A stitch in time ...

Did anyone else spend quiet times in primary school working their way around a square of holed fabric doing cross stitch ? I remember it being soothing; safe from that scary playground, vast and on a slope - I had balance and spatial problems even then I think, that are now known to be Meniere's. I learned recently that cross stitch was introduced into the curriculum at that time following research that showed it helped to order the brain, setting down patterns that aided education. I loved the colours and patterns then; now I cannot hold a needle for long enough to return to embroidery or collage that I used to enjoy. The picture is a small embroidery panel that my Bump did over many weeks when she was too ill from ME to get out of bed for a long time. It answered the dual needs of occupation for her and her Christmas present to me. It is number one on my list of what to rescue in case of fire or flood.

Elizabeth kindly emailed me with good wishes in case there was a negative reason I have not posted (or even visited - sorry) for a while. Thanks for hauling me back here Elizabeth. I have just had stuff to sort in my brain and on my laptop which has taken available energy.

A friend, an ancient wise old lady, died and I didn't know in time for the funeral, and I hadn't seen her because I have been out of circulation for a while and had not visited her for over a year, and my last letter to her was full of my problems why I was unable to visit, and now I feel loss and regret that I didn't. She had a profound place in the lives of many people and was instrumental in my ability to continue and cope. She was a Jungian, founded Jungian study and training in this bit of the world and influenced many people and organisations. Her funeral reflected the deep respect she was held in, and was held in the Quire at Salisbury Cathedral. I shall go there next week and light a candle for my regret and her memory.

Last week I visited my GP, just to touch base; she is another wise lady but young and enthusiastic and not afraid to speak her mind, to me or the NHS Primary Care Trust. Even so, she managed to stun me with her reaction to a letter from the Team Leader at social services that I had forwarded to her. TL had initially written that I could not have a social services money into my Direct Payments budget to employ my PA for assistance at hospital visits, I would have to get the money from each hospital I visited (four, for various reasons) and my GP would have to organise it. Since that first letter and my response of 'don't be silly, that's just bizarre and you haven't considered ... (or words to that effect !), the exchange of correspondence between me and the TL has degenerated. My GP's response was that the TM was getting personal; nasty and bitchy, (more subtly put than that, but you get the idea) and my GP was feeding that back to me in case I needed that support and input from another that social services were getting nasty and personal. Wow!

So I went home and thought about it, and thought about the two letters from others at social services that are waiting for a resply from me. Me hesitant, because the only reply I can give would be to tell them they are wrong, incompetent and not working to the duty of care they have towards me. And it all clicked into place; why I cannot find the brain energy or confidence to do this: I am ill. I am disabled. I do not have the disabled facilities and adaptations in my home requested by me and acknowledged as necessary by social services in April 2003, to enable me to cope with day to day living. I am not coping (now the latest and last systemic steroid is wearing off) . I do not have wheelchair access to disability related equipment for communication assessed by social services as necessary in March 2005, so communicating; writing on the computer, accessing files and records, notes and aids to my cognitive dysfunction, is all difficult, painful and tiring.

After I had thunked a while, it all came tumbling out of that locked-away part in my brain that wasn't being listened to; by me or by social services, that I cannot keep doing this. So I wrote to Mrs Bitch TL at social services and said: I cannot do this anymore. I cannot reply to letters. I cannot have meetings. I do not feel safe in my cognitive and physical disabilities to deal with this anymore.

Then I copied that to the Local Government Ombudsman Investigator, who has been investigating since April, and wrote that I hoped his investigations and the Ombudsman's findings, would aid me in this complex situation, in due course, when Dorset County Council have answered him, when he has answered them, when he has told me, when I have considered, when I have replied, when he has decided and told DCC and me his decision and DCC, I trust, have been found to be responsible for maladministration and injustice to me arising from that maladministration, eventually, finally, in due course. Whenever.

All that, and this; this laptop on my lap causing me pain and fatigue, because there is no space in my room for a desk or a wheelchair, is why, Dear Friends, I haven't been blogging recently. And knowledge that I need to do more out there, in the outside world with real friends, before anymore disappear. That is not to say I will be disappearing from here. Blogging friends and contacts are just as important, and real, as out there friends.

Q: When is a Dearth not a Dearth ?

A: When it is a chronic, not an acute, insufficiency.

