The magic of Sark

We recently spent six wonderful days on the magical island of Sark, a place that has stolen my heart, like Byron Bay in Australia, it is just out of this world, as if a true gift from the universe and I felt that I had died and gone to heaven many times over.

We camped the first few nights, and I will never forget waking in the middle of the night and going outside to witness the many stars overhead and the moon rising in the distance, still there, higher in the sky though, the next morning. It felt like my own private show, everyone else asleep and just these marvellous skies that you miss sleeping inside.

We stayed in self catering too, which felt like luxury after the camping, and I really did feel as if we had been blessed, the weather was phenomenal and we swam in the sea as much as we could, hiking up and down the cliffs, often with Eben in arms, and I discovered the joy that is Derrible Bay; there is always something new to discover on every trip, and never enough time to visit all that one might like to visit.

If you haven’t been to Sark please go, but please do venture further than the Bel Air and the Mermaid, further the Stocks too, I know it’s a popular one for lunch (and it is a beautiful hotel owned by lovely yogis, which we are very grateful to use for our retreats, it’s only a short walk from Dixcart too), but Sark has so much more to offer. It’s an island that has hidden treasures that will share itself with you the more you open up to it and notice and appreciate its beauty.

There’s nothing quite as special as a high tide morning swim at La Greve de la Ville, below the lighthouse, for example. I enjoy the walk too, there’s plenty of blackberries for the picking at the moment, helped get the children back up the hill! The morning light shimmers on the sea, and the clarity of the water is magnificent, it always sets me up well for the day head, there’s magic in that bay that’s for sure, even the children swam, their first proper Sark sea swim!

Mind you there’s a little bit of magic in all the bays. We visited Derrible for the first time and it was well worth it, visiting Sarkhenge on the way, and down the steep path, I left a sleeping Eben with E and Grandma at the top, but Elijah and I were both fine on the path and over the rocks at the bottom, joining some of our Sark friends celebrating a birthday.

Estelle showed us the caves, which are magnificent, especially the creux, which means a cave without a roof, and this one feels like you might be in a cathedral, there is an energy to it, go and have a feel. The swim was wonderful here too, it’s a lovely sandy beach and with record temperatures, the sea was much needed and extremely welcoming.

There’s Dixcart of course, just down from Stocks (see you can go for a swim before lunch!) and we managed a few trips down here. It’s fab swimming both at high and low tide, and has a little waterfall for the children to potter around, playing in the stream too, and going in and out of the arch. The walk down is beautiful, through the ancient-feeling woodland, which is healing by its very nature, or around the cliffs, currently laden with juicy and sweet blackberries, yum!

Port du Moulin is another favourite, I’m particularly keen on high tide swimming here but we have swam at low tide too. There’s Buddhist carvings on the rocks if you venture between the cliff and Tintageu, and actually if you go around into the cave, there’s fools gold (pyrite) in the rocks. Elsewhere you might find silver and Sark amethyst and I’m sure there’s other magical stones too - you can’t help but be affected positively by all the crystal and mineral energy!

I ventured down La Grand Greve, all 360 odd steps on my own one afternoon for a low tide swim, this after two trips to Dixcart, my legs were certainly feeling it, but my gosh it was worth the effort. I hadn’t been down there at such a low tide before and I was not to be disappointed, this will be on my list next time, albeit we were treated to the hottest temperatures of the summer that particular day and I was swimming with friends.

I made it to yoga that evening, a trip to Sark is never complete without a class with Caragh, a friend, chocolatier and fellow yogini. Caragh weaves Qi gong and yoga together and we practised outside on the playing field at the Village Hall, a fab end to a fab day!

There’s so much more, we’ve still not yet managed to get to Port a la Jument, or for a swim at Rouge Terrier, nor at Havre Gosselin, let alone the Eperquerie landings as we always run out of time. We did find the Venus Pools on our last trip but the locals say there are better pools to find. It took us over to Little Sark though and I always like to visit the Dolmen there if I can as this gets you a little off the beaten track and there are more blackberries to be found!

There’s more Buddhist carvings out towards Bec du New and caves down there at Les Fontaines. There’s plenty of caves, we still have to explore many of these and this red book helps; I was introduced to Jeremy who helped to update the original version and I know now how to get on and off Derrible Bay the La Trobe-Bateman way! No trip is complete without this book in hand, and will ensure that more of Sark reveals itself to you when the time is right, and will find you wanting to return for more.

