August 2018

How the chickens saved my life (part I)

This blog post is dedicated to Annie, my mentor, who first encouraged me to write about my chickens.

We had 5 ex-battery hens – we got them in September 2017 after a serious of seemingly random events led us to them. I’d fancied chickens for a few months by then – it probably started whilst I idly watched the ducks roaming free at a friend’s wedding at a posh country house hotel. I had wanted them more and more as time went on. Another friend at work had chickens and we used to chat about them, then one day, out of the blue, he asked if I wanted his coop as all his chooks had been polished off by a fox. I got all excited (not by his loss obviously) but hadn’t really committed in my mind, but when I went back to my desk minutes later there was an urgent appeal in my email for battery hen rehoming in a few weeks in our area. It felt like fate.

When I phoned Gary he’d just seen the latest KFC advert which was a cartoon of a glamorised chicken bouncing along having a great time as he danced to his death – he was so offended by it he was going to complain about it being hugely inappropriate. He wasn’t the only one, apparently it was widely considered disrespectful to chickens and distressing for vegetarians, vegans and children and got taken off the air (though I see they have a similar one just airing now). Thus softened and outraged by the plight of chickens in general, when I asked if we could get some he said yes. I don’t think he realised how serious I was, but before he could draw breath I’d hired a van and collected the coop. The level of excitement I felt can only be compared to how people talk about preparing for babies, I was over the moon. The area round the back of the house had always been waiting for something and it was an ideal area for them. I got it fenced and it all felt like it was meant to be.

I made them a wee shelter of bits and bobs lying around and it was such fun, as it didn’t need to be anything special because I trusted they wouldn’t judge me and I really enjoyed just creating stuff randomly. From the mere idea of having them they gave me so much pleasure. I read a lot about what to expect and I waited impatiently like a child going to Disney.

Enter Dora, Pink, Ella, Niala and Wambui and our lives changed forever. The lines of people in a garden centre car park, all there to adopt these pathetic, forlorn looking creatures was heartwarming. They were quiet in the car, and we placed them gently in the coop. Photos of them now look unrecognisable, but they weren’t as shabby as I had expected. Some of the rescues had been collected a couple of weeks previously, some the week before and some only days before. We didn’t know which ones we had but they had feathers, just looked a bit shabby, more so in the pissing rain. Ironically we had rescued them from a constantly warm environment and chucked them into a dreich Scottish drizzle! Looking back at what they were, compared to now is shocking though. They huddled warily in the coop whilst Twiggy the cat came to investigate.

Dora the Explorer was first out (or so we thought, we weren’t really sure, apart from one with a speckled neck – Niala, we probably couldn’t tell them apart). When Twiggy appeared at the door though, they all shot out, startled. Soon they started scratching around. We had been warned that they may not be able to walk or perch which makes me think these ones had been free-ranging for a couple of weeks and they seemed to be able to do everything. However they soon grew so much stronger that we realised how weak they had been. It was amazing how they just knew what to do, their peculiar 3 step moon-walk when they scratch, ferreting around – I was captivated by their joy and how their natural instincts just kicked in.

Gradually the chickens had the run of more and more of the garden and I picked up after them every day before Gary got home. It was just nicer having them around everywhere. They would literally gallop out of the coop to the “bird tree” and pick up bits. I had to move the bird feeders as they would hoover up debris all day, every speck that fell and thinking that couldn’t be good for them I ended up moving the feeders rather than fence it off. Whilst they aren’t affectionate they would peck gently at your legs, constantly, in retrospect I think it was Niala that started that. She loves pecking, blindly, mindlessly – a bit like cats when they pad up and down in a glaze. It’s very gentle – though you get the occasionally nip I’m sure it’s just curiosity. She loves a life-time shopping bag, but in time they all a start doing it – it’s so bizarre and funny to watch. Shiny leaves, plastic, stones…

Niala became Noisy Niala as she crows and calls constantly and gradually all their personalities began to come out. I’d got them coloured leg rings as they all looked the same to us at first (apart from Niala with her beautifully speckled neck). Pink was supposed to be Alish or Aisha but it never really stuck so she’s just stayed Pink. Wambui had the green tag, Noisy Niala was Orange. Red stayed Red until she was ill and because we spoke so much about her her name Ella finally stuck. Ella has always been the boss, she’s the smallest and feistiest, and always looked really shabby and tiny compared to the others. She started off ruling quite aggressively but as they all settled down it’s clear she was in charge but she doesn’t need to fling her tiny weight around anymore. Wambers grew lighter in colour and more distinctive, and she was always in the background – simply because she wasn’t ever a problem, but she and Niala hung out together, thick as thieves. Wambers was much calmer and measured than Niala who can be a bit frantic – and terrified of a bin bag although an orange Sainsbury’s shopping bag is like catnip to her.

