It is now 2018 and I haven't blogged for nearly a year!!!!!!

It was my birthday last week and I suddenly found I had an overwhelming excitement about the year to come. I have to say that this was a bit of a surprise, I hadn't really been looking forward to my birthday, in terms of another year past and another year older etc, then I suddenly got this sense of joy. I suppose it was particularly beautiful because it was unexpected. The joy was for the coming year, but it was also being here and now in the present.

So seeing the date, I realise that it was a year ago tomorrow my lovely Mum died, though I had been conscious of this anniversary coming closer. I have always felt comfortable with her passing, she was old and had lived a positive and happy life.  The last couple of months involved pain and pain relief and a very short memory, but she was peaceful when she died, and I had a strong feeling that it was the right time for her to go. We had a beautiful memorial ceremony and re-united my parents in a shared plot. The ceremony had a very strong sense of completion.

Over the last year I have thought about her life and particularly my role as a daughter within her life. I have been so happy that I started writing the letters. I know that they gave her much joy and pleasure. After she died I was given a rather battered folder full of all the letters, coffee cup stained, ragged at the edges but sooooo read. I had written the letters to mitigate my own guilt at being an absent daughter, it was only when I looked at this folder of all these letters, that I thought about her sitting on her own, in Abbeyfield and then later at Acorn Hollows, with a letter in her hand and the knowledge that I loved her. It sounds strange but I haven't really thought about it from her point of view, as an old lady sitting on her own but holding in her hand a connection with a loved one.

She had always been a great reader, but as she lost her memory she was unable to read because she would have forgotten what was in the previous chapter, previous page and at the end previous sentence. So my letters were like mini novels, self-contained with characters that she knew and loved. The reason that she could read them and re-read them so often, was that she forgot that she had already read them, and so took great pleasure in reading them for the ‘first’ time. I had thought about that aspect a lot but I hadn't thought through her feeling of how she must have felt the connection with me and my family.

One of the magic things about my birthday was the connections, people reaching out, sending me love and blessings from all over the world. I was sitting here in a little village in northern Croatia and I just received all these lovely messages, some FB, some email, some WhatsApp  - it was just so heart warming. I have got birthday messages before, but I think it was because I was actually sitting here at the computer when they arrived, so I replied to many of them as they came in, and that led to wonderful conversations and all sorts of other unexpected things!

So why am I so excited about 2018? I think it is because I have definitely moved on. I had physically moved, left Liverpool etc, I had left my job at the University, but I was still doing some consultancy bits, I had felt I was ready to do more Sound Healing as I wasn't certain how I could do that in a country where I didn't speak the language. But lots of things happened in 2017, some were terribly sad, particularly the death of Boris. Others things were very happy, like having so many visitors to stay last year, that had been unexpected and very special.

I did Singing in the Wild last year, it was by invitation and restricted to those who had done it before and knew Boris. It was the most powerful thing I have ever done in my life and it changed a lot within me. I witnessed pure grief and extraordinary courage, truth and authenticity, and I felt so privileged to be there. I had felt a very strong imperative to be there, as did all the others, and as I write I revisit the beautiful power of our shared voices, the connectivity between ourselves,  the valley and the sharp daggers edge of healing. 

Going with the Universe, after I left the valley, I ended up having three-days on my own on the coast. Being on my own and swimming in the warm Adriatic Sea several times a day, I had the opportunity to reflect on where I had just been. It was in the beautiful warm waters of the sea that I made the decision that the time has come for me to step into my new role. I didn't have the words at the time to know how to describe myself but now I have a business card which says:  Spiritual Guide & Sound Healer - see below!

Having made the decision and being clear about having made the decision, the Universe then worked with me in that beautiful effortless way of just going with the flow!!!

So now many things are in place for 2018 and I have decided to blogg again,  so see you soon!!!!!