Realization and my weasel…

The subconscious mind is powerful. It can bring up old feelings and pain without actually letting you know that this is what it is doing. You feel anxious, sad, unsure, and sometimes angry, but you don’t know why.

That is how I was feeling last week. All I wanted to do was run to get away from the feelings of inadequacy and pain that I was experiencing. I couldn’t picture how I could be happy.  And I didn’t know why. Life is good – I have a wonderful husband, I have the opportunity to follow my dreams of being a full-time writer, I have amazing friends and family, and I have just been to Thailand and fulfilled a dream.

Last week I felt quite pathetic. I had intended to experience life with more gratitude and simplicity, to remain inspired by what I experienced in Thailand, but last week I felt far from where I hoped I would be when I came home in May.

One of the dogs from BLES died in the last month, but I only just heard about his death this week. The news that the dog had died opened the way for the realization that my subconscious had been pushing something important up and I just wasn’t receptive to it. July is a wonderful month as it is the month in which Hugo was born. But, it is also the month of anniversaries of some losses. It is the month in which my beautiful Nan died three years ago and it is the month, six years ago, that we started IVF with the expectation that we would become parents. It’s true that no embryos were created from the first round of IVF, but with the cancellation of that cycle came the beginning of the death of hope that came more real with each cycle.

Anniversaries of deaths, in particular, bring with them memories and feelings about other losses that have happened as well. One of the most obvious is the loss of my cat, Minerva, just this past May. There is also the memory of my cousin who died in a motorcycle crash when I was eighteen and he was twenty one. 

There are other losses throughout my life, just like there are in everyone’s lives.

And, so, onto the weasel…

I have a weasel that turns mutant sometimes. Okay, not really, but I do have a part of me that when I am feeling melancholy and unsure seems to sense my weakness and rushes over to me to make sure I know just how useless and horrible I am. That is what was happening last week.

I felt fragile and with it came the thoughts of “you are stupid”, “you can’t do anything so why try?”, “anything you do will fail”, and the big one – “you can’t even have a child.” There was also one that relates to my concern that some treasured friendships seem to be falling away and I have no idea why.  Communication from their side has stopped. So, there were also the thoughts of “people don’t really like you”, and “you are not likeable – people just pretend to like you.”

I used to fight these feelings. I put all my effort into trying to overcome them, but all that happened was that the thoughts got stronger. There was no way I could defeat these kinds of torments and when I failed it just gave more ammunition for the thoughts that I am useless and no good.

I now have a strategy that I use where I imagine that there is a weasel in my mind. Normally it is well behaved and even useful, but every now and then it goes crazy and becomes a mutant that pours forth negative and unfounded judgments about me. If I try to make it go away completely it just gets more out of control. I have now given it an imaginary place where it gets a “time out” until it calms down. I imagine it as kind of a dog bed in the corner of the room.

This really does work for me. It’s like dealing with a child that is having a tantrum. I give it space, I don’t engage in its attempt to bring me down even though it keeps trying, and I ignore it until it calms down. Sometimes I even thank it after my thoughts return to being healthier.

Why would I thank this mutant weasel? Because sometimes it can be helpful. Telling me I am no good at anything is not a good thing, but helping me to recognize when I need to let go of something that I have tried and really have little talent for (and am even not enjoying) is beneficial. Saying people don’t really like me is something I don’t like, but helping me to think about whether I have done something that hurt someone can be a positive step in rescuing a friendship that is important to me.

Sometimes there is nothing positive that I can find in what the mutant weasel is saying. “You can’t even have a child” is one in particular. All I can say to the weasel then is “yep – that’s true…so what?”, or, even better, I ignore the weasel as it plays up in the corner.

While the weasel has its tantrum I get on with life.

With time the weasel calms down and stops the negative attacks. Then it returns to being a helpful and quite cuddly little creature.

I forgot about all of this last week. Life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns now that I have remembered, but it is certainly better…and I am free to think of the people and animals that have come and gone in my life with love and tears and laughter, and sometimes anger, without feeling that I am no good.

And I am free to think through the concerns of last week without being overwhelmed by them, and I can move forward instead of being stuck.

Me and Nan on the last day I saw her

Turning 40...

Here’s a very important tip when making a curry. If you are using a hand held blender to make the sauce make sure that the blender is turned off before you try to take one blade off to replace it with the one you need. Otherwise, like me last night, you’ll end up with an interesting cut on your finger which will really, really, really hurt and make you wonder if you are going to spend the night in the emergency department!

