From the safe harbour.

From the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

I came across this quote on Twitter and it really resonated with me. It seemed to encapsulate the 'journey' I've been on for the past 3 years.  Prior to this time I'd become the epitome of the 'couch potato'. A combination of circumstances had conspired to sap me of my confidence in myself or my ability to be a useful member of society. I hid away in my 'safe harbour', telling myself that I was happy and content with my life.  So what changed?

One of my favourite daytime TV shows at the time was Loose Women, a lunchtime chat show, where 4 female celebrities discuss various topics in a light hearted way. I never missed an episode and would record it if for any reason I couldn't watch it in real time. One day as I was watching I thought to myself how brilliant it would be if they ran a competition where the prize was the opportunity to appear on the show and be a 'Loose Woman'.

Well how excited was I when not long after they announced that they were going to run a competition where the prize was exactly that! I convinced myself that it was fate and that all I had to do was enter and of course I'd win. Needless to say not only did I not win, I didn't even make the shortlist. To say that I was disappointed is definitely an understatement, in fact I was devastated. My reaction was completely out of proportion.

Once I got over the disappointment I began to realise that perhaps I wasn't as happy as I thought and this made me realise that I needed to do something about it.

"To change your life, you have to change yourself. To change yourself, you have to change your mindset." (unknown)

Once I got over the initial disappointment, I actually went through a phase of being angry at Loose Women, totally bizarre I know. But this anger spurred me on to make the changes necessary to change my life.

The rest, as they say, is history. I started volunteering at Cogges Manor Farm Museum where over a plate of Chilli in the Manor House kitchen I heard about Woapa, the adult singing group. I joined the singing group and one evening at choir practice, Lisa Cherry stood up and announced that she was about to publish her first book. My reaction to this was one of jealousy. Writing was something I'd dreamed of doing myself once and listening to Lisa made me realise that it was still smouldering away inside me. I started to follow Lisa on facebook and found out that she was running a Beginner's Writer's Workshop. I went to this workshop and when Lisa's second book, Brightness of the Stars', was launched recently it contained a short story, 'The Fluffy Dandelion', I'd written as a result of a writing prompt by Lisa. It was also Lisa who encouraged me to start writing this blog.

"20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away"

Natalie Lowe

I've definitely left my 'safe harbour', 'thrown off the bow lines' and I'm enjoying the exhilaration of the voyage of discovery I'm on. This past year has been amazing, so many new and exciting things happened; taking part in a flashmob and making a CD, not to mention having my first piece of fiction published. I even appeared on a TV programme with Lynda Bellingham, one of the Loose Women panelists, (hence photo above, I'm the one in the floral blouse)! It has been scary at times but I've never been tempted to return to the safety of my old life.

 

I'm a 'lady of a certain age' and as we all know life is uncertain whatever age we are. I love the imagery of being like a sail boat catching the Trade winds.There's an element of uncertainty about the direction it'll take you and at times you may end up becalmed, but as we all need times when we need to rest and recharge our batteries, that's no bad thing. I know that it won't all necessarily be 'plain sailing', but that's one of the elements that make for an interesting journey; a voyage of Discovery.

 

Loose Women inadvertently changed my life! Ironically I don't have time to watch it nowadays, I'm too busy. Who knows; perhaps one day I'll be invited on the show as a guest-well a girl can dream, can't she?

An awkward situation.

The 'lovely Lisa' who anyone who has been following my blogs from the beginning will have already heard about, gave a writing prompt on our writer's facebook page.

'I have a little writing prompt for you today.... Write about a time you felt most uncomfortable/awkward. Maybe a new job, first day at school, first date, second date,....you get the idea. Who is up for the challenge?' she wrote.

Well I love nothing more than a challenge, so here goes!

My awkward situation. (one of many)!

I guess for me one of many times I’ve felt uncomfortable was the day I met my in-laws for the first time. I was just a working class girl, the eldest of 5 children who lived in a terraced house on a housing estate. My mum worked as a cashier in a bingo hall and my dad was a handy man in a local factory.

Donald on the other hand was the youngest of 3, his father was a geologist, who’d written books, and his mother a doctor. They lived in a large detached house and had not 1, but 2 cars and I had to use ‘Shanksy’s pony’, (the bus) to get around. His mum was my mum’s family’s G.P, and to say that they were a disreputable lot would be a vast understatement. My future mother-in-law already knew about my family’s skeletons before she met me.

Despite this, I in my naivety set off, nervous but convinced that it would be ok.

They were friendly enough when I arrived but as soon as I was shown into their enormous lounge, I knew I was out of my depth. Undeterred, I adopted an ‘air of nonchalance’ and tried my best to act as if ‘to the manor born’. Then it was time for lunch.

Lunch at home was usually a bowl of soup or a sandwich. Here I was directed to the dining room, (a room which I thought was only to be found in a hotel) and was presented with a table set with more cutlery than I’d seen in my entire life. Well, we’ve all seen the films when the heroine has to watch to see which utensil everyone else uses for the different courses and that was the predicament I found myself in.

I managed not to dribble my soup down my chin or send my peas flying across the room. I quite enjoyed the main course, of sausages that had been removed from their skin and chopped up and served in a white sauce. At least that’s what I thought they were. I found out later that they were in fact sweetbreads or pancreas to give them their biological name. It’s just as well I didn’t know what they were before I ate them!

So far, so good. I reckoned that I was ‘pulling it off’.

 

Then came pudding! Pears poached in red wine.  

A simple enough dish and how could you make a fool of yourself eating them? How could such a simple dish be the undoing of all my hard work trying to ‘fit in’?

