My mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's for over a year .She still has some long term memory but her short term memory is gone completely.
She remembers little of her life from the last 40 years for instance,
I show her photos of the family and her childhood home in Ireland, which she enjoys, but I have to remind her who they are.
Sad to see my intelligent , feisty mother like this. She was always so full of life, gardening, bowling but now she has little joy.
She doesn't like
mixing with other people so won't attend a day centre like my father.
She loves making words from scrabble cards and doing word searches.
I was told that the part of the brain we use for this is a different section and hers is intact.
Her personality seems stripped back to its essence and all of her negative views and anxieties have gone -she's like a different person and I 'm seeing who she would have been without her difficult marriage and hard life.
I had a dream in which my Irish Grandmother came to tell me she was looking after Mum. I didn't tell my mother , but the next time I saw her she told me she couldn't sleep "Because My Mam keeps visiting me - she came one day with other people with other people and I wanted to go with them, but I was told to stay."
I am learning how much I love her at this time .I visit again in a few day and will bring about the town we lived in most of our lives.
Wednesday 21 May 2014
Small Stones
Small Stones
Summer fills me with optimism.I have been de-cluttering and organising myself.
Currently doing a course in writing and spirituality with a Buddhist.
The idea of writing "small Stones" every day has been wonderful -I probably would have baulked at having to write every day. Doing the small stones helps me connect with my poetry and thus with Bride the Goddess I work with.
The idea I think links to "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.
If you feel overwhelmed by writing anything it's a good place to start.
Here are a few of my "Small Stones"
Morning coffee aroma arouses my senses.
Sunlight streams in
through the café window
Flow and grace of yoga
sunlight through the window panes
forms blocks of light across the floor
and we are in a cathedral.
25 years ago today
I gave birth to a daughter Lucy meaning light
Most powerful moment of love I ever felt
when I looked into her eyes for the first time.
Today I have a list of things to do so must go and do them whilst I have the energy.
Number one is vocal
exercising for I have choir rehearsal tonight and we're doing a lot of Handel. Blessed be
Thursday 6 March 2014
My special hour
Every day at around 4 pm I have an hour of stillness and reflection or simple meditation.
It is at that time because it suits my particular day and life. I sit by the hearth and light a candle and am still.
It is the time I try to connect to the spirit within me, the divine spark within my heart.
Sometimes I listen to music ,but in Spring and Summer I like to sit in silence and so hear the birdsong in the garden.
I often feel that when I'm alone at home(My daughter is grown up and has her own home and my husband is at work) that I am living a kind of nun's life. Solitary , with little contact with others.
I have enjoyed the last decade and this current time for I have had time to study spiritual topics and have my own world to reflect in. I do see other people at choir and at yoga classes twice per week but I'm very much a lone wolf. Partly because life has taught me that some people can be cruel and intolerant but partly because I love my own company and since childhood have my own worlds to get absorbed in.
I have never felt the need to put myself and my views "out there" preferring to work in the back stage of life., voluntary work, absent healing done anonymously.
For my own spiritual practices, I am happiest alone in the woods or by my hearth answerable only to myself and my spirits.
At 61 I feel stronger in myself than I ever have, for I have learned to deal with what is thrown at me with compassionate neutrality and look after myself .I am my own best friend and |I respect myself. I at long last can stand back and look at others from a distance to see a wider view of situations and what is happening to people.
It is at that time because it suits my particular day and life. I sit by the hearth and light a candle and am still.
It is the time I try to connect to the spirit within me, the divine spark within my heart.
Sometimes I listen to music ,but in Spring and Summer I like to sit in silence and so hear the birdsong in the garden.
I often feel that when I'm alone at home(My daughter is grown up and has her own home and my husband is at work) that I am living a kind of nun's life. Solitary , with little contact with others.
I have enjoyed the last decade and this current time for I have had time to study spiritual topics and have my own world to reflect in. I do see other people at choir and at yoga classes twice per week but I'm very much a lone wolf. Partly because life has taught me that some people can be cruel and intolerant but partly because I love my own company and since childhood have my own worlds to get absorbed in.
I have never felt the need to put myself and my views "out there" preferring to work in the back stage of life., voluntary work, absent healing done anonymously.
