Reality not always as easy..........

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...................

Third anniversary

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......

Blogging from Blanes

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..............

Having a first in Indianapolis!

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!!

Staying in Houston

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.

Spirithorse

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!

The Valley

Living on my own.............

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!!!