Dr A – the search for self November 25, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Into the new space , add a commentOver the last three months I’ve met with a gentle, clever, empathetic man to address work-place anxiety and to sort out what sort of work I want to do next.
He is a psychologist and a spiritual advisor who coached me over eight sessions to uncover skills I already had and remember the ones that I would need on this next path.
I am changing paths. The old methods of navigating don’t work as well as they used to. I felt frustrated with efforts to simply plug into a job description, defined by someone else. I’d outgrown the seek.com approach to happiness. It felt like a betrayal to a stronger signal, but that signal was unclear.
My approach to career and life management and its links to self-concept and self-efficacy have been heavily influenced by my late husband, a psychologist who specialised in the area.
I have a favourite book, “Dibs in Search of Self” by Virginia Axline. Miss A as Dibbs called his play therapist, is my ideal life coach. My expectations of a psychologist were akin to Dibbs’ – I expect clarity, empathy, intelligence, generosity, kindness, interest and respect.
“Dr A” had all of that – and gave me significant insights into my own process.
In the 1st session I learnt about metaphors. I love to talk, and A had an uncanny ability to listen, pace, raise the pitch and punctuate the conversation – not with a summary of what was said as much as an echo of intent – thereby keeping me dogged on message. He continually clarified the conversation so that I was able to drop ever deeper into the intuitive insightful part of my brain. This is psychology at its best.
In the 2nd session I learnt about the space between making decisions. When the first decision is made, and the 2nd not yet formed, there is often a no-space of waiting. That’s life.
In the 3rd session I learnt about gentleness – to myself and how change happens. I learnt about defiance.
In the 4th session I learnt about father – my own and my reproduced father roles that keep appearing. Joseph Campbell believes the search for father is the search for character and destiny – too true.
In the 5th session I learnt about vantage points. Why use language as if I was just beginning my life, when in fact I was half-way through a splendid well-lived life. It was a lesson in humility and humour.
In the 6th session I learnt about intuition towards wholeness and where play and joy comes in; I learnt I had to trust myself more and I learnt about prayer.
In the 7th session I learnt that anxiety had served me well to protect my heart and that it was ungrateful to judge it harshly now. I just need to adjust the hold it has on me.
In the last and 8th session – I learnt to view my own reflective drama and dance, and acknowledge my ability to engage and reflect the humanity of others again and again.
What a splendid teacher I had – thank you “Doctor A”, Have a great year next year and enjoy your own blessed pilgrimage.
Turquoise and the Seer November 9, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Into the new space , add a commentTalking of brick walls and hitting my head against them; I went to see a card reader to find out my future. Yes indeed, “come in spinner”, once again.
I went to the Mind-Body- Spirit Festival in Sydney last weekend and sought out a reader to reassure myself that this latest idea I have of taking a sabatical overseas for a year isn’t crazy. Of course it’s crazy but I’m addicted to finding the perfect psychic.
I do this – simply to validate what is already in my head. I do this on the understanding that if someone “out there” can see what I’m seeing then it just might be an event in the future which I’ve somehow tapped into.
Of course, it’s just as likely that those images in my head are somehow able to be “read” by a sensitive individual, who can tap into another’s conscious thoughts. I don’t know how it happens, nor do Iwant to find out. But I do remember reading that psychotics have this ability as well. Sort of a 6th, 7th or ? sense.
My search for the perfect psychic is a compulsive disorder. It holds a strange appeal, like a circus or carnival does; or fantasing that my lotto numbers will come in. The process makes makes me feel there’s a script already written on my life which a select few can scan and download.
I’ve not gone to this particular festival for some time, simply because I’d outgrown it. There are way too many auric cleansings and sprit guides – who all magically appear in pastel crayon on colour paper - for my liking. And of course whilst you fork out $80 to have some woman draw up an exotic (never ugly) handmaiden with wings and swirls, and stars and tiny golden budda statues, anyone would wonder why it doesn’t look like yourself, or your next door neighbour or the guy at the local club? Why is it invariably a Red Indian spirit guide with a big drum and a medicine stick? Or some cute oriental lass with a candle. Can someone tell me?
So along with other hopefuls, I queued outside the card reading stall – prepared to fork out 40 bucks for 30 minutes of diving insight from a complete stranger. Chosen because she had a nice face and she was free in time for me to make Yum cha with my friends. Sure I can fit in the future before lunch. Might whet the appetitie.
