Expert

My mermaid hair

So, I have always made it a point to acknowledge when everything is good with my life and at the present moment it is. And I give thanks. The school is looking up, the weather is AWESOME, holidays are round the corner AND Ireland, in complete contrast to the rest of the stupid sodding world, has made a stand for women and voted for pro-choice. I cannot tell you how happy I am. It is so wonderful to live in country, well on the edge of a country, where change is possible. Where people can think of another person. When young people can be young.

So, yes, life is good.

To top it ALL off, I am back running again. I went running in Belvoir Park Forest and I just sometimes pinch myself. How many people can say they go running in one of the oldest settled parts of Ireland - with a neolithic settlement there dated back to 8,000 BC and a river and a forest and the birds just singing. It is a good time to be alive. There are lots of people running all the time now. It is so different when I began here more than 15 years ago. In 2002, imagine. I began running in 2002 in Belvoir Park Forest. Wow.

I feel my form returning. I now know it take about two weeks of daily running to begin to get back and climb that fitness ladder to reach a comfortable state. And feel the muscles coming back. I know that in two weeks times, if I keep this up I will be well on my way to total fitness by the time we get to Singapore. I'll be running everyday and swimming everyday. And that will be six weeks of doing that while we are there.

After this is house cleaning. But I don't mind. Something has shifted. Yesterday I told Heidi how well the walkthrough had gone and she was delighted for the school. Things have taken an upswing and it is awesome.

Hopefully we will get a few families more from the walkthrough.

I wanted to write about something... and it is, I don't QUITE know how to put things into words... but there is a overwhelming sense of possibility and positivity. It is partly because of course the weather is so awesome, but also because there is this quality of lightness and love around. It is there to the point of tangible. To the point of magical.

Yesterday I had lunch on my own in Noble and while the people who run it are wonderful, the clientale are people I have practically no contact with at all. People who just want to talk about the holiday cruises and hairdressing appointments. They are all perfect coiffured and dressed in semi designer gear. There is nothing wrong with these people, it is I am sure I am an anomaly to them in the same way they are to me. Of course I used to meet them in the RSPB all the time, but now I practically never see them at all. The circles I run around in get ever increasingly smaller and my friends all look like me and I do wonder sometimes if that is healthy?

Although I have to say that the high functioning anxiety which often accompanies this crowd drives me a bit bats. I know we all have high functioning anxiety, but I think that they are not entirely aware of this. I know, this is bad.

I shouldn't judge.

However, there is another thing which has happened. I am now getting back to my writing. I don't know what happened there for a bit. I think maybe I needed to get over Rome a tiny bit.

I am now drinking a cup of slippery elm and Irish Moss. Of all the health things which I have indulged in over the years this is the combination, together with flax seeds which has suited me the best.

All three are great for the digestive system, skin, heart and lungs. All three are full of excellent trace minerals. Two of the three are local ingredients. And I sweeten it with local honey from, Helen's Bay. Along with the running, it has really made a huge difference in the past two weeks.

Well, like a slow car crash I went to take a look at the Belfast Harbour Reserve yesterday to see if the terns had taken to the islands. It would appear that they had just gone up because I saw the warden still shoveling pebbles into a wheelbarrow. But no terns seemed interested in them. Instead they hung around the old islands, still trying to get in. The gull chicks were now massive. There were around 50 terns still hanging about but I'd imagine that it is now too late for them to do any breeding. Maybe not. In any case, if they do take up on the new islands, at least they would have bred this year. I should be able to see if this has happened before I leave for Singapore. They should have had their first chicks by then.

What else? I was listening to Death Cab by Cutie's Black Sun, and there is just SOMETHING about that song which captures everything about how I feel about life. It isn't the words, but the sound of the words and the melody - but it makes me feel just utterly full of the sorrow and the happiness of a life well lived. I now know I would never shield myself from life because everything was meant to be and I am so grateful that I have, to date, lived a full life. There is something about having come through the eye of the needle. I am not just a survivor, I have thrived. Inside me is a garden more luscious, more gorgeous than anything Scheherazade can conjour. I know now that I can do ANYTHING. Just anything. Life is infinite for me.

