Posts Tagged ‘judgement’

 

Confessions of a Runner

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

You simply have to look at my feet to find out how I’m coping emotionally. After several months of pretty toes and sling-back shoes, the skin on the soles of my feet are starting to crack, the tips of a few of my toes are opaque with blisters and a couple of my toenails are lifting ever so noticeably. And, as I reawaken the Forrest Gump within me, my emotional state is most likely going to turn all of my toenails black. When that happens, go easy on me – I may have a huge smile on my face but somewhere on a deeper level I am falling apart and through widening cracks that are simply reappearing due to bad workmanship. And if I’m wearing black nail varnish on my toenails best thing to do is approach cautiously … preferably with a bottle of bubbly and the promise of an all night party.

But as for the confession … I have been protecting the identity of my lover, so I thought, because of the many complications involved with the relationships I choose to pursue. But, as I disengage (or try to), I can’t help but wonder if perhaps it is simply myself I have been protecting. The cryptic ways I refer to love in my blog and the even more cryptic Facebook status updates … and, of course, the delicious pseudonym he has on my phone … are possibly my way of shielding myself from the judgement I am not meant to even be afraid of anymore. So, in the name of testing that theory and in the name of testing (again) who my true friends and followers are … I’m going extreme on confessions.

The man I chose to fall in love with; the man who held up that mirror to the butterfly in me; the man who inadvertently became my One shortly before leaving the country – and my life – forever, with his world in tact; the one who helped me heal from a broken marriage and brought me full circle to the broken-hearted pain I was in a year ago is … well, he’s Married! There, it’s out. I’ll be very clear here, I’m no victim in this. I knew everything. All I can say is that the part inside me that was seeking the attachment (my ‘Pain Body’ perhaps) only heard what it wanted to hear. Being played for the fool in love has gone around in my head over and over, so whatever all this makes you think of me is really none of my business.

So, now I move beyond the unmentionable and return to the love that causes the attachment that ultimately causes the grief that turns me into Forrest Gump with black toes that reflect the deepening cynicism in my soul.

But the process is like unravelling the silk from my cocoon to make a scarf. So that’s enough for one day. More tomorrow … after my next consultation with Mr Gump.

For now I end with Paulo Coelho’s 1-minute reading:
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/08/11/manual-for-climbing-mountains-3/

I’m not going to tell you which mountains to climb but I will try and give you the courage to climb the ones you can’t avoid. So put on your Big Boots and get ready for an Adventure. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on between A and B.

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Left-brain hypnosis

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

I abandoned my writing recently and retreated almost completely into my left brain. My musings have been read and misinterpreted and judged until, through my honesty in revealing all, I have arrived in a place where I am watching my life as an observer being strung along by those errors in interpretation and by the judgments of people I once loved. And I retreat further and further into my left brain in an attempt to try and make sense of my dysfunction around blogging this stuff in the first place.

“It is not a sign of good mental health to be well-adjusted to dysfunctional society.” (Krishnamurti)

I go to therapy, I send my child to therapy, I try and conform to a set of norms. Defined by whom? I restrain my life into a set of rules and values. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. And you know what? It still sucks. Divorce sucks. Who said it shouldn’t? And who said we have to work towards a place where it doesn’t or that we’re ok with it? I wasn’t shy saying that I didn’t want a baby, I didn’t pretend to be ok with it, I just let the world know that I was ok not being ok with it. We don’t have to like the hurdles on our journeys but we’ve still got to jump them … to get to who we’re meant to be.

This violent hurdle of separation and divorce has been a slow, stressful and traumatic amputation but, just like the place the huge oak has fallen in the forest – there in the space that has been created – a sapling begins its journey towards the light. A new limb slowly emerges where the old has been severed. And then I left brain it and, like a cloud, it smothers the sapling’s journey out of the undergrowth.

I’d like to find my way back into my right brain where I don’t have to make sense of everything, where I can just bring judgement-free humour to my own vey personal shitty situation because it’s who I am. And who I am is not something that needs to make sense. I’m just me … with all my quirks and weird desire to sometimes just make light of the darkness that won’t disappear unless I shine in it. For things to grow they need both the sunshine and the shit … and if you’ve ever thrown manure onto a garden, it’s pretty clear where the accelerated growth comes from.

Love. Life. Even when it’s shit, it can be pretty damn fabulous.

