Easy Peasy
This morning, as I write this, I held the first Wise Women Circle of 2024 (see events). We looked at what we yearned for in the coming year.
“I yearn for ease”, I said (no-one said, “Don’t we all”!).
Ease
I have reflected. Ease – what does that mean? Does it mean I want an easy life? I wouldn’t say no to some calm and rest but that’s not really it. Do I want to feel at ease? That’s closer. When we find ourselves dealing with profound or traumatic loss, it can feel like a bomb has gone off in our being; we are disrupted, disorientated, unsettled, anxious. It takes a while to find a new, inner anchor or compass. It takes a while to know ourselves again. Knowing ourselves – that too is part of ‘ease’ for me: the feeling that I live within my own skin, irrespective of where I am and who I am with. How often do we have the inner narrative: I’m out of my depth, I’m wrong, they don’t like me, they’ll think I’m a failure, a fraud? What maturity of understanding does it take, to realise there is nothing wrong with us, nothing we need to strive to be, that just as we are is good enough? For a little while, I had someone offer me that understanding: my beloved man. The outside validation helped me find inner acceptance and ease.
Softening
Under his warming, softening gaze, I liked who I became. I liked the melting of my hard edges, the mellowing of harshness within me, the quietening of the critical voice, I liked the feeling of ease within me. Love – to give it and to receive it, to bathe in it and to appreciate it – softens us. It softened me. When he died, I lost not only him but who I had become in our shared love. I haven’t returned to how I had been before-the love we shared has changed me forever- but in his absence, how to maintain who I had become? The truth is of course, I can’t. Just as his love changed me forever, so too has his death. I have known that my only hope has been to keep on loving.
5 years and 2 weeks ago we were married. 5 years and one week ago he was finally and permanently confined to a hospital bed downstairs in our tiny cottage. I vowed to “love, honour and cherish [him] all the days of my life”. I have, I do, I will. And yet, to love without the one(s) you love being present to receive it, is hard. I have done my best (and I know I have written about this in these posts before) to keep my heart open to loving whoever or whatever touches me: the way the dew hangs like diamond droplets on winter branches; the child who giggles at his own jokes; the dear, kind, generous ones who care about me. I know I am deeply blessed in my life and I love and appreciate those many blessings.
Human Touch
And yet…and yet, I yearn for a touch that is the carrier of love, respect and intimacy. Sometimes the most intimate touch I experience in weeks, is bare twigs running their ‘fingers’ through my hair as I walk beneath them. That and the dog’s licks every evening.
Babies who are not held fail to thrive, in extreme cases they die. We need touch, we need to be hugged and to feel the rhythm of another heart beat next to our’s; we need our hand held, to feel the sensation of warmth and skin against our own; we need someone to look into our eyes and for us to look into theirs and to know that we see each other. This is our humanity. But so often it is sexualised, off limits, misinterpreted. We live, especially at this time of year, beneath layers of clothes in our individual homes and if you are one of the millions of people in the UK who live alone, you may have no living touch for a very long time.
I have no answers, no solutions. But how I abhor and regret the centuries of abuse which have made us fear one another, the violence which has violated our humanity, our culture’s dis-ease.
So yes, I yearn for ease, I yearn for softness and I yearn for us to share our love and our humanity with deep respect and tenderness, to love, honour and cherish one another all the days of our lives.
With my love
Nickie
News
Making changes
I had a notification a couple of weeks back that from February I will no longer be able to send out letters to subscribers from my gmail account. I don’t have any other. I have been thinking for a while that I will move my blog to Substack (an online platform for writers). It seems like now is the time.
As regular readers will know, I am not very techi savvy. However, this is what I understand will happen. From February, you will receive the blog in your inbox rather than a notification for it. The email will be from me @substack (it shouldn’t go into spam but do check if you don’t hear from me in a couple of weeks’ time). This means you won’t be on my website but there will still be links to the website and I hope you won’t abandon it! I can’t be totally sure I’ll be ready in a couple of weeks, but that’s the plan.
At the same time I am working hard to get my application ready to become a community interest company (social enterprise) so that I can apply for grant funding for my work and reach more people. I will let you know as soon as that happens.
Until next time, thank you for your support.
PS And just to say as well, that the singing retreat is filling up – if you are interested in coming please do book soon.