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.
- The Pear of Human Kindness
I was doing alright. I’ve worked really hard for 8 months, I was feeling optimistic about the future and I was looking forward to a quieter time reviewing and recharging through August. What I didn’t need (did I?) was to trip over a stone, fall flat on my face, break my wrist and be incapacitated for weeks.
What about the room I was going to redecorate in my quiet time, the curtains I was going to make, the visits to friends, the garden I need to renovate, the decluttering, the….If I have a few brain cells left after the general anaesthetic for the op on my wrist I’m still waiting for, maybe I can still do my annual accounts, further research self publishing, find the course I want to do, finally get down to doing more writing, planning and business development.
Not busy doing nothing
I know… I don’t sit still, even though I’m sitting at my computer for hours most days. I find it excruciating to do nothing, unless I’m rewarding myself after a very busy time. I remember I had the skill as a child, able to lie on the sofa and day dream. But along would come my busy bottomed mother and say,
“Don’t just loll about! Find yourself something useful to do.” So I suppose resting and day dreaming became something I associated with laziness, something I didn’t give myself permission to do, something that made me feel a waste of space. I can see how much being useful has ruled my life.
Care
When I fell walking the dog beside the river at 7.45am, a man I know only by sight took care of me, made me as comfortable as possible, called the ambulance, called my friend, waited where the ambulance could see him to direct the paramedics and didn’t leave me until I was safely on board the ambulance. My friend dropped everything to come, called my daughter who had just arrived in the UK, and advocated for me. Several dog walkers came by: one took my dog home, another went back to feed him, another with a child who offered me her coat brought me water. In the hospital alone and in pain, a man gave up his seat for me, kept me supplied with water, bought me juice, insisted staff use a wheelchair for me and kept my spirits up.
X-rayed, my bone manipulated from beneath my hand back (more or less) into place, plastered and re x-rayed, by staff who were endlessly patient and sympathetic, but still having eaten nothing since the evening before, at 3pm I was ready to go home. But how? I made a few phone calls and drew a blank. The mother of a patient overheard me and found me a nurse who organised me hospital transport. A few minutes later she reappeared holding out a green pear.
“I’m sorry”, she said, “this is the only food I have.” No pear could have tasted sweeter.
As an older woman on my own I am vulnerable. Mostly I don’t live in that awareness. What I found when that awareness smacked me in the face, was kindness. Kindness all around me, from strangers, friends, and professionals who see crises and dramas hour after hour every working day of their lives and still care. What I experienced was the best of humanity and it was shining.
2 weeks post accident and 2 days post op:
What if…?
What if I dropped all expectations of myself? If I woke in the morning without a to do list to be accomplished? What if there was nothing towering over me or driving me from behind and nothing pulling me forward demanding action? What if…there was just breathing to be breathed…a strawberry to be tasted…a friend to greet and hug…morning sun to turn my face towards? What if the simplest pleasures were the fulfilment of living in human form and the rest is just choice, noise, invention? What if everything arises not from direction but openness, if sleep and rest and taking care of myself is more important than achievement, and the most loving thing I can do on this planet is to appreciate the gift of my life? And what if my mother had it all back to front and I have too?
Well in that case, the weight falls off my shoulders and they drop about 2”. Then I accept the help of beautiful friends and family to walk the dog and take care of me, knowing it comes from love not obligation. Then I write or read or sleep or drink tea according to what I feel like and ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ become non-words. Then, despite the effects of a general anaesthetic and heavy duty pain killers, I can embrace this sore but stalwart body and let myself be bathed and tended to.
And I can know, that there is no ‘Sword of Damocles’ dangling above my head waiting to fall if I don’t… (fill in the blank); and there is no Judge at the end of the road telling me I’ve fallen disappointingly short of my potential. Instead, I can feel for what has the juice of joy in it, the colour of birdsong, the sweetness of laughter. Then I go no faster than I can breathe and I can trust that if I take care of this moment …and this one… then the next one will take care of itself.
With my love
Nickie
NEWS
Creative Pathways through Love and Loss…..
….has been postponed until the autumn. If you’d wanted to come but couldn’t make the date, hopefully you’ll be able to make the new one, to be announced very soon. You can register your interest with me here now.
Buy Me a Coffee
I have been writing this blog for 3 1/2 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