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~ When life doesn't turn out as you had hope it would – It may not be 100% factual truth-but, it is 100% me.

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Tag Archives: Reflections

These are the Times

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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change, Changes, Endings, Gap Year, Growing Up, Growth, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Memories, Memory, New Beginnings, Nostalgia, Reality, Reflection, Reflections, Regret, Relationships, Talk, Toronto

Sometimes I get lost in nostalgia. Today is one of those days.

I lived in Toronto for 11 years in two different time periods. There was pre-New Zealand and post-New Zealand and the experiences are vastly different from one another.

This morning I find myself in deep reflection, once again, on my time there pre-New Zealand. This was an intense time full of deep relationships, friendships, emotions, highs, lows, struggles and heart aches.

During this time I led a reflection activity for a group of young people using Billy Joel’s song “This is the Time,” encouraging them to make the most of their young days because they would not last forever. I didn’t realize how true these lyrics would become for me. I truly thought that this was a time that would last forever; at least for me.

Watch on YouTube: This is the Time

As I sit here writing this, listening to these lyrics again, I am almost surprised by how much things have changed. I was certain that my life was going to continue-on in the same manner, that I would be surrounded by the same people, doing the same things, for the rest of my days.

But, everything has changed.

There are beliefs, lifestyles, locations and people long-gone that I thought I would never leave, or leave behind.

Despite the fact that I was encouraging a group of young people to be mindful of their current situation, that it would not last forever, I did not seem to grasp this reality for myself.

There is one truth I know in life – things will change. I miss my friends, I miss the city and sometimes I even miss some of the experiences. I never thought I would be sitting here, miles away, having not spoken to most of these friends for many years, worlds apart from one another, living completely different lives.

In-between us now sits the large ocean called “Life,” and it seems impossible to cross.

“Sometimes it’s so easy
To let a day slip on by…”

 

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The Thorn in Her Side – A Poem

09 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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1998, 2001, Childhood, Healing, History, Journals, life, Poetry, Raw, Reflections, sexual abuse, Sexual Assault, Teenage Years, Truth, Writinig

I spent some time reading-through two of my old journals tonight. I found a journal entry from December 4, 2001 that piqued my interest. Once again, it reminds me of something I could have written yesterday, because of how familiar it is and how applicable to my current state:

December 4, 2001 (21 yrs old)

Sometimes when I sit down to write in my journal it is very difficult to know what to write and where to begin. I am sure that my journals are some of the most strange, inconsistent journal writings ever recorded. But, it serves its purpose for me.

***
I thought that this entry was particularly interesting, given the fact that I had begun this evening’s readings with a few poems in a previous journal that are very raw and unpolished.

In my previous post, I commented that I was going to start with bones – bare, naked and vulnerable, and this poem is just that.

NOTE: This poem could be triggering to those who have experienced the trauma of sexual abuse – if you are concerned for yourself, please do not read further.

 

 

The Thorn in Her Side _- June 12, 1999 (18 yrs old)

A little girl,
Unsure and frightened.
Unknowing and trusting
Of those around her.
They are older and wiser
And she should be able to
Trust them.

One night
A friend
Took advantage
Of that small
Trusting
Child.
Stripped her of innocence.
She stood naked for the entire
World to see.

She felt it was wrong,
But did not know
What do do
What was happening?

Ashamed of letting her
Brother hear.
What if he knew?
He would tell and she would be
In trouble.

Closing her eyes
She attempts sleep
But she feels
Restless
Scared
Ashamed
And sleep won’t come.

Curling into a fetal position
Longing
For the safety of her mother
She hears herself
Screaming
Yet knows that she makes no sound.

As the tears stream down her
Rosy cheeks
Soaking the pillow where
They land
She eventually drifts away into
A deep
deep
Deep
Peaceful
Sleep.

When she wakes the next morning
She remembers it as a
Haunting dream
And shoves it –
Violently
To the back of her mind.