Not to say we didn’t visit the Bel Air, Eben is keen on the play equipment in there, which we think is lethal. You’ll know what we mean if you visit, but it seems to keep the children entertained! Not far away from here is Lynn’s peaceful treatment space, I visited her for a hot stone massage and was not disappointed, I highly recommend, she is an aromatherapist and Reiki Master too and teaches both Reiki and massage so she knows her stuff, go and treat yourself! She also has a one-bedroom (double) self catering unit to rent, not far from the Avenue, see https://www.lesronche.com

I could go on, about the cycling, and the joy of La Valette campsite, the heritage museum, Mont Plaisirs stores (the two ladies who run it have been friends their whole lives, and their mums were best friends before them, I like that), Caragh’s chocolate shop and cafe and all that amazing chocolate (plus the pool and trampoline, which the children loved), the charity shop with all it’s finds and Simon’s shop next door, which the children always visit, and Jill Gill’s new shop along towards the Mermaid, the cafe on the left on the way to Stocks which is by far the best place for lunch, oh and there’s a display in the old Village Hall all about Sark under the German occupation, which is fascinating and makes you feel incredibly grateful for the freedom of life lived now.

I encourage you to go and visit if you can. I’ve two retreats planned on Sark, it is a marvellous place to retreat, and these are now fully booked as if proving that. I do have it in mind to run a more intimate retreat, a soul nourishing weekend with yoga and visits to some of Sark’s special places (although it’s all special really), so let me know if you would be interested in that, and also if you’d like to go on the cancellation list for the Spring retreat - emma@beinspiredby.co.uk - but honestly any trip is a retreat and a treat too!

Thank you Sark and you beautiful Sarkees.

Love Emma x

The killer!

The killer came with the both the full moon and my dark moon, an interesting combination of the light shining into the shadows to a deep and dark place, so well hidden that I hadn’t noticed how an experience almost twenty years ago continued playing out in my life in subtle (and perhaps not so subtle) ways! Still this is the way of the shadow, and I’m always grateful to the moon for helping me to see the patterns. 

I’ve had this thing about killing for a good many years now, wrapped into the idea of ahimsa and non-harming, the first yama or ethical principle of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.  Yet this has been tested a number of times over the years, not least before lock-down when we discovered a family of mice living in our wing. I didn’t like the idea of killing them, but coming face to face with them, quite literally, I also didn’t want them living with us either.

This happened at the same time that the ants moved in as they do every year on the equinox energy shift. I was challenged by these little beings too but refused to kill them either, albeit I was quite happy if someone else did. My friend, Jo, suggested that all of this was happening to allow me the opportunity to look at my relationship with killing, but even then, while I was quite happy to look at it, I didn’t really understand the lesson I was meant to be learning.

E managed to catch the mice humanely and set them free at the very back of our garden, where the rates live happily (I can’t kill them either). The ants drove me slightly mad as they crawled over my mat while I was teaching Zoom classes from the wing during lock-down, and I prayed to the ant Deva to take her ant family somewhere else and whether she listened or not, I can’t be sure, but they moved out once the seasonal shift settled. So I thought this subject was dealt with, I’d managed to find a way to live in harmony with all these beings (and was quite happy at the thought of living in harmony with Covid too), but alas not.

Then a week last Monday I was really challenged by the zillions of flies that had congregated in our kitchen and were continuously buzzing around me as I tried to prepare food. The flies usually arrive at the end of June for a week or so but this year they were late in their arrival and they were also larger in number, a recognised issue here in the country parishes of Guernsey, with many a household complaint (so too about the number of rats may I add) and distracting E and I each day with our fly ranting.

That Monday I had had enough and I resolved then and there, in a moment of frustration more than anything else, a pre-menstrual rage perhaps, when those things that are bugging us (no pun intended) become crystal clear and I concluded, in that moment of clarity also, that I was done with trying to pretend the flies were OK, and I would embrace my inner killer, ha, I would show those flies! 

I grabbed a tea towel and squatted a few of them, enough to vent my rage, before continuing with the food preparation. I didn’t feel all together happy about it, because I truly don’t like the idea of killing and feel that we should make an effort to live in harmony with other beings in this world, they have just as much right to be here as us, but enough was enough, it was time to look at that aspect of myself that could kill if it chose. Late that afternoon, and I didn’t see the coincidence or put two and two together until the next day, but I finally gave in to my craving for fish.

I’ve been a vegetarian on and off since the age of 13. There have been times when I have needed to eat meat due to acute anaemia, but this has only been short term. I have gone through phases with fish, yet last year, I felt less inclination to eat fish and dropped this from my diet. However, over the last few months my body has been craving it and I became aware of nutritional deficiencies that were likely caused by my vegetarian diet. 

