Poem about being essentially me

Compassion not division

Treacherous waters, rapids and stones unseen
The undercurrent, twisting and mean
Can I navigate these with no training
I feel out of my depth, afloat on uncharted waters
Should I stand and be counted, scrutinised at close quarters
This shit is so draining, explaining
I've done this forever, seen differently, acted outlier
Been a non-complier
But this isn't a thing, but it is
It doesn't make me different, but it does
I'm just me, I've always been me
I was never in a closet
I don't need to step out
But these words, these describers, these descriptors
Are holding me captive
Like a snake around my throat,
Do I really need to speak out?
Jump on a bandwagon that shouldn't even be there
Say who I am, declare
These words have trapped me, collapsed me
As I navigate an ever-changing vocabulary Undercurrents, treacherous waters
Too many shoulds, shouldn'ts, oughtas
And I'm left adrift
As a sense a shift
In me, that wasn't there before
That I just want to ignore, because
I abhor
That it has to stated - the need to show compassion and kindness
Which should just be a right for all, not a divider
Purely due to your gender, race, orientation or any other qualifier

The Waves of Grief poem

The Waves of Grief

It doesn’t matter how strong

When the waves come they batter

It doesn’t matter how sad

Those waves crash over, no matter

How prepared

#How surrounded by those you love

Nothing can stop the push of water

The pull of the undertow

Trending water

Going under

Come back up

Put on a brave face for shoe

But the pressure of the sorrow

Actual hurts in my chest

The pressure of tomorrow

I feel under duress

To keep going

Despite the siren call to

Stop floating

And just let go

To know

I will not see you again

Is just too real, too surreal

The waves come crashing

Choking

Taking my breath away

And I say

“I miss you Dad”

And I keep swimming

Heavy legs and struggling arms

All twisted and uncoordinated

My world turned upside down

Disjointed, discombobulated

Debris

Life jacket

Comes past out of nowhere

I just grab for whatever

I don’t care

I’ll take a hand, a laugh, a smile

And hold it like I’ve been given gold

A moment of happiness

Or gratitude

Wherever I can find it

Like a pearl in an oyster

Or a piece of driftwood to hold

When dragged under or over by the waves of grief

Battered and broken

Drowning alone

Those precious moments of human empathy

Can remind me of home

I am Dadless, I am sadness

This is who I am now

But there is happiness

And memories to hold on to too

I am sadness, Happiness

Laughter and loss

Darkness and light

Solid and ghost

I am strong

I am weak

I am a human who’s grieving

I am silence

I am song

I am grateful to be breathing

The poem was written by Viv Chamberlin-Kidd 

17 days after her Dad’s death on 25/01/20

Here is a video of my saying the poem on a FB ‘live’ on 10th April 2020 can be viewed here on YouTube https://youtu.be/5tKJC72lOk4

Compare and Contrast poem

I hide behind you
But I didn't ask
I decided myself
To compare and contrast

You're thinner than me
Your hair is so wavy
You have so much drive
So much more than God gave me

Inside I roar, roar and compete
Inside I reel, I scream and deplete

Scored on a scale
I compare my abilities
Against those I see
I compare my agilities

In my own secret race, sprinting with no pace - maker

To keep me in check
To not stack my deck
Against myself my only competitor
But I imagine comparison life editors

I hide behind others
But I didn't ask
I'm the one who decided
To compare and contrast

Inside I hide, I hide and compete
Inside I'm raw and incomplete

Social media drowns me
Even when I don't look
Pervasive like disease
A comparison hook

Look at her, look at him
They're so together
They've done this, they've done that
Their pictures like heaven

Inside I'm confused
Inside I compete
Inside its torture
Inside I repeat

She's thinner and fitter
They're funnier and prettier
I contrast and compare
It's not rational
It's not fair

Look at him

Look at them
Look at her
I'm so numb

My brain keeps on whirring
Spewing out such vile thoughts
"You're worthless, you're lazy. Compared to them you're worth nought"

I try to be strong
Push those thoughts to the back
Then things pop up on my feed
And the gremlins spew black

"She gets way more loves
People comment for her
You're a fraud and a fake"
I'm nauseous and raw

I hide behind her
But I didn't ask
I allowed my inner voice
To compare and contrast

This comparison-itus
Is consuming my soul
A whirlwind of broken mirrors
And of media holes

Stop
Stop, breath and mind quiet
Stop
Stop, breath, halt the riot

Breath in the power
Breath in my soul
Stop the inner critic
Stop and take hold

I'm raw and complete
My soul purely me
Look inward and soul ward
Be comparison free

I'll let you be you
For I didn't ask
I'll hold on to me
No compare nor contrast

Primal scream / Primal slayer - shamanic journey in poetry

I have a shamanic spirit teacher that looks to me like the first slayer, Sineya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer so that is where the slayer reference comes from.

