Every year I try and do something for charity whether it’s a gentle 5k jog or a 2 and ½ mile jump out of a plane. I was pondering what this year’s adventure might be. Should I climb a mountain? Walk through the rain forest only using my knees or maybe a balloon flight across the North Pole. And then I saw it and I knew it would be perfect for a multitude of reasons.
In doing this, I will face an emotional challenge that will have me writing for months! This, coupled with raising awareness of something I feel so passionately about, and the boxes are well and truly ticked.
Some of you know my story, some know bits of my story and some of you probably think my story is very very different to what it actually is because the reality would never have occurred to you. I have only been really open about these experiences for the last couple of years when I realised that it challenged stigmas and helped break down the walls of silence that people carry through feeling shame. Stigmas rage in our society about alcoholism, child abuse, homelessness, depression and there really is no need for people to carry this alone.
So here is a little timeline of a decade from a time in my life that has shaped me in far more ways than are for exploration in this blog post. When I was 13 I went into the care of the local authority for 3 years. I lived in foster homes and children’s homes, an experience which impacted upon me on every level. The very core of my being was affected emotionally, spiritually, financially, mentally, socially and educationally. In every possible way.
As it was the 1980’s and the Children Act 1989, created to protect Looked After Children, had not yet come into play, I then endured two years of homelessness. During this period, I lived in night shelters, the streets, trains, hostels and squats until finally housed in 1988 in London thanks to services available to children and young people who find themselves in this vulnerable abandoned situation. I slowly built my life by crawling into an AA meeting at the age of 20, getting clean and sober and then receiving funding from an amazing charity that enabled me to take A levels and then go on to do a Degree, recovering an education I had lost years before to survival!
The multitude of charities out there that saved my life are saving lives every day, quietly and continuously, while I sip my cappuccino and gaze out of my window with food in my cupboards and the heating on.
The purpose to telling you this is that out of all the things I have lived through, homelessness was the most disturbing of the lot. To be homeless is to be cold, hungry, invisible, ignored, segregated, abandoned, a nothing. To survive that, teaches you about yourself and about society at a depth that is unexplainable to those who have not been through it.
My chosen charity event for 2012 is going to be far harder than jumping out of a plane. I want to do the Sleep Out forThe Big Issue. This is a demon that I feel ready to confront….
Will you do it with me? Groups of four can apply for only £100 with each group needing to raise a minimum of £1500. We could have a 40 of us….ten groups of four!
The Big Issue is amazing as it provides a truly entrepreneurial response to one of society’s hidden truths.
Please write to me at lisa.cherry@hotmail.co.uk if you would like to join me on 18th May in London and if it’s not for you, or you just like clicking buttons, then please press the ‘like’ button on this page and make a difference through raising awareness.
So I’m 42 today! And for those of you who have been blessed enough to read the Douglas Adams books, you’ll know that this is indeed the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything. I think not.
But I can tell you a few things through my fringe with its ever so slightly greying hair:
Being able to get through the night without needing the bathroom should have been more valued in my twenties.
I thought I’d be dead by 30 so each year thereafter is a bonus, rendering me about 12 years old. This may account for the sensation I carry of actually feeling younger with each day that passes as I get older.
I love leg warmers. I never fully appreciated them the first time round as I could never quite dance like Leroy in Fame….I have now come to terms with this….finally! Leg warmers and me with a hot cup of cocoa and it’s a good life.
Understanding the shortness of life, enables it to be lived with the urgency it requires.
Chocolate does not give you spots. I know this to be true because my daughter informed me that it was said so on a science programme. Thank you god for daughters!
Things I don’t understand and don’t need to:
Thongs…I mean pulease! Bits of string up your bum?? Pass me the big knickers.
Darts. I don’t even have any words to add.
Cheese strings (there’s no cheese in them??)
People who don’t kiss! What????
Adults who say they are bored! Rude…
Saving a dress for ‘best’. This is ‘best’. Today. Wear it today.
