For the last 7 years I have been a professional ‘serial retreater’ playing in many other worlds. These worlds were not entirely new to me yet I had never fully immersed myself in them. I have the freedom to be able to go, do and be in and with anything that interests me. I have surely done it all, been there, got the t-shirt, had so many experiences and met such amazing people.

Both of these decisions were turning points in my life. Both not premeditated; they were just an overriding feeling of ‘being bored now’, of being full up and ready for a major change in my life. I could not have foreseen what would happen in the years after leaving my career, the sudden death of my man of 40 years, my father dying as I am moving out of our family home of 21 years, and then moving down to the Jurassic Coast on my own. Here I have stayed playing in this place, and now? I don’t know what I’m doing here, what I am for, what is going to happen next? Yet I love it.

My decision to stop this time (or should I say pause) was taken as I am grounded in my own nest, not influenced by any other roles I play in anyone else’s life. I am not escaping, not rejecting, not trying to prove, not leaving any parts of myself behind and chasing something new.

This time I am ‘just’ loving myself, just loving life

This time loving each day I get to wake and play.

This time I’m loving unconditional all those that I get to share life with

This time I am on a spiral song line of my own natural design

This time I can just change my mind and create anything I wish with blind.

This time is mine, to be divinely guided by my nature, to come out and to fully shine.

Since saying no more retreats last June I have done 3 so far this year! Starting this New Year with a Winter Dreaming week-long retreat on the toe of Cornwall. Then later in January I was Rooting Deep Rising Strong on a weekend retreat on Dartmoor. Then late February on a 5 day retreat in Yorkshire called A Psyche the size of the world.

Oh and also this year ......

• Had a Mystical Memoir weekend online in February

• Completed a year long with a women’s group called ‘leave your coat on the shore’

• Participated in some Mothering the Bones sessions in Hampshire, with a retreat in Wales June

• Attended 2 Sundays of Death Wisdom as a part of a 6 months gathering round a kitchen table in Hampshire, with a retreat also in Wales July

• Started Storyscape - Singing ourselves Home online bi-weekly rooting in place sessions

• Finishing a 6 month online singing and dancing sessions called upper mouth lower mouth

• Singing with Candlelit Choir near Charmouth, and with the Expression Sessions in Bridport

• Continued with Wild Writing in Seaton

• Taking part in a series of monthly Constellations called Standing behind your ancestors near Taunton

• Monthly online Truth Club

• Womens Horse circles

Oh and ….

this last weekend started my 2 year DipM in ‘Equine assisted Constellations ‘ yep just for fun! I spend the weekend online (21 hours) of Family Systems and Orders of Love applied to our own blind constellations based upon our own Genograms.

Yep, that all in last weekend’s play, after having said no more, I changed my mind, because I can. When I’m asked what do you do? I answer anything I like. Now it’s all part of my Jurassic Coast playground, where I play with all parts of my life, with humans and other kin folk including the more than human.

Oh and ……

this is the last post of a 21 day Writing Challenge. This is my 4th year and 1st of publishing on substack outside of Mighty Networks. My theme this year is The Art of Surrender and what I have noticed is the more resistance I have to surrendering, the more I suffer. So its taken a few years to formulate this equation and whilst I’m not sure I’ll ever say I’ve mastered it, I am increasing my awareness and taking responsibility for surrendering to it faster.

🦊

I have no idea when I finally surrendered to something far larger than me but also that has been within me all my life.

Something in the way she moves like no other lover🎵 Why did that song just come into my head? Must have been something she said🎵 Oh there she goes again singing fragments of songs, rhyming and making it up as I go along. Yes ! Now I know this is one of my many creative ways of accessing not just a part of me, but the infinite potentiality, far more than possibilities, its something I create into practicalities, then into matter, if I choose.

Then I hear the voice ‘ how can you say that?’

Well firstly, because I did, secondly because I have all my life. I have chosen what I want to do and have done it. Yes there have been spells that I’ve cast upon myself like signing up for the Royal Air Force at 16 to ‘Travel and see the World’s, a successful career in IT , I know hard to believe when you meet me now, maybe even then? Many other ‘ contracts’ know and unknown I have entered into and left when I got bored.

So why all this second guessing myself, why the need for confirmation from others that I am living my best life?

Why indeed?

Why because I said so, because I no longer need to please anyone else except myself.

Ohh how selfish of you!

Yep that me and what’s more I proud of it. Yet I still haven’t mastered The Art of Surrender to myself ? Why do I have to try, to prove, to push myself to do?

This week I started a 2 year DipM in wait for it ….. ‘Equine assisted Constellations’. Why I ask myself? I can find no logical reason other than because I can, because I feel such a full bodily release when a horse agrees to play in a way that can’t be explained. To play in this field of knowing, without knowing, go figure.

We have started with mapping our families, opening up to see a fresh perspective on the system that without each of the members we would not exist. Enquiring within our stories using the frames of ‘The Family System and ‘The Orders of Love’ and to answer some questions for ourselves.

Each family and stories different, yet the same universal truths. I have surrendered so many imprinted stories and realised how much I was type casting others and therefore myself. If I judge, reject or make wrong another then I am doing that to myself.

Now reading that back it sounds a bit ‘Kumbaya’, yet it feels so freeing and honouring the parts we all play in our family system.