A delightful woman greeted me as I sat down in Row D number 7, she a nice warm face, an appropriate collection of crystals, decks of cards, a few angel statues – you know the drill.
Of course she told me everything I’d heard only 2 months prior from my regular psychic. The poor darling guessing along with the best of them, tapping into some all knowing RSS Feed of my future happiness. Mind you she was on the same feed as the previous psychic, so al lI had to do was validate with a rapid-fire “yes, I know that…..next…”. That of course is the down-side of going to psychics multiple times. If they’re good – you just hear the same stuff again.
When she ran out of news to tell me threw in…” so what’s with the little white fluffy dog”? Normally I’d have said – who knows, dog shmog? The problem was that I had seen the dog myself that morning in meditation. My response, quite appropriately was, ”Well don’t ask me – “that’s why I’m paying you!!”.
Now as I’m thinking of heading off to Europe for time out – painting and volunteering or working for board and food on some organic farm in France or Italy, I didn’t want questions – I wanted clear reassurance. 15 minutes in, she threw open to questions. Of course I asked her if she could see anything relating to the immediate future.
Quick as a flash she asks”Do you travel for your work? I see lots of colour, painting and Italy” “Are you buying a new car” Not a bad scan of my current secret fantasy, and the 2 hours I had spent that morning reasearching whether to buy or lease a vehicle overseas.
So for $40 I got a fabulous future. All planned the way I wanted. And of course I got the obligatory old Indian guide with a big drum and a winning smile. I also got a relationship thrown in. The only lead I had was that it would be someone with lovely hands who creates things, in Canada and who wears a turquoise ring and probably comes from a different race. So my future is with a Mexican or Indian carpenter or builder. OK I can work with that.
What is it that we need to go outside of ourselves to get the validation for some serious thinking and work only we can do for ourselves inside! Sigh.
By all accounts I’ll be some new age old witch with an Indian lover living in Canada chanting about the rising moon…
God only knows why I continue to ask..bring it on I say :)
All changed, changed utterly April 24, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Yellow , add a commentVenus disappears now and then.
Astrologically speaking, she’s retrograde – going nowhere fast!
Normally I’d “pah!” or “humbug” such news, but I’m starting to think there might be something in it. My life’s going nowhere fast, and as a Libran – ruled by Venus – I could well have fallen under her invisible, directionless sway.
To add “pish” to that “humbug” I’m wondering if disappearing or withdrawing isn’t totally appropriate right now, that is for someone who had a ‘fall’ and who needed to regroup and recover.
The only problem is that sooner or later you have to re-emerge or re-appear and the environment more often than not – has changed in the meantime.
I’m in the process of re-entering my atmosphere – parts of which have significantly changed whilst I was away. The most notable change is the nature and extent of my social network, and to a lesser degree my own preference for maintaining such a network.
This last fortnight, I wanted to fill a table at a charity ball. Everyone I asked was either too busy, or away or just unwilling. I felt a social failure and took it personally. My sister reminded me, rightly, that one can’t expect “to pick a bunch of flowers if you haven’t been tending the garden”.
One of the greatest losses in my garden though, was a dear friend who is just unattainable to me. Not just for the ball – but on a regular basis. She’s always too busy or moving too fast for me. She has nowhere to put me and those talks that I want to have with her. And as I don’t want to move at that frantic pace she undertakes, I think the friendship – as we know it- is doomed to fail. I hope she will always be in my life, as we have shared many stories, but I’ve changed as much as she, as our flight plans and preferences are different.
So thrown back on my own resources and lack of social network – I did what I normally do, 
I painted. I completed a painting that has been a focus for several weeks. The painting is of a Monarch butterfly emerging from a cocoon as a metaphor for my own process. The Monarch the only butterfly to make the Transatlantic crossing and resides in USA and Australia. It sits on my bedroom wall and I keep one eye on it as I fall asleep into my flights of fancy, and dreamscapes. The other eye I keep firmly fixed on Venus – awaiting her return each morning.
Like the painting and the loss of friends, things appear to happen from the outside-in, rather than from inside-out. The butterfly reminds me to take responsibility for my own changes – to friendships, directions, and choices.
I’m out of the cocoon now and I can’t return to it, no matter how much I wish I could, or how cold it gets out there on my own. I have to decide whether I’ll make a transatlantic crossing of my own – into the future or back to the memories from my past. Either way, I’ve got to fly – and life has to be lived.
