OCTOBER 9TH 2020

Today is my birthday and it feels like the perfect time for me for start writing a blog on my website. Something that I have been meaning to do for a very long time but which never appeared until now. Procrastination is one of my lifelong habits due in large part to the perfectionism that haunts me. Unless everything feels right and looks beautifully aesthetic, I have found it hard to focus on anything else.

However, here we are. It’s time! Time to drop or at least notice how that need has driven my life and for me to now move on.

This last year of 2020 has brought so much of my life into view. It has been very chaotic and with so much emotional suffering for the last 27 years. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s true. I have been married to a man who indulged in all of the patriarchal systems of control and used them to devastating effect. This is now commonly known and seen as narcissism and he is a covert narcissist. That means that he appears to be fun, kind and generous and he is, but it also includes gaslighting, financial control, emotional unavailability and a lack of conscience or morals.

Basically, experiencing that behaviour, has taken my life to understand and move away from.

Yet I can see how I actually unconsciously chose to have that in my life and so I take full responsibility for the choice. I had however no inkling of what I was doing when I said ‘yes’ to him.

There have been many gifts in those years though that arose because of the dynamics. I travelled much of the world and lived in Asia, specifically Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for 22 years. During that time I worked at the International School of Kuala Lumpur as a music teacher and absolutely loved it. I became Choral Director in the Middle School and have many happy memories of the choir room, singing groups, concerts, students and other members of the faculty.

My own children Sam and Chloe also attended the school and had the most wonderful and full education there. All the way from Kindergarten to Grade 12. I know they both understand just how lucky they were to have that and also to live a luxurious life surrounded by the abundant and green jungle, friends and all that the expat life offered.

There were many moments of hell and suffering though. However on looking back I can see just how perfect it has all been. My own gifts of creativity in the form of Music and Art were cracked open. Initially in KL it was all about music and it pierced my heart deeply. I love to hear young peoples voices singing and I had the opportunity to spend every day doing just that!

When I eventually returned to Canada, my birth home being Windsor, Berkshire, England, I found that there was yet more cracking open of my heart to come.

Betrayal and loss were close and constant. I felt completely abandoned and powerless.

But and this is a big but, those two elements very successfully shattered the mirror. The one in which I pretended to myself that I was ok and would be looked after and he would wake up to his cruelty. Instead it was me who woke up and realised that although my children are amazing and wonderful, I would have to get through this emotionally and maybe financially, alone.

My veneer started to peel back. The only relief I could find was by painting. I painted day after day after day. So many paintings! Probably hundreds. My talent and the lens through which I viewed the world was being honed, As I look back on those paintings now I can see the journey more clearly.

Which brings me to this present moment.

I sometimes still worry about my financial future when I put too much of my attention there. I can feel myself very easily pulled into a state of lack. However I also am very aware of how wonderful, abundant and amazing my life is and how there is so much potential here. I have a studio where I paint my large pieces of art. My intuition which has always guided me has started to go through the roof. I am clairvoyant ( not surprisingly ) claircognizant and clairsentient. I sometimes am also clairaudient which explains my deep understanding of and love of music particularly classical music.

These gifts are here to be used in service and that is where my attention now lies.