Memories

Who’s the boss?

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Did you know there’s an organisation that brings science and spirituality together? Its mission is to create a kinder, heart-centered world where we care for one another and live harmoniously. It’s called the HeartMath Institute and offers many free resources.

They have found that the heart is not just a mechanical pump. It contains thousands of nerve cells. That is probably the reason our memories and trauma are stored in various parts of our body, mainly the brain and heart.

We were taught in school that the brain is a master-organ but it’s the heart that tells it what to do. The intelligence of creativity, innovation and intuition resides in the cells of the heart. Brain neurons are the antennae that follow the heart’s desires. For example, I want to speak and understand Spanish says the heart. The brain follows.

We humans have a stunning ability to self-regulate. Our biology is engineered as a soft technology. Our fundamental physiology is made up of ion-potentials across membranes. We’re the only form of life that can harmonise its two major neural organs through Heart-Brain Coherence. We can alter the chemistry in our bodies. Once this coherence occurs, we can heal and be healthy. The immune system is strengthened, longevity enzymes rise and stress is reduced at a molecular level. Three minutes of this shift can produce beneficial effects for 6 hours.

3 steps:

  1. Shift in focus – into the heart
  2. Shift in breath – slow it so the exhalation is longer than the inhalation
  3. Shift in feeling – a positive feeling – initiate Gratitude on demand.

We are powerful self-regulators. It is a God-like ability that we have, to heal ourselves. We’re conditioned to feel helpless and think we need external help. Sometimes we do need interventions, but we can honour the gift of this body to heal ourselves.

A silver heart

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His bench is where I go to say hello and good-bye and I love you, even though he’s with me always. One late September afternoon, a day before leaving London last year, I drove to where the bench is, in Dulwich College. I parked in front of the Great Hall. As I stepped out of the driver’s seat, something twinkled on the tarmac. I looked down and just by the rear wheel on my side of the car lay a black friendship-band with a silver heart. Just the kind of casual thing he would get for me. I picked it up and looked around. The car park was deserted. No claimants. I slipped it on my right wrist, convinced this gift was left at that particular spot, specifically for me. I wonder if that’s true or plain silly.

The Wednesday Group.

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Dear Saagar,

Ten is a strange one. Who knew an innocent, round, even number like this could inflict such pain on one. The last note I had from you was ten years ago. It turned each moment of each day into an unwanted debt, heavily owed to God-knows-who. Potential decades stretched out before me like a horizon-less dark desert. I wished they would disappear. Time became the enemy, unfolding in fits and starts in wiggly circular patterns, etching lines of blood and tears on the surface of mighty oceans.  

Now, this gone decade demands recognition. It wants to be acknowledged in some way, however small. It deserves a pat on the back for braving through such turmoil and finally becoming a friend.

Hugo, Azin, Phoebe and some other friends, yours and ours came over for a Sunday lunch in early August and brought their friends along. Many of them, musicians. Remember Corinne Bailey Rae? You bought me her CD, Girl put your records on one Christmas? Remember how I sang along to it in the kitchen while cooking? On Sunday, we sang that song together. The Dock of the Bay and Ain’t no sunshine and Stand by me too.

We cut a chocolate cake for everyone who turned thirty this year. We were together for five glorious hours. Tens of sun-flowers smiled in vases dotted around the room and the sun shone on us as we talked and laughed and sang, just like the old times.

You won’t believe this but I resigned from my job recently. I know. I was so proud of it. I got so much from it. It meant so much to me but I feel liberated. Now someone else can do that lovely job while I work with my unique gift. In a world increasingly obsessed with labels, I am happy to lighten myself and shed a few.  

Last weekend, Si and I hosted a retreat for eleven bereaved parents. It was The Wednesday Group of the Circle of Remembrance that had started meeting online in May 2022. For more than two years we met for an hour and a half online every fortnight, sharing the most personal of things. This was the first occasion for us to meet in person as a group. It was divine.

One brown butterfly alighted on the left side of Si’s chest and rested on his white shirt peacefully for quite a while as we all talked and laughed and sipped our teas and coffees.

After returning home, one mum wrote to say,

“…this weekend has reminded me of who I am and what I am capable of as I continue to navigate this life I never expected or wanted to have.” 

