Life Sentence

Tags

acceptance, escape, future, healing, letting go, metaphor, past, reflection, self-knowledge, taking back control, therapy

Life Sentence

Source: Google Images

The past was nearly always tense. The future seldom perfect. Life became a sentence imprisoning subject and predicate: which often times were punctuated by dashes, question marks and ellipses …
The full-stops when they came were soft and sudden. They crept up slowly behind, blocking the way, preventing progress of any kind and making the escape route barely visible: an abrupt pin-prick in a confusing world.

Clear and present danger alleviated, those dots and dashes now form the much longed for and welcome SOS signalling pathways, prising open those prison bars, and like innocent inmates – embracing freedom – make a dash for the exit vowing to colonise the state of freedom.

~ Marie Williams – 2017

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“It’s Good to Talk …”

Tags

awareness, compassion, counselling, counsellor, creativity, emotion, fears, healing, journey, Julius caesar, letting go, mental health, mind, opportunity, pain, self-knowledge, therapy

Image: Courtesy of TheCrazyBagLady

HEALING HURT
(Talking Therapy)

In moments of pure fantasy
And wild imagination
I fancy that Karen could be
Just distantly
Related to Julius!

But I’m rudely awakened
And snap back to reality
As beaming, in black she beckons me
To her small but cosy surgery

Karen Caesar sees me as
Her work in progress
She’s dedicated to releasing
And decreasing the pressure

That calls me religiously
Each fortnight on a Friday
To discuss with some intensity
The demons that bind me

For Karen Caesar
Explained her calling
At the end of a session
Which begged me to question

The degree of her ability
To address the responsibility
Of dealing with healing
The complexity of the human psyche

Karen Caesar tells me
That caring seized her
From a very young age
And at the stage

Where she felt that
She was able to lend her
Tender, and compassionate bearing
To caring for victims
Whose minds were so painfully hurting

It’s a splendid opportunity
This talking therapy
To engage with a professional
As dedicated as Karen
Caesar, who certainly aspires

To deliver with some certainty
A tireless and dedicated approach
And unstinting efficacy

To help her patient,
Speak, cry or remain silent
In her surmountable journey
Of feeling, healing and self discovery!

Dedicated to Dr Karen Caesar

This poem was written eight years ago, but I thought it tied in nicely with my posts on agoraphobia which having spanned 17 years of my life to date has had an enormous impact on my life and the way I live. My counsellor encouraged my creative side which emerged in the form of poetry as I started my healing journey. She said very kindly when we parted after a year in counselling that she would be the first to buy my poems if they were ever published.

I also want to thank TheCrazyBagLady for allowing me to use her sketch in this post. I saw it months ago before I even decided I was going to write about agoraphobia, but I felt at the time that it was such a beautiful sketch that I would one day use it. The opportunity came today and I took it, just as TheCrazyBagLady says on her sketch: “Every day another door opens”.

And to close, in the words of British Telecom (in their sales initiative some years ago): “It’s good to talk…”

~ Marie Williams 2017

copyright Marie Williams – 2009

Agoraphobia: part 2: Professor Green, Talking Therapy and Me

Tags

awareness, child abuse, fears, fun, healing, journey, letting go, Loose Women, mental health, Professor Green, rapper, rapping. laughter, self-knowledge, therapy

Warning: this post contains references to rap which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But I hope this will not prevent you from reading to the end.

You may remember that in my last post I spoke about agoraphobia and how it impacted my life. Not to go on at length, but to explain how Professor Green (a British rapper, not a University professor) helped me in my own healing process, I would like to share my thoughts with you. I also want to touch on talking therapy/counselling which I really believed saved me during this uncertain and debilitating period of my life.

I was at home watching ‘Loose Women’* on television, and Professor Green was a guest on the programme. Professor Green is a well-known rapper who catapulted to fame in recent years. He is a young man who has documented how his early life impacted the way he is today and how his music reflects this. He grew up on a council estate in London, mainly raised by his grandmother. His father was absent for most of his life. This affected him in many negative ways, but he rose above this to become an international rap star. Professor Green’s father took his own life shortly after he had become reconciled with his son many years later and after he [Green] had become famous. This devastated him and he has since recorded a television programme about suicide in which he speaks openly about his love for his grandmother (who stabilised his childhood) and the impact his father’s untimely death had on his own life.

To get to the point, Professor Green spoke about counselling on Loose Women. He talked about how it helped him come to terms with his ‘demons’. I was incredibly impressed and touched at how openly this young man spoke about his own experiences with mental health issues that I listened with more interest than usual. Having my own mental health issues (PTSD, chronic anxiety and agoraphobia) his thoughts resonated with me.