In those days I had a false tooth on a plate because of a rather nasty abscess I’d had which resulted in my tooth having to be extracted. Pears have a tendency to have little pips or stones; I’m not quite sure what they are. All I know is that one of these became stuck underneath the plate of my false tooth threatening to dislodge the tooth in front of the entire table. To try to minimise the embarrassment of the situation I chose to make a rapid exit clutching my hand to my mouth, hoping against hope that no-one noticed.

How I had the courage to re-enter that dining room, I’ll never know. I could quite happily have just slipped quietly out the front door and resigned myself to spinsterhood.

Fortunately, my future in-laws chose to see the funny side of things. I’m not sure to this day if the sweetbreads were a test or not as to me it was a strange dish to serve to a stranger. Whatever it was, I passed and went on to have a very good relationship with them, and thanks to modern dentistry the offending ‘tooth’ is no longer a problem.

If only all of my awkward moments had such a happy ending? But that’s another story.

Keep looking up, even when you feel down.

Being human means that we are a mixed bag of emotions. One of the lessons we learn, to a greater or lesser degree depending on our upbringing, is how to deal with these emotions. Have you ever watched as a young child has had a temper tantrum in a supermarket and found yourself wondering what type of adult that child will grow up to be? Fortunately, it's possible, with the right training for children to learn that this isn't the right, or even the best, way to achieve what you want.

As a child we find it easy to express how we feel. If a baby is hungry they cry; if  happy they laugh; and how many of us have been on the receiving end of a suspicious stare from a toddler? But as we grow up and especially when we reach adulthood, many of us find it hard to show how we are feeling, especially when we are sad or even angry. Suppressing these negative emotions is one of many causes of Clinical Depression. I know because it happened to me. But this isn't what this blog is about.

 

I have a friend who has published a book about growing up in and out of the care system, and her experiences of life after being launched out into the 'big, wide world'. In it she talks about the time when she was homeless and living on the streets. At this time she remembers lying in the gutter and looking up at the 'Brightness of the Stars'. Now in her 40's she is a successful author, speaker, Mother, among other things. Somehow this young sapling who, through no fault of her own, reached depths that many of us will never experience, yet managed to reach up to the 'Brightness of the Stars' and turn her life completely around. If you want to find out more then I recommend buying her book titled 'Brightness of the Stars:.......' available now on Amazon or through her website, www.Lisacherry.co.uk.

This made me wonder, if she hadn't been looking up, would she have found the strength and courage to turn things around? If you walk around constantly looking down all you see is the rubbish and detrius of life or your own feet that are tired and weary from the trudging journey that you're on. This can make you feel as if that's the way life will always be and remove all hope. Looking down it's very easy to become so wrapped up in yourself and your own problems that you fail to see the beauty and possibilities of life or even the hands that are being stretched out to help you.

I know that it's not easy. It takes an enormous effort to keep looking up when you are down in the depths. In her first book 'Soul Journey' Lisa shares the stories of other women who have risen above their circumstances and made a happy, successful life for themselves. It is possible.

When I was depressed my children were 'the stars' that helped me get through each day and gave me the strength that I needed to fight my way back to health. I'm sure we all have something that we recognise as 'our stars', a reason to fight. The gift of life itself is sometimes enough if we can only see it. There is something truly inspiring about 'The Brightness of the Stars'.

Portal to another world!

As a child whenever things got tough I'd disappear into another world. I was blessed with an over active imagination so it wasn't very hard for me to imagine that I was really a princess who had been 'swapped at birth' and that some day my real parents would appear and re-instate me to my rightful position as a cosseted princess. Books were my magic tools, some day my prince would come. Reading a book I became the heroine, I conquered the giant, my heart broke but was mended by an act of kindness or compassion that over rode the pain that I was feeling.  In books there was a 'happy ever after'.


As the oldest of a family of 5 children, I felt a burden of responsibility that looking back as an adult I feel was unfair. Why should an 11 year old girl be expected to look after her baby sister or help clean the house or make sure that her brothers and sisters got to school on time. Books were my escape! I would often hide under the bed and read, dreaming of a life that I had seen in films or read in books. I dreamt of improving my life and 'making something of myself'. I'm not saying that my parents were bad, they were  just following the model that had been put before them when they were growing up.

 

Books kept me sane. They showed me another pathway, another life,  a parallel universe as it were, where you could achieve your goals and ambitions and where anything was possible! One of my ambitions was to be a writer. It's taken me a long time, but I'm now trying to pursue that ambition. This picture showing books as a' portal to another dimension' really resonated with me.





When things have been hard or when I've been going 'through it' it's always helped to read a book or write down my feelings. Whether it's been just pure escapism or taking my mind of my situation or even, quite importantly. providing me with an excuse to cry, books have been a really important part of my life.

Books help you to solve your problems, understand your problems, understand those close to you or just provide sheer escapism. By providing us with romantic figures like 'Mr Darcy' they give us  the means to immerse ourselves in a fantasy world and rise above the things that are dragging us down.  Books can help us when we're going through adverse circumstances to feel that we are not alone and that what we are feeling is 'normal'. Writing can be cathartic as long as you can deal with the consequences of other people's responses to your writings, so be careful of what you write.

I don't know at this point if I can write the next Jane Eyre or James Patterson, or 50 Shades of Grey! But I do know that as long as I live, books will continue to be a 'portal to another dimension' that will keep me feeling alive and inspired and give me hope for the future.

I'm on a pathway to fulfil my dreams. I've recently sat an exam as part of my open university degree including creative writing. I've had a poem published in my local newspaper and a short story included in a book by another writer.


If you have dreams, if you want to change your circumstances, step into the 'portal of books' and discover a world that can show you the pathway to your future.