The body always knows best, however I ignored this wisdom for my head had decided I would not eat fish and that was that. It’s very easy to get caught up in labelling and the separation and denial of our body wisdom that comes with this; I see it much more clearly in  others than I am prepared to admit in myself, yet because I see it so clearly in others, I was aware that I had started to fall into that trap too, of having to define myself by my diet…”I am a vegan…”, “I am a vegetarian”…”I am gluten-free”. 

I’m none of these things, not really. I am who I am and sometimes my body needs eggs and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it needs nuts and sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it needs warming foods and sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it needs fish and sometimes it doesn’t. I feel that with yoga especially, we can get so caught up in the idea of what we think we should eat that we don’t actually listen to the messages our body is giving to us. 

But that Monday I was listening, because I couldn’t not; I was virtually salivating at the fish counter at Forest Stores, I needed fish and I finally surrendered my mind’s holding that I don’t eat fish, and I bought the freshest locally-caught fish they were selling and ate it with love and respect that evening. It crossed my mind that I was actually harming myself more by denying myself what I needed, than by eating the fish, and it was only in acknowledging my own inner killer that I was able to eat it without feeling guilt. 

The next day, Tuesday, one of my students came for Reiki and there was an annoying fly in my healing room. I commented on this and told her how I had actually killed some the day previously and she shared with me a story of how she had grown weary of the snails attached to the side of her house that she had pulled them off and popped them in a bucket of ale, which she had been told was a humane way of killing them. Later that evening she met a friend for dinner and her friend had given her a really hard time about the snail killing.

I asked my student whether her friend ate dead cow meat. She laughed and said that actually, as it happened, they had been eating steak at a local restaurant when the conversation took place. I laughed at the irony and commented that perhaps her friend was in no position to judge her, given that she was eating dead cow, albeit that she had not killed it herself, yet someone had had to kill it for her to be able to indulge in her choice of eating it.  

 All of a sudden it dawned on me, this issue we have around duality and seeing things as black and white and right and wrong and being averse to something or attached to something and judging of the opposite. I realised how much I had been creating my own suffering by holding on so strongly to my sense that one should not kill, and yet how that was always being tested, not least by the mice and the rats, the ants and now the flies, but also my youngest son and his fascination with guns.

I honestly don’t know how he even knew about guns because we never talked about them, he never watched anything with a gun in it but one day he wanted a gun and that was that. I resisted but he persisted until his auntie bought him one. Even then one was not enough and on and on he went. I eventually did some research, discussing the matter with friends whose boys were allowed nerf guns and also with a gun professional from the local shooting club. 

This man told me that from his experience children will find a way to what they want, so if I was to keep denying him the opportunity to get guns out of his system now, and in a responsible and controlled way, then my son will likely find his way to guns in the future and when I had less control over it. I knew what he meant. I have seen children denied sugar and screen/TV time during their childhood, who then go on to spend their early adulthood eating as much sugar and junk food as they can while watching as much screen/TV as they can. Extremes don’t work. 

When it comes to killing, while I absolutely don’t condone killing for the sake of killing, all of these experiences have helped me to recognise that by denying my own inner killer and judging others for killing – and yet expecting others to do the killing for me - is contradictory and causes inner conflict and disharmony. How can I expect to experience peace of mind when I have not reconciled various aspects of self and judge others so openly (and myself may I add)? Simply put, I can’t.

I have recognised that we all possess an inner killer, and I have finally owned this. While this doesn’t mean that I am going around killing things (I’ve not killed a fly since, it was just part of me understanding the lesson, they’ve virtually left us now anyway…always the way when the lesson is learnt), it does mean that I have become less judgmental about it, because I know that if someone was trying to kill me or my boys that I would likely try to kill them first in self-defence – this is inherent within us, the need for survival and to protect those we love; we all have the capacity to kill whether we like it or not. 

I realise that in my quest to not kill I was trying to kill a part of myself that I did not like, to put it in the shadows out of the way, to deny it. This in itself will kill me - as I have mentioned a number of times recently, anything that is repressed will find expression through inner dis-ease. It was quite a revelation, and a difficult one to stomach at that, but all part of the process of gaining a better understanding of the workings of the mind and of ahimsa, which is not there to give ourselves an even harder time, far from it, it is about being conscious of what we are doing and the reason for it. 