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I’m Back

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

I have been judged a lot lately for my need to share my personal stories. Although this is human nature and I don’t expect it to be any other way, I have always felt the need to try and justify why I do it and, mostly, I don’t do this particularly well. But, while reading The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, I came across the perfect line that sums up what it is in my heart that drives me to share what other people find far too personal to put out there:

“I share personal stories because I want to co-create a story of intimacy and cultivate our capacity for compassion in dealing with our human failings. I tell stories because I want to learn how to love well.”

I wrote while I was in India recently how being there brings me that sense of just being, a relaxation about self and an existence totally devoid of branding. As I grow, I define myself by the places my branches are reaching towards rather than by the place my roots are sucking from the earth. And with this comes a sense that, like the branches, my identity is being whipped around by my life’s experiences … and even when there is total calm, there is still a sense of movement within.

In many communities around the world there is a culture of story telling, of passing legends on from one generation to the next. We don’t live in a society like that and so we rely on the people who pass through our lives, imparting wisdom, spreading knowledge, sharing experiences that cultivate the compassion within us. We meet the people we need to and are fed by people who are guided our way. And this of course works in reverse too. We often think the work we do is where we end but every one of us has a part of us that needs to be shared. Every one of us has a story to tell.

I am a storyteller. That is what I do. I don’t write fiction because I am no good at it. My reality, my life, my shared humanity … to me, is enough story to tell. So, as I document whatever transformation happens in my life … and therefore in the lives of those around me who are part of my story by association … know that it is human nature to judge but know too that this is who I am whether you judge me or not. Judging me will not change who I am or what I write. But it may well change you.

I promise to be as honest as possible without hurting anyone. But don’t read my blog if personal issues offend or if you can’t get over my lack of the need for privacy.

Quoting the last stanza of one of my poems, Many mountains. I am:

… I am all the flowers and the trees. They are me
I am unpredictable. I am power. I am many
Penny, you are seen by all.
But you are things no one can see.

I’ll end by saying: Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbet4RdSo4

I will expand and embellish – as I am only too good at doing – and explain its relevance to this context. In time. But not now.

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Full disclosure

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

One of the reasons I started this blog when I had a baby was because I was amazed at how mothers gossip about each other. Everyone has an opinion on how other mothers are coping, whether they have PND, what they feed their babies, when they wean them, how their mothering effects their child’s behaviour, whether they follow a routine, if smacking is condoned and a range of other general issues including reasons for bedwetting and tantrums. Mothers, in their search to find balance and normality in a mind-blowing situation can become … well, they can become a bunch of bitches.

I was, however, determined to let people know how I was doing and what I was failing at and I wanted to make it public so that people could either empathise or just feel like they weren’t alone. I know most of this generation was brought up with a side of shame and guilt at every family meal and I wanted these to be the only things I was willing to conceal under the gem squash skin.

People have commented over the years about things I have written, they have empathised and they have disagreed but they have always taken this blog at face value. Now that I am being public about other areas of my life, however, people have been coming out of the woodwork like bora that you don’t know is there until it’s done a whole lot of damage … people are now judging me about having been so public about baby.

The purpose of my blog is to create a bit of unease; some tension to provoke debate … it is not about causing damage but alleviating pain, both for myself and for others who may be going through the same thing. Like I said in an earlier post, we are all part of the same humanity and what is happening to each of us is also happening to millions of others … so where is the shame in sharing?

People I have known for years, and some I have never met, have used my frank discussions to finally open up about going through the same thing and close friends have only gone public once they have already been through it. I can’t express the pain involved so I know that those people have been to hell and back before they have even told anyone what they were going through.

Despite judgement and criticism, I will always stand on my soapbox. Other people’s secrets are sacred to me but my own life belongs to the collective. I may be scrappy and I may offend people with my lack of regard for issues that some consider too private to divulge so publicly … but I believe my life should come out of my own mouth, not the mouths of others. And when people try and silence me, I only shout louder … only this time I can shout to a lawyer.

However my soap opera plays out in the end, I think I owe it to myself to explore the world out there for an opportunity to grow and connect to those millions of people with whom I share a part in this tragedy. If nothing else, I owe it to myself to rip the words right out of the mouths of people who would rather discuss my life with others.

Gossip is always easier than confronting any issue. It’s not surprising then that it is the people who devour magazines such at Heat and Hello! who are the ones that choose to base their opinions on the gossip that they hear rather than my truth that I publish.

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