At the End of the Phone

Without clients my life just isn’t complete.  I shine when I see people move on from their fears, their pain, their acceptance of letting go.  I feel them changing at the other end of the telephone line.  Their voices lower, their shoulders relax.

Sometimes all it takes is one or two words, sometimes it takes longer.  More often than not, just being at the end of the phone for encouragement, support and validation of a client’s feelings is the first step to them being able to move on with the rest of their life.

I want to share this email, and I have permission from the writer to do so.  I’ve been moved to tears by her words.  Please enjoy them and understand my work too.

Last week, a situation between me, and let’s say “significant other” whom I had been involved in a “relationship” of kinds with in my life reached breaking point. Our relationship terminated forever.  Neither one of us can go back to where we were.

For three days I had not been able to stem the tears, the hurt and pain weeping out of every pore, the mind going over every conversation, every event, over and over like a mad person just possessed by the pain, reliving every beautiful moment but unable to comprehend why or how it suddenly, and literally overnight, turned into the ugliest and most painful experience.

I don’t reach out on personal matters. Its something my hard exterior will not allow. If I let someone inside the brick wall that surrounds me, they will hurt me…..past experience tells me this…and now I have learnt that when you allow people inside, where you heart is raw and hurting, there is quite simply the capacity for someone to wound it further.

I am an armadillo. What the world sees is the tough shell.

If there was a chance of making the relationship better I would have leapt in a heart beat to it. Like the word fatal after a car crash, this relationship had ended fatally too. In my heart I knew the separation was ultimately the absolute best thing in many many ways, the pain was still crippling. I could not see a way forward, and despite my life being almost hideously fortuitous in every other way, this person absence from my life was soul destroying.

Through these days, one person was popping in and out of my conscious mind. My twitter contact Jackie Walker. Her location “at the end of the phone” was propelling me to call her. I was not sure why.

The universe I guess was at play. We meet people after all, for a reason, season or lifetime…..and there is no such thing as a chance meeting.

From the moment the phone rang, and I started to talk, the tears started to spill, I was almost hyperventilating as I cried, unable to breathe, the hurt inside as I spoke, tearing me apart and just hearing someone’s calm and rational voice, that cared, someone who just let me talk, who understood the pain, who asked the right questions, who gently probed was enough….….until an hour and a half later not only could I actually breathe again but the heavy black cloud that has engulfed me for the past 72 hours had started to part allowing rays of sunshine to pour into my heart and start to just melt the ice that had surrounded my insides and stopped my lungs from functioning. As Jackie probed and questioned the answers that I was searching for, that perhaps I knew already deep inside, started to talk to my logical brain. As I rubbished the way I felt, embarrassed to say the words “I loved this person, I care, and I feel hurt and angry” Jackie gave me utter permission to not only feel this way, but to almost celebrate allowing the emotion to come out.

It was an exhausting call, I had totally purged my emotion in a way that society tells me is simply not appropriate to do. My instant trust in jackie reassured me it was OK.  Jackie left me with some amazing meditations to cut the emotional ties that were holding me down and to just cut myself and focus on all the wonderful things that remain in my life, which are actually the most wondrous and precious things of all.

The next few hours and days became easier to cope with the feelings, and several days later I can now reflect on this call.

Jackie is a mediator. Her passion and dedication is to mediate Ugly situations. I could not ask for mediation as my situation was long past that but, I know with Jackie’s help, my situation would not have ended the way it had if we had tried to resolve it with her help.  I’ve never really understood the role of a mediator to facilitate improving a relationship, but I realize now, with no uncertainty at all, that someone with the gifts that Jackie has, can truly truly help.

I didn’t really know Jackie until that call. However the person at “the end of the phone” allowed me to share how I feel, she gently guided me through all the hurt probing me for answers and solutions and ways forward….and it was so natural it was like talking to my best friend, it wasn’t embarrassing or awkward and in such a relatively short time I could see the answers and solutions needed to actually move forward. My life had literally been suspended in mid air for 3 days, I would still be there now if it was not for the support from Jackie.

I absolutely would not hesitate in recommending Jackie to help others, especially people struggling within a relationship and preferably before its too late. I think perhaps we all hold onto so much pain inside, that if left trapped not only does in not allow you to move forward but the ugliness of the situation will always stay within you locked in the “here and now”.  Jackie is someone you can open up to who will guide you through and out the other side.

Hitting the spot between the eyes! #215800

I’m deliriously happy today, yes really.  All the trouble that surrounded me last week has gone, well at least it feels that way.

I had a conversation which would have been impossible  only a week ago.  I felt calm, centred and grounded.  I came from a place of willingness. At the other end of the phone, there was a tight voice, and as the conversation developed, it relaxed, became gentler, and the words flowed.  There was space, on the line, for creating peace.

