My Epitome of Love

Daily Prompt Word – Epitome

 

My epitome of love, I miss you every day.

You taught me how to love myself, before you went away.

You loved me every moment, from the the very start.

You taught me how to listen and love with an open heart.

You modelled it so wonderfully, it was very clear to see.

My epitome of love, you loved much more than me.

You loved so many others, in oh, so many ways.

You taught me how to do this, I try to every day.

Your love is indescribable to anyone but me.

So I have to practice what you taught, so everyone can see.

Your loves continues brightly, your love is like the sun.

My epitome of love, my love, my darling mum.

Phase of You

Daily Prompt Word – Phase

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/phase/”>Phase</a&gt;

A simple phase your going through,
in love with me, it can’t really be true.

A blissful moment of time stood still,
here with me now of your own free will.

I must be dreaming, I must be asleep,
to believe that you are here for keeps.

Break me in pieces, I surely won’t mend,
our love affair can never ever end,

Don’t tell me if you leave, just go away,
I just want to remember you here today.

The Power of You

You hold me in mind and lend me your strength,

Propelling me forward by sheer will alone.

I begin now, to recognise and believe in myself,

Strong and empowered by the experience of you.

On my life’s journey, I know you are near.

Your thoughts travel with me, protecting my way.

As attached to your soul by invisible thread,

embroidered like silk and tied with love.

The power of love calms storms, clears the sky.

You prop me up, sensing you tall inside.

Planes held aloft, on the winds of your will.

Deep love brings me home again, safely to you.

The Look of Love

Pensive

Alan looked tenderly over at Gail and smiled, ‘Well come on then, it can’t be that difficult’ he pushed his fingers gently into her ribs in a joking fashion. ‘I asked you to explain our love in just five words, it can’t be that hard, surely!’

She hoped her face didn’t give her away, she tried to look pensive, thoughtful and stared off across the room into the dwindling fire. Pensive, that was the look she needed, she wanted to appear as if she was deep in thought, looking for just the right words to express the emotions she felt about their love. In truth, she was screaming inside, she didn’t know if she loved him anymore, in fact she didn’t really know if she ever did. She was in such turmoil, inside she was a million pieces that wouldn’t fit together anymore.  She focussed on the butterflies in her stomach and willed them all to settle down nicely on a branch.

She thought back to when they first met, he was queuing behind her at the canteen and she took the last vegetable lasagne. He let out a large sigh and then immediately laughed and excused himself. ‘I’m sorry’ he laughed ‘ did that actually come out?’. That was the beginning of their relationship, they settled for the lasagne, a portion of chips and salad and two plates. It had been easy, they went to the same university and lived a couple of blocks apart. They settled, like they did for the lunch ten years ago.

Alan was solid, he didn’t give her the rush she was used to but that she thought was because she was growing older and wiser. He was safe, he had a good job and they enjoyed the same things, both loved photography, to dance and to sleep in on a weekend. Alan would look after her into her old age, he would hold her hand still when it was covered in wrinkles and sun spots, she knew that for sure, but was that enough. It was last week anyway, before Brian came to stay. ‘Brian the bum’ as Alan called his brother.

Alan was out of town and Gail and Brian opened that extra bottle of wine after dinner. Brian got his guitar out and played some of the songs he had written. Later that night as she turned off the light, she realised she had been waiting for someone to knock her of her perch. She needed the wake up call to show her not everything in the garden was rosy. She did regret sleeping with him in his brothers house but not the good slap around the face it had given her.

She felt her cheeks redden, her heart beat frantically and knew she couldn’t keep the pensive look up any longer.

‘I don’t love you anymore’

Leaving You

IMG_4501

I have tried to leave you on a number of occasions, but it is impossible as you always conspire to keep me. I can make up my mind to go and then suddenly I find myself sitting on the beach with you, looking out at the vastness of the sea and wondering if I could really ever be truly happy anywhere else.