You face me, my mirror and soul

I am broken and tired, you are strong and whole
You say "Let go, let it all out"
I hold it in but want to shout
You continue "Let go, it's been too long. 

You're an adult now, the child has gone." 

I open my mouth, the tears they well
I let out the rage, I scream and yell
It goes on and on, a timeless bubble
Snot, spit, tears, rage uncontrollable

Then the magic begins
I watch it unfold
My memories spun
Webs of stories untold

My snot is mycelium
Running forever unseen
Unground networks of food
And hallucinogenic dreams

The spit from my roars
Falls to the ground
Springs up into grasses 

Trees and plants, all around

My rage fills the air
Heated, pure power
The atmosphere forms
An impenetrable barrier

My screams punch holes
In the sky, like spears
They become stars
That shines for years and years

As I scream and rage on
My feet stomp the ground
Cracks spread out forming

Caves and tall mounds

Mountain and valley
Dale and hill
Spring up all over
Allowing rivers to spill

From my tears that fall
And flow into seas
Forming lakes en route
As clear as my dreams

When spent, I collapse
And bigs spiders scurry
Enveloped in cocooning webs
They take my old memories

Weaving them into stories 

Of power, resilience and strength
My personality and uniqueness
Forming with each thread

I watch the magic unfurl
In the haze of my dreams
The landscape morphs
Moulded from my screams

Until I am the landscape
I am everywhere
My childhood and memories
Totally laid bare

A wondrous scene
Filled with colours unfolding
One of a kind, uniqueness
In stories untold, in
Patterns, nature, magic and music

Who knew old, rage-filled memories
Could become so perfect

My slayer now shimmers
A landscape of beauty
My mirror, my soul
That landscape is me

"Visit this place,
Tap into the power
When unhelpful memories invade
Remember each flower

There is no other like you
And never will be"
My slayer turns and smiles
And that primal being is me

'Reclaiming myself' - shamanic journey in poetry

I have decided to start publishing the poems/prose that I get after going on a shamanic journey. I do not edit the poems after I receive them so they are published as given. I hope this will be the start of many such pieces of work. Enjoy and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

I am strapped to an A-frame
My life force slowly drained
Drip by drip, over time
Until nothing remains
An empty shell, I keep breathing
I am bewildered
This is my life, child to adult
So completely hindered

Skip to now
Reclaim joy, passion, power and purpose
Take my soul back, reclaim life
And run from this circus
The shadows, comparisons
My uniqueness, circle back
Time rewind and scramble
To consolidate lack

The abyss of this loss
Forgotten and black
Rewrite the story
Through lack and back to non-black

Light to show shadows
Magic to show dreams
Sleight of hand to become whole
And begin where we seem
To be now holding course
True to the game
But remember the past
no more the A-frame

Seasons - poem

The earth is sleeping.  

Feel the cold breath on your face.  

This is winter.  

The earth is waking.  

Yawning, stretching.  

See the snowdrops, buds and crocuses.  

This is spring.  

The earth is dancing.  

Singing and drumming. 

See the colours bursting on the trees

Hear the birds and see the bees.  

Feel the warmth beneath your feet: grass or sand, soul or pavement.  

This is summer.  

The earth is humming.  

Hear the crunch of the fallen leaves under your boots.  

See the stars and light the fires.  

This is autumn.  

More poems

I am trying to get all my poems from Facebook and get them here on my blog instead.  Look here for other poems, but here are some more.