Ah, this is what I wanted to write about. Getting older.

For most of this year I think there was a little bit of a readjustment to being well into my late 40s. Well 47, to be exact. There was the beloved menopause, of course. And then feeling so blah. And then there was my struggle with fitness. And also of course the acceptance of how I started to look. BUT after about - I suppose - since late last year, I have begun to grow into the person I am.

Oddly enough, a lot of my aches and pains have disappeared. Is that weird? I used to have loads of them around December and now, I have none at all. I do try and sleep a lot - by a lot I mean I am in bed by 9 - I get up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night - but I sleep a lot. I also have started exercising regularly again. I have noticed that aches and pains decrease diametrically with regular exercise. BUT this is the important bit, it has to be moderate exercise. I don't think I will ever do anything more than moderate exercise.

Being a Steiner teacher is also a huge plus because you are not only forced to learn things all the time, but you are with children whom you watch grow as well. There is something very difficult to put into words. You are, both humbled but also made wise by being with them. It is a great reality check.

Finally, the whole question about looking - this obsession with looking younger. I don't think there is any short cut to looking great at any age. And when I mean great, I mean glowing and alive and interested and curious about the world. The steps are:

1. Moderate exercise
2. Have an interest in the world around you
3. Be kind
4. Have a sensible diet.

When I say have a sensible diet, I mean there is no need to rearrange your entire life around what you eat. Eat small amounts. We eat too much in the West.Whatever portions you think are good for you, halve them instantly. Eat that amount at mealtimes and dont eat anything in between.

Wrinkles, white hair, saggy skin, etc... all those things are part of getting older, but they can be made more interesting by regular, moderate exercise. I always - have always said - exercise is not about my physical body - it is about my mental state. Exercise does more for your brain than any other part of your body. When I exercise I am acutely aware I am doing it mostly because it is helping me reoxygenate my blood and my lungs. Which helps with the brain. Everything else is a side benefit. And what a side benefit that is.

I know that once I have started exercising for two weeks it just becomes automatic. And I don't do it with earphones or with anyone else. Exercising - running - is my downtime. This is why I don't think I could go to yoga. Or any other exercise class. TOO MANY PEOPLE.


Well one more thing. SKIN. A lot has been written about skin. What is skin really? Skin is what is used to draw a boundary between yourself and the world. We breathe through it. We live our lives in it. Life arrives to us through it.

Somewhere along the line women were told we could not be comfortable in our own skin. We had to constantly be doing things to it.

This really gets on my wick. For a start, most of the things they suggest we do with our skin is actually bad for us. From injecting the botulism bacteria into it, to putting chemicals which really should not be there. Women, covered in inches worth of make up, are then told that this is supposed to be attractive. This is ludicrous. I am almost certain that everything which we have been told we have to do with our skin will be disastrous for us in the long term.

Secondly, the skin is where the maps of our lives are drawn. It is on our skin where we trace the routs of our lives. What does it mean that woman have to constantly erase these routes? It is mad. Are we to deny ourselves our own stories, once again?

Finally part of skin is hair. I love my white hair. I love it for so many reasons. I love it because I can make it any colour. But I also love it, because like my stretch marks, like my wrinkles and scars, well it is the story of my journey.

And I am proud of that journey. The unspoken narrative in the beauty industry is SHAME. Be ashamed for your age, of your experience, of your story. Be ashamed that you are no longer desirable in the eyes of men. Be ashamed that you now have less value - and do something about it - by disinheriting your story. It is awful. It is really really awful.

It also pits women against each other. I refuse to do this. We are sisters and we need each other. There is no need for anyone to be the fairest of them all. We are all beautiful in the eyes of the goddess.

So that is my journey this year. I am listening to Hidegard von Bingen. I have listened to her now for years and years. She has always inspired me. A woman, following her own path, owning her own talents and skills. We deserve so much better women.

I am sorry that it has taken me 47 years to fully understand this, but better late than never. In many ways I suppose I have always understood this - but I know own it. I understand it deeply and truly and completely. Something has happened this year - this year I became an expert in life.