Chris Jenkins a lovely man

Beirut has been amazing on several levels.

Work wise very good - really helped my thinking and met lots of good people and listened and talked solidly for last three days!

Beirut wise - well amazing - difficult to explain - but I have just loved my time here, the people I have met and the places they have taken me to - on the physical, emotional and spiritual planes - lot of going places in that sentence! But just amazing!

One more short day and then home - knowing it will take me a while to process all this - both professionally and personally!

Can't get away from the matra - how lucky am I...........................................

The combination of Canada and the Women's Lodge at Spirithorse has left me in a beautiful place - that sounds really naf - but I am just so happy at the moment - and enjoying every precious second of this.

It's funny how difficult it can be just to accept happiness - it's like there is an alternative motive to happiness - that makes it so difficult to dive into and to just enjoy.

Guilt has a lot to answer for! It's such a destructive and poisonous emotion. We have one life - and we have a duty to enjoy it! But maybe we need the other days - the days of sadness in order to be able to be happy.

I do remember being happy when Chris was alive - I can recall the feeling of wanting to savour and cherish every second - when Jimmy was a new born baby - but apart from that time in my life - I was happy but not as conscious of being happy - if that makes sense.

I do so love this blogg - because it really helps me think - I have just realised that I am consciously happy at the moment - I have been happy, quite happy and sort of happy for much of my lucky life - but where I am now is consciously happy.

But maybe you have to have been sad in order to be consciously happy!

The end result is that I am glowing with happiness - I don't feel guilty about this and I am treasuring and loving every second of my life..... so how good is that!!!

........and having an absolutely mind blowing time!

Yesterday I was a key note speaker - and I had a long time - over an hour - speaking over lunch - to the whole conference - and later I spoke at the end of the Charrette process............ and it was truly amazing!

This is a very special conference and I love them - and they love me!!!!!

It's funny how things work out - I was interested in coming to this conference - the first of it's kind - but I had not expected the connection to be so strong - or so powerful.

Here for another two days - the conference continues today and tomorrow I have a series of meetings before flying home tomorrow night - then the Women's Lodge at Spirithorse for the weekend.

Heard that Mama died whilst I've been here - I am going to think about that whilst I'm in Wales - too much going on for me here to go there - so I will give myself time then...................

It's Saturday night - 10ish and I'm in Toronto - having worked all day in an amazing Charrette process - as an expert - and been with special friends from US earlier - then dinner with amazing members of my team - feel pretty blown out!!!

Obviously in some kind of superlative mode - which is good - lots of layers to this - how come I've become what I have become! International expert - where did that come from!!!!

But this is what I have become.....

........but also happy to be away again soon. Living in a whirl of travelling with all that goes with that - short bursts of intensity with long times in between. If I didn't enjoy the long times I would have to stop doing this - but at the moment I just love it.

Thinking a lot during those times - sometimes work - sometimes reading spanish books - sometimes just enjoying the moment of being there. You have to have patience to enjoy travelling.

Chris loved travelling - even though physically he should have found the process un-believably difficult - but he did have an extra-ordinary amount of patience - and particularly in the last few years - just lived for and loved the moment.

I was so lucky to have such a wonderful teacher for all those years!

So it's Sunday - a walk with all 5 boys today - some of the Sandstone Trail - followed by tea with all of us and Perri - veggie lasagna and red wine!

Tomorrow dancing, Wednesday, London, Thursday Canada.............

Having a lovely weekend - should really go running but went dancing in heeled boots last night and don't think my feet feel up to it - or me come to that! OK it was a very late night but such good fun - Vanessa and I went to a Tango night at El Rincon followed by dancing on the altar of the Alma de Cuba - two single women - out on the town!

Earlier I had been to Lesley's house and we walked and talked in her local park - a botanical garden with beautiful beech trees - again two single women - going deep in conversation and enjoying each others company.

Then today I have a big group of old friends - and two sons round for a roast dinner - though it will include one new friend - Mikko from Finland who's spending 3 months in my team - and is an amazing man. Rob and I bumped into him on Friday night and had one of those great end of the week nights talking and talking over lots of beer.

I'm thinking a lot about friendships at the moment - and how each friendship is so unique and precious. How you will talk about things differently with each friend, sharing different parts of yourself, building on these over time - making a shared history - which in time becomes part of the friendship.

Thinking about this - it goes much deeper than friends and extends to all the people that you share your life with. Some are there for only short period, some for all your/their life - but all having their own purpose within your life.

It does make me also recognise and appreciate how much of a friend Chris was to me. We were together as man and wife for all those years but he was also my best friend for all those years. I hadn't really thought of that before - and I do miss - so much - that wonderful and unique friendship.

But my life is so rich - I am so blessed with so many wonderful friends old and new. Time to get up and start preparing a roast lamb dinner - to be shared around my big extended table - with some of my oldest and dearest friends - how lucky am I.