Of Men, that is. The male of the species. The necessary opposite of female. Chronic, not acute. As in: always, not just recently. The essential opposite of the female; in daily life and in the psyche. So, the insufficiency has had to be filled by alternative masculine input. Masculine input that I could relate to, however impersonal was their way of relating to life; through music, words, the visual arts.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Poet

I discovered T. E. Lawrence ( Click for T E Lawrence Society ) long before I came to Dorset, where he hid. His friends the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, used to visit his Dorset cottage deep in the woods and would sit of an evening, listening to recorded music, as I am doing now. He is buried at Moreton in Dorset and someone, anonymously, leaves a posy of flowers on his grave for his May birthday. His effigy in his Arab robes lies quietly, stately, in Wareham church.

T. E. Lawrence (Augustus John - Tate Gallery)

My neighbour died last week. He was a male constant in my daily life, hammering away in his shed, muttering to his dog, grunting to his wife. Talking, like some men do down here*, in incomplete sentences; beginning in the middle, leaving the ending unsaid. Expecting the hearer to know dutifully what was his bidding; answering everything with "eh ?" so it had to be repeated, to give him time to formulate a reply to his/the cleverer quicker female.

(*Down here being Dorset; 'up North' they (men) have their own local variations.)

Nonetheless, he was benign. Until the frontal brain tumour, un-benign, began to take effect on his sense of right and wrong. He it was who banged on my front door one dark and quiet night at 11.10 pm, when I blogged it ( Click for Don't Panic Sally ! ) because I was frightened, because I didn't know who or why, when I dismissed the possibility of it being a neighbour and called the police. Sat in the dark blogging and waiting for my pounding heart to be slowed by beta-blockers and common sense. Was re-shaken remembering the neighbouring farmer who, I found out on holiday on Crete, was serially violent; remembered the childhood fear from father.

Why me? Why bang on my door? Because I am a woman living alone, so therefore without a man to keep her in check. So seen, by some, to be an affront to all that is right and proper in the order of things in this rural idyll. (I was rocking with some 70s rock on the telly.) Coming south to live in Dorset twenty years ago was like stepping back in time by thirty years (1985 - 30 = 1955) - and no, not to Thomas Hardy's storytime either. ( Click for Thomas Hardy Society ) I was never milk-maid material, but recognised that the place where he placed his stories, here in the Blackmore Vale, was where I found myself.

Thomas Hardy and friend at his home Max Gate, Dorchester

(personal.centenary.edu)

Another neighbouring man didn't have to look far when his wife died some years ago; there I was across the road, visible from his window, single. Obvious choice really, for him. Every time I came out of my door, it was to see him. Every time I did some work in my front garden, it was to see him. Every time I went to a village event, it was to see him. It took some carefully planned avoidance and seriously bad rudeness from me direct to his face to get through to him that, No Actually, the last thing I wanted in my life was the boring, selfish, patronising husband that my dear friend over the road had to put up with, before she died.

I am a child of the 50s, now in my fifties in the 21st century. When I was a child men were men and worked in the coal mine. It took me until about my fourth birthday to stop being afraid of growing up, because I didn't want to go down the mine, to realise that I was a different being and would grow up into being a wo/man not a man. My brain has always been too washed with testosterone, or something, that made me think too much and argue and fight, with words, and generally not fit in, thankfully, which is what got me out and away to London when all my northern friends were becoming couples and settling down, instead of thinking and reading and following, even finding, careers.

The female hormones eventually did get a look in, possibly aided by the new-fangled Pill that became readily available, if you answered the doc's questions in the right way and made up a 'hearts and flowers' story about a proper boyfriend with a proper job saving up for a proper marriage ceremony; all hearts and flowers.

So a few glorious years living in London, working with and socialising with clever, intelligent, capable men and women. Discovered sexual attraction and uncovered a desire for home-making (which I still enjoy) and baby-making (now thankfully too too old). I settled into being the sort that fitted in and had a good life and a nice wedding and produced a wonderful offspring. Then the Pill had to go because it was making me spotty and neurotic, so hubby had the snip and suddenly my hormonal balance tipped ever so slightly back to being me again, with a thinking demanding questioning brain in gear and at full tilt I wanted to go places, meet people, be someone, do things, and he didn't want me to. This picture then split

Life as a single working mother was hard financially and culturally, but time passed and I had more Me time and a few lovely encounters and one very restorative relationship but he died. Inbetweentimes I retrained, had a bad fall, and ended up with two good men in my life, both of whom I had to pay money for; the osteopath and my Jungian training analyst.

Carl Gustav Jung

And for quite some time they were the two men I most appreciated in my life. Over many years the osteopath unravelled all the old injuries and took on the imbalance and generally dizzyness in my physical body and the analyst did the same over seven years with me and my psyche. They both were in stable relationships and that was a good foundation for the professional understanding that enabled the friendship between us.

But that was when I first noticed the Dearth.

