Feeling the sorrow and the love

I  know  there must be so many others that like me did not sprint into this new year, bubbling over with goals and excitement and new healthy regimes.  I  shuffled into 2014 in slippered feet with my soft and snuggly dressing gown that my mum bought me two years ago for Christmas draped around my shoulders, reminding me that however far away she physically is, she is always there!

I felt so frail. Despite so much support from everyone through the bumps and avalanches of last years journey, there are some bits of our rugged paths we can only face alone and this Christmas I heard my pa has lung cancer and doesn’t have long to live. I haven’t had an easy time digesting this news. Its not something I can wash and hang out on the line to dry, its an ache inside me that doesn’t go away. How do I live joyfully when someone I love is in pain ? I guess thats what I am trying to figure out. Maybe I should just let my tears fall as I tell you about this wise and wonderful man who has given me so much. You see I wasn’t blessed with him as a child, he came into my life when I was thirty three and turned it upside down. I was so brittle when I met him, so unused to being safe in love. I expected calamities and betrayals with every breath and I created them. I had no expectations that I was worthy of love. I had grown up with an adopted dad who was so emotionally unavailable I finally learnt I got more attention from him when I took drugs, got pregnant and hung out with all sorts of undesirables. Boyfriends were chosen only because of there ability to shock and shake my middle class family into some sort of acknowledgement of me! I felt as if I’d won lotto when at sixteen I met up with a  juvenile delinquent that was in and out of jail for stabbing people. Boy did he get a rewarding reaction from my parents!

                                                                                                                                   Me in the red,meeting my new family. So,when I met my physical father,Philip for the first time, I was a long way past my teenage rage, but I didn’t love myself. I had no idea I was worthy and beautiful and precious and I also had no idea that my Philip, my Pa and his wife Gill had bought up three younger children,who were then in there early twenties and they had known about me all there life! Philip had always said ‘She will turn up one day, I know she will’ And I did. Totally serendipitously and thats another amazing story thats in my book…coming soon. Yup I decided one day ,oh hang on, take the I out of this ! I had all sorts of amazing messengers appearing and telling me it was time ! I couldn’t have dreamt our meeting it was so much more than expected. It was miraculous. It was wonderful. It was a fairy tale. I hadn’t even known he knew about me ! And if I could have hand picked a father out of thousands of applicants,I couldn’t have done a better job! Now I have to tell you a little story because its a great example of what can occur when we resist love.  As much as I leapt for joy at my unexpected fortune, there were times I wanted to run. Being loved scared the hell out of me, and I kept finding myself reacting from past pain. On one occasion I had just spent a few days with Philip and Gill. As I got into my car for the long drive north back to my friend Jane’s, Philip had said ‘Give us a ring when you arrive.’ I was literally bubbling over with fury as I drove away. I’m thirty-three years old! I’ve managed all these years without him and now he wants me to ring him when I arrive! It was ridiculous, yet I loved it that he cared. It was winter and I had to drive across a moor near Manchester, a long stretch of isolated road. I didn’t pass another car for hours. There was a howling wind and it was raining so heavily I was scrunched over the steering wheel, driving so slowly, struggling to see the road. It was much too bleak a place to stop. As I was driving across that grey and lonely moor the exhaust came apart. Despite the howling wind, the noise was deafening. I had no waterproof clothing and had to slide under the car, water running down my neck, soaking all my clothes while I struggled to wire the exhaust back on. My fingers were so icily cold they were numb. It fell off five more times on the trip home  and I got under the car and tried to reconnect it each time! I was shaking with cold, crying my eyes out, feeling so damn sorry for myself. My vintage Triumph Herald had no heater and over and over again, as I shivered,unaware of what I was even saying, I was repeating, like a mantra, ‘I’m glad I have a dad that loves me, I’m glad I have a dad that loves me.’ Was life looking after me then? Most certainly it was. All my sharp edges were being whittled away, and I had to find my vulnerability before I could finally stop fighting the beauty and love that was transforming my life. I didn’t need to analyse all the times I had felt unworthy as a child—I just needed to let go. Yes, meeting Philip had been wonderful, was wonderful, but it brought everything up—including stuff I didn’t even know was there. There were times I felt ecstatically happy. I couldn’t believe my life had transformed in this way; yet at other times, I felt raw with sorrow. However much I tried to deny her, inside of me was a wounded little girl who felt broken-hearted that this love from her father had come so late. In the midst of joy I would find my bottom lip trembling and my tears would overflow. I didn’t feel at ease with this pain. It made me vulnerable, and that was a place I didn’t like to be. Whenever I had kept this tough exterior around me, I had felt in control. But now even that was crumbling under the loving gaze of my father. He thought I was beautiful. He called me an angel, and when he saw my tears he told me there were times he could roar like a lion, but when he needed to, he could also cry like a baby. I grew up not knowing my adopted dad was not my physical father. I know my parents did what they felt was right, I have no doubt about that, but especially at the start of the 60’s parents didn’t  realise the seams of distrust they created within the hearts of their children when they told them untruths. You cannot have a relationship of trust if its built on a lie, however well meaning that lie is. No one has the right to deny a soul access to the full information regarding who they are and every experience we come onto earth with is given to us so we can can learn and grow. I learnt from the lies, I understand the energetic repercussions of withholding secrets and the burden it places on those that keep them and I hope that I can help people make wise choices by understanding these impacts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBuzk5C3Z2A But I meander ! My life changed when I met my Pa and the full implications of that change did not occur overnight. I was like a dry lake bed that hadn’t seen water for a long time. As someone that has watched a dry lake being filled with water I know that for a long time it doesn’t look as if anything is occurring. The ground is so dry there are deep cracks in the earth and the water has to seep in and fill those cracks. The foundation for this transformation occurs underground before we see the water pooling on the surface and that pool getting deeper and wider as the lake fills and the birds come and the plants flower and the fish jump and the pool becomes an oasis.

I haven’t had a normal life with my Pa and our time together can only be marked in months, but even so he is at the centre of my world. He is the wise man that held a light out for his daughter and showed her the truth of her reflection ..she is and always has been and always will be BEAUTIFUL And as I write this, as I pour over precious moments together, our chats on the phone, I know that my struggle finding the joy is simply about remembering the gifts this man has given me. I don’t doubt that there will be times when i am overcome with grief, but if I let go of all this dear man has given me to remain within the grief,Im throwing away all of his gifts. I have so much now and its because of him. Without Philip coming into my life, I would not have been ready to love my dear Gil, who came into my life the year after Philip. Without Philip I would not have understood why every path I take I’ve needed to clear myself and why the well worn tracks were never appealing. When I found out that my great grandfather was an African church minister,from the Fante tribe in Ghana,who married a Jewish actress around 1902 ,WOW I understood so much about myself. Why I have always been a black sheep ,why I have always struggled with convention and rules and laws,but most of all,what I have learnt from my Pa is the beauty of vulnerability.  My Great Grandmother

I may not have set huge goals to conquer this year. Achievement for me will be being the best I can be as my path in life twists and turns. I shall connect with nature much more,breath deeply,try and be more in the moment. I shall spend less time on the computer and more time staring into the eyes of a frogmouth owl I am rearing or listening to what the kestrel has to say,{he gets so impatient with me when I rush}. And I shall allow myself to be vulnerable,I shall lay down the last little swords of defence that come between me and those I trust and love and I shall open up the windows of my soul and let myself ,raw and unedited be seen.

In my slippered feet ,with my snuggly dressing gown draped around me,I am shuffling on, but now I feel renewed, full of love, grateful to feel the sorrows of life as well as the joy. They are all entwined. Thank you Pa