Fortunately my finger stopped bleeding quickly and I didn’t need stitches. 

And a positive I can take out of the incident was that Kirby had to finish making dinner!

I think it’s fair to blame my lack of attention to on turning 40 in the past week.  I’m officially over the hill now…so it’s only to be expected…

Of course I’m joking. At times I am just clumsy – I was clumsy in my teens, my twenties, and my thirties.

Turning 40, for me, is a milestone – it is not the end of anything, but is the beginning of something new. I told people before my birthday that it was just a number, but I don’t feel like that anymore. It is more than that – it is a time for changing the basis of my life.

My life was very different to now when I turned thirty. I was living in my lovely one bedroom apartment with my darling girl, Minerva. I was single and wondering whether staying single was a path I should actively pursue. I was in the fifth year of a job as a student advocate – which was a job I adored and I still miss (much of this is to do with the people I worked with). I had my friends and family and I was enjoying life.

But, even though I could see myself staying single I still had that deep desire to meet my life partner and have children of my own. Many of my friends were committing to their partners or getting married and/or having children. The reminder of what I really wanted was all around me.

I had no idea of the mountainous adventure that lay before me in the coming decade. What a ride!

Here’s a quick summary. Ready?

I met Kirby and moved in with him and then we bought an old bungalow together which we planned to renovate. I sold my lovely little apartment. I gained a whole new set of family and friends that came with Kirby. Kirby and I were married. We were blessed with new nieces and nephews (through both family and friends). I lost touch with friends I thought would be life-long and made new friends who I believe will really be life-long. My beloved Nan died. We brought home our gorgeous little Ari (not so little now!) and adopted our funny little Odi. We gave a home to one of my colleague’s cats (Felix). We looked after my sister-in-law’s cat, Frankie, for what was to be a few months, but seven years later she is still living with us. I was made redundant from my advocacy job due to the organization I was working at being closed down. My Dad was seriously ill and nearly died. I tried to run a dog training franchise without much success. I’ve had two or three bouts of serious depression which lasted a couple of months each. I’ve had three or four other jobs all in administrative roles. Kirby and I realized we were having trouble conceiving a child. We lost two babies to very early miscarriage. We tried IVF but the two embryos that were transferred into me died which devastated us. I started working for myself as an editor. We went on a dream holiday to New York. I completed a Masters in Creative Writing. Through some kind of unconscious unfolding we realized we wouldn’t be trying IVF again. I’ve lost touch with family members who I was close to and miss terribly. We moved house to be closer to our nephew, and because we realized our old house and the constant need to repair it wasn’t for us. Our Minerva died after a short illness. I went on a holiday all by myself to Thailand to Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary.

Throughout all of this I have been constantly trying to define my identity and my spiritually. I’ve tried to pick one type of spirituality (or religion) from Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga, various forms of Paganism, and Christianity. I’ve read numerous books on being happy and on positive thinking. I’ve sat down with pen and paper and tried to draw a path to a life where I would be content and where I would have a constant link to something higher than myself. I tried to get to a place where I would finally have everything about my life sorted out. I thought about myself a lot. I was completely immersed in the self-help movement.

I think much of this trying to define everything has partially been because of being unable to have children. Something so huge that I was sure would be part of Kirby and my lives just didn’t happen and in response I tried to grab hold of the other aspects of my life so they wouldn’t slip away and so that I could find some kind of identity when I realized I wouldn’t  be a mother. I needed a new meaning for my life.

Something has changed recently. I think it started before I went to Thailand but it became clearer while I was in that amazing country. I’ve been spending so much time on myself that I am missing the real life that is all around me. I am missing the people, the experiences, the just being, the emotions, the failures, the success, the chance encounters…it’s true I have seen all of these things but I haven’t been fully immersed in them because I have been afraid that I will be wrong.

It’s utter rubbish really. The whole thing is just crazy. I spent most of my time trying so hard to fit into a mold of what I thought I should be and what I thought my life should be that I ended up twisted and tormented.

When I was in Thailand, especially when I was at the elephant sanctuary, I saw people who had very little but they were happy. Sure they strived to have the necessities of life and they had goals, but they were happy while they were waiting to see what their lives would bring. They didn’t need some book telling them how to work themselves out. They didn’t need some self-help guru harping on about how positive thinking and intent would ensure everything they wanted would come to them. They just got on with it. They worked, they smiled, they wept, they helped each other out, they shared with each other and with me what little they had, and they spent time with their families and friends just being in the open spaces under their home-made homes.

