Tag: Family

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Summer – Old and New..

Suddenly the summer sun shines on a day I cannot miss – like the Prince waking his Princess with a long-awaited kiss!

I’ve seen a fair few summers now, but Mother Nature has a way of heralding the seasons so that we view them with fresh eyes or at least appreciate them anew. Mornings now are bright, so bright we feel excited to get up. At 4.30 the other morning I had to rise and grab my camera to take pictures of the beautiful sunrise because each sunrise is unique and this one was spectacular.

As the poet Rumi says:

‘The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you – Don’t go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep! People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep!

Perhaps Rumi is telling us here that right from morning time, we can break out of our habitual tendencies and become present. We don’t need to fall back into the same old routines. (Something I need to remind myself!). What does it mean when Rumi tells us to ask for what we really want? It can be interpreted in many ways but for me the ‘you’ asking is the one who wants to create a story of a fairer world and a unification of culture. The long summer hours help us fit more into our days and perhaps we have more time to ask for what we really want. Rumi reminds us how moments of awareness and choice are very subtle. We touch the ability to change, to go ‘back and forth across the doorsill’ – the doorsill is there and is open. We may ask what the ‘doorsill’ is? I interpret it as the way through to enlightenment. It is not just about changing ourselves necessarily, it is about hoping for a peaceful world. Awareness helps us work through new challenges and moral dilemmas.

A new summer can throw new light on what is around us. Or in front of us and our brothers and sisters. My heart goes out to those who face a summer being sent to a foreign land because we supposedly don’t have the resources to care for them here, and also to those whose country is torn apart through conflict.

I don’t however, feel the doorsill is just about moving forward, it is also about looking back too. Being aware of where we are from and acknowledging our past. Reaching out and feeling the love of days long gone. Summer days can be particularly evocative. The smell of newly mown grass, the fragrance of the first bunch of sweet peas or the blowsy bunch of roses will all catapult me back to childhood days. The summers seemed to last forever, and there was time for picnics and tree-climbing, swimming in the local brook and collecting tadpoles. I remember the loving arms of my parents and grandparents, the security of family.

How lucky I am to be able to stop and revisit the places I have grown up in. How will it be for those who are displaced to find their way to some peace this summer? For those who will only look back with sadness and feelings of loss.

I hope there will be a chance for those who wish for life to be just as it was, to find their way home.

‘Don’t go back to sleep’. Of course we will metaphorically. It’s human nature to forget there can be a wonderful, calm simplicity in this life and close our eyes to it; to forget how much love and care there is in this world when we look for it. But when we do awaken, life becomes a blessing.

Sometimes it takes a reminder like this to put us into a place of awareness where we can cross the doorsill, see hope and make change.

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The Place We Call Home ...

The Place We Call Home….

 

Most of us have been living in a lockdown situation now for about three months. We have got used to every inch, every nook and cranny, every quiet corner of the place we call home! Perhaps we have got to the stage where we may be taking it for granted, and yet in another way, nervous to take those new, tentative steps out again and reconnect with the world. Some of us are starting to venture out now, but more than ever before, we have needed the safety and the anchor of home, and the roofs that cover the place where we truly have the space to be ourselves. Sometimes I, and perhaps many of us, have a fantasy which involves roaming free and letting go of all the restrictions handed out to us that hold us back. But no matter (in normal times) where we may travel, it doesn’t take much – a familiar smell, the sound of a distant lawnmower, or a warm light shining through a chink in the curtains of an unknown house, to fell us with a surge of homesickness.

The structures of our homes are more than just bricks and mortar, for within our walls are the people we love and care about, and where we share our hospitality with those we hold dear. It is interesting that the bond we share when we have lived in the same home with family members never leaves us. My beautiful sister was only five when I left home as a teenager, yet the times of being together under one roof has bonded us in a circle of love that can never be broken. Of course the family ties bind us, but the familiarity of homes we have shared stays forever too. It is the feeling of connectedness to others that home symbolises.

