Hope. A personal Story. It’s not over till it’s over

About 13 years ago now my only daughter moved to Thailand having said she didn’t love me. That wasn’t her reason for leaving. But it started a wealth of questions and searching that only quietened with some deep soul searching.

We’re never truly ready for brutal conversations. You build a life where you and your dear ones rub along and then the drama unfolds and your world crashes down. I hope it never happens to you. Because whilst it is happening, life goes on. And if you’re not careful the road back can be rocky and long.

I’d thought we’d always been close Anna and I until the teenage years. As a single parent I brought her and brother up from when they were 7 and 5 years old. It wasn’t easy, but you do it, don’t you? Thousands do. And I just pushed through.

I started teaching craft, then reminiscence. I taught in school, in college and in Adult Education. I worked with Special Needs adults, did stints in care, in residential, and got a 1^st in Post Compulsory Education in the process.  I wasn’t going to be called a slouch. Childhood had prepared me for that.

I was ready for ‘work’. But I hadn’t figured out that ‘The Work’ behind the scenes – my mental work, would be so long and emotional.

At various points I loved then hated her for how She made me feel. Until that is, I really delved into the life lessons that this was teaching me.

I talked to friends with different viewpoints – and I warn you here – if you’re in crisis, be very careful who you talk to.  Everyone has an opinion, and some will push you towards the downward spiral faster, if you listen to them.

I had advice to burn the bridges, sever the ties, and then I was urged to go in another direction – to go pray and listen and keep the faith. 

Long term, it was hope that got me through. Hope and a lot of modern psychology techniques that finally pushed me to know myself better and question what was going on with ME rather than with HER.

Here’s what I learned about myself.

When we’re in crisis we blame others. What’s wrong with them! How could they? We trot out the usual connections and sacrifices (we made for them).  We tend to see more of what it’s doing to us, rather than understanding how things are their end.  And depending on our teaching, we ask for help when the case seems hopeless.

Even though I was raised a Catholic, God never figured strongly. As a single parent I questioned myself, long and hard.  And I didn’t let up on my self-criticism. I was hard on myself, until I started to see that the lesson here was not to Get Her Back, but to Learn.

What did this have to teach me?   I’d learned to love more when I had children but now, I had to learn to let go.

I had to learn separation. I had to learn that I didn’t need my daughter’s love to validate who I thought I was.

I learnt (so slowly) that I could learn to live a tolerable life without her.

I learnt that whatever pain you have, until you learn the lesson it teaches you, you’ll have a re-run at some point.

My spiritual friends encouraged me to figure out this one Big Lesson. And over the years I feel I did, using lots of Mindful techniques along the way.

My Mindful techniques

• I started journaling my daily thoughts (Julia Cameron calls this Doing your Morning Pages). I cringe at some of the loathing and uncertainty I read from 10 years ago!
• I read loads about visualising – how if we imagine our future big, bright and bold, we can ‘see’ it panning out before us. I call this Mental Rehearsal. Denise Linn has written many good books on the subject.
• I learnt about Dream or Vision Boards and gathered positive pictures of relationships and love and put it where I’d see it daily and send Anna blessings, (but if I’m honest, this was after I’d removed every piece of memorabilia from my house that reminded me of the pain I had felt In The Beginning).

Yes, it was definitely a time of highs and lows. But I still kept reading and learning.

• The Secret popped up sharing stories of Universal Laws and the Halls of Learning (and Akashic Records). I read as much as I felt able to tolerate and absorb

Sometimes I overdid it and went into ‘analysis paralysis’. Sometimes I felt I knew what the books were talking about (in fact at times I thought I should write a book myself)!

• Marianne Williamson - a favourite, spoke of The Power of Love. I read all I could of her work and admired her honesty, her spiritual connection and willingness to step out from her pain. Through her I learnt about creating places of reverence or sacred altars in which to re-group. I still have an area in my house where I like to sit and ‘be’.
• I joined one of Brandon Bays’ journey weekends and read all her stuff. It was a great unpeeling of emotional layers but for me, not the solution. But it gave me an insight into new therapies –Neuro Linguistic Programming being one of them.

