Staying Alive

Thank you to Belinda, of Mad Englishwoman and Dog Blog, for identifying this rampant flowering plant for me which, in a recent blog,

 I vaguely called comfry with a tiny blue flower. It is in fact alkanet, an evergreen bugloss with very bristly stems which has overrun the wild end of the garden.

Along with this other "weed"

 also with a tiny pretty pink flower.

Aquilegia - columbine...

self seeded- I don't remember planting it.

The heavenly honeysuckle came into flower this week...

especially lovely ...

as my gardening friend pruned it back hard in the winter.

The white wisteria, not quite in full bloom is flowing over the shed roof...

and the beds are full of

this acid lime green spurges,

euphorbia. 

As I'm leaving the house I'm leaving the garden to go wild as well.

This bold blackbird flew in right past my nose when I was crouched by the euphorbia with my camera and landed on the daisies in the lawn,

totally ignoring me.

I didn't have time to walk in-between my appointments today but being in the cool wild greenness of my garden was a good substitute to bring me back to myself.

I was very re-assured by my lovely therapist this morning that when I'm in that deep alone cave of grief,  which I think no-one must see, when I'm disabled by re-living the loss, when I feel weak and scared, my nervous and adrenal system is shot and it's not physiologically possible to think rationally or make even simple decisions. 

So making big ones is like asking a 3 year old to ring the bank and arrange a loan.

Selling the house, doing it without Robin, has brought up another wide seam of the past for me to  heal. 

I've been feeling exactly like I did when he was ill...constantly squeezed by trying to get it right and make a thousand decisions a day - like living in the dark with sunglasses on.

I've been tying to mange all the feelings around it without acknowledging or even letting my self go back into the lake of grief that is always there desperately close to the surface. 

And which I've been afraid to dip into too often, afraid I'll never come out. And then I won't be able to be a normal person again. And make grown up choices.

But now I'm learning that I can't ignore the lake,  I must drown in it. And when I come up for air there are comforts, and places of safety I can put in place to bridge that gap between being cut down by loss and needing to function like a normal person.

Comforts like walking in the park.....being in my garden... taking photos...stirring honey into my ginger tea in the morning....making myself the food I really fancy -I bought vanilla custard today - reading on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, listening to Classic FM.

 So that when the time comes to fill in the forms, or make the difficult phone call or decide where to live I have some inner resources....and I know I can dip in the lake again and again... and recover enough... by dipping into my comforts....to use my head as well as my heart ....to stay alive.