But the seed had been
Planted
And it would soon become a huge
Thorn
In her side.

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A New Year

05 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts

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Accomplishments, Attitude, change, Changes, Childhood, Choice, Choices, Confidence, Control, Courage, Creativity, Determination, Diet, Dreams, Empowerment, Exercise, Friendship, Goals, Growth, Healing, Health, Healthy, Healthy Eating, Healthy Habits, High School, hope, Hopes, Inspiration, Journey, life, losing weight, Mature Student, Me, Memories, Memory, Nostalgia, nutrition, perseverance, Progress, Reflection, Reflections, School, University, Victory, Weight Loss, Writing

I know I have been extremely slack in writing. This will be no surprise to anyone who was followed or known me for any length of time. I have a history of writing faithfully for bursts of time, followed by not writing for a length of time, only to pick it up and start again. On and on the cycle goes.

The main reason for this is that there are many, many, many things I want to write about that involve other people and I am not quite ready to put the stories that include other people (even if I withhold names) out there just yet. But, that doesn’t mean the writing isn’t happening. I still have to go through the process of writing about what’s in my mind. I just can’t share it yet.

These stories invade my mind and I still have to allow myself the time to go through them and let the stories work themselves out before I can move on to something else.

This often includes a process of revisiting the past and sometimes even reaching-out to a long, lost, friend or just trying to come to terms with how an old relationship ended.

There has been a lot of this for me in the past 6 months as our move back home has brought-up many memories and experiences with which I still needed to process and come to terms.

I have also become a full-time university student, via distance ed., working towards a degree. This has been a dream of mine ever since I left High School, when depression and anxiety held me back from being able to attend university. It has been something I had always missed-out on and, being someone who loves school and loves to learn, had always dreamed I would be able to do.

Now I’m doing it and it feels great!

I am also continually improving my health and nutrition and constantly striving to treat myself well.

I feel great.

2018 is going to be a good year.

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The Decision to Move

22 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Cancer, change, Changes, Choices, Courage, Family, Fear, Home, Hopes, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Loss, Love, Mourning, Moving, Pain, Reality, Reflections, Sepsis, Toronto, Truth

When my Mom phoned to let me know she had called an ambulance to bring my stepdad to the hospital, it was as if the world around me grew still, despite the fact that I was standing in the middle of a bustling Nathan Phillip’s Square in downtown Toronto at the very first Winter Festival being held there.

My husband, child and in-laws kept walking and I could see them pointing towards the ice skaters and, more excitedly, towards the Zamboni. But, my heart had sunk to my shoes and tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I didn’t want to spoil their moment, but I was feeling desperate. I just wanted to get away and be somewhere I could have a good cry. But, I didn’t want to scare my son.

I hung-up with my Mother and eventually rejoined my family. I explained what was going on to my husband while his parents entertained the kid. My gut instinct was to get in a plane and go be with my parents. However, this was very much complicated by the fact that our in-laws had flown all the way from New Zealand to be with us, we didn’t have any other vacation days (so I’d have to take a pay-loss), we were broke so I would have to borrow the money to go as it was, I and I have a 3-year old that I had to consider.

My husband calmed me and told me to just wait to hear some more news about what was going-on before I panicked too much.

It wasn’t until recently, when we moved-back to be with my parents, that I learned just how dire the situation was and just how terrified my parents had been. These are difficult things to convey over text or phone calls, I suppose.

When talking to my Mom in that week and a half, I was trying to discern from what she said and how she sounded whether, or not, they really needed me there.

After getting off the phone with her one evening I broke-down. When my husband came to see what was happening I sobbed “I hate feeling like I am waiting to get that nightmare call that we had better come now or it will be too late…”

My Stepdad had gone through 11 rounds of chemo for colon cancer, and this was the year after he had been flown to Ottawa for a triple bypass. Now, he was in hospital with sepsis and my Mother had said that they were struggling to keep his organs functioning.