In Esoteric writings, Venus is also the name given to Lucifer Morningstar – the brightest most beautiful, most loved angel before “the fall”. Now the name is associated with darkness, shadows, fear and the devil– which is “lived” spelt backwards. A sort of retrograde all its own.
The point of these ruminations is that each life has a myriad of splendid, brilliant moments and colours – from our past and surely into our future. With each breath we’ll unfurl just a little bit more of the colour, brilliance and splendour of our nature. With each retrograde we take stock and try to see things back-to- front for that new perspective.
For all of this – some of those moments, insights, gardens, and landscapes have to be left behind and to be let go of. We can leave them wrapped up in the cocoon of our history of what led us here. They’ve served us well. It is enough.
And in doing so – we accept that we’ve changed, as Yeats wrote so succinctly,“ changed utterly – a terrible beauty is born.”
Growing up in the Market Place March 23, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentI don’t like the murky boundaries between personal and organisational life.
I don’t mean the often discussed “work-life balance”. I mean the situation when the behaviours that are appropriate in the personal sphere are mindlessly and expectantly transported into the work arena where they just don’t fit.
We make friends at work because we spend the greatest amount of time there, but we often can’t maintain friendships through a work environment because of different “agendas” and motivations.
We also can’t expect to have friends with people at work unless the organisational status is in the same stratosphere. Someone gets ahead in the company because they are more skilled, more ambitious or perhaps because they knew how to source the support they needed.
Likewise that support team, often sourced from their “friends” complied with their choices for progress – many times because the supporter got to “piggy-back” on that relationship. This translates to a favour here and there – a chance for promotion or an opportunity that may or may not have been given to another. For the supporter – it’s an investment strategy, for the progressive one – it’s payment- in-kind.
The thing we can’t maintain, however, in this finely tuned exchange of energy, is the illusion of friendship. Personal comments and opinions are affected, the level of consistency and care varies, the quid-pro-quo invariably gets short of quo.
All of a sudden there’s an “ask” but no “reply”. There’s a “demand” but no “supply”, the relationship has changed. And someone feels hurt. It’s at this point that it gets messy.
Because we don’t grow at the same rate, and we don’t want the same things, the demander gets out of cycle with the supplier. He or she still moves on their projectile to their goal. The problem is, the supplier has changed their destination and they’re not on the same route. Because their job isn’t as all-consuming or singular, they’ve diversified. They’ve got more time for personal activities and pursuits and they’re not available, on-tap to supply the demander anymore.
This might come in the form of an overt disagreement or objection, or a failure to support the new direction. When they are now held to account for their objectionable response – the supplier is resentful, “If you didn’t want the answer, they intone, why did you ask the question?”
On the other hand, the demander who has often fed off the supplier for ideas, for support, for motivation, for encouragement is now also resentful. Instead of sourcing that support internally from a base of self-efficacy – they out-sourced it – making a quicker, more economical perhaps less mind-ful choice. But when that source dries up, the demander is at a loss, and resorts to the time-worn script and illusion of “friendship”. And things get “personal”.
“Personal” for a demander, however, comes with all the organisational sway at their command. Opportunities, requests, outcomes – the ball has always been in their court because they call the organisational shots. So what’s the answer?
Grow up.
We only have control over our choices and our relationships. We need to be clear on every choice we make and every relationship we invest in. If our investment strategy changes – we should be clear on that. And if we don’t seek favours or opportunities unless we’ve rightfully earned them, then we can rest easy.
We choose, for ourselves, what we want to personally achieve. At some stage, every supplier and every demander will get a wake-up call. Perhaps they’ve not been mind-ful Perhaps mistaking organisational behaviour for personal friendship they’ve misinterpreted relationships and been hurt or frustrated that the old modus operandi doesn’t fit. Perhaps a new player in the relationship has tilted the balance.
If we’re grown-ups we will behave in each sphere with appropriate behaviour with no need for manipulation or guilt or carrot and stick, or disguised favours. And then, perhaps we can all be honest with ourselves. And if we are honest there’ll be no need for tedious, predictable office politics that permeates every level of every organisation like some B grade Hollywood series.
If we can be honest – and support each other in a proper and equal way – each to their own, for their own, on their own – we might all get to grow up through our working life – as we expect to do in our personal one.