It is not deliberate on my part, I am open to new friendships and potential for relationship, but I guess the answer to 'Why the Dearth?' lies somewhere in all the above, and the fact found in another neighbour's new relationship: when he came out of mourning for a feisty rotund wife, he found himself a thin quiet blond who has the appearance of being half his age. Men !

The Dearth in my life continues. Until that imbalance rights itself, here is another favourite Dorset man, a man of letters and many languages, sometimes called the Dorset Dialect poet. ( Click for William Barnes Society ) I salute him for his love of all things Dorset every time I see him.

William Barnes - Poet - watching the people go by on Dorchester High Street

(Edwin Roscoe Mullins)

Growing Up

A bit of a jumble this post; after recovering from the physical and emotional load of 'There and Back Again' I have been waiting until my thoughts sorted themselves into various blog topics, but more kept piling in, so this is a bit of an off-load. And I am trying to do this at 8pm while watching the England Rugby team crucifying the national anthem. Well, bless them, its going to be a tough one, so up and at 'em boys. Who described it as "a game for ruffians, played by gentlemen" ?

First, the pic of Sally above, after who I have named myself. She was such a sweetheart, a companion for twelve difficult years, but she has been gone for just as long. My current profile picture of four year old me, sat down in a frilly frock, felt appropriate when I added it last year but no longer feels representational of where I am. I am maturing, and the fringe is growing out (from the skull surgery) and the current steroids mean I am standing and even walking a bit more. This picture will (hopefully if I get the url right) replace the younger me on my profile, but I am so much older than that picture there is little chance I will be recognised from it, even in this rural village called Dorset. And the spectacles have changed dramatically, needless to say !

Now, the big news is the weight is dropping off me, thanks to Neris and India. Those in the know will know who I am referring to. So I feel no embarrassment posting the pic of me taken more than a decade ago because although no diet on the planet can role back the ... (What a start Josh Lewsey - a THUNDEROUS try ! Yeah !! Come on Johnny .... .... oh well, five points in 2:44 minutes - nice one.) ... can role back the years, I feel tremendous confidence. Thanks Neris and India. That is all I will post on the subject for yonks, so don't ask.

Maturity. The visit up north (last visited in 1998 for my father's funeral - you may not remember, that was his last typical act, the funeral ending on the day and at the time of the eclipse) ... (I like brackets, so did Virginia Woolf, who didn't use brackets, but this stream of consciousness is a result of reading her's) ... to my mother, who I have not seen for six years or so, and who I didn't speak to for eighteen months, after her last massive betrayal of me.

(8:29 minutes and England are leading 5-3 against France)

Mother was on her best behaviour. There were a number of contributing factors: She is now in her mid-80s and a little frail. I was not staying with her (Oh I LOVE CentreParcs) so she had no opportunity to have control over me, in those small devastating ways of hers. Also, in order to make the trip (250 miles) and be safe away from home and home helps, my PA did the driving and stayed with me for the week, so she accompanied me most of the time I spent with my mother. So mother was on her best behaviour, with only a few small slips.

(Prince Harry looking a bit nervous in the stands watching the line out ... its ok Hal, still 5:3 to England.)

So, I was able to a 'good-enough' daughter to my mother. We have been friendlier to each other during the last year or so on the phone, and during the visit I felt genuine affection for her, which is the appropriate place to be in when one's mother may be slowly coming to the end of her days. That she feels less of the need to put up barriers and fight, (with everyone, not only me) and is able to expand into herself since my father's death, was at least a 50% contributing factor. She opened up about family history, where in the past she has kept it to herself as if it had a value she was not prepared to give away.

(bugger, 17:53, Eng 5 Fra 6)

On the last night of our stay, I had what Jung would call a 'big dream'; a dream that showed there had been a massive shift in the unconscious psyche, making unconscious contents conscious. That is what psychodynamic psychotherapy teaches - the psyche's own dynamic at work. The big dream is too symbolic to make any sense as a reported dream story here, but it was about pulling in more positive anima into my consciousness, allowing the feminine to be integrated; not needing to be quite so animus driven to protect myself against the negative feminine, when that anima is coloured by a female's first experience, her mother. Who most definitely was not a 'good enough' mother. So, I am maturing - (about bloody time I hear the Freudian super-ego commenting).

So, after the swop of pics this replacement profile pic will reflect the optimism I feel. The current optimism is not, I am pretty confident, only a result of the steroids. A side effect of big steroid doses is more firing of the brain synapses, so I have to prepare myself for the crash that comes as the steroids leave my system some ten weeks or so afterwards. 120 mg in my butt lasts a long time.

( ... "Johny Wilkinson needs to be at his immaculate best at the moment" - so come on, stop missing the goal !!)