What could be better?

I am blessed. Thank you for being my son.

Your essence remains here, with us.

Love you my darling.

Mamma. xxx

(Please visit http://www.core-community.com and contact us to join our loving and understanding community or recommend it to anyone who might find peer support after child loss helpful.)

(A handmade patchwork wall-piece for the home of CORe)

It’s a story. It’s not a story.

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Last weekend I was part of a team of volunteers. The Compassionate Friends hosted a summer retreat for parents who have lost a child to suicide or substance use. We expected seventy parents to arrive, some as couples, some by themselves. Many of us drove for many miles through road works and traffic jams. Some changed trains more than once and persevered through serious delays due to fatalities on the tracks on two successive days. Even though their own hearts ached, they traveled from all over the UK to Leeds.

The venue was a new one, Hinsley Hall. It was true to the pictures on its website – majestic. Having never worked there before, many of us arrived a day prior, to familiarise ourselves with the space and allocate rooms to activities depending on their size and suitability, getting to know the staff and setting out folders, notice boards and programes.

The job at hand was to belong to those who attended and have them belong to us. I went up to my room and drew the curtain. I gasped at the view. My window looked over a deep-green lawn with dark old trees and two parallel hedges with patches of yellow.

As the participants arrived through the gates, we welcomed and escorted them despite their visible anxiety and fatigue, a reluctance to acknowledge their eligibility to be here, attending this retreat. Slowly, cups of tea, coffee and glasses of water loosened the atmosphere.

At the Writing workshop, words like ‘disassembled’ and ‘brown silt’ were shared and felt. A bronze sculpture of a young woman in the courtyard, standing with her arms wide open was a constant encouragement to open our hearts.

Over the next couple of days, each of us felt seen, listened to, acknowledged and our grief felt witnessed. Friendships were born. There was much laughter and many tears flowing through truck-loads of memories. Grace was at work. It was allowing something within us to soften and relax.

At the end, one mum said she met some lovely people and found much comfort and connection. Another said, she met herself, this time with gentleness.

Being there, volunteering, was a good way to honour Saagar’s  life and mine.  What better way to spend our days than to hold our kids, ourselves and each other in a warm embrace?

I am here. He is here.

Shiny-new-object Syndrome

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If you’d ask me, what’s the one thing I want to do before I die, I’d say – write my book.

I have been working on it for years but it fails to materialise because there is work, home, travel, putting away summer clothes, family, packing, births, films, reports, reading, e-mails, deaths, Diwali, slumber, too-hot, too-cold, Christmas, don’t-feel-like-it, may-be-later, not-inspired, not-now and the list goes on to fill five pages.

This blog is a friend, a punch-bag, a vent, a discovery, an exploration, a path and a ready distraction. It is my creative play-ground, seemingly under my control and gives me instant gratification – writing a few hundred words within an hour or two and hitting ‘Publish’. Done.

It takes tonnes of time, sweat, blood and gut-wrenching angst to get the first draft of a book done. Things to think about – the setting, characters, voice, pace, first-person or not, genre, authenticity, shouldn’t sound preachy, shouldn’t be too emotional, shouldn’t be too short or too long, chapter-isation, privacy, audience and mountains more. It needs reworked, edited and rewritten many times over till it’s polished and ready. It needs to pass through expert scrutiny before it gets anywhere near ‘Publish’. It needs my full attention.

I’ve spent the last three days at a little village called Satkhol taking part in a Creative Writing Course at The Himalayan Writing Retreat. It’s been an exercise and a luxury. The air is pristine, the hospitality impeccable, the space serene, the teaching clear and the long range of snow-capped Himalayas in the near distance, stunning. This environment elevates me and brings me home to my truth. So, distractions will have to go. For now, I shall take a break from blogging to focus on the book. Stay in touch. I will resume when I have made a submission to a literary agent. Thank you for being here with me. I have felt your warmth. It has sustained, inspired and encouraged me for as long as I have been with you. Thank you. This is no more than a pause.

May each new day and the coming New Year bring you clarity and unveil the joys that lie within your heart.

“Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?”

                                    -an excerpt from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver.