I Walk in Beauty

The sky this evening before moon rise.

Because I'm very tired tonight I'm going to post something that Robert Holden wrote recently that has stayed with me all day as I've been pottering around at home....decluttering the cupboard on the landing full of Christmas decorations and stuff for wrapping presents...and making an all-veggies-in-the-fridge soup....and trying to sort out my printer....and buying train tickets online.... and reading on the sofa.....and not going out in the freezing rain.

Reminding myself "I'm beautiful and everybody loves me."

It did surprise me the thing about only 4 percent of women who think they are beautiful ....

 How to Feel Beautiful by Robert Holden

One sunny day, when my daughter was four years old, I found her lying on the grass in our garden gazing up at the bright blue sky. She had a big smile on her face.  

“Hi sweetheart,” I said. 
“Hi dad,” said Bo. 
“What are you doing?”
“I’m feeling beautiful,” she replied. 
“Wow, that sounds fun!”
“It is!” she said, “I love feeling beautiful and I try to feel it as much as I can.” 

For four years I was the coach to the leadership team for Dove & the Real Beauty Campaign. Together with my team at Success Intelligence, I coached the President of Dove, ran workshops for the Global Leadership Team, hosted three annual Dove conferences, and travelled the world presenting seminars to the Dove community. The goal was simple: to help more women and girls feel beautiful everyday. 

Dove’s research on The Truth About Beauty shows that although we have more beauty products on the planet than ever before, we are feeling less and less beautiful. Only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful. It’s a similar story for men too. In fact, recent research revealed that men privately worry more about their physical than women do.  

I believe it is our birthright to feel beautiful. As children, feeling beautiful is natural. Just ask my daughter Bo! Something happens! As we grow up, our natural beauty is forgotten and obscured. And yet, our secret beauty (a term coined by the mystic Thomas Merton) remains, waiting to be recognized. How do we recognize our beauty?  

The Beautiful Prayer 
My favourite-ever prayer is by the Benedictine nun, Macrina Wiederkehr. I’ve written about this prayer in two of my books Loveability and Happiness NOW! I’ve prescribed it to hundreds and thousands of my people who’ve come to my workshops. It goes like this: 

O God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is! Amen.

The Beautiful Prayer, as I call it, is an invitation is to see yourself as you really are. To do this you have to stop judging yourself. Why? When you judge someone (including yourself), you see only your judgements. You can’t judge someone AND see who they are. It’s not possible. I firmly believe that if you pray this prayer and sit in meditation for five minutes afterwards, for 7 days, you would start to feel more beautiful again.  

The Beautiful Meditation 

Beauty is not something to create; it is revealed to us when we stop judging. This beautiful Navajo Meditation (below) is an invitation to see beauty everywhere. How do we do this? In each moment, you are either judging or loving. When you judge, you see your judgments. When you love, you see beauty. Love is a training in vision, and the more you practice seeing life through the eyes of love, the more you will see beauty everywhere. 

In beauty I walk With beauty before me I walk With beauty behind me I walk With beauty above me I walk With beauty around me I walk I walk in beauty.

The Super Blue, but not Red, moon captured tonight from my front garden in Exeter before the clouds swallowed her up.

Small Shining Gems...Little Moons....I Matter

Beyond the Goat Walk along the Exe Estuary, 

where the tide is very low on Saturday

and the waders are skimming mud for lunch.

Along the river and into Topsham....I don't think telephone boxes like this still function....

and peering inside this one I see that it may have become the local book exchange for novels.

Boats like this always remind me of my sailing uncles on my mother's side of the family ...

The nearly full moon last night....like daylight.... shimmering through the Victorian stained glass panel above the front door.

This afternoon I weep and cough my way through a session with my lovely kinesiologist therapist who  assures me that all this gunk and fluid congesting my system is actually a good and healing process.... a clearing out of all my old patterns, old thinking and beliefs - about myself -  and making way for new shoots of spring.

Old habits like nurturing and loving someone else but not losing myself in the process.