Ring them belles…ya gotta… February 26, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , 1 comment so farIt’s the end of the month and I just trawled through the Spam queue associated with my last post. I don’t know if I’m frightened or exhilarated.
I don’t know how Spammers spam, and I dare say there is an automated something that does the thinking for them…but something in the title or the content triggered a surfeit of the weirdest “stream of consciouness” one has ever read. It would have made Joyce’s Ulysses proud! Or in the very least provided the starting point for an excellent porn script.
I got a message from one of my readers today. What the?!! I have readers???
Well, in all honesty, the “reader” is a dear friend I met in my workplace who has kept in contact. As a thoughtful, clever young woman – whose finest gift is Love-ability - this friend, Belle let me know she was reading and enjoying such spam-worthy words. Bring it on Belley-Mac-Bellestar!
I was gratified. Belle knows how to write.
My posts are now punctuated, as if on an internal bio-rhythm, by the month. As if magically, there is a yearning to spout some new thought, frame it reasonably sensibly, and then shape it into a manageable structure, to send out to the void. God! I think that was a line from a hollywood movie that featured online communication. Save me from filmic cliches! Is my porn-inducing script just the beginning?
What the hell. Cliche, smeeshay (yiddic type word spelt phonetically). I am as cliched as they come.
I have just joined a local theatre and am about to audition for a middle aged woman’s role!
Therefore, of course, I watched the Oscars because they were on. At this point it wasn’t too dificult to connect the timing of the Oscars with the grand conjunction of my own thespian pursuits (enough to make any decent astrologer blush). I had to watch them.
And just to add cliche to smeeshay, I then followed up with a dose of “Tootsie” out of my DVD collection. Of course this was just to ensure I was wholly in the mood for my new life as a suburban star… (Please note, with all due respects to Dustin- God! isn’t Phillip Seymour so much better – Hoffman, that does not make me a drag queen, or a nun-botherer!) …. Sigh.
Soooooo – no great thoughts this month. It’s Dad’s birthday tomorrow.. I’m gratified that I can memorise 2 monologues a 24 hour period, and I am feeling pretty chuffed about most of my life.
loveya belle thanks for not being spam xx
There is a crack February 2, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentRing the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
So goes the Leonard Cohen Anthem. Cohen is a doyen still performing in his 70s, whose poetic alchemy is so strong and message so sustainable, that a brand new generation is in love and profoundly. But what of this light?
Another excellent artist, James Gleeson explains it as an integral ointment to the process of painting:
If the Light is right the darkness will remain
to hold the form in stasis.
Something will be that had not been before
As a amateur painter I can relate to the Gleeson, as a broken individual I am addicted to the Cohen.
I paint to retreat and make meaning of things. Right now I’m painting a scene on the river at Woy Woy on the Central Coast of NSW. The painting is of the home of my grandparents. A retirement home they gave up, when they moved back to Sydney to look after us following the death of my mother.
My need to paint this scene, is parallel to my need to make sense of what home means.
The unfinished work sits on an easel in my spare room. And it’s as if there’s a presence in the house. As I pass by the open doorway and look in, it stares back. And I wonder – is it working? Should I stop now when the potential is still there, before I stuff it up? Do it like it? Would I know?
Undertaking the actual painting is like navigating a battlefield – one part of you motivated and defending the perfect vision of home, memory, life and loss. The other part, questioning and criticising your choice of colour and topic, and always with the eternal chant, “You’re not a painter”, “You’ll muck it up, you know you always do”…crack..
To add insult to injury, watching the progress of a painting is like caring for the wounded. Wandering the corridors with a lamp, you’re motivated by care, diligence and hope. Wanting to keep it alive, to rub it back, add more and then take off some.
And compelled at the open door, as if addressing an ailing patient, you whisper aloud, “You certainly made the right choice adding in that central focus point”. “You did well with the tone and depth”. But always when you turn away, if you’re honest, you’ll admit it could just as easily turn septic with the next encounter.
And it can happen at any time. These mistakes that take us on a certain path, unlike the one we started out on, these are the cracks and breakages and they are part and parcel of the artistic – healing process. Gleeson writes,
From the known a newer resonance
shaking old doors open to a separate incarnation
Last week I got an email from my niece, Georgie. Along with it – she’d attached the copy of a beautiful painting she’d 
just completed. It was the way she processed the loss and separation from her long-time boyfriend. The work was done on silk, full of abundant flowers – each with a symbology of loss, meaning, honour, fidelity and care. Not the work of a depressed woman – but certainly the work of a mind-ful one.
