On Grief, Growing Up and Gratitude: Thoughts for NYE 2017

Hello my lovely readers

I write this rare resurfacing of a blog entry not from the UK but from Canada, where Mama and I are staying with my grandparents in order to offer support to them whilst Grandi is in hospital. Having just returned from a visit with him, I'm now sitting in the lounge of their apartment, gazing out of the (triple-glazed) windows at the late-afternoon sunshine as it hits the snow. I did much the same this morning at sunrise, so I’ve made that the featured picture.

Why? 

It strikes the sentimental poet in me that this image is the perfect summary for the past 365 days of my life - a year in which I have learnt much about the necessary coexistence of apparent opposites. So today's post ponders on some of those, best summarised in the first half of its title: 'Grief, Growing Up, and Gratitude'.

This year, as I wrote when I last came back to the blogosphere for my birthday, and also in one of my summer posts about theatre, I have been repeatedly reminded that beauty can be found amidst (and alongside) bereavement. Saying goodbye to four more special souls, the most in any one of the last sixteen years, has been hard. Yet it was this which inspired me to take on perhaps my most significant challenge yet - walking 100m at Parallel London in September in memory of all the people I've "lost" - whilst still dealing with chronic pain as a result of my spasms. 
  

The intensity of the grief as an abstract concept as well as for individual people also prompted me to seek specific support. Through that work, I have found tools to tackle other traumas, and to begin talking about them. I won’t do so here, largely because I wasn’t the only one involved and they aren’t just my stories to tell, but they relate to the second part of this post’s title, ‘Growing Up’ – and offer me a link to the third, ‘Gratitude’.

The thing is, thanks to starting to talk (and tap!), I discovered that the spasms which have caused me so much physical and emotional pain over the last eleven years had a very specific source. I internalised (and physicalised) my response to events in my childhood, because we were actively discouraged from having discussions. That became clear only in October, when I talked, and the spasms went away. Since then, I’ve been tentatively exploring the physical possibilities of reclaiming my sense of self, and self-worth.

This is not, however, an overcoming narrative – not least because, in many ways, I am just at the beginning of my recovery, especially emotionally. As I wrote on social media, when I at last went climbing again a few weeks ago, I’m halfway up the wall. I know I still have a long way to go (particularly in processing the mental impact of those experiences now I no longer have the pain as their physical proxy) but I can also take stock of how far I have climbed – which brings me, and this post, full circle.

Those physical changes were what enabled me to fly again, and Mama and me to get to Canada when Gramma and Grandi need us. So, in celebrating that, I am acknowledging both gratitude and grief – as well as growing up, actually, because the country I find myself in as 2017 draws to a close was a huge part of my childhood. My feelings about being here are extremely mixed and muddled. That somehow seems apt, though, since (like the sunshine on the snow) those two adjectives capture the essence of my year. Consequently, I’m going to conclude by adding another ‘m’ to the list – ‘motivating’ – and thereby end this post with a triplet to match the title.

I’m not sure what 2018 will bring. It’ll most likely be as mixed as its predecessor; but I’m motivated to muddle through, inspired by gratitude for all the amazing people I have around me.

I hope you can find a way to do that too.

Love, strength, solidarity, and spoons, as always

Jx

Snowy sunrise