The Swirly Girl
I’ve got a very special house guest this week. She’s beautiful, talented, funny and generous, and is making me laugh so much, i may not be able to let her go home to LA on Sunday. She’s been sampling life by the sea today, with the obligatory English rain and clouds, and tomorrow we’re off to London, where we’ll be wreaking havoc in Notting Hill and the West End.
Truly a sister-soul mate :-)
Half a dozen of the other
I was talking to someone recently about blogging and it became apparent that they just didn’t get it – they thought it was rather self-indulgent, as if to say why would anyone be interested in reading your diary on-line? Isn’t it a bit me me me? And i replied that yes, of course it is, but you’re missing the point. The blogging that I like, and the reason I still do it, is the sort that creates communities. We don’t blog in isolation – reading others’ blogs is as important as posting a few hundred words on the internet. There are some blogs I have been reading for over two years now, and it’s like reading the most fabulous never-ending book, one that you can interact with, and if you are lucky you can befriend the author too. Blogging is about sharing experiences, whether it’s culinary knowledge or interior design tips or potty-training a toddler or sharing the pain of grief. We learn from each other, and I realise that no one particularly cares about what i had for lunch today, but I hope that some of what I share here has maybe helped a soul out there, just as others have helped and inspired me too.
Don’t you find that non-bloggers can really get your back up when they try to poo-poo the whole thing? Moving along… I want to borrow a meme that Kristen posted recently.
{Go back through your archives and link to your five favorite posts.}
Link one: about la famiglia
Link two: about friends
Link three: about yourself
Link four: about something you love
Link five: your choice
Finding the centre
You take a step.
Your balance is off and you’re scared, but you do it anyway because the path backwards is closed off to you and there is only one way forward. You take every precaution you can because you’re full of the fear of the unknown; you don’t know if you can trust the person holding your hand to hold on tight enough, to not let go. You smile; you dance; you share the tender pieces of your heart, quietly, in the middle of the night. You worry it is too much for a mere mortal to hear, but you can’t stop the words coming out of your mouth. And they listen, and they do not run away.
Time is shared together; you try each other on for size. And just as a pair of shoes can look so perfect in the shop, sometimes you get them home and realise they don’t quite fit your wardrobe of swirling skirts. And so it is that, just as quickly as they joined you on the path, they decide it is time to go off in another direction, and you realise that perhaps you weren’t headed towards the same destination after all. And this realisation stings a little; you are shocked at how the hurts from the past come flooding back, hurts you thought you’d already healed. But as you sit with the new direction you are facing, you understand what a quantum leap you have taken, and even though the growing pains leave you aching, you know you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Listening in
Beannacht
(Blessing)
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
~ John O’Donohue, from Echoes of Memory
Transition
When I began reading Stephanie Ericsson’s book Companion Through the Darkness all those months ago, I didn’t know that the journey through grief she describes would end up mirroring my own so completely. There have been so many poignant moments when I have thought I was losing my mind, only to then find the exact words I needed to hear when I opened her book. Time and time again I find myself in the pages; time and time again i am reassured that every emotion I feel, every panic I have, is normal and part of the healing process. A woman I don’t know, and will never meet, wrote a book in 1993 that has truly been a companion, and has helped so many others I am sure. I am so grateful for the gift of words today. This extract from her book describes exactly where I am on this sad but sunny Valentine’s Day.
“Our first attempt out into the dating world will be terrifying. And maybe even exhilarating. Somewhere, with someone, we will be ferried over into the next way of life. At some point, we will take our clothes off for another lover. It can be such a pivotal experience that gratitude can make it seem like it’s true love. We are like children, who think that every growth spurt is their last. But this is just the beginning………. I felt like a virgin. I felt like a cheating wife. I wanted to push him away, but my body said to go. Then I thought I was in love with him. But I was just grateful to be touched again.”
Young love
Last December he’d bought a gift voucher from me to give to her as a Christmas present, and last weekend we finally did the shoot. I hope these pictures convey just how incredibly sweet this couple were – they are both absolutely besotted with each other. The afternoon was such a joy, and i came home with hearts and cupids fluttering around me – they were that infectious…
Squashed tomatoes and stew
This is the first birthday when I have woken up and had to ponder what it really means to be a year older. And not a silly my-life-is-over tears in my coffee performance – rather a very quiet morning of musing on the fact that I am not only a year older, but i look and feel it too. Discussing this with a friend this morning, there really does seem to be a moment where (as a woman) you go from being the sassy young thing around town to suddenly becoming the (hopefully) wiser, older woman of another generation. I’m not going to write a prize-winning novel at 24. I’m getting less attention in the street from men (and i know how up-myself that sounds, but you know what i mean…) All the interviews I read in magazines these days seem to be with up-and-coming 20-something actresses who have skin like a baby’s.
Turning 35 does feel like a bit of a crossroads. It’s five years since i turned 30 and met the man I would fall so hard for; it’s five years until i turn 40 and who knows where I’ll be then, and who’ll be in my life. I really do like being in my thirties, much more than i ever liked my twenties. I like knowing who i am; i like being grown up and wise and having some life experiences behind me. I don’t particularly like how my body is changing and how I seem to look permanently tired, but i’m willing to find the grace to accept these things and revel in all i DO have. I’m grateful that I have so many wonderful friends in my life who make each day a sunnier place to be (flowers sent from New Zealand chased all the clouds away this morning – thank you my friend). I give thanks every day that I got to be sisters with the most amazing human being I know, and that my family circles around me every step of the way. I’m so thankful to have found a career path that feels right to me, that excites me. Life could be a lot worse – in fact, life has been a lot worse, and yet here i am. Alive. Smiling. Grateful.
Hello thirty five, it’s nice to meet you.
Anniversaries
They creep up on you when you least expect it, when you’re busy getting on with the messy business of being alive. Today was a significant day for us, and for the first time in five years i hadn’t thought about it. This wasn’t a forgetting – it’s simply me being distracted by the other things happening right now in 2008, not 2003. But last night in my dreams he was there, and he held me close and told me he’d come back for the anniversary. He told me he hadn’t forgotten.
And then I woke up. And for the rest of the day I have wanted to search through every drawer and cupboard in my house, looking for clues, looking for him, looking for something. You can’t jettison the grief when you want to – it is still there under the surface, smaller, less powerful, demanding less and less of your attention each day. You have lived enough time since they left to be able to smile when the sun comes up, to be able to open yourself to the future without feeling like you are denying the past. But just as a broken bone heals stronger than before, the phantom break will still ache from time to time.
I ached today. I really did.