One day, a few months later, Dora shut down. That’s the only way to describe it. I took her to the vet but no one could find anything wrong with her. I realise now that when we got soft eggs I had thought it was her and when she was off I had held her in a bath of Epsom salts, and she laid one eventually (and ate it) then seemed to perk up. However now she was just a husk of a chicken, first she would respond when you were around but just shut down when you went away, but eventually she just stopped moving around at all. After the first vet visit revealed nothing we started trying to feed her treats. Then her crop filled up and we thought it was sour crop and got it flushed but in retrospect it was just her body shutting down and I wish we’d had her put to sleep before putting her through that. I know now that you need to see an avian vet. Our vets were lovely and helpful but they just didn’t really know and I wish we’d just put her down then. I’d put her back in the coop at night but the next day Gary fished her out of the pen and put her in a box near the Aga as she was just standing in the rain, unmoving. She wouldn’t eat or drink and it was heart-breaking. When we spoke to the vet I asked if I could just leave her be to die, rather than trying to force feed her but the vet said they can hang on for a couple of weeks so we took her and had her put down immediately. I couldn’t bear for her to be manhandled in her last days on earth if she wasn’t going to survive. RIP gentle Dora, Jan 2018 – she was the most gentle of them, whilst she wouldn’t let you cuddle her, she wasn’t quite as quick and determined in dropping away from your hand and would tolerate you stroking her.

I knew someone was laying soft eggs, we had always assumed it Dora. But they continued, nearly every day. I notice Ella squatting a lot, not trying to lay or anything, just down on her haunches, but she would get up as soon as she saw you and always looked like she was investigating something, looking bright and busy so I wasn’t that worried. Then one morning I saw an egg shell hanging out of her bottom and knew that she had been laying them. I took her to the vet and he said there was nothing stuck in her but it would likely happen again and prescribed antibiotics. A dog sized pill (drugs companies don’t cater for the chicken pet) to be dissolved in water and put down their throat. He gave me an enormous syringe, and after Googling how to medicate a chicken endlessly on YouTube, I found a smaller syringe we’d used on Twiggy. You can only put a few ml in the chicken at a time and to squeeze it down their throat you have to slide the syringe down, avoiding the windpipe or you’ll drown them. If you think holding a cat still for medicating is hard, a chicken moves like a blur compared to a cat. Whilst they don’t have claws, they are so brittle and vulnerable it’s terrifying. The best advice I read online is that when you hold them (trapping their wings so they can’t flap) they will squawk like they’re being murdered but after a few seconds when they realise they aren’t dead, they’ll calm down! Dissolving a horse sized pill in a teaspoon of water just isn’t possible, so I had 2 full syringes and another to refill the small ones so poor Ella and I went through hell every morning and evening trying to get the drugs into her. I was sick with fear every single time I did it, although the day I did it the first time I felt so empowered I thought I could jump over the world. It still kept me awake at night and I’d be trembling with butterflies every morning, like getting up for an early flight, moving around in a daze with a tremor of nervous anticipation. Ella survived the intervention – even having to go to the vets for an injection for the last 2 days to finish the antibiotics as I was going away and couldn’t expect Gary to waltz in and take over without my help. Ella was so patient bless her but she’s never been as chummy since, always a bit wary. She seemed to recover but I knew it was only a matter of time before it happened again and the soft eggs continued. I decided we couldn’t go through this again and I found an avian vet in Falkirk with a view to getting an implant to stop her laying. It took a couple of weeks to kick in but since then she’s filled out tremendously and her feathers have grown in glossier and fuller, and now she’s as big as the others.

One minute Pink was plotting to scale the fence, absolutely determined to get at the bird seed, and she’d escaped twice, the next she was quiet and blown up – all fluffed up with her eyes shut. She had always been the greediest, the most enthusiastic feeder, full, fat fluffy bottomed with a dark glossy coat. My heart sank – forums are full of the sick chicken look but it was all too familiar. However Wambers had been off for a couple of days a few months previously and then recovered without intervention so rather than assume it would all end in death I fed Pink treats and watched her carefully. She still engaged, but spent more and more time just standing, fluffed up, unmoving. She was disinterested in food and gradually lost condition. Suddenly Gary witnessed a violent attack between Niala and Pink, and then Wambers attacked Niala and they had a full on fight. We’d seen a bit of bickering but nothing concrete, but in retrospect I had found her off on her own a few times, hiding in bushes and behind the hurdles – she’d even laid an egg there. Fortunately, maybe because they’ve be de-beaked, no blood was drawn but he was really shocked and it became obvious that poor Pink was being bullied by all of them, with Niala as ring leader. Eventually I took her back to the avian vet having decided if it wasn’t something obvious we’d have her put down. I took Gary so I wouldn’t make an emotional decision, but vets as always are so practical and calm we saw no reason not to try the treatment. He told us some stuff that it could have been – nothing obvious again, but I didn’t catch it, he didn’t seem to identify anything specifically but noticed her stools were full of undigested corn. He told us to separate her so we could monitor what she was eating and pooping, I had been avoiding isolating her I case the bullying got worse but he said she needed time on her own and if she was bottom of the pecking order it wouldn’t matter. Thus followed a week of medication and to my disgust, being covered in fleas. I’m still not sure what they were, think Richard (the vet) said they were mites but they didn’t really look like any of the pictures on Google images. Like a pale grey/brown flea, only smaller. The vet said that happened when they were under the weather, nothing to worry about but that’s all very well when they aren’t crawling in your hair. They didn’t seem to bite but the vom factor when you think something is crawling in your hair is not to be sniffed at.

