Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Lent Day 2 Lying in the Desert

A gentle day today despite the high winds outside and the occasional downpour.  The light was gloomy, suddenly deciding to brighten up for a moment as twilight fell.  We have noticed how much longer it has remained lighter as each day comes.  Tonight it was getting dark at 5.20pm.  I always think of February as gloomy - but this year the sun has shined too - even a rainbow the other day.  I must go on a snowdrop hunt.

I have slept and spent time in the Wilderness place.  No Art Therapy today, I think the therapist may still be off and I was knackered anyway.  I am surprised how restful being in an empty, open landscape is.  Imagination is a wonderful device; a beautiful plaything.

Over the years my preferred 'safe places' in my head began with a Cindy doll house as a tiny child made by me from cardboard boxes and tissues.  It graduated when I learnt to read to a book filled room with a fire and a cosy sofa or chair.  That image lasted for years until it stopped feeling quite so safe when words became of professional interest and I had a bookful of rooms and a room full of books. 

I went to sea shores - but now I live by one - so that is not safe in the relaxing, imaginative, mindful sense - like all places we make our inner home in, this has become my lived reality - not a special, inner space. 

I then did a visualisation about a space in the centre of a large tree - and it didn't work for me for long - I was really quite ill when the therapist facilitated this - and I was convinced I was hurting a living thing by my presence - so left.  (Apparently not a terribly conventional response!) 

I've imagined little wooden huts in trees and now, for the first time an entirely open space. 

I have lay in the sun today in my visualisation for a short time (as I look like a lobster after about 10 minutes no matter what factor I put on).  I had my multi-coloured sunhat on, my favourite trousers and shirt and some thick sunglasses.  I can see nothing in bright light.  I was surprised how safe I felt not seeing, in the open and with the sun beating down - not too hot - warming and soothing like a bath.  I made sand angels with my arms and legs.  (I am supposed to exercise my shoulder which has seized up since my accident in June.)  It was a sand angel with a wonky wing to one side - but we all have to start somewhere. 

In my visualisation Jesus is about and the silence is companionable.  He enjoys making patterns in the sand and arranging pebbles - very zen and very beautiful - but nothing stays - it's persistently, but gently adapted and changed before my eyes, developed and brushed out  with a leafy branch from a nearby bush.  We drink together at a small pool.  I wait in his shadow until he has finished and moved a little away. He leads me from the shadow back into the full light.   We sit and shut our eyes and think for a while.  I wander off and sleep off the heat of the day in the coolness of a cave.  It is all so simple.  He has even admired my sand angel.  Just a smile when I suspect he thought I was sleeping - but I knew - it only took his smile.

Thought:

This day many share in the pain of not knowing or even understanding themselves,

Provide the cave to cool the anguished soul,

Water to cleanse the rawness of a broken spirit,

A Playful moment to enrich all that is perceived as bleak or unmanageable.

In the name of one who came to teach and bring life,

Amen.

The first Day of Lent: Taking Up Not Giving Up

I continue to feel stronger and better.  It is a huge load off my mind to have shared that I am BPD.  I can feel my energy returning.

My partner and I have known the diagnosis from the end of December, but decided to give ourselves some time to get used to the idea before sharing it without feeling we didn't know the answers to questions - or - much more importantly how we felt.  We have talked alot, but also allowed it to settle into our shared life.  We are welcoming a new companion into the dynamic of our relationships.  I think we both recognise BPD explains a lot!  We have read and now abandoned books and websites - and now feel we have to make it our own - and I have to own how it is for me.  (I haven't put the books on the fire though - but they are squirrelled away amongst other psychology stuff).  To be honest, they were a little scarey when I first read them and I had to work through a sense of denial and grief at what I was reading before I could find the framework I now have which is for the most part one of relief and positivity.

Lent has begun, and I have given myself the opportunity to try out new and old activities; take things up rather the putting them down.  As I sat in the car park at our near by retail park watching the cars and people moving about while my partner picked up my latest prescription, I realised I was content.  Being there felt fine.  We discussed going into the bookshop.  Sanity about our bank balance prevailed rather than anxiety - I still cannot enter a bookshop and leave it without a purchase.  Somethings don't change.

