These last two weeks have been incredibly sad for my family, especially my mom and I, after losing my beautiful father just over two weeks ago on the 29th of June 2013.  We are really feeling heart sore, and for the moment, this poem by W.H. Auden truly expresses how we feel ...

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I love you Georgie - you are deelpy and sorely missed xxx

Another one of my joys is cooking, and today with the weather being a bit wet and mis, I decided that I just HAD to make some yummy, fresh, tomato soup!  While making it, I was singing along to some of the songs on the radio, feeling really content.  I was also secretly anticipating the delicious taste and the enjoyment my family would have while tucking into the soup. I was in my joy.

Even though I had some bread in the fridge, at the last minute, I decided that freshly home made soup deserves freshly baked bread, We have an amazing new bakery just down the road, and the baker uses only 3 basic ingredients in his bread - stone ground flour, water and his own home grown yeast.  No additives or anything else!  So off I tootled down the road to get the bread and then onto school to fetch my kids, really excited to nurture them with my joyful soup.

It was delicious and I concluded that in living your joy, you are serving others.  In this particular case, it was my family.

I absolutely love this quote!!

“Don’t ask what the world needs.

Ask what makes you

COME ALIVE

AND GO DO IT.

Because what the world needs

Is people who have come alive.”

H. Thurman

Sometimes I think we are all so busy looking for the bigger purpose in life and finding out what it is we are "meant to be doing with our lives."  We also stress about having to serve others.  I have come to learn, that the best way to serve others, is to live your joy and in doing so you are serving the world in the best way possible.  One of my biggest joys is sharing what I have learnt; hence my love of coaching, teaching, workshops, circle groups, motivational talks, blogs etc.  I have also come to learn that it is so intrinsically a part of me that I don't even need to try and think about it.  I do it all the time, naturally.  For example when I read an amazing article, I start emailing it to all those I think will enjoy it too, before I have even finished reading it; or when over- hearing two moms in the car park the other day, talking about their children and how they are battling with discipline - I'll go and sheepishly tell them about a book I read that would really help; or a workshop that will really help someone with something they are specifically struggling with; or  a piece of advice that I have picked up; or an amazing website or blog I have discovered.  I haven't even thought about it; it is just such a strong urge and a huge joy.

So think about what fires you up and happens so easily for you.  Often those joys might seem small or irrelevant, but when you give it some thought, you realise just how much joy it gives you and how it serves others.

Look at your energy levels when you do something that is joyful to you.  It is a huge clue as to what your joys are. Another way of discovering some of your joys or strengths, is to look at some of Marcus Buckingham's work, in particular, "Now discover your strengths" where you can identify your top 5 strengths and then see how you use those in your everyday life and how much joy they give you and how they can serve others and yourself.

Go live your joys and be alive!!

Hello Again!!

I haven’t been very active on my blog at all these last few months.  2013 has brought on a whole new life for my family and there has been a lot of confusion, fear, anger, tears, deep sadness, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness as well as calm, patience, faith, adjustment, miracles and love.

My dad has been in hospital for 100 days today!  Can you even begin to imagine that?

 A big, yet relatively standard procedure (inserting a stent into a blocked artery in the neck) with a one night stay in hospital didn’t go as planned and led us into a completely new and terrifying world. This world of the ICU with its doctors, nurses, drips, blood tests, brain scans, x-rays, beeping machines and artificial lights was unchartered territory for us and brought with it a sea of emotions. Every day seemed to take us deeper and deeper into this manic place; we were lost, confused, bewildered and the angst and helplessness was completely relentless.  There was no way of getting out.  It was like we were lost at sea. And every time we seemed to gather some hope or make progress, something else would happen and we drifted further and further into the deep, dark ocean away from our place of safety and normality.   At first my dad was conscious, aware of it and trying to deal with it all – his changed body, his fear and the uncertainty. But after a second stent procedure on the other side of his neck (which ironically went really well), he slipped into a coma a few days later and it was just my mom, myself and members of our close family.  We had lost him in all this madness, never to regain him again, because one thing is for sure, the man I have known as my father, is gone.  Forever!

There is no way, after what he has endured in these last few weeks, that he can ever be the same again, physically or mentally.  His fight for survival was so enormous and the sheer exertion of trying to stay alive has battered him and his beautiful, strong body, like a storm would ravage a little boat in crashing waves.   

Over time, he has regained consciousness and where he has been, we do not know.  Where he currently is at, we also do not really know.  He is not able to speak because of a ventilator pipe down his throat, although he is slowly being “weaned” off that; he is in isolation as he is ‘carrying’ one of these hospital superbugs that he managed to survive; his right arm is lame and his right leg very weak.  We still don’t know from one day to the next whether or not he will make it out alive!  Even if he does, the path ahead is still full of so much uncertainty and there will be many more challenges to be faced, mainly by him again, but also for my mom, who will become his main care giver.  Does he still have enough strength for the road ahead? Will he be able to cope mentally with such enormous changes in his life?

 I am currently reading Elizabeth Lesser’s “Broken Open” and in it she mentions one of her good friends having had a major stroke, and she quotes him, “Illness had shattered my self image and opened the door to a new chapter in my life … The stroke was like a samurai sword, cutting apart the two halves of my life.  It was a demarcation between two stages.  In a way, it’s been like having two incarnations in one: This is me, that was ‘him’.” Can my dad cope with that?  Will he find the mental strength to deal with it all without sinking into a deep, black hole of depression?  I pray that he can. And I pray that like the mythical Phoenix Bird, he can arise from the ashes, and come to know his true magnificent self.

Then of course there’s my brave, brave mother.  Her whole world as she has known it has also collapsed around her and she too has been stumbling out of the ruins and is walking along this incredibly long and hard road, helped along by amazing friends and family.  But at the end of the day, she goes home alone to an empty house and bed, wondering what the day ahead holds for her and my dad.  And like my dad, I pray too that in time, she can find and choose light, hope, meaning and joy.

And in all of this pain, there have also been miracles, compassion, prayers, touch and love beyond all boundaries.  For all of that, I am deeply, deeply grateful.  As the rabbi Yehudah Fine, who had a major car accident and underwent his own painful journey said, “I would simply say that suffering and crisis transform us, humble us, and bring out what matters most in life.”

Life in the hands of a doctor ...


Well the procedure is done and life flows through his veins and through him. Amazing how a life can be held in the hands of a doctor, his knowledge and experience or lack thereof. And of course the Divine working through those very hands.

Thank you

Life in the balance ... 

Today is a very big day in our family.  I'm sitting here quietly next to my dad as he lies here in hospital, awaiting surgery that will either increase the life flow into his brain or take it away completely.  It all feels extremely surreal and at one level totally incomprehensible. To have to make a decision about a procedure that will either improve your life or take it away. And for that decision to be made and the procedure to happen the next day. A huge weight to have to bear; wondering, was last night his last night, is today his last day? Absurd really. And for him to have to sit with that and process that and find some peace in it as he goes into the operating theatre.

It all started out as a 'small' procedure and escalated from there; again life confirming that we never know how our lives can turn out and so to be present in each moment and to find joy and gratitude in each moment. Gratitude for our amazing bodies and the many, many things in life we take for granted, like being able to drink a cup of tea. 

So we sit here, afraid and having faith. Faith in the bigger picture, sometimes not always understanding, but having faith.

I really enjoy this poem. It mentions that the act of attention is a form of prayer or meditation and has the same value as taking the time to be still. 

I also really love the question at the end of it.  

Enjoy.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver