Emotions

Strength of the eternal Spirit (childhood, sickness and death)

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 3 Comments

I will be staying with my mother for a few days from early tomorrow until Wednesday afternoon. I feel very anxious about the visit for several reasons. It is always strange going back to the home I lived in for a brief time as a teenager; that is, before going to university and moving out for good. But this visit has extra complications and emotions attached. It will most likely be the last time I stay in that house, where my mother has lived for almost 30 years, because she needs to move somewhere without stairs. Her health is deteriorating due to heart failure and lung fibrosis, so I’m not sure how much worse she will be since I last visited in early February. I speak to her a lot on Facetime and we text, but such mediums are limited for knowing how someone really is. Also, Mum is stoic and independent to a fault, and thinks she’s protecting people by not giving them the full picture. It is hard to know quite how well or otherwise she is until I see her. She has relatives nearby but we’re not a close family, so I don’t get much information from them, even though they visit my mum regularly.

In addition, my sister is driving us all (my mum, me and my niece) to the grave of my other niece who died of cancer in 2019, age 34, both to leave flowers for her and to scatter my dad’s ashes (he died in 2015). To make this extra surreal and potentially painful, my niece’s grave is where my mum’s final resting place will be, when she succumbes to the heart failure. We will all be aware of it but of course it will be left as the great unspoken. How on Earth does one even begin to make conversation along the lines of ‘one day we will be visiting you here’? You just don’t. But it will be on everyone’s minds all the same.

I know my mum won’t really be in the grave, just as my niece isn’t, and my dad is not the ashes that we will be scattering. Wherever their spirits are/will be, they’re not part of the Earth, just as none of us alive today are our physical bodies and the dust they are made from. We are the spirits that inhabit them. When our body returns to Earth, so does our Spirit return to the place from which it came. I can’t begin to rationalise that because the mind cannot understand it. It is the ‘peace that passes all understanding.’ We cannot think about it logically, we just KNOW, with deeper wisdom, that this is the case; our Spirit is eternal consciousness and will fly free, as it is our true nature.

Remembering such truth is of course far more tricky while in the presence of your childhood family. Was it Ram Dass who once said ‘if you think you’re awakened, go spend a week with your parents?’ There’s so much wisdom in that statement. Our parents trigger us, remind us how far we have to go, as well as, positively, how far we have come. Throw in old age, sickness, and death, and that’s about as triggered as you can get.

I am ready to go. I hope it will be a positive, precious experience, and a reminder of the fragility of this Earthly life as well as the enduring power of Love.

I will be back. Thank you for reading. Many blessings x

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What are you good at?
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This is a weighted question for me. I would say, overall, I am good at being honest with myself, but that has a flip side. I am very self-aware, which is mainly a good thing, but without some discernment it is easy to fall into the trap of becoming too intimate with my faults. Seeing and learning from my faults is a good thing. Judging and criticising them is not. In fact, when I criticise myself I have succumed to the past conditioning which created an image of myself as worthless and a failure. The thoughts quickly turn into the familiar narrative of how it’s pointless trying because I’m so useless and before I know it I’m back there again – hurting.

But I can see it. And this is my gift.

As a child, I saw how people’s minds and emotions worked. I wrote stories about them. I had not developed a full self image at that point. I was in touch with my intuition. I wrote to God and made characters express the feelings that I was unable to. I didn’t think about or analyse anything, it just flowed from me like a river from Source. It was only after I was forced to change schools at age ten that it all went wrong. And of course, age ten is pretty pivotal in terms of ego development. I’m talking here of healthy ego or personality development, when we learn who we are in the world, what we like, what we want.

I started the new school a shell of the child I had been previously. I was scared due to what was happening at home and school was no longer a refuge. I was socially anxious and had been removed from everyone I knew. The kids didn’t know what to make of me. In typical kid-style, they took the mickey. A year later I started secondary school, still friendless. The bullying started. I had always been an introvert but now I was completely withdrawn and scared of people. So rather than developing a healthy personality, I saw myself as an idiot who nobody liked.

I have already written about the sadness around my writing when I started university so I won’t repeat it again. Suffice to say, I suffered a lot through school but writing became an outlet for my emotions and something I considered myself to be good at, until I lost faith in that too. But now, as an adult in my forties, I see and understand that writing was not something that belonged to me; instead it flowed from me, and it’s not something that can be lost, just like the essence of who I was as a child cannot be lost. In a way I have become full circle; I am integrating what the child in me knew with the maturity of age and the challenges I have faced, and realising that what I believed about myself at school was an illusion.

Self-awareness is a gift. Writing is my offering. It is my joy, my passion, and I still like to believe I am ‘good’ at it because that is something that matters to me. In writing, I understand my story, discern my faults, see where I am caught. In writing, I allow the beauty of Divine love to channel through me, remind me I am okay as I am. There is a balance. There is always a balance.

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Have you ever broken a bone?
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Yes, my right leg when I was a year old. How it happened is shrouded in mystery because, as with all my early childhood, no one openly talks about it. What my mother dripped into conversation over the years is that I slipped from her arms at the bottom of the stairs. I asked my oldest sister about it once, when I was about 11 years old and staying with her (which I hated; she didn’t want me there). She is 14 years older than me. In answer to my question, she said ‘What are you thinking about that for?’ making a clear point that I should not be thinking or talking about it. I took the hint and never mentioned it again.

I don’t believe that there is any sinister explanation for my broken leg. Rather, the secrecy around it is typical of the atmosphere I absorbed into my very being as a child, knowing that there were ‘things’ that were hinted at, dropped into the conversation, but I wasn’t allowed to ask about. Another example is when my mother asked my father to move out (after years of not wanting me to speak to him, despite us all living in the same house). My mother was complaining about him to me, something she always did (and continued to do until his death), so I wasn’t taking much notice as I hated it when she did that anyway, and she suddenly muttered under her breath ‘getting a divorce.’ I said ‘No!’ and she simply said ‘Yes, I can’t take anymore.’ And that was that. A few days later my father told me that my mother had asked him to move out. He asked me whether I wanted him to go. All I could say was ‘I don’t mind.’ Truly awful words. But such was the fear of speaking my truth in that household. Indeed, the fear of speaking.

I accept now that my mother was locked in so much pain and resentment towards my father, as well as suffering from mental illness, that she didn’t have the capacity to consider my feelings or let it occur to her that I had any at all. She dealt with things the way she has always done: packing them into boxes in her mind and carrying on. But she let them spill over when it suited her; mutterings under her breath, flashes of anger, comments like ‘the worst mistake of my life’ knowing I would see and hear them but, being the well behaved child I was, wouldn’t say a word. I suspect it was her way of reaching out, as strange as that sounds. She needed my companionship, wanted to express herself in the only way she knew how. She had no concept of my fear. And I was remarkably good at hiding it, being strong, moulding myself into the listening ear.

Returning to my broken leg, I’ll never know the truth, but I suspect she was at the top of the stairs when she dropped me and I tumbled down. These things happen. I don’t blame her for that. What I wish is that she could simply say ‘Oh yes, I dropped you, it was terrifying, you just fell.’ We could talk openly about it. But my guess is that she, too, was afraid. It was yet another thing she had to force away in the depths of her mind, lest it reflected badly on her. Mum has chronically low self esteem, the outcome of her own childhood. It so often is. The irony is that if she could have come out of her shell and dealt with her own pain, we’d have both been okay. But isn’t that the epitome of the human journey?

I know this post paints my mother in a terrible light. She is actually a very sensitive, caring, intelligent woman, and we get on well now, within reason (she still doesn’t do emotions). Her mental illness has passed. Her physical health is not good. I have healed a lot of my emotional pain. I have found acceptance. We relate as adults. We never talk about the past. Maybe in that way we will remain as we always were. But we talk more openly and freely about our lives now, today, and I can be thankful for that.

The quest for happiness and finding peace

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Yesterday I was reading one of my journals from 2008, in which I wrote:

“Everything is like an endless struggle -wanting happiness but never really getting there “

I believed that happiness was waiting for me ‘out there’ in some distant place or state of being. It made complete sense given the fact I was caring for my severely disabled and very challenging 7 year old son while being extremely unwell myself. The situation was unbearable. While social services had thrown all the help they could at us, I was barely surviving. I wanted my life – as I knew it – to be over. Whilst I did go into some very dark places, I had enough presence of mind to know that I didn’t actually want to die. I didn’t want to leave my child. I wanted to be happy, I just didn’t know what it was or where to find it.

I didn’t realise then that happiness does not exist in some other place or even necessarily in the present moment because – if we’re honest – many people’s present moments are absolutely horrible. And while they may help, quite often no amount of shifting perceptions or affirmations or prayers change the realities that some people are unfortunate enough to have to endure. I tried all of them. I thought if I was spiritual enough my situation would improve: I’d recover, my son’s behaviour would become manageable, and I’d finally be happy. What I now realise is that it was never really happiness I was after in the first place; it was inner peace.

Happiness is a temporary state that usually depends on external circumstances. Inner peace goes deeper. It’s our true state, existing beyond shifting thoughts and emotions and circumstances. If the self was a lake, happiness and other temporary emotions would be the ripples that come and go, subject to disturbances such as stones and twigs and boats, whilst inner peace is its depth.

When we go deeper, we realise that the present moment truly is the holy grail because it is only when we stop and pay attention to the now that we tune into the stillness of the lake that exists within us. We are no longer being thrown around at the complete mercy of what life throws at us. Whilst outer circumstances may be dreadful and cause immense pain and apparently endless suffering, we know that the strength and magnificence that lies within us is truly endless.

Moreover, when we connect to the stillness within, we access our Divine truth. We don’t see our thoughts and perceptions as the ultimate reality because we have experienced a greater reality. We will have the wisdom to know whether we can and should change the situation we are in, or whether to walk away, or there is nothing to be done but tap into the Divine power of acceptance.

This is far from easy. In my case, it took me seven more years before I reached rock bottom and realised what Divine wisdom was asking of me. It went so against the grain of what I, my ex, and indeed society, thought a mother should be. I was brought to my knees and you know what the saying goes – if life brings you to your knees, pray. Well I was so angry at God that I neglected my spiritual path for quite a few years. I didn’t understand why I was so ill, why I had a child with such difficulties, why my life had to be so hard. I still feel the pain. I had to make a very tough decision that affected me and those around me for many years. I felt immense guilt for a long time but it was the only decision I could have made.

I’m not in the terrible situation I was back then; in fact my outer life is quite peaceful all in all, only my thoughts and emotions cause disturbance. I am not always happy but I understand that happiness was never something to gain; it is something we experience at times, if we are fortunate. Being in touch with our natural state can inform our thoughts, emotions, and experiences for the better, but sometimes circumstances just hurt. In such times I remember the calm lake that is my true Divine nature and know that whatever disturbs me in life, I am safe. I connect deeply with my inner self, and I am at peace.

The power of human kindness

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 4 Comments

In case anyone ever doubted it, even the most small acts of kindness make a real difference.

Years ago as a sixteen year old I went on holiday with my mum. It was a particularly painful holiday for me because I had to break up early for the summer break at college and miss a final week with a teacher who I was deeply attached to. Also, while away, I became very sick with some sort of bug, or possibly sun stroke, and ended up vomiting for a couple of days. Then, on the final day, my mum got very ratty with me although I can’t remember the details of this (probably blocked it out) only that it may have been over having little money as we were poor, albeit still had enough to scrape a summer holiday, but she blamed our financial situation on my father, just like she blamed everything on him.

My mum’s emotional state always affected me horribly, and I developed a severe headache while waiting in the hotel for our pick up bus to take us to the airport for our return flight. By the time we reached the airport and were standing in the queue for check in, I had a full blown migraine.

My mum was no good in these situations. As an adult myself, I now know that it wasn’t that she didn’t care; she just had little or no emotional energy left for me. She had depression while I was growing up, understandably given the circumstances we lived in, and her focus was on survival (and blaming my dad for everything). She has always been strong and resilient which serves her well now in terms of her ailing health, but back then her determination to plough on and give no time and attention to her emotions meant that she had little patience for her very sensitive and introspective youngest daughter (me).

I can’t remember what she said or did, only that she was sharp with me, and I went and sat on a seat in the centre of the airport where I could see the line of people queuing. I had my head in my hands. The pain was horrific. I’m not sure what was worse, the physical agony of the migraine or the sadness weighing on me. I can’t remember how long I sat there but at some point a man came over, sat with me, and asked if I was okay. I told him I had a bad headache. He went off to get me some painkillers and water.

Such a simple gesture but I still remember this 28 years later. It sticks in my mind because the loneliness I felt then – the disconnect from my mum and not being able to spend the final week with the teacher who I’d formed an emotional bond with – was debilitating. I didn’t even realise at the time how lonely I was because such devastating feelings are too much to process when the support structure isn’t there. A total stranger reached out and helped me when I most needed an act of kindness. That is why so many years later it still touches me.

Never underestimate a small act of kindness like this. It can absolutely make a difference, however insignificant it seems to be. One can never know how much it might be needed in ways that go beyond the surface. Knowing someone cares is the most powerful thing of all.

An ode to journal

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 2 Comments

Starting in childhood, I’ve been a prolific diary and journal writer, filling out pages upon pages with introspections and often deep emotional pain. I’ve kept them all. I rarely read back over them as I’ll be honest, most are horrifically painful to read, and easily send me back into a dark place. But neither can I throw them away. Sometimes I wonder whether holding onto them is the right thing to do and all I’m doing is clinging onto a past that has gone. Surely I should be willing to let them go, like everything else? The truth is that I can’t. The journals are the voice of the child, and later the teenager, who had virtually nothing and no one else, and to throw them away feels like dismissing her strength and courage to be her own person even when she felt invisible to the world.

It’s an interesting dilemma though and I often ponder how I’d feel if the journals were taken from me. Would I be devastated or relieved? Would I feel lighter and more present to my day to day self or as if I’d lost a part of me? The time may come when I won’t feel the need to keep them anymore because what they represented has become fully alive inside the self that I now am. In truth, I’m already there, but for now I am honouring the child through their presence.

Just the way it was

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Today was evidence that I’m in a very different place to how I was two weeks ago.

My son was in an awful mood when I visited. He was shouty, agitated and upset. No one ever knows why as there’s no obvious reason and of course he can’t tell us, so we put it down to one of those days. But he did appreciate my presence, or at least my bag of goodies. He grabbed the Easter egg, immediately tore the wrapper off and chomped down hard on the top, then proceeded to leave the egg for the time being and shred the box, which is one of his favourite activities of late.

I watched him, knowing he was being exactly who he is, and it was okay. I had no expectations of anything different. I didn’t experience any pain or sadness or longing whatsoever. It was just the way it was.

Soon after this his agitation grew so he disappeared into the toilet, which is his ‘safe place’ when he’s feeling overwhelmed. After ten minutes in there he came out yelling the word ‘shopping’ over and over, indicating that he wanted to go for a walk. I told the carers this was fine and that even though my taxi wasn’t picking me up for another half an hour, I was happy to just sit and wait if they wanted to go. I couldn’t go with them as I couldn’t walk very far. I hugged my son goodbye and told him I’d be back after Easter.

I sat in the lounge on my own waiting for difficult emotions to appear, but they didn’t. I felt okay with everything. I didn’t need to attach any reaction to any of it. I realised that I didn’t need anything from the situation. I didn’t need anything from my son in that moment. I just wanted to be there for him, give him his Easter egg, and I had done that.

I decided to see if I could get a taxi home any earlier. I was fine with waiting but the taxi arrived five minutes later. Small blessings seem so big when you don’t mind what happens.

A day in my life of feeling fine, that everything pans out in the way it’s going to, and I don’t need to take it personally at all, or hope or feel the need for anything different. I’ve done my bit and that is enough.

Inner child and new beginnings

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 2 Comments

I’ve been reading tarot for myself every day but haven’t had much chance to write about my spreads. Today’s spread is an especially interesting one to examine in depth because I feel in a completely different place to how I was last weekend when I was caught in the aftermath of Mother’s day grief. Today I’m happier, calmer, more connected to myself and to my son who I visited on Thursday and plan to visit again next week. Life feels…..okay. Spring is in the air. I’m taking care of myself and remembering that my emotional states are simply that….states, not a prescription for reality. Emotions are how we process our experiences and thoughts and have important information for us, but they are not who we are. They flow with intelligence and wisdom when we open to them without clinging and do not resist their input.

With this in mind, this was today’s spread:

Card 1: 6 of Cups

Card 2: Page of Cups

Card 3: 3 of Swords

Card 4: Ace of Cups

Add-on card: Queen of Pentacles

My first thought was what a lot of cups! The suit of Cups represents emotions, the unconscious, creativity, psychic development, which is very apt considering how emotional the last two weeks have been. I had to break the spread down to really see what it was saying.

The 6 of Cups is about nostalgia. It says that the past needs to be honoured for what it was and what I have learnt from it, but do not get stuck there. It is also an invitation to get in touch with my childlike energy and bring that forth into the present. Interestingly, I keep dreaming about babies which is very suggestive of this card and my need to nurture the child part of me. In a sense the grief over my son is also about my own inner child, particularly as I have been longing for another child of my own that will never be. Of course some of this longing is about motherhood, but it is also my soul reminding me that to become truly whole I need to be compassionate towards the younger version of myself whose needs were not met.

This makes the next card, Page of Cups, extremely relevant because the Page is all about the childlike version of ourselves! It is inviting me to explore my creative and emotional self and, most importantly, look after my inner child, be creative (a link to my post yesterday about the child part of me who knew I was a writer…until I grew up: https://wordpress.com/post/path-of-light.uk/857) and remain open to all possibilities in life; do not get lost in doubts or judgements.

Very interestingly, placed in between Page of Cups and Ace of Cups (which have similar meanings) is the 3 of Swords, which is about none other than grief. This card is a reminder that there is a time for mourning and healing, and the clouds will dissipate, but also to look at the root of the pain for sometimes it isn’t what we think it is. As above, it is not just my longing to be a mother again but a call from my wounded inner child who needs to be parented. This card can also be an invitation to examine how our thoughts are influencing our emotions and how we can look at a situation with a different perspective.

Finally, the Ace of Cups, like all aces, is about new beginnings; this time in my emotional life. It is a card of emotional contentment, joy, connection to self and others, and most importantly perhaps, self love. It may also mean repressed emotions which still need to be expressed but that positive times are ahead. It is a card of Wholeness, symbolised by the ace.

The add-on card at the end of the pack was the Queen of Pentacles, which is interesting as she’s a very practical Queen who is caring, nurturing, practical and grounded. This card may be saying that I need to be mindful to find a balance between emotions and practicality, particularly as I focus on healing my inner child; in this sense the Queen could indeed be the parent that I wish to embody because she is grounded in reality and provides for her loved ones without becoming overly emotional. A hard balance to find, to be sure. She is the very manifestation of security and abundance, showing me what is possible in this life, not necessarily literally but on a soul level, as I continue to grow and heal.

I am still very much a beginner but I love reading the ‘story’ of the cards and how this may be relevant to my energies in the moment. It is so important to remember that energies, such as emotions, are always fluid, so the cards do not necessarily prescribe what will happen in the future; the truth is there is no future: there is only now. What they do is provide a window into the unconscious so we are more aware of what we may be experiencing or projecting in this moment. We may then have more insight into the choices we wish to make or the experiences we are having to live a more conscious and fulfilling life.