I knew it was serious, but did not know how serious or how scared both of my parents were going-through this. I guess that’s a compliment to how well they handled it together. Still, I hate thinking that they had to go through it alone.

Once my Stepdad was out of the hospital, I said to my husband, through more sobbing one night: “I NEVER want to be in that position again. Having to ask my Mom to let me know when it got to the ‘you need to come now because he’s dying’ stage.”

I hated being in that position. I didn’t wan to wait until it was too late. I wanted to spend time with him while there was still time to spend. I wanted my son to be able to build memories of his grandparents of playing games, laughing over dinner, sharing ice cream treats and going for car rides and not just sitting in a hospital saying ‘goodbye’.

So, we made the decision to uproot our lives, and move home.

It was a decision that required a lot of sacrifice, and there are times I still can burst into tears when something I miss about our old home strikes or when my Son asks something like: “Can we go to the tick-tock park?” (A park we used to frequent behind city hall, where the large clock on old city hall, would chime on the hour).

But, the pain and the loss we experience over leaving the city that we all dearly loved pales in comparison to the pain and the loss we would feel if we had decided to stay and, instead, forfeited the time we now get to spend with family.

You just cannot put a price on that.

People say it all the time, but until you are staring it in the face it can be tough to comprehend;

life is short.

You have to look at what really matters to you and be prepared to move heaven and earth to make it happen.

It may be very difficult at times when we are missing our beloved city, but that is grief, not regret. I will never regret choosing time with my family over our life in the city.

We never know how much more time we have together. I’m determined to make the most of it.

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Empty Time

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Adulthood, Childhood, Dreaming, Fulfillment, Growing Up, Growth, life, Living Life, Reflections, Time, Truth

A space for writing. A space for thinking. For feeling. For being.
I am old enough to remember life before the internet was in every household and in every hand. I am old enough to recall what it means to spend a day in your bedroom, without Facebook, YouTube or instragram to “entertain” you.

I remember listening to Ace of Base for hours (the entire album, not just that one song – because that’s how you listened to music back then), while doodling fashion design sketches on notepads. I dreamt I might become a fashion designer one day, creating clothes that were comfortable, functional, and cool.

I liked to wear my black Doc. Martens boots with floral babydoll dresses and a well-worn jean jacket. Nobody dressed like that in my town, but I didn’t care. I thought I was ahead of my time and, having watched “Reality Bites” more than once, believed I was a Winona Ryder-esque misfit.

This brief soirée into fashion design came from the most unusual place – Archie comics.

I loved Archie comics and I used to own them all. At one point, they started fashion design contests where people could submit outfits for Betty or Veronica. Having seen the winning submissions, I just knew that I could do better than what I was seeing – for Betty, of course. Who the hell cares about Veronica?

There was such an incredible amount of space and time to create back in those days. Time to dream. Time to breathe and just be.

Some of this has been swallowed by adulthood. Time is now used for cooking meals, doing dishes, cleaning the house, taking care of my child, paying bills and the many more responsibilities that age brings with it.

Loss is inevitable when the currency is time.

But, does it always have to be lost? Once we reach a certain age in life are we just doomed to continue losing time until the day we breathe our last?

I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.

I have begun seeking ways to gain time instead of always just losing it. I find I regain a few seconds when I take the time to just look out of a window for a few minutes or sit on the porch swing, empty handed, no music or distractions other than the birds flittering around the bird feeders or landing lightly on the evergreen branches. I gain a minute when I just sit and watch my son playing and allow myself to soak-in every movement and noise he makes. My time bank grows a little bit when I go for a drive and allow myself to breathe-in the landscape around me, letting my mind drift-back to the days of childhood when I used to look-out over the same landscape and dream.

I am on a journey to rediscover the pleasure of empty time. We grow-up and somewhere along the way we buy-in to the concept that empty time is a waste of time. This is simply not true.

Empty time is where life is found. It is where joy exists and time expands.

Empty time is where the magic happens.

