I Am in the Wind and the Water

You will find me again, my love.

Come outside –

I am in the wind and the water.

You and I are the same,

Only you have forgotten.

You do not see me, you sense me;

I am what you are.

Only you are in the world of form;

I am in the wind and the water.

Remember who you are,

And you will know me.

Wendy Dartnall, A Wind from the East.

Five things to consider trying from A Wind from the East:                    

1. When we speak negatively about another, we are really speaking about ourselves. It may be conscious, or subconscious, but we are reflecting what is really inside us, not the other person. When we become aware of this, it’s wise to zip the lips and listen. Listen sincerely, with heart, not from an attempt to be superior, or patronising. I noticed that my late husband Terry would accuse me of doing things that annoyed him,  but they were actually things that he had always done. I learned to listen quietly to his complaints without rising to my own defence, as I always had in the past. Instead, I listened sincerely, letting him say everything he felt like saying, sometimes telling him I was sorry he felt that way, but generally only listening. On one occasion, he wound himself up so tightly, that he walked out on me. He had fought only with himself, but I don’t think he’d noticed. In the book I say: I found that listening closely to anyone who was pointing the finger negatively at another brought awareness of whom they were really speaking about. It was true for me in reverse of course. When I complained about a friend’s irritating habit, I began to catch myself, realising I had the same habit, though I might show it in a different way. It was a deeply humanising realisation, because along with the self-knowledge, it showed me how much the people I attract are my mirror in some aspect. A Wind from the East, p 202. I found this strategy helped me to keep my integrity and sincerity, without engaging in a fight. I invite you to try it with someone who criticises you regularly. Observe what happens. It may take a little practice before you stop going on the defensive and listen sincerely, but it’s a gentle way to break free of the cycle. Write to me and share what you experience.
2. Affirmations work. Suspend disbelief and say affirmations that suit your needs. Say them daily until they become automatic. They will help to change your life for the better when you say them with sincerity and feeling. Affirmations help us to regain our power. All the great teachers give us affirmations: Louise Hay, Abraham-Hicks, Dr Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and many others. Affirmations are not a new thing. In the early 1900s, Émile Coué, a French psychologist, used auto suggestion with his patients and gave them the phrase: Every day in every way I am getting better and better. My spiritual guide Anne Cheridan gave me an affirmation that I’ve used for over a decade: I love and approve of myself, I trust in the flow of life, I am safe, I am worthy of the best. Write your favourite affirmations to share with us here.
3. Writing to the dying and the dead can help during bereavement and grief. When my husband Terry was dying and too weak for conversation, I would write my thoughts and feelings to him in letters that he would never read, but that helped me in my grief. I continued the practise even after his death, because it helped me to express and work through my grief. It was more powerful than writing in a journal, because I was addressing the loved one directly. Please share with us here if you have used this transformative exercise.
4. Changing our thoughts can change our lives. Abraham-Hicks tells us that a belief is just a thought you keep thinking. Try to go for the better feeling thought on a regular basis. Choose positive thoughts over negative ones several times a day, and you will find that you become more aware of your habits of thought. You will regain control over your thinking. We have the power to control our own experience. Think about what you do want, not what you don’t want. When you know what you do want, imagine the feeling of it. No matter what is happening in your now, try to get the feeling of what you want as if it has already happened. If you have an experience of this, please share to help others.
5. Happiness is up to us. It’s a choice. We are bigger than our circumstances and we always have choice. I feel choice is linked to responsibility. From the memoir: I don’t know if it was in a moment or a lifetime that I came to the realisation that I was responsible for my own life… I remembered that we only have the moment we are in; the responsibility for what we do with it is ours. p.103. We are all a mix of the ‘glass half full’ or ‘glass half empty’ person, but when we become aware of our thoughts and behaviour in the moment, we can make conscious choices for a more positive life. Please share if you have experienced choosing uplifting thoughts and actions in adversity.

I love hearing from others who experience their own strength, courage, empathy and love. It uplifts us all.

Best love to you until next month.

Wendy

The only way I’ll get wings is to stand against this wall in my youngest son’s cafe. But that’s okay, I’m still flying high.

A Wind from the East is available from http://www.wendydartnall.com, http://www.amazon.com, http://www.barnesandnoble.com, http://www.bookdepository.com, and independent book stores.