  ‘Home is where hearts are sure of each other; a place where you know your way in the darkness.’

I think of those people who do not have a home, now more than ever. For those who are homeless through no deliberate choice, I cannot imagine what living through these times without the comfort of home must be like. Somehow, there must better ways of supporting those who would love to have a more permanent place to call home.

This is the time to express gratitude for home. Our homes have probably taken a bit of a battering lately but they don’t complain! Perhaps we should give them a bit of TLC! A good spring clean may be on the agenda, some new leafy green plants to freshen the air and a change around of the furniture. It all helps us to see our refuge with fresh eyes and give us a sense of achievement and a sense of progress. And as I get out my warm blanket, folded to sit on for my yoga practice, and light a candle, I can feel a sense of appreciation that I am home, and comfortable, and that warms my soul.

‘Home is the nicest word there is.’ – Laura Ingalls Wilder

‘If you go anywhere, even paradise, you will miss your home.’ – Malala Yousafzai

‘A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.’ – George A. Moore.

The place we call home needs to keep peace within its boundaries, welcome within its walls, shelter for its friends, and a cake in the larder.

So when you feel unsettled, remember that home is where you and your loved ones are – it is not dependent on fancy fixtures and fittings, palaces and mansions, but on you and the people you love, and in the cosy place where you gather together.

Welcome Home ❤️

 

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Learning To Love Your Scars

Learning To Love Your Scars…

As I was out walking today I looked at the trees as I often tend to do. I thought about time and how long some of the old oak trees must have been growing there. I noticed that the old and gnarled trees had a certain beauty and graciousness about them; they had stood the test of time.

Beauty is a concept that is often revered for the wrong reasons – the reasons why it matters and what it means. Often parts of life aren’t beautiful – they are marred by anguish, trauma or pain. When we think of beauty we may visualise glossy magazines, fabulous homes with perfect interiors or top models gracing the catwalk. We think of something that can be prized or given awards.

But I have learned not to see beauty that way. I have learned to accept my scars and even see beauty in them. Just like my trees they show I have survived my various battles.

Some scars are visible and some are not. We all carry them in one way or another. We have emotional triggers, maybe faded injuries, broken bones or broken hearts. However our scars manifest we should embrace them.

There was a time when I felt sad to look in the mirror; I felt the world could see that I was going through a deeply stressful time. I piled on the makeup and tried to cover how I felt. I was afraid that people could see I was struggling to cope with life’s trials. Now I view these emotional scars as life’s stories. A life lived and traumas survived.

There are happy scars too. I remember when we as a family were preparing for a wedding. It was a special time and we were in the midst of dressing ourselves and the children. My lovely daughter- in-law was trying to do ten things at once and left the hot curling tongs on my dressing table, scorching the surface. She was mortified but I wasn’t – these things happen, and now, whenever I sit at my dressing table and look at the indelible mark, it reminds me of a wonderful day, full of love and new beginnings. I wouldn’t want it to be polished out. Another scar I look at with pride is the scar I wear on my body from a Caesarean section. Without that scar, my baby who has brought me so much joy may not have been born safely in his haste to enter the world.

It is beautiful to have lived and survived some traumas along the way, and to have the marks to prove it. It takes nothing to dress up in a fabulous outfit, but to face the world looking less than perfect, that is indeed beautiful.

Sometimes when we are struggling with emotional trauma or anxiety we lose our sparkle. If we stop feeling beautiful inside it shows on the outside however we try and hide how we feel. To look beautiful we need to feel good inside. Once we accept our scars and take the power away from negative emotions, accept that we cannot change our past and instead, look forward, we can be beautiful again.

I think of Kintsugi, which is the Japanese art of precious scars. By repairing ceramics with precious metal like liquid gold or silver,  it’s possible to give a new lease of life to pottery that becomes even more refined thanks to its ‘scars’. It teaches that broken objects are not something to hind but to display with pride. Now that is beautiful.

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‘Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars’.   Khalil Gibran