Human Experience is not a test
Can you assess my state of happiness?
Can you score it out of five?
Can you really pass or fail a test
That tells if you're truly alive?
Is joy a quantifiable trait?
Can you plot it on a graph?
Do you score a special funny point
Every time you laugh?
Is empathy a transferable skill?
Can others give feedback?
Telling you if there are traits
In which they think you lack?
I don't think you can pass an exam
In love or contemplation
I don't think you can get an NVQ
In passion or in meditation
Hope cannot be learnt from a book
Grace cannot be easily taught
Peace cannot be summed up in lesson
Just because you think it ought
You cannot have a kindness target
That everyone must reach
The attainment of gentleness
Is not something you can teach
The fruits of spirit and soul
Need space and time to grow
They cannot be cultivated in league tables
Or seen in "tell and show"
Spirit cannot be marked and scored
Even if you wanted to
Because human experience is not an exam
ONLY YOU can A* you

"My Wings" poem
19 March 2010

My wings enfold me and I sigh
A tear drops slowly and I cry
I look straight down and all I see
Is my sea of tears and they're drowning me
My wings are heavy, a tear-soaked burden
I don't want to feel this, of that I'm certain
Wings are meant to be freeing and light
They should be magical, an instrument of flight
But my bad mood has taken hold
And my wings are completely soaked and cold
All my self doubts come crashing in
And all my worries they begin
To suffocate and trap my feelings
Stifle me and stop me breathing
I have to stop, adjust my perspective
To halt the turmoil and over-reactive
Dark side mumblings that float around me
Clouding focus and deadening me
So I look back up and see my wings
These beautiful, feathery, golden things
They can be magic, light and free
If only I can stop and truly see
That my gifts are numerous like the feathers
They can cause problems and feel like tethers
Or I can count them as a blessing
Try to use them and keep learning
Practice outside my comfort zone
My gifts and qualities to hone
Like a fledgling bird's first flight
Keep on trying with all my might
So I am grounded with my wings
With the freedom flying brings
A lofty escape from oughts and shoulds
An ethereal release to maybes and coulds
My wings spread out and I am free
The wind blows around and it lifts me
Perspective changes as I climb higher
Things seem smaller and not so dire
I feel grounded in the air
A contradiction but I don't care
My arms are open, a wide embrace
And I soar higher in my space
I circle and let out a joyous scream
Envisage my life as my perfect dream
Where my gifts and soul fly together
Not as burdens or a tether
When I feel low or feel like crying
My wings can stretch and keep me flying
And if I need a hug or to cry
I can do that as I fly

 I am my Masterpiece (moving forwards in giant small steps)
I don't know where that title came from but I am sticking with it!!!
31 January 2010

I sit quietly with myself
My spirit is here
I see through the sadness
And my purpose is clear
I will continue to ponder
Work out my issues
Battle to my core
I may need some tissues!
There will be sadness and sobbing
Doubts and reflection
But also joy and dancing
Time to be and meditation
Searching and enthusing
I am here to be me
Consciously work towards
The best me I can be
I may need a short break
When my sadness need space
But will always resume searching
At my own pace
I won't beat myself up
For these lapses of contentment
It's all a learning experience
Not needless entrapment
So here I sit quietly
Changing and growing
Small steps, giant leaps
New behaviours a-sowing
Acceptance, forgiveness
Justified grumpiness
Wholesome, loving
Intuitive faithfulness
Unique, special
I am one of a kind
Emotional, spiritual
Not just a mind
My poems are my language
My body, my shrine
My writing, my rhythm
That beats out in time
So pick up your sticks
Come drum with me
Let's dance and be merry
And be the best we can be

family dynamics

Love Letter to My Daughter

(which I composed in the car on the way to a meeting this morning)

It’s me who doesn't see the beautiful person that you are

And the growing potential you have to be a kind and loving star

It’s me who doesn't see all the wondrous gifts you have

And all the quirky things you do to make other people laugh

It’s me who’s frosted glasses mean I cannot clearly see

The marvellous, eccentric person standing right in front of me

I need to take off those glasses and make sure I get a proper view

Of the person who stands before me, the very special you

I'm sorry that I sometimes yell at you – squashing your authentic self

Instead of nurturing those unique traits that add to your true wealth

I'm sorry that you feel that I love your brother more than you

Because you think I am more like him and daddy is more like you

Maybe sometimes that is what I show you and that is my fault and not yours

So here is my promise to you – a mother-daughter relationship clause

I will try to take the time to see you for the unique person that you are

And try to help you continue to be a kind, loving, authentic star

I have been having a hard time recently with connecting with my dd.  She’s an amazing, eccentric, quirky, beautiful, funny, joyful, caring, sharing, helpful 9 yo.  She is also very, very different to my ds whom I seem to be on the same wavelength with and so that makes the times when dd is pessimistic, unhelpful, a bit whiny, stubborn and a bit mean, more of a problem because those are not traits I would ascribe to my ds and they are traits which I find challenging especially when I am not in a good place myself.  