This does not make it right or wrong, it is all just an experience anyway and it is one that will change depending on the day and the circumstances. Like so much in life it is not certain, and this is the trickiest thing to get one’s head around; that everything is subject to change, including our opinions and judgements. Once we can settle more into the middle ground of uncertainty, of things not being this way or that way, into that quieter unknown space, then I believe we are more able to hear our body wisdom and embrace all aspects of ourselves, including the inner killer!

This way or that way

Yesterday I was cycling my electric bike from Vazon to Pleinmont, with Elijah on the back. It was windy and I was having to cycle into it, which started to becoming annoying, because it was hard work and because the wind aggravates me, as it does for so many.

It crossed my mind that rather than be annoyed and irritated by it (as it was not going to change the situation reacting like this), I might just go with the flow of it. Yet I wondered how I might go with the flow of wind that is blowing against me, I could hardly turn around, although I did wonder if this was a sign that I was going the wrong way, off to a school outing.

I turned inland when I could, to escape the wind, and it was here, on the brow of a hill that I passed a crossroads and saw a sign someone had made that said, “This way”, “That way”, “Other Way”, “Wrong way”. This made me laugh. Which way was I going? I was going this way, but it could be that way, or it could be the other way, it could also be the wrong way. How do we know?

So much of our lives is spent trying to navigate the ‘right’ way. I have spent hours running questioning which way I am going. Sometimes it might feel like life is going the right way, and sometimes it feels that it is going the wrong way. regardless, it is going on anyway.

We walked out to the fairy ring out at Pleinmont and Elijah spotted a fishing boat and we wondered which way it was going. All I really saw were the orange buoys, which made me think about the times I tried to explain to both my boys the nature of buoys, “they are called buoys, but they are not boys as in, you are a boy, it’s a different buoy”. It was confusing, and still is, even though they know that a buoy is a buoy, they do still ask me why, why is a buoy and a boy so similar in sound. I can’t answer that, just like I can’t answer the reason that “sea” and “see’ sound the same, but are spelt differently.

We lost sight of the boat and never did know which way it was going as we were distracted by the tiny fairy door that someone has placed on a stone near the fairy ring itself. Is that a way too? I like to think so, into a world that is yet unknown. The wind was whipping around this extremity, it’s always windy here, as if the wind itself is leading the way to the fairy ring, because once you get around the corner it calms a little, and you can make a wish without being blown away.

I don’t know that there is a right way anymore than there is a wrong way. My life has been about navigating between the two, because my mind like’s to distinguish the good from the bad, as if I might be judged by some higher power, as if life is a game of snakes and ladders, and who wants to land on a snake, let’s be honest. I’ve become less certain about this, about anything, is there really any certainty?

There have been times in my life when my soul has suffered because of the decisions I have made. When I have not been paying attention, because I didn’t know that I had a choice, so what was the point in being attentive if I was going to have to do what I was going to have to do because it was expected of me, or because I didn’t even question it. Or did I?

Perhaps it is age that brings with it a different perspective, or perhaps it’s a shifting relationship to the soul, as one realises that the way was compromising something, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, until it screamed at you in the dead of night, it is always the dead of night, when we have lost the soul that we might recognise it. There is something about this witching hour, as if it might be a portal to all those lost bits of ourselves. I heard an owl, I was pretty certain I could hear an owl, that other worldly sound, maybe the moon as up, I can’t be sure, I didn’t know that back then. But I did know that something didn’t feel quite right.

If only I had know then what I know now. Perhaps then there might not have been so much suffering. At the end of yoga classes, I regularly repeat, “may all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering”. Recently it has crossed my mind and sometimes I even say it, “may all beings be free from their suffering and the causes of their suffering”. Because we create our own suffering. Our mind creates our suffering. This way, that way, which way. The mind loves to debate, question, wonder, ponder, make sense.

Am I going the right way? I can’t be sure. It’s a way, that’s all I know. The moon is rising later. I know that too. Later and later each evening. Until it rises in the morning. Is that the right way? It’s just it’s way. That’s the way it is. I see the sea. The sea I see. It’s just the way it is. It’s liberating, lets us off the hook, to know that it is not about being right or wrong, this way or that, who cares, as long as we can make a decision and be OK with that. It’s the inability to make a decision, to continuously question which way might be best to the extent that we never make a decision, it’s this that harms us the most.

The wind blew me the way I needed to go, to see what I needed to see, to think differently. I didn’t notice much on that journey, my head was down mainly, desperate to get to the destination in time - don’t even get me started on how much of our lives are defined by the ticking of a clock - but it did open my mind, free it a little. The flow will take us where we need to go, even if we feel that we might be going against it, we will get there, somehow, it is up to us how much we suffer in the process.

