OK so things really are not that bad - except that I way overdid it and had no energy left yesterday at all.  Luckily the family was all feeling lazy yesterday so we did not go out anywhere.  We just lurked around chatting and eating and then watched a film....

I so hope my meds get increased!

Greivances

I am kinda cross right now.  Two things yesterday pissed me off.

Firstly I heard from my Sister that the spouse of a second cousin told my niece that he did not think we were really family.  I have a theory about families and how they grow outwards, how you need to make or find your own because with time, you will slowly find yourself on the outside of your family. 

Our Dads were cousins, they were close and formed a good friendship which kept the family tie nice and strong.  For the offspring, the family tie is lessening, we have shared childhood memories but have gone on to make lives with include each other very rarely.  But we still have that shared common root and I for one have good memories.

The spouse always struck me as being arrogant and pompous but now I know so for sure.  I didn't think they overly liked us and had definately gotten the feeling they looked down on us.  Now I know for sur and that the ties between my branch of the family and my second cousins are being unravelled, in large part because of the spouse.  My sister and the second cousin have always been good friends although more recently they have seen little of each other.  They could have picked up that friendship anytime they liked but the presence of a disapproving spouse makes that unlikely...

It is interesting seeing this process in action because I can clearly see it embedded in my family tree everywhere I look.  I have a family album which shows how close my Great Gran was to all her siblings, even when they became older.  How close all the cousins were, but yet I do not know a single one of these offspring.  I have never met any of them.  My Dad has childhood memories of some of them.  But where they went, who survives, who had children is not known to us.

I have a female family friend who had two brothers.  Following an unsucessful marriage and no children she increasingly finds herself on the edge of things.  Her two siblings have had spouses and in one case a second spouse too.  They have children and grandchildren.  When there is a family occasion, making room in the house for their own offspring takes higher precedence than dedicating an entire room to their spinster sister.  Few people can afford houses with that many bedrooms!  She did not grow her own family.  She makes the most of mine though, but even that is getting more tricky as my parents get older.

Anyway, why would you say such a thing to a teenage girl who clearly believes she is family?

The second thing to annoy me is S.  I know teenagers take things like money for granted.  I know they can be selfish and thoughtless or annoying.  S's Mum and Dad were pretty bad with money when they were together and ran up a few debts.  Being the man, F's name went first and so when they split he got landed with them.  Ten years later and we are still paying it all off.  When we first got together we were also paying child support but as time has passed inflation has made these debts a little easier to bear.  But I never got any use of the fancy things I get to help pay for.

Well F pays for them, but of course F having no money affects me.  The first few years we were together, we were pretty poor and we still don't have a huge amount of money.  We both work and have alright jobs but not great jobs.  S's Mum and Stepdad clearly have more money than us and S is used to having the combined might of two sets of parents and two sets of grandparents.  He never goes without, not that he should have to, but he has far better gear than us and I don't think he even realises it!  But also because S lives with them, they get all the government assistance with things like tax credits.

So my sister is a single mum who receives no assistance from her ex and is only able to work part time and she is down here on holiday for a week.  F and I are only able to spend the bank holiday weekend with them and evenings after work but S is expecting to stay with them some nights.  He knows from last year that my Sister can not afford to pay for him or feed him.  He earned an awful lot of money the last few weeks and then went on a shopping trip and spent an awful lot of money. 

Last night he told us he didn't have much left and I am really cross.  We have paid for a couple of expensive days running aorund and have paid for everything for him which is fine but he has arranged to stay with my sister tonight and I have no idea who he is expecting to pay for him to go places.  My sister has National Trust membership so she and her kids can go places for free.  I think he is lying about how much money he has, hoping to hang on to it and not have to pay out for things.  As far as I am concerned if he is with my Sister he needs to pay for himself and if he can not then he can not go and stay with her.  He has seen them and had a couple of expensive days out and we can not afford to pay for him to do more.

Even just petrol is not cheap.  Just runnign him to and fro has probably cost us £20 before we even got to meet up with the others. 

But at the same time my own attitude makes me sad.  My parents still pay for me to do things and they even pay for F too sometimes.  They know we can not afford thigns and they have more money than we do and they wish to see us and help out.  I guess there is a huge difference between helping out and supporting a life of luxury and certainly they have always said no to us when they could not do things.  I also worked and paid for things myself.  If I arranged to go and do things with my friends I had to pay or ask them for money.  if they said no, I couldn't go....


