Robin Williams - RIP warm wonderful funny man...

The media is flooded with the dreadful and unbelievable news that that most loveable and funniest of all souls, Mr Robin Williams, aka Mork From Ork, Mrs Doubtfire, Patch Adams - pick any number of your favorite characters he so unforgettably portrayed over his long career - has taken his own life, at age 63.

It's an incongruous age to end it all, was my first thought, after that initial and incredible sense of shock when it came through on the breaking news yesterday morning.  63.  Not young.  After all, plenty of souls don't make it to that age anyway, leaving this complex building called Life in all manner of ways by that time.  But 63 is not terribly ancient either.  Depression is the reason reported, and hanging and asphyxiation his chosen method, but still worded carefully by the media, because in this litigious age we live in, you've got to "cover your arse" when saying ANYTHING, even when reporting something so obvious and tragic as a suicide by hanging.

He was old enough to know better, yet clearly powerless to escape his demons.  Were they mental ones or physical ones - or both?  We won't know.  He touched our lives, but as my fellow scribe Janette B so aptly says, we didn't get to touch his. Do some souls just burn too bright, and therefore burn out earlier? 

The outpouring of grief, of love, the reaching out in agonies of despair and sadness worldwide at the passing of this amazing man, had me thinking that had he have truly known how much he was valued and loved and adored and revered while he was alive, would he have chosen to step out, aged 63, and quite alone?  I'm only hoping his spirit is smiling now in the understanding of how much he meant to so many, and maybe it's bittersweet for him because he didn't realise this in time to prevent this tragedy.... and much more so for those close to him, and even those who knew him not at all.... but enjoyed him enormously nonetheless.

We are very good at appreciating what's gone, and not so good at it while we are getting on with the sometimes challenging business of living.  The message I am personally taking from this momentous outpouring of love-too-late is I don't want anyone in my world not knowing I love them, and I intend to reach out in positivity to you all each and every day of my life, as long as you'll allow me to!

Rest In Peace, Robin Williams.  The whole word laughed with you, and now there's tears of another kind...
Not forgotten, gone too soon, but your gifts will be enjoyed forevermore....just a bit more solemnly, and with an ocean of regret for what else the world might have enjoyed.

May your spirit soar in love and laughter! Xxxxxx

Sins of the Past

It's a somewhat somber blog tonight, and it's to do with dysfunctional parenting and its effects on children...

Having a great childhood guarantees you nothing really except a good clean start to life.  You travel through childhood, with all your baby angst, your fun kiddie times, your teen perils, to arrive into adulthood, hopefully with a fully formed character without too many major flaws, and ready and able to tackle what life will invariably throw your way as you venture forth.  The good, the not so good, and the downright awful.

Having an unspeakably dreadful childhood, or one filled with the miseries of alcoholism, molestation, drug use, absentee parents, narcissism and the like, not only doesn't guarantee you a good clean start in life, but what it does promise you is a lot of work later on, if you are ever going to overcome those rocky beginnings. It's been on my mind somewhat lately, and this afternoon, watching Shawshank Redemption again with my daughter, a few sentences always seem to stick out to me.  One is "Get busy living or get busy dying." The other is when Andy DuFresne crawled through a river of shit to come out clean on the other side.

Some will never enter that stinking sewer to attempt to find that redemption; they will simply quietly get busy dying, and drink or drug themselves to death.  They will never really feel the pain and decide to address it, or die trying.  But it is worth fighting the good fight, because the rewards can be enormous.

Narcissistic parents have a lot to answer for, although they never will do that, simply because these types are "wired wrong," and therefore will never know - or care - of the scars they inflict on everybody around them, including and especially on their own flesh and blood.  Those who get to experience the fallout from being raised by a narcissist suffer lifelong from the experience, and sadly those who don't educate themselves about what this condition means, will wait forever for a redemption that never comes. At some stage, you have to put defective parenting firmly into the past, if you have experienced it, or it will slowly but surely kill your very being.

Adult children of narcissists and addicts and abusive parents never really feel whole.  They guess at what normal is, not having grown up with it.  They do not trust easily.  They can be hard judges and jury, given that when raising their own children under normal conditions, they cannot relate to normal childhood angst and behaviour, because they tend to benchmark it against their own demented upbringings and find their own children's problems trite and insignificant by comparison.  But our children are our NOW, and we need to always remember that.

So, the good news.  Provided these adult children are not infected with the same narcissistic gene, as can certainly run in families, they can in fact turn out to be the most wonderfully caring parents, who although still frequently getting it wrong due to their own faulty radars, are driven to growth and learning and insight in a way that perhaps the more grounded simply don't need to.

