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Shit happens ..... and a 5 step guide to coping when it does

Shit happens.

Sometimes with monotonous regularity.

And it seems that this year, for a lot of people I know, has started particularly shitty. It seems like everyone is going through some epic stuff.

Now I know that I was all geared up for an epic start to the year; I was bursting with creative ideas for blog posts, meditation classes and was getting geared up for the launch of my self love club. Then my mother in law went into hospital on boxing day. My mother in law has become very, very special to me over the past few years. She is/was one of the few places of pure unconditional love  and acceptance in my  life and seeing her in such distress and hooked up to various machines was a great shock.

The month of January passed in a blur of text messages, phone calls, family visits and hospital visits. We all spent time sitting with her,  holding her hand, and, in my case, sending her reiki. Finally at the end of the month she passed away and we moved into the grieving process and caring for our father, father in law.

A week to the day after she passed I got the phone call that my brother's struggle with cancer was drawing to a close. He had been battling for 15 months and was now on a downhill slide. Again it was around of phone calls and texts but this time no family visits as I am estranged from most of my family of origin (Foo). He passed away yesterday with no fanfare, no funeral and  for me no family gathering but at least I got to say goodbye.

And I am not the only one.

While my mother in law was going through her turmoil her daughter was dealing with a breast cancer scare. My sister in laws brother has been diagnosed with throat cancer. A friend's father went into hospital with serious complications just days after her husband had a motorbike crash.

On and on it goes, shit at every turn. Let's not forget the turmoils in the world; Ukraine, Syria, major upheavals and unrest all round.

So when life is handing us a shit sandwich ( yes, shit is my new favorite word, thanks for asking) how do we keep ourselves from descending into a deep pit of despair?
Survival Tips
Great question! And here are my survival tips. These are what have kept me sane, grounded and functioning over the past two months. ( Ok sane might be a bit of a stretch!)

(1) It's ok to grieve;

Give yourself permission to feel what you are feeling. It doesn't matter whether you are grieving something major or something small, you are entitled to feel what you are feeling. This gem was passed onto me by my awesome hairdresser after a not so great haircut from one of the other hairdressers in his salon. I was explaining why  I wasn't happy with the cut and he said "You are entitled to feel what you feel".

Just like that. No justification necessary.

(2) Surround yourself with positive people;

As they say before you diagnose yourself with depression just make sure you are not in fact, surrounded by arseholes ( that's assholes to you Americans, same thing different spelling)

It is important to spend time with people who acknowledge and accept your feelings instead of dismissing them as trivial or unwarranted. These people are treasures and should never be taken for granted.

(3) Spend time in nature;

I live on a three acre block of land with a view of the sea . Walking around our orchard, feeding our chickens or just watching them be chickens fills me with a great sense of peace. A few days after my mother in law passed I had a flock of swallows and a group of dragonflies swooping and diving right outside my office window for a good fifteen minutes.

It really is the little things that heal your soul. Do whatever you can to spend time in nature.

(4) Meditate

In whatever way that you can spend some quiet time with yourself. Talk to your angels, God or whatever beings you believe in. Leave some space for them to answer and pay attention to any signs that come your way. This might be in the form of song lyrics, a feather on your path, butterflies, dragonflies or any other way messages show up for you.

If you don't feel like you have time to meditate than you need to make that time even more. Our lives need to be simplified more and more not overcomplicated so now might be a good time to skip a tv show and meditate instead.

(5) Practice gratitude

We have so much to give thanks for, every day. We have gotten so used to the luxury of our modern lives that we forget that there are still large parts of the world without running water, let alone hot and clod running water in their homes. Electricity, the internet, cellphones, cars an unlimited supply of food readily available at the local supermarket, the list is long. Then we have our healthy bodies with a complete set of fully functioning parts; you just need to speak to one person in hospital to realise what a gift that is.

Ok i said there was only 5 steps but here is a bonus for reading this far:

 (6) Practice kindness

Nothing is more guaranteed to get you out of your funk than to do something nice for someone else. It can be as simple as smiling at a stranger or letting someone go ahead of you at the checkout line or paying someone a compliment. Simple. Effective. And with a side bonus of making you feel better.

For more tips on how to be kind to you check out my blog on the 10 commandments for self love

Come and check out my Facebook page  where we are doing 100 days of Self Love

This is why we can never win

Ideas of what constitutes beauty are constantly changing. Our obsession with thinness has only been around since the sixties with the likes of Twiggy and  Jean Shrimpton ( aka The shrimp) and what people forget is that fashion designers are not interested in the model but in the drape of the clothes. Models are, in fact, glorified clothes hangers.

They don't want annoying things like curves, boobs, bellies and butts, to detract from the clothes which is where your focus is supposed to be. So models are getting younger and younger and thinner and thinner.

But it doesn't stop there.

No.

We all know that images are photoshopped to within an inch of their lives so that often those portrayed no longer even resemble themselves. Skin is smoothed, pesky things like pores, are removed, necks are lengthened, waists are narrowed, thighs thinned, well, the list is endless.

So the average woman is left feeling less; less than beautiful, less than sexy, less than desirable, just less. What do we do? We follow the latest diet or exercise craze in an attempt to attain that which is unattainable; the perfect body that we see portrayed before us in every magazine, every television show, every commercial.

We read column inches of how the latest superstar dropped her baby weight by some crazy means ( I don't read the mags so couldn't come up with an example LOL!) failing to mention that she has a nanny, a personal trainer and possibly even a cook.

We watch reality shows likeThe Biggest Loser believing that the weigh in's are held weekly and then get disappointed with our own meagre weight loss in the same time frame when it is all a lie.

And then we have this news.

It seems the latest winner of The Biggest Loser was a female. But that is not the shocker.

No, what is "shocking" is that she started the show fat ( no shock there), proceeded to lose lots of weight on the show which is why she won and then came back for the big reveal even skinnier. She thinks she looks great but everyone else thinks she has gone too far and now looks skeletal.

And this is why we can not win when it comes to our body image.

I know that it is important that we don't promote obesity as a healthy image. It is also important that we don't value thinness above all else.

Healthy is not a size.

Beauty is not a size.

There are just as many unhealthy thin people as there are unhealthy fat people, it's just that they are harder to spot and therefore more acceptable.

There are just as many thin people that smoke to excess or drink to excess or eat tonnes of junk food or do drugs or well the list goes on.

There are just as many truly beautiful fat people  as there are thin people we just aren't looking at them through non judging eyes. We see only the unacceptable fat and declare them ugly and lazy and stupid and lacking in willpower when the fact is we have no idea of what they have been through or what they are going through.

So instead of looking at others and deciding on their merits,  or lack thereof, how about we look at ourselves and decide on our own value and worth?

 How about we stop waiting for the world to accept us  and we start accepting ourselves?

How about we focus on loving who we are so we can love others as they are?

Because, who knows what beauty will look like tomorrow?



If you are interested in learning to love yourself from the inside out then come and join the Self Love Club

Click the link for all the details. Starts February 14 2014 Join today! Now starting March 14!!!