A Place Where I Love and Accept Myself Totally

Do you go on intuitive walks? Where you set an intention and then follow your intuitive urges and see what happens? This is one of mine…

photo shows cherry trees blossoming at the top, with ivy covering the trunks

My intention: to find a place where I love and accept myself totally. The walk took 44 minutes but I didn’t set a time limit. So much happened. Outside my block of flats I found a Cherry blossom sprig on the grass and felt an urge to pick it up. I followed my inner compass to a road where a line of Cherry trees grow (I wondered if it had come from there). They are covered in Ivy – kind of being throttled by it, yet still blossoming, but not as much as usual. I was reminded of my internalised mother, who is throttling me at the moment as I feel stressed moving into a new version of myself. I am receiving a lot of love from people in my life and that is resetting my nervous system, which sparks off old coping mechanisms of embodied self-criticism in the form of headaches. I am appreciating the protective, albeit misguided, nature of this coping mechanism.

Continuing my walk, I came across an uprooted shrub and I felt shock and sadness. It reflects my sense of trying to settle back into my home after 3 years of living in my van up North to complete my Master’s, where I slept at the sides of canals and regularly immersed in other-than-human nature with limited time in the greyness of towns / cities. I think it may also reflect how a lot of people on this planet might be feeling right now, with the craziness of war and unprocessed trauma being exacted on innocent people. Of course, it also reflects how we’re living our daily lives and how that is choking the planet, although if we make ourselves extinct, she will recover and thrive.

I moved on and, wandering slowly, noticed how life grows in so many places it’s not ‘supposed’ to – every nook and crack is home for a seed to grow.

Nearing home and I see a piece of Ivy laying on the pavement. It seems symbolic, although of what I’m unsure. I lay the Cherry blossom I’ve been holding next to it and leave it there. Two, separate, no longer entangled, yet held in the same place and I feel an internal shift.

I follow an urge to go to the Level (a park near my home in Brighton) and walk near the trees. As I reach the North East corner, my heart swells and I suddenly feel a sense of everything being okay, even in the messy, grittiness. As I leave the Level a song comes to me and despite, my chesty cough, I hum it, sending my gratitude through it to the Earth.

I arrive at my block of flats and the Caretaker is there, chatting with a man I don’t know. When he asks how I am, I tell them I’m poorly (I have a cold). They ask about my symptoms and we briefly chat before he makes a joke about man ‘flu being 10 times worse than childbirth. I shake my head and say I’m sure the population would be less if men gave birth. He talks about disease and war adjusting population size and then asks, “But why do we have war? Is it just in us to be this way?” I say, “No, it’s because of unprocessed trauma passed down through the generations.” He says, surprisingly, “Thank you. I’ll think about that today.”

I omitted to say that we don’t have rituals for people to act out war or initiation ceremonies and such; but it didn’t occur to me at the time, and that’s okay.

Thousand Yard Stare

When you looked like that,

Your eyes seeing another time and place,

I knew.

Soft brown somehow turned black,

Pupils blown,

And I knew.

Something had to give,

To pay for your service to the Queen,

When you weren’t seen.

The troubles affected your mind;

I knew you would turn to me.

I’d listen for the creak in the hallway,

Late at night,

When all were asleep,

‘Cept you and me,

Though I pretended to be,

Arms pinned rigidly either side of my body,

Duvet trapped,

As I barely breathed,

Heart thumping in my ears,

Fears rising so high they might shatter into shards in the next moment.

Fists clenched tight against my thighs,

Tense stillness mixing hope and listening, 

Listening…

For your almost silent footfall.

Mouth arid but a desperate swallow,

Frightening in the sound it makes because

Any

Tiny

Noise

Could cause you to attack.

But it wasn’t that, was it?

Not me,

Not my body’s natural urges to move, no.

It was you,

What happened to you,

What they did to you,

What you didn’t express.

Couldn’t.

What you couldn’t express.

Home is where the heart is?

picture shows a tiny home shape made from cardboard
Cardboard Home, 2023, Cardboard, glue, oil pastels, string

Home, according to Mole in Wind in the Willows, is a place filled with “familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him and now smilingly received him back.” I read the passage this statement comes from aloud at the start of the Home workshop I facilitated for Outside In at Hove Museum on 9 December. We all shared gestures, sounds and a word to get a sense of what our homes felt like before creating artworks that depicted this feeling(s). Conversation flowed between strangers as their hands busied, and I felt delighted to sit with each person and get to know them a little bit as they made their home. You can see an image of our homes formed into a group below – a village perhaps.

picture shows several tiny homes from soft material or clay or cardboard or card and stuck to a corkboard with string and pins
A ‘village’ of homes at the Outside In Home workshop at Hove Museum on 9 December 2023