I am reading and writing again.  Incredible.  I am beginning to talk on the phone too.  Awesome.  I have discovered, sadly, that even with medication I hate housework, shopping for groceries and certain types of cafe that are a rip off.  Most of all I am enjoying not living through a haze of anxiety.  I am surprising myself.  My partner and I spent a happy half an hour in hysterics the other evening while I read out yet more t-shirt slogans to choose from.  I am remembering how to enjoy myself.  Thank God for a sense of humour.   

As we begin Lent I am reflecting on the ministry and final days of Jesus's life.  He chose to set himself at odds with what was conventional and challenged accepted thinking by often subverting it in his own actions; not good to be seen with a sex worker or a debt collector.  Today I have been  sitting with him in the wilderness; watching and waiting to see what is to be asked of him (and me); what his intuition, courage and energy will become (and what mine will embrace). 

The watching and waiting is an expression of the mindfulness I mentioned yesterday - for in the wilderness place that I imagine Christ - there is nothing much to do but allow yourself to focus on the now. The feel of the gritty desert floor, the heat from the sun, the hardness of rock against flesh, the scarcity of plants and, the sudden call of birds over head or the slither of a creature from the shadow of a rock; thirst and desolation; loneliness - but with a purpose; a focus; staying in the moment to be more fully myself.  It is the place where I will practice what I have been taught, that tomorrow and yesterday take care of themselves - it is now that I live.

Ash Wenesday - Living Mindfully

An excellent session with my CPN.  Difficult though in some ways because we are trying to earth my aspirations particularly regarding a balanced, healthy family life with a few reality checks.  I feel clearer as a result about what I need to be and do to remain in a more balanced frame of mind. 

The first Ash Wednesday I can remember when I haven't attended Mass, but I have not found myself short on thoughts and reflections.  I feel I am 'living a lenten observance' just now, presenting myself afresh to God, my community and myself.  I am I guess 'coming out' or emerging.

This afternoon I did more - enjoying riding the wave of an energising session with my CPN.  I have wandered round town with my partner; been into shops and even wandered off alone.  I felt human again and as though some of the goals that seemed unattainable are possible once more.

Today we are reminded liturgically of our mortality.  "From dust you came and to dust you shall return".  There have been times in recent months when I have known what it has felt like to want to die and to plan my death.  I have faced my mortality and even longed for my life to be prematurely over.  Today my CPN gave me an introduction to mindfulness - a way of remaining truly in the moment.  I had ample opportunity this afternoon as we were out and about to practice it.  I was aware of the colours once more in the world; my world.  The smells from women's perfume to kebabs and chips; the hustle and bustle of people rushing home - and I realised I would have missed all this.  I gave thanks for life.  All life - but especially the one I have been given.   I am being invited to dig deep and search widely to make sense of my place in the world and that is a privilege, not a curse or a threat or a terrible disability.  I am genuinely grateful.  I have been given the chance to be.  The be-coming will happen if it needs to, as and when.  Can't be forced.  But the be-ing feels just right.  Mindfulness.  Keeping my mind fully in the moment.

From dust I came and to dust I shall return - but for now I am happy to claim life as it is given for the time in between.

BPD and a Shoe Box, Shrove Tuesday and Reflections

I have just watched Dido, our Golden Retriever - the  matriarch of our dog pack and eleven - push our study door open with a large shoe box in her mouth bringing it to us in the hope of a reward.  She couldn't see where she was going and her whole body was wagging in the shear delight of the action.  She deserved her chicken light strip!  She is terrific at retrieving - but as she's got older she doesn't always wait until you ask her for something - she spots a displaced item and brings it anyway.  I love her sense of purpose and joy in serving.  She has now carried the box down to the utility room with my partner so it can be put there for recycling.  She will almost certainly wait until his back is turned and then pick up another piece of cardboard and bring it back down the hall to me.  I watch and wait.

Shrove Tuesday - and we are working up to pancakes.  As this is my favourite food - I think I might even make some!!

As I prepare for a reflective Lent discerning my future vocation, I also want to share the most up to date information that I can about my mental illness with those who accompany me via these blogs.  What I am about to write may not be comfortable to read but I will not be able to fully reflect and discern possible futures unless I am honest about my present and past.  Below are some extracts that I have cut and pasted from a more personal letter to those I have been discerning the thought of setting up a Christian community with.  I have chosen the sections that explain the diagnosis I have now received and it's implications.  I hope this helps clarify and join up the dots as it were.  I am hardly used to the idea myself - but I feel the next steps of managing a life long condition are to share what I am learning about myself. 