Been very busy - big group of visitors for 4 days followed by a short trip to Brussels - but managed to dance three times this week - which was great - Monday at the Dojo - first time in a month - really needed and loved that - dancing at home! Then on the Wednesday - was pretty wild with European visitors in El Rincon - which was really good fun - if some what disconcerting for several members of my team! Then today I went with Vanessa to an Andrew Holmes Day of dancing in Shrewsbury - it was just so good!

There is just something special about dancing 5 Rhythms - and today was such a really good dance - we all went deep - blowing the socks of several new dancers - who were brilliant - Andrew is a truly inspirational teacher.

The Day was called 'Take a Partner' and explored relationships - so we danced what Vanessa and I discussed - all the way there and all the way back!! A subject of great interest to me at the moment. Until three years ago - I had spent all my adult life with one gorgeous man and that formed the basis of my relationship with all men - now I am on my own and thinking about - and making new relationships with men - and it's a whole new world - but fun!!

So it's Sunday night - and I am pretty tired - have not been sleeping well and then working, travelling loads - so it's good I have been also been dancing a lot because that really does give me energy - and today was really fabulous - I danced for 5 hours intensely - and was wild and wonderful - and I will dance tomorrow night - great stuff!!!!

How lucky am I to be able to dance!

Having been really proud of myself with coping so well with the third anniversary - have actually found the day really hard and long! Gilly is in bed with a cold/flu so I'm on my own tonight - which is fine - though I felt the need to talk so rang several people - but that's good too!

Bought a new stereo today for my bedroom - with an ipod dock - and it's wonderful as it fills my whole bedroom with music - have had to shift furniture etc to get it right - but I now have sound surround music in my bedroom - linked to the Ipod - which is amazing!

So a long hard day - but that's OK - it was never going to be easy - I think I have come such a long way through these three years and sometimes it is good just to accept being sad...................

Today is the third anniversary of Chris's death. I have been aware that it has been coming all week/month but it has been a much lighter shadow this year. I have just looked back to the two previous anniversaries and can really see that. One of the reasons I love my blogg so much is that I can re-visit my life over the last three years and see where my head was!

So worked yesterday as normal, had a Spanish lesson with Hector - and a year on I can actually have conversations in Spanish - how amazing is that, cooked myself a meal for one - bacon and mushroom salad with new potatoes - I like the hot/cold combo - watched part of a Spanish film - and talked to Paul and Sue for a lovely long time.

I was very tired last night - which when I think of how much I've travelled over the last three weeks was not surprising! My week started in Blanes and included a trip to Bristol which is two long trains from Liverpool.

Today two of my sons will come for breakfast/lunch, I will get my hair cut - it's pretty shaggy at the moment and then Gilly and I will drink wine and talk. Tomorrow I have a big group of Europeans coming for a few days and I go to Brussels on Thursday. But I will go dancing on Monday - so looking forward to that - in one of my new skirts I bought in Bristol made from re-cycled saris!

So I recognise what a lucky, lucky lady I am and I recognise that this is the third anniversary of my lovely husband's death with contentment and joy in my heart......

It's Monday and I have to finish of my development plan for the new centre this morning and then Fernando will run me to Girona airport this afternoon. I do feel so at home in Spain - which is great and my spanish is getting better but it's still pretty horrible. Fernando's house is a building site - so that makes me feel at home - though I know I'll be going back to a finished house - and Ed is painting the outside whilst I'm away.

I found america hard - I always do - and Madrid was actually hard work - but exciting. So it has been lovely just to have a couple of days doing nothing - we swam in the sea on an empty beach, walked, ate paella and fish and watched a film in french - and I breathed fresh air!!! There are two terraces with views from mountains to the sea and I have spent a long time on the upper terrace just breathing and collecting my thoughts.

So back to work properly tomorrow - the second launch of the pack and then straight to Bristol.... feel I have got my energy back -so how lucky am I..............

Chris died just days after the 2006 COE conference and in 2007 I surrounded myself with Jimmy and Harri. Last year I went with Margaret and this year I've travelled on my own - and quite right too.

However I suddenly found myself today on my own in Indianapolis - I couldn't even point to it on a map - got the time zone wrong earlier today - and although I travel all the time on my own - it did suddenly feel that I was very much on my own. Might be something to do with having been with so many of my friends for the last few days.

I have been coming to the COE conference for the last 11 years - and have a group of very dear friends and I also know so many people - many have been to Liverpool on the staff tours, or their staff or students have been etc etc - so the COE conference is always a giant thing - but the bottom line is it's work - and I'm tired tonight.

...........continued the next morning. Felt quite lonely last night when writing this - when Lesley popped up on Facebook and we ended up talking for hours - she has some phone deal with free calls to the US! It was wonderful.