And because she is so skilful and wise I leave with some small shining gems....little moons... to hold on to in the journey ahead. Which could be a bumpy ride as it's the first time I do it without Robin and the first time I do it with the purpose of my own self worth. Standing in the place of 'I matter' I can love and nurture from giving out but not giving myself away at the same time.

It doesn't matter that I don't really know how to do that yet.

What matters is that I matter enough to myself to think it's worth a try.

3am moon last night ......a blood moon and a super moon... two full moons in January and not another till March. I'm not sure what it all means but it sounds rare and auspicious...... and heralding all power for the  good.

Laying Low...Loving Myself

I walked briefly here - the Exe Estuary at Bowling Green Marsh -  on Saturday 

when I was feeling a bit more normal, sporting a small thread of energy.

Tonight I caught the end of Spotlight - a local South West TV news programme filmed here at the Exe Estuary at Topsham

so I'm very pleased to now identify these gorgeous ducks as 

Green Winged Teal.....he only took his head out of the water for a nano second at a time so I have lots of this headless version of him.

I think this is the female with the huge flat beak.

Unfortunately my little bit of feeling normal didn't last and I'm back in bed with inflamed sinuses and phlegm coming out of my eyes. Probably too much information.

So I'm laying low...sleeping a bit in the day as I can't at night - maybe something to do with this super moon casting her tidal net wide - reading mostly, writing a bit, watching films on Iplayer and feeling pretty miserable.

I've been living on mashed potato with olive oil, purple sprouting broccoli with a poached egg on top. Tonight I made an unctuous coconut milk rice pudding  - which looks alarmingly coffee coloured as I used a bit too much vanilla powder - but it hits the sweet comfort spot perfectly. 

My sisters and I  also completed the 21 day Raising Your Self Esteem with Mirror Work Course with Louise Hay. And I can say with honesty I can now look back at myself in the mirror and find at least one good thing to say to myself...say it several times....and even start to believe it.

Louise says, There is one thing that heals every problem, and that is to love yourself. I'm finding it's a good place to start.

This is what I've been saying to myself to day.

It's only change.There is nothing to be afraid of.

Gratitude

It's my sister-in-law's birthday today....actually since she's in Fiji it would have been yesterday. These frangipani flowers remind me of her. I always associate them with my African childhood but since we went to Fiji last summer their heavenly waxy perfume is now woven into new memories.

No coherent blog tonight. My cold has sneaked onto my chest and infected my sinuses. So I'm  deaf in one ear and it feels like I have a swarm of dull bees buzzing around in my head. That and a sound like a dripping tap in the background.... probably my over-heated pounding pulse.

Today's lesson 19 is all about gratitude.

 And I find I can still be grateful for lots of things. Like only being deaf in one ear and not both.

Memory lapses and I Trust Life

The first sunset  for a long time...over my view of Haldon Forest in the distance....

and the first sunshine today for a long time...

briefly, between showers of stinging hail and sleet.

This morning, talking to a dear friend over coffee, I notice that I'm more forgetful than usual. Or maybe it's not unusual anymore. There are big holes in my memory - names of people and things. It doesn't feel the same as when Robin couldn't find words for ordinary things. Like when he muddled up courgette and croissant, or lost the word for toothbrush.

In conversation today I couldn't remember the name for the royal blue gem stone.....looked it up when I came home. Sapphire. I wear one in my ring.

I couldn't remember the name of the Irish journalist who was killed by a motorcyclist in Dublin in the  1990s. I was in Dublin the day it happened in  June1996 and missed my plane home. Veronica Guerin.

I also booked a holiday in Portugal and gave the wrong dates although I'd double checked them before I wrote the email. 

All minor lapses and rectifiable mistakes. It's probably best if I don't make a big deal out of it....don't get afraid I'm losing my mind. Just noticing another fear. Which isn't real...only a thought which could be changed.

Today's lesson - Day 18  - is about receiving and prosperity.

Prosperity covers an abundance of money and love and joy and time and beauty and miracles.

You can't create abundance by thinking and talking about your lack.

