Tag: friendship

Love Sharing Stories – But Some Magic is Just for Me

The cycle of shame over not writing, editing, or attending enough to creative endeavours is my Sisyphus boulder.

While I do not currently earn a living from creative pursuits, I live a life scorched by the flames of curiosity and wonder. I also have the freedom and resources to be doing basically whatever I want, when I wish, where I choose, and only with people I actually adore. Yet, time gets swallowed up with business commitments, children, chores and general drudgery.

This is why we travel. And we travel A LOT. We head off to far flung places most people just don’t think to go so we can steep like a couple of happy little teabags in a hot water of hope, happiness, curiosity and creativity. 

My soulmate and muse Damon exists on a very different plane to me and sees the world through the eyes of an almost minimalist former Buddhist monk. He does not crave or create clutter or confusion. 

These days I am incomprehensibly calmer than I was a decade ago. Yet, still feel drawn to whimsy and probably more excitement than your average middle-aged witch. Also tend toward being compelled to consume trinkets and things as we travel. Purchased a lovely and loud bright orange dress in Santa Barbara. Do I need another dress? Absolutely not. Do I like my new dress? You bet your sweet bippy I do it is cute af. 

dress turned out to be the same color as the sunset on the trip from Houston to Merida.

So now we are ensconced in blissful solitude in a castle-like conversion in the capital of the Yucatan province in Mexico. Merida is the real Mexico I crave, not a touristic town filled with gringos like us. We came here to improve our Spanish and it is a necessity to speak it here. So that is a win.

We are also going to put me in my corset and witchy dress so I can swan around and Damon can photograph me. Love having a partner who is so willing to be silly and childlike with me. We literally play dress up and hide in our rich inner lives in strange and wonderful locations all over the planet.

We always have so many intentions of sharing the incredible moments of change and transformation we enjoy on our travels. Also sharing the rare but real challenges that sometimes arise in our intrepid choices. Honestly, we have some incredible ‘what-the-actual-fuck’ stories and really ought to be sharing those along with our smoother and simpler sojourns. 

We are pretty content most of the time at this stage in our lives. We actively avoid being ensconced in our own or other people’s complex orbits and dynamics as the more people you’ve got in your orbit, the higher the chances of being pulled into orbits of drama or difficulty. We do not shy away from grief or challenging times when they are presented to people we Love. We do avoid most people most of the time though, as we like our own company so very much. Life is predominantly devoid of drama and I tend to make myself scarce at the first sign of convoluted fuckery, decipherable deceit, or any other general hijinx. 

It is definitely by design that I only have four close friends. I am deeply, madly, and importantly in Love with hundreds of humans who have wandered into my life over the years. I would drop everything to support any one of them if I were summoned. But true, trusted, sincere friendships that I chat with consistent regularity (most days) I only have the bandwidth for four. I had more but my fuck around and find out mechanism means there’s been a lot of goodbyes for the sake of self-respect and preservation since I started my healing journey. Nobody nowhere will hear me speak anything but Love and respect for the people who were in my inner orbit once and have since been shut out. Provided they didn’t do anything cruel, conniving or unforgivable. I will speak that truth all day long if someone shit on me. But most of the friendships I have ended in the years since my breakdown have ended because it was time. No anger or animosity, just the dull ache that comes from wanting to reach and share good news or check in to celebrate a win or commiserate over something. And that ache is seasoned with a strong sense of relief as when something special and cherished ends, it always makes room for new adventures and beginnings. I am not a person who regrets letting go. I actually Love this about me. The ability to let go of basically anything or anyone so I have the bandwidth to really show up for what is important and fill up my cup too. 

Last week I took a rare and intense peak into the life and history of one of my four favoured friendships. Auriga brought us on a whirlwind tour of her teenage, formative and young adult life. I want to smash out a stunning update replete with images and insights that will capture with clarity the magic we were exposed to. I’m desperate to deliver with just enough words the closeness and clarity this journey introduced to our friendship. I want to bring the reader along on the funny, harrowing, heart-wrenching, exciting, and incredible journey we went on over four very busy and beautiful days.

But that magic lives in my heart now. And it is mine to have and I doubt I would be able to accurately describe the complex, charming, extraordinary and awe-inspiring magic I was exposed to.

