Blog

11 Aug Can We Write About This? Men, Sex and Feelings

Posted at 15:32h in Culture Reviews by admin 0 Comments

‘Can We Write About This? Men, Sex and Feelings’ is a podcast by Tony Pletts, featuring fizzing conversations with two brilliant writers and me.

The podcast has come out of the book Tony has written about the loving journey of our relationship, together and into consensual non-monogamy with others. The book hasn’t been published…yet. Taking his manuscript into the world has opened up a broader enquiry about why men have been reluctant to write about their personal sexual experiences and vulnerabilities, and if there is an appetite for them be published at all.

The conversations Tony has with Lucy-Anne Holmes and Monique Roffey are intelligent, provocative and fun. There’s an interview with me too if you want to hear more about what it’s like to be physically and emotionally exposed in thousands of words.

It is Tony’s honest self-reflection that makes his writing different from the bombastic hero we have come to recognise as the unreconstructed Hollywood portrayal of men’s sexuality. Tony and I make many mistakes, and he is willing to reveal our faltering steps and stumbles into emotional quick sands. Amid the steamy explicit descriptions of sex, his book is about learning by getting things wrong. Tony shows us what it is like inside his perception, and it is refreshing to hear about his awkward mis-steps. For me, he typifies ‘Daring Greatly’ (Theodore Roosevelt) via Brené Brown.

“If we are going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of ‘what we’re supposed to be’ is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.” Brené Brown

I hope what Tony’s brave revelations will do is open more conversations, inspire people to acknowledge their true longings, encourage people to negotiate the shape of relationship that meets their needs, and allow others to connect with their feelings and their voice.

There’s more information about the podcast here, and You can find a link and listen to it here.

Sarah Pletts is a Grief Tender and Artist who offers workshops in London and online, sharing rituals where grief on all themes is welcome. For more information about Grief Tending events see here.

07 Aug The Shadow Side of Sunshine

Posted at 15:19h in Sarah's Journal by admin 0 Comments

“Isn’t it lovely?” My neighbour asks on my return from a glorious walk in the park in my sun hat and shades. I’m experiencing cognitive dissonance. While I may enjoy the sunshine, the consequences are far from lovely.

In the UK we have a temporate climate, and have so far been insulated from many of the more extreme weather that impacts other places on the front line of climate chaos. In the park and gardens, plants are crisping, leaves are coming down ahead of their scheduled drop. The grass in the park is bleached blonde with bald patches where footballs have scuffed the surface. A hose pipe ban is imminent.

In my life so far, the benchmark for drought was the summer of 1976. We were living in a forester’s cottage in a pine forest. Instead of a wolf, there was a Cairn Terrier. My family were sitting eating Sunday lunch when a piece of ash blew in through the open window. My father jumped up and ran out to see a wildfire leaping towards our house.

There were no fire engines available as they were all already out. My father sent me to run down the road to find a fire engine stationed at a nearby fire, and let them know we needed help. The feet that I would eventually grow into flapped along the road, and I carried out my mission with urgency.

While forty-foot flames lapped at the garage, my Dad said I could choose one precious thing. I grabbed Panda (who ironically, I would later betray by burning). Dad drove our Mini onto the lawn. The way to the road was already aflame. His most precious things were the portraits of my Great, Great, Great grandparents, which he shoved in the backseat of the car hoping they would be safe. (They’re hanging in the house I live in now, so survived the ordeal).

The house was doused with water and escaped the fire, but much of the forest burned. A team of soldiers camped in the garden for the next week to stamp out fires which sprang up having burned along tree roots like detonation cords. I was whisked out of the way to have my tonsils out, and returned to a charred landscape.

I remember the water saving measures that included sharing baths with no more than 2” of water, avoiding flushing the toilet, washing up water watering plants, and brushing my teeth in just a splash of water. I remain acutely aware of wasted water. So, I am conscious that drought is the shadow of sunshine.