Eating disorder as a journey to the soul

I turned 45 today. I’d been preparing for a while, because it felt like it might be a momentous occasion, a real mid-life moment, something that needed to be acknowledged in some way. I had initially thought we might go to Glastonbury on pilgrimage and swim in the white spring, then I decided I’d go and watch the sunrise at Stonehenge on the solstice and celebrate on my own, early.

 But then Covid arrived and we have come to Sark instead, which has started to feel a little bit like a second home, a spiritual home at that. There is something about the energy here, the combination of the ancient rocks and the wild sea, the space, the peace, the fact that it hasn’t been ruined by modern civilisation or mass tourism that I find uplifting, grounding and profoundly healing.

It allows deep knowing to surface, space between thoughts, a re-prioritising of life and a consideration and rejig of what might be important. It also offers wonderful walking and scrambling, and swimming and cycling, all my favourite things and with my favourite people too. It is a place that touches deep into the heart’s core and transforms things. You cannot help but be changed by time spent here.

I needed this time if truth be told, to step away from the maelstrom of Guernsey, the pressure of the schooling debacle, and the routine, to say nothing of the building repairs being carried out on the cottage, this after the flood right before the beginning of lockdown; how I have missed my bath! Here I get to lay in a bath. I cannot tell you the joy. It is like nothing else. If bathing was a subject, then I’d be giving it my effort for a grade A. 

Life always feels better after a bath. Like sea swimming. I have never once regretted a swim. I’ve never once regretted a trip to Sark either. Although there was a drunken work event back in my twenties, when I ended up staying the night at the last minute, and drinking even more wine than was needed and paying for that the next day, not least with an invoice for the hotel room, but with a sore head. Those days are long gone thankfully. 

However, this has definitely been a year of reflection. When I turned 44, I was aware there were still aspects of my past that needed resolving and I thought that if I don’t do something about this soon, then when will I? My mum had highlighted this to me when she had read the first draft of a manuscript I had written and commented that I wasn’t really in a position to write about how one recovers from an eating disorder, for example, when I clearly hadn’t, not totally. She had a point. But the question is, do you ever truly recover? 

It’s a question that made me curious, and it began a process that has found me exploring how this might still show up in my life.  I developed an eating disorder when I was 17 yet I had never taken professional help to understand the nature of it. It was something I skirted around, the elephant in the room, it went unspoken, and yet I could write about it, which is strange isn’t it, that we can sometimes write publicly about the things we can’t talk about intimately.

Yet it is tied up in intimacy, as is so much of the life that we live in our heads, because intimacy is tricky, as anyone will know, who has tried to explore this. The  process took me into intimacy and into harm, and it shook me around, as I tried to make sense of when and why it had all began, and I started to see themes and patterns in my life even now, so that while, these days, I might eat ‘normally’ (whatever this means), an eating disorder is so much more than food. It’s about our thoughts and our relationship with self and about our mind and our heart, our body, our soul and how we relate to the world.

I did find it depressing when a lady told me, a beautiful lady incidentally, who has some experience of working with people with eating disorders, that it is just something you come to live with. I don’t know about that, it doesn’t settle easily with me. I pull weeds out of my veggie patch so that the veggie plants can thrive. Isn’t it the same with us too, can’t we pull out the weeds from their roots and make our internal earth richer, our inner landscape clearer. The sea goes in and the sea goes out. The moon rises and it sets. Are we so very different? 

 Sure the clouds come and obscure the moon, and the winds whip into a bay, disturbing the calmness of the sea, but their very nature stays the same. Is it not the same with us too? I believe it is and I wondered then, whether it may be a matter of making peace with our own nature, living in harmony with ourselves, with our true self. This I have explored too. You can lose your mind in the process. Some people might think you mad, but I think it makes you feel very alive.

What is life if we do not lose our minds? There’s nothing worse than a fixed mind, believing this or that as if it was a truth, when really a truth is only a perception captured in time, your perception, and this can chop and change, like the sea, like the moon, if you catch it from a dodgy angle, or when you’ve drunk too much wine (which I haven’t done for a long time now, I’m so pleased about that), or you think you see something and yet it’s not really what you thought it was when your eyes focus properly.

