Stirrings from Life
I feel good.
It’s been a while now.
As a seasoned coach I am always looking for ways to build or examine lives that have more ease in them. More ease, more peace and more enjoyment. Whatever that means to each person. There is no one-size-fits all for coaching. One-tool-can-be-adapted. That’s true. I trust my clients to make decisions that are in line with their current capabilities. Before we know what we want, we must tell the truth. We must be working in a reality that folds in the systems within which we operate.
I remember hearing a quote by Liz Gilbert, something about being well. That she was allowed to be happy but she was not allowed to be well - had to be continually struggling with something to feel valid or loveable. Now she is in 12-step programmes for a number of challenges and living her life well and unencumbered by hair and botox and poverty.
NOW - please understand that this does have the whiff of ableism about it, so if you are struggling with chronic illness, peri-menopause, mental illness, deep grief, or any such real-life disability, then please do adapt this notion to fit your real life condition - but it was about being well. Give yourself accommodations - take the notion for you. Or leave it. GAWCDWETW*.
Now let me be clear FUCK the WELLNESS industry. Not entirely - there are some lovely things in it. Nice smells, nice candle, nice teas, nice massages.
But yes please well-being. Being well. As well as can be.
“We may be just one intervention away from feeling better”
With this in mond I have been accounting for the interventions I have added in
In our family systems designated patient - the one who struggles
Things are not by any means perfect and life continues to be life and relationships continue to be relationships in all their paradox, but I’ve been building scaffolding that is holding the renovation up. Soon it will be removed, but not before time. That would be foolish. I tried that before and paid double to have it put up again.
Proverbially.
But here are some things I have been musing on, especially let’s say since the beginning of 202 and reminsicing on MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED THERE. I’m an internal organ lighter, alcohol-free and understand my mind a bit better. I’m also recognising my true value and offer on this earth. Turns out to be exactly the same as I’ve been doing. Only more mystical and at my own pace.
HRT has been a game changer - it is one of the legs of the three-legged stool that are holding my being together. Hormone replacement two years ago was when I initially went to get on hormone replacement because I was extremely depressed, had extreme brain fog, low energy, and could not seem to get a foothold in my life and business, and was haemorraging each month in a way I could not sustain. Of course I had to be checked thoroughly for cancer, have internal checks and that ‘s when we discovered I had severe anaemia, a large myoma growing in my uterus and it had gotten too large to remove without surgical intervention. “Shall we just whip the lot out Doctor?” “Yes, why not - it will mean you will reduce the risk of fallopian, uterine and ovarian cancer by 100%! Plus those myoma have a habit of growing back and also of turning malignant so let’s get the lot out! Here are some intraveous iron shots in the meantime and some very expensive hormones to get you not bleeding out. Let’s leave one ovary in though so you can still experience the joys of PMS without even knowing when it’s happening Mkay!”
I still managed to launch a creative writing programme; now on Cohort 4, grow the Lighthouse Grief Circle, run 5 clothes swaps, coach clients to extraordinary activity, run a number of retreats, dinners, gatherings, workshops visit England 3 times, New York once and maintain a lovely group of friends.
BUT a little over a year post-surgery I found that I really did need a little help and so HRT it is. I feel happy, clearer, physically more energetic, saner, enthusiastic. My natural bent toward optimism and beauty has been restored! Now to find out how to truly work at baseline with my brain.
Yoga - on my last trip to England I booked a couple of 90-minute massages to see what would happen if I had long, indulgent massages while on holiday. It was nice but the massage therapist (who had been in my brother’s year at school) gave me a sympathetic look and said something long the lines of- do you do any yoga or Pilates because you are fucked, your back is basically fused together you are so stiff. I was so upset at the time as while I was aware I wasn’t picture of flexible health and magical mobility I did also run a fantasy that I am basically a very sexy and flexible dancer. Toni-Anne had unwittingly smashed my fantasy.
When I got back to Japan I started going to yoga locally every Monday and Wednesday. Over 50s and Hatha. I go no matter what unless I have something that will infect everyone else, like a cold. This plus the HRT is genuinely and noticeably helping with many things.
