘A Beautiful Anarchy’ is, to me, as inspiring, if not more so, as those first words of his that I read so long ago. David has a way of writing that makes you feel as if he is snuggled next to you on the sofa sipping on a mellow red with the soft glow of a dying fire throwing light on his words, which are humble and honest.  They caress the creativity in me and stoke the fire that burns deep in my soul.  He is not afraid of revealing himself in a world that judges all too easily.   I like that he makes me less afraid to do the same.  For lets face it, as creative individuals, it is our fear of being judged that shatters our confidence long before we have allowed our work to see the light of day let alone make it onto the vast ocean of social media.  His invitation to begin living an ‘unapologetically creative life’ is a calling to great to turn down.

He photographic style is not the same as mine, nor is his subject matter.  I enjoy his work but in all honesty it is his deeply honest style of writing that has found its way into my heart.  I envy him his life not because of what he does but because of the way that he does it.  He lives his life as honestly as he writes.  He is fearless in his search and is prepared to sacrifice in order to find, but best of all he is prepared to share it.  Every sweet moment, good and bad, funny or sad.

David I want to thank you for finding your voice for in doing so you are helping me to find mine.

 

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