So where was I going with this, as we’re going out to see a fat pig, on the farm here on Sark, owned by friends, and the boys love pigs, which always amuses me as they love to eat sausages. They understand the connection too, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. I’m more bothered and I’m not even eating the dead pig, ingesting it’s energy – if you buy into that sort of thing, which I do btw, because we are all energy…

Picking up the thread, OK so I think I thought that my mission might be, by the time I am 45 to have explored and understood more around the subject of harm, because this really is the crux of an eating disorder. I mean let’s face it, you can’t harm yourself much more than depriving yourself of the very thing that might nourish you, namely food, or stuffing your face to the extent that you tax your digestive system and counter any potential for nourishment.

It’s a really cruel and nasty state of mind to find yourself in. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’s very difficult to be satisfied by life when you don’t allow yourself to be satisfied by food, when the very thing that night nourish you is turned into a weapon by your mind. It’s very difficult to suddenly switch the mind away from that, especially if it has become an ingrained pattern over a long time, and it often is with an eating disorder because it is very difficult to treat – even the ‘experts’ don’t really know how to treat it, at best they might help you manage it.

But I didn’t just want to manage it. I tried that for years and it was a daily consideration, because every day you have to eat. Not that it’s even about the eating, it’s about everything else, and I suppose this is the point that I have been trying to make. It is about allowing yourself to be satisfied by life, of feeling that you deserve to be nourished and loved and cared for by yourself as much as by anyone else, by life then! It is about all these wonderful things, but ultimately it is about love and it is about intimacy, and it is about being deeply honest and truly forgiving and compassionate. 

I have learned a lot this year and I’m proud of myself actually, I congratulate myself, because it has not been easy. There have been dark nights of the soul, as you know, and not because I’m losing my mind, going mad, oh cripes is there something wrong with her sort of thing, but because I don’t want to be continuously limited by my past, and by the patterns I have developed to help me feel safe, that are actually no longer – and never were if truth be told, but you’ll have to wait for the book to read more about that – useful or helpful, that are anything but that.

Accepting and loving the self is not something that happens over-night, you’ll know that if you are reading this. You’ll know because we all have moments of questioning our worth, when we catch sight of ourselves in a mirror and wish we hadn’t and then quickly find something to distract us from ourselves so that we don’t need to go any deeper, get busy, busier, drink more wine, do more yoga, always doing, rushing, being somewhere other than exactly here right now looking at ourselves honestly in that mirror.

Those of you with eating disorders will know this more than most. It is not easy to recover, to find your feet again, to mend your heart (for it is the greatest wounding to the heart, to harm yourself in this manner), to be able to look at your reflection and love what you see, to be compassionate to yourself, respect, love, cherish your body (so conditioned are you to push it, starve it, abuse it, try to change it, control it), to nourish, care for and be at peace, to put yourself and your needs first, to listen and be heard.

But it is possible, bit by bit. I know this because I have had to face my demons. I had a choice. Last year, the year before and every year before that too. My birthdays came and highlighted to me my ongoing issues and neuroses. Birthdays do this. It is as if a portal opens for us so that we may see more clearly. What used to happen though, was I’d ignore it, because it was too painful to acknowledge that another year had passed and I was still carrying this burden. I’d drink wine. At birthdays you drink wine. It was the perfect excuse to pop my head in the sand and just hope that things might change by the next year.

The trouble is that we don’t change unless we do the changing. Unless something shifts. Unless we look honestly at ourselves and do what is needed, lose our mind usually, because it is only in losing our mind that we can find a new way to be, in the unknown that is not fixed by what has happened previously. The mind is a terribly powerful thing. Ask anyone who has experienced an eating disorder. They will tell you. The mind is truly fascinating, ingenious and beautiful and yet at times extremely disconcerting. Thank god for the heart! The heart keeps me sane. So does faith. 

Two years ago all my birthday cards seemed to be about yoga and drinking wine. The yoga was fab but the drinking wine made me uncomfortable, and I was aware that I wanted this to change. It’s a silly thing to notice, but do notice the birthday cards that you are sent, they speak volumes about where you are at in your life. I was stuck and I needed to go a bit deeper, to stop skirting on the edges, not really getting into the centre. Yet I didn’t know then what to do or where to turn, because on the surface life was great, I was writing books, teaching yoga, living the dream. 

Last year, my birthday was uneventful to the extent that I don’t remember it, I had to look at photos to remind myself, and yet I knew that I liked turning 44, that there was something about the number, and 4 my lucky number, so double luck and I suppose there was a sense that I had to get on with it now. You get moments like that, where you’ve been coasting along, you know there’s stuff there in the background, but you can ignore it, you’ve gotten used to ignoring it. But then all of a sudden you just think no. There’s a line in the sand. 

