Making changes and resolutions.

/ kategresham / 8 Comments

I don’t like New Year resolutions. I don’t like the attitude that now it’s New Year so we make resolutions and I hate it when people ask me what my New Year resolutions are. It feels imposed and artificial.  I don’t like that.

But I don’t want my life to drift along. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that “I was always going to…but now it’s too late!” I do need to remind myself of the things that matter and are my highest priorities. That way I can keep control of my life. At least, that’s the aim.

Easy enough to say, but not always easy in practice. I get busy and routines fly out the window. I discover that it’s a week or a month or even longer and I haven’t spent any time in mindfulness practice, or  exercise or  writing. Too easy then for me to fall into gloom and beat myself up – never helps.

In some TV show one character said of another that when she died they’d put on her headstone ” She died with potential.” Now that scares me.  I do not want to die with potential. I want to use it all up. Was it the singer Placido Domingo who said he would rather wear out than rust?

Helene Lerner, in an interview on CNN, about Resolutions,( posted on January 21, 2014,) reminds us to take time for self-reflection; to go inside ourselves and ask ourselves what it is we really want, what excites us and turns us on? She reminds us of how easy it is to get off focus. And that’s where the time for self-reflection needs to come in.

Helene says that if we decide that this is the year to do something we’ve always been going to do, then  DON’T GIVE UP. She emphasizes that there’LL always be obstacles. The challenge? is to keep going. I’m embarrassed by how many things have been on my list for years.

In the post  “When self-improvement gets boring, try these 6 motivational strategies,” (in the Huffington Post: healthy living, posted 01/26/2014, written by Brant Secunda and Mark Allen,) the writers talk about “soul resolutions”. They explain what they mean by this is those goals that ” concern the deeper aspects of personal growth.”

I like this much more than New Year Resolutions. For me, these are those essential, on-going goals that keep me oriented. They are my life blood.  I won’t even know what they are unless I spend time in self-reflection.

BUT…that doesn’t mean I do it. I’m so easily distracted from that self-reflection time. I might get up late and have appointments.. so my time goes. Or I decide to set time aside at night.. then I read for too long or a friend phones and I’m tired.  I can make excuses or justify missing my time much too easily- I can always do it tomorrow, I think to myself, one day won’t hurt. But the next day I mightn’t  even think about my soul resolutions.

As long as I never give up.

Winston Churchill said “Success is not final. Failure is not final. It is the courage to go on that counts.”

That gives me heart to pick myself up yet again, take time out and keep going.

I’d really like to hear any tips or strategies you have for keeping on. How do you overcome obstacles?

Little boxes on the hillside, and they all look just the same.

/ kategresham / Leave a comment

little-boxes1

Having lunch at work one day, a colleague remarked: “Now I can understand why Kathryn (me) has never married…”

I was so startled at this , I didn’t even ask her why I hadn’t. She could have saved me many hours and many dollars spent with my therapist as I’ve struggled to unravel the complexities of my relationships.

Why haven’t I ever married any of the very suitable men who may have given me security, stability, safety, a sense of belonging, a family…the very things I have always thought I wanted?

Why have I (mostly) chosen the ones who will never give me what I want?

As I’m writing this I realise I’m assuming she meant marriage as in wedding, bride and groom, confetti, signing the register…But maybe she meant, as I do, a long term, totally committed relationship. That’s a whole other can of worms. Did she think I have never experienced the joys, the wonder, the pleasures, the pain of a relationship with someone I love? As I write that, I find myself getting hostile- how dare she?

How did she know I have never been married? (in the strict sense of the word.) My colleague had never asked me and it had never come up in general conversation. Most people my age, if currently single, have at least one divorce behind them.

What did she think? That I’m so boring no one would ever want to marry me? or so unappealing? or something worse? How dare she even assume that I am heterosexual- she never asked me.

My mother once said, pointedly, on hearing that a cousin had married for the third time: “Well, it just shows anyone can get married, if they really want to.” Did this woman also think that?