After a week then began the re-integration. We put Red in with Pink and kept Niala and Wambers separate. That went fine, so I put Wambers in with them the next day, leaving Niala. They were fine, no obvious scuffles, but Niala was dejected and confused and it was heart-breaking. I can’t describe how difficult I found it all. I was desperately trying to protect Pink and was upset at Niala as being the obvious bully, but she’s just a big, boisterous baby, like a clumsy, less popular child who longs to be in the limelight and tries to be funny by pushing people around. Her behaviour had become more frantic and manic the last few weeks, being really bolshy with all of them and I felt that even Ella was avoiding her, but seeing her alone calling constantly, broke my heart. I put Niala back with them but it became obvious she was still picking on Pink. Although they seemed to be managing, I couldn’t know what was happening when I wasn’t watching and I realised we needed a permanent solution. I kept finding poor Pink on the roof of the coop, the wood store and on the gate and I knew she wouldn’t be safe – if she could get out she would be away from food and water and it wasn’t fair for her to be on the run constantly.

Endless Googling told me there was only one thing I could do and I decided to separate Niala for a couple of days, however hard I found it. It was shocking and frightening even to me at how upset this made me, a deep, buried anxiety rumbling away in my stomach, solar plexus – like when you’ve had horrible news, death or a breakup and it sits deep inside you radiating a heavy sad knowing of grief. I know it’s ridiculous and I’ve since learned that it’s because I’m so (animal) sensitive, but knowing that it’s totally disproportional to the anxiety the situation warrants, doesn’t make it go away. I felt so helpless, logically I knew I was doing everything I could, but I couldn’t shake the sheer desperation, the deep all-encompassing sorrow I felt tinging my whole life. The closest I can describe is when my beloved Twiggy went missing and I was sure she was dead, but the not knowing was an all-consuming grief, a feeling that I could never be happy again but there was nothing I could do about it. But aware that this was my own private drama, I hardened myself, a few days of misery for Niala vs a lifetime of bullying for Pink was what I held my mind.

Then I saw a YouTube clip of a lady who had used the Emotion Code on her chickens. It’s a form of energy healing. Like a woman possessed I found out more about it and started it immediately. I felt like a fraud at first, couldn’t get the hang of it, but funny how necessity forces an issue. Days later and I’m really confident with self-testing. I can connect to the chickens immediately, I go through them each in turn. I don’t even need to be with them, I can do it in the house, but I like to sit outside close to them. I did lots with Niala, imprisoned in chicken jail as a bully-bird for three days I sat with her, whilst she pecked gently at my legs. She stayed really close, either oblivious or enjoying it, who knows. I released about 3-5 emotions in Niala nearly every day, occasionally inherited emotions, but mostly hers, and if I’m guided to ask more (mostly I’m not which is just as well as there are only so many questions to ask about a chicken emotion!) it’s usually in the first year of her life. They are all emotions like sorrow, fear, anxiety – there’s no anger or bitterness or hatred or resentment, it’s all abandonment and betrayal, all consistent with the horrible life they must’ve had as battery hens. Ella has had less, but she usually throws up one or two every couple of days. Wambers probably only one or two, Pink has probably had about four since I started. The first time I did it on Ella she was dust bathing, and she just seemed to go into a little daze. There may be no connection at all, and they don’t seem to notice. I’m not touching them when I do it, but they are happy to stay close whilst I do my voodoo on them (they aren’t cuddly chooks, but they usually follow me around. Ella less so since she’s had the benefit of medication so doesn’t trust me singling her out, and Pink is also less chummy after her week of medicating).

Today, after probably a couple of weeks of doing this most days, sometimes twice a day, I’m still releasing emotions from Niala and Ella. Today Niala had three, abandonment, forlorn and anxiety, Ella had betrayal and dread. I always ask to proxy for them and it’s always a yes, and the connection is immediate and strong when I connect to each one after the other.

I’m happy to say that already my girls are all getting along. At first Pink was still terrified of Niala, pinking and peeping and running away as soon as Niala approached, but it soon became clear that Niala wasn’t provoking her, it was just residual fear.

Yesterday they ate together at the feeder and I cried.

(My three fat ladies now, top image is Pink when we first got her. From left to right, Ella, Niala, Pink).

