IT’S my birthday next week. On the 13th. Same date as the next New Moon. This dark phase of the lunar cycle is said to be linked with feelings of introspection and new beginnings. Got me thinking about the pile of new leaves it felt like I’d have to turn in time to make it a new start. Another year done and I wasn’t where I wanted to be. Made me feel like I was running out of time. There was suddenly a homework deadline looming that I hadn’t seen coming. That’s no way to start afresh.
I went for a walk. Tugging sleeves over freezing fingers and kicking up crispy orange leaves (metaphor for the worn-out state of my life I mused; ever the positive-thinker)! I sifted through regrets (not many), memories (plenty) and this-time-last-year thoughts (jeez that’s a lot more life lived than I remember).
Crossing fingers and hoping for things to magically fall into place in time for birthday day wasn’t the way. I knew that. Panicking about it wasn’t gonna work either. I needed to find a different way.
I got on my bike to remind myself of freedom. I rode on quiet streets, flaneuring without anywhere to be. How does one liberate oneself from the past and find peace? I pondered. The answer came fast: practise being peaceful. Simple. Yet not so easy to grasp when you have a brain that goes bad often. What can we do? Practise, practise and more practise and see where we end up.
WINNING marathons isn’t all about the running.
Someone I know recently ran her first marathon. It’s pretty sensational to watch a person take something like that on; the grit and graft and unwavering commitment required to nail it.
Would you ever do it? she’d asked me during her training months? NOPE not ever I said, partly cos I don’t think I physically can; mostly cos I know I’ll never have the mental space required to train.
Also cos writing my book felt like running a marathon. There were times I lost my mind; almost gave up cos it hurt like hell - A LOT. Finishing it was an unbelievable victory I didn’t believe I’d ever achieve. If I do it again there’ll be zero room for more than one all-consuming thing like that (i.e. Marathon running) in my life.
That convo also got me thinking about how it feels like I’ve been running a marathon most of my life (perhaps many of us feel this) cos some of the tough stuff aka what I call the mentals - in my experience - never get easier to navigate. It’s a MASSIVE bummer I still fight with. More on the mentals here.
But for now, back to this week…
I’D like you to start writing again a learned psychological professional told me this week. I stared at the Persian rug beneath my DMs as my brain drifted to the fence I’ve been leaning on the past chunk of time. I’ve wanted so much to tip over the edge and start the thing knocking around my mind. I’ve even told a few people about it to make it real, but haven’t felt ready to do much more.
WHY?
The usual: finding the time, fear of the blank page, dunno-if-there’s-an actual-story-there thoughts but mostly the hustle for work which sucks the life out of everything. Creativity feels like a privilege at such times and this in itself is enough to make anyone who wants to make things feel depressed. The fastest way out of this one is to ignore that thought. IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE and muster the trust from somewhere that if you hustle enough and tend to your heart’s needs one day you’ll find yourself in a space you’ll be able to make things again. If you can’t do that tell someone who believes in you more than you perhaps do yourself. Tell them how awful you feel and then when they say you’ll do whatever it is you want to do again (when life circs allow you to) - BELIEVE THEM!
WHICH (finally, finally) brings me to the purpose of this post. It’s a get-myself-writing warm up and birth-year-end reflective round-up. Writing has to have meaning and purpose or I won’t do it. The M&P on this occasion is that I’m telling these stories cos I need to hear them myself.
These aren’t life lessons cos my track-record is more of a give things a go, give up, try again, try harder, hopefully do better next time, keep trying and if I’m lucky things stick. Sometimes they don’t and that’s what’s brought me here. To revisit old things that need a re-think, some convos I’ve had and some stuff I’ve been smacked in the face with cos turns out I’ve still not got the message.
THE work of life is SO HARD someone told me this week. This person has been through some of life’s worst horrors. Unthinkable things that are hard to process even for for me on the outside looking in. She’s been undergoing deep therapy work for several years and doesn’t feel like she’s ever going to get better. I relate.
At the same time we both know this work isn’t so much about being ill and getting better, drawing a line and never looking back. I don’t know what this work we do is actually about either tbh but recovery - which so many of us are doing doing at various points in our lives is circular.
When you’ve been in and out of mental ill-health as long as I have; doing, undoing and re-doing the bloody work you recognise the recurring been-here-before feeling when it comes around again. Being back at square one always leads me to disastrous, catastrophic when-am-I-doing-to-get-there? thinking. But lately I’ve been trying to convince myself that it doesn’t mean you haven’t moved forward at all, only that there’s more work to do. It’s a huge blow, I know cos I’ve had to face up to this myself recently so I don’t say any of this lightly. Revisiting old pain is a grind. There’s no way around it and apparently it’s simply time to come at it from a new angle.