So, steroids and no WAV for a week (oh dear, more later) meant all that energy was used in clearing the garden ... well, steroids and some new light-weight high tech ratchet loppers - instead of tidying up the overgrown shrubs around the front door and windows, I just cut them off where I could reach from the wheelchair. Dramatic size reduction in the garden too !!! Very therapeutic. No vehicle to take the chopped off branches away, so I used them to stuff in the front hedge. Got you, you little b.....d cats, who sit in the hedge, waiting for the birds to settle into swiping distance. I saw the two neighbouring cats actually walk round from the road-side front of the hedge, up my drive and along the garden side of my hedge, to have a look at why they could no longer take that short cut into my garden, or find the gaps they used to sit in wait from. Truly, I do like cats. I had one years ago, a huge ginger stripped old lady who came to live with me, unbidden, and keep me company when I was pregnant. Twenty eight years ago! I like cats I know, who have chosen to make friends with me. I hate the cats who diminish song birds in my garden.

( ... its still 5:6 and approaching half time ...)

Whether its the steroids (which undoubtedly do lift the mood) or part of the maturing process that allows me to relax about the Dragons at Dorset County Council, I don't know but, despite the six months that have passed since I asked the Local Government Ombudsman to investigate DCC Social Service's five year delay in providing wheelchair accessible adaptations to my home, I am not worried, anxious or concerned about that process. It is out of my hands now. The Ombudsman will decide. And eventually let me know what he has decided. I'm waiting on the Ombudsman finding maladministration and injustice arising from that maladministration. Fingers crossed.

What I have learned from the Ombudsman process, is that those in authority at the local authority are not necessarily more competent, intelligent, informed or capable, than I am. They may be incompetent, uneducated, ignorant, incapable, yet still have jobs that determine the quality of life of disabled people. Now, that IS maturity. Maturing from expecting the 'grown ups' to sort it out. Maturing from expecting the service providers to look after me, as a child expects the parents to put its needs first, before their own. Learning from this long five year process of delays, that I have to put my needs first, not be afraid of demanding what I need. Not being understanding of why they have not supported me, advocated for me, ensured my eligible assessed needs are met in a timely way, despite their bosses demands that The Budget is the most important factor.

Last week I had a meeting with my DCC Social Worker, (who is capable, intelligent and qualified) and a Finance dept. lady from DCC Exchequer Services for a Fairer Charging Assessment. Fairer to who ! is the obvious response. To determine if I am liable to pay a charge to DCC for the home care (home helps) and day care (personal assistants for a socially inclusive life) services I receive. Bear in mind I am dependent on means tested benefits and currently nursing a little overdraft at the bank.

(48:13 minutes - Eng 8 France 9, missed it, how did they do that?)

It was a positive meeting, in that it was fair and followed government guidelines and gave me the opportunity to let off steam about a few things: when the Finance lady explained that if I had any queries about my benefits, she could look into it for me, I was gob-smacked. Does that mean instead of interminable waits on the end of the phone, or gobbledegook replies from the Department for Work and Pensions (the old D of Social Security) to my letters, I can just email you ? Yes. And you can access 'the system' and sort it out ? Yes, we have a partnership agreement to provide this service. Since when, I asked ? Since two years ago. .... Erm, why didn't I know about this. How are service users told about this service from DCC. That is such a helpful service. How have you publicised it to service users ? Er, we haven't. We can't. We have over 2,000 service users and if they all contacted us we would spend all our time answering emails.

Now, just wait a minute here. (said I) Are you saying that DCC have entered into a formal partnership agreement with the DWP and get central government funding to provide this partnership service to service users, but you are not telling service users ? (I didn't wait for her reply; she did look very uncomfortable.) You have to tell your bosses that they need to give your department the resources to provide this service to all DCC social services service users and tell the service users about it so they can ask for it. Your bosses are getting the money from central government for this partnership with DWP but you they are not providing the service ? ! ? ! Am I the only one to think of this ? Why do I have to be the one to point these things out. You have to look after me, what is going to happen to me in 5, 10, 15 years time when I am too tired or too ill to recognise these failings or do anything about them, like I am telling you now. What is going to happen to me when I cannot do it anymore if you are not going to look after the interests of me and other service users. Non-committal silence, significant respectful understanding looks exchanged between the three of us, but nothing said.

(... there's more ....)

