Change is an ongoing theme!

 I knew it had been a while since I last created a blog post, but not quite THAT long!! 

I'm currently trying to get to grips with how this site works, as I can't remember some of the original features and others have obviously been added or changed in the intervening years.

I made a vow many years ago to learn something new every year and ever since making it, I have kept to it.  One of the few things that haven't changed, lol.  

So one of this year's skills that I decided to develop further was Zentangle (c).  I have doodled ever since I was a small child so some of the classic Zentangle patterns are very familiar to me and there are dozens that would never have occurred to me.  So I have been to a few classes, practiced a lot at home and follow various people on YouTube for tutorials and new ideas.  

During lockdown here in the UK, my CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher) created a Zentangle competition to win some art supplies that had been kindly donated by another Zentangler.   I was inspired to put in an entry, and to my surprise, I won.  

They were inspired by my gorgeous black Labrador who came to live with me just over a year ago.  She's getting on a bit now at 13 years old, but she still adores her walks and loves her food.  She even comes paddle boarding with me, though she prefers to splash about in shallow water at the edge of the river rather than being ferried around on my SUP!

I am excited to be joining the October challenge that combines inktober and Zentangle into a 31 day challenge to create Zentangle art every day.  I tried a 100 day challenge earlier this year for creativity - I managed art as my creative focus on many days, but definitely not the whole 100!  Crochet also featured, as did creative writing and attempting wood-carving and pyrography....!!

Another thing I have been heavily involved with is the FreeMind system, which involves 3 core pillars to balance your life - Peace, Power and Purpose.  Over the last few chaotic months, I have come to value this system very highly.  

It was created by Tom Fortes-Mayer who runs frequent events and challenges to demonstrate how the processes work, as well as in-depth training and personal coaching.  His next challenge starts on 15th Sept and is called Shine Fire: Loving the Inner Child.  Feel free to click on the link to the right and pop over to have a look.  

I don't earn any money from these recommendations, they are genuinely things that I find valuable 

So many changes....

Life has continued to progress at a rapid pace (no rest for the wicked, lol) and more huge changes have ensued.  

It is now early October and I have just finished my life coaching sessions with Matt.  We have had such a joyful journey, and it has been so empowering (not to mention plenty of surprises) for both of us and I am truly grateful to have not only found him, but to count him as a dear friend :-)

We worked on so many deep issues and I moved through and beyond them all, in a variety of ways.  Matt helped me to review them all in our final coached session and I still find it incredible just how far I have come in a few short months.  My deep rage that so concerned me has dissipated - it was not just mine, but that of many generations of women who preceded me and that had to be resolved energetically.  We talked about feeling safe, holding space, managing boundaries, reflecting light and joy and through it all, I was bubbling over.  I have found my tribe and continue to find them, and there is another purpose that I will start to progress more once I have allowed all this work to settle and incubate for a bit.  Looks like I will be back to teaching, lol.  Definitely "seeding the change".  

I had a lovely reading from Spirit Rebelles, with the card 22. Collaborative Dreaming (how very apt!). 

Your vision oozes (in a good way) into the pores of everything you do, everywhere you go, everyone whose life and work you touch. Grow collaborations and new creations. It is TIME for a new world.

The write up in the book went on for pages but a few phrases really stood out for me.  

"Your heart is big enough to dream not only for yourself, but for a new humanity.  

You are being asked to honour your growing desire to co-create with conscious, like-minded people.

You are no longer to think of yourself as the lone wolf.

You must always trust your own voice above any other."

 I am solidly on my path, I am radiating joy and abundance and for the most part, my life is flowing smoothly, despite the fast pace.  All is well in my world <3 xx

Moving forward

So the life coaching continues in leaps and bounds, despite no real agenda in advance for each session.  In my quest to find more members of my tribe, I've signed up for The Healing Weekend at Secret World in Somerset in July and have bought my ticket for Into the Wild over the August Bank holiday weekend.  I'm considering a couple of others but am reluctant to commit to too many, as I want the freedom to just take off by myself if I need some space or get the chance to go wild camping.  
Latest revelation is that I need to make food preparation fun in order to let go of some issues that seemed totally unrelated until we dug deeper.  So far I've made chocolate fudge brownies with sweet potato and beetroot (gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, would have been vegan if I'd had maple syrup or agave nectar but had to make do with honey) and have figured out that I could do baked potatoes, and baked apples in the coals of a firepit or on a BBQ.  Need to go back to Tesco to see if they have any of the little BBQ buckets left I think, though I would have preferred a version with a lid!

Bought some purple nail varnish to paint my nails but haven't quite got around to it yet - Matt is waiting for the photos so will need to do it soon, lol.  

 

Turbulent few months and more massive changes

So things went from bad to worse with Dad, with a miserable Christmas and then New Year spent back in A&E followed by readmittance to hospital.  Another stressful 6 weeks or so in various wards, followed by transfer to a nursing home for 24 x 7 care.  He is now relatively settled there, though there have been many ups and downs, and his condition is worsening quite significantly from one week to the next.  So we are on the final decline that the doctors warned us about back in November last year.  He has already had one bad chest infection from aspirating food and is back on the pureed diet that he loathes, hence he is not really eating.  Toria coaxes him with food she takes in and tries regularly to get his meals upgraded to fork mash but so far, without success.  So he is still losing weight and there must be a limit to how much he can lose before his system finally gives up. 