George stayed with me following the death of my husband a couple of years ago. She’d graduated and had given herself a year before applying for college. Most nights we’d sit out on the veranda talking. We spoke about life and hope and loss. We talked of death and battlefields and of caring for the wounded.
As much as you would hope it wouldn’t happen to an 18 year old, she had lost a friend in a car accident only months before and had seen it first-hand.
Georgie painted her way out of that grief as well. Embellishing a plaster cast she had made of this girlfriend’s torso some weeks before the accident It was a living canvas – potent with life, as it should be when you’re 18. And it was now frozen in time, attended to by the painter. So she took that cast and painted it with decorative meaningful emblems and gave it to the girl’s mother. The act was classy, brazen and inspired by love.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
For you darling G
Imaginal cells and grout lines January 5, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Yellow , 1 comment so far
I’m starting the New Year of 2009 with fresh new tiles throughout my living space and thinking about Caterpillars.
As the last stage in my home transformation process I’m surprised at the level of disquiet and unease the change has caused. I’ve replaced the tired dusty 25 year old carpet with cleaner lighter tiles - marked out with cream white grout lines.
For the first day in this new environment I found myself gingerly stepping around and over the grout lines like a child or an OCD sufferer avoiding cracks in the foothpath. I couldn’t get away quick enough, away from the potential dissonance that comes with a big purchase or job. Was it the right choice of colour? Is the job a good job? Why do I miss the carpet?
I escaped to my sister’s house 2 hours away for Christmas and New Year. Normally a haven where the brain slips into neutral, the body goes into idle and the heart gently opens. Calming, loving, no disquieting elements at all. A fabulous end of the year. As the weather proved to be a delight, we swam each day in warm Christmas water, retired early and slept in late. And during each day, the most energetic thing we found ourselves doing was making a pot tea for whoever was laying around nearby.
Only this year was different. There was a discontent, a restlessness, and the ever present grief. Old feelings in a reliable setting, not unlike my now defunct carpet. Comments in passing, spiralling thoughts on the eve of a new year: Why was I alone? Was I driving people away? Would my life always be like this? Why was I such a worrier? Why didn’t I have more friends? Any friends? Why did I have to invade my sister’s life.
On New Year’s Eve it peaked. Friends, new and old, were invited around. There was predictable conversation and brand new people. The house was squeaky clean, the windows glistened, the table was over flowing with our signature dishes, the garden awash with sand-bagged candles, glowing as the sun descended. My wish for the event was that it heralded a new year full of wonderfully creative loving people, as well as an open hearted attitude in myself to new adventures and experiences.
There were 2 conversations that evening that proved to be testament to the wish. The first was with a long-standing friend of my sister’s – who is opiniated, funny, wounded and guarded. Having just broken up with her boyfriend, and undergoing profound family dramas, she was transmitting nervously most of the night, old scripts, old lines, sure laughs, side-swipes and commentary. In truth it was exhausting to watch and interact with. But then again, I had a head full of grout lines and sustainable fear of the future.
The 2nd conversation was with the new gay girlfriend of a (previously assumed straight) family friend. She was affirming, interested, gentle, alive, abundant, happy and in love. When you’re in love – is there a sweeter place? I found her delightful.
I got what I wished for. It was time to let the old way go, the old friends or friends of friends; the old way of worrying about everything; the old way of standing on my turf. And it was time to embrace the new. But how?
To transform yourself is hard. It’s hard enough changing the external environment, but now I have to fac
e the disintegration of my old self. Luckily my best teacher of all (my sister Cate) rang me with the answer – Imaginal Cells.
When a Caterpillar turns into a Butterfly it has to disintergrate and disolve first. Then almost by magic, imaginal cells appear to help the move into a Butterfly. All of this is done, unseen within a chrysalis. There’s a period of waiting and a total surrender to the process. When the Butterfly emerges it’s hard to link the two creatures so tranformed is the shape, look, feel, weight and scope.
If that means I have to walk on the grout lines, I will! Just Imagine then, what I’ll be able to do.
All the world’s a stage…… December 15, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Coming Back , add a commentI attended a workshop on the weekend called “Play of Life”
The training program is run by my very dear friend and her husband who designed and created it. For information on the program – you can visit their website.
