Sunday, December 30, 2012

All you need is love...


"That's the spiritual meaning in every situation: not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us and who we decide to become because of what happens to us. The only real failure is the failure to grow from what we go through."

 Marianne Williamson, 'The Gift of Change' (p.5 Kindle Edition).

This Christmas has been magical for me and my little family. Discovering really for the first time what it is like to have the joy and fun of Christmas without any hospital commitments or distractions. How lucky and grateful we are for the spirit of Santa and wishes come true.

I don't want therefore to talk about anything at this moment in time about health. Period. I am having a little holiday from that responsibility by pretending that it does not exist. Because if you are lucky enough to be at home with your loved ones at this time of year - nothing else really does exist outside that little cocoon. We may all rush around, spend too much money, have too many commitments and go slightly crazy at this time of year but it is all a wonderful luxury that leads to the real privilege of spending time huddled up together as a family. Visiting loved ones, sharing presents, eating food, drinking wine and being together.

For those of you still in hospital though I send my love and light and wish you well. You are on my mind. You are in my heart. And as we head into the New Year may it be one full of healing and love and the creation of new memories of fun times.

I began this entry with a quote that I just read the minute before I started writing. There are things about being in hospital that suck (obviously) but there are some real moments of intimate privilege that heighten your life experience in ways that definitely enrich you. There is the complete absence of 'normal duties' - so you don't have to do the dishes or vacuum the carpet! - and there is this vast opportunity in the space that an isolation room in the middle of the night can provide for you to really strip away all that other nonsense.

In a dark room, in a ward full of sick children, in a strange place that is becoming oddly familiar you can feel like you have dropped of the planet into some strange vortex. It is in this space where you have nothing to distract you except the beating of your own and your child's heart.

In that space you know with all your heart that the only thing left is love. You know that you have a choice in how you respond to your circumstances as surely as you are painfully aware that you do not have a choice in what those circumstances are. You know that you have to remove absolutely everything from your life that does not come from love. You have to strip everything away and go back to the intuitive consciousness that you had as a baby, before linguistics and socialisation. You are in an embryonic state, free floating in a womb of the unknown. Being.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that you are returned to the embryonic state at a time when you are fighting for the health of your child's cells, their very DNA, as if you must re-grow them and give birth to them all over again.

I remember a night in the dark in an isolation room with a little boy named Oscar. It was a scary night and I did not know whether that little boy was going to make it. We had dropped off into the void together. And I held that little boy in my arms all night. I sat, my back in agony, and I held him in my arms and I decided that if love heals then I will love him more than any love ever known to the human experience. I sat up and focused every single cell of my being, my every breath and my every thought being pure love. I imagined that the love was radiating out from my chest into his and I sent loving thoughts like a mantra looping over and over in my consciousness into his.

The next morning a Doctor ran into my room elated, handing me the results from Oscar's bone marrow aspiration. They were as good as they could possibly be and they were the big ones we had been waiting on.

I did grow that night. I knew from my heart and not my head what the secret to this miracle of life really is. As someone who spent too many of her adult years studying law and looking for the facts with my mind, I discovered the truth with my heart.

To all families out there trying to love each other through each and every night remember that circumstances do not define us, they do teach us and that it is a journey that never ends. Growing takes time, it takes the nurturing care of people accepting you for who you are in any given moment (good or bad) and it takes unconditional love of yourself and others.

Some moments we fail, we fall back on the habit of fear, other moments we evolve and remember who we are by letting go of the idea of life and just living it from the heart.

I have failed many, many times on Oscar's journey to health - as his carer, his mother and his role model. I have given into fear many times and I am not proud of those moments and I have shared some of them with you on this blog. I am grateful for your patience in reading what was not always uplifting to read and in your unconditionally returning to this blog to support me.

I have also risen to all sorts of unimaginably challenging situations with genuine selflessness and love, as all mothers do. I have had to push myselft past the limits of my mind and dive deep into the freedom of my heart and I hope I have shared some of this tremendous light with you amongst the darkness.

We all have limits. We can all grow past them. We are all one big family trying to find love in the dark night. You are not alone and when you feel alone (as I do many, many times) it is not necessarily because others have abandoned you but because you have abandoned yourself. You have failed to be kind to yourself by trying too hard or forgetting to forgive or by just simply expecting too much.

Love is the answer. No matter what the question.

Take care beautiful people. Thanks for checking in on us throughout 2012 and may 2013 be full of health and happiness for you and all your families. x

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