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a quote from Louise Hay

"'It is safe to look within. As I move through the layers of other people's opinions and beliefs, I see within myself a magnificent being, wise and beautiful. I love what I see in me.'"

bless Louise Hay!

welcome home gifts

(my treasures from my walk on Church Bay)

today i was having a sad day





where the tears sit just in my throat





and i find a sense of restlessness all around me





making me pick things up to read





and put them down again





aimlessly search and look for new postings new sites new new new





when what i think i need is to just be





still





quiet





easy





so today i took my restlessness and the poodle for a walk on the beach and these are the gifts i found...well i was given really

i feel rewarded by finding beauty in these small and perfect things

i always take away rubbish so i feel like i trade the beach as well...

but i also feel that these treasures are offered up to me by the sea.... the place that calls to me...

they are welcome home gifts

i can't tell you what pleasure it gives me to see these gifts, to hold them, to feel their weight, or weightlessness in my hand

and know that i am part of this amazing universe...

and to know some part of me feels like i deserve it is better still

What makes you feel at home?

what makes you realise you are loved?

my vagina's unpleasant experience

Photo of my youngest dressed as princess Leia for a starwars party - i want to be a vagina warrior as feirce as this!)

i have recently had to go for 2 colcoscopies...where they look at your cervix to suss out whether the cell changes are sinister or not...

initially i was sent to the local hospital but knowing there were only male gynaecologists

i chose to go privately...i mean i have never had stranger men around my cervix in any other part of my life so why would i want to start now ?

then as luck would have it (and i live in a smallish place so only one private gynaecologist) i needed a second opinion...

off i go, reluctantly, to be quizzed about why i didn't go there in the first place ... a little discomforting but i told the truth having to work all the while not to apologise because i am highly attuned to Doctor worship and saying i have a different opinion to a Doctor is pushing buttons for me...

...then i was in the stirrups (and hating every second of being disconnected from my vagina and his examination by a sheet - like it was none of my business)

HE COUGHS ON MY VAGINA...

I mean the kind of cough you would definitely turn your head away if you were face to face with someone

so why would you cough on the vagina of someone unless you were disrespecting it?

WHY?

and he didn't apologise - either he does this all the time, or he didn't think it warranted an apology - there is just no way around it - he doesn't think vaginas are worth it...

...so now i need to go back

but i won't

and now i need to ring the hospital and cancel the appointment (having already raised the hackles of the staff there by insisting that they tell me biopsy results over the phone so i don't have to wait 2 months - CLEAR BY THE WAY HOORAY!)

I just need a little bit of courage to make the call - to claim back my right to have the airspace around my vagina respected...

sheesh

funerals and scaffolding

On Thursday I went to my Uncle Ken’s funeral.

So I pause, at the beginning here, to honour him. The funny, slightly pompous, very teacherey man I knew, who grew up farmed out to relatives, his mother passing away very early in his life. A child of the depression who always wanted something better for himself and the very loyal family he built around him with his wife, whom he loved fiercely.

The thing with funerals is that sometimes they are many conflicting things.

There is sadness, for the loss and, in Ken’s case for the senseless suffering he and his family endured in the last 6 months of his life.

There is readjusting. The shuffling up in the queue as the older generation passes and the next one moves up…

There is fear. There is a dead body there in that box and for many of us the only dead body we see is the one which rises in the zombie movie to come and suck the life out of you while you sleep.

There is the form… the service, the songs, the cup of tea and scones afterwards… people shuffling about in suits (some hired, none ordinary) dreading what will come out of their mouths when they greet the close family…

There is the seeing old faces… seeing first cousins you haven’t seen for 10 years, people that look just like you, or your Dad, but you have no idea who they are…

And there is the trying to make sense of it all… make sense of death, of the meaning attatched to the years that have passed. The lists of achievements, the counting of the attendees…the tallying up of what this life has meant…

And as clichéd as it is, it is always love. Love of a partner. Love of children. Love of friends…

It is always love.

As I watched my cousin struggle through his eulogy (damn fine job, Stuart although don’t get me started on the Anglo Saxon stiff upper lip bullshit….) I could see how much love there was… not right there at the pulpit, but in the hours of going around to the nursing home, to helping his Mother, to immersing his children’s lives in that of his parents, I saw love.

What a legacy to leave.

I drove the 2 ½ hours to the funeral with my two brothers. I think it is the first time in 20 years that I have been alone with them. I think it is the first time I have had a chance to talk about family with them. And to laugh. Yes we were mocking my mother and I know that is not very nice. But God it felt good to laugh with them again.