If the climate is worrying you, Grief Tending can be a place where it’s possible to express ‘unloveliness’. It’s not a strategy to change what’s happening, but it can be a way to let off steam, and help stay engaged enough to continue working for change.

You can find our next Grief Tending events and links to book them here.

07 Aug The Feeling Spectrum

Posted at 06:51h in Sarah's Journal by admin 0 Comments

Where are you on the feeling spectrum? It might be helpful to imagine a scale for access to feeling responses, where 0 is no access to feelings and 10 is overwhelmed by feelings all the time. Whether we find it easy to feel or to express our feelings may change over time. When I was young, for instance, I decided I wasn’t going to be like my mother – who had a very different feeling style to me. Under-feeling and over-feeling will be responses to our own complex histories, and may include some adaptive strategies that have been helpful to us. We may also have outgrown defences that no longer serve us.

Are you the person who feels, in a family who seem to be oblivious to their pain? Perhaps you are the one who cries when the latest disaster statistic is mentioned on the news and no-one else appears to blink? How is it to feel so sensitive? Is this fragility or strength? Do you cloak your softness in tough armour? Do you create a persona that is unapproachable to disguise your tender heart?

Or are you at the other end of the feeling spectrum? Perhaps you are one of those who seem to have lost the ability to feel? Maybe something happened long ago, and you decided that it wasn’t safe to feel? Perhaps the only defence that was possible for you was to fight? As a child, did you have no choice but to disconnect, to freeze out the feelings that made you vulnerable, or split off a part of yourself in order to survive?

Whether you recognise yourself in one or the other ends of this spectrum, or somewhere in between, at a Grief Tending workshop, people may begin to look behind the strategies they have developed. Sometimes people feel safe enough to take off their masks – the necessary protective shields they wear in public. I feel privileged to have seen so many people show their un-curated selves, so different to their ‘shiny’ social media appearances.

It is extraordinary to witness long hidden truths, and real expressions of feeling. The perception is often that if my shell is cracked, I will be seen to be broken. But what often happens is that we see how each of us feels inside, which evokes our compassion. We all have places that are vulnerable – where we have been wounded, or feel unworthy. What changes everything is when we see that we are not alone in our imperfections.

Sometimes if we are willing to crack ourselves open, to look inside and process the experience, there may be strength that comes in its wake. Although I would never wish the impacts of developmental trauma on anyone, the ‘trauma growth’ that often strengthens us after we have been through our troubles, (whatever they may be) can be a gift. Working through our pain, can allow us to connect with insights, to cultivate meaning alongside the grief.

Come and explore you are on the feeling spectrum at a Grief tending workshop. You can find our next events and links to book them here.

04 Jul Hospital Curtain

Posted at 20:10h in Sarah's Journal by admin 0 Comments

This week I had a routine procedure in hospital. As I waited in a cubicle painted institutional pastel colours, I noticed a tremor of recognition. Many explicit memories – filed as linear stories – came to mind, along with implicit ones – sensations and emotions stored in the body. The hurried sound of curtain swishing on rail, and the illusion of privacy felt so familiar.

Not every hospital visit has been traumatic. Some have brought relief or comfort. Sometimes I was playing a supporting role. But I am aware of how many pivotal moments in my history have happened in or next to a hospital bed.

This has been somewhere that I have experienced initiations. Now, as I watch the light sneak onto the wall through the gap in the curtains, it reminds me of my own mortality. As I grow older, this may be somewhere I visit more often. I am at the stage of life where conversations often begin with an exchange of symptoms. This is a time for me, where there is moment of balance between having processed much of what has happened so far, with anticipating the unknown that is yet to come.

Some of the challenges in my life have arrived as sudden impacts, others have been slow burning troubles, and there are the known and unknown in the future. People bring things to a Grief Tending session from any or all of these sources of grief. Sometimes there is just a sense of absence or longing.