Hitting The Spot

I got to wondering about the times in our lives when nothing hits the spot.  D’you find that you become disenchanted and bored with the contents of your fridge.  The food you’ve been eating which once fulfilled you, is now boring.  You yearn for something else, something to get your teeth into, to excite the taste buds and maybe even test your culinary skills.

I wondered then if perhaps we get bored with some of the interactions we’ve had with others and whether that affects us similarly.  I know that this particular relationship is one which is too often trying, it’s monotonous in its predictability.  It was time for something new.  It just took a new recipe, and maybe  a new shopping list of skills.

Peace … Again

Whatever it took, I’m going with the ease of today, and not resting on my laurels that it will continue unaided, it needs to be tended and nurtured.  There’s much pain to undo, there’s a whole new relationship to be built, it might or might not be possible.  My dearest hope and wish is that it doesn’t go back to the monotony of bitterness.  If it were all up to me, I could guarantee it.

This is the challenge I have.  If I’ve learned my lesson, the previous troubles should now fall away.  What if the other person has lessons to learn which makes it continue?  Or is it really going to be true that it won’t bother me anymore, it will be water off a duck’s back and that alone is what will create the peace?  Ah, yes I think that’s it.

It’s hit the spot between the eyes, the third eye!  I see it all clearly now.

Wow, this is even better than I thought at the beginning of the post and it’s nowhere near 800 words, but I’m done for today – my creation was in my conversation, live outloud writing!

Why does it always rain on me?

I can’t stand myself
I’m being held up by invisible men
Still life on a shelf when
I’ve got my mind on something else
Sunny days, oh where have you gone
I get the strangest feeling you belong

I heard an interview with Travis about writing this song – he comes from the west coast of Scotland where it is usually very wet and wanting to do some song writing booked himself a holiday to Egypt (I think).  Lo and behold while he was there, it rained a lot!

Somehow it happens, we can take the rain wherever we go – we can even make the weather change – now I know, it’s a long shot, but it can happen!  I remember when I was going through a particularly tough period of my divorce and wondering just how I would get through it and each day I’d go out to take my dog for her walk – and sure as eggs is eggs on the days I needed it most, there was a rainbow – showing me that behind the rain, the dark skies and clouds the sun still shone.  Hang on till you get there was what I heard, it’s just passing over.

What’s really weird though is that ever since, a rainy day does not automatically produce a rainbow any longer.  I’ve got passed the point of needing to know that the sun is still shining somewhere because it just is!  I know deep inside that whatever is happening in my life which I’m not enjoying is something I can handle, it will pass, and the good times soon return.

Travis knew it too – he addresses the sunny days and gets a funny feeling they belong.

The way back to sunny days is trust and forgiveness.  It’s knowing that where you are, no matter how uncomfortable, it’s going to end and you will soon be basking in the warmth of the sun ….. only as long as you are willing to let go of the memory of rain.

History or His Story?

If you think that history makes you what you are then you might be in for a shock – it certainly brings you to where you are, but it sure as hell doesn’t define you going forward.

Take the break up of the word and make it ‘his story’ and you will quickly recognise that whether you be male or female the ‘his’ is purely a generic term for mankind.

A dear friend of mine, Wendy Salter, has written a wonderful book called Herstoria – you can follow Wendy’s blog from the blogroll.

Relying on past experiences to provide us with a template for the future is all well and good if the experiences have served us well.  If on the other hand they were necessary for our growth and learning, let’s just take those salient points and leave the story behind.  To do that we have to be grateful and forgiving …. mainly of ourselves and then other people.   Holding onto history to taint our lives with pain, fear, guilt and sorrow does not give us the ease and capacity which is our right by birth.

But holy cow it just isn’t so easy is it?  I know I’ve spent years getting rid of many a story and rightly so as it really was just keeping me in a place where I could abdicate responsibility and pretend that it wasn’t my fault.  Well the fact is that we’re not to blame for things, it’s just that you do have to take responsibility.  There’s a fine line in there I thought, and I’ve remained curious about fault and not to blame – until suddenly the penny dropped.

Just get up, accept what is and get on with it.

Stop wearing the problem, stop talking about, stop feeding the negativity.

Realise that it’s not all about you but the only way you can make a difference is to make it all about you – your responsibility to make a change to your attitude, to what you can do about it .

Start to recognise that you are not to blame and forgive yourself for giving yourself such a hard time.  Stop blaming others – and recognise they were doing the best they could – even if it seems a bit odd.

We make mistakes only so’s to learn better how not to do it next time.  And that doesn’t mean that you stop trying, it means putting in place better strategies.  It doesn’t mean erecting barriers against what you perceive as injustice – it wasn’t an injustice, you had to learn how to grow up and be better than you were.

You’ve never been perfect, it’s unlikely you ever will be, but you can be better than you were – how’s about it?  Are you ready to give it your best shot … even if it’s for the 28th time?