WE’RE all working on something aren’t we? I tell myself this as a way to feel better and then realise that there are possibly loads of people who aren’t. Oh to be them and have that life! It wasn’t meant for me. That’s the thing those of us on this never-ending journey of self-work have to remember. It’s still a pain in the arse and a battle between feeling on top of things and being dragged back into the trenches. It’s a battle I’ll probably never win but the fight must go on cos not doing anything is losing.
I SHOULD be writing the work-of-life-is-so-hard person told me, but I don’t know what to write she added. She also said she was worried she’s forgotten how to write. I have the same worries when I’m at the bottom of the barrel drowned by unbearable feels that I can’t deal with or contain. Panic sets in, that you’ll lose the thing that is your salvation to the vortex. This person talking to me turns 40 soon and is dreading it in the is-this-what-my-life-has-come to way I started this story with. She knew I felt the same. But it’s easier to make sense of things when someone else is telling them so I tried to say helpful things.
YOU’LL never forget how to write I told her. No one can write like you. No one ever will. Feel these feels I told her (painfully aware of how reluctant I am to do the v same thing - the irony wasn’t lost). When you’ve stopped crying and feel ready write what’s in front of you. Tell a muddled story of what’s going on right now: the anger, pain, sadness, helplessness. Get to the bottom of it. Keep digging ‘til you find the nerve that’s causing all this trouble. It’ll take as long as it takes. Let it be months, years, whatever. Write it for you. It might help. Worth a try? She nodded. I don’t think she believed me but I hope she does soon.
On recovery (& still being f**ked up). I saw my oldest, dearest friend this week. He’s seen me at my best, been there for my worst and still by my side. Love like that doesn’t come along often. I included a conversation we had that meant a lot to me in my book (Alienated Awareness and Dropping the Bass with the Zen, pages 123-130).
I’m on my knees I told him, at the bottom again. He knew what that meant. As we sat gazing at a pond that I spent many of my miserable teenage years living by I reminded him of a convo we’d had in the Spring. I’d been out of sorts. It had been everything and nothing cos just when things start feeling okay, something else comes along that isn’t.
We rode out of London on my friend’s motorbike and lay on the grass. Moments later endless streams of the churned up stuff started pouring out of me. My friend listened. Then he shared back: 20 years of recovery and still messed up he’d said, talking about himself.
We both cried. Neither of us expected to feel sad but we did. We laughed too. I wanted to run away cos being in pain together is hard even if It’s real. Sharing pain, carrying each other, knowing healing is there is the thing, my friend said. Healing hurts, I said, I don’t know if I can do it but he was right.
Meaning of the story: None of us can heal alone. It’s why I love sharing the practices I do so much; to do the carrying my friend spoke of. It’s why community inspires me; to build what I’d otherwise run from. Healing is work. I don’t think it gets easier. But you gotta believe it gets better; that you’ll find ways to live with the wounding thing. That’s what healing is. That’s what I’m reminding myself at the moment cos a big bit of me isn’t quite convinced.
You’re my best friend I never see my mate said as we parted ways. Funny that. Hiding from people who love you. Another thing to work on.
SERVICE Keeps you Sober (from whatever it is that’s the problem). They teach you this in 12 Step programmes. I haven’t been to a meeting in years but I heard it A LOT. It gets drummed into you when you disappear and eventually come back as a way to keep you coming back. Didn’t make sense for a long time; or at least I didn’t believe it would work. I didn’t want to commit to getting out the chairs or making the tea back then. How could doing that stop me from walking into an offey or reaching for a five packets of biscuits I didn’t really want on my way home? Well turns out…
These days Service is EVERYTHING to me; a lifeline. In the past I hid away when I fell into a relapse; as I found my way out I’d want to go out and do service work more. I still do. I know I often say YES to things before I’ve thought them through because holding space to share practises that I believe in and practise myself is freedom from hell as I know it to be. The classes I teach have different names but if the same person came to every single one they’d see patterns that crop up, the similarities and repetitions. My offer is the same even if it’s packaged differently: to pause and check-in, observe and connect with our hearts. It’s what I’m most passionate about because I didn’t do these things for so many things and yet these are all the things that help.
I approach teaching in ways I practise myself because I’m the same person inside and outside the yoga sharing space. I have to share what makes sense to me and what I want more of in my own life. The desire to teach more has been growing more intense this year precisely because I know I have been vulnerable. I am vulnerable to going backwards. My behaviour has been showing me. I didn’t take it seriously and that’s why I ended up on my knees again.
Whenever I’m tired from teaching (cos I do find it tiring), as well as heart-filling and rewarding when people leave with a stillness about them and a lightness in their step I think about how more tiring the drinking and starving and throwing up used to be. Nothing’s more exhausting than the self-destruction of turning yourself inside out.