I spent loads looking for solutions, joining courses, buying books and listening to CD until I figured I knew enough, it was time to Be Enough. But then I’d have another soul search and kept looking for things outside of me for answers and ways to help me handle the letting go

• I learnt about the Power of Forgiveness - how to release the pain and take back your own power, and I came across The Sedona Method and the important work of Hale Dwoskin and the Letting Go Technique. Could you, would you? When?
• One day I found The Tapping Solution and learnt how to Tap alongside my Journaling. I still tap and share Tapping and hope to bring that to HMP (one day).
• I sat in a Spirit Circle each week where we meditated and shared our experiences. Here I learnt about Ego and being humble and living a Life on Purpose. I began to see that this was all a process and My Big Life Lesson. I wanted it and I didn’t want it. But I had it all the same.
• I kept reading, sitting quiet, listening for lessons, looking for signs, sending out thoughts of love and surrounding myself with uplifting things.
• I rid my life of the dross, and the time bandits (people and things). I stopped watching the evening news – I was selective in the materials that went into my head at night-time
• I started writing and reading affirmations
• At the end of the day I started building in a quiet time for review and reflection and then at the beginning of the day - anticipation. I began to expect good to come to me.
• And it was around this time that I was offered a position in Advice and Guidance at HMP. The best place if ever to take my focus off myself and my pain and look to others.

One by one, my learning put another stitch into my survival blanket, and I felt the sun coming out again. I knew I was learning to love and be loved again.

I never gave up hope. It wasn’t over, I knew, till it was over, and I would never draw a line under it.

Anna and her own journey had taught me much about mine.

I became engrossed in all this psychological study - How our minds worked, purpose, balance, feelings, inspiration, and spirit. And it made me who I am today.

I remember when I went to HMP pondering on the vagaries of life. How my many different interests could possibly mesh together and offer value.  But of course, they do. 

We are the sum of our experiences. We live and fall by our own evaluation of it all.  I read somewhere “Our attitude determines our altitude” – or to put into HMP language “You are what you think on the inside”.

I’ve only given a brief run through of the many practices and theories I read and delved into.  Some weren’t for me.  Others became stayers.

You may have heard the quote “Dig your well, before your water runs dry”. Well I had been dipping my toe into mindfulness before ‘The Leaving’ but when I was forced to look long at myself, I knew I couldn’t just give it all lip service.

It took courage to hold up the mirror to myself, but I did all this alone. I didn’t have anyone but me to answer to – so there was no need to hide from it. After all, it was search for insight.  If I didn’t rummage inside my head, I knew I wouldn’t find the dross. And my current thinking had led to the impasse.

Once I’d got over the ego tearing pain of rejection, I realised I had to find a way to live life on my terms without Anna’s love to support me.  It wasn’t that I didn’t love her. I had to find a way to feel complete without her. I had to love myself. To find ‘I’ was enough.

Of course, there were many mini bumps – I carried many stories of unworthiness from my past (divorce, mum dying when I was 6, sent to boarding school when my Father went on his honeymoon).

Perhaps this makes me sound unworthy to be sharing Mindfulness now, but I believe we are what we’ve lived through and we all have much to share.

And Anna now? You’ll maybe want to know what happened there.

Well, out of the blue she started writing to me. They were lovely letters.  She said she’d done her own ‘inner work’ and in time would be coming back to the UK. 

You can imagine my heart somersaulting.

We continued writing – she liked the distant communication and congratulated me on my writing – she loved to read them. And she said she loved me!

So, she’s back now, living only a mile or so away, despite saying she didn’t ‘do’ family. I get that she doesn’t need to be with me – after all she’s nearly 40 now.

We come together on her terms and I’m Ok with that. I admire her strength and resilience.  She isn’t needy, (and has read some of my earlier fave books like Stephen Covey).

I’m grateful. I’ve learnt some big lessons.

I learnt that hope is the key. I put so many good thoughts and energies her way that she couldn’t have helped but pick them up. I am sure the collective energies filtered though. I asked her spirit guides to speak love to her. I showered images of hearts and hands and smiles on her. And I never stopped loving her from a distance.

I believe love is the answer. What was the question?

Love is always the way forward. It can carry us through when things look bleak and dodgy.

It’s never over. Love never is. It’s the strongest feeling of connection, and I try and share it every day.

So, a question. Could you manage to live without love when it’s challenged? Could you let go – really, with no contact, for years? How would that change your love, and your purpose? How would you feel if a nearest and dearest withdrew their need for you?

I’ve more stories of rejection, but I came through my life’s biggest one. And I believe it made me stronger, and who I am today.

So, I thank Anna for the lesson, and the blessing I finally found within it.