So I won’t. 

I will perhaps write down some thoughts about the two beautiful people I finally met after hearing about them both for years. Auriga’s parents are formidable forces of nature in the most natural and wonderful way. She looked like a chuffed child sitting between them as we enjoyed sushi at a place over on Howard Hughes Drive.

How cute is Auriga and her parents are just lovely. The poodle is named Little Bit and I am more than a little bit obsessed with her she's perfect.

They have already lived long and incredible lives and are both witty, and brilliant and have poetry and pain sewn in their coat pockets from lives well-lived and mistakes made and learned from and stories that would make anyone laugh and cry. I wish them continued long, healthy, magical life. Along with all the other incredible over-achieving magical creatures we met. We need hope more than ever in these uncertain times. I have been decidedly charged up with some of that hope thanks to the magnificent and intelligent Americans I met on this adventure. 

And my heart hurts for them all as the world journey’s farther into patterns that many of us hoped would never be repeated.

Check in with your friends in the USA there’s a lot of feelings being felt right now and supporting mercy, kindness and intelligence is more important than I think it has ever been in my 46 years on this earth.

Thanks for reading.

I AM My Hero!

So, currently, the state of play is oscillating wildly between anger, shame, joy, grief, hope, despair, and then… probably some more anger.  This is my angry stage of the healing journey.  

The reason for this blog is to remind everyone who bothers to read my shit that the journey is about progress, not perfection and YOU are always the only person who can save yourself.  Absolutely futile waiting for someone to come along and rescue you.  You gotta do that shit for your own damned self.

The reason this has sprung to mind in particular lately is this.

My wonderful wife Damon is fucking next level lovely.  He is beautiful, kind, smart, brave, patient, ambitious and recently he’s suggested we ought to get fit and fabulous so we can get back to some healthy middle aged tantric type sex, which requires core strength and a sense of adventure.  Seriously, he is annoyingly wonderful it can make my eyes roll.

While all this is absolutely true, and we have had five lovely years as a dedicated couple and been married for nearly two years, I must take a moment to remind the world and myself that this safe and functioning relationship is a symptom of the intense and occasionally excruciating inner work I have been doing since my second severe nervous breakdown in 2019.

People sometimes elude to or outright say things like “Oh you are so lucky, Damon saved you!”

Erm.

What now?

I saved me.  I fucking got my drunk boundaryless ass out of the hostage situation with my first marriage.  I stared down my demons and now I dine quite comfortably with most of them.  I did the therapy and the work.  I built a healthy and accountable culture with a few good friends and severed ties with anyone who was not brave enough to be actively supportive of my evolution.  Steve and I remain civil.  That’s all I will say about that. And I choose that civility too.  Me.  I saved me. 

This does not mean I am not grateful for the support and accountability that are offered by the chosen few I let near me these days.

Had a lovely time at the P!nk concert with two of the winners of the Love Letter to Yourself competition and I couldn’t cope with how people-y the whole situation was after a while.  Luckily Sev felth the same way and we nipped out and headed home early.  There’s a word for being on the same page/frequency in Turkish and it is Bilmukabele.  It is more nuanced than this, but it is a state that I enjoy with Sev.  We are both beautifully broken and brave goddesses and unafraid to do the work that is required.

On the walk we talked about how much we have both changed and how at some point in our deeply feeling and cortisol laden journeys we each figured out that the issues in our lives always, always, remained rooted in us.  We’ve struggled and battled and felt uncomfortable in our own skin and been angry at people who Love us.  Today we are both doing pretty great if I might be so bold as to say so.  We have Loving stable partnerships and great friendships.  We are both exhausted a lot of the time, but on balance, pretty happy people.  Why?  Because we stopped blaming and deflecting and started very brave journeys inward.

We have boundaries, and see beauty everywhere.  We are talented, complicated and so fucking brave I can’t even begin to express how proud I am of both of us.  

Life’s not perfect and there’s still daily battles and a huge amount of effort required to stay on track and continue to evolve into the women we deserve to be.

But, I just needed to say to anyone who stumbles across this that it is you that will absolutely be your own greatest hero in this life.  

Big Love thanks for reading.