I have always had a passion for personal growth and finding ways to understand myself and using that information to become a better person. That usually equates to simply being more ME. I have a real knack for finding fantastic resources to help me do that… which I’m starting to realise is how I can help others too. It’s how I can help YOU. [Read more…]
Sometimes your heart breaks quickly.
A hand of thorns squeezes tightly around the soul’s flesh and you bleed out. When a child dies suddenly. Your husband of twenty years leaves unexpectedly. Your beloved pet is killed instantly by a car.
But then there are times that your heart breaks slowly. [Read more…]
“Love lifts us up where we belong…”
That’s the song I was humming the other day.
I had just listened to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert and something she said echoed in the empty chamber where I thought I was thinking the exact same thing all on my own. Turns out the people I connect with most deeply agree with me, but sometimes we are just too afraid to say it. We have paper hearts that we’re terrified will be torn in half. [Read more…]
You left your shoes by the door. Those black leather ones with the worn soles and thread-pulled laces. You always kicked them off when you stepped inside, walking around the house in your socks. I didn’t put them away for such a long time. Each day as I left the house and looked down, I thought about how those massive shoes would be so difficult to fill again. I was scared that if I threw them away that there would be no more me.
It’s what I do. Create myself around the person I’m with, becoming who they need me to be. Being alone would be like living in my 3-year old body again. That day we were at a restaurant – me, mom and dad – visiting with their friends and children who were playing on the Wimpy jungle gym outside.
Me.
Inside.
Under the table, my arms around my mother’s leg, mesmerised by the other woman’s blue high heels next to my knees, tapping on the tiles.
Rat tat tat. [Read more…]
When I was a little girl, I used to beg my mom to read “The Ugly Duckling” to me every night. By the end of the story I was sobbing my heart out, yet so strangely entranced by the tale, that I asked for it over and over again. There was just something about this poor little out-of-place duck that seemed to be a part of me…or like me.
I always felt different, like I just couldn’t fit in with everyone else. My mind’s train travelled in loops that didn’t even exist in other children’s brains, and their tracks were in lines I couldn’t fathom. I tried to find a box to fit into my whole life. I wanted a label for what I was – something to describe my oddness – so that I knew which parts of myself to scratch out and which fake parts to paste on. On that happy day I would be able to swim into the pond (with a very natural-looking feathered suit) and call myself a duck. [Read more…]
When you are diagnosed with a mental illness, the definition of who you are and what you are capable of is often squashed into a stereotype-shaped box. Without asking about the unique ways your illness affects you, many job applications are immediately put onto the toss pile because you admitted you occasionally had anxiety or suffered from depression. If you throw in a word like bipolar or schizophrenia, then you can be sure that your chances of employment are minimised even further.
If you wish to travel internationally you need a letter from your doctor declaring that you are fit to do so and that the medication in your luggage is prescribed. I once wanted to teach English in Taiwan but couldn’t even make the first round because of my diagnosis. I understand that there are risks involved when you have a mental illness. Of course there are. Just like there are risks involved when you have diabetes or epilepsy. However, these illnesses don’t exclude you from the same opportunities, even though they pose just as much risk in certain working environments, such as a classroom.
Fortunately, I have never really given a shit about taboos and stereotypes. Even before I found out about my own diagnosis, I would (and still do) get to know people on an individual level, entirely separate from the identity slapped on their file by others. Just because someone is in prison, doesn’t mean he is “of bad blood,” he may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A highly successful CEO of a massive corporate (and a lovely family man) could be a far more dangerous sociopath. What you see isn’t always what you get. And that works both ways. I may be naïve to always give people the benefit of the doubt. But I guess it’s because I hope it’s what they will do for me.
Then again, this hasn’t always worked in my favour. My innocent faith in someone that others walked away from blew up in my face more than once. And allowing the ones I love to expect more from me than I could possibly give…well…that didn’t end fantastically either.
I’m a smart girl and those pesky IQ tests you do in school lifted my parents hopes far higher than my little feet would ever take me. With that level of intelligence, we were told, I could be anything I wanted. A doctor. An engineer. A fucking astronaut. [Read more…]
Sometimes, when you have fallen off a very high cliff and are rescued, it’s rather easy to become awestruck with the one who saves you. It could be a sexy paramedic (if it’s an actual cliff), and it could (if it’s an emotional cliff) be a talk, a book, a magical person that enters your world at the right time.
My saviour was writing.
It always has been. From the earliest days when I only just learned how to spell and hold a pen, until now. I have filled hundreds of journals with the feelings I could never express beyond my invisibly sewn lips. There were days that writing literally saved my life. I have fallen off so many cliffs and it was always there to pick me up again, one piece at a time.
Last year I had two writing muses enter my life. [Read more…]
“Hollowness: that I understand. I’m starting to believe that there isn’t anything you can do to fix it. That’s what I’ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps.”
– Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
Yesterday I finally got my hands on a book that I should have read ages ago. There’s the movie coming out soon and I figured, I have to read the book first, I always do. Gosh.
The Girl on the Train made me forget that I had boiled the kettle and that I actually really wanted some tea. I didn’t notice my phone flashing next to me. I only got up to pee and feed the cats. I read it in one sitting – literally. I sat in the same place, just turning each page until I reached the end.
I think books mean different things to different people at different times. What I take from this one today may be quite different to what my future self feels in 10 years time reading the same thing. See, the thing is this: It’s obvious that Paula Hawkins is a brilliant writer. You don’t sell over 10 million copies of your book cause you’re average. But that isn’t the only reason I loved her book. It’s more because it made me feel something so familiar by living through her characters. On so many pages that was me. That was him.
Many of you know my sad story of how I had built up a little online business a few years ago – targetted at creative entrepreneurs – and how that mini-empire came crashing down when my domain name was mistakenly sold when I switched hosts. That meant no more website – overnight – and no more emails. I could no longer log in to Twitter, so my 1000 plus followers were lost in the big black void and all my clients who emailed me got a bounce-back. But hey, that was then….and this is NOW!
“Your little will can’t do anything. It takes Great Determination. Great Determination doesn’t mean just you making an effort. It means the whole universe is behind you and with you – the birds, trees, sky, moon, and ten directions.” – Katagiri Roshi
I haven’t written a blog post in quite a long time.
I also haven’t been out with friends much.
I kind of felt like a car with a leaking fuel tank. No matter how much I put in, I just kept running low on energy. I gave and gave and gave, pushing my body and mind to the limit. Although I knew it was important to follow the compass in my heart, my relentless refusal to fail made me say yes to more and more projects, even though North was pointing in a different direction.
My body was screaming at me. My hands and face were covered in red blotchy eczema and I had recurring nightmares. When I didn’t listen, my body dived into cupcakes and chocolate and those cute Sissy Boy jeans no longer pulled over my thighs. [Read more…]