There are moments in your life when you feel your heart crack open. For some people it’s looking at a baby but that’s not me I’m afraid, I would have run a mile from a baby in my past life. Though now I can actually stand still in their presence and appreciate the magnificence of creation, how those clear open eyes, untarnished by the world, hold the spark of the human creator, before society starts its relentless disempowerment.  For others it’s a puppy being really cute, a whale or a rainbow. Those moments are often accompanied by a twist of pain which isn’t altogether comfortable. A sort of longing, a gnawing which we don’t know what to do with. I think that’s what’s called overjoy – were so unused to experiencing pure joy that it can put the body into overwhelm, literally. Babies usually evoke pure joy (unless, like me you’ve layered that over with your own negative beliefs), as apparently do really big things, like whales. Animals vibrate a lot higher than us, since they have mastered unconditional love and that’s really why we get so much from being with them. Abraham Hicks says that whales evoke joy because they are so big that you physically can’t not be affected by their vibration! Sunsets, rainbow, universally evoke a sense of wonder, awe and joy in people. And often people are moved to tears by a beautiful sight, sometime just the awe of nature, sometimes by the realisation of other peoples’ love and compassion. All these things remind us there is so much more to life that the pursuit of money and material things, that all we’re ever really looking for is a way to feel happy.

If you’ve seen any of my social media you’ll know that a pheasant has started visiting the garden. He arrived day one, squawking at the door, with a female, and since then they’ve been working out how to get in and out of the garden around the chicken fencing, how to navigate the chickens, the cat and the magpies (who see themselves in the pecking order). On the second day we noticed poor Humphrey (so named by Gary) had snapped all his magnificent tail feathers, and over the next few days they fell off.  I say “poor Humphrey” but Humphrey, as with all animals, is completely oblivious to the damage, and loves himself just the same, squawking and flapping his wings periodically, announcing his presence to the world. I don’t know if Humphrey is the same pheasant we saw last year, pecking at the windows, and occasionally in the field with his harem of three females. He has only one this year so far, who Gary has named Mabel. In the past I might have worried that he only had one female instead of three, but the animals has repeatedly shown me they don’t care about stuff like that. None of this is personal. If he had three, fine, but he doesn’t see only having Mabel as a reflection on himself. He doesn’t see his broken tail as a statement on his virility or his beauty. Animals, quite simply, couldn’t give a toss. This is delightfully demonstrated by Under One Sky Rescue, a charity we (the Animal Communication Collective) worked with recently. Under One Sky Rescue work with special needs cats, and their daily videos are just beautiful, cats with paralysed legs bouncing around playing, completely and utterly oblivious to their “disablement” and finding new and novel ways to get where they want to go (I highly recommend following them on Facebook, link below). When I first saw the videos they sent me into a paroxysm of sobbing, I couldn’t quite work it out as they are happy videos but I did a bit of exploration on myself with my guides, to understand what that was triggering in me, but that’s a story for another time. This was yet another nudge from the animals, making me face the realisation that I superimpose human emotion on to animal behaviour that simply isn’t there. I’m not saying animals don’t experience emotion, they do, just the same as us, but they don’t hold on to  it, analyse it, save it up and examine it, poke it and prod it to make sure it’s still there, the way we humans do. When we see damage, we make all sorts of associations – like Humphrey’s broken tail means he won’t get a mate, he won’t be loved. Ridiculous. The lambs told me that last year, as I cried about the lame ones: they bounced up to me, looked me straight in the eye and told me it was all in my head. In my head, I saw them rejected by the other lambs, unable to play, alone and unloved. As they bounced around me, delighted, they told me they didn’t care. They don’t associate all that stuff with injury. Yes, they experience pain, but pain without all the other stuff layered on, is just that. Pain. You don’t normally cry over a hurt ankle. If, however you project that to mean you’ll never walk again, you’ll never get out the house, nobody will ever come and see you, you’ll die alone and rejected, boy that’s going to hurt a lot more.

Humphrey is simply beautiful. Eye-wateringly, excruciatingly beautiful. He stands outside the window, proudly, the light catching his feathers, and my heart cracks wide open. I can’t describe the intricate patterning, the vivid, ripe colours, the details, the tones – all of it, it’s just awe-inspiring. I desperately want close up photos to share, but I can’t get that close, he sees movement at the window and he’ll wander off. He has a curved beak and a red head – it looks like a plush velvet, is so, so red it’s practically pulsating. He has white ring around his neck that is whiter than white paper. His golden feathers are like tiger eye, with tiny intricate patterning, spots and swirls. Couple that with the shiny purple and green like peacock feathers. I could stare at him for hours, every nuance dancing before my eyes. He reminds me of swimming with tropical fish, fish painted so delicately, so ridiculously, so vividly and so vibrantly that you can’t believe they could exist in nature. Oh the arrogance of the human mind, that only we could out-do nature! Even Mabel, a fawn colour has beautiful markings. I picked up a feather and saw it had the same markings and swirls that Humphrey has, just in a quieter colour. She’s like a tawny leopard, with subtle but equally intricate spots and markings. She’s more timid than Humphrey (or less arrogant!) so I’m even less likely get a close up of her, but she’s fascinating.

