Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

It has blown over and I said goodbye as best I could. It is really amazing not more is made of this time in our lives. Yesterday I made more beef soup. Just to keep my strength up. Brexit is in a total mess. The English could not have made it worse if they tried. I dunno what to say. Who knows what lies in store for us?

After having spent the past week slowly getting better, and by that I mean feeling halfway normal, I had a backslide into the exhaustion and mood swing yesterday. The mood swing I can now deal with. Hunker down and then with several heavy blankets wrapped around you - metaphorical of course - you just keep walking into the snowstorm. The exhaustion is much harder. And I have never felt exhaustion like this before. Possibly because I tend to do too much anyway - so when I don't do an awful lot it feels like I am particularly useless. But when I look back at my life I wonder how the fuck did I have so much energy? I think I am going to need to pace myself. This is what my body is telling me. You are not lazy, you just need to take it easy. You can't keep forcing this open. You will break yourself. Does this mean I admit defeat? Not at all, I just rearrange the pieces so that it works with me, instead of works against me. Sometimes it does feel like the whole world works aga...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Hearing my first chiff chaff of the year Today's Nice Thing: Hanging out with Emma for the Dawn Chorus before heading back Last week was all about recovery. Last week was all about feeling normal once more. Last week was all about having the very ground I was standing on resolidify and returning to the possible - the present and the future. For about two weeks I feared that I was suffering from an autoimmune illness. Did I have CFS? Was at the start of MS? What was happening to me? This week was about once more reentering the world - with all its wonders and disappointments. Sometimes I don't know where to put the disappointments. They hang around, literally sometimes, like a bad smell. A feeling in the pit of my stomach. But it will be fine, it must be fine, I tell myself. They also delight in tormenting me. This week we were in Derry. Derry is actually an exercise in what denial can be all about. I was really interested in how people const...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Gabriel is back in school!!!!! And a gorgeous sunrise. I am now up at 3 am - and write for an hour, do reading and class prep for an hour and a half, take a short nap and then head for my run. My run is a short one. Yesterday it was running back to the most amazing sunrise. I must, at this crucial time, focus on the beautiful things. And the beautiful things are the sunrise. And my future. I must seriously think about my future. What this means is to be not getting involved in things which really do not concern me anymore. Really, I must stop. I don't know why I do this to myself. I really hope I get a change of scenery soon. I should have gone away ... but I was too tired to move - no, what I did was good. Caught up an laundry and stuff. Life is supposed to be tough I guess. I have it easier than most, so I shouldn't complain. When I sometimes see others who allegedly 'have it all', what exactly this all consists of, I do not...

Yesterday's Nice Things: 1. Oisin saying I love you Mom when he came downstairs and coming over to hug me 2. Ghin cuddling up to me on the sofa 3. Finally getting my mojo back 4. Doing ALL six loads of laundry and folding two loads of it 5. Meeting Kevin and talking about soapmaking and 6. Having and amazing dream this morning, just before I got up which took me all the way to 2.30 am I am running in a forest. Even though I do not remember it, it is also not the first time I have run here. It must be autumn because the trunks of the trees are wet and black - they are leafless and architectural. Each branch and twig is an etching against the morning sky. The sky itself, the air is filled with a low golden light - it must be eight in the morning. Leaves which have fallen  reflect the skies and the light to gild every surface. It feels like I am running in heaven. I remember having left my house. The house is a massive bungalow, the kind they used to have in Singapore, from t...

Bedspread made for me 17 years ago by Helen Quigley. Will be mending the holes today. The blanket itself is a total work of art. I have promised myself to wake up everyday to bless and greet the sun. And to ask for strength and grace to make the most of my day. Just one day at a time, that's all it will take. Today it will be running and stretching, house cleaning, laundry, school, lunch, admin and then relaxing - maybe going for a walk by some sea shore. After I wrote this morning, I went to bed and wrote some more. I needed to put down somewhere that I had tried many things in life and somethings had really worked for me and I would continue doing them - and somethings they hadn't worked at all and so I would stop. I am not a naturally extrovert person and the truth is that all the showing off that takes place in social media I no longer am interested in doing that. To archive my life, quietly, away from the fanfare, this year I took to my blog once gain. What ...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Finally getting laundry done and just chilling at home while I did it with Ghin and eventually, Oisin. Remember the days when looking after the boys was a 24-7 job? It's not anymore, of course. Now, they look after themselves. Well, more or less. I still cook, clean and tend the house for them, and I still hang out with them and make sure they are ok, but that constant making sure they are ok, anticipating and fulfilling their every need, making every decision for them... that's gone. I have a very different relationship with the boys - with Oisin, he has always been my helper. He was always there for me, especially when Ghin was very small. He'd get things for me, accompany me - he always seemed so much older than the 5.5 year gap he and Ghin had. I expected things of him. Ghin on the other hand, I see him as much younger than he really is. I know it is because he is my last baby and so, well, I am trying to extract as much from his boyhoo...

