The Reward is the Journey

...was the order of the day.  It was brilliant to get out on my bicycle this morning.  And even better to meet Charlotte for three laps of the waterlogged Richmond Park.  We pedalled steadily, and I enjoyed every moment of it.  Even when the wind picked up after mid morning tea break, and catching the spray off her rear wheel.  I can't think of posterior I'd rather follow.  I always learn lots when we ride together.  I have lots to learn.  Following her up the inclines, and along the flats, I aspire towards her seemingly natural balance of pressure and cadence.  Right, left, right, left.    It was positively thrilling to don some slightly ill fitting thermal bib tights, and get out in the (very) fresh air.  Pure delight having felt confined to the spin studio for what has been too long.  Coughs and colds banned me from there too before Christmas.  Now, w...

And it was a very happy Christmas.  We found a most welcoming retreat in whose cocoon it felt as though we were far, far away from the hustle and bustle, the madness, mayhem and hype.  Christmas spirit was in abundance, and we enjoyed a peaceful and joyful affair.   Many pints were consumed.  Dihydrogen oxide tastes particularly good when it's seven times filtered.  Adding a slice of lime makes my preferred tipple.  The batteries have been recharged, and our energies replenished simply by the change in environment and routine.    Presents were unwrapped.  Smiles and laughter aplenty.  But the real gift, was the ability to be present, soaking up the here and now (or the there and then, as I write retrospectively).  Today, I adore giving.  I am able to give without expectation or condition.  Only in the absence of any agenda is it possible for me to be in the only state in which tr...

Another delicious bowl of soup.  Ginger and chilli made it a winter triumph.  Weekday suppers in Herne Hill are always good, and whilst the food is undeniably alluring, the company's unbeatable.  I could hardly believe my ears when Charlotte casually mentioned the run she had done earlier.  I almost choked when she told me how far she'd run and how quickly she'd done it.   This year has been bonkers.  Everything suddenly turned upside down.  And now it's returning to something of a new normal.  Charlotte is getting fitter and faster.  She could always run farther and faster than I can even imagine moving through space.  I'm back in the pool and am looking forward to spending a fair amount of time in underwater over the holidays.  I will be back on my bike in January.  Charlotte and I have plotted to clock up a few miles in the sp...

I'm not gonna lie.  It was tough.  It always is after a long break.  My PoolMate confirmed what I felt - I have missed my regular swims due to nasty sore throats and general under-the-weather-edness.  I wasn't alone.  I shared a lane for part of my session with a guy who had been similarly plagued with winter sickness.  We were both 'taking it easy'.  Apparently.  Thing is, enthusiasm got the better of me.  I managed just a little over 2.5k but it took far longer than it usually would.  Although it was only shortly after 4 in the afternoon, with it being dark, the pool didn't feel like the right environment at that time of day.  In the winter months, I am a morning and early afternoon swimmer.  It was great to be back in the water.  I know no better mood enhancer.         

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...

Getting it in was not much in question.  I had confidently shared this only a fortnight ago and in so doing, had (re)set my intention.  Sometimes hearing myself tell someone else how a particular achievement is possible, and what it might take it to get it done, concretises the faith necessary in order to do precisely that:  get it done.   It was more about how and when than if.  Procrastination is something I'm well practised at.  I know it's landscape and texture well.  I can taste it.  There is something comfortable about the discomfort inherent in this as a modus operandi.  Thankfully, it has been contained to matters academic.  Beyond the books, I don't tend to flirt with deadlines.  My prolonged career as a student (albeit latterly a part time one) has become the forum in which I have pushed my affinity to be within earshot of a deadline before so much as typing the title.  It ...

It's that time of year.  This morning, on the briefest of perambulations, it suddenly dawned on me that winter is well and truly here.  I felt it (on my nose) and smelt it (in my nose).  I have bought a new pair of boots and everything!      And so, as I prepare for the conclusion of the year that has been, there suddenly feels to be an increase in pace.  I know my diary more intimately than I might ordinarily (3 weeks' in advance).  I have a finite number of appointments available between now and the 2013.  It's a strange, yet oddly familiar space to be occupying.  I have been somewhere similar before and feel pleasantly comfortable here.   I have not yet sent any cards.  I'll get round to it shortly.  I have bought the stamps in readiness.  It's one of the few seasonal traditions I observe annually.  I have plenty to report, but do not intend to compose a missive....

