NOvember - My Personal Experience in Learning to Say No

Google NOvember and you will see that there are many campaigns encouraging people to say no to some pretty serious abuse. Such as drug abuse or violence and sexual exploitation. 

But as the hashtag is expanding to include other topics, what about day to day things that may be seemingly insignificant to some but are causing stress or anxiety to others? It's these seemingly insignificant things I started saying no to this year...

Looking back on the past year, and decade, gives opportunity to put a lot of what has happened into perspective. With plans being put into motion for 2020, I would like to move beyond all that has happened.

To all I have offended. It has never ever been intentional. This year I needed to learn to say no and walk away from things/places that were not good for me. And I needed to say no to things that I simply did not want to do. I have been such a people pleaser for so long that saying no felt impossible. And it came at a cost...that cost was my truth.

In order to speak and live my truth I knew I had to start learning to say no. 

As I started to say no and it offended someone, they had no idea the strength it took within to say it. Inside I was terrified. 

Next came the time to start walking away. This was scarier because I knew I would be misunderstood. 

And I was. 

Earlier this year I walked away from an online group. Actually I left a few, but only one caused misunderstanding. I literally just walked. I snuck out of the back door. No drama. I had my reasons...many of them. They had been building for a while. But I decided that I would keep them to myself in order not to cause drama or sway opinion. 

However, it didn't go down too well. I caused offence just by leaving and such an action was extremely misunderstood. Being put down to a single fact...I left because I was offended myself. 

Not true.

But you know, it's okay. 

It's okay because I have more self-confidence than I did a few months ago. Saying no does that to you. At one time it would have bothered me but today I close the door. I'm moving on. But before I do, I want to say this to everyone who I've upset.

I'm sorry. I'm genuinely sorry my actions offended you and I'm here if you ever decide to put the past behind and move on too. 

I am not sorry for my boundaries. 

I am not sorry for standing on my morals and principles. For speaking up about injustices.

They are so incredibly important to me. It took a lot to be brave enough to start living by them. 

Years ago I vowed to not be a victim, waiting for someone to come save me, but to try and be the best version of myself possible. It's only now I'm learning that boundaries and no's are part and parcel of that.

I genuinely wish all I upset the very best. Next year is going to be an incredible year and I really do hope your dreams become a reality. But if we cannot go into 2020 together, that's okay. Just know they are no ill feelings on my part. 

Geraldine Xx

My Journey To A Magical Life - The Key! Part Four

Continued from part three.

This was when signs intensified. I was reading a book that was recommended to me. It was all about a woman's search for faeries. For enchantment in a modern world.

 (I know, I know, but you've come this far with me you might as well stay to the end!) 

Anyway, I'm not talking about the cute Disney cartoon type but a real investigation into all the stories of what some call 'The good folk'. The authors story was not only a real eye opener for me, but I felt relief knowing there were "normal" women, my age, actively on the search for that something more. 

Once I had read that book, I had a new awareness and respect. An awareness that maybe there is, as Brian Froud mentions in an interview with the books author, another world/dimension which we once could see but now lost sight of. And a respect that, if this really is the case, I need to pay more attention. 

An affirmation taken from a book I had been repeating for a couple of years now includes the words "The world of the wondrous." It's a nod to the fact that people's inner child still believes that something wonderous, beyond their imagination, can happen.

I had always felt everything in nature is not only alive, but speaks and communicates. A skill we have lost over time, yet one which can easily be cultivated once again. For example, the wind often "spoke" to me. I would feel it beckoning me to listen and pay attention (to what, I don't know). However, because I didn't realise that was what it was saying, I felt restless and agitated at those times. Like I was supposed to do something but I wasn't sure what. It was only later that I knew it was an invitation to listen and pay attention. And again, serendipitously, as I write this I come across another lady who knows the feeling. She describes it as;

The winds restless chant.

So as things with my situation intensified, I held the thought that I was standing on the verge of a fantastic new, yet ancient, discovery. Some of it I saw, literally, as a child. But again, that's another story. 

In a whirlwind of change we found a house. It was perfect. There and then we said we wanted to proceed with our application for it. For a whole week we were left wondering if we got it. I couldn't bear it. We were so close.

One day, still waiting, I went into the back garden to place some incense to mask the smell of weed that consumed the area. Thinking about the book I had read, and of the possibility of an unseen world, or rather a world hidden to us, I looked at the Hawthorn tree. Known as the tree of fairies. At a time when neighbours were felling trees, as if they were allergic to nature itself, I put up fences around the Hawthorn to protect it. It was right on the garden boundaries and if I didn't do something, it would also soon become the victim of the neighbours abhorrence to nature.