Over the years, especially living with children who have been very badly hurt by others, my partner and I have learnt how 'secrets' can end up unhealthy and painful - we have always tried to live with authenticity and transparency even if at times that have been personally and professionally incredibly costly.  So, when illness is about, what's the point in not saying more - just the fear of not being understood.  Well, blow that - fear is courage waiting to happen.

So to my extracts:

I am in awe with gratitude at the support and encouragement I have received in recent months.  Thank you for the part you have played in that.  I have been very humbled.

Getting Better

Fortunately for now there are significantly more ups than downs and my general mood is consistently improved on my new drug cocktail.  I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.  This is a condition which is most commonly caused by early emotional abuse in childhood or, much less frequently, a period of sustained trauma in adulthood – things like domestic abuse.

This latest acute illness that I have suffered resonates significantly with an understanding of myself as ‘disappearing’ under the pressure of meeting other people’s needs as a priority.

Bordeline Personality Disorder is a condition which affects 1% of the population and of that around 75% of  those diagnosed are women.  It is diagnosed by a consultant psychiatrist who commonly uses a set of nine pathologies to identify the condition.  If a patient exhibits five or more of the behaviours listed, she is diagnosed with BPD.  In my case the match was eight out of nine – so I haven’t left a lot of room for doubt!

The main symptoms, which would be obvious to those of you who know and love me to varying degrees, are:

i)                   Poorly regulated emotions.

ii)                 Impulsivity.

iii)               Impaired perception and reasoning.

iv)               Markedly disturbed relationships.

I am not going to go into lots of detail, but will attempt to put some of the above into the context of  the me-ness of me as I guess that’s the important part.  Remember I am still the Jane I have always been.  I am not suddenly different – just more aware of why I react in certain ways in some situations.  Frankly, it’s a relief to know why there is a difference – but I am not immune to the stigma that surrounds mental illness particularly this one!  On TV just now an advert for a series describes Personality Disorder sufferers as “present day lepers”.  (Well, there are at least some encouraging biblical precedents in that one).

First thing I have had to recognise is that some of my earliest life experiences seriously damaged my perception of myself.  Many of these issues became very unimportant as I began to experience success in my life choices but they were underlying and showed themselves to me even if not always to others as acute anxiety, poor sleeping, paranoia, over-eating and avoiding emotionally challenging situations which I could not control.

These early fractures in my personality and experience became less ‘acute’ as I got older and wiser – and gained a sense of my value. 

I fell into a serious depression in 2002.  We decided that a choice had to be made, I gave up my full-time academic career.

My BPD symptoms work out in the following ways.  My impulsivity shows at its most acute in over-eating and spending money unnecessarily; also through insomnia and then over-working – hyperactivity; acute feelings of emptiness; anxiety – constantly blaming myself for everything and reckoning that I have done very poorly – even when others are open in their praise; feelings of depression – or imploded anger.

Most of my life there has been a correlation or trigger in physical illness which often depresses me and leads to a period of depression.  My present bout of mental illness was in part triggered by a bad fall in June.  I was suddenly physically trapped with the reality of my inner most feelings.  I am usually suicidal when I become seriously depressed, although I have never attempted to take my own life in reality.  This illness brought with it a new way of harming which was to cut myself.  This was, at the time, a way of feeling powerful.  An effect of the illness is that I feel very disassociated from my physical body – so this reminds me I am here – as it were.

The way my impaired perception and reasoning shows itself is in emotional self-flagulation.  Very few things are not my fault and I can rarely genuinely please myself.  This used to be easier when I was younger.  I seem to have lost the ability to play in recent years and just be spontaneous.  I am not only often paranoid in my thinking, but I also do what is often described as ‘magical thinking’ which is characterised as having unrealistic thoughts and beliefs.  Most powerfully, my image of mysef is often unstable when I am ill.  It takes a lot for me to see myself as gifted – ironic when I have had notable success in enabling others to claim this part of themselves.  I see everyone else as very talented.