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I Am Enough

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Acceptance, Adulthood, Farming, Fear, High School, life, Loneliness, Maturity, Reflections, Tomboy

I used to be afraid of seeing people I knew from growing-up in this town. When I visited my parents, I would dive behind displays in the supermarket, or turn my head when someone I knew was nearby.There is so much in my childhood/teenage years and early adulthood that was absolutely horrible. My relationship with peers was always very tumultuous. I felt weird, odd, strange and always felt like I never really belonged or fit-in.

I seemed to skip-over the teenage years, and didn’t understand what it meant to relax and have fun. I was always on-edge and lonely. I hated high school rallies, sports games, events, etc. I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed so happy while I was so miserable. Because I didn’t understand it, it all seemed fake to me. Everyone seemed fake and I didn’t know how to relate to that.

As I’ve grown-up I’ve started to have a better understanding for what happened in those years, why I was affected the way I was, and have had a better appreciation for the people who were around me at the time.

I have also grown in confidence. Being in the city has helped with this. There are far too many people in a large city for people there to be bothered judging them. Living in a place that, in comparison, is so free from judgement and harsh opinions, was liberating.

Thousands of people walked-by you every day dressed in all-manners of clothing, different levels of attractiveness, poor, rich, dirty, clean…and they were all the same; just another person you were passing on the street.

It is in the city where I began to feel confident wearing tank tops and shorts. I saw woman of all shapes and sizes just dressing to be cool and comfortable on hot summer days and didn’t hear one negative comment from any of the hundreds of people around, about how they looked and I realized – I could do that too.

I remember as a child/teen always wanting to be as “cool” as the “town kids”. The “town kids” had all the “in” name brands: Club Monaco, The Gap, Adidas and even B.U.M. Equipment. I don’t think I owned anything that was name-brand until I finally begged my mother to the point she bought me a B.U.M. Equipment sweatshirt for Christmas. But, my wiener dog, Gus, chewed-up the ‘U’ and my mom decided to stuff the ‘U’ with cotton and patch it with floral material. I hated it, but felt so guilty and pressured to wear it after all her work, that I did. But, I’m sure my ability to ‘fit in’ took several hits for the cause.

The “town kids” also didn’t smell like a barn when they arrived at school. I lived on a farm and did my share of barn chores (mostly shovelling poop), which meant that I always had a bit of a “barn smell” on my skin and clothing. I don’t really know if other people smelled it, I never asked, or if I was just self-conscious about it. But, it is one reason I found it difficult to get out of my comfort zone to hang-out with peers.

I also was a tomboy who never cared for, or bothered, to learn about things like doing hair, makeup, nails, plucking eyebrows, etc. It just didn’t interest me. There were so many other things to do with my time, like climbing trees, going out on the 4-wheeler, milking the cows, raking the hay and playing music.

The ironic thing about this whole period of time is that I thought that I was the one being judged harshly, but have come to understand that I was doing the judging myself. I judged my peers as being fatuous and shallow and determined that I was above that.

There were, at times, reason to feel this way. We were teenagers, after all, but I’m sure now that if I could have been outside of myself and looking at myself on occasion, I would feel the exact same way about me.

Though, I also did a lot of my “teenage stuff” before I was an actual teenager: I skipped school, got in fights, had boyfriends, fooled-around, tried beer and cigarettes, all before grade 9. During Grade 9 I did a bit more of it, and was kind of in one of the ‘cool groups’ (I even participated in a Homecoming float). But, by the end of Grade 9 I guess I just felt ‘over it all’.

I became a bit of a loner. I was just ready to get on with life. I wanted to be an adult, to be a successful writer, musician or University professor. I wanted to be full of knowledge and experience, having traveled the world and lived-through adventure upon adventure.

And here I sit, 15+ years later, having gained knowledge, experience, traveled and lived-through adventure upon adventure, and I’ve returned to this place, where it all began, changed and yet, in many ways, the same.

