Beautiful moments of 2011

At the start of the year I wrote about not making too many plans or goals because life will inevitably get in the way.

“Perhaps in reflecting on the year that’s been and planning for the year ahead I should focus more on my hopes and dreams, my ability to grow and adapt and transform the way I see myself and the world and the God who created it all. I’m not sure yet how to achieve this... But I’d like to resolve to LIVE more, to see beauty, seek justice, be intentional in my relationships, be creative... and when unexpected things come along to embrace them, experience and grow through them.”

I didn't know how prophetic that was! In May/June this year I was blind-sided by the worst episode of Major Depression I've ever experienced. I came to the precipice of a nervous breakdown and it has taken the rest of the year to crawl back from the ledge.
But in some moment of “sanity”, I vowed to seek out and enjoy any moment or glimpse of beauty I could as a means of survival.
So instead of a ‘Top Ten of 2011’-type list I’m just going to mention some of the top beautiful things I heard, read or seen this year...

Music
Music is always my best medicine. Music has always held a profound place in my life, especially during my mental illness. So here’s the most influential from this year...

The Waking Sleep by Katie Herzig
If this was a Top Ten list, number one is the only position I’d be certain of – this album. This album is hauntingly beautiful, heartbreaking, childish fun and just plain stunning – both lyrically and musically. Who could go past such beautiful lines as... “my faith lies between daises and pews” (from Daises and Pews) This album has breathed hope and life into my heart every day since it was released in September.
And check out this super fun video of the first single “Free My Mind”

Vice Verses by Switchfoot
You know those albums you hear and you think they were written exactly for you in that particular moment of time?
Vice Verses was written about my life this year.
I wish I could have written the song Thrive: “No I’m not alright/I know that I’m not right/Feels like I travel but never arrive/I want to thrive not just survive”. And I think this album rivals The Beautiful Letdown as Switchfoot’s finest work.

Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars
The moment you hear the harmonious vocals of John Paul White and Joy Williams I’m certain you will be mesmerised, just like I was. The stunning simplicity of this album is phenomenal. In my opinion, there is definitely a good reason why this self made, indie duo from Nashville has become one of the most acclaimed acts of 2011 across the world.
Check out this beautiful single “Poison and Wine”

People and Things by Jack’s Mannequin
I always seem to find something inherently hopeful about Andrew McMahon’s (aka Jack’s Mannequin) piano driven music, regardless of the lyrics or content of the songs.
I mean who’d have thought you could make a song entitled “Hey Hey Hey (We’re all gonna die)” sound so good?!

Invisible Empires by Sara Groves
Sara Groves has a consistent spot in my playlist. I think it’s because her lyrics always touch me, challenge and inspire me, regardless of how mediocre or brilliant the album is. This year was no different. She puts beautiful words and heart to the doubts and mysteries of our faith.... and I’m very grateful.

Other artists who have had top places in my playlist this year: Matthew Perryman Jones, Mumford & Sons, Amy Kuney, Brooke Waggoner, Wakey! Wakey! and Butterfly Boucher.

Words
Reading for enjoyment has largely gone by the wayside this year, mainly because it’s not really enjoyable! My concentration, especially at the worst of times is appalling, so taking three months to read something is a bit of a drag!
I have found a lot of solace in poetry.
This year I’ve discovered the work of both Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver. Both of them have unique ways of revealing the messy beauty of humanity and nature. I have found great comfort in their poetic voices.

The most phenomenal writer I have come into contact with this year is Colombian Ingrid Betancourt. She was one of the keynote speakers at Sydney’s Writers Festival in May. Considering Ingrid spent seven years in the Colombian jungle as a hostage of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) this woman is definitely one of the most graceful, peaceful and brave women I have ever met. The way she speaks of experiences and choosing to live our best in the darkness was incredibly moving. I’m still attempting to work my way through her incredible (and huge) memoir “Even Silence Has An End”.