I often toy with being away from the craziness of us, I imagine being alone somewhere, maybe in a field, with just the birds singing. But I’m not, I’m still here with you, I stay as I always have since you came into my life. You give me that constant buzz, there is always something going on with us, you still amuse me.

I don’t remember when we first met, it was so long ago and in those first days we just danced and flirted with the idea of us. It wasn’t until much later that I knew I had to be with you.  I packed up my home without a seconds thought and moved to be with you.  I wanted to merge with you, be a part of you, I knew I loved you.

It was hard at first, we were different, your people were different. I had to make changes, I had to soften my edges. You are always changing, still changing, but you’re still the same in the most important ways. You’re welcoming, you always look after everyone, you want them all to have a good time, night and day you keep going.  I remember the festivals and music we danced to, I remember the newness of everything, the excitement and the joy of living.  You still excite me, although I see all sides of you now.

The people you have introduced me to will always be in my life, wherever I go. You knew they would be my people, those crazy, weird and lovely people. Then there is the kindness and love I have discovered here, discovered in myself. I’m not sure I would have found that anywhere else in the world, you gave me that, you provided the opportunities.

As with all great love affairs, I think one day we, you and I will come to an end. But our ending will be gentle, never painful, not us. I will eventually find the courage to leave you, but it will be gradual at first, a few days at a time until I can manage the final goodbye.

I will always love you, there will always be a special place in my heart. Brighton, you will always be my home.

.

The Chase

I thought I saw mum, I was ecstatic, I hadn’t seen her in so long.  I ran to her quickly, I was running down a hill to where she stood but didn’t really notice my steps keeping my eyes upon her should she move.  I reached her in no time and instantly I could see I was mistaken, I was distraught.  There was a likeness, defiantly in build and hair style and colouring but she  just didn’t have mums beauty or light. Then as I stood thinking about the comparison, mum ran past a few feet away.  I took chase, knowing as I did that I had little chance of catching her. She flew across the ground and she looked to be heading back up the hill I had just travelled down from. I hadn’t noticed the big stone steps as I had come down minutes earlier. This time it was definitely her, I saw her beauty and light. She was dressed in a brightly coloured costume gown with a fancy head dress upon her head. I fleetingly wondered how she could bare it, she hated anything on her head and that dress was awfully long to run so fast in. The dress was cut out at the back, gathering just below the waist.  I could see it was mum, her tapered back and tiny waist so familiar.  I knew for sure because I had seen her lithe and beautiful body all my life, I had cuddled that waist many times, reaching up as a small child does.  Her skin was soft and shiny and looked to be touched by the sun.  I felt hopeless, she was going far too fast and I had little hope of catching her.  I shouted out for her but my voice got lost in the crowd or didn’t leave me. She stumbled and dropped something, turning and stooping to pick whatever it was up.  I clearly saw her gentle face as she turned.  This was my chance to reach her – I woke up.

Soul Trauma

Are there traumatised souls beyond this world…

Much of my work in life has been with traumatised children, many of whom have been traumatised through their early life experiences. Born into unloving homes, with parents incapable of providing the love a child needs to thrive or abused at the hands of adults who should have cared for them.

Although early intervention, love and understanding can help in recovery for children who have suffered traumatic experiences, I believe in some way the soul carries these scars forward, certainly in this life and maybe beyond. If the purpose of the challenges on earth is to develop the soul so that it becomes enlightened, surely it can only do this through these memories and how they impact upon this life.  What understanding we gain from them and how we change.

They say that stress can bring on disease to the body and I have seen that enough to believe it possible, but what about the soul. Does the soul carry the trauma on with it or can it, when not connected to the body understand the reason for the challenges.  Are these challenges just for us, our own learning, or are they for the people around us and part of their lessons.

Mediums or channellers of spirits might say that they have a connection with a soul who passed and give evidence to loved ones of an illness that took the spirit over. If this is a memory for the family, providing evidence of life after death, it must remain in some way with the soul of the spirit that has passed.  I hope that after death illness disappears as it is only an illness of the body but I have a feeling the memories must surely remain.