So mastering ‘The Art of Surrender’ is about surrendering to myself. Its an ongoing enquiry and evolution of ‘who I think I am’? Who am I in relation to those I love and those I honour for my gift of this life in the body

Yet you’re not physically here with me now. You would have loved our life down by the coast. Not hot like the Dar es Salaam beaches you were brought up on, yet the freedom of these beaches to roam, to fish and play any time.

I know you are with me when I go to these places as I talk to you, as I walk with you, as I remember your presence on the many beaches we have walked together.

There I was at Hawkwood College just outside of Stroud attending my first residential retreat with Chloe Goodchild in October 2018. A woman who I had come across on the Shift Network, here she was at what was to become my half way home as I made my way down to live on the Jurassic Coast.

Since I can remember I have loved to sing, in fact my mother said I could sing words to the Beatles song before I could speak them. I sang along to many songs, in many choirs and open mics. I even had a vocal coach, yet I always sang along to another’s song, words, score, arrangement.

It was so liberating to make sounds to a sanskrit scale (like doe, ray me) to free my voice and ground it in my body. Before I had ‘ performed’ now I was playfully learning the sound of my soul. Then came something that I now know by many names and yet none of them are in and of themselves adequate to express what came out of me. The form was called Triads, three of us taking turns, as protector, witness and for want of a better word the sounder. It was just over two years since my husband had suddenly died. I settled in, closed my eyes and started, slowly and softly at first and then the flood gates opened. One of the women who I am still in contact with now said she’d never heard anything quite like it …ranging from an Operatic Wailing to a Screaming Banshee and an Angelic symphony.

Since this first release of my ‘Naked Voice’ I have had many more experiences with Chloe, and others and then with a form called Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) with Briony Greenhill. With CVI I have embodied my full range of musicality enabling me to spontaneously combust or bust out into a vibe. This past Sunday I sounded at a Grief Ritual that was held as a part of a six month Death Wisdom course. Last week I sounded to the trees, river and land on a retreat with Sharon Blackie about : A Psyche the Size of Earth’. Hosted and held at Broughton Hall and Sanctuary on the Yorkshire Dales with 60 women with at least a third of them travelling over from the US. I improvised as inspired by the discussion on the first day singing Aquarius ( dawning of the age of) and many other impromptu moments, often accompanied by others in voice, moves and laughter.

It feels like that first Triad released my Genie from her bottle and now I’ve thrown away the screw stopper. No more will I confine myself to singing off a hymn sheet even if everyone is singing from the same one. Nope I’m out of that echo chamber. I’m more of a medley of mash ups of musical modalities, more of a whispering, wailing, clicking, clucking, shhhhy and just mucking about kinda vocal sounding impressionist. A resounding anything goes kinda resonance.

I also know my 7 years worth of journals are full of song lyrics, so now I’m patiently preparing for my pop up band to show up so we can improvise with everyone’s gifts, flash mob, troubadours, rapping and moving to a unique vibe, each of us in their own divine time, oh how sublime, just let the sunshine in..

I have noticed that having done ‘21 songs of Surrender in December’ and now this is day 17 or said 21 , that while I am using the word more, I am questioning who, what, why, when and of course how ? Couldn’t ‘they’ have thought up with another W for how?

Anyway, that was a side step distraction to avoid getting into full interaction with the questions that I’ve posed myself.

Starting with who am I surrendering to? Answer : Myself.

What am I surrendering ? Answer: Everything I thought and held myself to be.

Why? Answer: I can no longer pretend and carry the weight of all these personas. I am ready as I’ll ever be to step out from the mist of who I was, and into the light of the new me.

When? Now.

How? Just by being me naturally, being curious, cheeky, questioning, singing of course. Playing with all the seriousness that I would get stuck in and now shaking it off. Moving in places when being invited to sit, yet making sure I am taking care of myself first, and of course doing what I want to do.

Feels like I’ve just fleshed out a ‘Manifesto for Surrender’, maybe a mantra and of course my melody, mapping the ‘songlines’ of my new life.

So ‘My Art of Surrender’ is for myself, it’s each and every day, in multiple ways, multiple media, multiple layers of the seen and unseen, the sung and unsung.

Giving voice and presence to the space that I create for myself and any that are in my field, to feel and allow more to be revealed.

Good Morning

Good Night

Last June after seven years of serial retreating I said okay I'm done, finished. I was for the remaining 6 months of 2025, then this year I have done 3 retreats, each seam to have woven into each other. I mean really what more could I be grateful for, I have everything I need in my life and more. Now I am ready to step out and move slowly towards what I want. 🎵 Tell me what you want what you really really want.

The answer… I don't know… yet I will when I see it. So just for today I will be grateful for another day, that I get to play in anyway I choose, no win or lose just choose. And I do choose to be grateful for my health, wealth of abundance and the stealth of my resilience to keep going, to keep a open heart and mind, and to slow down even when I think I couldn't go any slower, I do. Unless that is my creative impulse is raring to go and then I flow, with a attitude of gratitude.

Mother, Grandmother, Great Grandmother, yes you what happened to you? All I know of you is when you died and how your body was going to be disposed of, as shown on a notification slip of paper within my mothers papers.