Things I don’t understand but will continue to try and fathom and change:
World poverty
Domestic violence
Homelessness
War
Abuse
Oppression in all its forms
Children living in sewers without food
People who hurt animals
I fully intend on living at least another 42 years and I intend on cramming a whole heap more into Part Two I can tell you!
Your Comfort Zone is the place where you feel safe and secure. It’s the place where nothing and no-one really challenge you. In this place you are never ‘on the line’, exposing your vulnerabilities and your insecurities. You are not going to have to deal with the perception of failure in this place called Comfort Zone and you won’t have to worry yourself about change, unknowns and facing fear.
The flipside to all this of course, is that you won’t get it wrong or ‘fail’ so there are no learning opportunities. You are unlikely to meet interesting and new people that question and challenge and make you think about the world in a different way. You will be unable to gain the experience and knowledge of your own capabilities and strength because you will not have pushed yourself to try something different. Fear lives in Comfort Zone.
Luckily, leaving Comfort Zone, can be achieved by taking small steps.
Try something new as many days a week as you can, whether it’s a new food, taking a different route to somewhere you go all the time (it doesn’t have to be major to start with).
Understand the inevitability of change. Everything changes. All the time. That’s just the way it is. When you embrace this, the world becomes the adventure that it should be appreciated as.
Say yes to doing something different/new.
Do something spontaneously just because you can.
Understand that there is no such thing as failing, only learning (or free training!).
Release the need to believe that you absolutely must know the outcome to everything you do. Not knowing how something is going to pan out, is exciting!
Now you are on your way to be in Experience Life To The Full Zone. Where you can be the very best you can be, feel a sense of fulfilment and experience the love and joy and learning and pleasure that the world has to offer you…. See you there!
Do you ever find that sometimes the same thing keeps showing up in your life in different forms and situations like it’s in a slightly different colour to everything else so that it will stand out and you take notice? Well, I’ve been seeing lots of amazing projects and meeting with lots of courageous, community and system changing people lately that have brought a number of things to me to ponder upon.
I’ve been reflecting upon what we seek out of our experience of being alive. Personal fulfilment, a feeling of connection, a perception of belonging, happiness and a sense of self-worth all seem vital components to living a happy life (securing a definition of ‘happy’ would take another article so please just see it to mean what it means for you).
I have learnt that there are many simple things that you can do so as to have these in your life, but here are a few to get you started.
Pay it forward. I am continuously amazed at how the more I give, the more I receive. I seem to live on fresh air at times, yet me and my children have enough to meet our needs and a little more. I’m not sure how it works other than seeing it as an energy that flows around people who engage in this way of operating.
Get involved in a project in your Community. Find something locally and become a part of a bigger picture to make a difference. In Oxfordshire, there is a new project just launching called The OTCN Oxhop Challenge. There are always things happening in your community and if you can’t find something, create it!
When you stop to talk to someone, a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance, comment on how well they look, or how the colour they are wearing suits them, or pass on something good to them that you heard someone else say. It’s not hard to say something nice to someone but it can make the biggest difference to the receiver of the compliment and they’ll be left with a lovely feeling. The quote “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel” springs to mind.
Being who you are is actually all you’re meant to be….self-love is the cornerstone to everything! Remember that….
What do you do? What brings you the happiness you seek? How do you feel a sense of belonging and purpose? What can you share about what you have learnt on your journey that might help someone else reading this post?
I have always been fascinated with the idea of meditation and have often wondered how some people appear to have the ability to sit calmly and quietly, focusing on breathing and not much else. But it was one of those things I felt was inaccessible to me. I have a very busy head, filled with excitement and ideas and creations and I can sometimes appear quite unfocused, which I’m actually not especially but my focus is untidy and a little unstructured sometimes and left unchecked, can make me feel very tired.
In May last year, I went away for a week to enable me to have some space to write, away from the distractions of daily life with a company calledSerenity Retreat where I met a lovely woman called Annewho was running a Course there on Mindful Meditation. This was the first time I heard about it and I was stunned that I could even participate in short 10 minute group meditations without completely distracting myself.