Lastly, there is the ‘symptom’ of ‘disturbed relationships’.  I have had the reputation of being ‘aloof’ in the past and I am a master at avoidance.  Interestingly I am very black and white about myself and highly judgemental – but mostly very forgiving, accepting and collaborative in relation to others – sometimes putting myself at serious risk.

That’s the illness and I am not exactly comfortable knowing I have it – but I am learning better strategies all the time regarding coping with it’s symptoms.  I have a good drug regime now which works.  I see a CPN weekly just now, but this will become less and less frequent in the weeks ahead.  An occupational therapist is helping me with confidence issues – doing the things I want to do.  I also attend Art Therapy.

I do hope this helps de-mystufy.  I am on the mend and I am taking myself seriously for once – and part of that is realising what is important to me.  Living and the companionship of friends even beats good health into touch.

The prognosis is that I will, inevitably, have relapses from time to time and the occasional bad day.  At the moment I am doing one activity a day and bounce things that make me too anxious – but this is getting better.  When I am functioning at a higher level again, I will need to keep an eye out for the early symptoms of a relapse and act quickly.  The great advantage now is that this will most probably be pretty uneventful with a revision of medication with the local CPN and regular monitoring.  I imagine I will continue to have depressive episodes from time to time – but they are unlikely to be as tortuous as this episode because I am now diagnosed and monitored.  The best case is that I settle into periods of fruitful endeavour and manage a more evenly balanced lifestyle which pays full attention to my own needs as a priority.  From this position I can not only stay balanced but be available to others.

I will always need to be challenged as to whether I am making healthy decisions in this area.

I will soon be working towards getting a new guide dog – and I was asked what I would like.  I have asked for a dog who is as good as Teddy and Rainbow have been at stopping me dead in my tracks and warning me of what they have perceived as an obstacle or danger ahead.  I need much the same in my forthcoming life dialogue – honesty, transparency of thought and that we continue to offer in prayer and meditation possibilities and hopes; dreams and realities.

Have a blessed Shrove Tuesday - and a fruitful journey through Lent.

No Score Draw

Do you ever have a day which feels like a no score draw?

That's been the feeling of my day.  I had one of the worse anxiety attacks I have had in weeks this morning.  Interestingly, now I have very little recollection of quite what it was all about; the detail has gone.  Something about being a liability and hurting people - but that's all I can recall. 

I went back to bed and put on my blue and white hat and thought, slept and thought.  Eventually - and it felt as though I had fought twelve rounds and landed on the mat in a knock out, I had sorted my head out and come to an understanding of what was worrying me so much.  I am coming to terms with seeing myself differently - and inevitably I don't like everything I see - or all the memories my subconscious is reminding me of.  But I faced the dragons this morning and I think I left all our heads throbbing.  I'm glad I did stop and stand my ground - it hurt like hell - but I don't want to be constantly frightened by my emotions and flashbacks.

My one planned activity today was to go out with my occupational therapist, unfortunately the trip fell in the midst of the worst of the anxiety so I bounced seeing her.  Something I have subsequently beat myself up about as at a rational level I desperately want to get on with re-claiming and in some ways, gaining my independence and confidence again.  Splitting on a meeting is wasting her time and not fulfilling my basic contract with myself. 

I am disappointed I couldn't see beyond my anxiety at the time and couldn't just put the outing with my OT in a separate compartment and get on with it - then go back - if I had to - to the introverted stuff.  I think I was well beyond considering a trip out as a distraction. It felt, as far as I can remember, as though I just had to get on with what I was doing right then - no justification.  I should have been there and hit that mark.

I have written a letter to core community and e-mailed it tonight.  I have lost one core community person's most up-to-date e-mail - it has probably been put somewhere very safe like my work book which has also gone missing.  DB if you read this can you e-mail me so I can send a letter to you.  I feel this is a huge step forward in owning my mental illness and sharing in trust and love gradually with all those who have shared and trusted their stories with me.

Today feels as though I have been two people with a huge swing of the pendulum in between.  A passable impression of a scared rabbit this morning and a slowly thawed out human being who began to think and move and do things as the afternoon got underway.