Last night I felt like dancing around Wizard of Oz style, as the munchkins did to celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch of the East.  Part of me still does.  It is possibly the best news I've ever heard.    Charlotte received the results following a scan she had last week that confirmed the alien's demise and departure.  It was all clear.  Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!   She's cleared off.  Hopefully forever.  Charlotte can breathe a deep (and mindful) sigh of relief, and focus on moving forward.  2012 has been a helluva year.  We will make 2013 even bigger.    So, the witch has gone.  She must now be kept at bay.  And Charlotte is well equipped to do that.  Her fridge is the home of anti cancer superfoods (of which I was the grateful recipient with yet more delicious home cooking).  Charlotte is, unsurprisingly, paying greater attention than ever, to what she puts into her body...

Recovery is about so much more than sobriety: Fact.  Sober thinking often takes considerably longer than simply abstaining from our substance(s) of behaviour(s) of choice: Fact #2.  Practising recovery, in all one's affairs, is perhaps best thought of as the business of a lifetime...   So I am coming to believe... You can take the brandy out of the fruit cake, but you're still left with a fruit cake.  The awkward and unpalatable truth in recovery, is that the road often gets steeper and narrower before we discover the promised land.  Take the substance of behaviour of choice out of the equation and you are left with the illness.  As I was reminded by someone who's been around more than a few days, it's an 'ism' not a 'was-m'.  So what is this 'ism'?  An Internal Spiritual Maladjustment?  The I, Self, Me syndrome?  These resonate.  So too does Incredibly Short Memory.  This is why, for me, recovery is a d...

  I have been facing a number of big decisions recently.  Today, decisions are things I see as opportunities for growth.  Which isn't to say they aren't sometimes scary.  Right at the back of my wardrobe, I came across a pair of shoes I had almost forgotten I had.  I remember buying them, in Newcastle in anticipation of some vacation work experience more than ten years ago.  Their soles reminded me how little I've worn them.  That changed last week.    I have friends who truly believe that shoes are a girl's best friend.  I like shoes.  Ok, I love shoes.  Secretly, I am something of an aesthetic junkie.  Consequently, those I love most, my feet tend to loathe.  So, I have several pairs that rarely make it out of my bedroom.    This particular pair of brogues however have had a second nascence.  And, as I wore them to work last week, it occurred to me that shoes...

I've seen quite a few movies recently.  It was the BFI Film Festival which prompted more cinema trips than usual, and most recently, I enjoyed the return of 007 in Skyfall at the largest screen in Britain - the Odeon IMAX at Waterloo.  Life has felt a little like a movie recently, in that much of it seems far fetched, and removed from my usual and everyday experience.  As ever, there is plenty going on, but little that I feel I am the Director or Producer of.  I'm not familiar with this script, and the set is a largely unknown environment.  But I am in good company.  I am surrounded by friends.  And I am feeling held.    Today, it's okay for me not to know.  I have learnt to trust the process.  To trust, firstly, that there is a process and that it's unfolding.  I need not seek to control it.  All is well.  And all will be well.  What will be, will be.  And so it is...  Just for today, everything i...

Today it felt like winter had arrived.  Real winter, not just the supermarkets getting overly excited and decking out the halls well before they should, cold and crisp, and crunchy.  The apple I bit into after lunch was decidedly British.  Having developed a soft spot for pippins of the Pink Lady variety, shipped from lands afar I concede that, at this time of year, home grown are hard to beat.    I was momentarily transported to years gone by, and school days.  Yes, November has arrived!  The tiny apple created a big impression as welcome as it was unexpected.  Sometimes the ordinary can truly shine.  When we let it.        It stood out boldly; a simple yet simultaneously profound enquiry.  "How are you?... I haven't even asked..."  The tone of delivery took me by surprise.  The timing was perfect - we had been in eachother's company for a little more than three quarte...

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense...

Humility is a word that today carries a whole lot of meaning for me.  I used it and meant it towards the end of a workshop I was delivering this weekend.  I felt it, and powerfully.  I feel humbled sitting in the presence of families who have someone missing.  Their extraordinary and awful experiences throw into a different light so many of mine, both past and present, and I was conscious of the collective experience spoken to by a group of relative strangers, brought together by a horrific and harrowing reality none of them imagined, let alone expected.      The workshop represents the completion of a series we have as a team delivered up and down the land.  Yet it stands for so much more.  As I found myself fumbling for words, which carried anything like the meaning I was searching for, I surrendered and allowed my heart to find its voice.  Sometimes words fall so far short, it is better to give up the...