I have gently and slowly built upon this introduction over the last few months. Mindfulness is about paying attention to purpose, having awareness, being conscious. I had never been able to deal with my continuing thoughts through meditation, but Mindfulness just acknowledges them in a non-judgemental way. They are not good or bad. But by awareness of them and redirecting awareness away from negative thoughts and using an anchor to bring thought back to, their effect on our lives diminishes and we can then create a space where calmness and contentment can be and can grow.
I often joke that I need to be a Massage Therapist as it’s the only time that I stop, mentally stop and become very purposeful and ‘in the moment’ about what I’m doing. I have become very aware that I Massage in a mindful way. I am completely focused on the person I am working with and what I am actually doing, the purpose, and this is even more true when I use Reiki. I also have some CD’s with short 10 minutes mediations on that I use for myself and also with my clients during a massage (as an introduction) and I have found, even in this very early stage of bringing mediation into my life, very helpful and centring.
Here are some suggestions if you’re looking to create some space in your mind away from negative harmful thoughts.
Find out about mindfulness and see if it resonates with you at all. Hugh Poulton runs courses in Oxfordshire which, although I haven’t been on one, I’m reliably informed are amazing and life transforming!
Try out some CD’s. Sometimes it’s just about finding a voice that you can relax to. I have a mix of accents and of male and female…you have to feel comfortable.
Become purposeful and aware in your every day activities. For example, don’t just eat, eat consciously. Don’t just walk, walk and know that you are aware of walking and what your body is actually doing to make this happen.
Become aware of your breathing without trying to change it. It’s not about doing it deeply or through the nose or mouth. It’s just about becoming aware…as it is.
I would love to hear about your experiences as mine are very new and from a beginners perspective and please do share about any courses, practitioners or CDs that you have tried and can recommend….Many thanks and please share the love, mindfully!
So we have arrived at the end of another year, or in the words of the great John Lennon, another year over and a new one just began. It is one of my favourite times of the year, far more meaningful to me than Christmas, and it spares any negative emotional yearning that the week prior to this always makes room for. It doesn’t take hold of me because of the external celebrations on offer but because of the internal opportunities to pause, reflect and create. This time allows us to quantify what we have achieved, note who we have in our lives that were not here at the beginning of the year and who we no longer have around us. The deepening of long term friendships is always a favourite reflection for me and it is the ability to project all of that information into the future in terms of thinking about what the following year may hold, that really captures me.
I have given 2012 an incredible amount of thought. I have a clarity about the year ahead and what I want to achieve that can only be described as daring. But, if we are to fully understand that the future is made up by what we do in the present moments that we have right now, then we absolutely have to set ourselves challenges beyond our wildest dreams.
Glossy magazines and newspaper articles are currently spouting the monotonous resolutions dialogue that involves all that we should undoubtedly be striving for anyway…losing weight, getting fit and reducing death-enhancing substance use! These are the kind of goals that we set in order to feel like we ‘fit in’ with what we think people want from us. These are essentially setting resolutions for others’ approval. I’m suggesting that we set different goals altogether.
Make your future different, make it really different. Make resolutions that come from your inner desires born of your authentic self which stem from your very core. Set goals that frighten you as they seem out of your reach, like dreams. I realise that this is contrary to much of what you will read which will include ‘keeping to realistic goals’. But I absolutely wholeheartedly know, that if you reach for the stars, even if you get to the trees, you will have achieved something amazing.
I have set a goal for myself that is terrifying. I know I can do it. I believe it is there for me to do. I know I can make it happen. But the voice of doubt that sits on my shoulder from time to time is saying “You can’t do that”, “Why do you think you can do that?” and “Who do you think you are?”. Well, I am going to do it and I know that when I sit down next year and pause and reflect and look at what I have achieved and created, I will be able to know that I made it happen. I made it happen and I ignored the doubting voice and the constraints of limited thinking. So tell me, what will your resolutions look like? Are you looking at the same picture that you looked at a year ago or are you going to change your future into a future you want for yourself… because I know you can!