Sometimes there are turning points in life when you recognise that something needs to shift, and sometimes life doesn’t give you the luxury of a choice. We hope that the spaces we hold offer a safe enough space to explore all of this.

You can find our next events and links to book them here.

20 Jun Celebration Day

Posted at 21:44h in Sarah's Journal by admin 0 Comments

There are times to grieve, and when it feels right, celebrating someone’s life can be another important acknowledgement. Everyone’s different, and this might be soon after a funeral, or years later.

Celebration Day is happening this year as a dedicated opportunity to do something special to remember someone. It might be a friend, family member, or a distant ancestor. Many people already mark specific dates – perhaps a birthday or anniversary. For others, there may be a longing for a wider awareness of the cycle of life and death. The rising popularity of Halloween and Dia De Muertos (Day of the Dead) point to this upsurge in hankering for communal rituals on this theme.

Love and loss are so tightly woven together, that the invitation to honour someone’s life will also create space to grieve. I know I can feel reluctant to make time to be with feelings. The intention is to have an annual day where we can plan to pay attention to someone we love, who is no longer here.

What you might choose to do is up to you. It could be a small personal tribute, or something bigger. Perhaps it might be a part of ‘finding meaning’ for you, as a project or gathering inspired by the person who has died. David Kessler names making meaning as one of the stages of grief (that may co-exist with or follow others).

It doesn’t have to be a huge gesture. I rang family members on my Mum’s birthday. Five years on from Rob’s death we gathered and sang Bowie’s ‘Five Years’, and then read out poems that were composed by him. You can see some ways to get involved on the Celebration Day website, and an invitation to submit your ideas and plans.

Nicholas McInerny has written ‘Common People’ inspired by his friend Andrew’s final days in hospice, (imagine latex, leather and dancing!) The play had its first public reading on Celebration day.

The death of my father John was an initiation that began my enquiry into mortality. His thesis – a large orange tome with his name, “CRS Thesis 1982” on the spine has been unread on my shelf for the last 34 years. Some words underlined on the synopsis include, “talking about feelings…caring for communities…responses to major social problems…discoveries about being ill-at-ease…” I wish I could discuss our common aims now. I have decided to spend some time this Celebration Day reading some of his words. I spotted a note in his distinctive hand-writing in the margin, which still has the power to catch at my heart. I have poured him a brandy, and picked a rose from the garden in his honour too.

We’re also hold regular Grief Tending workshops, in case you’re not yet ready to celebrate.

31 May Crossing the Owl’s Bridge

Posted at 20:17h in Book Reviews by admin 0 Comments

Kim Bateman’s ‘Crossing the Owl’s Bridge: A Guide for Grieving People Who Still Love’, is in itself a bridge between myth and real-life stories. With examples of folk tales from different cultures, Bateman takes us through the experiential processes that are shown symbolically in the narratives.

“As I began looking around at different cultures, and particularly their stories, I found that this theme of the loss of the physical coupled with a continued relationship in the imaginal is ubiquitous.”

Bateman correlates traditional tales with the stories of people who have experienced tragic losses and deep grief, and how they began their work of dealing with bereavement. Many of these short personal testimonies are heart-rending.

While grieving, the process she describes is for the bereaved to “create the symbols or rituals that you need to create a bridge – a bridge between you and your loved one.” This work of making-meaning, like the heroine Nyctea in one story, of bringing memories and mementos of a life together, can be helpful in actively coming to terms with, and changing the relationship with the person who has died.

Kim Bateman works with people who have lost their dear ones; she understands the initiation that bereavement can be. Her wise words come out of both personal experience, years offering grief work, and by listening to the sense below traditional folk tales. In the altered, liminal, non-linear grief space, myth and imagination can be really helpful tools to transform our relationships with the dead, whatever our beliefs.

She describes ‘Singing over bones’, which is also the title of her Tedx Talk.
“This mythologizing, or piecing together of memories, pictures, objects, among other things, is one of the ways in which the evaporated person takes form again.” I recognise this from the creative ways I have honoured my own ancestors’ belongings and histories.