Some of this may be because I had a fairly shaky weekend.  I have started to read again.  Today Buber's Between Man and Man landed on my desk - found by my partner at the local Borders.  I had also ordered some books about my mental condition through Amazon last week.  They arrived all too swiftly and I read alot.  I didn't take it as well as I had anticipated.  I hadn't realised that I was still in denial about the longer term implications and the impact of my illness on family and friends.  It was a huge wake up call - but it felt initially another insurmountable mountain - how to present the reality of the present and possible futures with authenticity and transparency whilst also keeping a healthy balance which places my emotional agenda at the top rather than near the bottom of the pile of needs and wants around me.

While depression and your personal dosage of antidepressant seems to have become a popular topic of conversation at nice, middle class dinner parties in the South, I am still aware of just how much, often unintentioned stigma, surrounds mental illness.  Part of my future will undoubtedlly involve exploring how this can be reduced in much the same way as I have attempted to do with theological reflection on physical disability - but it certainly wasn't a calling I would have chosen.  As my partner says:  "If you want to make God laugh tell her your plans."

Journeying to a New Way of Living

I am moving forward at so many deep levels that some times I disconcert myself.  The movement looks non-existent on the outside as I have needed a couple of days of much sleep and little activity, but this is misleading.  I have been doing a huge amount of internal processing and 'coming to terms with' how things are for me and how they will be in the future.  I have enjoyed some space.  No pressure.  Read.  Think.  Think.  Read.

The review of Boff's book has gone off - so I have a sense of real acheivement.  I can do some things.  Reading the book was a good exercise in finding out what still fires me and community etc... still does.  Boff is a prophet - he was a good place to start in testing my resolve!  I also heard that a place has become available for a conference in July which I desperately wanted to go on when I was well last year - but when I went to book around this time last year - all the places had been taken - they have had a cancellation and I have an application form.  Will I be well enough is the only question.  What is well is the slightly bigger one.  At the moment I am feeling nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Thank you again for all the wonderful support.  M - do give everyone my love.  I am there is spirit.  Yes, I do need your support and encouragement.  Thank you ALL.

It's All In The Message

I've had a downish day today - which we all know happens from time to time, but I have been aware of the causes and that is a huge help. 

I was dozing and getting over an unfortunate concoction of drugs I indulged in during the night - more later - when the dogs had a hissy fit and there was a knock at the front door.  A most beautiful bouquet was delivered to me in my bed with a card from my students at the Theological Institute. 

We are all thinking of you and hoping that you will be feeling better soon.  You are in our thoughts and prayers.  Love from all the students at TISEC.

I was so touched I really could have cried.  Whenever I have focused on not being able to be with them, teaching at our weekend residentials this year - all I could 'hear' in my head was how much I had let them down and how much my brush with my mental health must be such a disappointment and poor 'witness' to them - particulalrly of so much of what I advocate in spitituality terms. 

It was a joy to receive the flowers at a moment when I was beginning to beat myself up a little (more later) - it reminded me that I was missed and thought about; remembered.  I certainly miss them a great deal, but I am far from ready to resume teaching.

I think my first not so good day focused on my over-reaction to yesterday.  I had a great start to yestrday; targets met and I went to my CPN appointment - alone - walked in - anounced I had arrived and waited in the waiting room without hiding in the car or the loo or behind my partner or in my coat.  Excellent progreess. 

The session was really good - wide-ranging but helping me to keep working on the positive strategies for well-being.  It is just like seeing a personal trainer in a sense.  The CPN can take a good, forensic look at how I am approaching and interpreting things and help with the re-framing if I am losing a positive focus. 

I then took the big step of beginning to tell family a little more about the type of depression and the causes of it - also  the prognosis.  This feels personally important and a healing step - owning the problem as it were.  I have got as far as telling one branch of the family - but have had no reaction to speak of as yet back - it will have been a lot to take in and these things are hard to know how to respond to.  There is a lot of truth in something I read on a mental health website recently which said, expect flowers when you are in hospital with a appendicitis and silence - when you are in with mental health issues.  I must have very enlightened friends.   

More later via the blogs and personal conversations as I practicise describing what the future holds and how I am likely to feel in the longer term.  I am having to get used to seeing myself as a person with a mental health issue!  I am still me though.