For my own spiritual practices, I am happiest alone in the woods or by my hearth answerable only to myself and my spirits.
At 61 I feel stronger in myself than I ever have, for I have learned to deal with what is thrown at me with compassionate neutrality and look after myself .I am my own best friend and |I respect myself. I at long last can stand back and look at others from a distance to see a wider view of situations and what is happening to people.
Tuesday 25 February 2014
The wanderer returns
I am back. Determined to do more on this blog ,but still showing my age and struggling with technology! It has been a few months since I posted and I have been going through many shifts and extensions.
As a solitary walker of my path I find that I often go off on tangents
but that is an essential freedom for me. I have been learning about gnostic Christianity (and unrelated !)finding out more about the Irish Goddess Bride and her saint Bridget counterpart. This was triggered when I was in Glastonbury this Summer and visited St Bridget and St Patrick's chapel in the Abbey there
This is the painting on the chapel wall and at first sight it looks like the Goddess Bride(Whom many know as Brighid) but in fact is Saint Bridget who founded a community of nuns and was a scholar ,well known for her compassion to the poor and sick(including lepers)
Many years ago I did a ritual to see if there was a Goddess I should work with. I found myself writing down the name Bride ,which puzzled me as I only knew of Brighid. I found out later that Bride is her name in Scotland and more recently that Bride is a common name for her in Ireland where my mother was born. I am going to visit Bride's Well and other sacred wells in Kildare and Clare this Summer.
I have been trying to simplify and declutter my spiritual practices, but as a Druid I will always have a thirst for learning and exploring and finding links between all things .I seek to live my spirituality in my daily life. Involving myself quietly in animal and human rights causes, the environment and voluntary work. It also determines how I live and interact with people ,animals and the material world around me.
I am revisiting some of the wisdom I learned from Sandra Ingerman, with whom I studied many Shamanic skills, such as Soul Retrieval, death and Dying and Medicine for the Earth. I have heard people undermine core shamanism ,saying you can learn basic journeying in a weekend. You can learn the basics of tennis in a weekend but it won't make you a Wimbledon Champion!!!!What fascinates me about Sandra is how she has constantly evolved- exploring work with light and creating a web of light, transmutation of polluted water and healing.
I am just starting to redo exercises from her Shamanic Toolkit. May talk about that here, may wander off onto something else!
As a solitary walker of my path I find that I often go off on tangents
but that is an essential freedom for me. I have been learning about gnostic Christianity (and unrelated !)finding out more about the Irish Goddess Bride and her saint Bridget counterpart. This was triggered when I was in Glastonbury this Summer and visited St Bridget and St Patrick's chapel in the Abbey there
This is the painting on the chapel wall and at first sight it looks like the Goddess Bride(Whom many know as Brighid) but in fact is Saint Bridget who founded a community of nuns and was a scholar ,well known for her compassion to the poor and sick(including lepers)
Many years ago I did a ritual to see if there was a Goddess I should work with. I found myself writing down the name Bride ,which puzzled me as I only knew of Brighid. I found out later that Bride is her name in Scotland and more recently that Bride is a common name for her in Ireland where my mother was born. I am going to visit Bride's Well and other sacred wells in Kildare and Clare this Summer.
I have been trying to simplify and declutter my spiritual practices, but as a Druid I will always have a thirst for learning and exploring and finding links between all things .I seek to live my spirituality in my daily life. Involving myself quietly in animal and human rights causes, the environment and voluntary work. It also determines how I live and interact with people ,animals and the material world around me.
I am revisiting some of the wisdom I learned from Sandra Ingerman, with whom I studied many Shamanic skills, such as Soul Retrieval, death and Dying and Medicine for the Earth. I have heard people undermine core shamanism ,saying you can learn basic journeying in a weekend. You can learn the basics of tennis in a weekend but it won't make you a Wimbledon Champion!!!!What fascinates me about Sandra is how she has constantly evolved- exploring work with light and creating a web of light, transmutation of polluted water and healing.
I am just starting to redo exercises from her Shamanic Toolkit. May talk about that here, may wander off onto something else!