My mother has always had a fear of not being able to breath, terrible claustrophobia.  Today my mother sits with an oxygen cylinder by her side assisting her breathing, her lung capacity is at a minimum and she has a lung disease that will eventually end her life.  That the fear became a reality is strange, is it a coincidence or something more meaningful, did she know all that time ago, was she in fact involved in the plan.  I know for sure that I have learnt from her pain and will continue to learn as I care for her.

The soul of the child is born into a family who cannot show love and therefore the child cannot learn love unless, provided with this experience. The child cannot show empathy, trust and understanding to others, as it has no knowledge of these things in this lifetime. But what about the soul of the child, the soul that has lived many lifetimes before this one, does it not retain some of those memories. Do the challenges and lessons of previous lives help us through the ones that follow.

What about our resilience, do we develop it here on earth or is this something we bring with us, learnt from the many challenges of the paths we have walked before. What is natural resilience anyway, I’m resilient, but I also know I have achieved this through my own experiences here. I am able to deal with some traumatic situations by removing myself from the pain of them. Or am I still kidding myself, will the pain slap me around the face one day.

The brain of the child does not receive the signals required from the parent in order to grow and development is delayed. What happens to the soul is it underdeveloped too, does it know it has been let down, is it raging inside that this life might negatively dictate its future journey.

Does the soul not recall love, does it not know there is love in the world. I know as a child, I had a friend, invisible to the adults around me but she loved me. I was born into a loving family and I did forget her, maybe when life on this world became the larger part of my experience and therefore had to be the truth. But I hope this shows we are born with an understanding of love and that we bring some of it with us.

I don’t think the soul is a blank canvas at birth I think it retains some of the wonder of worlds beyond and lives before. It just forgets as the new world unfolds around it. Hopefully a child will receive love, know that there is someone there for them unconditionally and grow up into a loving and understanding world.

I hope that the memories the soul carries help in this life, even if forgotten for now they provide a memory of what is possible and hope.

When people live traumatic lives, through loneliness, war, loss, mental health and illness how long does it take to recover and what happens to the soul. If each lifetime is a lesson, can one lifetime destroy the lessons learnt before.

When you hear stories about life beyond this world you hear of ills being cured, those that were blind seeing, those who could not walk walking. What about those that were not loved, I assume they, find love and are loved in return. I’m guessing they will have more time to recover before the next life………….

I found this piece of writing in my drafts, it was before my mother passed over.  I probably wrote it at a time I attempting to come to terms with grief, thinking about my own personal trauma and that of my mothers.  I haven’t answered all of the questions yet, I might not.

Thoughts on Spirituality

We spend a lot of time trying to discover who we really are, find out what we should be doing and how to live our lives. We attempt to connect with our true selves, through meditation, mindfulness and just regular kindness. We treat our bodies well and love as we should, unconditionally when we can. We are kind to the planet and follow as best we can the recommended spiritual pathways. Thousands of books have been written on the subject of spirituality, from many different points of view, but who are we really?

I believe we are spirit incarnated in a physical body, living regular lives on this planet called earth and that is the problem. A spiritual being is made up of energy and colour but without form, spirit is thought, love and feeling not matter. When we are born into this earthly existence wherever we came from and whatever we knew before, the first primitive things that hit us are the needs of our physical body. We need warmth, food, clothing and shelter and there it begins our departure from anything we were connected with before. We have to find our way through a world based on materialism, where what you own counts more than what you do. We are programmed from the moment of our birth into whatever society we are born into, there starts the race back.

I believe we come her with a plan, we know what our purpose is and have a hand (turn of phrase) in planning our journey. I think we even choose our families and friends in returning to the same soul groups, but play a different part each time. Not all performances get a standing ovation, but we can hope we get it right this time. We know as spiritual beings what the objectives are, in our all seeing all knowing form we understood. In retuning to the same soul groups we will influence and challenge each other, assist each others journey and hold each other back. Until we realise this journey is ours and ours alone we will not fully make progress, that is not to say that a big part of our journey might be service to others.

