Anger.

I have among other things been boosting my recovery & self awareness by attending some counselling sessions which have brought about a wonderful epiphany.

I found it difficult to get into initially; being on the other side of the therapeutic relationship is a hard thing to fathom, but the lady I've seen is skilled & warm & I soon stopped looking out for technique, got myself to trust the process & let myself go.

After the second session I had said a lot of things out loud that I'd only ever said in my head & immediately suppressed, buried & banished away for good. I felt a burden lift. In the third session I was carefully & considerately coaxed into discussing these again. It was difficult. I didn't want to say them once, let alone twice. I'm glad I did.

Since then I have come to realise that my fear of anger has made me bottle up & suppress all of my own anger & rage. This is my epiphany. I haven't allowed myself an outburst for 10 years, or rather I thought I hadn't. I can see & acknowledge now that little bits of it have been shooting out all over the place without me being aware or in control of it.

I fear the damage, judgement, power, strength & force of my anger. I naturally have a long fuse but when it blows it tends to blow big. When I used to let anger out it was only ever when under the influence of booze or pills & powders so it came out wrong anyway. With this realisation I can see that I haven't been able to grieve properly for things I've lost; my beloved Dorian, my job, my health, relationships, clothes (I'm so sentimental about my suits...) I have not allowed myself to experience the anger resulting from their loss so I haven't completed the grieving process.

So now I have a task. I have to learn how to be angry productively & handle it without the altered mental states I used to habitually seek. I have to trust myself enough to know that I'll let the anger out in a constructive way. I have to experience the fear of my own anger & express it anyway. 

Another step. It feels like a big one. Expect rants.

Happyish Newish Yearish...

New year & Christmas always seem to amplify feelings be they joyful or utterly disastrous. Since my last post I have been party to both but some interesting things have been happening around them.

Unpleasantness beyond my control on New Years Day drove me into a panic the like of which I've not had the displeasure of experiencing for months. It's still not satisfactorily resolved but due to some hard work I've been doing over the past year it did not result in a retreat to the bedroom to hide & weep. Instead it created an improvement in communication & planning, learning a way to prevent a similarly disastrous occurrence in the future, hopefully. It has also created a war of attrition in my mind, a constant battle of wills & words between the annoying self defeating talk of the chatterbox & the looking on the brightside, positive, hopeful, calm & loving voice of the higher self. Higher continues to win battles but the war is not over. All of this comes after a day spent on New Years Eve brimming over with positivity, love, creativity & joy. I felt completely in the zone. I experienced a day full of moments of true happiness. So the resolve is to get back up there, deal with the set backs & get another day like that, hell I might even manage a week full of that but it feels far off at the moment. With that aim, I've referred myself back into mental health services to get some more therapy. Reflecting on it now, the signals have been flashing at me for a while. 

Physically, a re-jig of the inhalers has brought about improvements with my breathy sacks & I'm no longer constantly reaching for the ventolin. I went for another chest x-ray... I wonder if this one will reveal any previously hidden causes of my ills. And a new thing started. I have had the most agonising ear pain all through the holidays. I would have thought this impossible due to all the painkillers I'm already chugging down but no... And I have gone completely deaf on one side. Apart from the incessant ringing... One GP could see nothing wrong. The next GP could see nothing wrong because my ears were jammed full with wax & arranged an appointment to have them all cleared out by a nursey with an ear douche. I was looking forward to being all pain free & fully aurally functional again yesterday but the nursey had a look & was pleased to see that I had managed to shift whatever was gumming up my ear holes with the bicarb solution I had been pouring in there frequently. So now it's back to the GP on Monday & strapping a hot water bottle to my head for the weekend as that's the only thing that provides any relief. The most frustrating thing about this is it's really affecting my ability to meditate. I keep trying to get past it but it feels difficult. Listening to guided meditations is frustrating due to my deafness. So rant over. Let it go until Monday...

Superb things that have happened...

I got some lovely books for Christmas.

With the vouchers I'd saved from my birthday & those I got for Christmas I scored a wonderful Skopes waistcoat in the sales & had enough left over for some posh socks too. Abundance!

My giddy day of higher self positivity & joy led to some really lovely interactions with people during the day, some known & some not. A couple I hope will lead to fortuitous things & I need to return some compliments.

I have been  affirming & practicing manifesting which I can see has done some good.

I sold another hand made tie.

I went to a meeting with a lady to get some business advice & she listened to me without once looking at me like I was mad, didn't try to talk me out of it & gave me some really positive tips & advice. She said good things about what I'd done so far & we meet again later this month.

I have started to write down the parts of a story that I've had bouncing around in my head for a long time. It will go along with some of the photographs I've been taking.

I am still here & I am still trying, which is the best thing of all.

And here's a bonus gargoyle that I used to make some experimental birthday cards that turned out really well.

So back to planning, positive thinking, affirming & balancing a hot water bottle on my shoulder while sorting out the laundry.

If you've managed to read this far I wish you a 2014 filled full of dreams come true, successful schemes, plans made good & more abundance & joy than you can cope with.

Jx

Some success! Yesssss!

I have been guilty of being a little giddy with excitement of late & an excess of thrilling self satisfaction. This has been Jato's most successful week so far with sales of six ties! One vintage & five handmade. I couldn't be more pleased. Happy beginnings are much more pleasing than happy endings right now. I feel a real surge in momentum driving me forward & a belief more than I ever dared to dream that I might just pull this off. So it's time for more focus, more hard work, more learning, more satisfaction, more abundance & more fun!

Plans have been laid for next year; I am to start a course on starting your own business (so I can get this off the ground properly), start going to the craft workshop sessions & continue my painting class.

I am tired but excited to get up & start again tomorrow in a way that I haven't been for a long time, in a way that I thought was lost & for which I am extremely grateful.

Widen your horizons Wednesday & the thief of joy.

Yesterday's affirmation was “My courage, curiosity, confidence & creativity lead me to new & exciting opportunities to increase my abundance.”

A while back I found I was getting bogged down & frustrated with my affirmations & lost focus. I was spreading myself thin; trying to get too much done with my special sentences. I hit upon the idea of assigning each day of the week a particular focus so that I could make sure I was doing what I needed to do & give each area for improvement my full focus for an entire day, knowing that the others were going to get taken care of later in the week. It seems to be working miracles.

Wednesday has been designated “Widen your horizons Wednesday”, a day for focussing on affirmations for new, exciting & beneficial opportunities. Today I got three...

Following my support group meeting on Saturday I got in touch with an agency called Positive Assets who can assist people with mental health problems get back into work. I got a lovely call from a lady called Rachael who said that I may not for the criteria to receive assistance directly from them, but gave me a ton of helpful advice & hints for stuff to be getting on with just in case.

A conversation about my plans at the morning school gate drop off got me an offer of advice, guidance, potential access to a local business network & some knowledge about applying for grants to get my plans up & running, something I'd never thought of before.

Bumping into an acquaintance in the doctors reception led to a conversation about computer training & free courses on computing & web site design. Something I'll need to get done to make Jato fly.

Which all got me thinking about something I used to credit all my good fortune & achievements to; serendipity. I used to put all the good things that happened down to serendipity, simply being in the right place at the right time, opportunities miraculously opening up, goals being achieved just when I needed them. I didn't & wouldn't take any credit for them myself, that seemed somehow uncomfortable & not at all correct. Taking credit for anything good has never sat well with me.

Now I've done some essential & overdue rewiring & maintenance on my ailing thinking organs when reflecting on past victories I can see that all my achievements have come about from my effort, my affirmation & manifestation when I needed it most. When I really needed to, I could pull off the tricks I'm now using every day to get what I needed. Then I realised my mistake. By attributing all my hard won achievements to serendipity I was giving away my own power. By not acknowledging my own hard work & winning strategies I'd completely dis-empowered myself. So I'm going to stop talking about serendipity, she's stolen an awful lot from me & sneakily kept the praise & credit when she had no right to. Get thee to gaol serendipity, you are banished.

I'm grateful for a full day, grateful for the help offered by folk, grateful for the effort & courage I put into dreaming that my plans might be possible, grateful for convincing myself that I can move forward, grateful for the idea of writing “opportunities” on every shopping & to do list.

I'm grateful for all the good things that “Thankful Thursday” is going to bring too.

All finished & up for sale. Link below...

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/171464428/hand-made-grey-bow-tie-with-blue-window?

Only four available. Get 'em quick!

Winter

I have been outside. Not particularly unusual but for me it's been special. For the past two winters I've been restricted in what I can do; too ill or scared or breathless or in pain to go out on the cold & blustery days. If I was out I hid on buses; sheltered from the elements, crammed in with other weather cowards & seasonal refugees, all reluctant to experience the wilds of winter. So today I forced myself up & out despite the ever present pain, despite the breathlessness, despite the annoying fearful little voice trying to convince me to stay in & worry about the weather making me more wheezy.

Focus on the tasks of the morning, focus on saying anything positive inside my head, focus on all the layers of lovely fabrics I can pile on to protect the fragile chest.

So I got out. I breathed the chilly winter air, the drizzle dampened me & the wind swirled aggressively around me. It was exhilarating. Bashed about by the breeze, walking proud through the murk of winter weather I felt like I'd beaten something. A victory for me. I've missed the winter. Missed the savage blast & the surprise cold of the downpour. Missed the rapid changing sky. Missed the fantastic feeling of being safe & snug in the middle of cold brutality.

The fragile chest still hurts & my lungs still feel like shattered glass, but no more than they did earlier, no more than they did yesterday & no more than they will tomorrow when I shall venture out again. Another fear felt. Another fear beaten. All I need to worry about is which coat I'll choose tomorrow.

making...

I have been busy...

Everything I make is sewn on my Singer sewing machine. It belonged to my Great Grandmother who was a seamstress & a milliner. I have coveted this machine since I was a small child. Now it's my favourite thing in the house (after Sharon, Jack, the cat & the dog!) Grangran (her special name) made my mother's wedding dress on this. I can feel her looking over my shoulder when I'm sewing; an encouraging presence. 

I like them when I turn them right way out after sewing. They look like chubby tentacles.

Soon to be available in the Etsy store. Only five available so get 'em rapid!