As November Ends
It has been a hard Autumn watching my mother slowly sink into dementia and other family members fighting for control of my parents' life and money.Angry at their difficult childhood.Yet I have compassion for my parents.I try to remember the little acts of kindness that did happen sometimes.y parents were very young when they married my father married at 21 and by the time he was 30 he had fathered 8 children including stillborn twin sons.He had no childhood as he he was boren in 1930 so World war 2 stole the best years of his childhood and then he had to go straight into National Service in Egypt and Malta.He enjoyed the experience .He had only known my mother for 3 months before they married.She became a lodger in the house next door to his parents's cornershop.they moved into the space above the shop and rented their house to two Irish girls.At the ime many landlords put signs in their windows ,my mother remembered,saying "No Irish,No Blacks"
My mother is Irish and had a hard childhood and I feel was born in the wrong time,She is intelligent and a free spirit but found herself trapped in the home based(no choice) life of the 1950's housewife,her life dominated by child bearing and rearing in a 2 up and 2 down house with no central heating, no bathroom or toilet or garden.Her Roman Catholic religion totally dominating and repressing her life and never having the money to go home and visit her parents save once 3 months after her marriageI was conceived in Ireland :) )and 17 years later when I went with her.I never my Irish grandfather as he died many years before.
I suspect she was envious of her daughters with their education and choices in life,though her father often sold his boots and went without so she could go to a boarding school at Spanish Point where she got the equivalent of A levels.They had hoped she would go to college.Mum was one of 9 children The second youngest ,the eldest was her only sister and there were 7 brothers.Her sister emigrated to America (as so many of her generation did) at 19 to help the family back home.There were dozens of relatives already out ther including almost all of my grandmother's siblings.Her father and sister raised her.My great Gtrandmother died just after giving to birth to my Grandmother so her 16 year old sister became her mother.My aunt went out to My Grandmother's sister.A whole generation before them had gone to New York to escape the Great Famine ,which was particularly severe in Co Clare.
My mother however was wild free spirit and at around 18 ran away to England where she wanted to work on the buses a she had seen this in a film Her eldest borther ,already living in England found her and persuaded to study Nursing.She was bored after a few years and left it.
Enough of that for today!
My mother is Irish and had a hard childhood and I feel was born in the wrong time,She is intelligent and a free spirit but found herself trapped in the home based(no choice) life of the 1950's housewife,her life dominated by child bearing and rearing in a 2 up and 2 down house with no central heating, no bathroom or toilet or garden.Her Roman Catholic religion totally dominating and repressing her life and never having the money to go home and visit her parents save once 3 months after her marriageI was conceived in Ireland :) )and 17 years later when I went with her.I never my Irish grandfather as he died many years before.
I suspect she was envious of her daughters with their education and choices in life,though her father often sold his boots and went without so she could go to a boarding school at Spanish Point where she got the equivalent of A levels.They had hoped she would go to college.Mum was one of 9 children The second youngest ,the eldest was her only sister and there were 7 brothers.Her sister emigrated to America (as so many of her generation did) at 19 to help the family back home.There were dozens of relatives already out ther including almost all of my grandmother's siblings.Her father and sister raised her.My great Gtrandmother died just after giving to birth to my Grandmother so her 16 year old sister became her mother.My aunt went out to My Grandmother's sister.A whole generation before them had gone to New York to escape the Great Famine ,which was particularly severe in Co Clare.
My mother however was wild free spirit and at around 18 ran away to England where she wanted to work on the buses a she had seen this in a film Her eldest borther ,already living in England found her and persuaded to study Nursing.She was bored after a few years and left it.
Enough of that for today!
Sunday 5 May 2013
The Long Goodbye and shedding skins
My mother has just been diagnosed with Alzheimers.
It is known as " the long goodbye" because you slowly see the person you know fade away over many years.
Already she does not recognise anyone in our childhood photos.
I will be looking at what happens to the spirit when the mind fades during this awful illness in future blogs
.Asking my spirit allies to help me help my mother.
A young friend writes in her blog of shedding skin and renewing.
Some thing similiar is happening to me.I have always found my path creates ripples like pebbles thrown into water.
I guess I felt I had to stick to one path or another as people often accuse you of being not a" real whatever" if you walk many parallel paths. Not true!We are simply spiritual travellers,moving from place to place in our caravan and constantly evolving and learning.
Even now at 60 I am still studying new things ,working with new energies.learning from people of all ages.