I feel the wisdom of Kenneth Grahame’s words about things in one’s home being friendly and welcoming. That is my experience and, as a neurodivergent person, I form a strong bond to things, like my drum, my Grandma’s jewellery box, my Macaw cushion cover, and the newest addition, my unicorn cat candle holder (see photo below). They have their places and I would not like anyone to touch or move them. I have a strong aversion to people touching my things, and if someone moves my things in the communal part of my home, well, I have to employ mindfulness of my thoughts and feelings with grit and determination. Thank goodness I know how to do this!

picture shows a painting with a cushion cover with an image of 2 parrots on it draped over the painting, with a shamanic drum resting against the painting, a black jewellery box, a drum beater and a candle holder in the shape of a cat face with a unicorn horn
My drum, my Grandma’s jewellery box, my Macaw cushion cover and my unicorn cat candle holder

Not all things in a home are friendly, however. I suppose it depends on the kind of home they’re in, or were in. I’m referring now to a recent trip to Hastings to visit a friend. There are many second hand shops selling ‘vintage’ items there. As we browsed, I was transported back in time to the 1970s, which was a deeply unpleasant decade for me, not least because of the horrible aesthetics that permeated everything – haircuts, buildings, decor, and home things. Things appear less than friendly in a home where a child is hyper vigilant for signs of attack from the parents. Being around so many things that reminded me of that time made me aware of how lucky Mole, and indeed, Kenneth Grahame, was to have the experience of a safe and friendly home. I am glad I now have that experience too.

The photos show the little homes I made in preparation for the Home workshop. I enjoyed making them immensely. They’re an excellent way of meditating on what home is like / means. What does ‘home’ mean for you?

Othering Me, Othering You

Image shows strands of finger knitted wool of differing lengths arranged in a circle with the ends at the centre in a spiral. The wool is multi-coloured.
Othering Me, Othering You, 2023, Wool

I created this piece using wool. The wool came from a cardigan I made where I found the seams to be too irritating so I unpicked it. I am very sensitive to seams and labels in clothing. I was left with lots of small balls of wool in varying sizes and I followed an intuitive prod to finger knit each ball into a long strand. This took a few months and during this time I was working on my dissertation for my creative psychotherapy master’s, which was a heuristic inquiry into the experience of othering people different from me.

This piece is a creative synthesis of what I found out about myself in the research. It became clear to me that othering people, for me, is a somatic response to being triggered by people that somehow remind me of the people that abused me in childhood. The somatic response of a tightening in my solar plexus then kicks off anxious thoughts that circle in my head. I came to this awareness through creative workshops that I held for myself in which I followed intuitive urges to move, be still, make things, or write. I sometimes found myself walking in a spiral and coming to stillness in the centre, where I would feel and notice.

The space created to feel and notice is depicted in the spiral of wool at the centre of the image. Othering happens regardless of whether I want it to, but I have space to observe, rather than act on it.

When I Write About Rape

Poem and call and response song

When I write about rape

It takes its toll on my body

As pain, grief, rage spiral

Threatening to pull me apart

With the tension of

Wanting to stay

And wanting to run.

Thinking she knew when I was 9

How could she not?

How could she not?

I saw the signs…

His body tightly sprung,

Ever more so as the day wore on.

How could she not?

How could she not?

As bedtime drew close

And I’m sick on the floor,

Begging to extend my time with the telly

In the relative safety of the lounge,

But no,

Disgusted by my plea,

She sent me to bed.

How could she not?

How could she not?

I hate bedtime even now,

40 years on.

It’s okay for him.

He’s dead and gone,

But I’m still here

With a tightly wound body

That remembers what my mind forgot.

Only now, I’m not losing the plot.

I’m seeing clearly how we forgot

Our connection to Earth

And the object projection that entails

The lack of relationship with

Our Great Mother,

Makes it necessary to treat one another

As things to conquer, to control,

But actually all we need,

As 4 young men once said, is love.

Reciprocal love that comes by

Singing and listening

To the animism present in everything,

Which makes things beings.

Alive! 

The chair you sit on.

The shoes that got you here.

The trees, oh, the trees with

Whom songs appear

When we listen.

Othering Me, Othering You Is This The Best We Can Do?

I completed my MSc Counselling and Psychotherapy – Contemporary Creative Approaches in August 2023 with a research project called Othering Me, Othering You – My Living Experience of Internalised Patriarchy. I’m going to share the following sections from my dissertation in this post: definition of terms, introduction, and conclusion. If you’d like me to send you the dissertation or have a conversation about setting up creative workshops to uncover hidden biases with compassion, please email me.

image shows a wall with 2 canvas paintings and 8 pieces of paper with drawings on them: a heart with 2 people inside, a person with their head inside a cloud with the word "worry" in it and the word "othering" written on the paper, a large multi coloured heart, two spirals - red and blue, a series of black circles, a pink triangle, a red circle with black spikes surrounding it with yellow outside of the black and green in the corners of the image, a diagram with colour coded lines leading to bits of paper, a collage with the words "would I have known where to start without this?" written on.