There have been a couple of sick sheep on the farm and I offered to give them healing, and connected in with them. Jen-ni-fer as she wanted to be known, told me she was going to pass, there was nothing more that could be done. She was calm and peaceful and reassured me that animals fear nothing about death, one animal communicator I saw on YouTube said it was like shrugging off a coat for an animal, and that’s such a brilliant way to describe the triviality that eternal beings associate with changing form. What she did show me, a little gift for me, was a vision of the field, the other sheep as if through polythene, everything was just blurred slightly, muffled. She was showing me what it’s like to be in spirit. She showed me that it’s all there, they can still see and hear everything, as a “knowing” it’s all there but it’s muted. Different. “That’s why we want to be in physical form” she said, “it’s only when you aren’t able to experience it do you realise how precious that is”. As Abraham Hicks says to see it, to feel it, to touch it and taste it. When I look at Humphrey suddenly it’s all so clear to me. THIS is why we’re here. It’s like when you clean a dirty window and you’re blown away by the colours in the garden. It’s like removing the layer of tracing paper between photographs in an old fashioned photo album. This clarity, this beauty, the vividness of colour of smells, the feeling of a soft cat fur rubbing against your face, clean sheets against your freshly shaven legs, cold water of the sea smacking the back of your head, the smell of popcorn, the sound of rousing music. This is why we’re here. We come to experience life, to be blown away by beauty, to snuggle into cosy blankets, to hear the heartbeat of our loved ones, to feel the warmth of skin on skin, to feel your heart explode when you’re laughing uncontrollably. We choose to come into physical form to experience the glory and beauty of life. We have all chosen to be here. We have lived multiple lives, and each time, we’re gagging to come back, to try something different, to learn something new. Sometimes it’s so hard to imagine that, that we seek out challenging experiences, we sat around and vaguely planned them out, determined that THIS TIME we would rise above our human conditioning and damn well enjoy the ride!

Looking at Humphrey is all part of the ride. Humphrey reminds me of the sheer awesomeness of nature. Of everything around me. And Mabel reminds me it doesn’t have to be showy to be equally beautiful. Every time we appreciate something beautiful, each time we notice the sky, the grass, the clouds, the fields, the flowers, little insects scurrying around, birds busying themselves, we open ourselves up to seeing more delightful things. Every time we acknowledge a little gentle thought instead of defaulting to irritation, we soften a bit more. Each time we appreciate someone else’s kindnesses instead of slagging off another one’s driving, each time we look for the good instead of announcing the bad, we get a little closer to enjoying the ride.

 

https://www.facebook.com/underoneskyrescue

If you know an animal charity that would like us to do a fund raising event, please do pass on our details:

https://www.animalcommunicationcollective.com

We’ve been mis-sold a sofa. Two sofas. That’s really the only word for it after everything that’s happened. Turns out you can’t get them wet. Not even damp, as it permanently ruins the pile and effectively stains the sofa. Sterling Furniture UK, Tillicoultry, recipients of well over £15,000 of our hard-earned cash over the years have really let us down. They didn’t tell us when we bought them and we didn’t find out until it was too late. 2 claims with insurance later, for the cat spraying on it when we freaked her out by bringing home an orphaned cat to see if they could get on (Sally sprayed her disgust all over the sofa, don’t need to be an animal communicator to get that was a “no”) and the next when a nesting swift got in the living room and shat all over the sofa before we could smother her in a tea towel and gently release her. Both highly unusual situations. That sofa has probably only been sat on for 15 minutes total in its lifetime, since we bought it just before COVID and haven’t had guests since. The other sofa, that we do sit on, is marked with swirly, curly whirls where I’ve sat back with damp hair, a half-moon water mark and various other inexplicable marks from water. That damage is not insured, that they won’t fix. I’ve never before had expensive furniture and I’ve never had insurance for our sofas, this time we did, but really, the problem lies in the fact they were mis-sold. They are, in fact, ornaments to be admired from afar. I never want to be the type of person that hovers over guests incase they spill anything (I have Gary for that) but these sofas make me nervous. Sterling have refused to address any of our concerns after 3 letters a visit from an expert and several phone calls. They say the fabric passes all “tests”. They point blank refuse to address the fact that they didn’t tell us it was allergic to water and they even gave us a complimentary stain removal kit which would have ruined the sofa if used, indicating they didn’t know either. And here my ego kicks in, furious with them, furious with their stonewalling, furious that they are treating us like country hicks who don’t realise that expensive furniture is supposed to be ogled at from behind a glass screen or better still, in a glossy magazine. I know there is no point pursuing this, because other than getting our money back, I’m not sure they can make this right, and as it stands, they won’t even admit they didn’t tell us about the fabric. But not even an apology? An acknowledgement? Anything? I realise that would imply liability and thereafter we could probably sue them, so they won’t budge, but that’s what rankles. The implication that we have “forgotten” about being told, that we chose these sofas in the full knowledge that dribbling on them if you fell asleep would ruin it, that of course we were told about it, that we’ve received plenty of care information (all lies, I tell you, it’s all lies) and on top of all of that, it’s perfectly obvious to anyone who has ever had expensive furniture, so you idiots obviously can’t be trusted around high end furniture.