I love both my children unconditionally but I have to admit I do sometimes find it a lot easier to like my ds than my dd and I feel awful saying that.  And that got me thinking – why do I feel awful saying that?  When I quizzed my daughter about whether she understood, and therefore, “got on with” daddy more than me she said yes and I can totally understand why.  They have a similar outlook on life the same as ds and I do.  What I want to do though is make sure that my dd knows that I love her as much as I do my ds and that will never, never change.  I also want her to know that in life there are people who you are going to “get on with” more than others and that is ok too.  

However want I need to remember is to find a way to re-frame, or deal with, those traits which I find problematic so that they don’t grate as much.  At the same time I want to help my dd to maybe master the time and place where those traits are beneficial and don’t end up annoying or hurting people unduly.  I can totally see times when being whiny and a bit stubborn can be beneficial and even when being mean (maybe in a more constructive way) could actually have a positive outcome.  I cannot do that if I am not seeing the beautiful person my dd is under those characteristics and that is what I have been doing of late.  

As parents we have a huge responsibility to our children because we chose to have them.  My dd didn't choose to be born and also didn't choose to have those character traits that sometimes wind me up.  I have to see and nurture the best in her whatever she does and I need to love her even when I don’t feel like it.  But also I need to steer her to be the best she can be and that can never be done with putting her down or consistently having a go at her.  

I read my dd the above and asked her permission to put it on my blog.  She also said that in return for my trying to do what I have said, she will give me hugs in return.  Who could want for more than that!!

Following on a little later, my dd and I had a chat about stuff and we came up with the idea that she could make a badge that reads “I am upset and will talk about it when I am ready.”  This is because she says that she thinks she can be more annoying or whingey when she feels upset but that she doesn't always want to talk about it then.  We are going to try it and see if it works and she is also going to make one for daddy too!!!

This reminded me of the fact that a while ago dd, ds and I had a major discussion about how dd annoys ds and vice versa.  Dd tried to vocalise that she sometimes feels pressured to say sorry or work out how she feels too quickly in these scenarios.  There is an imago relationship theory about there being a maximiser and minimiser in every relationship (read about it here.)  My dh and I can definitely attest to that.  What is interesting though with our children is that it seems that ds is a maximiser like me  - where everything has to be out in the open and sorted out now (if not sooner) - and dd is a minimiser like my dh - where they need time to mull things over.  It can be a very frustrating dynamic from both sides but I would say more so when 2 maximisers are finding 1 minimiser annoying.  I had forgotten about this so having now written it as a blog post maybe I will be able to remember this minimiser/maximiser stuff and come up with other coping strategies for all of us to live life more harmoniously.

November's Novel Nuances

Watch this optical illusionary video here

I was part of a The Future of Libraries day here in York - watch the video here and see if you can spot me in a few places!!!  Read more about the day here and it looks like York libraries have an exciting future ahead.

Absolutely brilliant video by a veteran about who the real enemy is and it isn't Iraqis.  Watch here

A beautiful video here of how we can affect people - watch Whoopi Goldberg get thanked for her role in Star Trek here

Brilliant satirical write up of the British weather over winter here

Speech by Matt Damon about the state of America.  Impressive stuff here

Brilliant wind-powered creations here

Hear what crickets sound like slowed down here

October's Oscillating Observations

Watch here for fantastic practical examples of how to stay young, fit and mentally agile.  Stephen Jepson is a great example of a guy who likes playing and is enjoying life and "never leaves the playground".

How about a piano playing elephant here

Great rap about money and politics but a fab young man here

Fantastic porject helping Africa get its green land back by simply digging ditches - watch here

Radical teaching discoveries - read about it here and then watch the "Hole in the Wall" guy talk about the future of teaching via this TED talk here

Absolutely brilliant comic about finding the life you want (Bill Watterson) - see here

How about the idea that there is a prejudice against stay-at-home-mums which should be taken seriously.  Read more here

Great poem about perceptions of women getting older versus men - listen here

Great story about how being nice and helpful actually makes a difference - watch here

Watch a fantastic video here showing an amazing ant colony

Powerful video about rape "7 cowardly words on a bus" - watch with caution here

Another example of how the images that we see daily of "beautiful" women are not real - watch here

Fantastic video about teaching children pointless things.  David Allen at his best - watch here

Let's be the best we can.  This guy (Shane Koyczan) is awesome and the violin (Hannah Epperson) just adds more - watch here

To learn or not to learn....