At the end of an exhausting but fairly positive two hours .... "I just need you to sign this form Ms Sally ..." Three statements on the form I was asked to sign. Tick one, tick two, hang on a minutes, I am not signing that last one. It says: I undertake to pay DCC any Charge I may be assessed as eligible to pay (or words to that effect). I am not signing that; how can I sign that statement until I know what the result of the assessment is. And another thing ... If I am assessed as having to pay a charge I will appeal the decision. Hasn't any one else spotted this flaw in the form. You cannot ask anyone to sign that statement. Anyone has the right to appeal a Fairer Charging decision, so it is wrong to ask them to state that they will pay the charge before they know what the charge is. I am telling you now, because your bosses who designed and worded this form obviously don't understand service users' rights, that this is wrong and you are wrong to ask service users to sign the statements, without telling them they have the right to appeal any Fairer Charging decision. I am tired of being the one that points out the wrong things that DCC social services keep doing. I need looking after. I need you professional DCC social service employees to look after your service users. Now I am very tired, emotionally exhausted and I am going to cry. And I did. !!!

And that was a very mature thing to do in the circumstances. I did not let them off from their responsibility to this service user, their duty of care. Whether it will have any effect, create any ripples up the hierarchy, I don't know, but they know that I know that they know that the Local Government Ombudsman is creating a bit of a stir at County Hall.

(70:55 minutes, still Eng 8 Fra 9 - Andy Gomarsall, scrum half, needing a bit of attention, and he gets it ... and is looked after and has his needs met, and there is a parallel in there somewhere.)

( 73:59 Penalty - " dangerous tackle - takes it high - not malicious, come on Johny .. .. .. ..
deep breaths" (says the commentator) " England go in front ! And its Doctor Wilkinson !!!"
Only 5 minutes to go.)

77:40 minutes, Wilkinson ..... Oh yes, " no anaesthetic now for the French" .... Eng 14 Fra 9 ... Commentator gleefully - "they're nearly there!"

Prince Harry must be bursting up there - away from the cameras.

(... but not from the newshounds - msn uk news)

Proud England, not without a fight, despondent French ... swelling song ... " Swing Low Sweet Chariot, coming for to carry me home".

There is encouragement in that.

Call to Arms

http://www.ngw.nl/

Who's Afear'd ~ not Me !

This is the coat of arms of Dorset County Council, granted to them in 1950 by the College of Arms. They got the motto from the Society of Dorset Men (not exclusive to men), to whom it was suggested by Thomas Hardy in 1905.

I am not afraid of the Dragons at the County Council. Maybe its the ongoing investigation by the Local Government Ombudsman that currently enables me to feel this; maybe it is a growing confidence that they (the corporate body) are, in my experience, blinkered public servants who are incapable of seeing beyond the edge of their (corporate) desks into the Kafka-esque abyss they are creating for the users of social services.

Certainly I know that the latest systemic steroid injection fires my brain up, clears the cognitive brain fog, boosts up the stamina and even cools down the heavy molten lead carried around my whole body, just under the surface, by the systemic erythematosus that is the inflammation of Lupus. (Be warned, a systemic steroid injection doesn't suit everybody and does not help every condition of fatigue and brain fog; certainly not CFS/ME in people I know of.)

I feel like sending a rocket up the County Council's (corporate) arse. My paternal great grandfather could have been of practical help in this, for as lifeboat coxswain, he may have had a few to spare after this ...

The nitty-gritty of the new situation I now find myself battling with Social Services, is dull to all except those directly affected, but I put it here in case there are, out there in the blogosphere, any other service users of Direct Payments.

So this is a Call to Arms to other disabled people who are users of their Local Authorities' social services department's Direct Payments scheme. Disabled people who employ their own staff for the home care and day care they are assessed by social services as needing for their health, safety and wellbeing (to use the correct wording), including assistance to attend medical appointments or in other health care settings .

We should get together, virtually, and compare experiences of problems, and their resolutions (not revolutions, yet !), and perhaps have a rocket practice so that, all over the country, local authorities get the proverbial rocket up their (corporate) arses.

http://www.jubileefireworks.co.uk/

The County Council are short of money for their social services budget. To (allegedly) disguise just how enormous are the budget cuts for social services, they have (allegedly) combined budgets from social services departments, libraries, adult education, community safety (sic) and health improvement (very sick), and re-named the whole damned conglomeration ' Adult Services', which now has a whacking great budget, made up of all those previously separate budgets, each having its individual budget cuts thereby disguised.

Then they (the corporate they) (allegedly) decided to grab as much of the National Health Service budget as they could get their hands on, thanks to central government encouragement to the NHS Primary Care Trusts and Local Authorities with Social Care Responsibilities to work together to deliver services.

Remember that central government has poured lots of money into health care (as it affects voters of all ages and incomes) and not very much into social care, as the not-yet-disabled voters don't think it will happen to them, so its not a vote-loosing strategy. Cynical, moi ?