We drove behind 3 lots of scaffolding trucks on the way down…(ok a little left field but stay with me…)

This fact seemed significant to me but I didn’t know why until I realised…

The funeral process helps to remind those of us still earthside, about our priorities…

What are we scaffolding our lives with …. What are we using to build the years and the contributions we make to others….
Is it love?

Expectations, bottom lines and other geometry

(The most straight lines i could find in my photos of some harakeke or flax (phormium tenax) that of course aren't straight at all)

over on the magical wonderful loving and challenging SARKforum http://sarkforum.freeforums.org/ i am having revelations about expectations

EXPECTATIONS ARE PLANNED RESENTMENTS.. (thankyou soaringwind!) http://thecreativitygardencafe.blogspot.com/

when i expect life to deliver me a certain thing i am planning to be resentful when they don't happen

ahhh resentment my old foe.....

this expectation malarchy speaks to me about bottom lines -

expectations are a line drawn on the map of your life...

i expect i will attain .....

i expect that this will not be for me.....

and then you live up to - or down to them...

childhood is full of expectations and adult hood i guess is about deciding which lines on the map you will rub out, which ones you will draw for yourself....

but everything in nature is slightly curved

straight lines are imposed

so any kind of line on the map of my life is an imposed demarkation from the possibility of it all...

it creates barriers

it limits us....

but my ? is about how do we fit our bottom lines into this (eep another line)

how do we say yes we will do/accept/aceed to this or not?

Are we (as the wonderful wise and truely beautiful Andrea http://abccreativity.com/ says) able to understand what we will and won't accept from others without expecting anything from them...

this is revolutionary...

people we invite into our lives will be who they are - do what they do- behave how they behave- and what we do with that and how we choose to accept that or not, is up to us....

the bottom lines are imposed on ourselves not others...

that is the geometry of the path of the arrow going straight to the heart... the heart of the matter the heart of me...

the sea of stupid

(this is the Pacific ocean at Pataua North Beach, East coast New Zealand where i was yesterday - it is not the sea of stupid i am sure that would be much uglier than this!)

i have a mother who drives me mad

she has a daughter who drives her mad too...(and i am her only female offspring)

my best defense against the corrosion i feel around her is avoidance - and since i have moved back to my hometown from across the other side of the world i can't really avoid her....

so yesterday she came to my house - it was a big family gathering - about 15 people but still my nerves knew where she was every second....

the red alert button was flashing

and then i watched her do something that really annoyed me - i mean pissed me off and triggered me and made me feel small and blow up like an angerpuffer fish all at once...

and then i took a breath

and i saw her from a different perspective

i saw this woman on a sea of stupid

a sea of her own making... full of bitterness and envy and self pity and resentment

and i knew as sure as hell that i didn't want to swim there...

i didn't want to prove myself right, or correct her enough to go swim in that toxic sea

so i left her to swim by herself

i didn't even stick my toe in

- this is huge -

normally i would be like the big burly lifeguard - blowing my whistle and racing out with my silly hat and floatation device and making lots of splashing...

but i just turned and walked away -

if at 70 something she can't swim then i sure as hell can't teach her...

as i write this i feel slightly guilty about it but when i connect to the feeling of being so whole by not diving in i know i did the thing that is right for me...

and that is right

and when my 6 year old was crying last night about feeling as if she had been mean - i was able to use the swimming in the sea of their own stupid analogy and just let her be ok about sticking up for herself, about letting someone else try and put her down and just leaving them to it because they would look stupid not her... and it helped...

so long sea of stupid -

i think people only drown there if they stay so long, trying to prove how bad it is there all they need to do to survive is start swimming to the shore....

a lovely metaphor

(this is a photo of us camping under the stars last summer)

i was listening to the radio this morning about New Zealand and Australia's joint bid to be part of this wicked project called the square kilometre array.

they are going to set up a spiral of around 4000 radio telescopes to help them collect more information about space

one of the reasons Australia and New Zealand are front runners is because of the quality of our night sky, the relative lack of light pollution...

the darkness will help them see the stars

The darkness will actually help them see.

and i thought this was a beautiful metaphor.

the dark times in your life are the times when you are open to seeing inside yourself, seeing outside yourself....

the darkness helps you to see your own stars...

if you want to learn more follow this link to radionz webpage and go down to feature guest Bryan Boyle - a brilliant and enthusiastic man who describes himself as a cosmic archaeologist!

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/

A PINCH AND A PUNCH

(photo of a poppy from my garden )

A time of new beginnings...



things that have been buried deep in the dark,



now peep out



raise their beautiful heads



and drink in the light



Happy first day of southern hemisphere spring!