In a very dark year there has been many beautiful moments; small and large. And I’m particularly grateful for the eyes to see them.
As Anne Lamott says: “Hope begins in the dark. You wait and watch and work and don’t give up.” That’s how I’m going to end 2011.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Breathing words again

Nearly every day this past month words have poured from my heart and head onto paper and screen. It started as just a few drops back in July – the first piece of prose I had written in years. And now it has turned into a river. Poetry I thought was lost is welling up inside.

Sometimes the words are poetic or profound, sometimes chaotic and incoherent. But the more I welcome them, allow them space to live and breathe, the more they come.

A friend complimented me today and I thought “I cannot help it! Often I am barely trying to write well... I’m simply trying to write. There's nothing special in that”.

I realise now that I had stopped feeling the same way as I used to.

I have always felt deeply, none more so than my teenage years. My most prolific period was during the usual periods of teenage angst (with some added complications along the way). Even as a fairly depressed 16 year old, I am so fond of the memories of sitting with other writer friends pouring out our souls in silence or together at Writer’s Camps.

But over the past few years I think I have begun to shut down. While pain, chaos and the mundane of life raged in and around me, it was easier to slowly close my heart; no longer hearing, seeing, writing, poetry. It was easier to feel less and give up words, than plumb the depths of wounds and thoughts and dreams.

I scribbled last night...

I stopped breathing

I stopped believing

I stopped feeling

The truth was

numbness is more painful

These days, though, I find myself feeling and breathing and releasing. Words reveal truths and pains and hope that I could not find elsewhere. They begin to tell the story that I have been safely locking up inside my heart.

Poet Gregory Orr describes this very process

“I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive… When I write a poem, I process experience. I take what’s inside me — the raw, chaotic material of feeling or memory — and translate it into words and then shape those words into the rhythmical language we call a poem. This process brings me a kind of wild joy. Before I was powerless and passive in the face of my confusion, but now I am active: the powerful shaper of my experience. I am transforming it into a lucid meaning."

I am beginning to breathe and feel and believe again. And I am so very grateful for the gift.

Beauty Comes

I know a girl. She is insanely talented, kind-hearted, loving and strong... and one of my most favourite people in the whole world.

Sometimes her life has been a mess. Sometime people have hurt her badly. But she believes in a God of hope and love and grace and transformation.

Among her many abilities, she is an artist.

Her art inspired me to write this poem.

for Lori (23-11-11)

the beauty comes
seemingly effortless
the colours and shades and objects
a reflection of a life lived
of battles fought
fears defeated
grace received and given
passion and love and brokenness
revealed in the open heart
of her beauty

pain is not her story
rejection and bitterness
will not hold her
the beauty comes
from wounds healed and healing
the beauty comes
from within

Do I dare?

This darkness constricts my being

I exist

I do not live

Breath comes and goes but does not revive

this broken, weary heart

What is life? Where does it come from?

When will the light stream in?

Those who wade into the darkness

bring flickers of light

breaths of fresh air and hope and grace

Do I dare to catch the them

to take a step towards the light?

I do not live

But maybe one day

as the flicker grows....

do I dare?

On noticing beauty

Sand moved heavily beneath my feet, making me conscious of every step. The roar of the waves was so loud I could hear nothing else. The wind was blowing so strong that I could not help but breathe the fresh salty air in deeply. It felt like the air and the noise and the waves were washing me as I walked, blowing through me and refreshing me.

I felt alive. It was beautiful.

These past few weeks have been extremely dark for me. Possibly some of the darkest I've ever experienced. But I feel compelled to wade out of my own darkness and write because October is Mental Health Month, Monday just gone was World Mental Health Day and I am someone struggling with a chronic mental health condition.

Last year during October, I picked up this great little free postcard created by the Mental Health Association of NSW. 10 Tips To Stress Less. Some of the suggestions were predictable. But one caught my eye.

Notice something beautiful.

As someone who had struggled with depression and anxiety for many years, I had heard pieces of advice such as 'remember to get your zzzz's' and 'talk about your troubles'.... but never 'notice something beautiful'. So I decided to become intentional about noticing and appreciating beauty in my days.

