New Years resolutions….. full of hope for a new and better year…..
reflections…. authors own photo
January, a time of hope, promises and resolutions, whether we say it out loud or quietly to ourselves….. a new year is always a source of contemplation. Before the year ends, we make promises that ‘in the new year’ we will do this, or that, give up this or that, be more healthy, change jobs, give more time to loved ones, give more time to ourselves, take up a new hobby, leave something or someone behind.
We go into the Christmas period with a measure of excitement and a measure of dread, for many and varying different reasons, and some can’t wait for it to be over, so that the ‘new year’ can begin and we can begin, afresh, renewed, awakened.
We look back and reflect and ask, what is it I want to do, to be, to have, to start to end, to give up etc etc. Some years may be the same thing as the previous year and we began with gusto, enthusiasm and motivation, only to dwindle, falter and be left with a sense of failure and nothing more than procrastination in that, next year, it will be different…..
Still, we look forward and we try. Does it matter that we may not complete and accomplish it, whatever ‘it’ may be? Isn’t it the ‘giving it a go’ that matters. Even if that ‘giving it a go’ is to just put one foot in front of the other and make our way downstairs and face another day.
For some people the previous year could have been so challenging, so devastating, so traumatic, that to just do that, go downstairs and flick on the kettle is the biggest achievement that they can muster, and isn’t that great! They did it, they made it, they didn’t give up.
When we pass people by in the street, in the shops, in our places of work, looking ‘put together’ and getting on with life, we assume that all is good, all is well with them. Of course they are all putting their best side out. We are all putting our best side out and for some, it is a real struggle.
So this January, no matter what your path, lets all be enthusiastic, that we made it. We can reflect, we can look forward, but lets not forget to be present, and to acknowledge our own unique achievements, no matter how big or small……
There is havoc, chaos and even tragedy in the storm, when the winds are so strong they have the power to knock tress down and knock power lines out too.
Last week storm Barra visited us and we had just moved in to our new home and we brought our grandson up with us for a few days.
This new house has not yet had the gas fire connected or the new gas hob so we were only left with the oil central heating for heat and the electric hob…… both of which do not work in a power outage.
So here we were in the midst of a powerful storm with no heat, no way to cook, no phone or wifi. ‘At least we have a roof over our head’ I said ‘and blankets, food and candles.
We lit so many candles that it created a nice bit of heat and we even tried to boil water to make tea from the candles. We succeeded but it did take nearly 3 hours!
The next day out we went to buy a camping stove and some battery operated lights. We stopped at the charity shop and bought some books for our grandson. One of which was a a book of Christmas Carrolls.
That night, for our entertainment we played the game, eye spy, followed by singing a few Christmas Carols and a game of ‘go fish’.
Had the power not gone, this would have been a missed opportunity. Like most people in today’s modern world, evenings are often spent in front of the TV. Our grandson loves the TV (just like his grandad!) and they both love to watch movies.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with that, it is good to spend time together, whether watching a movie at home or going to the cinema, but I just felt thankful that the power did go and that it wasn’t another night spent watching TV.
My grandson, really enjoyed the games and the singing, as did we. We all had a good laugh playing and guessing the eye spy so much that we didn’t even notice that there was no heating or all the other power filled luxuries that we are accustomed to.
To be powerless, as in having a power cut, can be beautiful. The stars in the sky shone brighter and the moon reflected in the windows and the chatter and laughter in the house was louder. It makes us more connected, more focused and more appreciative of the little things that matter more than all the other stuff. The lack of electricity brought us back, for a while, to a time when, that is how the world worked.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t like to be without power like in the ‘olden days’ all the time, but for just a while, it is not ‘just an inconvenience’, it can be beautiful, absolutely powerful to be power-less.
heating the water with candles….. authors own..singing around the candlelight….. authors own….
There are no guarantees of being a success, of finding ‘the one’ of being fulfilled. No guarantees of reaching your goals, living to a ripe old age or attaining your dreams.
What is it then, within us to continually seek to try, to find, to hope and to keep going, even in the face of adversity. Is it all our intrinsic resources that push us on, or are there extrinsic factors at force?
It must be both but, even with the best will in the world, sometimes, it seems like a hard battle to fight or difficult mountain to climb, and then we feel defeated.
Then, sometimes out of nowhere it seems, that all is not lost, there is another way to climb the mountain, once rested, and not all battles need to be won in order to succeed and feel a sense of hope again.
Adapt, be absent and acceptance are the three ‘A’ s that will help pull you through the rough times. Accept that there is a difficulty, stay absent, for a while, from the usual routine or the usual people around you, and soon you will find a way to adapt to the changes that you must face.
There is no guarantee that things will always stay the same. There will be ups and downs. There will be losses and gains there will be love and pain but all will not be lost and something of value will be taught.