I'm such a lucky person, I feel lonely - so a friend with a great phone deal just appears!!

Has been wonderful – which I didn’t expect as I so struggle with America – I find the level of hatred and fear palpable – as I witnessed yesterday in the anger around President’s Obama’s speech to the school children. Bobbye put this radio station on and it was like the car just filled up with venom. A country of extremes which is also home to some of the loveliest people I know.

The joy of being in Houston has been Bobbye, Jackie and Mama. I’ve known Bobbye for 11 years, since she did the very first Black Roots summer school and have met Jackie a couple of times since they married 6 years ago – but had not spent time with the lovely man until now.... and Mama – she is so special – now in her 90s and very very frail with dementia – she is just such an amazing person.

As I type I’m sitting next to her as she sleeps. She doesn’t always remember me – but when she does – she gives me the most wonderful smile of recognition and then she forgets – so every time she remembers me I get this amazing welcome.

Mama is very old now – well into her 90s – and has had a lifetime which has gone from growing up in New York, the daughter of a housekeeper of a German artist, to now living with her only daughter in Houston. Her only brother died tragically as a young man, a now recognised Black artist with a painting in the Smithsonian. So no immediate next generation but a huge extended family across the USA.

I am so pleased that I made it here to spend time with Mama before she goes, I have helped Bobbye tend to her and made chicken soup yesterday. I’m crying as I type this and look at this wonderful frail old lady sleeping gently next to me. I do know why I feel so strongly about Mama – we just ‘clicked’ when we met and my love for her was met by hers for me.

Mama’s Great Grandmother was born a slave. As I write this sentence and look at the wonderful old lady sleeping beside me – the enormity of this statement resonates around me. Mama used to spend her summers in Georgia with her Grand Mother and Great Grand Mother. I am one cuddle away from a woman who was born enslaved.

I’m going to put two pictures with this blog – one of Mama as a young woman in the 1930s and one of Mama and me.

My heart hurts but also radiates with love.

The Valley of Dreams was just so much fun, we danced and we sang, we ate great food and we laughed, we talked and we enjoyed the rain and the gale force winds! It was a tent village of lovely remarkable people, who didn't care about convention or status. I felt so privileged to be a part of it, to be so beautifully embraced in the loveliness and often time craziness of it all!

It was also a profoundly moving experience and there were times when I did feel a bit over-whelmed by it all.

I had taken a small oak tree with me, which Lara had given me last year and had been in my back garden - and I knew it couldn't stay there. I had also taken some of the cloth from Rene's Sweat Lodge - and the tree and the cloth were incorporated into a whole village ceremony - which was an amazingly powerful and wonderful experience.

The valley is so beautiful and special and it felt very right to recognise Chris there, whilst at the same time dancing outrageously and being wild!

I went dancing last night in Hoylake, which I really needed. It was a lovely session and it has helped to ground me a bit after the weekend - get my feet back on the ground - for a few days -before I go to Texas.

Wow - I am just so remarkably blessed!

Tonight - for the first time in my entire life - I am living on my own!!!!

Jimmy moved into his house today, all ready to start university, and I am now a completely independent woman!

Not that long ago I would have thought this to be my worst nightmare - but tonight I am just really ready for the next stage of my life. I am also very conscious of how many people live on their own, sometimes from a very early age - I am also aware that I am not the only person I know of comparable age that have actually never lived on their own.

So from today I will be on my own - rattling around this great big house - but comfortable with this - which is good - this feels very much as a part of a process -the Spirithorse weekend was absolutely amazing - also part of the process.

So I am now on my own......................... and it feels good!!!

Hit me by surprise - quite how emotional and upsetting the week has been - the week of Jimmy's A level results - the upshot of which is he's going to John Moores to do History - a good result but not his first choice.

But the thing is - and I'm continuing to get upset as I write this - is that it's been such a hard three years for Jimmy - and for me too - as his Mum - I had the responsibility of helping him get to the next stage - which as Chris died just as he started his A levels - was to pass his A levels and go to university. It was an unspoken thing that this is what he had to do - because it would have been what his Dad would have wanted. Looking back over the last three years - he/we didn't make good choices - how did he end up doing Maths and Physics for three years!!!!!!!!!!! .. and in the end he was only two points off the grade required!

So I think so much of the emotion this week has been one of relief - though this has come out as anger in Jimmy and over-emotional tearfulness by me.

It's now Friday night - Jimmy is reconciled to his course - I actually think it's a better option for him - and we are friends again. We are both away next weekend and he will move out the week after that - and I suppose this has also been part of the emotion of the week.

I am proud of Jimmy for what he has done over the last three years and myself for supporting him - as much as I could - alongside his two lovely big brothers. So family Jenkins a joint effort - but an exhausting week non the less!!