The rest of the day wasn't so good.  I came home to my respite care support person.  The person comes each week to sit with me and give my partner a break.  My partner can then go out and have some personal in-fill time.  For some reason as the afternoon went on I just wound myself up and up like a tightening spring.  I have no real sense of why at the deepest level. 

The care-giver is calm, gets on with her own work and will do anything for me - cups of tea to order!  But I was in the wrong mental state at the wrong time.  I semed to regress into a fearful child-like lump.  I told myself I couldn't even get up and leave the room for the loo.  I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.  It had nothing to do with the carer - it was entirely to do with the inner emotional energy I was projecting into the situation;  I was seizing up - and I don't really know why. 

I am still uncomfortable in a wide variety of situations and particularly around strangers - and this may have been the starting point.  I think it was also that I had wanted to talk to my partner about the session with the CPN and I was resentful that he was out and I couldn't talk to him.  I projected my negativity elsewhere.

What came out of the afternoon was that having a CPN session followed by respite isn't brilliant for any of us.  My partner hadn't really settled to an afternoon off because he also wanted to hear how things had gone.  My partner is now seeing if the respite can be changed.  That would be fantastic - the best of both worlds.  However, the knock-on effects were that I blamed myself for not making healthier choices in the afternoon; for 'allowing' myself to in some way be less than I wanted to be; for having negative thoughts about the care I was receiving etc...

I tried a new drug combi to get to sleep last night and woke every hour and felt awful.  At one point I had palpitations and was sweating.  I've had a pent up irrational fear since - the urge for flight - but I can't pin it down to any cause.  Odd.  I am less reflective on the new drug regime.  An elastoplast on the worst of my anxiety and agitation.  Time for the psyche to heal itself.

In desperation I took a sleeping pill at about 4pm and went out like a light - I woke briefly at about 11am - for flowers and breakfast and then again at about 3pm.  Not a very routinised day.  I have felt alot better since I have woken up.  But I still have this underlying anxiety about something - as yet undeciphered.  The feeling something awful is going to happen - but no one has told me what.

Apparently the phone rang at some point and Art Therapy is cancelled tomorrow.  A shame. I can finish my review and re-claim my routine though. All is not lost.

I am learning so much about so many things.

Thank you to everyone who keeps a watching eye and a thoughtful engagement with me.  It makes such a difference.

J.

Tommy

Hit my targets today.  Important to emphasize that this is metaphorical, and that I have not become violent or started attacking my partner.  On the contrary, in a state of relaxed, drug-heightened stupor, I asked him to marry me as it was the 29th.  He very gently reminded me it was still only January.  One step forward, three back. 

There was a reason for this sudden moment of romanticism from a woman who cannot remember immediately how many years she has been married or whether we married on the 6th or 7th (fortunately my partner is a wonderful soft-hearted romantic and can) - I asked my partner to marry me on 29th February and he said fortunately said yes.  I may be a month early - but my feelings were sincere this morning. 

I am still a tad fuzzy from time to time - but over all I am going slowly but surely.  Concentration is a little bit of a problem still - and my spelling - well.

I had  a wonderful blast from the past in the post today which was from a very old friend of my parents.  My Dad, had amongst other things, occasionally performed ventriloquism.  He hated doing it - and was technically OK - but not a comfortable performer in this medium.  He used a vent doll which was given the name Tommy and was dressed in a similar outfit to the one my Dad wore for informal children's shows.  Tommy was a very vivid part of my childhood as he often sat in the armchair in the front room having an airing between performances.  He was a part of my extended family of marionettes and puppets.  For me he had a distinct personality in my imagination and was a sort of imaginary playmate.

I was in my early teens when my father formerly retired from theatre through ill health and I can remember coming home one day and finding that Tommy had gone.  I only realised recently who Tommy had been sold to - although it was probably shared at the time.

Today, Tommy has been 'retired' in a new guise and will form part of a theatrical archive.  I am very much hoping we can see him one last time.  In the meantime, the post brought some smashing black and white photos of Tommy after a minor makeover, from the performer who had originally bought him from my father.  Brilliant.  I will treasure them.

I Think Therefore I am Dangerous

Rainbow and I had a great session with my OT today.  Challenging in terms of concentration and maintaining my calm - but brilliant in that I did, to all intents and purposes, manage to acheive both.  I felt tired when I returned home, but not exhausted, which is a huge bonus compared with many outings.