I’m not married. I don’t have children. Does this relegate me to that old stereotype of “spinster”?

But there is a much more significant issue here and this is merely an example- an example of the assumptions we make about each other. I’d never had even one “getting-to-know-you” conversations with this woman. Anything she thought she knew about me had come from general, superficial conversations. But she had assumed. Assumed she knew me and assumed a quite intimate knowledge of me. It’s breathtaking in its arrogance.

But we all do it. We don’t bother to find out about the person we work with, or our neighbour and maybe we don’t really know our friends. We all make assumptions.

That remark reminds me to:

never assume;

listen;

discover each person’s unique story;

to “walk a mile in their shoes.”

We aren’t all made of ticky-tacky, and we aren’t all the same.( Song by Malvina Reynolds, made famous by Pete Seeger.) http://youtu.be/ONEYGU_7EqU

Everyone needs to belong

/ kategresham / 1 Comment

Building a life in a new place takes energy and courage and sometimes I’m tempted to give up. I don’t like walking down a street where no one recognises me, knowing I have to start all over again.  I need to feel safe and secure and I need to feel I belong somewhere.

Yesterday I visited my old neighbours, that is, my neighbours where I used to live. The swans were on the lake, the people in my house, well, it’s theirs now, were feeding the king parrots, the beaches looked wonderful and my garden… I know it’s no longer my garden, but I started it from nothing and loved and cherished it. It was my first home and my first real garden, in a wonderful place, with wonderful neighbours.

Deb, my neighbour, values her family more than anything else and she has adopted me as her big sister. For me, this is  priceless.  I don’t have children and  I can feel my lack of a “normal” family intensely. It doesn’t take much for me to tumble into a hole of self pity- “I’m all alone, when I am old no one will visit me, I don’t have the big family get togethers with my children and grandchildren I dreamed of, I don’t belong anywhere…” I know I’m loved, but most of my friends do live far away, as do my brothers , sisters , nieces and nephews. Christmas especially, can be a time of feeling sorry for myself.

One of my friends used to say that when he died there would only be about five people at his funeral and they wouldn’t know each other. At that time I used to walk my dogs through Waverley Cemetery (Sydney) and reading the headstones would plunge me into self pity. I would think that when I died, no one would come to my funeral because they wouldn’t know I’d died (too many moves, too many jobs, too many scattered friends) and I had nothing to put on my headstone! I was no one’s dearly loved wife or mother or grandmother… So, I asked my friends “Can I say ‘dearly loved friend  of’…”and of course they said I could. Now I have a list of people to be contacted when I die and I can walk through a cemetery  with equanimity. My headstone will show I did belong somewhere.

My aim  to create a  network here where I live is a priority. I’m passionate about the need to create community; for everybody to feel loved and valued; to have a place where they belong; to have that sense of knowing that there are people they can call on if they need; that they are not all alone.

A wise friend once reminded me to reach out, rather than fall in a hole. Or, to remember the words of St Francis:

“Make me an instrument of thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow your love;

“…grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love;…”

The kindness of strangers and my undying gratitude. Number 1

/ kategresham / 1 Comment

IMG_0020 I’ve just come back from the vets, after taking Bear the cat to have his flea treatment applied. Last year I lived in a rented flat, I’d sold one house, not yet bought another, and had a persistent problem with fleas. The previous tenant had both dogs and cats. Moving here, we seemed to have brought them with us. Bear is a big cat. He hates any of the flea treatments and can smell them as soon as they’re opened. I suspect he recognizes the shape, he’s quite clever. Open one and he takes off. I can’t hold him and apply the treatment. I end up scratched and bitten and Bear ends up cranky and still flea ridden. Early in the year I had a friend staying with me and a flea leaping on his leg was the absolute last straw. In desperation I rang the local vets. ( only just moved, tired and stressed) How much would they charge to apply the treatment for me? Answer: nothing, as long as I bought the treatment from them. “Bring him up,” they said,” and we’ll do it.” So up we went. As I was thanking them profusely, I started crying. Well, everyone started apologizing for upsetting me, although you’d think that veterinary surgeries are places where you often see tears. “No,” I reassured them, “I’m not distressed, I’m crying because I’m so happy!” and another flood of tears. Result: One happy, relieved and grateful woman; one calm, flea-free cat; one happy friend and a flea-free home.