You can keep on keeping on, pretending that everything is OK, or you can dive right in. In moments like that, when I suddenly become aware of something that needs healing, there is no choice. I don’t want to live a half lived life, denying my potential, too fearful to make the changes that might need to be made, too scared to feel what needs to be felt. I’ve spent too many birthdays in tears, a combination of overwhelm and just because they’ve never felt quite right, a reminder that I still hadn’t quite found that place inside me where I might feel satisfied, deserving, and OK with everything. The inner critic was always just a little bit too loud. 

Mary Oliver writes, “Attention is the beginning of devotion”, and she is right. This year I have been attentive. Really attentive. The Scaravelli-inspired yoga has helped this, it is all about being attentive, and about devotion. It is through attention that we come to notice all that we had previously ignored, because there is nowhere else to turn, not when we have taken the step inwards, towards the heart. We are all heart, we know this.

Some will argue that we are the breath, because the breath gives life, yet without the heart, there is no breath. IVF allowed me to see this. At six weeks gestation, both my boys were visible on the screen as beating hearts. Beating hearts! They were alive and yet there was no breath. Not directly. This would follow when the heart was ready for expression in the outer world. Did they choose? I still don’t know about that. There is always mystery, this is what feeds our soul. 

I didn’t know how it might be today either. I found myself in tears on my mat yesterday, they seemed to come from nowhere but I wonder if it might have been apprehension, ahead of the big day. I bumped into someone I know from back home, not well, but we had this intimate conversation about home schooling in a very short period of time, on our bikes, along a grass track, our respective partner’s chatting, our children remarkably quiet, and she confessed to crying that day too, in the Avenue. Albeit she is five months pregnant so has an excuse!

But today was the most wonderful day. I felt I deserved it and I felt satisfied by it. I allowed myself to receive all that was offered. I did not get overwhelmed or upset and I didn’t drink wine or in any way numb out. I awoke with Eben’s head pressed to mine and when I reminded him it was by birthday (given he is three, I didn’t expect him to remember!), he excitedly told me of the gifts that were waiting, “the most beautiful Buddha, beautiful crystals and gardening gloves”. I couldn’t help but laugh. He opened my presents anyway and yes, there they were, all chosen by him.

I got to meditate, to drink tea, open my cards, take it easy, before we scrambled across rocks and swam naked in the Venus Pool, a first! We visited the Sark dolmen and Eben learned how to use my pendulum. We cycled and walked, and we swam some more at La Grande Greve, also a first. We ate fresh Sark eggs, homemade chips, and local salad with roasted pumpkin seeds, we drank tea and ate Caragh’s amazing dark praline chocolate, and we got wet in the rain. 

I wrote until my heart was content and I didn’t feel guilty one bit. We visited our friends and their huge pig and I sat in a tractor. I went to a yoga class, I can’t tell you the joy, and I lay in a bath and read my book. I did all these wonderful things that nourished and satisfied me and it felt great. The inner critic was quiet. I cannot tell you the relief.

That part of me that doesn’t self-congratulate easily, that holds back for fear of being judged for being egotistical or big headed, well that part of me is coming out of the shadows, because it is needed, it is so very much needed. I congratulate myself, because it has not been easy, but I know now that it is OK to feel satisfied and deserving. 

It is OK to express our needs and allow ourselves to receive what is needed. It is OK to damage our hearts as long as you find ways to heal it. Then it is OK to let go of the need to keep fixing, because we can get lost here too, playing out the old themes about not being good enough or worthy enough and forgetting that we’ve moved on and all we’re doing is keeping ourselves stuck in the past. Heal and move on. I know that now too. 

It is OK to feel proud of ourselves, to accept ourselves, to love ourselves. And I do, honestly I do. I couldn’t have told you that before. I would have cared too much about what you might have thought and not enough about me, packaging my poor little heart away in a box, whispering, “maybe next year you can come out and shine”. But now is the time. I hear you beautiful heart. And I rejoice in me and my life and my soul. And I hope you rejoice in all that is yours too. 

Stuff happens to us in our lives. We harm ourselves in many ways. I harmed myself with an eating disorder for many years and it would be foolish to pretend that that life is ever the same after an eating disorder comes in, but in many respects it can be reframed as a blessing, as something positive, as it might take you on a journey to the deepest parts of yourself, that you might never have otherwise known. It’s like depression, but more on that another time.