I lost a very dear friend recently. My heart was broken, for her, her family and for me. She is a huge loss and leaves a massive void.
We won’t grow to be old ladies together. I had never even contemplated that…. She died too young, but she had a good life and she enjoyed her life to the full. She lived with love and shared her love amongst her family and friends.
So in this sorrow, in this grief and hurt and pain there has to be acceptance and life must adapt without her physical presence. Making ourselves absent, giving ourselves time and self love, to come to terms with the loss and remember the good times is crucial in the process.
There is no time limit, there is no right or wrong way to grieve. For me, I believe she is present, all around us. I talk to her, pray for her, look out for signs of her. I keep her alive in my heart, even though I miss her and the rest of the life, she should have had. Yet I’m grateful for the time we did have….
So what now? One step at a time. One day at a time, we move forward. It’s all we can do. We live, we love, we hope, we pray, we dream. We must stay humble and grateful for the time and love we shared and for all our loved ones lost to us, live on with them in our hearts…. Until we meet again…..
Though the tides will ebb and flow and the night will turn to day The steps that go one, in front of the other Will always carry you, along the way….. Hearts filled with love and sorrow Will carry over, all the tomorrows that you do not have But live on through those left behind who will tell stories of their encounters, and we will smile, as we recall, with such joy, the love and laughter that we once shared and so, you will live on another day, and more, until we gather together again, and dance and laugh and hold you tight, in our arms…..
I took you to dinner that night We sat by the window A view of the river Lee flowing past A beautiful orchid and candle Central on the table I layed my napkin, carefully, thoughtfully, on my lap I hung my head a few seconds longer Composing myself Before looking at the chair opposite me Smiling, imagining you sitting there Knowing That sometime after dinner We would have our very last factime It would soon be time for you to go You were being called home To your eternal rest I had to prepare myself To face the reality That this was it And so, I took you to dinner And I stared at that chair Smiling at you, as though you were there
Toasted you, our friendship And told you I loved you forever I thanked you for being my friend I told you I was blessed to have met you
45 years wasn’t long enough I explained I would forever keep you with me I raised a glass to you I told you I was sad that you had to go But I understood it was time Acknowledged that you were tired And ready to go Told you how much you would be missed by us all But you already knew that You knew how special you were to us I didn’t want dinner to end I didn’t want any of it I wanted you here To be in that chair for real Laughing and chatting And being healthy and well I wanted that, more than anything And I know You did too…..
It’s nearly completion date and that can only mean one thing….. time to start packing and sorting and selling off/giving away what I no longer need, the ‘stuff’ that is surplus to requirements.
We all have it,’stuff’ even if we don’t mean to have it, but the ‘stuff’ piles up, in our homes, our cars, our bags, everywhere.
We accumulate over the years. We change our cars, our furniture, our decor and style, and our homes.
Now I am changing my home, yet again, but this time, for a smaller home. I have lived in small before.
When I first left home at age 16, I lived in a bedsit, tiny room, shared bathroom and shared kitchen. I owned very little, as it was furnished. I owned easily removable things, like my record player and records. Some pictures and a few ornaments.
Over the years my properties have got bigger and bigger and so has the amount of stuff and furniture. This one is the biggest, the one that I am about to leave. This one I designed, on a piece of paper, handed it to an architect and then proceeded to build it. From start to finish, it was my project, my taste, my style, my design.
It has housed my husband and I and our children for 23 years. We have fostered 13 children and have 4 grand children who have all walked the floors of this house, slammed the doors, laughed and cried within the walls and played out in the garden.
The decor has been changed numerous times. The rooms have been re organised many times and we have ran a couple of businesses from it over the years.
We have accumulated a lot of stuff in the process and now I have to undo the doing, because now, we are going smaller again, but big enough to still be a down size….
Will I miss my house? yes of course. Do I feel emotional about it? certainly, but the time is right for our next adventure.
The only thing is, most of my stuff is too big for the new house, or the wrong style. I have a very eclectic taste and I have some wonderful pieces of furniture, from Edwardian to Victorian to very modern.
When we decorate rooms we always feel better about them and are pleased with the changes we made, but eventually, we tire of it, well, I do anyway, and so we change it again.
We do the same with cars and clothes and they seem much easier to shed and to move on without any major emotional distress, right?
That is what I keep telling myself now, about shedding this house, and all we have done here, with all the aforementioned people that were here with us.
I keep telling myself, ‘it is just stuff, you take the memories with you’. But I do feel a little bit attached to some of the stuff too.
Then I think, but someone else can get the pleasure out of that beautiful piece of furniture and I can get excited about sourcing a new piece for my new house. I get a buzz from finding ‘nice things’. A new project, a new beginning, a new style, a new neighbourhood. Exciting, daunting, liberating, all at the same time.
The sorting and packing and picking and choosing, now that is the real dilemma, but it has to be done and so today I made a start.