Argh!!!!

The Walking Dead

I am still struggling with opening the door to the Dead.  I have opened it part of the way but I am still really, really resisting opening it all the way and getting on with all this.  I have a friend who is a spiritualist medium and I have been promising to go to church for a couple of months now.  After years of never bumping into her and falling out of contact, I first had a dream in which getting her number featured and then within the following two weeks I did see her and I did get her number.  Ever since this I keep bumping in to her, just often enough to remind me I need to go....

This year the Dead have slowly been walking into my life.  Some of my Ancestors have spoken really strongly as I have learnt of them and I know they swirl around me now.  One managed to intrude on my dreams earlier in the year and definately has some unresolved, mostly because he wanted his story to be told, he didn't want to be forgotten.

On Sunday I was supposed to go but I got a little freaked again.  Earlier in the day I was looking at old photos and the family tree and matching up some people.  The album had been sat at an angle on the desk for some time when it suddenly slid off into my lap.  It only did this once in a couple of hours.  The two pieces of paper I had flat on the desk that had names of who was in which photo shot of f the desk less than two minutes later.  There was no breeze, nothing else moved, no windows open, no doors opened, nothing.  No good reason for them both to shoot off at all.

I know someone was there.  I know my Ancestors have things they want to say to me.  I know I have gotten better with all this, it's like we send each other postcards every so often, but they want to actually meet up...

I have been having some omens of disagreements between buzzards and Crow recently and I have just discovered that Buzzards count as Vultures....  Which really puts a different slant on things.  The other day I watched Crows and Magpies chase a Buzzard off their turf.  Vultures are definately about Death and Crows are all about the Inbetween, which includes Death and Magic and all sorts of things....

I am sure I will get there eventually but I have a feeling I am really dragging my heals....

School Time

I didn't like the school I went to...  I think there were quite a few reasons for this looking back on things now. 

1) I was a tomboy and would probably have been happier in a boys school than in a girls school
2) I accidentally got put up a year
3) I had a few minor health problems such as my skin and joint pains that made Physical Ed hard for me and this was a large part of the day, with one of the seven periods each day occupied by it
4) It was a boarding school and I did not board.  A really good way to never be part of things....
5) I was a geek....

I always wanted to belong, to have a best friend, to be part of things, but somehow I never was.  I can look back on it as an adult now and see that the girls I was at school with were pretty unhappy.  For some it was a good and stable place to be because their family life was pretty bad.  Some of my classmates had left their homes so young, 7 or 8...  I think they envied me going home and my nice Mum.

But anyway...  enough of the bad stuff...

The school was in an old manor house set in huge grounds and we pretty much were able to roam as we would.  I would always get in the back of my Dads van because my sis was much more of a lady than me and we would go the couple of miles to school and then down the long drive and he would drop us off at the grand entrance.

Our days would begin with assembly in the hall.  It was the only hall when I began with a grand stage and velvet curtains and old style gym apparatus folded against the walls.  I had not been their long when they built a sports hall but assembly was always in the main hall.

My first classroom was very close to the hall, just down some stairs and we were there as my class would file into our allocated rows at the front.  There would always be a reading and a hymn and I always enjoyed singing.  On Fridays a local vicar would come and take assembly.  There was one vicar who was so very lovely, his face was round and shone with loveliness.  Another young vicar came one time and ate a daffodil.

Once a term, for a week we would have class assemblies where a different class would do the assembly for that day.  We all used to look forward to doing this as it was a chance to do something quite fun.  There was also concerts and plays and all sorts of events that took place in the hall.  I remember there would be a concert at the end of every term for the parents and children as they got picked up.  We would sing Auld Langs Syne and I would so glad to be getting out of there....

I remember doing a nativity play.  I was the Inn Keeper.  The school had an interesting set of costumes, collected over many years.  Apparently the costume I choose for myself had a different colour for every item of clothing and very long boots.  My Mum and Sister rescued a really old jacket from the dress up chest which they paid for and have looked after ever since.

My first year I was the youngest girl in the school.  It was tradition that the youngest girl and the head girl would jointly light the bonfire on Bonfire Night.  The only thing I remember about these evenings was the size of the Bonfire.  I think the workmen collected wood for some time and their bonfires were a work of art.  I think I vaguely remember a guy as well.

