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A breast screening and a message of trust
Last week I went for a breast check for the first time in 7 years. The last time I did was in 2015, a few months after my sister died of breast cancer. It wasn’t a surprise that the check-up was triggering. The first thing the doctor asked me was, Are there any complaints? And my answer was, I have a family history of breast cancer. He laughed and said that this was not a complaint, and we proceeded to the examination. I was lost in my thoughts when he said I had cysts in both breasts. At this point my heart started pounding and it was the only thing…
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Waving goodbye to the past
I feel the last few years are catching up with me. Many feelings are coming up to the surface for first time to be illuminated. Things I realise for a first time ever. Things sometimes too grave. My life for the past 4 years has been grave in many ways. Not only, of course, but mostly. I realise now that as soon as my relationship with my partner began, it was stifled almost in the bud. Uninvited visitors, like death, grief, anxiety, came along and didn’t leave much of a space for us to breathe as a new family. My love for my partner was suffocated. My love for my…
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Coming out from the mud and continuing onward
I am grateful for where I am on my journey. I am grateful for the mud I had to come through. I am grateful for the waters that held me while I was rising up. I am grateful for the air that touched my skin upon my resurfacing. I am grateful for the roots that kept me in place. I am grateful for the process, for the journey, for the experience, for my life. On 15th October it was 7 years since the death of my mother. Here’s what I wrote: I was only 26 at the time. I remember trying to rationalise and intellectualise the shock of her…
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Motherhood and enjoying the present moment
For a first time in my life I feel like I’m enjoying being a mother and my relationship with my son. I was too naive and maybe somewhat young when I became a mother. We’ve only been together with my partner for an year when I got pregnant. But we said yes to it, yes to all this family-making, children-raising thing. And it was good for a while. But soon it became clear that this isn’t what I thought it would be. It soon became clear that instead of building a family, there was a wall being built between me and everything around me. And I closed down and shut…
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The anatomy of desire and manifesting
Two weeks ago I had an epiphany moment. It was a moment of full blown joy. I felt happy all the way through from the depths of my soul. It was a moment on my journey in which I felt I’ve passed some rite of passage and have shifted energies and moved forward on my path. It is an indescribable feeling and something I’ve never experienced before – it could probably be best described by the word BLISS. A couple of days later my dad came to visit and we shared a day of warmness and closeness. Then he had to go and even though we’ve said temporary “goodbyes” to…
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Interview with Jonelle du Pont: blogger and writer at Tyranny of Pink
Jonelle is a Mom, Wife, Ostomate, Writer and Community Development Practitioner! She writes the blog Tyranny of Pink, a blog about intentional living, with a focus on living life positively, purposefully and authentically. In October 2014 she found herself unhappy with her life and the path it was leading her down. She quit her full-time job and decided it was time to do things that make her happy! In September 2015 she had her first child, Oden. His journey into this world nearly killed her. She woke up post-surgery with an unexpected stoma and her whole life completely changed. In that moment, she realised that she was finally living her authentic life and being…
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Breaking free of our mental prisons
I mentioned in my last post that I’ve kept myself into a sort of a mental prison. After talking to my therapist about it and going for a walk after, it came to me – another piece of the puzzle. After the dreams about my past lives, I had another few empowering dreams – one symbolising letting go of the burden I’ve been carrying by throwing things out of a backpack I’ve been carrying, and another – expressing myself freely by singing to a song I don’t remember the words of but nevertheless singing loudly and freely. To me, those dreams symbolise my emotional release of the trauma I’ve been lugging around…
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Rewriting my story in a radical self-forgiveness context
“I am here to deal with my fear of isolation, loneliness and loss. I have chosen my parents, sibling, partner, child, close friends, and my life circumstances so they can support my soul’s evolution. My mother temporarily left me for 5 years when I was 10 years old. Then she permanently left my life when I was 26. By doing so, she first opened a hole in me as a young child, and then she made that hole graver, bigger and deeper by leaving this world altogether. When my mum first left she prepared me for encountering a greater feeling of loneliness and loss later in my life. When she…
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On grief: the missing relationship with the mother
If you ask me how my life has been the last couple of years, I probably wouldn’t say it has been full of grief. It would be one of the first things to cross my mind but I wouldn’t say it. I would probably divert to being a mom and looking after a household, which is true but it’s only half of my world. The grief and everything it brings – I’ve put aside in the back pocket of my mind. It wasn’t until I started listening to the audiobook Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, that I felt how much grief I still carry in me.…
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A hopeful start and a pat on the back
The New 2016 Year is here! Happy new beginnings to all! Before I start fully focusing on what’s coming this year I’d like to reflect on what was achieved and accomplished during 2015. I was scribbling a draft on December 31st and finished it at 11:49 pm. I was quick to go to bed, where my son and partner were already asleep, before it was New Year because I didn’t want to greet it on my own. The draft was a sort of a painfully honest personal rant. I wrote it down for myself and part of it included some very practical resolutions we’ve made in our household (understand: laundry…