I baked a new recipe this week and took a photo of its shiny, sticky, inviting self. It’s from my favourite recipe blog http://www.alicebakesacake.blogspot.com.au. I shared it with friends. Today I look at the last two slices, thinking about the sweetness combined with sour; the subtle notes of cardamon and freshly made coffee. Pomegranate molasses gives a sharp lemon flavour, complimenting the dark sweetness of dates and soft brown sugar. Kind of like life. The sweet and the sour, with coffee our constant companion.

Sweet and sour. Positive and negative. Yin and Yang. Love and loss. Happiness and grief. Life is spiced by the existence of eternally opposing forces. Abraham-Hicks calls it ‘contrast.’ Every human being experiences contrast; the light and dark of life. They are both temporary, and we do have choices. We can choose to think about what we want in life and hold to those thoughts, no matter the ‘reality’ of events as they appear to be. It’s what all the great teachers tell us.

Louise Hay says, ‘It is only a thought, and a thought can be changed.’

You might say in response, ‘Well, that’s no help. Look at my bank balance! How can I feel happy about no money when the rent’s due?’

Byron Katy might then respond to your fears with ‘Is it true?’ You might reply ‘Yes!’ Or you might say ‘No. I get paid tomorrow.’ Whatever your fears, Byron’s process of examining thoughts, helps you to see the illusions that fear imposes on your life.

There are people who see that their bank balance is zero and the rent is due at the end of the week, but they remain optimistic that ‘something always turns up.’ And for them it does. Mostly. Not in the way you might think, but in ways you might never have been able to imagine. My stepfather was one of those people. He never had much money, but he always had enough. He was content and enjoyed life with cheerfulness. ‘Don’t worry, something always turns up,’ he’d say. Life works in mysterious ways if you just get into the feeling of what you want.

Have you ever had a bad day when everything seemed to go wrong? We all have them. But were you aware of your thoughts and emotions at the time? Were you feeling an undercurrent of anger, or disappointment, or anxiety? Were you attracting more of the same?

Louise Hay tells us, ‘The thoughts that you choose to think and believe right now are creating your future. These thoughts form your experiences tomorrow, next week, and next year. Make your thoughts good ones.’

Wayne Dyer says, ‘With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.’

In their book The Law of Attraction, Abraham-Hicks say ‘It is not necessary for you to monitor your thoughts. Simply be sensitive to the way you are feeling, and anytime you feel negative emotion, recognise that you are – in the moment of that feeling – miscreating. In the moment of that negative feeling, you are thinking a thought of something you do not want, thereby attracting the essence of it into your experience. Creation is the process of attraction; when you think a thought, you attract the subject of your thought.’

I had a defining moment of choosing my thoughts when my husband Terry was dying of pancreatic cancer. I talk of it in my memoir A Wind from the East because of the intensity of my emotions at the time. I realised I could swing up or down, but the choice was squarely mine. In a letter to Terry, I wrote:

‘Months before you died, I surprised myself with a conscious choice about emotions. You were lying in hospital, and I knew I could never tell you about it. I had arrived home alone to our new house at night for the first time. No Adam, or Abbie, or Poppy. Outside on the terrace, I worked a key into a lock, feeling apprehension, but not of intruders – or loneliness. I slid back the glass door to black spaciousness and silence.

This is how it will be when Terry’s gone. How will I live here alone?

A dull weight similar to depression swamped me on the threshold as I listened to the unfamiliar stillness of our new house and breathed its different smells. An image of you dying flashed in my mind, and my emotions could have plummeted further, but it was a moment of choice, and I did not want darkness.

In the heartbeat before stepping through the door, I chose to sing the house to me. A disembodied high note reverberated through the space as I stepped inside. I gave no thought to what I was singing. My voice flowed with an instinctual note, followed by others, bathing the house with melody. It was not like anything I had heard before, but it flew straight from the heart, making me lighter and safer. I had claimed my home, and it had accepted me.’ Chapter 18, A Wind from the East.

There is a lot of beauty and fun in life. You can choose to see it, or not. We might have to break old habits of thinking, but anything is possible.

A Wind from the East is available at http://www.wendydartnall.com,

http://www.amazon.com,

http://www.barnesandnoble.com,

http://www.bookdepository.com,

 http://www.readings.com.au, and independent book stores.

Ten years ago I began facilitating a writing group for the blind community in Brisbane. All members are vision impaired, or ‘legally blind.’ All except me and three volunteer scribes, who write for people who dictate their stories, and then read them afterwards to the group. The members named their group ‘Writing With A Vision.’