I cannot tell you how many times I changed my mind about things, but then said, just let it go, like Anna, in Frozen, time to let go.
My pictures, my paintings, my bits and bobs, they can be easily packed. My books, now that is a different matter, I would nearly need a small van for those alone, I cannot let go of them quite so easy….
The procrastination has come to an end and the ‘sorting’ has begun. It is with mixed feelings, but ultimately, happy and excited ones about the change that we are heading into as we progress to our downsizing.
Were going from 6 beds to 4 beds from 3000 square feet to 1600 square feet and from an acre garden to a quarter acre and can finally get rid of the ride on lawn mower and cut down on the mowing!
I look forward to a smaller house to clean, to paint, to decorate, to garden in and to have new walks, new views, new people to meet, new places to discover, a new place to make and call home, for our family to come and visit and enjoy with us.
So it’s full steam ahead and on the home stretch now, into completing the transaction for our new home! Watch this space……….
I’m getting fat. Not fat, fat exactly, but fatter than I was. Having said that, what do people consider fat?
I was always skinny. The skinny bitch. I didn’t think I was skinny, but I didn’t think I was fat. I was just me and my size was just my size. I was lean, yes but I didn’t think anything about it because, like I said, I was just me.
So now, I am still me, just a bigger version of me than I was, when I was younger, so, am I fat?
No, not really, though I do have a spare tyre, my upper arms are definitely bigger and softer, my thighs are bigger too and they wobble, they didn’t used to wobble. My ass, well let’s say, now I have an ass, so before I had a small ass, never the less, it was still an ass. My face is rounder and I have more than one chin. When I was the skinny bitch, I could, if I tried hard enough and put my face down towards my neck, make myself have more than one chin,
It is called skin, lean with pockets of fat cells in it and maybe some muscle. I used to have muscle, when I was the skinny bitch. I did lots of hand stands and cart wheels and other gymnastic tricks. I loved gymnastics at school. My friend and I were both good at it. We were the skinny bitches.
We remained the skinny bitches even after we had children without even trying.
I went even thinner after my first baby, all that breastfeeding. It gave her colic. I thought it was what I was eating, so in the end I ate very little. She still had colic. I put her on the bottle as I had to eat and something had to give. She took the bottle and the colic went, but the constipation came. She still screamed in pain.
It was a lose-lose situation for her, and a win lose for me. Win because I could now eat again, the cabbage, potatoes, salad cream etc. that everyone said was probably giving her colic. I lost because she was still screaming and I felt it was my fault for putting her on the bottle and the poor child was still in pain….
I started to get fat when I was in my early 40’s. Actually I think I started to change, ever so slightly, from my early 30’s, I think I gained about 7 pound from when I was in my teens. I didn’t try to gain these pounds, they just arrived, slowly and without much encouragement or notice from me. I was still a skinny bitch you see.
By my early 40’s I had gained another 7 pound. Still I think I looked pretty good in the mirror, even though, that is a whole stone in a 10-year period. I was beginning to ‘fill out’. I was also noticing that my skin was changing, slightly. I was getting fine lines and the elasticity was beginning to loosen I suppose. That’s ok, it does that with age.
By my early 50’s I had gained another 14 pound and from 50 to 55 another 7 pound. So from my teens I had gained two and a half stone and like they say, it crept up on me.
I am not blind. I could see my body changing shape. My face, rounder, my boobs fuller, my belly definitely fatter, my arms, my legs, my whole body. Still, I was me. I am not fat. I am fatter than my skinny bitch days, yes, but I am not fat. I don’t know when I will consider myself fat but I know this. Some people, thinner than me, will look at me and say that I am fat.
Some people, bigger than me, will look at me and say that I am skinny.
I will say, I have more fat on me than when I was skinny, but, I am still me and I am happy with who I am. Like my skin that is ageing, my hair that is greying, my body is changing as it naturally does with age.
I am glad to be ageing, it means that I am alive and that I can chose, every day, what I do with my day. I can choose to look in the mirror and say ‘hey, you are fifty something and still fabulous’ or I could criticise how I look and feel bad about myself. I chose the former not the latter.
The moral of this story is, just because you are the size that you are, you have to decide whether or not, you are happy with you. So long as you are healthy and have a healthy view of yourself in your own mind and can embrace your own body, wobbly bits and all, or bones and all, don’t let it consume you.
Other people will always have their opinions, it’s either colic or constipation, skinny bitch or fatty. You decide, yourself, what label you want to put on you……
Big boys don’t cry…… This to me is a damaging statement, because boys have feeling too and like us girls should be able to be free to express how they feel…. right?
I collected my grandson from school last week. He thought he was staying in after-school club because his mother was working, but I rang and told her that I would collect him early and bring him over to his aunts house, so he could see and play with his cousins. He hadn’t seen them in a few weeks as both my daughters have been busy with work and other commitments.