When sitting outside, I tried to notice the signs of life around me, instead of thinking about how my allergies were playing up. I listened even more earnestly to music, trying to hear the intricate beauty in clever instrumentation or lyrics. When I sat down to a fresh-brewed espresso I noticed how beautiful the smell was. I sought out poetry and stories and creative writing to inspire myself. I begun to cook more creatively and savor the wholesome beauty of food. And the more I opened myself to see beauty, the more beauty I noticed.

Then earlier this year when I suddenly dropped into a episode of Major Depression and Anxiety Disorder, noticing beauty became even more important... and harder to do.

On days when there feels like no end to the darkness, sitting in the sunshine and noticing the beautiful warmth it brings is a powerful antidote. On days when I feel there is no hope, taking time to stop and listen to my favourite cd's, noticing the beautiful rhythms and melodies, the poetry, begins to fill me with hope. And on days when I feel like I can do nothing right, creating a pot of hearty winter soup is nurturing for the soul. These things might seem very mundane, but noticing beauty in the mundane has saved me in so many ways these last few months.

This is how, at the end of the darkest of months, I stood on the beach and felt alive last week. I was able to see beyond the fog and darkness of my pain... and notice something beautiful.

Struggling with a mental illness is not easy. There are no quick fixes. Many don't understand or see what is happening to you. It feels isolating. But there is beauty in this world... And there is hope.

Take time to notice.

*If you feel hopeless, overwhelmed and unable to make sense of your thoughts, please talk to someone. Seek out help. It is there. If you don't have a friend, teacher, pastor, doctor or someone to talk to, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14. You can also check out the following websites for advice and encouragement:
Beyond Blue
Sane
Mental Health Association NSW
Inspire - ReachOut

Sharing our secrets

I love people. I love listening to their stories. I love the deep beauty and richness of sharing lives with one another.

I build walls. Deep, hard to penetrate walls. I live in fear of burdening others with my pain. I build walls and live in fear of people not fighting hard enough to penetrate them.
The deeper the pain, the more I withdraw from deep connection, the stricter the facade. I am happy to care for others pain, but not my own.

As I was reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this morning I came across a beautiful set of scenes. Harry is struggling to come to terms with a dark truth - the prophecy revealed that he alone must battle Voldermort, and only one of them will survive. He is dealing with an enormity of grief over the loss of his Godfather Sirius and the new reality of life in the wizarding world. He feels utterly alone in his pain. Then Dumbledore speaks with him....

'Now I think I am correct in saying that you have not told anybody that you know what the prophecy said?'
'No,' said Harry.
'A wise decision, on the whole," said Dumbledore. 'Although I think you ought to relax it in favour of your friends, Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger. Yes,' he continued, when Harry looked startled, 'I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them.'
'I didn't want -'
'- to worry or frighten them?' said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. 'Or perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away.' (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; pg 78-79)

Why are we tempted to shield those closest to us, from our deepest selves? Am I afraid to admit, not just to them but to myself, the depth of my own uncertainty, fear or pain?

And then later when Harry finally reveals the truth of the prophecy to his friends Ron and Hermione...

Harry did not really listen. A warmth was spreading through him that had nothing to do with the sunlight; a tight obstruction in his chest seemed to be dissolving. He knew that Ron and Hermione were more shocked than they were letting on, but the mere fact that they were still there on either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not shrinking from him as though he was contaminated or dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them. (pg 97)

It's in the telling and the sharing that we find freedom.... feel warmth spreading. Not just for ourselves, but for our friends. By sharing we give them the ability to love and care for us. And we show our love by daring to tell our secrets.
This reminds me of Frederick Buechner's beautiful explanation of our secrets:

"I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about." from Telling Secrets (italics my own) (pg 2-3)

I live in hope that I, and we, can learn to share secrets more and live in the freedom of sharing ourselves.
Now to start knocking down some of those walls....