Thank you for getting me out of bed and almost completing the laundry. I have six loads to do and I am now on load 5. The entire house is filled with laundry and I spent the afternoon mending a duvet cover which perfectly demonstrated what a stitch in time save nine - or in my case 504. Possibly more.  I have gone into purdah and am likely to remain here for the rest of the holiday. Tomorrow I will resume my schedule. Starting with running. I have missed my running. I will start with running tomorrow because I really need to run. And I will run a short distance for the next few weeks. I am going to sleep early tonight, round about 9 and then wake early around 4 am. It looks like rain tomorrow, no matter. I will go running and then I will do house type things again. I will get the toilet washed tomorrow if it kills me. No one ever cleans the toilet apart from me. Then, once again I will start my schedule. I have blogged 71 times since the start of the year. The desire to ...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Meeting Gabriel and speaking with her Well, life goes on. After the best part of the month of PMT followed by a week and a half of actual period - it has all but stopped now - life goes on. Today I am going to give the house a good going over and then everything is going to be reset. It was hell, but sure you know that enough already. There is one thing I did not expect about growing older - which is looking at people who are younger and thinking, god they are assholes. Literally just because they are younger. I mean, in general I looked at older people and used to think god, they are assholes, but now I look at younger people and think that. I suppose being younger I used to think that older people were the ones responsible for messing up the place - but now I see that younger people - and I mean those in their 20s and 30s, possibly even 40s, are not much better. Having spent most of my life trying to do the right thing being a self righteous judgey...

At least my entire body isn't in completely pain. After four months of not bothering to darken the door, the period returned with a vengeance. No wonder women end up at the doctors. A friend asked me, how are you feeling, and I said, I have been on drugs since Friday. I meant paracetamol, of course. But this not writing the past week, being utterly devastated, that has to do with the period. It was like all those four periods rolled into one. Last year was hot flushes. This year - the quarterly bloodbath. Possibly. It was four months to the day since my last period. Well, yesterday I stopped taking the medication. I had some wine though, which was not great. That's me and alcohol done now. I am off it indefinitely now. So the new thing is insomnia - I fall asleep for an hour after coming home from school and then after that I can't sleep anymore. I also can't move. I just need to be good to myself. But I also can't help feeling like I am sort of becoming inc...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Just staying home and not doing an awful lot Truth be told I had a really horrible weekend. I ended up in bed for most of it - well I was reading and researching loads, but yes, it was awful. I ended up having to take loads of paracetemol. I wasn't sure if I was having the flu or the menopause, or abstaining from alcohol - but it was terrible. I went to bed in Friday and stayed in bed all of Saturday and then on Saturday evening in caved in an began taking paracetemol non-stop resulting in feeling better on Sunday. Where I went for the da Vinci exhibition. I did the weekly shop and then I went to bed again. I have never had a run of so much feeling depressed and useless in my entire life. Even when I was going through my toughest times, I was really active. I chalk it up to the menopause or the flu. Even though everyone whom I have met has also told me they're going through a shit time. Another weird development is I am craving yogurt. There mu...

Yesterdays Nice Thing: Meeting the boat makers of Lough Neagh I went to Lough Neagh yesterday to see the boat makers there. As I headed to the workshop, I was horrified at the amount of quarrying work which had resulted in a rather unlovely landscape. It very quickly turned out that the people who lived on the banks of Lough Neagh actually didn't own the place. It was owned by Lord Shaftesbury and it was an understandably long running sore point. I was so angry for them. This is our homeland and it has been stolen from us, they said to me. It was taken from us and now we have to pay rent to live on it. I don't know how they do it. Lord Shaftesbury, from what I can see is not a good guardian of the land. The entire Lough is extremely polluted. It is actually one of the most polluted Loughs in the entirety of Europe. It's good to see the people though trying to take ownership. So I am going to try and get my class to come and work on it - it would be nice for them to fo...