Through acknowledging, being with, and tending to our losses, we may traverse through ‘the abyss’, and begin a journey of growing ourselves to be able to live with grief.

For our next Grief Tending events, please see here.

15 May Journeys from an Absent Present to a Lost Past

Posted at 17:45h in Culture Reviews by admin 0 Comments

Imagine a streetscape the size of a doll’s house. In ‘Journeys from an Absent Present to a Lost Past’ an exhibition at Fabrica, in Brighton, Mohamed Hafez has crafted beautiful miniature installations, that transport the viewer to an urban Syrian landscape. Each tiny environment shows everyday traces of local life. Washing hangs in the street, a car is parked outside a front door, a satellite dish rusts on the roof.

Mohamed Hafez, Syrian born architect and artist living in the USA, began making model environments to soothe his homesickness. First because of a post 9/11 travel ban, and then as a result of the war in Syria, he is no longer able to go back to the home that he remembers. He recreates the Damascus of his memories. “There’s always that emotional longing to go home,” he says.

Understanding the power of art to both express and work with the grief of loss, Hafez makes meaning by communicating something of the migrant experience. Speaking in a short film that accompanies the exhibition, Hafez reminds us “that life is fragile”. Hafez wants to capture our attention with his exquisite model images, “I like to be sneaky, because you know, that’s how crises happen in our lives. They sneak up on us.”

I recall there have been three brief moments in my life so far, when I faced the possibility of losing my home, but I have never had to confront losing my homeland. For me, contemplating this surfaces empathy for those who are in more precarious situations.

In Syria, crisis is ongoing. These tiny fragments of old Damascus streets invite us to see a knotted global issue from ‘another’s shoes’. An interactive element of the exhibition invites visitors to consider ‘What is home to you?’ I am aware that it is often only away from home that we really come to know the answer. I think of the familiar smell of Hackney’s green and grime that greets me after time elsewhere.

See here for next Grief Tending events.

15 May Earth Ritual

Posted at 17:37h in Sarah's Journal by admin 1 Comment

It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining. Windows and back doors are open. I can hear the boy next door calling to his friend’s Dad in the garden on the other side of us. I feel deeply rooted in this place, and enjoy the friendly connections between people and pets.

I have just returned from a gathering of friends, where conversation about melting glaciers and soil quality sit nestled with tales of frivolity and pleasure. I decide this is a good moment to complete the Earth ritual I have been preparing.

My deep time ancestors would have known rites for honouring the earth, been aware of Mother Nature’s generosity. They would have known how to live, in right-relationship with resources, been in awe of the elements, but I am still finding my way.

This is a practice I have learned from Francis Weller, to offer gratitude to the Earth, in response to ‘The Sorrows of the World’ (from his ‘Gates of Grief’). I have made an intuitive selection of small clay totems – a Beech leaf, a flower, an acorn, a Cowrie shell, a tooth, and a small bowl. I have inscribed “My tears are for…” on the bowl to symbolise the sadness I find hard to express.

In the face of the changes that are happening – weather disruption, bio diversity loss, and carbon emissions, it is easy to feel hopeless. I am working to remain in relationship with the natural world, and my grief, as I recognise my inter-being with the more than human world. A practice of giving thanks and offering gifts can foster this connection. It is a micro action in the face of a prevalent ‘extractive’ attitude to our planet.

Under the magnificent magnolia tree, I dig a hole. Ginger Girl – the cat from next door, (who regularly appears for on-line Grief Tending workshops) shows up. I place my clay offerings into the hole while chanting. Ginger Girl, after inspecting my work, turns to squat. A stream of yellow liquid fills the small bowl. These were not the salt tears I imagined, but present an image of a different kind of regenerative cycle. She then turns back again and scrabbles with her front paws, neatly filling the hole with earth again. She then sits looking satisfied. We both look up, as two of our regular squirrels travel across the branches of the tree above us. I offer apple, oats and incense as further blessings, feeling nature’s magic alive in me.