I have been thinking a lot recently about home educating.  This has mostly been because my 11 year old ds taught himself to read about 4 months ago.  This is one of the fears of many of my fellow home edders who take the autonomous route of education where we don’t actively teach our children but facilitate them learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it..  It is well known that an average self-taught reader will be anything between 3 and 14 years old but most seem to start showing an interest around 9 if they haven’t before that.  11 and a half seems old!!!  I don’t know why we have this obsession with reading and that is what got me to thinking.  Why Maths and English?  As an English nation we all know English: we all speak it.  So why after we have been taught to read and write does it go any further than that?  We abstract the ability to read from all the reasons we need to know how to read.  Most of the other subjects taught at school involve the ability to read, write and sometimes speak English.  So why force children to read books if they don’t want to read books?  Why abstract the ability to read, write and speak as part of natural life and have a separate subject that involves skills that you don’t need to be a valuable member of society?  You wouldn't force a child to dance when they don’t want to dance especially not to GCSE level even though I reckon the ability to know how to move your body and finding enjoyment from it is a way more valuable skill than the sedentary activity of reading fiction.

Again with maths.  Mental arithmetic I totally get.  A useful skill to have although I don’t believe you need that skill at the age of 6 or even any time before you are going to need to use it say in a shopping scenario.  Financial acuity on the other hand a wholeheartedly worthwhile skill that needs to be learnt before taking out your first credit card, loan, mortgage, etc.  The area of a circle however is a fact that anyone can look up on the internet.  It isn't a necessary fact to teach 9 year olds: the ability to regurgitate that area = pi * radius ^2 does not 'maketh the man.'  I know that Martin Lewis has managed to get financial skills into the curriculum but I have a feeling that many children will have been put off actually listening to this vital information by the way that numeracy and maths is taught in the earlier years.   Again most children learn to count before going to school – how is it that we turn the beautiful simplicity of maths into something so sterile and to many so confusing and/or boring?

The sad contradiction here is that kids love to learn.  Try and get a child to stop doing something they are absorbed in and you know what I mean.  My children will forget to eat, forget to go to the toilet and forget to go to bed when they are absorbed in what they are doing.  This is when the deep level learning occurs: the learning that stays with you years later.  And that learning can occur through random play, social interactions, or as Archimedes discovered whilst taking a bath or as Newton discovered sitting under an apple tree.  The shallow learning of facts for the sake of it however tend to fade because they are not backed by the ability or passion of wanting to learn those facts at that time.  And that is my main reason for home educating my children.  Passion:  the human right that every person has to learn something/anything when they are either ready and able and/or have a desire to do so.  And by ready and able, I mean when mental/physically/emotionally capable. 

My ds learnt to read because he was ready and able.  Once he realised that his brain could cope with deciphering the squiggles into words and that he had the vocabulary from all the bedtime stories my husband had read to him and all the conversations he had had, he started reading.  Just like that.  He was mentally capable.  If you meet him now a few months later you wouldn't know that he hasn't been reading since he was 5.  His passion for wanting to read and his capacity to do it led to him reading and he did it all himself which has given him a sense of worth that he would never have if he had been in school.  

My dd on the other hand has been reading since she was 5, again self-taught. Her brain could decipher squiggles but telling the time (which ds could do at age 4) was a different matter for her.  Numbers didn't make as much sense as letters to her when she was younger.  Her mental arithmetic and number skills have been learnt as part of life, through playing card games and going to the shop with her brother.  She recently learnt to tell the time because it helped her know when her school friends were getting home from school.  She found it difficult but persevered because she wanted to be able to do it and her passion saw her through. 

I am hoping that dd’s passion for reading and ds’s passion for computing and maths will help them when it comes time to get their English and Maths GCSEs (if that is still what they are by then.)  You may have realised that I don’t feel that those 2 subjects are any more important than others and in fact I feel that they are stunningly less important especially in the way they are taught at school.  My children will probably jump through those hoops and a lesson in pointless fact regurgitating will be learnt and I feel that is a shame.