So I asked to be shown in a constellation of my maternal line as represented by four women and saucepans. I placed each of the all four women one at a time in a semi circle , mine said she felt indifferent, my mother went straight down on the floor and curled inwards like a Tortoise , my grandmother stood looking away, and the same with my great grandmother representative she also looked away from the the rest. Each was asked if they were aware of who was next to them, could they they look at them, and what they were feeling? Only my great grandmother showed some interest in the women who was representing me. Then I placed the smallest of saucepans in the spiral next to my Great Grandmother and she reported that she didn’t want to be near it.

Each of these women in my maternal line were showing discomfort, disinterest and disconnection not only to each other but to themselves. I then placed the ever increasing in size pans into the spiral with a large stainless steel bowl in the centre. I stood down the women representing my Mother and placed a tea pot on the orange blanket she had been on. She offered to play the Sacred Witness , she walked the spiral and noticed what energy she was sensing. When she got to the centre, she stood over the large bowl and looked down into it. She all of a sudden kicked off her slippers and stood in it! I laughed and then even harder when she got out of it and put the bowl on her head.

This energetic representation of my maternal line showed me my great grandmother was 6 pans away from the source of true fun, freedom and love. Each pan had gotten smaller in capacity to hold what had happened to them, as a result of poverty, wars and loss. Most of all loss of the capacity to love.

After I had surrendered to a Gorse bush that I’d asked to represent my Mother, I stood up with tears clearing my eyes, to be greeted in my groin by the muzzel of a male Cob. This gentle black and white giant represented my husband as he had done for my daughter. This alone gave rise to another wave of emotions that are so multilayered that this simple gentle touch is still revealing to me.

I was asking ‘Six Geldings and a Gorse bush’ to constellate my mother and daughter relationships. My mother died in 2021, my daughter had come to meet these big beautiful boys on this ancient land a month before. I brought her and her husband to meet the women who has changed my life. I had manifested her and this most sacred work to be just 20 mins along the coast to me.

Back to the ‘show’ as it began to unravel with these two massive releases, the effect rippled across the field. The pony that was representing my daughter had moved from being by her father, over towards the horse that was representing me. I had asked this brown and white painted horse to play me as he had moved to the furthest fence and turned away from the scene. Both my daughter’s pony and my horse begin to move towards each other and graze at a distance, yet still connected. Next two more joined suddenly appearing from off stage, the black ex race taking up the furthest position in line with the red ex dressage horse in line with the Cob. So in the line up we had at the further distance to the gorse bush… my father played by the black ex-race horse , then my son-in-law played by Red, who had already been type cast, and my husband also type cast played he the black and white cob still stood next to my prickly mother.

So who was the largest of the herd playing? This black shire horse cob who had taken up his position grazing between mother and daughter? What was his stage name ?

Then it happened….. my horse laid down and then my daughter’s pony followed. Then the black shire horse lifted his head and moved towards me, no longer a block between mother and daughter, more of a guard,a protector and grounder for us both. He formed a triangle triad.

I was completely overwhelmed as now I knew he was representing my masculine energy. This force that has driven me throughout my whole life, both enabling me to ‘succeed’ and yet blocking me from being about to receive. He represented my protection, my armour and defence against the ‘dark arts’. That heaviness that I was carrying that was preventing me from stepping fully into my own light.

The wave of awe at this completely improvised cosmically choreographed scene that was laying out in front of me, was beyond words. Only now can I begin to express something so profound, so beyond human understanding. Yet my family’s energetic connections were being storied in front of me through these most sacred big heartted beings. Right here on these ancient lands that hold so many stories, and this most wonderful human that facilitated this experience for me.

The place of ammonite slabs of pavement , of sudden slides of rock revealing the hidden treasures in the storms, the mud floods of the land escaping to the sea. The sea reclaiming the debris of the place that I came to settle, the place where the real me, the true Fox, could just be free, naturally, and go timidly feral. This place where I could witness my landslide and surrender to forces of nature. This place you can’t fail to see the ever-changing scapes of land, sea and sky, the place I can no longer deny that I tried to escape to and not get stuck in the story on land, in the shifting sands and tides. Here I am cleansed by the lapping tides, by the crashing storms, by the mists in the twilight zone I call my home. Here where I release even more of me. A place that can hold me, as I balance precariously, to be able to reshape resize and remember who I am meant to be

For now I know this is the place, this is where I am meant to regrow to release all of the debris, all of the things I thought were my story , my history, my geology . Yes I am the landscape that is slipping and sliding in a landslide down to the sea. I came here to be with my ancient rock family, here held in the mist, here to be held in the vastness of the dark night skies, here in this liminal spaces between the sea, sky and rock, here in this place where I am meant to be in between stories

Inside me are vast hot dusty savannahs , with slow moving shapes on the horizon, at dusk they team with life with abundance and flourish at the water holes. As the smell of the heat settles and the sun sets, begins the night sounds and the eyes glowing in the dark

Inside me are the vast oceans of possibilities of the endless seas and infinite horizons of exotic stories of magic and mystery. They ask me to heed the call , to respond with sounds, to come and see for myself

This is my place of my resurrection song, the lyrics and song lines of my life. Here where I’m often asked are you an artist? I reply no, I don’t identify as being an artist. Although I suspect I may have an artist in residency within me .