So for years there it remained. Thinking of it's symbolic attribute to fairies, I smiled, connected to my inner child and with a tentative nod to the thought there may be more than meets the eye, I went and placed a incense stick by the tree. 

That's when I saw it.

A key.

An old key, embedded, but not buried, in the mud. 

You have to know, I had been mowing our lawn for weeks consistently and never once saw this key. I knew it wasn't just a coincidence.

I ponder on what it could mean. Then a thought dropped in my head. The key to the house was finally given to us. As if it had been held onto, by an unseen being, preventing us from leaving. This house, this prison that had held me for so many years, could hold me no longer. I was now free to leave.

Two days later, we received the news that our application was successful and we could move in immediately. I felt no sentimentality for the old house. Everything of importance I carried with me in my heart.

This is where all my faith, positive thinking, affirming, all that work, began to yield its fruit! 

Final post coming soon...

Journey To Rediscover The Magical Life - An Introduction

"Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent." - John O'Donohue 

This life can be magical. In fact, I would say that it is meant to be so. All that wonder and sense of anything is possible as a child, I believe, is meant to carry on into adulthood for a reason. But sadly, it rarely ever does. It is educated out of us. Those who do, however, do so with spectacular results! J.K.Rowling is a modern time example, igniting the world with permission to believe in magic and the magical again. And, something to note, as this is a theme I will touch on... Harry Potter was born out of very difficult times.

 In order to discover the magic, you will have to go on a journey. A journey that involves recovery or rediscovery (of what was lost) and a letting go (unlearning what does not serve us). 

 The starting point of this said journey is generally you being (spiritually) asleep while usually in a pit of despair or struggle. You find yourself asking questions like 'Is this all there is?' 'This is not how I imagined my life.' Next, something of an awakening happens and you begin seeking where you are now.  However, many do not know the way, so seek religion (not to be confused with genuine faith) which provides little to no answers. At it's best it will provide some sense of purpose and community, but it won't answer the feeling you have deep down within you that there is more. Putting it down to childish fantasy, many give up and fall back into the system that is our present day culture. And, interestingly, religion and our culture often does the hard work for us. We can easily slip into it's flow for the rest of our lives, never seeking and therefore finding. 

 I want to tell you there IS more. But it involves having faith while you seem lost and utterly forsaken and alone in the darkness. In that darkness, if you're willing, there is so much to learn. The reason for struggle and coming to a point where you feel you just can't take any more, often has to happen to get our attention and force us into SEEKING, noticing, and to pay attention. If we didn't have the struggle, most of us genuinely wouldn't seek as intensely as we should or pay attention. And sadly, this is where many give up.

Why? 

 Because we have lost our guides who existed in communities (and still do in some countries) and whose wisdom was handed down to each subsequent generation. These communities, cultures and tribes held secrets which, because much has been taken with them to the grave, has to be rediscovered. We're left with signs carved into stone, myths, legends and stories. And without a childlike approach of wonder and curiosity, we only delay our rediscovery of the wonders that this world holds. 

 Yet recent generations, arrogant in their “progress”, believe themselves to be the most advanced in history to date. Even today, it goes without saying that we are the most advanced we have ever been. Now I am far, very far, from being a conspiracy theorist, yet in my seeking I have discovered and firmly believe that... 

 history is not as fixed as we've perceived it. 

 New discoveries are more frequently coming to light which force us to rewrite history books. Yet the most incredible thing is that, much like the saying “Take it as gospel”, once something, however untrue, is established in the history books, it's taken as solid, unchangeable, fact and many people do then take it as gospel. And there's no going back for them. Even if there's firm evidence, the change seems to be too much and they feel safer believing in the old. 

 And that's where we close ourselves off to possibility....no matter how extraordinary that possibility may be. At the root is fear...fear of change, of things not being how we're used to them being, of being labelled crazy, of not fitting in....it goes on. And so we find ourselves back to the theme of struggle. To rock bottom. Because in that place you start to lose those fears. You stop worrying what others think. You are in survival mode. It's either fight or flight. In survival mode you begin to let go of those things that no longer serve you. And if you decide to fight, you start looking for what DOES serve you. New opportunities present themselves to you which you would never have considered before. 

 And so enters POSSIBILITY! For the first time since childhood!

Next, I begin to share my journey and the slow unfolding of magic in my life.