So, what is new, is that now my social worker informs me that, without notice, without my consent, without consultation, without any thought to the affect of their policy change on service users, AND without adhering to Fair Access to Care criteria, Dorset social services policy is now that the service user; I, will have to get the money to pay my PA to assist me at hospital appointments, not from Dorset County Council Adult Services with whom I have entered into a contract for Direct Payments to purchase the care I need; but from the hospital I go to.

Bizarre. Not on. No way. Have they not heard of the law of contract ?!

Obviously not, so I have told them. That the County Council cannot change the terms of my contract with them without my consent, without notice, without consultation with service users, without thought that the contracts of employment that I have entered into with my employees, is founded on the Contract for Direct Payments with Dorset County Council, which guarantees the regular amounts into my DP bank account from which their salaries are paid. So that I am not liable for the money to pay my employees from my benefit income - nor from my occupational pension from Dorset County Council !

And all sorts of other contractual reasons why not, which took four typed pages to explain it to them. All the reasons the council lawyers, service managers, team leaders, social workers and jobs-worths do not appear to have considered. Telling them what they should consider. Telling them how to do their job of supporting me as a service user, to met their duty of care for my health, safety and well being.

Posted yesterdday. I feel as though I have done their job for them. Without pay.

I could be wrong. How am I to know for sure, without professional legal advice on the law of contract and employment law ? Access to which professional advice on Direct Payments should be provided to service users by the County Council. Well, I don't consider the one-man DP advisory service that I refused to use any more over three years ago, meets that remit. I refuse to have that smelly (allegedly), (in my experience), bully (in my experience), (allegedly) in my house. Yeah, that's another axe to grind another day.

All I can do is shout loudly over four typed pages how this change in Direct Payments policy will impact negatively on this service user. And refuse to accept it.

They can earn their salary now and sort it out. This has been churning away in my mind and guts for almost two weeks now, and my laptop has taken a helluva battering. Now my laptop and I need some space and peace and quiet.

Always the Jungian, this image returns to me time after time. The dragon I hold on the chain is being defeated by my positive animus; my knight in shining armour, representative of a woman's ability to deal with the world. The lady in this painting is not Afear'd.

Paulo Uccelo ~ St George and the Dragon c 1456

Even so, I need to calm down my indignant racing heart so I don't need to take any more beta-blockers to deal with the physical effects. This would be a good way to calm down ...

Odilon Redon - The Mystic Boat

COMMENTS ARE WELCOME ON MY BLOG - please click on 'comments' below to read what others have said, and leave your own comments. I have elected to moderate comments, so your comment will not appear immediately. That is how I delete the comments that are offers from companies all over the globe to recruit PAs for me.

That's what This is - a Transitional Object !

Blogging that is - as Transitional Object - well, it works for me.

Occasionally other bloggers wonder "why" or "what" about their blogging. Sometimes such thoughts evolve into a Meme - 'why do you blog' or 'which blogs do you like reading and why'. The Seahorse inspired today's post's train of thought, which is entirely mine and may not have any resonance with your blogging, or life, experience. Also the comments conversation with Charles Dawson on my post 'Show me the way to go home', that has since been percolating and encouraging of a creative whinge. (New Blogger has apppeared to have lost the ability to provide me with the required information for a direct link. bad blogger.)

It was thinking through my comment on the Seahorse's post 'What's it all about': I said "...the blog can be one's transitional object, to hold onto, to be held by, in the process of life..."

That was in the early hours of this morning, waiting for the screaming tinnitus induced by the BSO's performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, to subside to levels (plural - lots of different tinnitus noises in and around my head) that would allow sleep. Instead of sitting here bemoaning that particular medical impairment, or the crap television at that hour, I blogged and googled and ebayed. Which saw me through the transition from being out in the world, socialising, enjoying a cultural experience as part of a group, albeit as a wheelchair user, (one of three there last evening, not bad out of an audience of about 600). Saw me through the transition from that to being home alone, battered by tinnitus, chilly because I cannot afford anymore heating oil and, dammit, therefore in need of a hug. Laptop as comfort blanket.

www.snoopy.com

When my Bump was a toddler, each morning when I got her out of bed (that warm safe space), she would find some small object and hold it in her hand - all morning, sometimes all day. It could be a wooden block, a small figurine, a piece of lego, anything provided it was hers, was something she used a lot, or was familiar with, and it was small enough to stay within her grasp. Interestingly it was always a solid object, not soft and squidgy. Most of the time it was out of sight, enfolded in her small hand, occasionally it got in the way such as when I needed to wash her hands, in which case she just swopped which hand it was in, but never let it go.