There are a couple of wonderful things about growing up in those highly dysfunctional home settings, however, and these aren't often talked about.  Certainly it's not the childhood trauma itself.  It's the flip side of the legacy those adult children are left with; the huge resilience, the empathy, the determination to be so much better than what they had themselves.  I mean, you can either look at it positively or negatively, like everything in life.  The negative - and those who have suffered such a start find it very, very easy to go down this path - are the "Why me?  What did I do to deserve this?  Life isn't fair."  These are all fair statements, coming from a child from that kind of unspeakably awful beginnings.  Why indeed?  Who knows?  It is what it is, or more accurately, it WAS what it WAS.

The biggest hurdle of course is to not let that kind of pain and fear affect your NOW.  The past, as horrible as it was, is in the past.  It need not have any say in what you are going forward, except you can take all the strength, the courage and the compassion and love into your life going forward, to come out clean and joyful at the other end...

On this Anzac long weekend, I've reflected on the brave men who marched into certain death such a long, long time ago to protect our homeland for the future generations - we - who get to enjoy it every day.  I am also two weeks into fighting an enormous battle, assisting an amazing group of women two states away, against a most unconscionable narcissistic adversary who needs to be removed from hurting more and more vulnerable people in the way he thinks its his God given right to do.  That one is still a battle in progress, and that's not surprising because those always are, as they have no insight, no empathy, and therefore no ability to change.  Textbook narcissism at its most grandiose.  Sigh.

But I've also enjoyed the company of some truly marvelous human beings, one being my teen daughter, whose teen angst I need to keep treating as a whole new ball game, not a poor second to what I had to deal with at that age.  Then I've had news of the death of a most awful man who was part of destroying my childhood, although he played second fiddle to those who should have protected me.  And I've cried a few bucketloads of tears and been held and soothed by a magical human being who instinctively "knew" me, even before I myself knew where my intense sadness was coming from, or why. Miracles happen, and all the time.

Sometimes we just need to howl at the moon.  And the Universe in all its wisdom, invariably sends us what we need to cope, to grow, and to move further into the light.  And to love life, and to love again.

Yours in love and light, Carol Xxxxooo

Lest We Forget.

Negativity is a Health Hazard

It's one of those occasions where I feel the Universe is sending me lots of small but determined nudges to write this post, ever more insistent are these nudges, and the last one (about half an hour ago) was like a sharp rabbit kick in the ribs.  Ouch, that hurt.  Hurts even more to know people I care about are hurting as much as they are, but can't seem to find their way into the light.  This one's for you...

It has been an interesting and extremely busy but joyful couple of days.  Communing with nature, people, friends, babies, a shark, a huge python, and then the past knocking on my consciousness today, not once but twice... but with nothing positive to say.  That's why they say when the past comes knocking, don't answer - it has nothing new to say.

I was surrounded by babies yesterday morning.  Four, to be exact - all cute as buttons, gorgeous uncaring little blank slates, lying wriggling on their colourful little blankies, playing with their mobiles, cooing, dribbling like a leaky tap as the odd first tooth tries to make its determined way through those tiny pink baby gums, A room with lots of bubbies, their gorgeous young mums, and the room smelt divine, of hope, talc, and the joy of new beginnings.  I revelled in it, in fact spent a fair portion of the morning down amongst the infants, fascinated by their ease with their world, enjoying their moments, with no thoughts of an hour ago or an hour forward, until the time would arrive when hunger would strike, they would insist, and be rapidly appeased, only to sink back into contented slumber and blissful little half smiles on their pure baby lips.

My gorgeous 14 year old daughter sits beside me, playing too, and it wasn't so long ago that she was one of these tiny unfettered miracles who know how to just be, and by instinct.  Too soon, they will take on board the world around them, and develop their own little worries and insecurities.  But for now, they are perfectly perfect.  Complete with scant hair, wobbly chins, chubby legs and toothless smiles, they know they're adorable and so do we.  A smile sends we adults into raptures, a careless giggle - what could be better?  I'm grinning from ear to ear, and when I leave two hours later, my smile muscles ache.

An afternoon kayak with a lovely friend follows, and we paddle peacefully among lots of happy humanity, out enjoying their day, whether they're barbecuing, singing, dancing, boating, fishing, swimming... they are embracing all that's good in the world, and so are we, both singularly, together, and collectively, just feeling the gratitude for the happiness state we get to enjoy so very, very much.  It's raining when we start out, and that matters not as we'll get wet anyway.  After a while, we get some sunshine and then it goes again.. then we swim, and sit, and talk, and contemplate, just enjoying our now, which is the best spot to hang out.  It's time to head home, and we then decide to take the dog for a run to end the afternoon.  Big doggy smiles all round at that one!  Then an amazingly delicious Thai dinner follows, where I get to try lots of different and unusual tastes - for a kid that used to subsist solely on pizza and coke and a hell of a lot of sadness and pain and total loneliness, I've come a damn long way, with still far to go... and man I'm loving this journey!

Today I woke up to the past stalking me overnight again via Facebook.. a semi regular occurrence, even after eight years of blocking, deleting, not reacting, hoping this thorn in my side will go away someday.  It's not a sharp one anymore, more like an occasional prick (no pun intended!) just reminding me that perhaps there's still something that needs to happen there, before that particular wound will be allowed to heal forever.  I ponder it, finger paused on the Block button that I've hit fruitlessly so many times before.  And because these days I think and act so differently, my mind turned to a positive way of dealing with something so negative.. and I sent a positive message.  And then hit the Block button.  Time of course will tell if this was the action that needed to happen to end it forever, but as they say, there's madness in doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  I'm positively hopeful, and meanwhile there's a good life to lead...

We then caught up with some old, old friends, and it struck me the stark contrast between two of the three present.  Two positive, seeing the good, feeling hopeful, smiling and enjoying the now.. one negative, looking for more negatives to feed it, and satisfaction in finding what they were looking for.  Because the world is a truly cruddy place when your mind and actions are set in the negative, and never in the Now.  Regret over what's happened to you, anger about why things never go right for you, as you struggle endlessly in the trenches at the whim of the world which keeps kicking you in the teeth over and over again, and ever harder.  The Universe wants you to pick yourself up, learn the lesson, so it can move on to the next one. The Universe is a patient teacher, but it gets a bit tired of waiting for us to get it.  If you spend too long on it, the pain becomes horrendous and the doom and gloom self perpetuating.  And I don't know how you can get off that particular treadmill.  Nobody could help me get off mine either; but anyway I always had plenty of company on there so it was a safe miserable place to hide... until I had to take the great leap of faith when life became just so painful that I couldn't go on in the way I was living.  I'm hoping those I care for will get there also, and can't wait to welcome then when they do!

A phone call tonight (my second past comin' a-knockin') and this one from about a quarter of a century ago (gosh, am I that old!) and I immediately felt the angst down that phone line; it fairly vibrated with it!  Kind words, positive encouragement, and I'm trying to share the joy, light the way forward, even just a flicker might be enough... sometimes it's all one needs, to start finding their way out of the darkness, but only if they're open to it at that particular time.. The door slamming shut firmly, not once but a few times, any positivity rejected cleanly and completely; they are not ready yet for such an alien concept when one's life situation is so dreadful in its complete hopelessness.  All that anger, kept under lock and key, and some of it almost escaped, but was then quickly forced back into its Pandora's box and the lid nailed shut.. until next time.  I'm sad for them, and yet it's their journey and their choice to make, whether they believe me or not.  And they don't.

As I munch my last jam drop biscuit, freshly baked by the lovely apprentice baker in the family this afternoon, I'm happy to finish this post, not to spread the negativity around, but to give you hope and a bit of insight, so far as I'm able to in my limited and very amateur way because I'm still a Johnny Come Lately in this happy game I now call Life... but oh I'm learning so fast...

It's just as easy to be positive as it is to be negative.
It's as easy to smile as to frown.
It's as easy to be grateful for what you have, instead of what you don't have.
It's as easy to be proud of yourself, as to beat yourself up.
It's as easy to spread the joy and love as it is to keep your sadness and disappointment locked away.
It's as easy to grow as it is to stand still.
And it's as easy to enjoy life and whatever it offers, as it is to not embrace it.

If I could have learnt this years ago, I might be a wise old owl today.  Better late than never I say, and that goes for everyone else.  It's never too late to become the positive and amazing human you were born to be.  It just involves letting go the past, embracing the Now.. and the future will take care of itself.

It's that perfectly and beautifully simple.

Smile, and the whole world smiles with you.  Frown, and you walk alone, sister.

Yours in positivity....Xxxoox

I can almost see it.

That dream I'm dreaming, but

There's a voice inside my head saying

You'll never reach it

Every step I'm takin'

Every move I make

Feels lost with no direction,

My faith is shakin'

But I, I gotta keep tryin'

Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side

It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing

The chances I'm taking

Sometimes might knock me down, but

No I'm not breaking

I may not know it, but

These are the moments that

I'm gonna remember most, yeah

Just gotta keep goin',

And I, I gotta be strong

Just keep pushing on, 'cause

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side

It's the climb

Yeah

                       ...Miley Cyrus, The Climb