Some of my creative outputs from my research that I analysed for themes

Continue reading “Othering Me, Othering You Is This The Best We Can Do?”

I Am Loving Her Now

Just sit and be still;

Meagre sounds compete with massive silence.

Giving myself to it in a different way now,

Yet tinges of teenage angst touch me with cold, sad fingers,

And I need to grieve for her,

For the self who ate to feel love,

Then purged to rid shame,

Over and over and over.

For her unwavering measurement of worth

Taken in the flatness of her tummy,

As she cast her critical eye in the mirror,

And carefully counted out 200 sit ups.

Her daily prescriptions created control,

With love nowhere to be seen.

And I am loving her now.

I am opening my arms to her,

Telling her,

Showing her

She is enough,

Loved,

Worthwhile,

Wonderful,

Creative,

And I love her.

I love her awkward shyness

And her brash, loud ‘big I am’,

Her need for solitude

And to play childish games,

I love her intelligence,

Often missed at school,

And I love her big heart that still can love the people who hurt her,

That ability to empathise,

And imagine;

I love her desire to be markedly different,

And her longing to belong,

Her ways of experimenting with clothes,

And gentle rebellions.

And I love her because there’ll never be another like her,

So my heart squeezes tears from my eyes

When I see her try to take her life.

And I whisper to the family dog,

Who wakes up the parents,

Who take her to hospital,

Where she is stitched up by a nurse with no compassion.

And I gently blow love into her

And walk with her all the way to now.

We are together.

Together we sit 

And ease ourselves into the massive silence.

So Much More

I wish I fitted into my brown trousers comfortably.

But I don’t.

I wish I could love this fat body.

But I don’t.

And who is the I in this case?

Small I soaked in patriarchal values.

Sexist.

Racist.

Ableist.

All the ists exist in this I

That has narrow eyes,

Pursed lips,

Calculates and demands,

Constructs beliefs from spurious evidence

So it can fold in on itself with narcissistic glee.

A smirk twitches the corner of its lips

As it caves into itself with denigration.

The other I watches,

Curious,

Loving,

And sees without judgement

The games played,

The means manipulated,

And utters a simple phrase,

“That makes sense,”

As her gaze

Casts wider 

Into the contexts

That pattern themselves restrictive

For all involved.

She breathes deep and long,

Appreciates the battles

With self,

With others,

With the world,

Feels the sharp sadness spike her heart,

Sheds soft, soft tears

That roll and tickle their way

To her throat

Where a hatch opens,

A tiny hand reaches out

To catch the rain,

So beautiful in the sunlight

That dapples into the darkness,

Touches the pipes

That begin to warm

So she can make the sounds of love.

She sings

Of warmth

And beauty 

And rage

And soon the I’s are soothed into remembering:

There is more than this.

Always.

So much more.

Power flows through me in ways subtle and gross

Power flows through me in ways subtle and gross.

The whisper of spirit gently surges as I walk by trees,

Notice bumble bees buzzing and swaying on their homeward approach

To dark, damp holes amongst tree roots;

I see brambles turn and twist themselves into spiky knots

As if to tie in for eternity, or, at least, until Autumn’s nimble fingers begin to unpick them.

I watch the tiny waves crosshatch on the canal’s surface 

And wonder what kind of musical sound they’d make.

I approach the beautiful Birch with my swollen heart 

And see the paper white adorned by crispy orange and green.

I feel warmth as I stand with a friend, arms enveloping, hearts beating together.

This power is gentle, loving, curious, connected and feels so, so freeing.

Then, suddenly, the other power rears its head and demands some dramatic attention.

It needs me to be more than or less than 

So it can exist and hide the hurt that’s bubbling beneath 

And MUST NOT BE FELT or… or… or what?

Too vulnerable!

Not safe!

Scared.

And yet these things, when felt, dissipate.

But the anticipation of feeling makes me want to flee myself.

I want to come home, like the bumble bee, heavy with nectar, 

Hips swaying with the weight of it;

Home to the community where I feel safe;

Home to hive where we work together to live.

I’m tired of this world where money is a token of power 

And the getting of it extracts from the Great Mother, 

Who is being destroyed by this foolishness.

Different threads linking me to the past

Different threads linking me to the past

Through my time and beyond.

I carry the ancestors’ blood,

Their woes and joys

And unspoken trauma.

Like lightning it finds its path

To easy ground.

I stand helpless as it works

Its way through me.

Tired, I want to rest

From the touch of

Its relentless fingers,

But I fear there is no end.

I feel pains in my flesh

As if time collapsed

And the trauma is happening now.

This will pass, I tell myself.

Yes, and it will come again.

I bow my head and weep.