You are never too old to change your perspective.I would compare it to adjusting your spectacle prescription so you see the world in sharper focus again!
It is known as " the long goodbye" because you slowly see the person you know fade away over many years.
Already she does not recognise anyone in our childhood photos.
I will be looking at what happens to the spirit when the mind fades during this awful illness in future blogs
.Asking my spirit allies to help me help my mother.
A young friend writes in her blog of shedding skin and renewing.
Some thing similiar is happening to me.I have always found my path creates ripples like pebbles thrown into water.
I guess I felt I had to stick to one path or another as people often accuse you of being not a" real whatever" if you walk many parallel paths. Not true!We are simply spiritual travellers,moving from place to place in our caravan and constantly evolving and learning.
Even now at 60 I am still studying new things ,working with new energies.learning from people of all ages.
You are never too old to change your perspective.I would compare it to adjusting your spectacle prescription so you see the world in sharper focus again!
Wednesday 10 October 2012
October musings
I love October, the colours and smells of Autumn.I celebrate my Silver wedding anniversary this month.I have been with my husband for 30 years.My life changed when I met him, for he encouraged me and empowered me.
He is supportive of my spiritual path ,though he does not walk a Pagan path himself.He has always attended Pagan moots and conferences and Groves with me in the past as he likes the company of pagans and real ale!
I help to care for my elderly parents and he is supportive with that too.We helped to care for his elderly mother when she developed dementia for over 9 years before we had to place her in care home nearby.Now my own parents have dementia and Parkinson's disease respectively.I take my turn with my brothers and sisteers to care for them.Not easy with such a dysfunctional family!I focus on the practicalities and the present, not dwelling on the past.
Needless to say we both work hard to keep fit and healthy.I have learned to live with the pattern of having energy and feeling fatigued that MS brings.
So the wheel of life turns.I don't have the enthusiasm and drive I had when younger but still persist with my spiritual practices and studies.They define for me who I am.
Most of my work is invisible to others, sending absent healing with a group from White Eagle Lodge for both animals and humans, helping causes for the environment, human beings and animals ,tending my family.
My lovely daughter is living near where she works and developing into a wonderful teacher.She has a great gift with children.Even at 8 years of age she was the only one in the school who could calm an autistic classmate and coax her down from the playground trees.
Young people here in UK have such a hard time,my generation was lucky and privileged with free education at university and more chances of getting work.
I'm working with Avalonian mysteries right now and moving more towards a magical practice rather than witchcraft,though I celebrate the Celtic Wheel of the year and will go to to a local pagan moot soon as they are having afternoon moots rather than evening-so many have young children ,including a friend who had twin boys last Samhain!
May anyone who stumbles upon my hermitage here have a wonderful October..
He is supportive of my spiritual path ,though he does not walk a Pagan path himself.He has always attended Pagan moots and conferences and Groves with me in the past as he likes the company of pagans and real ale!
I help to care for my elderly parents and he is supportive with that too.We helped to care for his elderly mother when she developed dementia for over 9 years before we had to place her in care home nearby.Now my own parents have dementia and Parkinson's disease respectively.I take my turn with my brothers and sisteers to care for them.Not easy with such a dysfunctional family!I focus on the practicalities and the present, not dwelling on the past.
Needless to say we both work hard to keep fit and healthy.I have learned to live with the pattern of having energy and feeling fatigued that MS brings.
So the wheel of life turns.I don't have the enthusiasm and drive I had when younger but still persist with my spiritual practices and studies.They define for me who I am.
Most of my work is invisible to others, sending absent healing with a group from White Eagle Lodge for both animals and humans, helping causes for the environment, human beings and animals ,tending my family.
My lovely daughter is living near where she works and developing into a wonderful teacher.She has a great gift with children.Even at 8 years of age she was the only one in the school who could calm an autistic classmate and coax her down from the playground trees.
Young people here in UK have such a hard time,my generation was lucky and privileged with free education at university and more chances of getting work.
I'm working with Avalonian mysteries right now and moving more towards a magical practice rather than witchcraft,though I celebrate the Celtic Wheel of the year and will go to to a local pagan moot soon as they are having afternoon moots rather than evening-so many have young children ,including a friend who had twin boys last Samhain!
May anyone who stumbles upon my hermitage here have a wonderful October..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)