It’s a program that grew out of the disciplines and philosophy of psychodrama wher
e the client can “show” rather than “tell” issues and life situations they need to deal with. By “showing” their current and ideal situation utilising a 3-D stage/play of small figures and props, they see for themselves the role, relationships, dynamic and often the first step to making it better.
It reminds me of the old fashioned sand-play, but taken to the next level. The program involves various techniques. One of my favourites was a technique to envision the ideal solution to a problem then envision what helps you move towards it and what enables you to move away from it. You strengthen one, and lessen the other. By using a series of well structured investigative, diagnostic questions a person can glean greater insight into their own patterns, roles and limiting behaviour.
We spend so much time creating our stories and narratives. And part of that creative work includes filling in the untenable gaps in life and our ideals. We plug up the holes with addictions, defence patterns, and often unrealistic mental constructs. For me, drinking my way through grief was better than facing the black hole of loss.
With this program I could “show” myself and another (witness) what was really going on. I could get out of the area of talking/telling /language and go straight to where the emotions and memories live. That’s why it’s so powerful – one can’t lie (that is if you’re serious about fixing the problem.)
For me, the wealth of the program can be encapsulated into the 2 main insights I took away:
1. That we can only change our own behaviour and we can often begin that change with a small step.
2. That we play roles in life -some helpful, others not so helpful. Once we are able to describe that role and see it for what it is – we can change it, just as one assumes and drops a role on a stage.
I love workshops that enable learning – specifically if that learning is going to make my life more loving and expansive. With my love and background in theatre I loved this sort of learning especially. I’d also done psychodrama before with very helpful results and so I was surely in my element.
The group was comprised of insightful, humble, loving individuals. These learning groups always are. People that want to grow are invariably interesting. The group were a microcosm of society and a rich mix of types, some introverted and extraverted. Some were willing and able to externalise their insights in the feedback sessions – no matter how painful. Others were able to witness someone else’s work, without having an opinion – not interpreting, just reading the signals and signs. We all loved it.
Mainly because the 2 days were facilitated by a delightful individual – a friend to many of the group. He is a young man – committed to caring and enabling the growth of others. A man who’d found a great vehicle for insights into his own process, the meaning of why we do what we do, and a way he can help. He was getting his trainer “P” plates, and he passed with flying colours – and well deserved.
The first night of the weekend, I was so exhausted I virtually collapsed asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. And I dreamt.
I dreamt of a stingray threatening the safety of my twin sister and myself. We were swimming in unclear, opaque 
water, and I warned her of this hidden threat To avoid contact with Stingray, I urged her to scramble onto a pier out of the water. My sister, though, remained in the water and was touched as the Ray nudged past and around her. Instead of dying, or being stung, my sister rode on the back of this huge magnificent beast – as if were a flying carpet. And as she did, the Stingray morphed into something less ominous and more graceful. It grew a neck and head of a swan, which my sister caressed.
I took the memory and elements of that dream into the 2nd day of the workshop. On this day I set up my ideal future – including the chance to love someone again, and to live in a fuller way. My intention, in this play of life, was to shed the role of fearful resigned loner and assume a new role of courageous giver and lover.
For me the Stingray’s beautiful transformation was testament to this desire. Change and growth were possible, if we stay immersed in the emotional water – despite the lack of vision and clarity and fear of being hurt.
Now totems in dreams are a big part of my psychic library. And both the Stingray and Swan evoke stronger intuition, protection and discernment. My own more pedestrian associations link it to the sudden and surprising attack on a well known Australian naturalist who was fatally pierced in the heart by a Stingray. No guesses there about my own lesson.
Later that night, when I returned home I spoke with my sister Gab over the phone. In tandem, we romped through the events of our respective weekends. She told me of her delightful stay with dear friends at Noraville, on the Central Coast of NSW; I told her of my weekend – the people I’d met, the insights I’d gleaned. Just as we were about to phone off.. she said,
“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you. The group went snorkelling today over the rocks at the end of the beach, as the tide was low and one of the blokes saw biggest stingray he’d ever seen. And even though it scared the life out of him, there was something extraordinarily beautiful about it.”
Making friends with the dark side November 27, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentA couple of times lately I’ve been forced to admit openly, I have a shadow side. And it’s well and truly alive.
Nothing new about that concept.
