Welcome to my blog – with extras! Extras like courses and events, cup of tea sessions, meditation recordings and podcasts, poetry and stories.
I am an elder woman: I’ve seen a lot of life and a lot of death, navigated many transitions and passed through numerous thresholds. I have worked in many different capacities but all of them are simply vehicles for my particular shape of love. This website is one way of offering my love and my gifts to you.
Please do feel invited to write to me, send poems, images and so on – I would love to hear from you.
I hope you will leave my site feeling warmer, comforted, smiling on the inside and in some way accompanied.
With love,
Nickie
“[Nickie is] like a magic porridge pot overflowing with love to give”. S.E.
- Such a shame….
It was the sun’s fault, calling her to play, smiling down at her out of a blue, blue sky, distracting her from the task of getting dressed in time for breakfast with her family. The invitation of the day seemed to fill all the space inside her.
The sting of her father’s hand on her 3 year old little body, left an imprint far greater than his hand.
The wife and little daughter of her father’s senior colleague came for afternoon tea. As her mother hosted the wife in the front room, she, not yet 4 years old, hosted the daughter in her bedroom. She handed her best thing to the little girl:
“It’s an ornament”, she said, pointing out the soft fur of the squirrel’s bushy tail, something which, rubbed between her fingers and against her face, had comforted her many times.
When the mothers called up that is was time to go, she said,
“You can keep it”.
“You’re not giving her that old thing, are you?” her mother said.
She watched, mortified, as they walked away.
“Come and stand in front of the class!”
She hangs her head, the joy and excitement of squeezing white clay between her fingers, feeling the elation of possibilities alive in her, have given way in awful rapidity to humiliation.
I will never, she thinks, let myself feel like this again.
Small People
I have been spending a week with my daughter and her family to celebrate my grandson’s 4th birthday. At the weekend we camped beside the lake and on Saturday his friends from kindergarten converged on the campsite for a pirate party. 15 little pirates raced around playing team games and hunting for the treasure chest filled with chocolate gold coins and crystal gems. They sailed off with Captain Greybeard in his canoe and returned to eat a pirate boat cake.
On Sunday my grandson was moany and grumpy. His mother and father understood he was coming down to earth after a brilliant day, that he was tired, that he needed time and space, holding and love, to ‘recalibrate’ – no blaming, no shaming, no stressing, no expectations.
The sacrifice
Watching him, the same sort of age as the little child that was me in those snippets of memories above, I remember again how sensitive we are- as wee ones yes, but in truth always. However minor those hurts were, I learnt the need to protect myself. We all do. Perhaps we grow skins thick enough that the barbs won’t penetrate; perhaps we become vigilant to make sure we stay safe; perhaps we build resentment, rebel or hurt back. Walls that keep things out keep us in and I think what we sacrifice is the ability to fly free in the sunshine. 64 years on, I am remembering my small person, returning to her, rediscovering in my maturity her innate wisdom: that the sun and the earth are my friends, that my hands need to touch beauty, that happiness matters more than conformity.
I know I will die and that on my death bed I will want to feel I have honoured who and what I was born to be and squeezed every last drop of aliveness and joy out of my life. And, I will want to die free of shame and rules and limitations. I have witnessed several people coming towards their deaths and I can tell you one thing about shame: it gets in the way. Shame is like pain of the soul. Many of us are frightened about dying in pain and for myself I fear bodily pain. But on the whole, there is much that modern medicine can do to alleviate that. Modern medicine however, can do little to address a soul in pain.
Is it true?
There is a point at which death is not on the horizon but full in our faces and it seems to me that this is the point at which whatever shame we have buried deep within us arises. How then can we surrender into the hands of death? I don’t believe in a Day of Judgement but I do believe that in these final moments we judge ourselves and harshly, with the inherited voices of reprimand, belittling, anger and blame we have carried within us for a lifetime. These days when I hear those voices – inside my head or outside from others – I turn to face them:
“Are you true?” I ask silently. “Do you belong to me?” I am encouraging an internal culture of compassion, a wise and loving parent to a tired or overwrought child. Whatever it is I want to feel on my death bed, I want to feel each day as I awake into life. To feel, as the sun rises, the possibility of friendship and kinship with nature, to know kindness and softness of touch. I want to feel the beam of my heart reaching across the dark abyss of sorrow to touch another and know, when my own need for solace arises, the intimacy of an understanding universe there at my back, appearing in whatever form best comforts me.
I began writing these blogs over 3 years ago in the heartfelt wish that their honesty might meet someone who needed to hear that they are not alone when life is messy or arduous or when the winter of grief is long and bleak. Yes, we will likely be judged, if not from outside then from within, but I’ve come to see how deeply unhelpful this is and how corrosive shame is. And unnecessary.
With my love (and my dog’s furry ears and soft nature)
Nickie
NEWS
Creative Pathways for Life and Loss
Please join us for a nourishing and resourcing day in Somerset.
The wood belongs to Deb Millar who hosts many different groups in the wood and knows how healing it can be to be outside with the trees, the earth and the sky.
We will weave together creative expression, sharing and reflection and provide you with a simple lunch and refreshments.
Cost: £30 – there are one or two donation and concessionary places available if finances are an issue for you. Equally we are open to receiving more if you are feeling abundant and this will allow us to offer further concessions. Thank you.
This will be a small group and booking is essential. For more information or to book, please write to: deb@wilderwoods.org
Buy Me a Coffee
I have been writing this blog for 3 years now and for the last couple of years many of you have gifted me through Buy Me a Coffee. I felt shy to ask you initially, but I cannot tell you how much it warms my heart to have £5 drop in here and another £5 or £10 there. You don’t pay me for my writing, you gift me for what I offer and to me it feels as if our shared currency is love. Thank you so much. I am open to receive your love any time you feel like sharing it! www.buymeacoffee.com/nickieaven