I knew enough then to realise it was important to her needs, as she went from one place (sleep/bed/unconsciousness) to the other (walking, stairs, noises, food she did NOT want to eat). It could not be taken from her, but she would relinquish it, to her pocket, or somewhere next to her, when she was ready.

When she was in senior school and I had time to begin being me again, I did a three year training course in Psychodynamic Counselling. When we trainees progressed through the canon to Winnicott*, I discovered what her important dearly held object was - a Transitional Object - to ease the anxiety and answer the need for support when moving from one state of being to another. In my childhood I, like many others, had a teddy bear (till my MOTHER TOOK IT AWAY !!!).

I now know that throughout life we/I find and use transitional objects continually, but as they are culturally acceptable they are not thought of as comfort blankets, or they are objects so often used by everyone, that no one notices them for what they are. I'm thinking 'pop' music, as an essential accompaniment to puberty and attendant angst; therefore, in the order of the technological evolution; the transistor radio carried around to the annoyance of the older generation, the Walkman, the IPod. Also, how 'comfort blanket' can you get than the present need for continual texting, for reassurance that the texting One is part of the gang, in demand, in contact with the rest of the herd/group of friends. After all, we are not babies anymore are we.

Charles M Schulz creater of Snoopy retired after 50 years of wonderful cartoons.

When I use the laptop to google and ebay, there is an element of connecting and it addresses the sense of isolation - I am often too brain tired and be-fogged to be able to blog, email or talk to friends on the phone, which is on those days when I am too physically tired/in pain to go out, fulfill commitments, shop, go for a 'walk', visit or have friends visit, but when I still need some input, some stimulation and, thanks to the laptop, I can recline and go online and do not feel quite so isolated, as many other crips testify.

Today I have had to cancel two out-in-the-world things. One, because I have not yet recovered sufficient brain clarity from last evening's exertions, to cope with being in or interacting normally at lunch in the village hall with the movement and noise of twenty or so other villagers. Two, because I am too physically tired to sit up and responsibly drive the car to the lovely cranial osteopath. I am cross about the first and disppointed by the second cancellation.

Cross about the first, because I need to make myself visible in the community as me, not as that woman in the wheelchair. The Parish Plan (on which eternal committee I sat 'till I could sit no longer), identified a need for villagers to meet socially informally, rather than for specific clubs or events, to mix and get to know one another. Corny it may sound, but it has worked well over the last year. I have lived in this village for sixteen years, longer than at least half of my neighbours, the incomers who have only ever known me disabled or, because I have not engaged in the village activities that they have, think I am the new-comer. So I have found that going to the bi-monthly sharing lunch, has been worthwhile, not least so that those villagers who do not already know me from the days when I was a fit, thin, healthy, working single mum, exercising large Airedale, cutting the grass/hedge/dog, ... can discover by seeing me and talking to me that I am not the lives-alone-female-alien-on-wheels, but an intelligent capable personable lady who is interesting to engage with and DOES NOT NEED LOOKING AFTER - YES I MADE THAT quiche/salad/pudding ! Basically, it is an opportunity to educate the populace. And it builds up my defences/allies against the bullies and gossips, of which there are always some in any community, ready to take advantage of what they perceive as the dis-advantaged.

Cross about the second, because it is inevitable (rather than my personal fault) that a single 50- something disabled female in a wheelchair, has very few opportunities to be caressed by a handsome dark haired - strike that out- treated by a (handsome dark haired) cranial osteopath. He, it, the treatment, helps the dizziness, the pain, the stiffness, and he is good company, and he reassures me about my skull scar and numbness while he works at keeping the soft tissues mobile during the healing. After fifteen years of on and off treatment, he is an old friend.

Blogging about the disappointment of not be able to do these two things, helps, and with it I make the transition from being tired and fed up about not being able to be out in the world doing the things I want to do, to moving to this place of exercising my value, re-visiting my past psychodynamic training, continuing my connection to blogging friends, compared to which, many outer life connections frankly, don't come close.

www.snoopy.com

(* D W Winnicott Playing and Reality available at Amazon books, but can I, today, manage to copy a direct link, dammit, no.)

Postscript on guilt

Following comments to my post Dear Mr Attenborough, thank you. I have agreed with all that others have commented, and others' following posts, and now offer a postscript.

While I was thinking of this postscript, synchronistically my monthly copy of the Quaker (Society of Friends) newsletter arrived along with my Quaker friend. The newsletters contain writings by Friends on their experience and understanding of the human condition, one's ability to live usefully, at ease, responsibly, with purpose. Each edition has something useful or relevant to what has been around for me. The Quaker newsletters are complemented by my ongoing Jungian studies which remind me of the gaps in my maturing process, assist me to relate to others as a mature responsible adult, give insight into situations that I am living unconsciously in, support me to uncover the unconscious contents of my Shadow that continue to trip me up in day to day life and relationships.