I still have no interest in town gossip, or want to be friends with people who think it’s ok to be mean to others and I still love to be a tomboy, spending time outside getting dirty, or doing heavy work. But, I no longer think of myself as an “outsider” or feel the need to hide behind shelves at the store if I see someone from my past.

I know now that I am a person, just like everyone else. I have things that are really fantastic about me, things that are unique and totally loveable, and I have things that are annoying about me and things that are weaknesses. And it’s ok.

It’s me.

When I was younger, I never felt like I was enough. It is still something with which I struggle. It’s a common affect of being a child that has gone-through divorce.

But, now I know better. I know that I am me. I am myself.

And I am enough.

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It’s My Story – And, I love it.

03 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Changes, Childhood, Home, Hopes, Inspiration, life, Life Change, Life Lessons, Looking Back, Me, Memories, Memory, Moving, Moving Forward, Reflections

It’s always exciting to me when a chapter of my life is drawing to an end. The older I get, the more I am able to look-back on each chapter with pride and contentment. Perhaps this is because so much of my early chapters were filled with struggle, heartache and pain and as I get further away from them, filling my book with more adventures and happy moments, there are simply more memories from which to choose than there once was.
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I am also more excited than I used to be at the start of a new chapter. When I was younger, so much of my life was a blank page and I didn’t understand or fully appreciate the wonder of that.
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I recall when I was in my early 20’s, reflecting on my life and waiting for it to begin. In my mid-20’s, thinking I had experienced so much and yet, still thinking that I was still just waiting for when life would really start for me. At that time, I had only lived a small handful of chapters.
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Even though I somehow, at least on an intellectual level, knew that this was life, that it had begun, I didn’t feel it and I was still waiting.
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I used to meditate on the idea and try to will my whole being to a great epiphany of in-the-moment realization that this was life and it was wondrous. Then, one day, without me even noticing, it just happened.
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I can look-back on so much of my life and see these clear chapters, separations, moments of endings and new beginnings, of loss, of gain, of growth of retreat.
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And it’s all glorious.
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Now, more than when I was young, I revel at those blank pages. I am excited to think what stories, adventures, sites, smells, sounds and memories are going to fill these pages. I have a deeper appreciation for what it means to really be able to “look-back” and reflect on things.
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Natasha Bedingfield sings a song called “Unwritten” that has just started playing in my head as I am writing this:
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Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten.
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One day, years from now, I will be looking-back on this new chapter after it has been finished and I have moved-on to a new one, maybe even several new ones, and I will see the flashes of happy Christmases, sorrows and loss, moments of silliness, mistakes made, feelings of pride as well as accomplishment and, what I’m most looking-forward to, memories that are, heavily, steeped in love.
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I will be changed then, as I am now from the 20 year old me that was so eager for life to start.
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But, one thing will always remain – this is my story.
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And, I love it.
.

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Confessions of a Facebook “Creeper”

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in Seeking Life Now

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Tags

Art, Childhood, Depression, Experience, Facebook, Forgiveness, Friends, Friendship, Growth, Healing, High sc, Invisible, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Memories, Memory, Nostalgia, Progress, Reflection, Reflections, Regret, School, Teachers

I admit it. I search for people all the time who aren’t my friends on Facebook. Usually, this happens during bouts of nostalgia when I find myself thinking about the people with whom I grew-up and wondering where they are, what they are doing, what they look like and how happy they appear.

I want to compare where I am, what I’m doing, what I look like and how happy I am with my childhood friends. I am always relieved and slightly joyous when I see that there has been weight gain, wrinkles, weariness…good. It’s not just me.

There are many people with whom I wish I had kept more regular contact. People with whom I am no longer “friends” – not even on Facebook. Sometimes I creep these people to see what life is like for them. I did this yesterday and spent a considerable amount of time looking at a few childhood friends and I was genuinely glad to see how happy they appeared. I was pleased that they had experienced adventures, travel, fun, love and beauty.

