When the nighttime crashes in
Look around beside you, babe, we’re your friends
When you need some oxygen
Jump into the fire with us
Music Monday – into the fire
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Category Archives: friends
Music Monday – Merry Christmas
Throw your cares away …
Sailing Away
Sometimes, you just need to sail away for a few days.
I am incredibly lucky to live in a place where I can do that. And, I am even luckier to have good friends to sail away with.
There was a long run on my favourite running routes.
There was lots of wildlife.
There was one of my favourite beaches.
And, there were good friends.
And, then, on the ferry on the way home, there were two orcas. A momma and a baby.
I just don’t think it gets better than that.
Glow in the Dark Bowling
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Making Ketchup
Touch
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Summer Fun
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Time to get pickled
They say that many hands make light work.
Perhaps. But let’s face it. Hard work is still hard work.
What many hands do is make the hard work take less time. And, if they are the right hands (and some left), they throw in love and laughter, knowledge and experience, ideas and inspiration, time to talk and touch base and a lot of listening.
And so it was yesterday as I gathered with some good friends to spend the day making dilly beans, mustard beans and honey-dilled carrots.
First, the obligatory feet shot. Pretty toes to pretty toes, ready to support a long day ahead.
The cat, sensing a hard day’s work ahead, retreats to the shade of the honeysuckle to nap. Cats are smart.
I don’t know that much about pickling and canning and jam-making. Home-making skills, I guess you’d call them. As a single woman living alone, there is not much impetus to spend a lot of time making large batches of preserves. After all, a girl can only eat or give away so many jars of pickles, or jam, or whatever. And to get enough variety, we’re talking several different batches! So, my experience level is low. But, I can chop veggies, tip and tail beans and I peel a mean carrot.
I’m also fairly teachable. So, I get to help with some of the trickier jobs – filling the jars, sealing the lids. Uh, taking artsy photos.
The honey-dilled carrots are definitely my fav of today’s work. Dilly beans are great, especially for Caesars! The mustard beans? Meh, not a favourite. But, good for gift-giving and I strategically bartered some of my mustard beans for more dilly beans. Did I mention the Caesars?
All in all, a good day’s work. You can see the results of our hard labour. Some say this is the reward. For me, the time spent with friends is the real reward. You can’t fit that in a jar. Although, we do sometimes get a bit pickled.
Sadly, I think we wore out the cat. Hopefully he recovers by chocolate-making time in December.
Days that help me be myself
I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
I completely agree. Sometimes, it seems like each day is a struggle to figure out who I am, to remember it and to live and breathe it in my actions, my words and my choices. Days when self-doubt is the demon that requires repeated slaying.
And then there are the other times. Those all-to-rare days when I feel completely myself and completely at ease. Days when I know that despite the hard decisions, my heart and my life are in alignment. Days which replenish my soul and re-stoke my fires.
Days like this past weekend.
Days away with amazing women who listen and support and never doubt for a minute that I am perfect just the way I am.
Days spent exploring the beach, listening to birdsong and attuning with nature.
Days spent listening, reading and eating good food made with love. Days of quiet solitude and burst of laughter. Days of story-telling, sharing wisdom and confiding secrets.
Days when I have time to stop, slow down, notice the little things. Time to consider things from another perspective.
Days where all the worries leave me and I know that everything will be okay. That I will be okay.
Days that help me be myself. Not just for the weekend but hopefully for all the days to come.
No choice but fear
Sometimes the Universe waits patiently while you gather your courage to face your fear. Other times it sneaks up on you and shoves you from behind.
Yesterday, C and S and I headed to Glastonbury to check out the Abbey, the Chalice Well and the Glastonbury Tor. The Tor is a big steep-sided hill, jutting up from the English countryside in a defiant juxtaposition to the gentle, rolling landscape around it.
I was looking forward to the view from the top, especially with my new camera in hand. I was even looking forward to the climb up. In the past, such a climb would have been beyond me but the last 5 years of hard work to get healthier meant that I was sure I could climb the Tor, even if I had to stop a few times along the way.
What I did not expect was the heart-stopping, limb paralyzing fear of falling that hit me like a ton of bricks when I was almost to the top.
I have never been afraid of heights so I’m not sure why I was suddenly gripped with the irrational fear that I was going to fall down the steep slope of the Tor and completely lose control of my bearings. Or, given how strong the wind was, just be blown right off into empty air.
I sometimes have claustrophobia and anxiety attacks and what was amazing to me was that this feeling and the response of my body was exactly the same. Racing heart, shortness of breath, constricted chest, a little voice in my head crescendoing “no, no, no” and that sense that everything was spinning completely out of control, no matter how hard I tried to hold it together.
I know it’s not rational, which I find really annoying. But it is still very real. And as little as I understand the why’s and how’s of it, one thing I have learned is to stop and deal with it.
Step One – acknowledge the feeling no matter how silly/stupid/ridiculous I think it is. So, I tell C and S that I’ve having problems with being up that high, and the steep slope and that I’m not sure how I am going to get back down. I am trying not to cry.
S very helpfully says, “Well, you don’t really have a choice.”
While part of me wants to smack him for pointing out that I have to do what every cell in my body is screaming I can’t do, the small rational part of my brain still left recognizes that he is, of course, right.
I have no choice. I am going to have to do this so I’d better figure out how.
Step Two – ask for help. Ever am I grateful for my true friends. The ones who bring out the best in me but who also stand steadfast beside me when I am, ahem, less than my best. Including the times when I’m a total mess. So, C ran around with my camera and took some pics since my back was glued to the building at the top. Then, she walked in front of me holding my hand while I made my way back down the path to the safety of level ground.
Step Three – be gentle with myself. I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. But one thing I do know is that beating myself up about it doesn’t help. It is love and acceptance and forgiveness and understanding that defeats fear. Not anger. Whether it is directed inward or outward. I don’t care what anyone thought of we two 40+ women holding hands as we slowly walked down the hill. Together, we did it.
I’m not sure if the time that the Universe gives us is a gift or a barrier. In this case, I was forced to walk off the edge of that steep hill of fear because I had no choice. I had to get moving forward.
I wonder how much time we waste in that place of constricted hearts, feeling like things are spinning out of control, trying to catch our breaths before we accept that have no choice but to face toward the fear and then head straight into it. Otherwise, we’re just stuck on a hill. Or, in a rut.
Perhaps the hardest thing might be that sometimes we do have a choice.
A Fish and a Bicycle 