Now that I am feeling better for longer, my emotional effort is transferring from simply staying alive and facing another day, to actually keeping my hand on the handbrake and stopping myself from speeding up and expecting too much too quickly of myself.  It is quite a discipline to choose to stop before I am forced to stop because of agitation or exhaustion.  I am learning a new respect for my well-being.  This is counter my earliest training which was to sublimate my own needs in order to be present and facilitate the needs of others.  I am learning about personal respect for myself and feel I am very much taking baby steps with this at the moment.

Over-doing it could be construed as an act of self-sabotage in itself, couldn't it?  So I have done my big thing for the day and am now moving back into my new routine activities like blogging.

Lots of thoughts are beginning to gain life once more and whizz around in my new thought-processing head.  Although this feels a little overwhelming after such a long gap of emptiness and nothing - it is also reassuring.  My partner teased me this morning - and former parishioners will recognise the joke - (EA especially - GW tell her about it!) - "Oh, no, this doesn't mean your going to start having ideas, does it?"

Yes, I'm afraid it does.  I chose today's t-shirt to emphasize the point:

I think therefore I am dangerous.

One of my ideas is to try and get to the bottom of why I need to carry so much weight around with me.  I have an inkling it has represented an emotional protective layer to me in the past and so now maybe the time to embrace the fact that this is not how I need to 'protect' myself so forcefully in the future.  I was talking to my OT about this over our de-caf cappocinos without a pastry or cake!  At some point I need to connect once again with a dietician and look not so much a losing weight but living in a healthy way with foods that will also help maintain and improve mental and emotional balance.  If I can do this, I will, of course, coincidentally, take off a few pounds and keep them off.

I think it was the make-up idea which has started me thinking more about my physicality.  I still don't think make up will do it for me one way or another - but I could see that I would enjoy embracing a picture of myself physically which is different from the one I have as my current reality.  I need to let this swill around in the psyche for a bit.  For now I am just surprised, and a little non-plussed to have thought it!

Perspective is a Wonderful Thing

I am enjoying Boff's latest book although I am only just over a quarter of the way through - far too much time spent dozing and thinking - sorry - reflecting theologically on what I had just read, life, the universe and everything- and perhaps most importantly - trying to work out if we need to rush out and buy a new kitchen in the dying breaths of the post-Christmas sales.  This would, in effect, finally commit us pretty much to an imminent move - cum the summer to the new communal base.  In the end - no kitchen - at least not yet - review in a month.  We decided a kitchen is a kitchen is a kitchen - and there are more important things in life just now. 

On a community note - there will be a personal letter coming out to potential base community friends soon.

Assuming I continue more or less on my gentle progress with some regresses as and when, my first priority is to settle my late mother's estate then think.  At the moment, we will need to be in this area for the foreseeable future.  This is partly because of our son's needs, but also my partner's and mine.  Unlike England and Wales, property prices are still on the rise up here - after all we had a long way to catch up on the South to begin with.  This is particularly if you are looking for a property with a large gardon or additional land.

Our own area is getting more and more expensive by the minute with a huge investment in city cultural ammenities in Inverness and close by.  (We will soon look out over a golf links - yum, yum). 

A few years ago we could have got what we now want for a fair exchange on our present house.  Now, if we want to get land close to the city and a property it's a great deal more.  This means that for us we either have to wait a  bit and then move - or I have to be earning a reasonable wage once more.  Certainly, it would work if I returned full time to writing and painting I am sure - but I think I am a way off considering that option.  It's enough to write these rambling thoughts just now.

It's a good sign that I am looking to the future though.

I have just been munching one of the biscuits sent to me.  Thank you P.

Boff's latest offering - Essential Care: The Ethics of Human Nature is proving a timely reminder of just how bizarre western capitalist priorities are at the best of times.  I couldn't help but smile when I read the following in the publicity bumph created by the publisher:

...One of the founders of Liberation Theology, he was silenced by the Vatican, and left The Franciscan Order saying that "the future of humanity and planet earth" are more important than the future of the institutionalised church.  He is still active as a lay priest in poor communities.

(SPCK publicity leaflet, 2007)

Life appears to be moving on...