I am weaving a new tapestry of my life I am exposing gold seams within my anatomy .I am releasing my treasures and cleansing them into the sea. Only taking those that remind me of the threads I can gentle weave anew.

I am the spirit of the places of the ‘scapes’ of the archetypes, the animals and the more than human. I am continuously shifting with the sand, with the tides, with the cliffs and rock faces that are continuously crumbling. as my sense of intention and of direction bought me down to the sea.

This is my greatest art of surrender as I slip into the landslide of life. As I crumble and humble in this place, I am deepening into this place of possibilities of belonging, of the rootedness within this season of my life.

I am paying attention each moment, giving my focus and then looking out at the infinite horizon, wide angle lens ,360 degree birds eye view. For I can fly high up in the sky and watch the sun lines below see the patterns see the movement of the energy lines just tracking the urine trails of a mouse then I can zoom out and pan The infinite potentiality of the cosmos as I merge and fly further into the sky of my imagination, or is it I am noticing The subtle shifts of the stuff of the shit that is happening, I am noticing as I am in motion .I am observing who I think I am and then playing with the people and the places and the paths are calling me to explore explore more rather than to ignore as I have done so many times before

Inside me are the inf are the songbirds that flitter and flutter and suggest something that I can’t see as I sit with my favourite tree and listen to what’s underneath me to what’s around me and follow the mystery within me follow the flow of what I know I bones

For I am the multitudes of ‘scapes’ those I have lived in, travelled through and to, and those I have flown over

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’, ‘Cause I’ve built my life around you, But time makes you bolder. Even children get older, And I’m gettin’ older, too….. the landslide brought me down.

I remember people saying to me you never experienced this type of love until you have grandchildren and now I understand what they meant. I get to play with them in a way that re-childs me, with awe and wonder, surprise and delight at experiencing life with these beautiful little beings. With them I have re-childed myself and I am able to completely surrender to the joy of being in each moment and loving them just as they are.

Now I get to play in new ways where my only limitations are the stories I tell myself, oh I’m too much, too noisy, too bossy, too boisterous……. yer right. Well guess what now I’m too joyous, too songful, too Fox, yep that’s me. I love me, all of me, even those parts of me that I was told were too much. For now I get to play with all of my child, that one that’s been within me my whole life, that’s been waiting for me to be free to play and I am here, joyfully foxy me.

Then I remembered the night before I had massaged coconut oil on this particular dry spot on his thinning hair as we lay in bed. Just an ordinary end of day and all was well.

The last time I had touched him, was earlier that morning, whilst trying to keep him alive, and I wasn’t being tender and gentle with him then. Now here he was, well, here was his body, it was cold and lifeless and he wasn’t in it.

I can only now feel these sensations, my throat is tight, my nose congested, and tears streaming down my face. As I sit back, relax my shoulders and take slow, steady breaths, I feel him with me, I hear him saving ‘stay with it Deb breath’. I feel the joy of still being here in my body. Of being able to feel the sensation ride like waves through my body, and relax into them and be fully in my body.

Each time I gently surrender to myself, to the full emotion of that total wipe out of a tsunami that hit me, my family and friends

Each time I soften gently allowing memories that are stuck in my body to take me, to just feel all that wants to be held by me. To sit gratefully with each breath and let it wash over me.

I had put my armour on, barricaded myself into my isolation of being on my own, of not needing any help or being able to ask for it. Woe betide anyone who offered me sympathy, advice or told me about what they went through when some died. Even though I had everyone around me, wanting to hold me and be held by me, I just could not allow it. I must have thought it would be too much to show my grief and vulnerability, for I am the brave one, the one who was here to save everyone, so I put my big pants on.

The Art of Surrender

Whilst I ‘think’ I am not one for beating around the bush, rather I am the one who takes the bull by the horns and who will call something out when it’s not right. I have developed such marvelous strategies for avoiding, deflecting and not really showing my real feelings yet calling it out in others.

It’s quite a complex web, layers upon layers upon layers, what I’m supposed to say, how I’m supposed to act, what I’m supposed to show and not to show and all of that sorta clippity clapidy claptrap

Ok now I’m getting somewhere, the first play I was in was called ‘where angels fear to tread’. I babysat for a couple down the road who used to go every Thursday night to amateur dramatics and they asked to play Erma. I said yes I’d love to, without a second thought. It was a small part yet a large part for me considering at age 14 I’d never acted, well on a stage at least. Here in my only scene I would run on stage, with my hair in Victorian ringlets, a smock over a dress and ask my Grandmother what was going on, I even got to cry.

Yes, what’s going on?

Four years earlier at age 10 my mother told me, in between deep drags on her fag ‘your father is not my father’ and if that wasn’t shock enough I wasn’t able to tell anybody. I had started my periods, was in my 1st year at senior school, even been to my first disco, I was coming into my own maiden and was shut down.

Knowing what I know now about rites of passages and honouring myself, I was forced to collapse into a story of shame not only that my mother had laid on me, also as I have found out my grandmother’s going back many generations.

I realise now when I look back that this was huge for me, not to be seen, to be heard and witnessed as myself , the thing that I wanted most deep down. This desire of mine to be seen and heard on or off stage, to speak my truth, tell my stories, sing my songs publicly, and take my place in the world.