However, this last week in particular has led me to ruminate why it is that some people have a genuinely sweeter nature than others. Kinder, thoughtful, empathetic – you know, all those qualities your parents and teachers tried to instill in you and those you and your therapist(s) tried to re-activate or even find!
One expects to find those qualities shining brightly in younger people – merely because life knocks most of it out of you the more years you stay walking on this planet. And of those older people – my peers and older - who still manage to hold onto the qualities, well they’re one step away from sainthood.
This week just gone, I farewelled one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. No she didn’t die but she did change jobs and after 11 or so years it felt like a little death. We’d traversed so much landscape together, she was there for me at my nadir and I trust, in some small way I have been there for her at her lowest point.
I admired how she left. A lot of us would skulk away, shunning those who treated us badly and leaving the rest with a gaping hole (given that we are soooooo fabulous, they won’t realise what they’re missing till I’ve gone!). I know I would do just that. I couldn’t risk finding out how few people actually liked me. I couldn’t face the fact that only the die hard loyalists turned up to my farewell. I have tried it before, and there was only a handful – so I’m right on that score.
But in the case of my friend – there were all staff emails, there were enormous group bbq’s there were farewell afternoon teas, dinners; it was as fine a farewell as any of Nellie Melba’s. And she deserved every one of them.
When we are couragepous to mark significant moments like departures, we give ourselves a great gift – the gift of love. We acknowledge our own splendidness and we play it out on whatever stage we strut our stuff.
When we are not courageous, we remain skulking in the shadows. Afraid of rejection and afraid of love. And in that shadow we make friends with the dark. We believe, often erroneously that we belong there.
When you are there, though, it gives you a great chance to make peace with what you find there. Your own dark thoughts and bitchy behaviour, your limiting beliefs and fear. You also great a great view of the light - In its absence.
Whether you can step into that light, spotted at times of transition, is merely a matter of choice and courage. Friends like mine however model it well and give me a gift far beyond the norm. A lesson on living well.
All the best dearest s.t.g.
About Dad November 9, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentWe had a reunion yesterday. It was also Dad’s anniversary.
My brother gave us a gift of photos – scanned from a box of old slides he’d collected from the family home. Most of the slides, he reported, were mouldy and useless, but he had managed to salvage a collection that he was able to digitalise.
My brother is one of the kindest people you could meet. Unlike me, his older sister whose response to life is sharp (alas more acerbic than insightful), Chris has a gentle spirit that doubles as a spiritual balm. Don’t get me wrong, he’s no saint – he’s a soldier and a guardian of memories.
The photos are rich and loaded with such balm. As he showed us the show, from his laptop, amidst the glare of an overdue sunny day, we caught a glimpse of a past.
Some images were in shadow with only a hint to their identity – was that Marie? No that’s Gel – see on the left, what was her name? Others were so fragile and ethereal as if painted on rice paper, torn at the edges and only just able to hold their colour. And some, as if painted on a still wet canvas, pulsated redolent and vibrant, transporting us immediately to that shared place in time.
A time shared between us as an immediate family but also shared across our extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. So there we were gathered around a laptop in a sunny park on a picnic 40 years after most of the photos were taken.
The reunion was organised this year, 2 years after our inaugural one, by my cousin, also called Chris, an equally heart-centred person to my brother. She is mid way in a larger family, and the same age as my older sister. There was always a cousin who was the same age as someone else.
There were shared birthday parties, Christmas parties, picnics, and religious rites of passage. And there were shared and common Grandparents who were central to the concept of family; they were formidable, immovable and almost sacred in our collective identity.
Dad had clearly started photographing after the death of his wife, for we couldn’t find any photos our Mother. I can relate to his strategy – capture everything you see, try to figure out what it is you’re seeing and then figure out whether you want to be a part of it.
I’m glad he did. I’m glad he thought we were important enough to photograph. I’m glad he came back from the abyss that goes hand in hand with death, an abyss so beguiling so tempting you want to fall headlong into it. I’m glad he wanted to come back to us.
My brother is like my dad. They look like each other – so says my cousing Brian and he should know he’s a great observer of life and people. I agree with Brian. And I’ll go one step further and say my brother is like my dad in intention and drive. Attending to the bones he trawled through a record of life – our life – and brought back the pearl of great price. A testament to love.
I am profoundly grateful to you darling bro. I love you.