We would have two lessons and then a break with tea and biscuits and then a further two lessons then lunch in the small dining room, or was it one?  Then lunch in the Small Dining Room and then lunch time then more lessons until 4.  As we got older, we had an extra lesson in the morning, a later lunch and a shorter lunch break.  At 4 there would be tea and cake.

The food was alright.  If you did not eat your veg you had to stay there until you did.  I hated it and was often stuck there for some time....  The only thing my Mum signed to say I did not have to eat it was Prunes, for which I have been ever thankful...  We had to cut up apples with a knife to eat them and table manners were very important.  Each day you would move round a place so the people on each table changed a little and you would sit with different staff.

I remember super shiny floors that were good fun to skid on.  I remember ice and a place that was always treacherous by the library and english room.  I remember boring a bike (I was not supposed to use the bikes because they were for boarders only) and coming off on the gravel on a bed on the dirt road down to the music block (I still have the scar).  I remember climbing trees.  All sorts of trees.  I remember watching tadpoles in the pond, squirrels on the lawn and wafting swarms of daddy long legs as we walked down to the music block.

The building fascinated me.  It had been added to and added to over the years so that it was a maze of corridors and rooms and no student ever got to see all of it.  Staff had rooms and little flats.  Other rooms were offices or hazardous or just plain private.  As a day girl I was rarely allowed into the dorms.  Boarders were not supposed to go to the dorms in breaks but I think they could at lunchtime.  I remember one Christmas my Mum took me in with her over the holidays as she had some work to do.  I spent a pleasurable afternoon exploring all the places I could not go at other times.  I went through every single dorm. My only disappointment was that tehre was no one to tell me which one was the haunted one....

But then there was the ghost everyone knew about, the one in the Mirror Hall.  This hall had a grand staircase and a floor to ceiling mirror and it was said that if you were on the stairs at night sometimes you would see a ghostly lady reflected in the mirror stood by you, and sometimes there would be a draft blowing out of the mirror and once someone had disappeared behind it...  There was rumoured to be tunnels and I remember one teacher telling us that there was a place she had found in the cellar where something had been bricked up and there was a draft.

One of the many places we were not supposed to go into was the old air raid shelter, which of course we did.  We were also not supposed to go beyond the school grounds, which I know I did.  I knew a family with a house beyond in the field and sometimes I would stand there and gaze at it, I even struck out once into the field.  Another time I walked along the edge, between the field and the wall of the walled gardens.  I never got to go in the gardens, but you could gaze out into it from the music block, rows of vegetables mostly.

Sometimes when there was snow we would be alloed to use plastic fertilizer bags to sled down the air raid shelter and then we got older we would go to the woods behind the school and sled down the big hill too.  That was one of the few PE lessons I enjoyed.  Swimming was torture - slogging away, lifesaving in clothes and the like.  Afterwards i would be so tired that walking back up the hill and getting to lessons on time was a problem for me.  I loathed tennis, although netball was alright.  Hockey was fine if the weather was ok, but we playe din pretty much any weather, mostly in our silly little gym skirts.  And cross country, ugh.  I liked badminton the best.  We each had a locker, old, old lockers used by generations of girls.

Everything was old and worn and well used.  The girls there may have been priviledged in some senses but life at school certainly was not.  In many ways there was very little freedom for anyone.  In fact some middle eastern families sent their daughters there for precisely that reason.  We wrote with ink pens and our desks had holes for ink pots we no longer used.  They had fold up lids for our books and years of graffitti.  Our school books were ancient our chairs hard and wooden.  As we got older we would have a sit for our class which would have comfy chairs and a record player.  I remember playing Final Countdown by Europe a lot and Silver Blue by Roxette.  Boarders had pet hamsters and tuck boxes.

Is it any wonder I felt left out as a day girl?  There were so many things they appeared to have that we did not, places to go we were not allowed.  They bonded in the face of adversity.  But still I know that they would have swapped with me in a flash, most of them, I think...

If I ever sent a child to boarding school it would either be a necessity or through their choice.  And I would never send a child as a day girl if it was obvious they would be excluded because of that.  but I think much of the damamge was done in my first couple of years there - being too young and put up a year.  but the ability to freely explore the outdoors was one I loved....

Moon of Surrender Introduction

Surrender is all about going with the flow, not resisting, not fighting.  Wheelkeeper describes it as letting go of the emotional reactions, the reactions of our ego.  Surrendering is nowhere near the same as repressing though, repressing is unhealthy.  Of course we all have emotional reactions but the important thing is to do the work in understanding these reactions.  Looking at Fears, understanding why we are angry and so on....