...When you say nothing at all?   Disclosure in the therapy room is a contentious subject, but perhaps one that is not explored as readily as it could be.  I am under no illusion as to the existence of a peculiar power dynamic in the therapy room, and do not seek to deny it, either inside or outside of the room.  Revelations I make about myself, my experiences, and my opinions can have a significant bearing on the individual relationships I have with my clients.  But the impact of my silence should not, I feel, be overlooked or underestimated.    It would be all too easy, perhaps, to remain an empty vessel, or a blank canvas.  To make 'therapist style' noises, at appropriate moments, and engage the full range of active listening skills.  It wouldn't necessarily make me very useful.  I'm not convinced this would establish terribly productive therapeutic relationships, capable of catalysing meaningful chan...

I have grown used to the sound of trains as they pass by at the bottom of my garden.  The sound was alien when I first arrived, and I felt convinced I would never overcome the regular disturbance, day and night.  Today, it is there, and I live alongside it, rather than battling against it.  At night, I barely notice the trains, and during the day, I find them somehow comforting, reminders that time is passing by, confirmation of that eternal truth that nothing stands still.    Travelling by train is something of a rare pleasure these days.  In recent months, I have, it feels, travelled the length and breadth of the country.  I do not have any such adventures on the horizon, but recall feeling aware of a definite sense of calm whilst in transit on the railways recently.  Train journeys are now, spaces to simply be.  In terms of getting from A to B, there is nothing much for me, as a passenger, to do, and nowhere for me to g...

It made a lot of sense as she said it - it can be scary to zoom out.  Keeping things in the day, and focusing on the here and now is a skill that once learnt, can become something of a protective cloak when the bigger picture is perhaps less orderly, and even overwhelming.   A great many of us move through our lives one chapter at a time, turning the pages as we go, and retaining a sense of 'all is well, all will be well', by taking things line by line, with the ability to take things even more steadily, word by word.  We set ourselves objectives, and make plans, but we live looking only just ahead of where we find ourselves.    There are lots of reinforcers for this approach.  Education for one.  Modules, rather than finals.  Public examinations annually, or even more frequently.  Progressing in a linear fashion.  It all keeps things ticking over nicely.    Until they don't.  I have come t...

As the days get colder, and the nights longer, I have upped my scheduled entertainments.  Twice in a month I have been to the 02.  For two very different evenings.  Jesus Christ Superstar was written to be performed in an arena setting.  Andrew Lloyd Webber, who appeared on stage at the end of the show, told us he'd waited 42 years to get to the 02.    Not to everyone's tastes, perhaps.  I thought it was spectacular.  The show has been revamped and boasted cutting-edge modernisation used last summer's London riots and the Occupy movement to create a contemporary backdrop for the rise of a new political leader who threatens the status quo of capitalism and state authority.   And it was loud!  Swinging effortlessly between heavy rock and ballad, the emotional connections in the triangle between the tortured but disaffected Judas, the weary Jesus and the yearning Mary Magdalene, are only further intensified Tim Rice'...

"...Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed the path that the program suggests..."  So says Chapter 5 of the Big Book, the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous.  "Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves."   How it works might be summarised as Honesty, Open mindedness and Willingness.  No two meetings are ever the same.  They may be broadly similar, as they tend to follow a similar format, but a meeting is as individual as the people that make it.    Meetings are the backbones of a great many individuals' recovery journeys.  In them, those who have decided to abstain from substances, or behaviours, access the support of those with a common purpose, and this is the not-so-secret key to 12 Step Fellowships.  By sharing thei...

Surrender has been a prominent theme in recent weeks.  On so many levels.  For me, there are few lessons learnt as effectively as lessons lived.  My own experience is a wonderful laboratory for many an unanticipated (and sometimes less than welcome) hypothesis.  I feel as though I have gleaned a great amount of late.   I can now see how very different surrender and resignation are.  I can only see this having felt it.  Giving up is not an option.  Surrender is not only an option, it is sometimes absolutely the right thing to do.  Which is not to say that it's easy.    It's not been easy.  Watching someone you love losing their life to a chronic and debilitating illness isn't something I'd wish on anybody.  Watching the life being steadily squeezed out of a family member, powerless in the face of a ruthless and progressive condition, is challenging on every level.   She's fading away.  We've not lost ...