When he was in the car I asked him if he was surprised that he was being collected early and he said he was, because he thought he would have to stay in all day. He is only 6 years old, I might add. He also had to be dropped to school early for breakfast club, so that his mother could get to work on time, so it can be a long day for him.
As I looked at him through the rear view mirror, I thought he looked pale, tired and also he looked like he had been crying. I asked him if he had been crying to which he replied no. I said ‘oh you look tired, maybe that is it’. He confirmed yes he was a bit tired as he had been in school for breakfast club.
I asked him how he felt when the teacher told him that ‘nanny’ was collecting him early. He then said that he was happy and excited and that he remembers now that he did cry then, ‘happy tears’ and that he could feel the tears coming again now because we were going to see his cousins and he was happy about that.
This made me feel both happy and sad. I know lots and lots of working mothers have to avail of child care so they can work, before school and after school. I had to do it myself when my girls were little. It’s not easy to do, to juggle, but it is the life for many working mothers. I couldn’t help but feel sad a little because it is a long day for him. I also felt happy that he could express himself. He is very good at articulating what he thinks and feels.
I told him it was OK to cry, whether they are happy or sad tears, as that is the Emotion, he was feeling at that time. ‘What’s emotion’ he asked me, looking back at me in the mirror. I explained that when we feel happy or sad, angry, excited or frightened for example, our body reacts somehow to that emotion.
‘So when you were told you were leaving early you felt happy and excited and your body reacted by your eyes welling up and having happy tears. Likewise, sometimes when you feel angry, you might shout and your body might also want to slam a door, punch the pillow or throw the toy’ I said, eyeing him carefully in the mirror as we drove.
‘You might also cry because you feel angry because you are frustrated, same as when you feel sad and upset you may cry. That is your body’s way of dealing with the feeling and that is what ’emotion’ is.
I explained how the body also reacts when hungry, in that it lets us know by our tummy growing and rumbling, that it is your body telling you it needs food.
‘oh, he said, so sometimes I get ‘hangry’ when I want food and so does mammy’ he said, matter of fact. ‘ Yes I said, that’s right, when you are hungry you very well may get a little agitated and angry, because it’s your bodies way of saying ‘feed me’.
I explained that emotions are good to have as it helps people see or read how another person is feeling by the way the person looks or by the way a person is acting and that lets us help, if any help is needed.
I asked him to think of his mother and how that makes him feel. He closed his eyes, his face softened and he smiled saying ‘I love my mammy’ as he opened his eyes looking at me in the mirror.
See, that is emotion I said, and your face, your voice and your body all reacted to that feeling, so don’t be afraid to cry, whether happy or sad or angry tears because that is just your body reacting to your feeling and that shows other people how you are.
It made me think about boys and crying and how they are sometimes told ‘big boys don’t cry’ or man up as they get older, especially into their teen years. This in particular concerns me. Why is it viewed that it is OK for girls to cry, but not boys.
I am quite the feminist and all for strong independent women and for equality and parity , but I also believe it is OK for girls/women to cry, AND also for boys/men.
They say that women can ‘cope’ a lot better with life’s stresses because they talk to their female friends and ‘offload’ about how they are feeling. A problem shared and all that.
Shouldn’t we be teaching our boys that not only is it OK to cry, it is essential, so as not to suppress that natural emotion that they are feeling, for to do so, they are denying a fundamental biological process. If they denied themselves food, when they are hungry, they would starve.
With so many mental health problems, especially amongst young men, isn’t it crucial that, from a very young age, we not only say it is OK to cry, WHETHER happy or sad tears, but it is essential and normal, as it is the body’s way of dealing with the feeling?
I would hate to think that my grandsons, when they are going through the rigours of the teenage years, when they are trying to navigate puberty, emotions, fitting in and identity, that they would feel that they cannot openly cry, without fear of being called a ‘sissy’ a ‘girl’ a ‘whimp’ for example, by their peers. It makes me want to cry!
Why is is OK for girls and not boys? What is wrong with showing emotion. In my mind, it is a sign of strength, not weakness to be able to express oneself, in order to be true to oneself and to feel whole. To suppress any emotion is damaging and the last thing we want to do to ourselves, to our children, is to damage them, right?
So, I say to all the boys out there, when your body wants to cry, whether they are happy or sad tears, go ahead and cry the same as you would laugh, if you saw something funny, the same as you would feed your body, when it is hungry. Not only does it give you a release to cry, it allows someone close to you to try to help and share the burden/problem with you in the sad tears as well as the joy in the happy tears.
There is pure strength in being in touch with your feelings and in my mind any boy/man than can openly cry and express or try to express how he is feeling, is a man I would want in my life, because it lets me know he is honest, open and compassionate.
Relay shun ships 
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