Maybe we are muppets. They are HUGE sofas with a velvet finish, exotic, elaborate, vibrantly coloured accents and cushions that wouldn’t look out of place in an art deco parlour. When I admitted to Gary that I quite liked them (in a whisper, that’s how outlandish they looked like in the hall of footballers’ wives furniture), he whispered back that he quite liked them too, so we wandered back to get a better look. As we approached, a woman was looking at them, flanked by two men who were obviously with her. One of the said to the other “what fanny would ever want a sofa like that?” These fannies we said, still under our breaths as they stalked off, disgusted at the ridiculous sofas. We had to get a glazier to remove a panel from the balcony to winch the sofas in through that way as they were too big to manipulate through the house. Maybe we were muppets.

What this has brought up for me, in case you missed it, is anger. I know there’s no point. I know it’s my ego desperately trying to MAKE ME RIGHT. Wheedling and complaining. I want to let it go but it irks me. I know the only person suffering as a result of my vitriol is me. Injustice, says Louise, and immediately fury washes over me. INJUSTICE! That’s exactly it. Years of injustice! Write about what injustice means to you and throw it away she said. But I can’t throw it away until I wear myself out with it, so you can suffer it with me.

It starts at a very young age for me. Was it being an empathic child or was it self protection that even at that age I knew my mum was staging me? Setting me up in an ambush in an attempt to control me. Afraid of my reaction to something or other she would wait until we were in public to land it on me, confident that my good manners (smacked into us) would prevent me answering back. It didn’t, because I knew even then that I was being manipulated. At least that’s what I thought was happening. My counsellor had other ideas. She called it public shaming. I was furious with her at the time, the counsellor, so blinkered I was to my mother’s behaviour that I reacted defensively when she called it abuse. Hey ho. But I knew it was unfair, which is why I refused to behave any differently in-front of anyone else. Stubborn in my own belief that you shouldn’t behave differently just because of the audience. I have very black and white views. Apparently that’s because Mum, (undiagnosed) borderline personality disorder, was all over the place, randomly inconsistent, so I made my own, rigid, unforgiving rules to keep myself safe. Was I a step ahead of my mother, or a step behind? Countless situations like this fold over each other like pages in a book, falling out and fluttering to the floor, blurring: situations where Mum would manipulate a scenario to place me squarely in a position of fault, to be seen as mean, jealous, vindictive: feelings I was more than capable of accessing even if I didn’t ever express them, but feelings that simply did not apply in that moment. My mother insisted this was how I was feeing, this is why I was “behaving” in a certain way, attributing all sorts of emotions to me that just didn’t feel true and this completely baffled me. If I tried to reason, explain or justify, I was “misunderstood”. “Pooooor Kate, you are so misunderstoooood”. This sneered at me, further belittling me, leaving me confused, angry and now completely powerless. This was her triumphant answer to any “answering back” with a quick slap across the mouth. Years and years and years and years of little (and large) digs, pokes, manipulations, shaming, projecting meaning on my behaviour that wasn’t there, misquoting my words, misrepresenting my actions, re-defining me into something I wasn’t. A nasty, spiteful, vindictive and naughty child. And I looked back, in bewildered innocence, silently filing away another injustice.

So if I was going to rant, it would be about that. Of how psychopaths manipulate and abuse people. How they make you doubt first your sanity and ultimately your worthiness. How they wear away at any shred of confidence you have or any compassion you may feel for yourself as they systematically undermine everything you think you are. How they turn things around to blame you, manipulate things just to disarm you, remove all stability from your life so you never know what’s coming next. Keep you on high alert, hyper-vigilant, until you mistrust everything. That’s really what I’m angry about. Bad enough to have a psychopath as a partner, or a boss, but if it’s a parent, you’re so young that you may never question it. It took me to age 50, and a catastrophic mental breakdown to realise. And because it went on for so long it takes years to unravel. But, for me, this anger at injustice manifests as a crusade for the underdog. A desire to protect anyone from bullying, manipulation, cruelty or neglect. It manifests as an excruciating awareness and compassion for animals that even the thought of animal cruelty or neglect can bring me to tears. I used to campaign passionately for things I believed in, rage against the machine, highlight any injustice, however small, however embarrassing, however much easier it would be to hide or ignore, I would fearlessly and relentlessly push it into the open and force people to look at it and address it. I felt obligated to act in defence of anything I was made aware of, even against my wishes, because if I had the capability to help, then not helping made me a bad person. It’s a prison that’s taken years to escape from.