We meet once a month and write from prompts. No one is bothered much by writers block. From the very first time I met them, they took to writing like those ‘ducks to water.’ Indeed, it was a process as natural as ducks to water because we human beings have language and we speak our stories all our lives.

At our first meeting a decade ago, I felt like a novice, knowing nothing about blind people. I’d read that some were high functioning in society, whereas others had been marginalised by their disability. I knew that each person at the meeting would have their own practical method of writing. Some would need a scribe, some could still write by hand but were unable to read, others used laptops, or Braille machines. I was there to help them discover their writing voices.

I told them they did not need to fear the mighty pedestal of the ‘writer’ with expectations of perfection. Each one of us has an inner critic that tries to stop us from being creative. It’s the voice that tells us we’re not good enough, that what we’ve created is stupid. ‘Who do you think you are, competing with all the greats out there?’

I asked them to acknowledge their inner critic because it would be useful much later on when they needed to edit a finished piece. What we were about to do in the workshop was to create. It was no place for negativity. We silently asked our inner critic to take a back seat and zip the lip!

The results were beyond my expectations. The group had fun and some even expressed surprise at what they had written about. The prompt I had given them to trigger their writing was a basket of everyday objects. Each person felt inside the basket and chose one thing, and then they wrote from first thoughts, memories, imagination. I asked them to trust their first thoughts and flow with them. “Don’t stop because you think it’s stupid. Write everything down.” I said.  “You can always say ‘Pass’ if you don’t want it read to the group afterwards.”

Everyone wrote and 14 out of 15 people agreed to let me read their story afterwards. A retired scientist said dryly that she never thought she’d write about a plastic funnel, but it had reminded her of an incident. A man said he never thought he would have written about a woman’s necklace, but it had reminded him of his mother and off he went.

It was a joyful and stimulating exercise, and everyone’s comments on each story afterwards were ONLY positive. This was writing straight from the heart, it was new-born. I explained to them that we don’t beat-up on a new-born piece of writing any more than we do on a new-born baby . Instead, we comment on what we like, what is memorable in the writing, what stays with us. Then the writer goes away feeling inspired to write more, knowing what worked, what people liked. Considered criticism comes later, when a piece of writing is presented to the group for critique after several drafts.

This is a method of writing created by Pat Schneider, Founder/Director emerita of Amherst Writers & Artists, http://www.amherstwriters.com, which offers trainings in her method. Her wonderful book Writing Alone & With Others, and companion DVD, explains the method and gives numerous writing exercises. (The basket of everyday objects is one of them). It is an inspirational book for writers, as the title suggests. I belonged to an AWA writing group when I was in Northampton, Massachusetts for 6 months. Years later, when I was invited to meet the blind writers in Brisbane, I felt it would be perfect for them. It is a method suited to both beginner and experienced writers.

Like Pat Schneider, I believe writing belongs to everyone.

Wendy’s writing prompt for January 2017: Write a letter to God. Call him Charlie.

Wendy Dartnall’s memoir A Wind from the East is available from http://www.wendydartnall.com, http://www.amazon.com, http://www.barnesandnoble.com, http://www.bookdepository.com, and independent book stores.

After the death of a partner, that first Christmas without them comes around with a dark inevitability. Christmas is one of the most emotionally evocative times of the year. It holds memories of Christmas past with loved ones, but their absence can make the 25th December seem like a dreadful day of loss.

My heart goes out to those who are lost in grief on any day of the year, but at Christmas we feel it more acutely because it’s a time when families gather together. If you’re without your partner this Christmas, I hope you have supportive people around you.

I experienced tears and laughter on my first Christmas without my beloved husband Terry. My three adult children had come home to spend the holiday with me. I awoke very early on Christmas morning feeling deep sorrow and decided to get up and make a cup of tea, but my bedroom door handle was heavy when I turned it. I slowly opened the door and found that in the night my daughter Abbie had hung a beautiful velvet Christmas stocking on the handle. It was bulging with presents. I returned to bed and opened them like a child, while the rest of the household slept. Tears streamed down my face as I smiled with joy at the small, thoughtful gifts she had individually wrapped for me. It was a very touching start to the day. Later, we all shared in the cooking and traditional festivities of the day. We had always played games on Christmas afternoon and that year we played ‘Pictionary,’ laughing so loudly it was as if Terry were still with us. Mind you, if he had been, we wouldn’t have been playing ‘Pictionary’ because he hated it!

