Evolution

Argh! It's February already! My great plan to find a pause button on life is sadly failing, I read recently that some university somewhere discovered that if you keep changing direction in your life rather than routinely going about your business your life will appear slower. I tried to draw comfort from this when we moved house for the umpteenth time on the 29th December last year, although to be honest I completely lost track of days altogether at that time. Still, once I had emptied the last tired looking packing box and begun to find positives in our latest new home I find myself looking forward to 2015 with excitement and in trepidation. I can feel it in my bones, this year will be a year of extremes some wonderful and some challenging, but all part of the soul's development.

So, what's exciting? Well, for me, I have decided to go to university for starters, and have already begun my path to a psychotherapy degree. Although qualified as a Hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner and teacher of meditation, I have both a personal and professional want to learn and offer more. The first concern I had was that I would look old enough to be every other student's mother, but thankfully this particular course has an average age of 35, it seems there really is a need to attend the university of life first before helping others.

And being a student, I have also decided to cram in a gap year too,  another experience I missed out on when I was younger. Thus far, in between studying, work, children and walking the dog, my 2015 itinerary includes; San Francisco, Ireland, India, and our annual weekend at Latitude Festival in June. I am beyond excited at each one of these trips for different reasons, more on that later.

My first challenge of 2015 began in the first week of January, my Dad was diagnosed with a malignant tumour in his stomach and for me this was quite a shock, I couldn't help thinking "but this wasn't the plan!". He is 85 and has always been such a healthy man, his parents lived into their nineties and both simply fell off their perches, so obviously I thought he would eventually do the same thing.  But my belief in the power of positivity gave me some purpose and I invited all my Facebook friends to spare a moment to send Dad healing and hope. Three weeks later, and I am happy to report that he is on the mend and it appears as if the cancer has all been removed. I am deeply grateful to all of those who took the time to think of him and give me a little longer with my Dad. Thank you.

Psychotherapy students must attend 40 hours of counselling sessions in the first year. Clearly, the view being you can't sort other people's heads out if your own is in turmoil, and this is an opportunity to observe how other therapists work. My therapist is female and older than me, she is local but my instinct's picked her because she looked rather wise in her photograph. I was apparently fifteen minutes late for my first session and I could see that I was going to have to accept that was my fault. There was a lot of note scribbling and nodding as I explained my somewhat unusual life path. The misery of abuse at boarding school, the conditioning at home, and of course the icing on the cake, the breakdown of the relationship between my mother and myself amongst other golden nuggets. I am a Freudian dream case, and although clearly my therapist has a view on the emotional damage of a child at boarding school, she also presumed she would take the role of my "mother" from time to time. My relationship with my mother broke down 6 years ago and we haven't spoken since.  My second visit I endeavoured to be five minutes early for my appointment, once again I had done the wrong thing! I apologised profusely and was met with a question on the lines of "do I you think I'm like your mother?" I am intrigued as to the journey this therapist is taking me on, the session was difficult and I came away with one half of me ready to look elsewhere for a therapist and the other half stubborn enough to see where she is going with this. Despite feeling as if I had been put through a mangle I am choosing option A for now.

I have learnt I can not change my mother (or anyone else for that matter), only she can do that, but I can be grateful for what she has taught me through her behaviour, and I truly believe that my closeness with my own children is because I realise how important a loving parent is. We must be grateful for what we have got not what we haven't got. In fact, I have always found that people who challenge us, are a gift, sometimes it takes years to realise the bigger picture but for me each event is a lesson and I choose to learn and grow, not wither and die, what else can you do?