As I wander my soul’s journey I have found peace with my mother – she was, after all, just doing what she could with what she had, same as the rest of us. Learning that “blame” was not appropriate was a long, slow lesson, but I’ve got there. Most of the time. I know she played this part in my life to help me evolve, and it’s not been fun for her. She’s unlikely in this lifetime to ever be aware enough to know what she’s done, or rather how it impacted us, but I know there is a soul contact there, and she played that part for me, to make me grow.

I can forgive my mother.

Sterling, on the other hand, I can’t forgive. Or can I? Really all that’s happened here is some smarmy salesman (John) failed to point out that the fabric is unsuitable for anyone who intends to actually sit on it. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he’s already had his arse felt and is smarting about it. Lucy in customer services really has no choice. She’s been dumped this problem by the managing director (J Ballantyne). Sales manager (Andy) wouldn’t help at all, condescending to the point of rudeness, so I wrote to the managing director. They really have no way to make this better other than give us our money back, and Lucy’s been told to make it go away without doing that. Lucy has been unfailingly professional and polite, if a bit distant, but she’s basically skirting around the elephant in the room. Poor Lucy. All the responsibility and none of the power. She can’t make me feel better because the salesman fucked up and they don’t want to admit it. On an individual level I can forgive them. It would be easier with an apology, but if I’m honest, the old Kate would have taken that apology, classified it as proof of wrong-doing (as my mother would) and rammed it down their throats in a lawsuit so I can sort of see why they wouldn’t apologise.

Maybe I can forgive. They are, after all, just doing what they can with what they’ve got.

Our society is obsessed with truth. We hold sacred the truth for the good of all. I am no exception. If I discover even a mild deception, my immediate reaction is to condemn that person to death. I just don’t understand why anyone would lie. No, that’s not true, I can see why they would, I just don’t know how they can do it. There have been enough times in my life where, for the love of rhubarb, if I could just have kept my mouth shut, things would have worked out so much better. Saying nothing would have been great, a little white lie would probably have been even better, but I just can’t do it. It simply doesn’t work. It’s like there is a button missing. Fortunately as I’ve grown older I’ve seen the benefit of not always sharing the truth about things, but I’ve never managed to actually lie about something. And still, whilst I think I’m so much more accepting of people now, if I’m completely honest, if I discover someone in a lie, they just die a little in my eyes. Usually it’s something completely harmless, but that’s even worse, like, what’s the point?

What I’m learning now is that the truth is pointless. I’ve vacillated over this subject for a while, and then a few days ago, just browsing the website of an animal communicator, I found a quoted passage which pretty much summed up what I wanted to say, so I took it as a sign that I had to get my own version out. Or I could just quote him verbatim instead, and go and have lunch…

Abraham Hicks and indeed, all the Law of Attraction community agree that everything we want, everything we desire, is because we believe that in the having of it, we will be happier. And that what motivates everyone is the desire to be happy – it’s just that we get caught up in the “things” we think we need to make us happy instead of focusing on what we really want, which is simply to be happy.

If I look up the definition of truth (definitions from Oxford Languages, the default for Google) it is the quality or state of being true; that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality; a fact or belief that is accepted a true. A fact is a thing that is known or proved to be true. A belief is an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof; something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion. An opinion is a view or judgement formed about something not necessarily based on fact or the beliefs or views of a a group or majority of people. Doesn’t it feel like we’re going around in circles?

According to Abraham Hicks, a belief is simply a thought you keep thinking. When you look closely at all of this, you do see there is a huge element of subjectivity in all of it. The problem with humans is that we’ve put too much emphasis on the “truth” and by “truth” let me use the word reality. Reality: the state of things as they actually exist. Reality, for us, being what we perceive (see, hear, smell, touch, taste) in our physical world. Law of Attraction says that if you see something that you don’t like, look away. Jesus said, turn the other cheek. Now if all this is getting you hot under the collar, it’s not going to get any easier. This is perhaps the thorniest issue with LOA. Turning away from cruelty or starving children doesn’t feel like the right thing to do in our society where we believe that we must fix every wrong. The position of LOA is not that you should condone or even ignore suffering, but rather that unless you are in a state of alignment, you have nothing to offer in terms of a solution. And to be in alignment you need to be happy. And most of us are incapable of being happy when confronted with suffering. We are not yet evolved enough to hold our alignment in the face of things that trigger our emotions. That the most you can ever offer anyone or anything is your own happiness and the happier you are, the more you offer the world. 

At this point, anyone who isn’t a LOA convert is usually frothing at the mouth. You can’t ignore reality they will rage. Well, you can, if you allow yourself to, you just have to be convinced that you’re not an evil selfish troll for doing so. Such is the pressure of our society, there is no room for us to be different. There is plenty of evidence that focussing on a problem only exacerbates it (think war on drugs, war on terrorism – neither of these “problems” have been solved despite the massive attention and resources spent on them). If you find this attitude disgusting, believe me I was right there with you. I just didn’t get it. It was with Eckhart Tolle that I first encountered this idea with and it really upset me. Who was I if I wasn’t there to protect the vulnerable, the innocent, the under-dog? If people didn’t stand up to injustice, where would that end? If you aren’t part of the solution you’re part of the problem, and so on and so forth. This viscerally upset me, especially when I considered ignoring cruelty to animals, so I feel your resistance. It took a few years of various teachers to gently get this point across to me, and it’s a bit like Eckhart says in his book (I forget which one), if you don’t quite get this, you’re just not ready for it. Which means I can’t convince you. There are plenty of teachers who may sway your mind, but I don’t intend to compete with them! But you open your mind to the possibility, you’ll find that gradually, it begins to make sense.