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 5 Comments
Daily writing prompt
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
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I wanted to be a writer from as far back as I can remember. I filled notebooks with prayers to God before turning to short stories at age ten and journals at sixteen. As a five year old I loved creative writing class on Monday mornings because we had to write what we’d done over the weekend. Most of it was made up of course. The reality was that my childhood home was pretty dysfunctional with secrets and violence.

Writing saved me. I have absolutely no doubt about it. I escaped into my own world where I was best friends with my favourite TV actors and used to meet them every day at made-up studios for lunch. As I grew, I wrote about abandoned animals finding loving homes, family dramas, and teenage romances. I wrote huge amounts of fan fiction based on my favourite shows, believing I was the characters. Years down the line when I considered that the characters I had created didn’t really exist, it was a visceral shock to my system, because they were so real in my head.

Then I went to university to study English and undertook a creative writing module as part of that. It wasn’t the first time my writing had been criticised of course; I had my share of constructive comments at secondary school. But this was on a whole new level. The tutors didn’t like my work. Worse, I was surrounded by people who were very clearly a lot more talented than I am. This destroyed my sense of who I was. You see, writing was my very heart and soul. It was the only real friend I had. I lived and breathed it. To have it torn apart by people who had no clue was like having my insides ripped out very slowly over time. I was struggling to come to terms with a painful past but this time I no longer had the writing I loved. I was on my own.

I gave it all up. Things changed when I started seeing a therapist to cope with my young autistic son and she commented on something I’d written about my childhood many years previously. She said ‘you write very well.’ I was stunned. I told her that I no longer believed that. I said I couldn’t bear to even hear it because it wasn’t true. She said ‘of course it is.’ Bit by bit, I began to tell her how studying a creative writing module had broken my heart. Telling my story, this time out loud, once again helped me to heal.

Tentatively I started to write again. Not as much as I did before as I no longer had the physical or mental strength, but once again it became an outlet for my feelings. I wrote a couple of stories about my son. Then I began journaling as an outlet. I no longer cared what others thought. Over time I began to reclaim the natural joy and creativity I’d had as a child. This led me to start blogging to share my thoughts and experiences with the world.

I no longer hold tightly onto the identity of ‘writer’ but I write. It is what heals the soul. My five year old self knew that all along.

Meditation is transformative

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 3 Comments

Despite having a meditation practice for years, I often forget that it should still come with a health warning!

It can calm a busy mind, create a greater capacity for self-awareness, and lead to a more peaceful state of being.

But there is a disclaimer: Intense meditation is transformative. It encourages deep emotional pain to rise to the surface and be processed, even pain that you thought you’d dealt with many years ago.

For a while a meditation practice gives you enough payoff so you keep coming back for more. You feel happier, calmer, more at ease in life, more self-aware. Great.

Sooner or later you have to go deeper. In Divine timing an intense meditation practice such as Vipassana or breathwork may cause an unexpected flooding of old emotions/grief. This is normal. Meditation is communication with your soul. It is telling your soul that you are ready for the next stage of consciousness. The channel is open, ready to receive what is needed for a deep cleanse. As stated, this can arise in very unexpected ways.

You don’t have to fear this process. It can be very difficult depending on how much cleansing needs to be done. Surrender and trust. It will all be okay. Know there is a purpose, no matter how awful you feel. Resisting will make it harder than it needs to be. It may cause or lengthen the classic ‘dark night of the soul’ experience. Only deep inner wisdom will tell you whether you’re resisting out of fear, or because your soul is protecting you because you are not ready.

And indeed, in certain cases intense meditation is not recommended, such as in PTSD and C-PTSD and psychosis. There may be more. If you have suffered trauma or are a victim of abuse or feeling in any way unstable, do not embark on intense meditation without the support of a trusted therapist. If you wish to meditate, start slowly and ground yourself before and afterwards. Guided visualisations or walking meditations may be more beneficial than breath or Vipassana. If you have experienced sexual or physical abuse be wary of body scans or other body-based meditations. Sometimes any form of meditation should be avoided until enough psychological healing has taken place and forcing the process can be dangerous for some people.

In short, meditation is a wonderful spiritual tool with many benefits but it can also be very transformative and needs to be used wisely.