Miserere

This is more about healing, which is the thing I'm thinking about most. It's understandable that this won't be for everyone. So feel free to swipe.

It's not quite light outside but I can hear the first birds on my left, through the window, despite Ola Gjeilo playing with great fervor next to me. Music is massively important first thing in the morning.There is a fragility to waking now. I want to not hold on too hard, but to save the mood, the delicious spaciousness of coming out of the dream state. Especially waking on a Sunday without a a lot of to do's already whirling around in one's head. I lay for a few minutes and do my checklist: puppy sleeping - check, Thistle snoring - check, Charlie breathing beside me, do I need any more sleep? I don't think so. Has the heaviness of yesterday lifted? I think it might have. Breathe? Oh yes, must breathe. But which breath? The double one. The one where you do a deep breath in and then another short sharp deep one at the top. I do this a few times for good measure. I know the breath will bring me back to equilibrium. I whisper "would you like some tea?" to C. I quietly pick up the little whippet puppy from his crate and we wander downstairs.. All Is Well. The puppy goes out, pees, he knows the drill now. I've left the heat on in the kitchen and the wooden floor is warm on my bare feet as I make the tea.

And yet, it might not have been so. Yesterday was not like this. Exhausted (a word I use all too frequently now) from being in the city, around a lot of people, shadowing as I do in my job. We are half people. We exist to make sure other people are okay, that their artistic visions are understood, that their worlds are illuminated for other people to see. These are good and lovely and talented people, and I have done this job for many years now, more than forty years, and the job is to uphold, support, enable and defend another's creativity. Perhaps it's the electromagnetic activity in the heavens, the solar flares, the aurora borealis, but my shadow job didn't feel like such a good idea. Somehow my body was done with the stuckness, tired of holding everything in, exhausted from being in a Medieval court, from playing the Fool, from the petty humiliations and unspoken slights and didn't really want to play the game any longer.  (I can hear the crows getting up, greeting each other, chatting, gathering around the oak now. We have hundreds of crows; a well-organized bunch). Despite good and kind people, and meaningful subjects, there was a pushing through, an extended effort, that you know means you're not in alignment.

As my father said to me twenty years ago when I first struggled with my job and wondering if it was indeed what I was meant to be doing, "you are lucky to have a job like this and to be successful at it." Yes I am. 

My depletion was so intent yesterday that I wanted to roll up in a ball like a pill bug, turn off my crazy mind, cover myself in a duvet and shut down. Maybe there could be plug in stations for human beings? Especially now everyone's getting rid of their Teslas. Rock up, connect and sleep for an hour or two while your body and mind and soul is replenished with magic vitamins, nourishing fluids and much-needed dopamine. Here's your little sleep box with its fluffy duvet, here are your headphones playing 432hz, here's your eye mask with just a little bit of rose-scented aromatherapy on it, and here are two smooth clear quartz crystals for your hands. Here is your prayer. Here is peace and tranquility. (Here are the two pink/white dahlias on your desk put there by your beloved; here is your cup of tea that he makes you every morning; here is the dog that sleeps at your feet warming your toes; here is the morning light where you can glimpse the optimism of the sun. Here is the morning when you feel strong and calm and loved.)

My exhaustion was so great that I cancelled my good friends who were coming to dinner. I love to cook I said. I do. I love the rituals of the dinner party. The making the house pretty, the hunting for flowers, laying the table, choosing what to make. Spreading books on the kitchen table, connecting again with the house, remembering that this is how we love, this is how we show people we care. But I had nothing to show and nothing to give. And because I am married to a beautiful saint of a man, he made salmon and vegetables and it was delicious, and I went to bed early with my copy of On Pilgrimage by Jennifer Lash. Actually I got into a hot bath and lay there reading and willing myself not to sleep, and watching the puppy chewing on the bath mat. It was the first time in quite a long time that I thought, ah, a glass of pinot noir might go down well now, in the bath, with my book. A perfect glass of reset. It was a bleak day. I wondered if I might be slipping into madness. Nothing really seemed to work properly. My house isn't in order, it's broken, I said to C. I think he thought I was referring to where we live. I wasn't. It's funny how dramatic one can sound when distressed.