I think we choose our challenges but that is  undertaken from a higher perspective, where we have what I call, the long view. We know what experiences we need to realise and overcome in order to grow and make progress on our spiritual pathway but we have to do it in a materialistic world full of obstacles from the moment we arrive. It does seem like a cruel trick, a difficult level in a game that we have to keep repeating until we get it right. But we do progress, I can look back on my life and see the steps I have made to get here now. I hate looking back, I’m not proud of some of my selfish and often easier choices earlier on. They say your life flashes before you when you die, there are bits of it that I see now and recognise as failure. But I hope I’m marked on my overall performance, what steps I made along the way and how much I changed. What if we get it wrong, do we have to do it all again, I’m inclined to think we do.

I believe in reincarnation, I’m not sure how it works but I believe in the continuation of the soul and reincarnation seems to me to sit nicely within it. So each life we progress until we reach a place in which we do not have to return. I’m sure there is more work to do after this but we won’t need to return again unless we chose to in order to help others. There’s a thought, say we return as a master and get it wrong, do we have to start at the very beginning. I think it can be easier to understand if you look at it like a game of snakes and ladders, each life is a new game and how quickly we get to the top depends on what we find in our way. It is so easy to land on a snake and find ourselves back where we started.

So we experience rejection, loss, poverty and illness here and have no idea why. I think that we probably have to come to a physical environment to experience these things. We are spirits learning how to be better and this is a stage in our learning, we need to overcome and find the true purpose of life in a place that doesn’t have the answers. If we think of the afterlife as a library and ourselves as students we have to agree we couldn’t sit our exams in a library, we have to find an appropriate place, an exam centre so to speak. We are all students working through the practical stage of the exam and we won’t get our results until we complete it, this might just be the foundation level.

So what about our higher selves, our greater consciousness, the part we tap into sometimes when we meditate. I’ve been told that we are connected by an invisible thread and that part of ourselves does not come to earth but remains in the spiritual planes. When we truly connect with our higher self we get the answers, because that part of us knows and can guide us in the right direction. I visualise my teenage self up there with my higher self, I think she can learn from her as could I.  One problem with any form of connection is that it is we talk with our mouths, listen with our ears and work things out with our brains, spirit don’t have these things any more so we have to learn telepathy or something in order to interpret what we think we feel.

Anyway who knows, sometimes I think maybe we should just let the mystery be and find out when the race is run.

The Visit to the Medium

‘Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one a penny two a penny, hot cross buns’ she sang across the room almost in a whisper. ‘Is there something about Easter I should be thinking of, is it a message of some sort?’ the young woman asked the medium sitting patiently across from her. ‘The thing is I can’t seem to get the tune out of my head, it is like it is on a loop and I can’t think why. I mean it is only January for goodness sake and I don’t believe I have even seen one in the shops yet, surely we have to get through Valentines Day first’. She looked across the room at the spiritual medium she was visiting who was silently smiling over at her. She wondered if she appeared mad, what did she really hope to get from today.

Rosie had booked the appointment on the spur of the moment, she had seen the card on a shop notice board, it had jumped out at her. She took it off of the cork board and slipped it into her pocket hoping she wouldn’t be seen and scurried from the shop to the park bench, where she made the telephone call to Myra. The woman on the other end of the phone sounded friendly enough. She said in a gentle voice that interestingly she had just received a telephone call from a client cancelling an appointment, and yes, although she had been fully booked today this cancellation opened up a space at one o’clock. She went on to say that maybe it was synchronicity, it certainly felt like that to Rosie.

After making the call Rosie began to feel a little nervous, she hadn’t been to see a medium before and today she was going on her own. Why did she even feel the necessity, what was she hoping for she asked out loud.  She scrolled down through her contacts on her iPhone wondering who she could persuade to come along. Exhausting the list of hopefuls Rosie realised she would have to go it alone, she didn’t want to put it off now she had made the call she didn’t know if she would be brave enough again.