This feels like a good Moon for me right now as I adjust to my changing body.  And things are changing.  The more I read the more I realise that all my health problems are related to my Thyroid and I have many years of problems to turn back through.  It started at 8 with Hydradenitus Surrativa, a skin condition I still have (possible cause of later thyroid problems).  Then at 12 I got strange pains in my joints that were diagnosed as Rheumatism, they went away in my late teens.  At 14 I got very ill and although tests never confirmed it was Glandular Fever it probably was.  Then at 19 I definately got Glandular Fever and it turned into Chronic Fatigue.  After I moved to Cornwall I developed Hayfever, IBS and dry eyes.  Shortly after giving up smoking I started to pile on weight, that no diet ever permanently shifted, in fact diets resulted in me putting on more weight in the long run.  Depression has haunted me through the years too, causing me to do so much work on myself that eventually I got to a place of contentment, when you know you have nothing else to be sad about you know how you feel is physical not mental....  And through all this there has been never-ending tiredness....

I don't think I had realised how tired I really felt.  The last few months when it got really bad and mucked up all my hormones too, I didn't have the nergy to even feel, I was just in a complete fog.  As this fog has lifted, all the other niggles have become evident.  My stomach now tells me when it feels full or when I have eaten badly I feel queasy.  I feel strange pains.  My head fog has lifted enough for me to be conscious of what remains, a headache that comes and goes.  My IBS has vanished completely.  My Rheumatism returned.  The clock is turning back for my body, but I am not daft enough to think that all that damage can go overnight.

I am making progress and this I am overjoyed at!  I hope to work with my Doctor to get my dosage right and experiment with drugs till I find the right cocktail. I am so thankful he decided to diagnose me.  But I do need to surrender to this process.  I can not rush it....

This has always been a tricky Moon for me.  First time round at the age of 8, I changed school.  I went from a mixed school to a girls school, state run to private run and I got bumped up a year by accident too.  It was really tough.  I had just started to realise I was a tomboy and started to find my place and now I was with a bunch of girls...  I was also with a group of girls who came from much richer homes than I did, many of whom were living away from home for the first time and dealing with things I could not imagine, comfy inmy secure family, going home every night.  These difficulties cause them to bond very closely in ways us few day girls could never match.  Then too, I had gone from being top of my class, to being bottom, being tested for Dyslexia and receiving extra tuition at break times....

Everything about me rebelled.  This was when my skin first started to erupt.  And other things erupted too.  I had so much anger and frustration inside me, and they came out.  The other girls would wind me up and I would lose it and hit out like a windmill with all my might.  Some girls would wind me up on purpose.  I hated it, hated losing control.  And of course it only made things worse, not better.

I learnt to ruthlessly control my anger, and along with it many of my other emotions too.  But Anger is such a positive and powerful thing in the right place.  It protects us and helps keep us safe.  With it comes our passion, our fire and they bring creativity.  In repressing my Anger, I lost so very much.  In later years a friend conducted an exercise with me where different seats in a room represented me, my anger and other times and feelings in such a way as I could talk with my anger.  It was very powerful and moving.  My anger was so sad.  It had been the anger of an eight year old and it had been trying to help as best it knew, trying to protect me.  This was a real turning point for me, late on in my second Year of Surrender.  It was probably the first bit of work that resulted in me returning a piece of my shattered soul to it's home.  It didn't happen overnight, it took time and work and persistence...

My second year of Surrender had begun very badly, or very well, depending on your view.  I collapsed under the strain of carrying my emotional pain and repression from the rape a year before and had a nervouse breakdown.  I had to break in order to get well I think, but my 21st birthday was horrid, a meal with  just my parents in a pub we never go to and have never been since, sat in a corner feeling retched.

Breaking allowed me to mend and I started to remake my world from scratch, looking at everything I thought and felt and deciding what to keep and looking for new material to fill the gaps.  I had counselling and I read and read.  On my return to the city I temped and eventually began a job where I met the lady who helped with my Anger.  I remember deciding that I did not want to let my experiences make me hard or cynical.  I guess this year was all about mending.

I had a lovely boyfriend at the time, who I will always be fond of.  I remember one counselling session released my anger, but of course I had no idea what to do with it!  And there was so much!  We had some chipped ornaments and broken things and my bf and I took them into the garden so I could smash them to pieces.  But I was still angry.  So we went upstairs and shouted and screamed at each other.  So convincing did we sound that a housemate watching TV in the extension to the house came up to our attic room to make sure we were not killing each other....