So here's the elephant in the room (the baby hippo in the mud): I am actually one of those trite people that has self-diagnosed with ADHD. And boy, was it a long time coming. I am so proud of myself for not having done it years ago when it was really popular and all the cool kids were doing it.  But you know, fifteen years ago when I had a high schooler and a kid about to go to college, their diagnoses seemed more compelling, and important I suppose. The focus was on them. boom boom. And my husband was obviously neuro-divergent, as he had obvious physical signs - hyperactivity (which was both massively inspiring and exhausting to be around, total focus on new hobbies including all the equipment, an inability to sit still at all). Our family was loving and loud and chaotic, in the best ways. So with all this activity and furor (it's not quite the seven fishes episode of  The Bear, but you get my flow) and madness, it was (looking back) easier for me to sit quietly and observe. Or at least play the anchor in some way. I now know that this is called masking. Masking. Not just for those on the autism spectrum. My hyperactivity is in my head, not my body. (Although I did get frowny looks when I ran down the corridors in my heels when I was an executive at Fox.) How do you know, indeed, that the messy soup of thought that is your brain isn't the same as everyone else? How do you know that the way you're experiencing the world isn't the way everyone else is experiencing it? You don't. We didn't talk about these things. My time blindness was just laziness or something. My inability to leave the house, or go to a meeting I didn't want to go to? She's a bit crazy.  My desperate need for a glass of wine at 6pm to bring me back to a settled, calm state? Borderline alcoholism. My inability to face a crowd of people? Antisocial behaviour. My massive lack of focus while trying to write my thesis?  Too many drugs? Not being able to sparkle on command? No-one knew. I'd just hide on days like that. Fake illness. Feeling everything acutely, every single vibe in a room? I don't know. Growing up with a volatile father?

So rather like that joke about the nervous breakdown - I've waited patiently and now it's my turn - here I am, trite as hell, sitting with an idea that seems to fit all the weird behaviours of my life. I am not entirely alone. I've discussed it quite a lot with my therapist, and she concurs, or at least can see the thread that connects everything. And even said something like "that must have been a lot" and it made me cry. It's all been a lot, always, forever, since I can remember. And that's what I was told too. A lot. Too much. Or, in the immortal words of my matron, Miss Collier (who also had a broom named after her) "Bumble by name, Bumble by nature." A really lovely, positive thing to write in the book of a struggling, spotty, slightly fat thirteen year old. And you know what? Sitting with all of this, all the time, for the last few days: It feels like grief. It should be a revelation, and definitely things are shifting, but it sits like grief in my body, heavy and sludge-like, unmoving, stultifying. And the thing about grief is that it doesn't give your the opportunity to enjoy change, or the new season, the color of the leaves, sweater weather, because you're stuck in regret and the constant unfolding of the idea that you missed so much. Where is my summer day? Where is my ten minutes of swimming in the Aegean sea? Why didn't we barbecue the day the sun was out? Why do I even bother having summer clothes?

Yo-Yo Ma, man, he brings you back every time. Him and Bach, what a team.

Here's the word that goes through my head constantly: excuse. This revelation is an excuse for not being better, because being better, fixing yourself, is what life is about, right? Self-improvement. But here's a radical idea: what if you are perfect, as you are? What if all the weird little divergent nooks and crannies and rough edges and bizarre quirks are exactly what the universe needed, and every little crinkly line fits perfectly into the big jigsaw? What if the world needed something that was exactly the same shape as you? And that no-one else is even slightly the same as you. You are a note in the symphony, a note that no other instrument can play. (If you're finding this trite, you may not be my people, no offense or anything, but this is where I am and the simplicity of this idea is what is healing.)

And one more sweet thing. I met a young woman this week from Los Angeles, who was a light, a shiney light in the midst of it all, guileless, sweet, kind and good. And she shone so bright because there were no rough shadow edges. Every single emotion was true and direct and there was no guilt or shame attached to any of it. She was exactly as she was meant to be, in alignment, perfect, in her lane in the best possible way, so she brought shimmery illumination to everything that she came into contact with. My daughter in law is the same. It's not an English thing to be this way, or not in my experience. There is no shame, no guilt, there is just being.

Here is something beautiful for your Sunday morning. Allegri Miserere in the Sistine Chapel. Inspired by Conclave.

I do like a list. And here are a few things I would suggest if you're trying to overcome overwhelm:

• Nature. Get outside as soon as you can in the morning. Just having your feet on the grass will ground you, bring you back.
• Walk in the trees either on your own or silently. Touch and hug them. You can actually feel the energy, and it is good. Walk far enough that you suddenly forget you are walking.
• Water, either drunk or bathed in, is good for the soul. Some say water is the magic elixir (Masuro Emoto, for example, or author Elif Shafak There Are Rivers In The Sky)
• Sing or chant. Check out Krishna Das. If you'd like my healing mantras playlist, let me know and I'll send it to you.
• Breathe. I do 4-7-8 breath, or the double intake breath with a long exhale. Magic right here.

And one more thing that I love is this:

Greet everyone as if you love them. Try it. It's quite magical how the energy you give is the energy you receive. 

(Yesterday is gone.)

Love to you.