This isn't what I thought I would write about when discussing home ed.  I thought I would be citing Ken Robinson videos and hack-schooling (I’ll add those at the bottom just in case you are interested LOL).  

Instead I would love for everyone to empower their children because they are amazing beings.  Those little babies that learnt to walk, talk, build towers, learn to use the toilet, etc. did so because they wanted to be like us.  They don’t need to be taught facts for the sake of learning them so that they can be tested and judged.  If we have to teach them anything then at least let’s teach them real stuff that will be useful all through their lives.  We have loads of creative, passionate, resourceful teachers out there and instead of using their talents we squash them into teaching abstracted subjects and learning is fast becoming synonymous with test passing.  Let’s set our children and teachers free to explore real subjects in a creative and stimulating way and let’s give teachers the freedom to know when a child is ready, willing and able to absorb those facts and adjust their role accordingly. 

So although I believe that all learning should be self-directed I thought I would put together a national curriculum just to show how things could be different if we had a government who actually wanted to adhere to their law about education being about an “education suitable to age, aptitude and ability”.

Anatomy and movement – I reckon everybody should know how their bodies work, how to move them correctly and look after them - breathing skills, meditation, swimming, climbing, cycling, etc.  Let's also give our children a healthy appreciation for how real bodies look, not photo-shopped bodies like here

Nutrition, cooking and sustainability – what we put in our bodies affects how they work, learning to make healthy meals from natural ingredients is vital to our survival.  Looking at where food comes from, learning to grow it, learning wild food foraging, learning about permaculture and other sustainable activities, etc.

Philosophy – the ability to form an argument and not take everything on face value is a vital skill.  So much of what is in the newspapers or that we are bombarded with via the TV needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.  Let’s give our children the skills to want to check the facts and not believe everything they are shown, told.  (Watch this video about one guys attack on the daily mail to see what our newspapers are really doing to us)

Mental arithmetic and financial skills – so you don’t get short-changed at a shop or fleeced by a loans company, knowing about how statistics really work and how they are skewed to serve many purposes would also be really useful. 

Empathy and non-violent communication (NVC) type skills – let’s teach our children to disassociate a person from their behaviour so that no-one is shamed and judged as bad because of the things they have done, forgiveness, acceptance of others, self-worth, etc.  Watch this video to see how prejudice really works, watch this one for how teachers have the power to affect how children perceive prejudice and watch this one to see how forgiveness can really change lives for the better.  

I am sure there are other important areas but these were just off the top of my head.  However subjects like history, geography, pure maths, applied maths, English literature, etc. can be left for those who are passionate about them.  

Here is one of the many brilliant Ken Robinson talks about education.  This one is extra brilliant because of the added animation.  Every one in the world should watch this video!!!

Schools kill Creativity, How to escape education's death valley and Bring on the Learning Revolution are his TED talks about learning and schooling.  Ken Robinson talks about diversity in education and notes (like I have above) that children, even born to the same parents, are different and so should be treated as such.  I cannot do justice to Ken's amazing ability to tell it like it is, in a funny but stunningly perceptive way.  If you cannot afford the time to watch all the talks above then at least watch his latest one How to escape education's death valley - "Children are natural learners and it is a real achievement to be able to stifle it."

Here are some interesting videos/pages and books about education:

Personalised Education Now

Teaching arts and sciences together
Hack Schooling makes me happy

How Children Fail by John Holt

How Children Learn  by John Holt
Teach Your Own by John Holt
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Pedagogy of the Opressed by Paulo Freire

There are loads of other great books out there and other brilliant blogs.  Just google 'unlearning', 'home education', 'deschooling' or get in touch if you would like more info.

Here is a poem I wrote about my issues with school and our testing culture in this country:

Human Experience is not a test
Can you assess my state of happiness?
Can you score it out of five?
Can you really pass or fail a test
That tells if you are truly alive?
Is joy a quantifiable trait?
Can you plot it on a graph?
Do you score a special funny point
Every time you laugh?
Is empathy a transferable skill?
Can others give feedback?
Telling you if there are any traits
In which they think you lack?
I don't think you can pass an exam
In love or contemplation
I don't think you can get an NVQ
In passion or in meditation
Hope cannot be learnt from a book
Grace cannot be easily taught
Peace cannot be summed up in lesson
Just because you think it ought
You cannot have a kindness target
That everyone must reach
The attainment of gentleness
Is not something you can teach
The fruits of spirit andsoul
Need space and time to grow
They cannot be cultivated in league tables
Or seen in "tell and show"
Spirit cannot be marked and scored
Even if you wanted to
Because human experience is not an exam
ONLY YOU can A* you