See here for next Grief Tending events.

Further documentary evidence of the story described in the text of this post

Ginger Girl participates in my Earth Ritual

20 Apr See No Stranger

Posted at 13:34h in Book Reviews by admin 0 Comments

‘See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love’ by Valarie Kaur invites us to see each person “as a part of me I do not yet know.”

This book takes us through the journey Valarie Kaur has made from innocent girl to social justice activist. It is an extraordinary trajectory, informed at every step by her Sikh faith. The ethics of her forbears meet the rise of both terrorism and racism in modern America.

Despite increasing professional accomplishments, Kaur retains the ability to relate simply and communicate directly. She learns through personal connections, and expands this sense of family outwards.
“As I move through my day and come across faces on the street or subway or on a screen, I say in my mind, Sister. Brother. Sibling. Aunt. Uncle.”

This is not a soft-hearted plea from a sensitive utopian. Kaur puts her philosophy of revolutionary love into practice in the streets, with breath taking courage. Do not be deceived, she is someone who understands the need to grieve and rage in safe containers in the face of injustice.

See No Stranger is a book of wise words that takes us through the steps required to ‘re-imagine’ the world through the tasks of acknowledging violence, grieving together, tending our wounds, listening, and breathing until we are able to reconnect through wonder.

Kaur takes us to some of the locations where these practices are most needed, in the aftermath of violent racist attacks. She documents the impacts of a society where the divisions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ proliferate.

In a world that can often leave me feeling powerless, and overwhelmed, she offers us a practical philosophy to bring people together. This book, she suggests is, “for anyone who feels breathless.” If that sense of fear, impotence or distress is making your breath come fast and shallow, I recommend See No Stranger as food for inspiration. And if you are ready to enquire, ask yourself, “What does this demand of me?”

Follow this link for next Grief Tending events.

20 Apr The Red of My Blood

Posted at 13:28h in Book Reviews by admin 0 Comments

‘The Red of My Blood: A Death and Life Story’ tells the story of the first year of grief. Clover Stroud writes about mourning the death of her sister. She captures the paradox of being both with deep feelings and the continuation of everyday family life; where children need feeding and attending to.

Clover Stroud writes her loss from the inside out. With metaphor and through her senses, we are invited into her inner world. She shows us glimpses of the pain of losing a sibling in middle age.

It is easy to misconstrue Kubler-Ross’s 5 Stages of Grief (plus Kessler’s = 6) as following each in neat order, but Stroud reminds us: “The path alongside death is crooked, remember. There are no consequential stages which happen one after the other, neatly, like dominoes falling.”

I love the permission that Stroud’s memoir gives to recognise the depth of love that mirrors the loss, in relationship with her sister. The death of a partner or child is seen as very significant, but grief follows in the wake of the death of anyone we love, as well as an infinite range of other life situations. “The truth is that the death and therefore loss of someone you love deeply is so awful you have to rearrange your brain dramatically to survive it.”

Writing during 2020, the pandemic adds an additional layer, as Stroud describes collective loss through lens of home schooling and changes in meeting with friends.

Describing grief as an “active verb”, Clover allows us into her own process. She sometimes faces towards the inevitability of death, and also the desire to escape from the reality that “none of us are getting out of here alive,” (to quote Nanea Hoffman via Stroud).

For me, through reading and feeling alongside the hurt of grief allows me to practice stretching my heart muscles. If you are currently inside your own experience of deep grief, Clover Stroud’s beautiful words may be able to reach out to tenderly hold your hand in recognition. She tells of her rituals and strategies, that allow her to begin to alchemise pain when it feels impossible. “The shrine of hard little objects were things to clasp, when the caverns of loss opened up and life felt as if it was sliding out of reach.”

Follow link for next Grief Tending events.