So if I think "I'll never love again." Or ''My money won't last me till my my old age",  then I'm blocking any flow of love or abundance that could come my way by my old beliefs in lack.

Focusing on gratitude for what you already have in your life creates abundance.

And saying things like,

My income is constantly increasing.

and

I'm open and receptive to all the good and abundance in the universe.

and

Life supplies all my needs in great abundance

has got to be better than thinking and saying I don't deserve to receive good things because I'm not a good enough person.

I may not believe it yet..... but the more I affirm that 

I trust life,

 the less likely I am to store up doubt and fear and pain in the future.

A Final Ending and The Power of Positive Thinking

When I arrive at Robin's grave on Sunday the wooden cross is tipped at an angle to the ground. Sticky red Devon mud not holding it up.

It has slipped sideways after all the heavy rain we've had and there's water standing in the grass ...a little glass lake below the blades.

I re-positoin it but it's still a bit loose in its moorings.

I realise it's time to start thinking about replacing the cross with a more permanent marker.

I don't want marble or granite or words etched in gold. I've thought about it off and on...the undertakers said you can leave it for a year or so to let things settle.

But I don't how to capture him and his lightness in stone. Such a hard and final ending.

Today.

I thought I was getting a bit better ...and I am ... but  still feeling grotty.

This is what Louise Hay says about stress which is the theme of Day 17.

Stress is a fear reaction to life and to the constant change that is inevitable. Stress has become a catchword: we use it as an excuse for not taking responsibility for our feelings, above all our fear. But if you can equate stress with fear—and understand that feeling stressed is really a fearful reaction—you can begin to eliminate the need for stress in your life. 

 I'm not particularly stressed at the moment in my life but I do know the most stressful times for me are when I have too much to do and too little time to do it combined with my own need to do everything perfectly. And forward planning and efficiency not being my strongest suit.

 So I've uncovered that the hidden fear in all that is the fear of being perceived as inadequate. Same old, same old not being good enough.

I chose these two affirmations as an antidote.

I flow with life easily and effortlessly.

I have all the time I need.

Which proved remarkably accurate for me and my sisters today as we all created much more time by having our afternoon arrangements either cancelled or postponed....and I for one had a lovely leisurely day.

The power of positive thinking was alive and well in Exeter and Bishopswood and Luton today!

Persimmon Smoothie and When you have a Beloved

I found 2 very ripe and squishy soft persimmons in the fridge and 2 large oranges with their peel zested,

so I juiced the oranges and then blended them with the fruit, added a squirt of lemon juice, and it turned into this very 

sweet fragrant  tropical smoothie - very soothing for sore throats.

I used to only ever eat persimmons in Portugal - the large very soft variety -  but they are ubiquitous here now in the supermarkets - 3 for a pound ( unfortunately in plastic packaging) and Waitrose magazine is predicting a new fashion trend in them in 2018. I also discovered the origin of their other name - sharon fruit - not after a girl but so called by some of the Israeli growers.

I have stayed quiet at home again today ..... I'm still not right but mending slowly.

Day 16 is about loving yourself more...releasing relationships that don't nourish or support you...and living in a 'circle of love'.

I  realise that I don't  really have any relationships that don't nourish and support me..... but I could nourish and support myself a lot more...especially my inner little girl.

 I like this affirmation 

Deep in the centre of my being is an infinite well of love.

I also read an article by Robert Holden today about writing ....

As a writer I often use writing for inquiry. Writing helps me live my life well."We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect", wrote Anais Nin, the American author. In a similar vein, Natalie Goldberg,

'"Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there is another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the textures and the details."

It made me think if it's true for me about this blog. Not exactly, but yes, throughout the day I'm sort of ruminating on what I'm doing and not doing and wondering what I shall say.

And then when I come to write it, I think about my day again ....differently....and sometimes nothing inspires me and sometimes just in the writing of it something comes clear.

And it struck me that it's not only writers who live twice. When you have a beloved you live twice too....your day and their day...wondering what little thing or thought would make them happy....what we'll talk about tonight...you thinking of them, them thinking of you...writing your lives twice.