What’s going on? Things are a bit haywire, aren’t they? I sometimes wonder if it’s just because I have an enormous family (six brothers, three sisters and dozens of nieces and nephews who are doing their level best to ensure depopulation is never an issue…)
But yeah, there’s a lot going on.
Personally, life is mostly pretty calm for me right now though. After a tumultuous start to the year, moving house, two brushes with the virus, my only battle right now is trying to convince my husband to work a bit less. Oh and my left eye has stopped making tears so if I need to cry it will be just the right one, okay?
Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life) says eyes represent the ability to clearly see the past, present and future. Causes of disease or irritation may be a rejection of what is happening in life.
Affirmation: I look at life with joy and love. I create a life that will be nice to look at.
Liz Bourbeau (Listen To Your Body) says the left eye represents what a person sees in themself. This vision is largely due to the influence of the mother, since the left side of the body is associated with the feminine.
Affirmation: Shut up, Mum.
Wow, those affirmations really work!
My poor mum cops a hiding in my journal and therapy sessions. She’s actually such a good mum. One of those decent people who mean well all the time. It’s hard being a mum, I know, especially one to so many kids. When I’m teaching, I even joke that she voices my Inner Critic. (Spoiler: It’s not a joke. My mum spent all her mothering years trying to keep me safe and that’s all the critic is trying to do.)
I’m using eye drops and I’m supposed to lie on the sofa three times a day for ten minutes each time with a heat pack on my eyes. Who’s got time for that? Not me…
I will need to make time because a tearless eye is a metaphorical cry for help. I remember too well how awful it was to not be able to write last year with my dodgy shoulder. I need to take care of my eyes or pay the piper down the road.
I sometimes beat myself up about all the times I started writing in my younger life then stopped but now I realise I would have written a whole load of twaddle. In my late teens I would have written a heap of angsty garbage about not feeling like I fit anywhere and reuniting with my family of origin. I would have written some pretty damning stuff about my parents and their inability to give me what I felt I needed.
I would have written awful poems and love songs and there were at least three times when I would have penned a goodbye letter of some description because it all just felt too hard. I thought about leaving all the time. I just didn’t know where to go.
I beat myself up over that too, because I know plenty of women who packed up their lives and moved to the other side of the world in their late teens and twenties. I didn’t know I could do that; I had some health problems and a boy I was convinced I would die without.
(As Frances Mayes says in Under The Tuscan Sun, the surprising thing is that breaking up doesn’t actually kill you.)
It wasn’t only that I didn’t think I was capable of going to live on the other side of the planet or even just in another city, I didn’t really think I could. I didn’t know anyone who had done that back then, without family to go to like my brother did when he moved to Sydney to be nearer his in-laws. I didn’t know it was an option.
Look, there’s a reason I write about time travel and time slips. I have so many regrets. There are just so many things I wish I’d done and said. So many other things I wish I hadn’t done, hadn’t said. And yes, sometimes I waste my time thinking about all these things.
Yes indeed, dear reader, sometimes I waste time thinking about all the time I “wasted.”
About how stupid I was. About how many great opportunities a let slip through my butter fingers. About how I was faulty and how often I failed.
In her book, Rising Strong, Brené Brown says the most dangerous stories we make up (about ourselves) are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness. We must reclaim the truth about our loveability, divinity and creativity.
Telling ourselves all the reasons why we can’t have the life we truly want is denying out inherent worthiness.
But we don’t need to achieve squat to be worthy of love, to give over time to creativity, to be considered a child of the universe. We just ARE. Period.
You are. I am.
We are worthy of love just as we are and our creativity is essential to literally life itself. Creativity is the fundament of our species. Sure the scientists say our ancestors were all about the survival and procreation but they also made art, a lot of art, daily. The terracotta pots our ancient ancestors used to store food were beautifully decorated. Poets and singers and musicians have been around for as long as we’ve been able to use our voices. The museums are full of jewellery, sculptures, paintings, books…
Even after all the wars and famines and floods and volcanoes, what survives?
The art.
Don’t tell yourself stories that diminish your inherent worthiness. Make art instead and eventually that inner critic, no matter who they sound like, will quiet down and join in the fun.
You must be logged in to post a comment.