Going with the flow to find our heart selves: Shattered yet still very much whole

The real privilege of any working week is to find 'flow'. Flow does not, I think, lend itself to easy description; rather, it has a quality that you can feel, and I am delighted to say that I experience this most pleasant feeling at fairly regular intervals. A facet of the flow I seek to describe is that sense that you are just exactly where you are meant to be...

On retraining to become a therapist, I'm not sure I was able to imagine what it might feel like to practise as one. I had, of course, spent a fair bit of time 'in the other chair' (the chair closest to the tissues) but this was to be just the beginning of this wondrous journey.

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning,

but anyone can start today and make a new ending

~ Maria Robinson

In so much of my work I feel connected to my purpose. I have the luxury of doing work I love. My work and the way I work are much more than my job. Should I come to regard my work simply as a job I do, or a role I perform, it will be time for me to reconsider what it is that I am doing.

I am not has what happened to me,

I am what I choose to become

~ Carl Gustav Jung

A great many of us are wounded healers. I have come to love my scars. They are, today, an important reference point. They are now something of which I may feel deservedly proud. They tell a story, and today that story has meaning.

I am so much more than my story, and I believe wholeheartedly that every other being I meet along the way is more than theirs, too.

Therein lies the healing, no?

Making sense of our stories and finding ways to relate to them and not from them is, I feel, the privilege of a lifetime. It remains a very great honour to walk alongside fellow storytellers and meet their courageous heart selves.

The wound is the place

where the Light enters you

~ Rumi

Someone who bears the scars of injury

may be the best qualified

to speak into the

lives of those currently afflicted

~ Unknown

Comments

Table. Apple. Penny.

Whilst there were several places I might have been that morning, I wouldn't have been anywhere else. The practitioner from the Memory Service arrived promptly. I liked her instantly. Mum was nervous. I think I was a little, too. It's been a difficult year. "It's Friday, it's the fourteenth of December and I'm at home..." No problems there. CAMCOG, or the Cambridge Cognitive Examination is a thorough assessment tool used to assess the extent of extent of dementia, and to assess the level of cognitive impairment. The standardised measure assesses orientation, language, memory, praxis, attention, abstract thinking, perception and calculation. "Table. Apple. Penny." Three everyday items that were introduced at one point, and then referred to again later on. Again, Mum was able to recall each. I am reminded that the...

Glass half full? Glass half empty? Or perhaps the glass is broken

I am, constitutionally, a glass half empty gal. I will always first acknowledge what I don't have, what I have lost, and what it is that I am seeking. I tend to overlook my strengths, concentrating only on those bits of me that are underdeveloped or weak. I refer to myself as a realist, but in doing so compliment myself and insult those who genuinely are simply realistic. My modus operandi is to identify what's not working and acknowledge this before seeing more clearly what functions perfectly well. This has its place: I edit others' written work pretty well. My fastidious attention to detail serves me, and the author. Accuracy counts, for me and I have an excellent memory. I can remember a great many of my sessions with clients verbatim. Even this asset is something I can, and do, diminish the true value of, by concentrating on 'I should have said...' or 'why didn't.... occur to me during the session?' Earlier this we...

Pausing in the sunshine

And so, chemo is over. My best friend's diary has been chocker... Line cleans, blood tests, scans and 18 weekly doses of the gruelling treatment itself. Summer seems at last to have arrived and with it, we hope, some time, peace and space. She is, we acknowledged over a rather yummy luncheon served to us beneath the beautiful canopy of creepers and climbers at Petersham Nurseries, an inspiration. A small group of us gathered to celebrate her forthcoming marriage. The sun's rays joined the warmth we all have for this very special woman. Warmth and, in my case at least, pride. It is the greatest privilege to call this woman my best friend. She continues to epitomise my understanding of grace. Our bodies are fragile things. Our minds are frailer still. In her composure and wisdom, she possesses an outlook I can only aspire to adopt. From you, dear Charlotte, I learn and I learn and I learn. The ...

The Reward is the Journey

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