It’s opened my eyes to just how self-centered I was being. I was constantly thinking about what would be in it for me if I did something or shared something. I kept my stuff to myself and worried about whether the curtains we had were okay and whether the house was clean enough to meet other people’s standards (which were imagined standards by me). It just doesn’t make sense to me, anymore, to live like this.

While I’m not going to let our house become a dirty mess, and from time to time I will reflect on what is going on in my life, I won’t be letting these things get in the way of living.

It’s okay to reflect and to read books on improving life, and it is definitely okay to have a connection to that something greater than me, but at some point I have to get on with living. I have to take risks in reaching out to people, I have to let things go, I have to love the people in my life, I have to let people go when they need to, I have to weep and laugh, be angry and be at peace, and let my emotions have a healthy reign on me sometimes. All I have to do is be and love people and animals and life – just the way it all is. I have to let go of controlling everything in my life and taking responsibility for things that are just not in my control, while having passion for those things I choose that I can perhaps do something about.

I have tried hard, in my thirties, to sort myself out.  But, I realize now that nothing in life is ever irrevocably sorted out. And I mean absolutely nothing. At the beginning of my thirties, and especially when I met Kirby, I thought I knew where my life was going.

At the beginning of my forties I have no idea what life has in store for me.  So it’s time to let it go and just see what happens and not be so serious about myself. It really is liberating.

What's in a name...

It’s been a while since my last blog entry – I blame Christmas, New Years, and a husband home from work to annoy me. Well, okay, not the last bit – it’s been lovely having Kirby home for the past few weeks and I’m not looking forward to when he goes back to work next week.

There are lots of things I want to write about, but many of them are more serious, and I want to start of the year with something a bit lighter (if that’s the right word). I want to share with you the names we picked out for our children before we even started IVF.

I always thought I would have boys rather than girls, so let’s start with them…

Jacob Arthur

Jacob is a very old Hebrew name and we liked the sound of it – it was strong, but simple. I’ve since found out that Jacob means supplanter – which basically means “undermines” or “supersede by force or treachery” – so the meaning isn’t all that flash. I still like the name, though – and what’s in a name anyway!

My Great-Uncle Arthur and my Grandfather

Arthur is my Dad’s first name, although he is called by his second name, David. He was named after his Uncle Arthur who died at the age of 22 in Bougainville in World War Two. That is my Great-Uncle Arthur in the photo with my Grandfather, Vivian Sydney. I like the idea of honouring our ancestors by using their names for future generations. Arthur is Welsh and means “bear”.

Samuel Kirby

Samuel is a name Kirby and I both liked very much. It is another old Hebrew name and means “God has heard”. It was the sound of the name rather than the meaning that appealed to us. Similar to Jacob, it is strong and simple.

The use of the name Kirby is kind of self-explanatory. Samuel would have had his Dad’s name as his second name. Kirby’s name was a family name on his Mother’s side – it was his Grandmother’s maiden name. It means, depending on the source, “the village with the church”, or “land beside the church”, and is potentially Scandinavian or Old German.

Now for the girls…

Ruby Grace

If you read my blog entry from the 10^th of July last year you will know about the dream I had where my Grandma was standing at one end of a long hallway and I was standing at the other. A little girl (about two years of age) was toddling toward me and my Grandma said “This is Ruby – you will look after her now”. From that moment, if I had a daughter, she was going to be named Ruby. Ruby is English and means red gemstone. I still love the name.

Grace is Kirby’s Grandmother’s name. I’ve always liked this name as well, and it goes with Ruby so well. Grace is Latin, although some say it is English. It has numerous meanings assigned to it, including “God’s favour”, “good will”, “favour”.

Audrey Margaret

Kirby and I both love the actresses Audrey Hepburn and Audrey Tautou, and picking Audrey as a name for our potential daughter was based purely on these two women. I like the meaning of Audrey as well, which is “strength”, as I always hoped our daughter would be strong.

Margaret is the middle name of both my Mum and my Nan. It is said to be of Greek origin and means “pearl”. I think that this meaning suits both my Nan and my Mum very well as they are both rare and precious. Nan has passed away, but she is still rare and precious in my mind.