It is not easy - really not easy - wrestling with the soul at this time in a life. I spent most of last night doing this and I was so tired I wasn't able to bring myself to go to school. Just years and years of fatigue it seems. I am hoping that by the time the end of Lent arrives I will feel better. I am praying, literally. This time of the year is always hard they say. There is something about the first few weeks of spring emerging out of the dying husk of winter. The pain of awakening is also laced with confusion and anxiety. The possibility or necessity of creating anew gets more exhausting as each year passes - I have never felt so tired, never. Usually I feel fed up - but the sheer, physical inability to do anything is very frustrating. But for the grace of my friends, there would lie I. Today I called into my mom's house. Whenever I go there, I feel held and loved. How lucky am I, to be able to have this place I can seek refuge and silence in? I have no right to feel...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: When I was doing sit ups in Belvoir Par, these blue tits flew over to see me. And so, yesterday, after my run, and with the help of more reading from Steiner, I have began to piece the understandings I have begun to have about this new phase of my life. The journey has been less violent, but no less radical and no less traumatic than the one I took seven years ago. Where I stood in the forefront of my 40s, I am now in the forefront of my 50s. My body is menopausing - I am in perimenopause and once again I find, I am left to go it alone. I was the part of the third wave of feminism, where we could be feminine and still be feminist (too be honest, when I was in my late teens and 20a, feminism was still a dirty word), and now, when I look around, women of my age are now redefining menopause and midlife. The medical profession still want us to me drugged, the media want us to be forever young - although we are now fighting back with accepting out whites and ...

Something has shifted in me. The shift has been brought about by reading Steiner and his insights on the evolution of the world. It is the only thing which has made sense to me. Not only did he correctly read what was going on at the time, but he also predicted the future. The reason why no one takes him seriously is because he spoke about the spirit. This is not to say I don't disagree with him on some points, but his insight into the state of the world and why it is is the explaination which makes the most sense to me right now. Based on this new information, I am going to have to rethink how days and my life - we live our lives in the way we live our days and this means that everything has to be relooked. Maybe I keep the entire structure, maybe I throw it out. Maybe somethings I keep and others I throw. We shall see. My main question is going to be how can I engage with the world, acknowledging its spirituality in a constructive way which brings my life meaning and which br...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Back to Islandmagee with Emma and the girls, and having ice cream It is a pleasant thing, is it not, to have a place like Islandmagee to go to? We are so lucky. Except they want to put a giant gs containment unit on it. What is wrong with people? Why don't they want to put a giant gas containment unit in Stormont where it would be far more useful? Also there is a production plant there right? As if there aren't any other places which already exist which are awful and wouldn't be harmed by a monstrosity like that. I detest the evil in human beings. And I will always stand up to it. And keep standing up to it - forever. I have continued reading Steiner's lectures on Ahriman. Steiner is very clear about the thumbprint of Ahriman. Adherence only to materialism and denial of the spirit, a literal reading of the gospels and nationalism - or anything which creates division in people where they are using difference to oppress each other. It b...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Knitting with Emma It has been a weird week, but yesterday things finally came together for me - the penny dropped, as it were. I was agonising for weeks, possibly months about the state of the world. You know how fruitless and pointless life is in general. That the world is totally doomed and we are doomed along with it - and that the evil people have won - and then, I read two pieces of writing - one by a Christain Community priest, and another by Steiner. The first one said, there are four things which Steiner said the Etheric Christ brought to us - first, to always hold wonder in your heart, the second, to always seek the truth, the third, to acknowledge that there is a spiritual reality and the fourth, to work with the three in the world - to bring your actions to bear. But there was still this vexing question about the state of the world and Steiner actually says, it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better and of course, it is not going t...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Being told I was one of the best teachers in the world. My dad wanted me to tell you that he thinks whatever you are teaching us is really good and that you are one of the best teachers in the world - and I think that you are one of the best teachers in the world too. It has been a short but weird week. I was telling Lianne that I have been feeling unanchored, unmoore lately and she thought maybe it had to do with the poles shifting. I never considered that, but it is a possibility. Also, I have been reading about Hermes and last night I read about Ahriman, again. The materialism and fundamentalism is paving the way for this awful creature which Steiner said would take on a human form, just as Christ had done. It is interesting that he should single out the three biggest issues in the world today nad have done so at a time when no one was identifying them: Christian fundamentalism brought on by the narrow reading of the Bible, economics (Banking in parti...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Sleeping at 7 pm.... So I didn't blog today - for the first time since I began this I did not blog in the morning, unless you count the blog from the day before at midnight. Today I was told by a pupil that his dad thought I was one of the best teachers in the world, and he said he thought the same. It was something I needed to hear. Sometimes I am not quite sure if what I am doing is right... and today when the class was faffing around, I said Class Seven,