Losing our mind is only the very beginning, and it’s worth beginning, because a mind lost is a heart gained, and really, it can only ever be about love. It is a pilgrimage all of its own, to our soul, to the deepest part of ourselves that can spend a lifetime being unknown, yet with devotion to the self, we can find a depth that we didn’t know possible. This is a continuous exploration, one that I truly believe, is worth making; an act of devotion.

xxx

P.S. My cards this year were about the moon and flowers, goddesses and living your dreams…

Uncertainty in practice!

Two hours after publishing my previous blog post about living with uncertainty, I almost laughed at myself as there I was, on the Sark Belle, a river boat, the less sea worthy of all the Sark boats, heading to Sark from Guernsey in rough seas. All the other sailings that day had been cancelled but I did not know this, just as I did not know that the sea had been described as ‘lumpy’.

It was a surprise to me actually, that before we had even left Guernsey harbour the boat was already lolling. I usually like this boat, I always favour it over the other boats as it brings with it happy memories of calm summer crossings to Sark, and especially to the Sark folk festival, one of the highlights of the year in years gone by.

Yet here I was today, oblivious to what lay ahead, as the boat lolled from side to side hit by southerly waves, as we entered beyond what was actually the safety of the harbour, even though that didn’t feel exactly calm. Before too long I had both boys sitting on me, “a leg each mummy”, was the agreement as usual, not particularly comfortable, bony bums sitting on both thighs, but it’s what we do, to spare the arguments.

Not long after then I was gripping both of them into me as the boat appeared to lurch up and down and side to side, the bottom of the boat crashing back down each time a wave had passed. I sunk my head between them and gripped in closer, wondering how I had missed the weather forecast, as I glimpsed the a younger lady ahead and to my left side burst into tears and her boyfriend wrap his arms around her.

It got worse. The boat was really at the mercy of the waves and we were at the mercy of them too. My whole body was locked in stress and I noticed that my right foot was attempting to find a solid place to rest itself, to push into something, to find some certainty in my world that was now desperately uncertain.

I noticed what I was doing and I almost laughed out loud as I considered how funny the universe can be allowing us to put into practice that which we teach. How comfortable was I living on the edge, in an uncertain world as I perceived it in that moment? I’ll be honest, I wasn’t very comfortable at all. I was totally out of my depth, desperate for some certainty that all would be well in the end.

The boys hugged closer into me and into each other and I considered my fear. What was my fear in that moment? It wasn’t difficult to work it out, I had already run through in my mind where I might find an exit from the boat, if it rolled onto its side and overturned, and yet I had also considered that the whole experience would be so shocking and disorientating that I wouldn’t have any control over an outcome of survival however much I planned for it.

It struck me that my greatest fear then was not losing my life, although this was a consideration, but my sons’ lives. I wanted to protect them and keep them safe. It struck me then that this has been the source of much of the underlying tension I have felt these last few years. It is not so much the tension between all the different aspects of self, or the tension of the pace of the outside world with all its perceived expectations, but the tension that arises with trying to keep children safe, of the lack of trust in the inherent safeness of life on planet earth. 

In that moment, I did not feel safe. I was out of my comfort zone and was very aware of this. I know that yoga is all about living with uncertainty and I moved my awareness to my breath hoping that this would calm me and it did. I remembered Reiki and put my family and the whole boat in a Reiki bubble. I also prayed to the angels and asked the boys to ask the magic fairies to look after us, their equivalent. This all helped.

Yet, I was very aware that I needed to let go, and allow myself to be moved by the boat, by its rhythm as it navigated it’s path through the rough seas, and trust in that and in the captain. I was aware of other people on the boat, a group of guys ahead of me (beyond the lady who vomited) talking avidly, seemingly unaware of the risks that the rest of us had perceived, our concerns about seasickness and the boat rolling over. This made me think how much of our lives are lived in our heads, through our mind’s perception of reality, and how small the gap between truth and imagination.

To me that was one of the toughest boat journeys I have ever taken, that is my truth and my reality, yet to those guys (hardened sailors as it turns out) it was no big deal, and all the risks I perceived, were stuff of my imagination, not real, there was no truth in them, their mood remained unaffected, high spirited, just another boat journey. I was high spirited when the seas calmed as we got closer to Sark, and as I recognised how much my fears were imagined, and how much they are linked to my boys and not being able to – always – ease their suffering or keep them safe. 

Yet really we were safe. The universe has our back. It is our mind that doesn’t always recognise this. Life lived with uncertainty is not easy, but I see how it can make us much more conscious of the moment, come what may. And really the lesson, as always, is about perception and shifting to a more positive mindset. This too is something I am exploring at the moment, so more on this another time. We made it, and with more lessons learned before having set foot on beautiful Sark!