I remember going to the most amazing presentation training session that was videoed. This eccentric woman ran these sessions in a flat with a boardroom in Westminster. She used to train politicians to be able to speak to the cameras in the House of Commons when they put the cameras in.

With all the preparations covered, like the way we looked, the way we held ourselves buttoned up and unbuttoned, pause and emphasis, looked at the camera, didn’t look at the camera, looked at the audience and over their head, all the skills, tricks and techniques and then something that I had never done, get up in front of the camera. I felt very vulnerable, shut down doing enough to complete on time and cover the content.

Then came the watching and feedback. The very posh lady said ‘come here my dear sit next to me’ as we watched my presentation. I was horrified as I looked at this person up there on the screen who was not the woman I thought she was. Then she said to me ‘now my dear what happened?’ Looking quizzically into my eyes which I could barely keep open, she said ‘you are such a bright light, so vibrant and chatty, full of personality and then as soon as you got up there you disappeared, and frankly my dear it was boring!’ Yes that’s what she said to me, and yes she was so right.

I think back now there were other times when I was public speaking I really wasn’t giving my full self, I was always holding back, I was better when I was acting, when I was able to be somebody else.

I have learned to play my parts or roles in my life, how to put on the uniform, business suit, and many roles that have contained, constrained and constricted me. Now in my Sage Essence I have been able to step out into my fool expression of myself.

The irony is that I now don’t have a stage that I’m playing on. Now I am not employed, a widow, not the mother of young ones, not at the heart of a community, an extended family and a social life.

Yet I am ready to be me, all of me, unashamedly, all of messy me. For I have no fear as I know this is why I came here.

The Art of Surrender

This ‘no smoking’ sign is from the chapel, now the only remaining building from the site of the abandoned mental hospital that my grandmother was taken to, following the aftermath of post war London and was never able to return to her family.

She, my Mother was born in London 1937, her mother (my grandmother) was a strict Methodist, her father a Union man. She was the youngest with an elder brother and sister. During the war, she aged 6 was put on a train from London and evacuated to Exmouth. Returning to the stress of post blitz bombing in London, broken families, poverty and her mother’s episodes of ‘madness’ . With many times being carted off to the Looney Bin (oooh that one just flew in from the cuckoo’s nest), taken away to ’hospital’ or who knows where to be ‘subdued’ for her own safety.

My grandmother suffered many losses, her son drowned in the river Thames, she lost a baby and had a baby boy after the war late in her life, and was in a loveless marriage. I now know she came from a family where drunken abuse was just the way it was. Probably why she took the pledge and never drank alcohol, and relied on the Methodist church teachings to keep her on the straight and narrow.

One day she had gone to the coal shed and got locked in, her baby was heard crying outside alone in his pram, and she was found having a psychotic breakdown. Who wouldn’t! Perhaps nowadays we would label this in many kinder ways, with compassion at the heart of it. That’s what they did in those days they ‘took her away’ and locked her up for her own good.

My mother was no longer the youngest of 3. She was the middle child, left again without her mother, to take care of her brother, to take over the home responsibilities while her father and sister went to work.

My grandfather was a very stern man, he wasn’t at all loving, and I always remember him telling me off and trying to control me ( don’t know where that came from). He remarried when my mother was in her teens, and later my mother used to tell me that her step mother ‘Nana’ was a silly woman.

When my grandmother was eventually ‘released’ she had no home to go to. She went into what was called an old age people’s home. She cleaned in exchange for a room and food. I remember she came once for Christmas, cried at the Queen’s speech, took her presents straight to her room with her belongings and I thought that this was strange, now I understand.

My grandmother had been taken to Cain Hill Mental Hospital, which was renamed within a London Borough. Originally named Cain Hill, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, it opened in 1882. It was a grand building on top of the hill with amazing views, a place for those of a certain social standing, where madness runs in the family (probably due to inbreeding) or deemed worthy of such care. The records show it took in soldiers from the first world war. All the buildings save the chapel were demolished in 2008 after having been abandoned for 20 years. They had become a fascination , because although derelict and suffered from multiple fires. It was still furnished, with chairs, tables, even beds and bedding on them. Made me hear that David Gray song with the lyrics ‘bedlam reigns, hope is drowned’. It had been abandoned for some 20 years after they locked the doors and left.

My mother always used to say to me that she didn’t know how to be a mother because she didn’t have one. She suffered all her life from a neurosis that manifested into so many operations, dependency on the drug dealers, ooops I mean doctors and the nurses that would visit to dress her ulcerated legs. Just as they used to do in World War One, except now they use charcoal or manuka honey pads! It’s a big business now and my mother got her money’s worth. She showed her affection by knitting us jumpers and my children. She did her best and yet deep down she harboured this anger and resentment.

It was not only hers, it was my grandmothers and my great-grandmothers, and as I have recently found out my maternal line goes back 7 generations before I could locate any sense of joy and open hearted love. Funny that. Why wouldn’t these women, and those before be angry, be broken as they are the ones that had to carry everything.

I always used to say to my husband when he was moaning about whatever he had to do ‘.... ‘oh what’s that I can smell, oh yes it’s the smell of burning martyr’. Funny now looking back at that because now I know somewhere deep in my bones that saying is based upon our collective lived experience.