I considered sending a few friend requests, but got lost in thoughts of how it would be perceived by these people. I suffered from depression for most of my time in high school. This was before depression was really understood, talked about or treated. But, the biggest casualty of my depression was my social life. I withdrew from all of my friends and lost most of those relationships. One of the biggest hangers-on of this time period is embarrassment. I feel embarrassed all the time about how I was and I assume that people remember me in a negative light.

I was moody, judgmental, shy, confused, lonely and lost.

During these years my FB posts would have be the kind that you just get tired of seeing so you block the person so you don’t get the constant drone of negative status updates in your feed.

When I think about these years I am always overwhelmed with sadness for the many memories I have about stupid things I did as a result of my state of mind. I’ve been working on forgiving myself, and giving that girl a chance to heal and find acceptance; strangely, creeping on Facebook kind of helps with this. I’ve managed to ‘rekindle’ a few of these lost relationships and they have been extremely meaningful to me. Every time I send a request to a long, lost, friend and then we message back and forth a bit, and eventually just start to share life through the regular news feed, it helps normalize what feels like an extremely polarizing time for me.

I wish I could sit down with all of my old friends and have an open discussion about those years, explain what was going on in my world, express my regret for how I may have treated them, share my sorrow for all the lost time and then make-up for some of that time and move-forward as friends again.

My mind is full of many happy memories with them. I remember hours and hours of time spent together, laughing, talking about boys, playing stupid games, sleepovers, doing makeup, playing sports, passing notes in school…I see snapshots in my mind of us together on hammocks, acting cool at school dances, playing flag football, flirting and silly things like stuffing our shirts with balloons. The memories are full and rich.

But, then there are years where the memories are filled with pictures of school dances, football games, pep rallies and lunches filled with all these faces growing and enjoying life—but mine is not with them. These memories haunt me like shadows. Life was happening all around me, but I wasn’t in it.

So, I creep on facebook. I try to fill-in some of the gaps. I reach-out. I rekindle. I make progress.

I am so thankful for those friends with whom I’ve managed to reconnect because, the truth is, the folks with whom I grew-up really do mean a lot to me. They were the people that helped shape me into who I am today. They were my original cheerleaders, challengers and role-models. They were my squad, my family, my community. They exist in my memory as a deep and vast resource of life, joy, sorrow, lessons-learned, new experiences, comfort and friendship and I am so thankful for the ability to creep into their lives now and get a little piece of what once was.

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Art is what happens to you…

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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AGO, Art, Awareness, Embrace, Experience, life, Live, Memory, Micah Lexier, Motherhood, Reflections, Toronto

*

Art- it’s exciting when a piece of art surprises you by impacting you in a way you never thought it would.

My husband and I took a half vacation day to explore the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). We had wanted to do this on Leap Day (Feb. 29, 2016) but it fell on a Monday and the Gallery is not open on Mondays.

So, we decided to do it yesterday.

We took the elevator to the top floor and found a volunteer leading a tour who invited us to join. Usually, I would want to just explore these things on my own, but today I was feeling like I could use a little extra input into what it was we were going to be seeing, so we joined in.

I’m so glad we did.

The very first installation we saw was one created by Micah Lexier. It was “a work of art in the form of a quantity of coins equal to the number of months of the statistical life expectancy of a child born January 6, 1995.”

Normally, I would look at something like this and think: “Huh…ok. Kind of interesting, I guess.” And not give it very much thought beyond that.

But, as we looked at it our volunteer tour guide said:

“Notice how the coins in the first box are neatly ordered and purposefully placed. This is the expectation of what life will bring-the hopes. This is how we all start out. Now look at the coins in the second box. It always reminds me of a line of a famous John Lennon song: ‘life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’.”

And then the tears came.

First of all, the installation reflected things I’ve been having about my own life for some time. For years now I have been trying to teach myself how to be present in the moment and realize that this is life.