Myra was situated just off of Haydon’s Road, in a little cul-de-sac full of red brick victorian cottages. Rosie got there a little early and walked past the house looking up at the windows. The curtains were drawn against the sun at the front which sent a little shiver through her, would the house be full of the spirits of the dead she thought, would she be frightened. Rosie waited a little further down the road, propped against a garden wall until the time of her appointment. At 12.50 Rosie watched as an elderly lady left the house, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue before getting into a waiting taxi.

On arriving, she was shown into a small siting room, Myra told her she used specifically for spiritual consultations. The walls were painted white, but the room was full of colour. Everywhere she looked Rosie could see bursts of colour, from the crystals, ornaments, pictures and statues to the spines of the many books stacked neatly on shelves. A picture on the wall above the medium appeared to draw her in, the colours where quite overwhelming.  Rosie believed could feel the colours in her stomach, she felt a pull that she didn’t recognise. Surprisingly Myra herself looked quite ordinary, nicely painted finger nails, long blond hair and wearing a black dress with a scarf tied neatly around her neck. Rosie had expected something else, a gypsy maybe wearing silk, bangles and beads but Myra looked like anyone else, although admittedly attractive.

Hearing that Rosie hadn’t seen a medium before Myra had explained a little about how she worked. ‘I don’t give predictions my dear, I see and hear spirit and pass on messages from the afterlife’.  She paused a moment before continuing ‘I have had a lady with me all morning and I wasn’t sure who she was, now that you are here I know that she is here for you.  But first I would like to know what you hope to get from our meeting today?’. Rosie wasn’t sure, she had come on a whim after not being able to get the hot cross bun song out of her head, but now she was here she didn’t have a clue as to what she wanted from the session.  Rosie garbled out how she had the song stuck in her head, she didn’t know why.  In fact she didn’t really know what had brought her here today, she had just not been able to stop thinking about it and then the card on the notice board.  She fell silent feeling a little silly and out of control.

Myra began to describe the woman she had with her, it was clear it was Rosie’s mum wearing the dress that Rosie alway saw her in, the green one with the cream spots and the lace cardigan. Rosie listened silently as Myra spoke of memories from her childhood. A tear trickled slowly down her cheek as she felt her mothers love and the words the medium said resonated throughout her very soul. ‘Your mother has a message for you my dear’ Myra said as she looked directly into Rosie’s eyes. ‘She want me to ask you why you don’t speak to her now she has passed, she wants you to know she is really here, that her love hasn’t died and she is with you every moment’. Rosie looked across at the medium, through her mother who stood between them in the small room. ‘I don’t know what to say’ Rosie whispered. ‘I see her all the time, standing by my bed, looking over my shoulder in the mirror and sitting next to me on the bus, but I can’t speak in case she disappears, you see she is in my imagination, she died last year’. Myra smiled gently ‘ oh you really don’t know you have the gift do you, do you not realise it is you mother you see not your imagination my dear’ she paused ‘Imagination my child is made up of the word image, you have to start believing in what you see’. Rosie looked up at her mother, standing in the room between them and for the first time since her mothers death realised she was still here.

There really wasn’t an awful lot more to be said in the session, the main message had come out straight away. It wouldn’t have been right to carry on with a reading they both agreed, well all three of them in some ways. Myra gave Rosie another card with the details of a development group, she told her it would help her begin to understand work with spirit when she was ready and Myra said she would be happy to talk to her if she had any questions. Myra told her she was very happy to have helped today, this wasn’t what she would usually expect on meeting new clients. Myra said ‘you never know what spirit have in store for you’ as she saw Rosie out.

Arriving home that afternoon Rosie put her key on her mothers trinket tray by the door and sat for a while reflecting on the days events, she thought back over the last year, realising at the same time her mother had been with her all along, she hadn’t left her at all.  Later Rosie opened the freezer looking for dinner options, she was starting to feel hungry. There on the top shelf was a pack of hot cross buns, frozen and forgotten. Rosie turned looked at her mother who was standing beside her ‘thank you for taking me there today mum, for putting the song in my head, for showing me the card, we won’t be needing her anymore but I did need to hear the message to really see you’.