Each Christmas after that became a little less sorrowful, but I always planned ahead to be with my children wherever it was most convenient for them. We still love being together for Christmas Day.

There’s a well-known poem that I love by Mary Oliver called ‘Wild Geese.’ Mary Oliver has a way of loving the natural world and expressing human emotions through it in her poetry. It has a unifying force for us all. Here it is:

May the New Year of 2017 bring you peace and joy.

Wendy Dartnall’s memoir of love and loss, A Wind from the East, can be found at http://www.wendydartnall.com.

It is also available from Balboa Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, Readings, and independent book stores.

When the wind blows from the east

And the sun is low in the sky,

Remember the roses and wine,

And the summer time,

And the long dance.

When the wind skirls at your feet

In dust-filled halls,

Remember the summer heat

And the long dance in the skies of dawn,

When the world was asleep

And the years stretched away over the fields.

Terry Dartnall

My husband Terry wrote this poem at least a decade before he died, little knowing it would be so prophetic. It perfectly fitted our experience of love and loss when he was dying of pancreatic cancer. After his death the poem became an integral part of my memoir, inspiring the title A Wind from the East.

When we realised his death was imminent and unavoidable, it felt as if a wind from the east had blown through our lives. I do not mean to say that an east wind is malevolent, but that an east wind denotes change. We are not always ready for change, especially when we are about to lose someone, or something, greatly loved. It fills us with fear and grief.

In the first weeks, when my fear was new, I needed anti-anxiety medication to keep me steady through everything I had to deal with: a terminally ill husband, a house sale to finalise, a house purchase to complete, along with numerous legal documents and intricate finances, as well as the practicalities of selling old furniture, clearing and cleaning the old house, and moving into the new house. And of course, family, friends and colleagues, all devastated by their imminent loss of Terry, needing news and information. In those early weeks, my practice of meditation wasn’t enough to calm me when I woke at 3am, deeply afraid of what lay ahead. But yet, with persistence, I settled into habits of positive thinking by saying affirmations, meditating when I could, writing poetry in the long hours beside my husband’s bedside (which focussed my mind more easily than meditation), and appreciating what was still good in my life. If I remembered to do so! Little by little I began to trust. I trusted that we’re never alone, even though I felt lost and alone at times. But I knew it wasn’t really true because whenever I called for help, it came.

I’m not religious and I don’t pray, so you may wonder why I feel that we’re not alone.  It’s not easy to explain because it’s ineffable. I don’t think we have an adequate language to explain the intuitive, inner feelings, particularly because such experiences are felt individually. One person’s experience of non-physical energy won’t be like another’s, and yet they will both be valid. In my book I talk about some of the gentle signs and symbols that came to me, rather like messages of love and encouragement. I grew accustomed to serendipity, to things turning up in perfect timing, without any planning from me. I accepted that which I could not change (my husband’s death), and in the grace of acceptance I found beauty and stillness.

Years later, I still sometimes have to remind myself that I’m safe, if life gets worrying and I lose my footing. Then I remember that life has always worked out for me and I say it out loud in the car, or in my head if I’m with other people: Everything is always working out for me. It brings instant relief and I build on that feeling of relief by relaxing; I feel the positive nature of trust.

People might ask, ‘How can you think so positively when you’re facing disaster?’ ‘Aren’t you just going into denial?’ ‘You have to face facts.’

I question the usefulness of facing facts if it puts me into fear and panic. Whenever I’ve felt depressed, or worried over a period of time, I’ve attracted more of the same from the people around me, then I’ve felt even worse, and more negative things happen. But when I seek relief in positively affirming the good things in my life, then more good is attracted to me and I find that everything works out well in its own way. I didn’t have to worry a solution into being, I only had to visualise the outcome I wanted, feel it and trust. There was no need to worry the ‘how’ the ‘when’ or the ‘which’ because I’d set the wheels in motion with my inner feelings of positive expectation, which began with the visualisation. If you can feel what you are visualising, there’s no need to work out how or when it will manifest. It’s already on its way.

‘Everything is always working out for me,’ is a very effective affirmation, but you probably have your own affirmation that suits you even better. Affirmations work. They are especially good if an east wind brings changes you’re not ready for.

A Wind from the East is available here: http://www.wendydartnall.com