Here comes the rapping! Those of you who have had the ‘pleasure’ of watching last year’s ‘X Factor’ will get a better feel of what I’d like you to do if you watched Honey G’s performance as a contestant. Honey G would rap saying:

“When I say Honey, you say G”, and this would be repeated many times, depending on how the audience received it. It went down really well. If you like that sort of thing. It’s a matter of taste. So here is my version:

When I say: ‘Professor’ you say: ‘Green’
Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green!
Me: When I say Professor
You say: ‘Green’

I was sittin’ in my home
All alone
got no friends
To call my own
Wanting someone to pick up the ‘phone
give me a call
so I don’t drown
In my sorrows
On my own

Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green!
Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green!

Mental health
has got a bad rap
That’s why I’m gonna
Put it on the map!
Shout it loud
and shout it clear
Mental health
There’s nothing to fear!

Me: When I say Professor
You say: Green
x2

I hope you managed to get a rhythm going. That helps! I hope Lady G and Tareau weren’t the only ones rapping along with me. Were you rapping Hariod? Anna?

Seriously, Professor Green was instrumental in getting me back on the road to recovery. He not only talked about how counselling helped him in his darkest periods, but he went on to say that although his situation was much improved, he still used counselling as therapy whenever he felt he needed it. And consequently, he was at present in therapy. Those words propelled me into action. If Professor Green was on daytime television, advocating counselling and he was not ashamed or embarrassed, what say me?

After the programme, I immediately went on-line to research counsellors in my area. I was very fortunate to find someone who has been incredibly helpful and who has allowed me to see that my case is not hopeless. That was over one year ago and I haven’t looked back since. Thanks Professor Green! I am not going to suggest that a few trips to a counsellor will make everything better. It takes time. It takes a willingness to partake in your own healing. It takes courage. It takes persistence. It takes faith. Often time, it can seem there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I’d like to encourage those who feel that there is no way out, that I found mine, and you can too.

~ Marie Williams 2017

* ‘Loose Women’ is a day-time television programme in which a panel of women discuss current topics.
– Final Part 3 to follow

Soul Lessons

Tags

forgiveness, freedom, healing, letting go, life lessons, pardon, peace, prose poetry, rules, school of life, self-knowledge, trials

“When hate has legislated, love is an act of rebellion”
Source: Origin South African, author unknown

This school is different to other schools that I have ever known. The curriculum is somewhat hazy and is nowhere written down. I’m expected to turn up each day with a smile upon my face, my shoes polished and my laces not undone. My uniform is whatever I choose to wear that day and I cannot say that it is one that others green of eye will be wearing the very next day. So come what may, some unseen force has planned that I should stay in school until all the lessons that I need to learn are well and truly learned.

There are no classrooms in this school and the rules are made up as I go along, they come down heavily upon me even though I feel I’ve done no wrong. No text books grace the library walls however hard I look, and if I enquire about things of which I’m unsure, the advice I’m given arbitrarily is go and look it up! Through many trials I have come. So many doors shut in my face. I am sometimes told by the principal to go at my own pace. And off she walks heels clicking on the floor, with a smirk upon her face, as if to say, my goodness me, will that child never learn.

Today’s lesson is the hardest I have ever had to learn, and still I know that even though to memory I have committed it, tomorrow when I’m asked what are the basic principles of the act of letting go, my already creased brow will furrow and I will stumble as if I didn’t know. But when alone, with no pressure from those who know, I will say quietly to myself:

Forgiveness does not mean that the other person has not really done anything wrong.
Forgiveness does not mean that you have to forget.
What forgiveness means is that you choose to pardon the wrong.
Forgiveness means that your soul is free no longer chained and restrained.
Forgiveness means that you are stronger for the lesson has been learned.

The school bell tolls and I no longer ask for whom.

~ MEW 2016

Time

Tags

birth, concept, death, Ecclesiates 3, expectations, Father Time, healer, human experience, journey, letting go, mother, purpose, season, time

Time in essence ethereal yet so solid it reigns supreme. It has its own place in its own kingdom and rarely a day passes without mention of the time. Time to go; time to get ready. Time to wake up; time to go to sleep. An expression of impatience: “She’s been with us for almost a year now, it’s time she got used to us”. Thoughts voiced aloud by a mother who didn’t understand her small daughter and thought time was all that was needed to bridge the gap between leaving her child and getting to know her years later. Time the great healer: time has no emotions. It doesn’t know that it has been imbued with healing qualities by mankind and that it sometimes falls short of expectations when it doesn’t deliver.

Time was, when the grass was greener, when men were gentlemen, when times were better, and men treated their women like women should be treated. Time was when children were better behaved. Time: this hazy, glowing picture of perfection. a picture portraying ideals which never really existed. More like a mirage, an oasis contrived by the desperate thirst-filled individual painstakingly making his way to the illusion of water.

Time raised to immortality in Ecclesiastes 3: “To everything there is a season, time for every purpose under heaven”. Time is of the essence it has been said. Time waits for no man, that too we’ve heard. Father Time, a respected figure: but why no “Mother Time”: was there only room for you? Could the two not reign side by side?

Time passes, ride on time, time to let things go, haven’t you noticed the time? Time goes so slowly. Time can do so much. So much responsibility has been attributed to this word used almost daily, sometimes casually without much thought and at other times with such reverence that it is a wonder how it encapsulates so much of the human experience from birth to death.

A timely post you might ask? Only time will tell …

~ MEW

Ask and you will receive.

Tags

asking, finding, grudges, ignorance, letting go, loss, moral, pettiness, receiving, trivialities, true story

Ask and you will receive

This is just a true story about two people and how we let trivial matters impact our lives, so we miss out on really good things.

Someone (I will call her Jenny)told me about an incident at her place of work and when I thought about the story, I felt I wanted to share it because there was an important lesson here.

Jenny and person (b) whom I shall call Susie were at work and apparently they had some sort of disagreement. It was over something petty: about how many nappies one person had changed for the day, compared to the other person. It wasn’t life-threatening. It wasn’t a betrayal. It was simply one person feeling agrieved over how much work she thought she was doing, compared to another. Jenny thought they had aired their grievances and the matter was done and dusted. She was surprised the next day, when she said “good morning” to Susie and Susie pretended she didn’t hear and ignored her.

Later that day, Susie lost her favourite pen and was searching high and low for it. When she couldn’t locate it, she enlisted the help of some of her other colleagues. She asked everyone in the office, bar Jenny because of course, she wasn’t talking to Jenny because of the incident the previous day.

Nobody had seen Susie’s precious pen apart from Jenny who could see that the pen had rolled under a desk in front of where she was sitting. Susie continued to search and was plainly distressed about her loss, but refused to ask Jenny if she had seen it. So Jenny kept quiet and didn’t tell her where the pen was.

I think this is really sad. Had Susie let yesterday’s altercation go, she would have lost her pen, but it wouldn’t have been lost for long. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the moral of this story, but doesn’t it echo (quite loudly!) how we should put things into perspective?

Nothing is ever truly lost if you ask for help in the right places!

~ MEW

Letting Go

Tags

abuse, compassion, forgiveness, hurt, letting go, moving on, pain, prison, release

Why is it so hard to let go of past hurts?  Do you know, I’ve struggled with this and try as I may, I cannot come up with the answer.  But I have tried hard to do this – saying “I forgive you”, and at the point of saying it, there is a feeling of release.  But oh how easy it is to slip back into unforgiveness!  It’s as if I am in a wrestling match, trying to overcome my opponent.  I think I have him pinned down, but then he frees himself from my hold and grips me in another hold, where I struggle to free myself from that hold in my quest to become the victor.  My conclusion is that it’s not possible to completely let go, it’s an on-going process and if you can get to a place in your heart where you feel the grip is loosening, then you will feel better.  Perhaps for some of us it is more healing to say that “I am forgiving”, rather than “I forgive” realising that it is a process and a journey (for want of a better word) and that by looking forward to that place of forgiveness, each step taken, takes you closer to your goal.  I found that trying to release my pain through this poem was a step on my way to forgiveness and letting go.  I’m guessing we all have a poem to write …

Forgiving You, For Giving Me Hell

In this beautiful place

On this beautiful balcony

Overlooking the beautiful sea

I see

My father in a different light

I begin to view his plight

 

This morning it’s not about me

This morning it’s got to be

A gradual awareness of how blessed

He is, that God has made me see

How broken and wounded this man has been.

So now I reach out

 

And without a doubt

Release him, I free him

From the prison of my heart

I say: “get off your bed, you’re free to go”

I open wide the prison door

And stand aside

 

That he might slide past me

And fly outside

That he might soar

With wings of love

Into the sky above

So long I’ve held him prisoner

 

Watched him through the window of my soul

Refused to give him parole

Screamed that he in prison would die

But now I see that he must fly

His tormented soul begs my forgiveness

And so I release him

 

I can no longer his judge and jailer be

I’d like to say, with one fell swoop I set him free

But that would be a lie

My qualifications for this job did not come easily

The tears I shed, my wounds they bled

I flirted painfully with death

 

So you see, I earned this position

‘Twas not given me

I could not relinquish without a fight

A lifetime of immeasurable hurt

But now I choose to set him free

Go on, go quickly: I will not change my mind about this clemency

 

You don’t deserve it

You misfit

You don’t deserve it

You’re so unfit

But because I choose to let you go

To lose my sorrow and my woe

 

You’re a free man

Free to leave your prison cell

Free now to dwell

Wherever you wish.

Copyright Marie Williams July 2009