Yoga is not only about yoga. It is about community, the collective, the area and land around you, your body, your mind, sounds, cooking together, gifts, thank you cards. It is about the people you encounter on the way there and on the way back. It’s about nature and laughter. Chatting in class, catching up. For me it is about listening and connecting with my Japanese neighbours, going to the local coffee shop after to work and be part of my neighbourhood, my local economy, and being present on the land that I inhabit.
The first time I ever went to a yoga class was at the Hindu Centre in my neighbourhood in Birmingham in the late 90s. Me and my then partner attended with our teacher, Sharad and a group of Jain women who did yoga in their sari. We practiced on blankets, and ate the strictly vegan food of the Jain diet (no cabbage or vegetables with folds in case there is an insect in there that you unwittingly kill). We would sometimes give Sharad a lift home. I loved the way Sharad said ‘butterfly flaps’. I felt cared for there. This is a lovely memory for me, one that is evoked now.
Singing bowls and gongs. My yoga teacher uses singing bowls and gongs every sessions and I get soundbaths twice a week during Savasana - it means the final relaxation pose is quite energetic for me - imbued with vibrations and notes. My musical ear can hear everything, the diminished 5ths that hang in the air, the area of my body that is vibrating at the same frequency and the instrument that is being vibrated, be it a deep gong, the range of bowls or the small bell chimes. I am stimulated right until the small bell chimes at the end. Sometimes it’s an almost cosmic experience where I enter meditation, more often I’m hearing all the notes and feeling them in my body.
Chatting in yoga - chatting and laughing together in yoga - it’s both serious and not serious and I love this. The more I do yoga with my teacher, the more I realise the wholeness of it. The integration is that with the land, the sounds and the collective and chatting is part of that.
Body awareness - week by week, little by little, I am becoming more aware of my body, I haven’t stayed with a physical practice like this since I was a competitive badminton player aged 8-24. I am awakening to the way my body is used to moving and the slowness or the pace at which I am becoming aware of it. I want it to be well and strong in my old age and to do that on a very long timeline. I am not trying to crush it.
We are just one intervention away from relief - this was something that I heard on a podcast recently. I am currently seeking all kinds of intervnetions, whether medical, drug interventions, diagnoses, talking interventions, the kinds of physical interventions that move me into more re-life.
The designated patient - the one who struggles and makes the family unit look good because they can rally around the patient and their struggle. On another recent podcast I was introduced to the work of Alexandra Solomon. She identified a number of family archtypes that emerge to protect a (dysfunctional) family system. The Perfect One, The Easy One, The Struggling One, The Peacekeeper, The Parentified Child, and The Rebel. I can recognise myself in more than one of these, but the two that stand out most are the Rebel (that the quiz also alloted me) and the Struggling one - always something wrong so the system has a focus to rally around that diverts both outside and inside attention away.
BINGO - NO THANK YOU - the Rebel resisting being well (She also wanted a goddam rest and was also genuinely sick for a couple of years) and the Struggling one STAYING SICK OR ADDICTED IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN THE FAMILY SYSTEM. Also no thanks. And so I morph into a competent well person - in progress; these roles are hard to shake off I think. But on each turn around the learning spiral - up and down, I think my wellbeing serves everyone in fact, even if a bit of adjustment needs to take place. I also offer the possibility of the highest possible wellbeing to anyone else. Within their particular set of circumstances. And interventions - what medical, therapeutic or other intervention could increase feeling better and decrease feeling dreadful.
Again within the bounds of possibility - I am NOT screaming into the Internet - EVERYONE CAN BE WELL IF THEY JUST HAVE THE DISCIPLINE LIKE ME (I have so little discipline). You are allowed to be well, even if it didn’t serve you to be well. Or sober. Or medicated. Or rested. Or boundaried. I hope you find a tiny intervention that serves your wellbeing. I shall continue with Yoga, HRT and sobriety for now. Maybe another diagnosis will be incoming. Perhaps with a side of cheerfulness.
*Grown Ass Woman Can Do Whatever They Want (If you are a man, please adjust accordingly)
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Hi there - I don’t want to struggle or rebel against things that are good for me anymore. I was still binge drinking like I had a cupboard full of reserve livers and an infinite number of accidents to recover from wihtou consequence at this point. I looked good though and was a lot of fun. To some degree.