People have often told me I have a high pain threshold. I hadn’t noticed until I spotted my ability to touch hot things far longer than most people. No idea why I’m like this. Also not true when it comes to emotional pain. I have a big deficiency there. At times like that my default setting is to do anything to avoid emotional pain. Anything. Sitting with it, you know that thing we’re supposed to do? Nah. Not for me. Another area for practise.
Looked at another way service could all be a massive distraction from our own lives. When we find ourselves getting immersed in aiding the lives of others could it be that we really want to help or that we’re avoiding our own stuff? Bit of both? Does it matter? I guess it does if we never get keeping our own side of the street tidy. At the same time I don’t know if I really care cos a life without service just doesn’t feel right.
SPEAKING of service and community, I’ve been thinking that the popular YOU do you trope is a capitalist victory and might not be all its cracked up to be. I get it. The sentiment that we’ve gotta be true to ourselves, do what’s right for us, take the path towards whatever makes us happy. There’s some truth here. But there’s also a flip to it. I say this as someone who avoided groups and community and did what I wanted to do for many years and it tore me apart. There’s a smidge of separation going on in this ME doing me idea.
The idea that’ll we’ll be happy if we go it alone. Happ-ier even. It’s gotta be a lie. I don’t mean the taking time out to focus on passion projects, retreats to rest and recoup. I mean the my way or the highway vibe which feels like the biggest lie. The idea that if we work hard (for ourselves/on ourselves), and as long as we buy the stuff, have our phones, Netflix and wifi packages we’ll be okay. But what about other people and what they want and need? There’s joy to be found in thinking about how they fit into our own shiny plans so why would we leave them behind.
This is where service comes in. There’s so much freedom in being useful, of doing something for someone else. Simple everyday little things make the world go round. It’s a feeling of being part of something greater than ploughing out there in the wilderness on your own. It is for me anyway.
Cos if there’s one big thing I learned this year while travelling around the UK with my book and meeting and talking to people about it was the value to be found in community and connection. Sure maybe it took a lock-myself-in-a-room you do you approach to get the words out but that wouldn’t have meant anything if it stopped there. The book didn’t become real for me until people started reading it and it mattered to them. That’s the thing that made me truly feel alive and more importantly - seen.
PARENTING ourselves (and thoughts on familiar suffering). This was another powerful convo I had this year with a friend who has some similar struggles to me. I could write a really profound essay on what we talked about but the key message from her was about learning how to parent ourselves.
We’re both people who’ve hurt ourselves a lot in life. We did some of it together, had some time apart when it got devastatingly bad but we came together years later and we’ve been getting better together too. We both marvel at our friendship, waxing lyrical how our bond survived the messier times. I wasn’t sure if either of us would ever make it. She always believed we would. Both of us are still working out why we did those things, and working on getting better.
In a completely unrelated moment, another friend sent me this quote of Thich Nhat Hanh who has long inspired us both: People have a hard time letting go of their suffering out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar. That really hit me. Practise is a long game. One day at a time. They teach you the importance of this in 12 Step progs too. (I learnt some good stuff there).
A RANDOM final thing. I’ve been re-reading Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, one of my fave writers of all time. It’s a tale of lesbian love, love affairs and lust; the ambivalence of love and not-love, the ordinariness of relationships and the irresistible-ness of them. The first line: why is the measure of love loss? is one of (my) life’s big conundrums. Why are love and loss inextricably linked? Loss is only truly loss when there’s love wrapped up in it.
And love; why do so many people I know fear it? It’s the let down of losing it. Still trying to work out the answer to cracking this one. I’m guessing there isn’t one. Apart from practise. The practising of doing the loving, the practise of letting it in, the practise of letting it go when it’s time to do that.
FINALLY, I got asked what advice I’d give my 16 year old self recently which made me take a deep breath cos it’s around about then things went wonky for me. It’s also when I went to my first yoga class. Life got a hellova lot worse before it got better. But it did get better.
The tough times will pass, things will always get better; trust your heart.
Same advice I’d give myself now. We live, we learn, some things change and others stay the same. My birthday gift/challenge/commitment to myself this year I’ve decided is gonna be a daily practise of cultivating pockets of peace. Small pockets.
A friend who’s been going through a hard time recently said she cant stop thinking about the thing she’s trying to stop doing. Let’s practise together I said. Harder, better, faster, stronger. We get better at what we do more of. Again I was telling her this cos I needed telling myself.
If any of these stories have touched you in any way or been useful do let me know. I’m out here here doing me, but without you; without being heard, none of it really matters. Maybe you’ll join me too if you like. In my pockets for peace project. The world’s a mad place to live. We owe ourselves the space to cultivate peace to survive it I reckon.
Some of this resonated a bit too much for comfort! THANK YOU for reminding about things I’d prefer to scroll past. And happy birthday!