Newsletter Archive: April 2010

 

Text Box: April 2010 Welcome to the Dare to Blossom newsletter If this has been forwarded to you by someone else, you can sign up for your own copy every month here. If you do not wish to receive future editions, please email me to unsubscribe. Everyone who is on the mailing list will be entered into a draw twice a year (at the end of June and the end of December) with a chance to win a prize of six free life coaching sessions. In this issue: This month my reflections are more free-form and flowing, I hope you enjoy reading them and find a nugget or gem of reflection for yourself. Reflections: Journeys I’ve been thinking about journeys recently. All sorts of journeys: short and long, real and metaphorical, unusual and mundane. Whilst physically travelling myself last week I took with me the book Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson (see here for more on the book and film). I have yet to finish reading the book - it is the moving story of a father who followed his intuition on a way to help his autistic son, taking him on a journey around the world from their home in the USA to Mongolia and Siberia in search of traditional healers. His inspiration was his son Rowan’s response to animals and to horses in particular, leading him to look for a tradition that combined healing and horses. Then today I gave one of my regular talks to a group of nurses being trained to work in the cervical screening process taking the samples (colloquially known as smear tests) from women. It was this programme of testing that diagnosed my cancer early enough for successful treatment, and my journey of nearly 16 years now since that diagnosis is a reason for celebration as well as reflection. Every talk I give is different: the people in the group are new to the training, the questions they ask may be similar but each is original for that person, the answers I give also change in response to this and depending on what is happening for me at that time. I have been on my own healing journey over those years with ups and downs, hills and valleys, mountain tops to challenge me - and to shout from the top of once scaled! I remember hearing a speaker at a conference telling his story of a ‘cancer experience’ challenging the ‘journey’ metaphor, saying that in most cases when we set out on a journey, we decide where we are going, we choose a route and a means of travel. And, although things might not turn out quite how we expect, more often than not, things go according to plan. His experience was that when he received his diagnosis he felt he had been cast adrift in a stormy sea without any charts or means of finding his way to a safe harbour again. Maybe this is where the healing comes in, if I can enjoy the journey, not be anxious about the details (as I tend to be with real travel!), view whoever and whatever comes along as a potential signpost or lifeline – maybe that leaves a space for synchronicity, coincidence and serendipity to work their magic. As I wrote last month, even on the shortest journey such as going to work in the morning if I really take notice of what is happening around me, the ‘wow’ moments pop up to surprise, delight and inspire me. This is not to under-estimate the challenges that you or I may encounter at various stages of our journeys through life, they can be all too real and all too painful, excruciatingly so at times. And (not but) they can also be painfully beautiful, touching, joyful – all at the same time. I believe if I am so numb that I do not feel the pain I cannot feel the joy either, and then how can I really live my life to the full? How often do we laugh and cry at a sad film, enjoying feeling the sadness as it allows us to share those human emotions which a good story and talented actors make seem so real? For all of us, the end of this journey, of this life, is the death of our body, whatever our beliefs on whether there is anything beyond that. So why wouldn’t we savour the journey, enjoy the people we meet along the way, explore the detours and dead-ends we may find ourselves in, and practice being in the moment to make the very most of whatever time we have as none of us know how long or short that may be. I know I can’t always achieve this, (as I wrote last month, we are all human and grumpy at times) - for me staying connected by regular reflection, reading, meditation, and new experiences is my route to feeling most alive. For you: some questions to think and/or write about in your journal: Have you been on journeys in your life that you would like to reflect on? Looking back, are there nuggets of gold and jewels of experience in those journeys whether they are seemingly at the time dark journeys of illness, or deceptively mundane daily journeys that you don’t usually give a second thought? Can you make a list of diamonds in the dust, rubies in the rubbish, emeralds in the emergencies and gold in the just plain boring? PS I’m having a bit of fun with words there, and you might like to as well! My own recent journey was a short trip to Cordoba* with work colleagues for team building, strategy and goal planning, plus some good fun and sight seeing. An amazing experience in all sorts of ways: a beautiful old city in a part of Spain I have not visited before, amazing architecture and layers of history, interesting food and drink (including plenty of cold beer and good red wine!). Our group was made up of people usually working in offices dispersed across the UK (and one based in Athens), so there was plenty to learn and to talk about. A journey I will be reflecting upon for some time to come. Marcel Proust wrote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – I have written before about ‘seeing with new eyes’ particularly on returning home from any journey and this is true about all I have written here. Reading about another’s journey as in the book about the Horse Boy, using my own experiences of my journey through illness, or reflecting on travel with colleagues I do not know well – all these help me ‘have new eyes’ and see more clearly what is around me and perhaps my place in that world. *(For anyone interested in learning more about Cordoba there is some interesting information on this Wikipedia page.) Here is one of the photos I took: showing the statue of the patron saint of Cordoba: Saint (or Archangel) Raphael, in the centre of the Roman Bridge. In the background is the Mezquita and the old city. Thank you for reading, do email me with any questions, comments or suggestions, or feedback on particular items. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think may be interested. All best wishes   Mary Text Box:   Text Box:  



 

 

 

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Newsletter Archive

April 2010

 

 
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