There was a period of time when I felt I was constantly waiting for my life to begin. And then, all of a sudden, I looked and I saw a box, much like this chaotic box of coins, and I realized that this was my life. Life was here in all this mess, disorganisation and the many unplanned events and bends in the road.

I had been expecting to look at my life and see it as the first box: Ordered, dreams fulfilled, everything in its place, looking exactly as I had imagined it would. But, I have recently come to realize and accept my life as being beautiful, despite the fact that it looks so different to what I had originally envisioned.

Just as the neatly organized coins have their beauty, so do the scattered. And, as I looked at the 2 boxes the one thing remained the same, despite how the coins were placed, they were all in “my box”. And, that’s really what is important. Whether the coins are neat, or scattered, they are mine. They are my memories, experiences, struggles, victories, joys, sorrow – my life. And that’s beautiful.

Secondly, I sing that song to my son all the time. And, as I looked at these coins, I saw my neatly organized hopes and dreams for what his life will be in the first box and the reality of what it will actually be in the 2nd. I realized that his life, just like mine, is going to be what it’s going to be. I can’t control it and I won’t be able to keep it neatly organized for him. He’s going to experience pain, sorrow, frustration, disappointment, confusion and chaos. But, there will also be joy, love, freedom, hope, comfort and adventure.

There will come a time when the 2 coins that are currently in his box will be at the bottom of this heap of messy coins, almost forgotten. Except, the image of how they are now in their near perfection, will always remain in my heart. At some point, there will have to be a letting-go.

As I stood there contemplating all of this I made a promise to myself to help teach my son how to not miss life because he’s trying to keep his coins in order. I want to teach him to embrace the chaos that is life and to see the beauty in it while it is happening.

Out on the ocean sailing away
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we’ll bot just have to be patient
‘Cause it’s a long way to go
A hard row to hoe
Yes, it’s a long way to go
But in the meantime

-John Lennon-

 

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Memory

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Tags

Childhood, Memories, Memory, perseverance, Reflections, Stories, Time, Truth

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I have said this before, memories are tricky, unreliable things.

I believe that most, if not all, of our memories consist of factual truth, embellishments of emotion, imagination and external influences (such as seeing a picture, news article, or hearing someone else’s account).

While they may not be 100% fact, memories, especially those from childhood, can tell us a lot about how we were feeling at the time. They should not be judged. They should not be criticized. And, there’s often no real need for them to be “set straight”. They exist for a reason.

They are called “Autobiographical Memory”.

Our memories help shape us and, in turn, our lives. I grew up as the baby of the family. I am used to having everyone else tell me how “things were” or at least, how they remember them.

I also have grown-up constantly trying to keep the peace and protect everyone around me. This has meant that, time and time and time again I have never shared what I remembered, how I have felt about things and the memories that have been my experiences through life.

Even now, as I started this blog, I have had to constantly battle the urge to edit or not write because I didn’t want to upset anyone. I have held my own memories, recollections, feelings, thoughts, and stories close to my heart, where they could be safe, long enough. I want to share them. I want to share this world that I grew-up in. As I remember it.

I know that my memories are never going to be 100% truth. Sometimes, they may not even be more than 20% truth. But, they are mine.This is how it was to me. And, as part of who I am, they don’t need to be corrected, just accepted as part of me, my story, my substance. I know that they are not, necessarily, perfectly accurate and I know that there are other people involved who have their own versions of the stories, their own memories, their own feelings. I do not write to take that away from that. We all experienced things through our own lenses. This is my space to share through mine.

Fear, loneliness, trauma, anger, shame, embarrassment, love, uncertainty, humor, imagination, sadness-they will all be a part of why I recall things the way I do. And that’s important.

This is what my world was. These are the experiences, memories and feelings, both fact and fiction, that all led-up to this point. Right here. Me.
Here in all my strengths, weaknesses, victories, failures-the love, the hate, the fear the bravery. Everything I am comes from these memories.

It may not be 100% factual truth-but, it is 100% me.

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