This year not only saved my life, but I had the opportunity to save someone else's.  One of my housemates tried to kill himself after a break up and I was the only one in the house at the time.  I think such a thing creates a powerful bond.  He has had a hard road, dealing with addiction and mental health issues, but he seems to have come out the other side, and he has a beautiful daughter now...

Last year was my third year of Surrender and to be honest it was pretty calm!  I first dreamed of being a Dreamer early on in the year and went on to connect with Lisa.  I took part in BIG, an e-course looking at intuitive painting.  Things began to settle a little for me at work.  The Little Princess left and my Boss started on the path of trying to repair the damage, mostly by blaming it all on the Little Princess and pretending it never happened - which is fine, society depends on these polite fictions!

Surrender for me last year, was all about reconnecting with the Universe, with the magic, with my place in things and who I truly am.  I quite like Surrender, but it really has not been easy for me over the years....

So this next month, I am just going to keep on keeping on.  Waiting and watching.  Onwards and upwards.

Moon of Inter-Relations Review

Well what a Moon!

I can understand now, why I did not feel entirely connected with this Moon and why my Dreamboard was as it was.

For me, Inter-relations took a back step.  The only sign I had of my totem, I think, for this Moon was a dream where I was diving (bizarely with my Boss) looking for Sharks.  We didn't find any.  I think I was being told that Shark was the one but that I was not in this Moon so much.

So where was I?  The Moon of Welcome....

I had several dreams about Wasps instead at the beginning of the Moon which for me is my totem for the Moon of Welcome.  I had one where I had a Wasp between my finger and thumb but I could not move my fingers.  The Wasp was struggling to free it self and broke itself in two, leaving me holding the stonging end.

Then there was the one where the Wasps burrowing under my home decided they needed more space and started burrowing outwards.

There was more but I have been so bad at writing it down recently....

And why did I need Welcome?  Because my life was about to change.

Of course anyone reading my blog will know what happened next.  I was diagnosed with Underactive Thyroid and began treatment.  I have steadily started to feel better but I have years of accumalated damage to my body to undo, so I think it will be some time before I feel 100% but I feel soooo much better than I have in years.

And my bleak Dreamboard of last month sums it up perfectly....  A rocky, cliffy bit sticking out to see with a hole through which the waves are crashing.  A fire burning in a shattered urban scene.  The words hope and gnawing fear.  Oh yes.  They all make sense now.

But inter-relations - sure they have been there, but so far this year, I have personally been in the Moons that have been collective so I have been able to focus on them completely...  This time, I was personally dealing with Welcome.  And my relationships have changed a bit this moon too.  A new colleague....  but I really don't have to much to say about it all....

Oh and this was my song of the moon....



I probably should not have posted this yesterday because I was not finished!

This Moon has been more about Fire than Inter-relations but still....  So this is a beautiful picture of linked fire.... 

She burned, high in the sky and her sisters watched her burn and they burned with her.  In all the darkness, the only thing there was, was light, unless you looked a lot closer.  Where there was light other things gathered like moths to a flame.  Even so, it was not for others that they burned.  They burned for themselves, gloriously, selfishly even.  And they sang and her song made harmonies with the songs of her sisters.

One time, one of the Sisters looked around her suddenly, and for the first time realised that there was more and her song faltered.  As her song sputtered out, so did that of her Sisters and one called to her 'Sister!  Sister!  What is wrong?'

and all she said in return was 'Look...'  indeed it was all she could say, so engrossed in looking was she herself.  So they all looked and they were astounded.  And for the first time ever, they wanted to be something other than stars, burning in the coldness of space, singing with a heartbreaking beauty, they wanted to feel.

The first sister reached towards the planet she viewed and before she knew it, she had stepped out of her burning fire.  In shock, she turned and looked at it, but then she smiled for she knew she was being given a gift.  She also knew her time was limited for her fire would burn forever without her, without being tended and fed by her soul.  She cast herself a beam of starlight towards where she had been looking and began to walk to wards it tentatively, but as she grew in confidence she started to speed up.

'Sister!  Sister! Wait!'  they called after her as they too stepped away from their fires and started to follow her, and before they knew it, they were all flying at the speed of thought towards something they had never experienced before.  And they knew that nothing would be the same again and for better or for worse, they could never stay.