My Quaker friend also trained as a psychodynamic counsellor, with Jungian analysis, over a period of many years. So we speak the same language, from the same foundation of understanding, but from our own personal experiences from childhood, parents, relationships, work and community. We talked of responsibility in relationships and that of God that is in everyone. We talked of the synchronicity of our seperate recent life events that led us to talk that day of guilt, where it comes from, what it is, is it ours, when it is and when it is not. We also consumed much cake and pots of tea.

It is my belief that we need to have been able to develop a strong sense of self in order to hold guilt that is appropriate and move forwards with it towards apology, reparation as appropriate, with following redemption of our selves.

Guilt is only the appropriate response if we know we have done something that we know to be wrong, in the small things of daily life and relating, or the larger picture of community or society. It is necessary to know it, in order to repent, apologise, and be redeemed; in our own eyes and in the view of the other. We have to apply mature knowledge of ourselves and society, to an act, an ommission, and acknowledge the harm we have done. In order to know it, we have to be comfortable with the feelings that our own acknowledgement to ourselves first, causes. If we are fragile, or self-protective through necessity, we may not be able to carry the weight of the negative feeling attached to guilt. We may have guilt thrust upon us by outside events that hit us full square, that arrive at our doorstep unbidden, unwelcome. The amount of negative feeling an event brought to our threshold of acknowledging, that we can bear, is dependent on our strength to bear it, not defend against it, but bear it. See it through. If we have not that strength to withstand the negative feeling, we will stop it entering past our boundary, long before it reaches our conscious understanding and acknowledgement. With those useful and maturely arrived at protective boundaries in place, there is no foothold for any inappropriate shame or guilt that individuals, community or society may attempt to lay at our door; when it is not appropriate, when it is not our fault, when it is beyond our personal or collective responsibility.

Also synchronistically, this week one of my regular home helps bashed the vacuum cleaner into pristinely painted door frames, twice. When politely but firmly faced with the evidence of chipped paint and flakes on the carpet; affronted she stated that it was not her and staunchly defended herself, with her own (previously prepared ?) arguments why it was impossible it was her fault. I know from past small events (she takes teabags and half empty boxes of tissues) that she feels un-cared for and put upon. She lives alone and feels freer and safer in England than she did in her home country of France. With regard to my paintwork, it is my understanding that she cannot bear the feelings rushing up from the constant guilt, shame and devastating agony she felt as a child from the nuns at her Catholic boarding school in France. I can imagine that as a child, she did not go through the necessary stage of maturing, supported by loving 'good-enough' parent/s who gave her experiences of acknowledging her minor wrongs, putting minor wrong doings right, time and again through childhood, so that as an adult she can hold the discomfort with herself, when guilt is appropriate, in order to lead her to say: sorry, I will re-paint it for you.

It is a blessing or an achievement, to arrive at mature responsibility for our actions, to move away from guilt that is not appropriate to feel, regardless of who (individuals) or what (society, the media) attempt to impose on us. It is a blessing when we have grown up in a loving good-enough family. It is an achievement if we have worked on childhood harm, to arrive at a strong appropriate sense of self, so that we are able to live balanced lives comfortably, responsibly, in relationships, community and society.

So, Mr Attenborough, don't put it out through the media to individuals. Ask for my support for your argument by all means. Then you use your influence and standing in society to tell the government. Lobby them not me. Shame, or frighten, them into taking action, with your righteous anger, evidence and statistics.

So, parents, don't shirk your responsibility for your childrens' well being, by blaming them for your shortcomings, your discomfort. Don't tell them they are bad, when they are actually confused, afraid, vulnerable, untaught and unloved, unsupported.

So, teachers and authority figures during childrens' and young adults' formative years; control them with love and time and understanding. Share with them your love for your work, not your frustration, give them of your patient time to learn. Understand that when they ask questions, rebel, don't listen, they are testing boundaries to mark out what they are and what they are not, during their important maturing years.

My understanding is that guilt is a personal responsibility; to know and defend when it is not appropriate, to accept and learn and put right the situation when it is appropriate, to bear the discomfort that I have been wrong, because I know I have been wrong. To bear the other's retaliation when the guilt they attempt to put on me is sent straight back.

I must have been dreaming most of this post, because I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote it down while it was fresh in my conscious mind. Now I find that the notes I made don't begin to cover all I thought I had said. So this post feels as though it is missing important bits.

But enough already.