I have sat down and began to write for this blog infinite times and yet the musings that I have elucidated remain in the drafts folder of the ether until the time becomes correct for their outings. This past month has however highlighted and re-reminded me of the power in reflection and actively setting aside time in my work to evaluate what I would otherwise have been living and allowed to pass without the proper scrutiny it deserves. Here I make the first promise to myself that I will maintain and honour this practice not only for the soothing and learning it provides me, but also in the hopes that it may in some small way provide such space and opportunity for any person who wishes to read.
April on the wider stage in our surroundings has seen the first stirrings of springtime, not only in the nature around us, but also in the machinery of life beginning to fire up. As shops, hairdressers and gyms were able to reopen their doors along with outdoor hospitality a welcome sigh of collective relief was audible in ripples around me. Off came the lockdown locks and out came hundreds of outdoor furniture pieces (in places I had had no idea that it was even possible to position it), so that premises could be open to the public once again. We have all become (some of us more reluctantly than others) lockdown professionals creating the rhythms in our lives to survive and get by in order to not be stuck still as I know many of us were the first time around and yet the country is also desperate to touch one and other and to be around others and so this most recent opening up has been much welcomed.
I am not sure however that it has been on the top of my agenda, I have wanted to in many ways to stay in the quiet contemplative state offered by the lockdown. I have needed it to be in my process and to hear and feel what has been happening to me. In many ways I have been really thankful that I have had the space because of lockdown to go within and grieve. Yet in other ways I have had anger and despair at the limitations that lockdown has thrown in my direction - so many people unable to attend Daddy’s funeral, pay their respects, mourn and celebrate for him, to the delays that meant the funeral was so long after his passing and the agony that the waiting produced. This juxtaposition of relief and uneasiness, of gratitude and frustration has for me been the recurring theme of April, the nub of what has been going on. Understanding that in the whole or oneness of everything in life, there is extreme and sometimes highly intensely felt polarity. The up and the down, the side to side, but altogether - all, at, once!
One of the biggest lessons that I have taken away from the passing of my Daddy, is just how wide open death blows our human experience. I heard a psychiatrist today (Dr Amen) ‘quoting Elizabeth Kubler Ross: “It is in part the denial of death that causes people to live empty meaningless lives” because when you live as if you are going to live forever you don’t take care of the important things you need to do today’. This struck me strongly in many ways; how in my mind do I allow time to pass by without attending to the things that are important to me in favour of another’s needs, in favour of talking myself out of it, in favour of the thought that I have all the time in the world. Now this is not to say that any of us need to be running to a place of panic because we need to act like we are running out of time, but rather, honestly making ourselves and our stuff important, like right here and right now. It also resonated with me in relation to my Daddy - I honestly believed him when he would say that he was going to hang around until at least 95. Now the reason he chose this age as his starting marker was because he was at university with Robert Mugabe (amongst any other significant black African political figures (Daddy is kind of a big deal - but that’s another story)) and he decided that if an old geezer who like Mugabe who ended up on the questionable side of life could make it 95, then he would definitely achieve that milestone. We spoke about it so many times that it was not even a what if to me, it was an absolute certainty that we would be having his 95th birthday in a few years time. But this certainty and my denial of the possibility that spirit would request his presence sooner saw me put off so many things with Daddy because of lockdown, because we had more time in summer, because - well the list is endless. Part of me is angry and annoyed at the things I left undone, and part of me knows and trusts that everything happens for a reason. One of those reasons being my understanding and deep learning of this particular lesson. What about you? How clear are you in tending to what needs taking care of? And I mean the really important life stuff that actually makes a difference to you and your experience of life - not doing the housework and making sure that on the surface it looks like you are where you need to be? What could you be doing differently to address how important you make yourself in your own life?
Rest and my serious need to rest jumped into my face on the 19th April. I feel like this was one of the important life things I needed to live by in that moment, in that week at that time. Again I refer to the fact that I notice I have taken on the perception that taking care of things, or doing things that are important in life has always been linked to rushing around, ticking off the ToDo List (and don’t get me wrong - there is GREAT satisfaction in accomplishing those things) and generally being busy - here and there for the sake of being here and there. Part of my need to be that way is linked to conditioning and past traumas and part of it is getting caught up in the swathes of achieverness that is everywhere you care to look. Our children are being trained to overlook their needs (my belief based on what I have observed with Nialah, my youngest in particular). They are indoctrinated with the need to achieve (based entirely on external measures of worthiness) and relentlessly produce their best work at all times. There is zero information or emphasis on internal wellbeing or any type of proficiency of maintaining an evenness in mental and emotional health and wellbeing (as opposed to crisis management when things have got passed a certain point) and yet I understand that a very large percentage of her year group require additional support in meeting their mental and emotional health and wellness needs. This indicates the trajectory of future generations which is also backed up by the figures the WHO give mental health statistics in young people. My little detour here is a reminder to me more than anything of the potential my modelling alternative approaches can offer the young people around me. So, I took some serious time out. I stopped all things that were not fundamental to facilitating life as a lone parent, and I took to my bed. I slept, I breathed, I self reikied, I meditated and I slept some more. I let the emotional exhaustion of the past few months have it’s opportunity to work its way through my system and it was really hard because I was not sure I was going to be able to get out of bed, but it needed to happen. Nialah was concerned at points because it seemed as though the stability she was used to having in me was fading away, and then we talked about sometimes needing to go to the places that life would tell us we can’t in order to be able to live as well as we know we can. I hope she understood that if she ever felt like it was all too much, then it was ok to honour what she was experiencing by resting, by exploring and understanding what she was feeling because life never stays the same. We need to experience our truth in the moment it is wanting our attention so that we can meaningfully move forward in freedom and power. It was an important moment for me to share with her, and I am so grateful that I was able to.
The advantage of taking that time in rest has been for me a level of clarity about what I am opening up to next. For a while I have been looking to crystalise the ideas that have been floating around my mind as to how best to develop my work. I have a vision that women in their power will enable the healing in their families of ancestral patterns and with their own clarity of vision live the lives they are destined for in place of the lives that history (both immediate and collective) imposed on them so that we can pave the way for living with consciousness, awareness, empowerment and most of all love, fulfillment, truth and connection. The guidance becomes clearer and clearer and if you would like to be one of the revolutionaries, get in touch so I can keep you up to date with the unfolding.
Thank you for staying until the end, please let me know if any of this connected with you and in what we, let’s keep the conversations and connections going. Until May.
Lots of love and the highest of blessings,
Ella.O xxx