In the meantime, I took most of March to volunteer at EarthHeart in the Forest of Dean and had a great time, if somewhat more challenging than expected, living in a dilapidated caravan, dismantling wood post and wire fences and learning some of the art of hedge laying, plus planting trees, clearing brambles, cooking for large groups of people and doing lots of chilling out.  A side effect that I really didn't anticipate was doing some really deep work, and having a huge amount of support from such conscious and aware people :-)  Some of it was very hard to deal with, but with a couple of breaks away, I really dug down into some core beliefs and core wounds and cleared quite a lot of stuff out.  And uncovered some things that I hadn't realised before.  I also decided to take Matt up on his offer of Life Coaching based on Inspiration (rather than goal-setting) and am already making more big changes in my life.  I have retired from IT Project Management and am now focused on finding more conscious people to spend time with as well as making more time for my close friends.  I have fostered a troubled little Yorkshire Terrier so I have a little dog around again, which is forcing me out into nature on a daily basis.  I am also meeting more people who can help and support me with his rehabilitation and life is full of fun and joy, and I am feeling much more in tune with my own needs.   I am moving further away from skydiving - it is a source of much frustration and disappointment, and although I still enjoy jumping with other people, I really don't get enough out of it to be bothered investing much time and effort in it.  I will see out the summer season, but don't intend to continue after that.  I loved training for the World Challenge and was very happy with how we performed for the most part (just love the statistic of being 4th in the UK in Rookie and 8th in the World, lol) but the UK weather has been diabolical for team training for FS 4-way so our team really isn't prepared for the UKSL at Langar in a couple of weeks.  So I will be training via fun jumps and the Sibson Scrambles instead, in order to inject a bit more enthusiasm into my hobby.  

Some drastic changes

So, some massive changes and some difficult times.

The Reiki retreat was a challenge - I was slightly late arriving because I'd had a difficult visit with dad who wasn't well again, and everyone else was fairly settled.  I was sharing a room so apart from walks, didn't really get much time on my own for the few days we were there.  And I was exhausted.  I slept every possible opportunity.  Every break, either before or after meals, each time my head hit the pillow, I was out cold.  And yet, never truly felt rested.  

The sessions were very interesting and I was fascinated to see how I could merge my shamanic work more thoroughly with Reiki.  We did treatments on each other and they were very powerful.  One of my last ones, I had 'nerves in my legs' healed, which really gave me a jolt.  Both mum and dad's illnesses have been to do with attacks on the central nervous system and I have been petrified of it happening to me!  

Not long after I got back, I had a call from dad's cleaner telling me he was really unwell and she didn't know what to do.  Later it transpired he had answered the door naked, and the whole house was covered in poo.  Quite literally.  Aga and I had a horrid time cleaning it all up - I did 7 loads of washing over 2 days to deal with it all :-(   And after being passed from pillar to post, GP to 111 to 999, eventually dad was admitted to a&e for rehydration.  Except that it turned out that although he was dehydrated, it was constipation that was the issue, not the runs, and he also was unable to pass urine.  After having nearly 1.5 litres drained from his bladder (with a little left in to prevent bladder collapse), a catheter was inserted and dad and I were left in a side room overnight.  I eventually left at 3am and went back to find that dad had been admitted properly with a UTI that was causing him massive confusion and delirium.  And basically this turned out to be the start of several months of stress and trauma.  Dad remained in hospital, moving between different wards, for nearly 7 weeks.  His medication was assessed and reassessed through hallucinations, psychosis and debilitating side effects.  He is now home but barely able to walk, at severe risk of falls, with carers attending several times a day.  Plus he is on 'acknowledged risk' feeding where there is a high risk of choking or taking food or drink into his lungs due his swallowing reflex failing.  Eating is one of the few pleasures he has left, so once it became obvious there was nothing more anyone could do for him, the restrictions were lifted.  We know it will reduce his life expectancy, probably quite drastically, assuming a bad fall or major infection don't get there first.  But we want him to have whatever quality of life we can manage, for whatever time he has left.  

It has become very obvious that he is not coping at home so we are trying to find a care home place for him as quickly as possible.  We always suspected that going home from hospital to his house was only an interim measure, to make the transition to a home less drastic, and now that has proved to be the case. 

Day 10 of 30

A bit of a strange day.  Woke around 8:30 after being late to bed and yet again, felt pretty unmotivated to do any work on my bedroom.  Eventually sorted myself out enough to head over to the Crystal Dragon to have a catch up with Clive, then spent the afternoon and evening with Caroline and the children which was great fun. 
After reading with Lucy and Michael, Caroline and I ended up spending about 5 hours (!!) building Lego models from all the pieces we had sorted out earlier.  A pretty decent collection of cars, planes and boats ended up on Michael's desk ready for him to play with when he gets home from his first day back at school tomorrow.  

I still haven't started packing for my Shamanic Reiki retreat which starts tomorrow and I have to fit in another visit to see dad and get his invoices paid beforehand.  And I really need to call a few agencies and get my CV sorted if I'm going to get a new job before the end of the month. 

Day 9 of 30

03 Sept and a busy day ahead was planned.  Except I couldn't get myself motivated enough to head over to dad's as I am completely exhausted.  So resting this morning, then will attempt some gentle climbing at lunchtime, followed by more chilling out this afternoon.  Maybe head over to dad's after that to sort his invoices.  
Don't feel too bad after the box-fit class last night, really hoping DOMS doesn't kick in tomorrow, lol.  Will head back over there for another session tomorrow evening and see how I get on.  Getting back into it is the hardest bit, so if I just stick at it for a few weeks, I should be fine :-)

Had a great climbing session and tackled some tough routes, though didn't manage to finish all of them.  More projects to work on :-)
Chill out session was fabulous, though I got home later than I expected.  Took the Porsche out for a run with the top down and although I enjoyed it, I don't think I will really miss it that much.