Biscuits and the Heart

8th May 2012 Tuesday

Blogging in bed tonight - sort of cross legged - the pussy cat is curled up in exactly the place where I want to stretch out my legs.

My husband is out on Dartmoor making another weird and wonderful creature.

Earlier I succumbed to a piece of hot buttered toast with raspberry jam after my baked bean supper. We had sea bass fillets for lunch with a gingery, garlicky, spring onion and sesame seed relish and roasted squash with aubergines and Pakchoi. We usually have a salad lunch but I miscalculated at the market this week  - we’ve run out of green leaves already.

One of my Mindfulness homework exercises this week is to write down an unpleasant experience and notice all the thoughts and feelings associated with it. This is what I noticed today.

My husband and I are walking by the river and talking - about communitation.

I say, I think it’s intrusive and annoying if you keep offering someone a plate of biscuits, or slices of ginger cake if they have already said no. Making him wrong.

He says, I think it’s helpful and makes them feel looked after. It’s a way in to have a more meaningful conversation.  Deflecting the attack.

I feel hopeless and despairing, judgemental and rightous....

Then we unwind it a bit more and I realise that the plate of biscuits is a substitute - a longing for contact.....for emotional connection......he just doesn’t know how....

I say ‘You could try just saying how it is for you.....how hard it is to be part of a conversation when you don’t know what people are talking about.....how lonely that is....

You could try offering your heart - instead of biscuits.

He says he’ll think about it.....and my heart melts.

We look out over the estuary and wonder where all the birds have gone.