It’s time for a Christmas post. I feel I have to do one and I absolutely know that my regular readers will not be expecting anything other than an alternative post from me compared to most blogging/articles on Christmas right now. Most posts in the Health section seem to focus on at best, managing family relationships, delegating some of the chores, managing the need to be perfect, dealing with guilt….I can’t connect with any of it. So this post is for those of you who sit on the planet I sit on.
The whole world, it seems to me every year, would have us believe that this is a time of year where families sit in one room together happily eating Turkey, playing charades (likes that’s a normal thing to do!) and smiling knowingly at one another. We’re led to thinking that all people are purchasing bits of plastic that no-one even wants, needs or can justify its very existence. That we all have fabulous trees plucked from the ground draped around the house and that we all eat and drink to excess and need an Alka-Seltzer to recover. And yes, some people do indeed live like that during this festive season.
But thinking outside of this, what is Christmas all about for the child in care or the care leaver? It’s a fat slap in the face as to how their life looks nothing like the lives that the media is showing. That knowledge that every person in their lives is paid to be there. It’s a day when the doors of whatever support services are being used are actually closed.
And what is it for the child who lives in fear of their parents? It’s the holidays, which means that both parents are at home, fighting, drinking, frightening.
What is Christmas for the homeless person? It is absolutely nothing other than yet another day of freezing cold Winter weather and possibly some extra food being dished out by the overspill of irrelevant Supermarket food needing displacement prior to close of day on Christmas Eve. I remember one year dishing out food on the strand – freshly squeezed orange juice and strawberries from warmer climates seemed almost offensive but I desperately wanted to be involved in the solution, any solution, even though it seemed a weird way of being able to go about it.
What is Christmas for the parent who has lost a child? I cannot even begin to imagine and I daren’t.
The list could go on… and on and on and well into the rest of the world but I’ll spare us that.
What is Christmas for me? It has been many things over the years, each year bringing something else for me to ponder and each year being slightly less challenging. I spent many Christmases alone as a young person recovering from the effects of being in care and also as a homeless teenager, wandering the streets aimlessly clutching luncheon vouchers dished out from the night shelter. I have had many difficult Christmases but my children have helped me to some degree have some tradition and sentiment about it that I would never have allowed myself to have were they not in my life.
I love putting up the tree with every year of their childhood represented by an ornament made in their primary years. I love filling their stockings and ringing the bells on them on Christmas morning to say Santa has arrived – although last year they told me off as they were still asleep and it was “to early” (teenagers need sleep, even on Christmas Day it seems!).
I like the smell of cinnamon and oranges and I love the sparkly lights on the tree. Last night I sang with the local Singing Group which was lovely and had a Christmassy feel about it that I liked, especially with all the families there and children joining in.
What really cheers me up is when people step outside of their bubble and remember that Christmas is an incredibly difficult time of year for lots of people. But essentially, the world will not be a better place until we spend every day of the year trying to make a difference, thinking about others, understanding our own privileges and not making assumptions about how people live. I use this time to reflect, be grateful and try and make a difference, not only for Christmas time but for every day, all the time. That to me is what Christmas is about….that is how I makes sense if it for me. Wishing you all a Happy Christmas x
I remember being given a sheet of paper, many years ago and long before Google searched your needs out for you. On it were these 10 rules for being human. I cannot remember who gave me this and in what context but I carried it around with me just about everywhere and stuck it to any wall that was close. It felt like the instruction manual that ‘they’ forgot to give me when I arrived here to this thing called life! You may well have seen this before….
You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
“There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
I came across this piece of writing, writen by the then 19 year old Veronica A. Shoffstall and was taken by it’s beauty, observation and eloquence, particularly for one so young. I hope it resonates with you too….
“After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t always mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure you really are strong you really do have worth and you learn and you learn with every goodbye, you learn…”
