Melancholy Dolly!

I flicked through my posts lately and thought maybe I should write something about the darker feelings we have, or the shadow self.

This may sound suprising or even strange, but flicking through, I realised how happy and wonderful all the articles looked and I understand that although this can be uplifting it’s also a bit unrepresentative of real life 100% of the time. 

Let me elaborate. When I was sick I was spinning around faster than hamster in a hula-hoop trying to figure out what, why, how I had made myself sick and what I could do to reverse it. True to my beliefs, I felt the answer was saturating myself with positive thoughts, foods and treatments, as much as I possibly could. However, I also like to be very honest with myself and was and still am fully committed to exorcising the anger, frustration and pain I felt throughout my illness as well as before and after it.

My daily dose of positive blog subscriptions was part of my morning prescription for staying focused and uplifted. But some days the shadow just wouldn’t shake itself off my neck, instead it would coil up cosily in my lap and flutter it’s lashes. 

On those days I found it so impossible to take on board the positive, smiley, hopefullness brought to me by e-mail. ‘What did they know?’ ‘Yeah right unless you’re a 31 year old mother of an infant who also has cancer’. These thoughts and feelings of hopelessness and self pity, were some what justified and needed to come out in order to make room to put the good stuff in. At least that’s what I believe.

I never found a blog or link that said anything like ‘hey I feel crap today, cancer is tough, life is tough, yes we are all going to die, but tomorrow is a better day’. Personally, some days I wanted and needed that more than forever rainbows and green juice recipes and skippy little poems about how the world is of course an onion and what is meant to be will be.

An Onion aka: Life

So, I just want to acknowledge that life is NOT always a bowl of cherries, although it can often be. And although I greatly believe and live by the power of manifestation, karma and the laws of quantum physics, some days truly are just, well, sh**. I am also a firm believer that repressed feelings are a major contributor to ill health especially cancer. So what to do?

Me & my Shadow

Here’s a few ideas;

• This too shall pass, remember nothing lasts forever, not even this moment ~ no one, not even yourself will feel as sorry for yourself soon as you do right now, so make the most of it!
• Take some time to be alone ~ re-connect with yourself & your feelings, however painful, allow the feelings to be ~ this can be the hardest/easiest thing ~ but it really works if you’re patient and brave ~ congratulate yourself for doing this too, as it’s a great achievement
• Give your feelings permission to exist ~ you have a right to feel this way ~ you really do

Permanent nature

• Re-connect with the world/universe ~ a walk in nature often does the trick or if that’s impossible, just spending time observing any form of life, a plant, an insect etc will give you a grounded feeling of security ~ a sense of being a part of the world
• Indulge yourself ~ pamper, physically hold yourself, cry, feed yourself beautiful food, read, walk, paint, bathe, anything that brings you comfort
  

  Oops!!

   

• Ground yourself ~ lie down on the floor, close your eyes, place your hand on your belly and inhale and exhale deeply into the space under your hand, feel your hand rise and fall, feel your body supported by the ground, the universe will support you, believe, just as the ground supports your weight
• Yogic philosophy states that all human emotional pain begins with the misguided feeling that we are alone, seperate. However, this is a false belief. We ARE a part of the universe, whatever your beliefs, we ARE a part of life and the world around us, remember that. YOU ARE IMPORTANT, especially to me 🙂 It’s true ~ I wrote this for you, you know?
• Journal, write and keep, or burn or destroy your deepest darkest thoughts, come on I dare you!
• If all else fails. Find a grassy, hill and roll down it like a pencil ~ you heard me! (be careful!)
  

  E.g of perfect pencil rolling hill

   

Lastly these are two of my most favourite mind games/tricks I like to play with my mind when it’s trying to play with me ~ remember you are NOT your mind, YOU control your mind, the mind does NOT control YOU, it is just an organ ~ o.k

• See the bigger picture ~ Imagine you’re standing infront of a beautiful, big tapestry. This is your life. You are relating to someone the stories of your life and what each little loop of thread represents, this is when I started school, emigrated, won a cheese eating contest, dumped the biggest loser in the world, realised life was an onion etc. Each thread/experience helps to make up the bigger picture, i.e the story of your life. Each thread is important, if threads are missing there will be holes in the picture. Now it gets cooler, look at the tapestry again. Where abouts are you right now? Choose a spot. In this spot it’s threads are a bit messy and muddled, maybe there’s one or two loops missed entirely. Now imagine as you relate your story, do you want to say, ‘This is my story where x, y and z happened and then I acheived a,b,c and then f happened and well…that’s it..I gave up, the end’ And there you are in this scenario standing with a half made thread bare tapestry, incomplete. OR do you wanna say, ‘This is my story x,y,z happened I acheieved a,b,c and then f, oh my this seems so long ago now, you can see how many stitches were missed, at the time I thought it was the end of me, but here you see I got right back in there and did g & h & s & p…’ as you proudly stand infront of your unique and beautiful complete tapestry with it’s complete picture.

• Give up. I mean it. Just give up, whatever that means to you. Go to bed, wallow, cry, sulk, become mute for a while. And then slowly realise, that you DO have a choice. Once you give in entirely to the minds tricks it can become a little bored. If you indulge yourself for a bit you may find yourself desperate to get into the scrum again, with renewed energy. This is because, we do have a choice. Sometimes life throws so much sh*zzola (yes it’s a word ~ what?!) at you, it’s easy to forget WE are choosing. Choosing to fight and overcome. We can give up too if we really want to, it does get boring quite quickly though. YOU are in control. And remember life is an onion at the end of a forever rainbow, with skipping unicorns (mostly!)

Melting yet still smiling!