Home is where the heart is.

/ kategresham / 1 Comment

the view from my “old” deck.the view from my old deck.

Home is one of my highest priorities: home, and having my community around me.

Home is where I like to be. It’s where I come to be renewed, where I feel safe and secure- my haven. I called my first home “Hearts’ Ease”- I wanted it to be a place of heart’s ease, not just for me, but for anyone who needed it. And, I grew heart’s ease around the door.

Being a renter in the city for so much of my life, I found it more and more difficult to deal with the regular moves and the constant insecurity- Would I be able to find a place to live? Would I be able to pay the rent?

I used to joke about being a bag lady when I was old and although I was joking, underneath I truly did fear it. It was a dread that tied in with my lack of my own family, of not feeling that I belonged anywhere- the big two for me: feeling secure and safe in my home and having a place where I belong.

Something Gloria Steinem wrote about growing older and still not owning a home really struck me. She wrote that if she ended up a bag lady she would  politicize and organize them. I have a wonderful image of Gloria leading a demonstration of bag ladies- waving placards, marching, making demands…

This, quite literally transformed how I was seeing the future- from feeling anxious and fearful to knowing that “whatever happened, I’d handle it.” ( and thank you to Susan Jeffers book “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway“).

Now, I have a home and no mortgage. I am so blessed. I have a friend who will share it with me and together we will work out how to live co-operatively.

I’d love to have a granny flat or studio, a separate space, where we could offer sanctuary when someone needed it. There’s been times in my life when I’ve needed time out to regroup and recover, but there’s always been rent to pay and no chance to call a halt.

I am worried by the reports of the growing number of older women who, through circumstance, are vulnerable to rising rents, some of whom are already homeless. I feel powerless to do much about it- but have chosen to buy a house with a friend so two of us have a home.

We need to find new and better ways of living- ways that are communal, shared and sustainable; where people are supported and nurtured, rather than isolated, alone and vulnerable.

We can do it!

Related articles

And here I am, living in the country

/ kategresham / 1 Comment

As someone once said to me “it doesn’t matter where you start, you’ll always get to where you need.”

So, here goes!

Some years ago ,I fled to my mother’s, who still lived in the village where I grew up, to put some space between the man I loved and myself. We needed some distance to lick our wounds and give ourselves time to see whether we had a future.
I ended up with a job and a mortgage and have stayed without ever really making a choice to stay.  Continual illness and large chunks of time off work  meant I have lived in constant anxiety about not being able to keep up the mortgage payments and becoming homeless.

.. It’s a long story. Eventually I sold my house, left my job and  bought this house with one of my friends- a large house in a small, country town. The main street still has a shop (more a shed), for irrigation things and the rural supplies shop has hay bales and farm bits in the window. Window display is clearly not a selling point. I hear cows mooing at night. There’s a sheep in the backyard a few houses along.

Six months after moving into this house, I’m still living in chaos. Boxes line the hall, books are stacked downstairs and I spend too much time searching for a piece of paper I had five minutes ago.

My friend has never lived in the country and she prefers inner-city; she is truly an urban dweller as was I.  But we are mortgage free! And we have some space where we can grow vegies, live a simpler life, put solar panels on the roof and contribute to our community.

Renting in Sydney, I couldn’t see how I could ever buy. I feared being a bag lady. Buying with a friend has risks. It’s a challenge. But it means I don’t always have to put out the garbage. If one of us is ill, we have someone to drive us to the doctor, make the chicken soup…And, we are sharing resources rather than  gobbling up so many of the earth’s resources.  A couple of times I’ve thought I might have been getting sick- my first thought? It didn’t matter. I don’t have a mortgage. My friend and I are two of the lucky ones. We can only give it a go!