Poems

Compassion poem
1 September 2011

When you are heart-broken, turn and give the heart-broken love
When you are ill, turn and give the sick healing
When you are bereaved, turn and give those who have lost loved ones hope
When you feel off-kilter, turn and give the unbalanced steadiness
When you have lost your way, turn and bring those who are lost home
When you feel unworthy, turn and give those who feel unworthy your full attention
When you are in pain, turn and give those who hurt, wholeness
When you are lonely, turn and give those who are alone friendship
When you are tired, turn and give those who are tired a place to rest
When you feel drained, turn and give those who are weary energy
When you feel betrayed, turn and give the betrayer trust and forgiveness
When you feel bewildered, turn and give the confused faith
When you feel overwhelmed, turn and give the overwhelmed calmness
When you are at war, turn and give the warring peace
When you feel cold, turn and give warmth
When you feel anger, turn and give a hug
When you feel the tears roll down your face, turn and give a smile
When you feel trapped, turn and join those who are stuck in a dance
When you turn back you will realise you are not the same person you were before
Feel deeply, Give deeply
And from those depths, compassion flows
Through a river of tears and sadness, joy and laughter

Daughter (Zack, CK2 and Indie) poem

26 January 2011 at 19:02

A poem I wrote about my molar pregnancy miscarriage.  CK2 is the name I gave the baby because there could never have been a gender.  Indie is the daughter I had a year and a half after the miscarriage.  Zack is the boy I had 2 years before the miscarriage.

I look at you my sweetie, And there is a wall, That stops me from seeing, It is way too tall

Before you were born, There was another, A sister for Zack, Or maybe a brother

I want to hold you, But it's not comfortable, Like there's a ghost, So intangible

I watch you play, And there's an aura, Of a precious life, That came before you

I have to grieve, To really see you, I need to cry, To truly hold you

I feel great shame, About the other, Like it was my fault, Not a good enough mother

I dishonour you, I dishonour me, I dishonour my unborn, Who was not to be

So I need to grieve, To truly see, The wonder of you, Not my miscarried baby

It wasn't my fault, And it wasn't yours, You are a wondrous gift, Who I want to adore

So CK2, A painful blessing, Here's to you, For you I'm grieving

And in my crying, The mists are clearing, The walls come down, My pain is freeing

I see my daughter, Here soul so clear, Indiana Nova, My new one so dear

In honouring her, I honour the lost, And the pain I feel, Doesn't seem such a cost

There's a place in my heart, For all I hold dear, But now to the living, My daughter's right here

She needs to be seen, In her own way, Not as a shadow, Or as an echo of pain

So I grieve, I cry, Send CK2 a kiss, I see my dear Indie, As she truly is

Wobbly bits
15 January 2011

I love my hula hooping
It really is a joy
To class as exercise equipment
Something that is a toy

But when you first try to hula
Most people look quite weird
A bit like those old ladies
Who seem to have a beard!

There are those bits of you that wobble
Which you didn't know you had
And those parts of you you knew would move
That you woudn't show your Dad

It really is good exercise though
Do not get me wrong
But until you are an expert
Or can keep hulla-ing for quite long

I woudn't show a soul
Your hula hooping tricks
Not unless you want them to see
All your wobbling bits

It is best to hula in private
Unless you want a giggle
Or unless you are an exhibitionist
And want to show off your wiggle

But as exercising goes
It really is a laugh
Even if you look a sight
And really feel quite daft

I'm glad I found the sport of hooping
I enjoy the hula spinning
And maybe in the future
They won't be so much of me wobbling

Hands held high poem 
23 March 2010

Keep hoping, keep dreaming
Through your mist the sun is streaming
Keep crying, keep listening
Through rising mists your sun is glistening
Keep hugging, keep sharing
Keep striving, keep caring
Keep loving, keep growing
In the day-break our unknowing
Turns to beauty, skies so clear
In your heart - wishes held near
Don't lose hope, your friends are waiting
To hold you up if you are breaking
Your soul held high under the sun
With all the love it makes you one
Your soul reborn, your hands held high
Spread your wings and you can fly