Esme Kate

Esme has a bit of a stigma here in Australia as it was the name of a character in a long running soap opera in the 1980s called “A Country Practice”. Esme Jacobs, the character, was a bit of a gossip and put her nose into everyone else’s business.  A few years ago I saw a character on television, although I can’t remember the show, who was funky, strong, and feminine, and her name was Esme. I figured the name Esme deserved a chance at redemption, and it really is a nice name in my opinion. It is a French name and means something along the lines of “loved” or “esteemed”.

And, finally, Kate – well, that’s my name. Although not really. Kate is short for Kathleen, which is an English form of the Irish Caitlin (which is Gaelic). I always thought I would use Kate for the second name here, but now I think I would have used Kathleen, or even Caitlin in honour of my Irish roots. Oh, and Caitlin means “pure”.

So, there you have it – what our babies would have been called if they had lived. I still think they are awesome names…

My Legacy

I can’t believe it is already six days into March. It really doesn’t feel like two months of 2013 have passed already.

This year, in July, it will be two years since my beloved Nan passed away from leukaemia. I miss her every day, and when I drive past where she used to live, I catch myself thinking I will call in on her. Then I remember that she is gone.

Every day there is something that I wish I could tell her – that I’m going to Thailand, that last week my two year old nephew told me it was nice to meet me, that my dog, Ari, fell into the lake and was embarrassed. Often I tell her anyway. I don’t know how it all works when we die, but I like to think our loved ones are around at least some of the time – that they check in on us. I can almost hear Nan’s laughter when I tell her that my cat, Minerva, was chasing her tale or feel her arms around me when I tell her about the waterhen I found who was sick and that I took to a bird sanctuary, but then it died.

I won’t have any children or grandchildren to remember me when I am gone. At times I feel sad about it. In centuries to come, if any of my brother’s descendants are researching family history I will be the name on the side – Paul’s sister, not the direct ancestor. I am not sure how interesting I will be – unless, of course, I am one of the first people to colonise Mars.

I am not certain what my legacy will be, but I know it won’t be from my body – at least not directly.

In some ways I feel like this makes me try harder to find a way to do something that matters, to leave the world a better place even if it’s just in a small way. Whether I’m remembered or not, I want to leave something that might be passed on not only through my nieces and nephews, but through other people that I meet and even just because I helped plant trees that have grown into centuries old beauties.

It might be the case that I am forgotten as the years, decades and centuries pass by, but in reality, how many of us will be remembered whether we have had children or not?

All I can do is do what I can do. And I intend to. I want to give something back for this amazing life I have been given and leave a legacy – even if my name is never spoken again.

The Meaning of Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying shopping for presents for our family and friends, as well as getting the tree up and strewing the decorations around the house. I love this time of year.

There is a tinge of sadness this year, though, and not for the reasons you might think. It’s not necessarily because we don’t have our own children to share Christmas with, but because my Nan passed away in July this year, and this will be the first Christmas without her.

Nan loved Christmas. She would make Christmas cakes and puddings with pennies in them. She would decorate her tree and home, and be there ready for Christmas hugs and kisses for everyone.

My Mum and I went Christmas shopping last Monday. We had a lovely time picking out this and that for various people – thinking about what colours one likes, the music that is the favourite of another, and what the right size of clothing is for this one. We were looking at Christmas decorations in one of the department stores and I noticed that Mum became teary. She told me that Nan and she had a Christmas tradition where each year they would buy a tree ornament each and put it on their trees. I suggested that perhaps she and I could carry on that tradition – and so we have. We each bought (well, actually Mum shouted me) a beautiful little red bell for our trees. Mum has also given me Nan’s Christmas tree and the red bell now hangs alongside the dancer ornament that was the tradition ornament Nan bought with Mum last year. I love having Nan’s tree in our home. Christmas was magical for Nan, and I know that I have inherited that from her.

Why am I talking about this on my blog? Well, it has got me thinking about Christmas and what it means given we don’t have our own children. In honesty I don’t think the meaning of Christmas has changed for me from what it might have been if we did have children. My Nan lost both of her husbands (one was in his forties and one was in his sixties) and two children (one at two years of age and one at seventeen). She could have been forgiven for pushing Christmas aside and doing only what needed to be done, but she didn’t. She always had this love that surrounded Christmas and made it special. I want to be like her – I want to carry on that legacy.

Christmas is about family and friends. It is about being with those I love, while respecting that I might feel sadness about not having children, and, of course, about Nan not being here.

Christmas is special for me.