At two years old, I remember my first sister being born, her strange little purple umbilical cord, and realizing that my life had changed.
I remember listening to the radio on the kitchen table and imaging a whole orchestra of little people inside.
I remember listening to the BBC about the ‘Bay of Pigs” crisis, and being frightened, even though I didn’t understand it.
I remember pulling on my Mother’s skirts to pry her away from her friend as she chatted cheerfully outside a store in the high street. It was growing dark, and I thought we needed to get home before the war started…
I remember being frightened all that night, and thinking that the voices outside my bedroom window in Falmouth town were not drunken sailors staggering out of the pubs and noisily tacking their way home, but soldiers fighting. The sudden loud bangs from cars backfiring were guns being fired, as the war began.
I remember when President Kennedy was shot, and the announcement came while my Mother was baking bread in the kitchen. She did not believe me at first, and had to come and listen to the news herself.
I remember going to the Fire station with my brother to see the fire trucks. I remember while my brother was mesmerized by the naked ladies on the walls of their break room, the fireman sat me on his knee and sexually assaulted me. I remember him telling me as we walked all the way home, “You must never tell anyone, it has to be our secret.”
I remember our Father teaching us all how to sail, and how to duck the Boom as it swung to the starboard side, and then to adjust the rudder. I would look back into the wake, tighten the mainsail, whilst feeling the boat beneath me catch the water and cut smoothly through the waves.
I remember leaving home on my 18th birthday to become a nurse, and the huge challenges that I faced adjusting to a new life.
I remember the indescribable warmth and love in my heart when I breast fed my baby daughter for the very first time.
I remember where I was on 911
Each chapter in our lives has its mile stones.
Each change has an effect.
Each event takes its’ toll, but we have to adjust.
We have to grow. We have to learn.
We must open ourselves to change.
“Change is what I was born for
To look, to listen
to lose myself inside this soft world-
to instruct myself over and over”
(Mary Oliver)
And to quote Tony Robbins,
“Change is Inevitable
Progress is Optional “
My book, the Moon of Compassion is now published and it is available for sale in itunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-moon-of-compassion/id892598396?mt=11
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