Ode to Joy...

So proud to have my 350th Follower -Welcome fiends!


I have been a bit quiet this week.   Some deep therapy was done in class and I have been sitting mulling on it.   I was helped through my learning thoughts by a wonderful lady who lives in the close orthodox Jewish community here in the north.   She is to become a firm friend.   She exudes warmth and care.

I pick my friends carefully these days, having had my fingers burned and my trust not returned in the past.

More news - I've been staggered that more people actually want to come and see me at the surgery where I'm a trainee counsellor...   Wow!   I hope I can do some good work with anyone who makes the choice to step over my threshold...   Although clients can never become friends, I care about everyone I have the privilege to see and their stories form part of the richly coloured patchwork quilt that I'm sowing to keep me warm over the long winter nights to come.

This weekend, I'm also privileged to be attending three weddings - Yes, three!   This is the start of my training to become a casual celebrant of weddings, civil partnerships and general facilitator of baby-naming ceremonies...   What joy!

Finding joy in the small things, like the number of daisies there are to be found craning their heads along the roadside after rain and sunshine, is the order of my day.

Things are looking up, mes mecs.  

I hope with all my heart they are for you too <3

We live in complex and challenging times...

Well, it's Monday again and the start of a new working week.

Well, at least part of a working week for me.

I have an induction session today for my new job helping people to marry the loves of their lives...  

Well, hopefully they'll be the loves of each other's lives!

I'm not sure what the week will bring.   Are we ever?   But I'm okay with that.

I think...

What I've become more aware of recently during therapy, (which is a compulsory part of my training course to become a counsellor), is that now I've found a little job and got over that great big 'hump' I slumped through after losing my job at the whim of Government, as it were, it's probably time for me to actually deal with the sense of loss and my attachment to my last two jobs.

...And I really know that this means I am going to have to re-visit the loss and grief involved with both my parents' deaths and some of the resulting turmoil that ensued in my life.

...And this week, in our community which mainly gathers in the local basic pub, which also serves as Village Hall, Sports and Social Club and second home for many, a strong and vibrant man - a farmer long of this area, and five years younger than me, has been lost after a long battle with leukaemia...

I had thought he was in remission, not close to the end of his days - He was a strong man, lambing his flock at the end - We saw him with his new wife and an old friend the Sunday before he died - It had been a cold rainy day after a few days' of sunshine and the atmosphere in the pub was also grey.   It was odd, but my husband and I blamed it on the weather... 

Now, I am not so sure.   On Tuesday, he died of pneumonia, refusing to have his last jabs.

I am grieving for the loss of him, his presence in our community, and his vibrancy and strength;  I feel for his just-adult sons who have lost their rock and anchor;   He only got married a few weeks ago, and I know his new wife's loss is great and they had known one another since their schooldays; and I also feel the sadness of  the mother of his children too...

Such times put into perspective our comparatively smaller losses in life, do they not?

Grief is an incredibly complicated thingie, I believe.

So is joy...

I wish you great joy.

My news...

I got the job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for all your warm wishes and care when I was wobbling like a jelly on a plate of late!

Subject to references from my last employer being okay - (And why should they not be??!) - I will be training soon to officially register, (albeit casually, but a permanent post - If that makes sense?), fabulous weddings and wonderful civil ceremonies in this building and elsewhere across the City, (photo courtesy of Google and a talented young photographer named Shepy CLICKIE

I am so honoured and so proud to have been chosen to take part in people's important days, and I hope this chance of work will fit around my counselling studies and voluntary job in the future...   I am off for four weeks' training to learn how to do the job very shortly.

Fingers crossed for all concerned.   Je vous aime...    Je te jure!

The Baby Bird Flees the Nest...

Little by little, I have been gathering bits and pieces together in preparation for my son leaving to go to College later this month...

I have been super-super-organised and have already filled a big, lidded cardboard box with booty: Crockery and cutlery, toiletries and stationery requisites and earlier this year, I bought the aforementioned vintage trunk, currently residing in the garage...

I am washing and drying laundry ready for the filling of a wardrobe, or three, and we still need to get him a couple of items so that he can take this new step in his life. We were supposed to do this on Friday, when I took a day's leave from work to spend time with my son, whom I've seen very little of lately, as it happens.

He felt ill after a stay-over at his girlfriend's new student house, and was tired after a night of coughing, unfortunately, (I think he's caught a bug from my husband), so we're planning to do things over the weekend instead.

And on Friday night, I found myself enjoying the veritable tippy-tappy, and talking to my friend over Facebook, which is very handy for that, if for very little else!

Talking.

And crying. Mainly crying, as things worked out...

I'm not sure where that came from, because I'm all right about Grizz leaving, I am. We've seen him so rarely recently that it's almost like he's already moved out, except I keep finding dirty dishes and half-filled glasses on, around and under the sofa, and rogue, smelly socks roam the floors of my house like pilgrims in search of the Holy Grail!

But I'm obviously moping a tad, in spite of my sanguine, ordered and organised, exterior. And a few words from a dear friend who's plotting her daughter's departure to College in Leeds, to read journalism, were enough to turn the taps on late last night...

Grizz is off to read Geography. Did I tell you already that I'm very proud of him? He's only off to Newcastle, so not very far. Still in slapping distance, actually! (I jest, I jest!)

I expect I shall be meeting him from time to time for lunch while I'm still working in the city. I shall be dispensing sound advice and ten pound notes, I should imagine.

This is the role of a mother, is it not?

To love them and to let them go.

To cry tears that are a mixture of joy and regret...

For what has been, and for what shall probably never be the same again.

Bon Voyage, my treasure!