No matter how much I distract , suppress, ignore, numb, the fact of the matter remains deep within my bones, within my ancestry, there is a huge amount of justified anger. Of hurt, betrayal and suffering at the hands of ‘fate’. Of those fateful times where universal things were happening to all people. Whether we were the oppressors or being oppressed, the colonizers or having been colonized, the victims or the perpetrators these acts of violence against each other. Based upon inbred fear, suppressed rage and anger, these shadows have to be witnessed. To be held with compassion and transmuted through us, those of us who are here now and are able to face these fears, these hungry ghosts. Allowing these energies to rest, to release and return to compost. To seed new growth, to nurture new beginnings and bless the endings that have enabled us to be here now.

The only smell of smoke I have now is from my wood burner and the occasional sage, oh how very Hippie and New Age.

Today I tried just noodling with some fragments of thoughts, images and of course songs ….

A sort of warming up my creative vocal cords …..expanding my mind…. micro dosing and see what flows. …..allowing what bubbles up from my flooded tundra and following what’s alive.

The spider web is a perfect image for this, as it’s not perfect, can be broken very easily, and yet still functions. With multiple connection points, within the form and in relation to its environment. It’s resilient, able to withstand changes, and reshape with what’s available.

I will leave it there, I could recall some story to demonstrate this, but it’s late and time for me to go to bed (said Zeberdee bongggg) so nite nite don’t let the bed bugs bite

Try (the 1st barrier to entry) as I might to delve into a specific felt sense and a specific memory my whole being feels ‘discombobulated….. A word that not only has appeared here also with actual peeps that I meet. It rings some sort of bell for which according to one source word arriving in the 1950’s and taking off at an exponential rate in 2020 and beyond, with no apparent traceable language root…… hmmm I wonder why ?

discombobulate (third-person singular simple present discombobulates, present participle

discombobulating, simple past and past participle discombobulated)

(transitive, humorous)

To throw into a state of confusion; to befuddle or perplex.

Loving the reference to verbs such as Humorous and Befuddled, and alternative forms

discomboberate, discombulate, discombobricate, discombooberate……..

Meaning: To confuse, perplex, or throw into disarray.

Usage: It is generally used in the form "discombooberated" (past tense/adjective) to describe a state of being.

Context: It appeared in early 20th-century American usage, often appearing in slang or dialectal, humorous contexts.

Origins: Similar to discombobulate (which surfaced around 1825–1834), it is likely a made-up word, possibly blending "discomfort" and "discompose".

Variants: Other variations include discombobracate, discombobelate, and discomboomerate.

Wow what a head fuck! Just one word and look what it churns up, whilst I am finding it amusing and frankly could ferret for further distraction, I am actively avoiding interaction with the prompt……

I Artfoolly Surrender and own up to what I have lost (maybe permanently?) that which is the ability to try (that word again) and make connections with stories that have become unstuck and are composting nicely in the muck.

Yep I have no truck, well actually I do have a truck it’s a 3 Door Rav4. Its been amazing on these Devonshire country potholed lanes that are springing up as rivers to go where the water wants to go. To show us how to let go and shift that sheer rock down the cliffs into the sea.

Yep that’s me, shifting sand, shifting land, shifting sounds

This sensation that words are inadequate for, so whilst I may use common parlance for said phenomena it is not what the labels would point us to conclude. I’m feeling like a dancing bear coming out of hibernation, slowly stirring and shifting around on the ground. It’s deliberate as I am sensing something that my ‘ Brian‘ wants to keep me safe. Bless him, Brian (my dyslexic handle for the brain) woke up that Monday morning and came straight online, over thinking, without pausing for breath or even blinking, he thought he was back in charge. He thought he had to be the one on his own who had to do all the heavy lifting, trying to figure out what to say, how to work it out, and be responsible for everyone around him and then he’d be safe.

‘Hey there’ said my soft animal body. ‘It’s ok you don’t have to play that way, we are all here with you, breathe’. But Brian wasn’t listening, in fact he was so hyper focused on getting it done that once again my body supported by my whole being had to gently intervene, to get his attention.

The sensation started in the centre of my chest, between my boobs, well to be precise a little higher as gravity is holding them lower these days. The phrase heartburn comes to mind and another physical feeling of heart break, like a heart opening as if inviting for me to breathe slowly deep into my belly and relax with a long sighing exhale.

I sat at the french doors, watching the birds, with a cup of hot lemon water and ‘calmed my farm’ and heard my man say ‘stay with it Deb, breath’. Then I said to myself as I looked around , ‘you’ve got this and we’ve got you’ .

After my husband died suddenly from a so-called ‘heart attack’ even though I was with him, no one asked me what I witnessed and held in his last breath. My son was getting married a month later, daughter returning for her final year at Uni, I had the death business to deal with and a house to sell. Now I see I was holding on for dear life to all of the external world for what I feared was feeling all of the shock and pain.

Three months later I was having a G&T with my newly married son and his wife. They sat watching TV , whilst I was away from them in my wingchair. I felt a burning sensation in the centre of my chest and it was moving upwards, I then felt it in my throat and jaw begin to spasm. I began to panic as I remembered how the symptoms of having a ‘heart fart’ (Myocardial Infarction) were different for a woman. I now remember going into a dream-like state to avoid feeling and leaving my body to ‘watch the scene’ from above.

Last Monday I not only managed to stay in my body, I also told Brian its ok we’ve got this, look around you can come off high alert, I’m not going to abandon you, we are going to breath through this together, dance and sing and move it through, and then I duly did a big poo! Yay we moved it through! Yes like animals do, get the signal, react or respond and then shake it off, often with noise and bowel movement.

What I have learnt is pain and suffering are inevitable as is death, or are they ? They are all stories we are born into, they have been perpetuated by the stories of modernity and so called technological advancements. Yet ultimately we get to choose which ones we tell ourselves, which ones we inhabit, which ones we move through without getting attached to.

I hereby declare to my whole-self, thereby including all else that I am connecting to, all in relationship with and all I am allowing to flow through. I am continually changing my point of view, not getting attached to and / or noticing when I do, to any story that inhibits me from truly surrendering in a Artfool Fox way of play to what is right here, right now with me.

This is the The Art of Surrendering and its a moment by moment reflex, yes I can introspective yet never again will I neglect my true whole embodied wisdom.

Yes I am wise but it’s Wisdom through the pain yes I’ve paid the price but look how much I’ve gained I am strong I’m invincible I am a woman, wooman I am women. Thank you Helen and yes I am Ready, Ready to Rise, What a Surprise I Rise, from the slumber of these modern yet ancient times, cause I like to rhymes

I was only little yet I knew that something wasn’t what it seemed, like I knew what was what and so did my Mum, yet what I was hearing her say, didn’t match. I could try to put it into words now with the benefit of much navel and star gazing, yet even then it would lose its truth, words alone are too limited a palate.

I remember…. when I was at junior school I had come to realise (truth alert) that there wasn’t a Father Christmas bringing me present, as shown in quote from my 21 Songs of Surrender in December here. I also learnt even if something wasn’t true and I said so, that I’d get into trouble.

All of my life I have been able to read a room, hear the discord and feel the dissonance of any situation with people who are not in alignment with their truth. Having sat in many corporate ‘Bored Rooms’ with my big girl pants on, I’ve been dumbfounded by what I was hearing and witnessing, beyond words and beyond belief.

In my early and school years I had no choice but to fit in, I suppose in truth I chosen to do this in all aspects of my life since then. This has enabled me ‘to travel and see the world ‘ in the Royal Airforce and beyond. To have had a successful career in the IT Industry. To have had a man for 40 years by my side, who was also a house husband for our two now grown up kids with babies of their own. So upon reflection I have chosen not to call out the mismatch between what I’m hearing and what I am feeling with all my senses, for the sake of keeping the peace.

Fast forward to ‘The Corvid Tales’ I heard it, felt it and smelt it big time, my response… NO.

Yes, that’s a complete sentence, its present, past and future tense.

I stood my ground, walked my talk and spoke my truth, still do to this day, no going back this genie is out of her bottle. I’ve opened Pandora’s box and with the help of my ancestors I’m clearing my maternal line big time.

I’ve always had 2020 Vision, don’t have a television, don’t listen or watch any of the propaganda. I can see right through it, after all both strategic and scenario planning were my bag. I’ve seen, sold and used all the tools, the tricks of the trade as well as designed the ‘roadmaps’ for adoption by the people, of the processes and technology used to integrate and implement all of these global systems.

Here’s the thing, if Technology and that guy AL concern you, then don’t be, why?

None of them are real, they are not alive, they don’t work if we don’t feed the machine.

These systems of record, of engagement, of compliance are an invitation to provide our information, our real life energy and attention, in exchange for something, so even if it’s ‘free’ … think twice is my only advice …..

… I remember when
I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
Hmm

… And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much, hm

… Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly

… And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that’s my only advice, mm
Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you
Who do you think you are?
Ha-ha-ha, bless your soul
You really think you’re in control, well

… I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
Just like me

… My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on the limb
And all I remember is thinking “I want to be like them”

… Ever since I was little
Ever since I was little, it looked like fun
And it’s no coincidence I’ve come
And I can die when I’m done

… But maybe I’m crazy
Maybe you’re crazy
Maybe we’re crazy
Probably

… Whoo-ooh-whoo
Whoo-ooh
Whoo-hmm-mm

The Art of Surrender

When stationed in Germany I’d love to have ‘Bratwurst mit pommes frites mit mayonnaise’ after a few beers, probably for the same sensation of soaking up fluids and filling me up. Needless to say (although it appears I’m going to), I left Germany a little chunkier than I’d arrived. I soon slimmed down after demob and moved into a far more wild and adventurous diet and way of living and working in Kenya.

Many years later back in blighty, married to a man that said he didn’t want anything to do with a ‘Brit Chicks or even worse WRAFs’ , He also used to say what is it with you Brits, and your cuppa’ teas, Footy and Fish & Chip? The irony of it makes me smile cause I never liked any of those ‘Brit things’ and in the end he loved them. Go figure?

He had his favourite chippy, he would love to go on a Friday night, yes even that old cliche. He queued with all the Brits, whilst ‘giving them a good working’ in other words taking the piss. This was a family business run by Greek Cypriots and I know they loved him coming in as he was that sorta man that made everyone feel seen.

Fish and Chips became my go to after coming through cluster migraines, maybe it was that stodgy crispness and filling up my empty system. These bouts increased the more I took prescription drugs to enable me to function, they would or so I thought be able to stop my body from my often violent sickness at both ends. Once that was clear I’d surface, drugged up not to feel anything from the neck up. Then to enable me to move I’d fuel up on stodge and caffeine to carry on regardless of what my body was telling me.

Even after I’d quit my corporate career , taken a gap year or as it turns out a gap life, I was still not addressing the underlying issues . My body was screaming at me and I was silencing it, overriding it and whilst I was reducing the contributing factors of stress I was still caught up in all the roles and parts I was playing. A consequence of ‘ having it all ‘ and believing I had to do it all.

I’ve just looked up the drug;’ Triptans are a class of medications that treat migraines by changing how blood circulates in your brain and how your brain processes pain signals.’

The side effects of Triptans and my patterns are confirmation that this drug was contributing to this cycle of tricking my brain, and that something was going to have to change. I was trying to get ahead of it.

I was having another bout of ‘I’ve got a head’ in August 2016, the day after having our first viewing of ‘The Boma’ our family home. That morning when discussing how we’d both slept, Gary said that he had had a rough night as well.

We were selling to downsize to the Jurrassic Coast. I needed to be by the sea away from as much of the toxins that living in a rural village, surrounded by sprayed crops, the trapped weather patterns you get from living in a valley in the middle of country.

By the evening I said ‘I don’t feel like cooking do you want to get some Fish & Chips?’. He was chuffed as it was a Tuesday, he duly went to fetch one portion. I then split between us, this was our ritual as a whole portion each was too much for us, so we’d share.

That would turn out to be our last supper.

Now I’m down on the Jurassic Coast on my own, I get a child’s portion, often taking it to the beach and feel grateful to be here now, eating with my fingers out of the branded packing, no newspaper, no drugs, no migraines or other pains, as I’m listening to my body and she’s happy.

The Art of Surrender

A few years ago (who knows and cares) I was accused by my daughter of ‘gaslighting’ her. Of course I replied indignantly ‘no I’m not’! Later I checked on the meaning of said lamp lighting, and realised maybe she had a point. Just like all the other labels that she has so beautifully offered me, which I denied point blank, then after checking I realised I could own a part of them all. In fact if I was still a Girl Guide I could collect badges for them all.

Now the term ‘gaslighting’ has very deep and dark roots at societal and systematic levels, and for me is based on avoidance of worry and pain. So to be clear my resonance with this ‘Pop Psych’ is more to do with convincing myself of something, and then acting as if that is the only way through. So in effect I have been ‘lamp lighting’ myself most of my life to avoid feeling worried.

I could point to specific milestones in my life to illustrate this however it’s only day 3 and I feel that’s enough self flagellation for today. What I will say is this; I have an honorary doctorate or hard earned PHD in ‘Positivism’ without which I would not be here now, and of course I didn’t get to where I got without wearing big ‘Knicks’.

So for now you’ll find me singing along to the song-lines of my life. Singing this is my message for you, don’t worry about a ting every ting is going be alright …

Yes I am a lamplighter of a different type, one that can ignite a flame into a fire as fuel for passions and desire, to DebLight and inspire, come on baby light YOUR fire.

The Art of Surrender

Yet as I reflect this way the only way I remember I could make a sound without being silenced, for now I know that it wasn’t safe for me to cry, to make noise or to be a burden.

Now I realise that the only time my sound was welcome was when I was singing along to music, and even then if I hit a bum note or got the words wrong I was ridiculed.

My mother used to take me on my birthday to see a film at the cinema at Westcliff-on-Sea, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Camelot with Richard Harris as Arthur and Paint your Wagon, yes all musicals even Camelot.

Later I would listen to songs on the radio and try to ‘tape them’ before the jingle or the DJ talked over it. I’d save my pocket money and later Saturday job to buy 45’s and LP’s whose art work and words would transport me whilst I played them in the living room, door closed of course. Buying pop magazines, posters, watching on Top of the Pops on a Thursday night and listening to the chart’s count down on Sunday afternoon.

Mostly the music was in me, as either the radio or TV was on, my mother would knit and liked to escape into a book. My Dad at the weekends would be out in the garden, doing the ‘pools’ on Saturday afternoon then reading at night, and listening to football coverage of his beloved team Tottenham Hotspurs, Spurs for short.

I remember the sound of the man reading out the results for Dad to check off his score sheet to see if he’d won the Pools. It was so boring to hear than man droning on I’d have to leave the room. Then there was the deeply depressing tune to Coronation Street that I’ve just seen first aired in 1960. Funny looking both up now the live matches are shown with all the analysis (another bore) of the league table and performance, plus all the football stars and wives.

The ‘Corrie’ soap opera is still going on today with 4 million viewers, the same old misery and deceit and of course the great British humour? Noticing that too now as I remember programmes that my Mother used to watch, that I didn’t find funny at the time, now you can get all the episodes at a touch of a button, or a command of my voice. Each of these have a tune to them or the broadcasters jingle and imagery and evoke something in me that enables me to hear past the times and listen to an echo within me.

“I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind / There was something so pleasant about that place / Even your emotions have an echo in so much space”.

Music is my first love and it will be my past music of the future and music of the past

The Art of Surrender