I think the episode that convinced me was an Abraham Hicks rant about the Middle East. It was really funny, delivered in that way of Esther’s that is so unique, basically a volley of the questions, concerns, confusion about everything that happens, when it feels wrong, but is deemed right, how we want to help, but don’t seem to be, about who is right and who is wrong, how we think we’re helping, and yet patently we’re not, how some people want our help, but others don’t, that we can’t stop them fighting, but they don’t want our peace, that everything we do backfires, yet we just keep trying, that the people we’re trying to protect don’t want our involvement. It goes on and on, getting more and more confusing and ridiculous and she stops. “What in the hell are you gonna do about all that?” And that’s the point. As an individual, even with the best intention in the world, we are pretty powerless in these situations. We support one regime only to realise that they have other beliefs that we weren’t expecting and aren’t aligned with. And that’s just it. Your beliefs on all these issues, be they religion, race, violence, terrorism, occupation, dictatorship – all depend on where you stand. Unless you’re prepared to believe that every single person who does not agree with you is evil, you have to wonder whether any of us should be standing in judgement of anyone else.

The Law of Attraction position isn’t really about not caring, it’s based on the premise that whatever you put your attention on,  you give momentum to. So focussing on the war on drugs for example, adds momentum to the war on drugs, but doesn’t actually help the desired result which is presumably, a world without drug addiction. If you want that, you need to put your attention on what the end result will be, not try to “fix” the thing you think is causing the problem. The old, “focus on the end result” not what you think will get you there. So in the case of drugs putting your attention on visualising a world where people don’t need drugs, or helping people build a life without drugs, rather than fighting drug lords and campaigning for stronger anti-drug legislation.

Anyway, my point here is not to convince you, but more to share my epiphany about a much smaller scale of this.

So what does the truth really give us? If your parents told you when you were 8 that Sammy the dog’s disappearance was because he went off to live with Grandma, and you find out at age 15 that wasn’t true, what have you really gained? If you were happier thinking that Sammy was living out his days in a far away land, sure you missed him, but thinking he was happy may have helped you be a little happier than if they had told you he had died a gruesome death under the wheels of the postman’s van. And this is true of so many situations. Putting aside situations which require your urgent personal action to save the world (no one is advocating that you ignore people in need when you’re in a situation to help, and feel willing and able to help rather than being coerced, guilted or bullied into helping), is there any point at all in “facing the truth” about upsetting situations you can’t control? Are you really any better prepared for catastrophe just because you’ve had a good worry about it beforehand? Why does our society insist that worrying pointlessly about things is somehow worthy, that we have to suffer right along with the victims, and not doing so makes you somehow responsible for it? And going a step further, why not just choose to believe the best of things that can’t actually be measured?

My example here, my little epiphany, was about my animal communication and talking to my guides. On the one hand, when I work with other people, I have a strong and obvious connection with their animals  and my guides. I’m usually getting constant validation from the owner of the animal or the person whose guides I’m communicating with, but beyond that I can also feel the vibration of what the animal or the guides are saying. I get waves of goosebumps, physically reassuring me of my connection to source and when I’m in it, I have an unwavering faith that it’s the real deal. On the other hand, when I dither around wondering what’s wrong with my own cat, or I’m swithering in a paradox about my abilities, it’s all too easy to lose faith in the whole thing. It’s a well known fact that reading your own animal is hard – because how do you know if you’re not making it up? When I connect with my clients animal I know nothing about them, so I can’t be making it up. When I talk to the sheep in the field, I have no human to validate what I’m getting. When I talk to the crows I could just be talking out of my backside, and likewise when I talk to my guides, is it not just my ego sounding grown up because I’ve taken a few breaths and stopped panicking?

As I swirl around in my chasms of self-doubt, many of my colleagues who I studied with are in the same place. But there are some who have literally just taken that plunge. Taken the plunge to believe. To surrender. And as soon as they do, the data they get comes quicker, with more clarity, more easily. Their intuition starts offering information all the time about everything. I’m teetering on the edge of acceptance, knowing that if I surrender my resistance my world will blossom and open up in ways I can’t even dream of, but still my ego holds on. Some people I studied with have always known the were different, intuitive, and maybe for them it’s easier to take that gentle step over the edge; for me though it’s agonising. I’ve always been “different” (and not in a good way) but for reasons I can’t quite reconcile with being intuitive even though my “difference” probably was because I was highly sensitive, and that led to being misunderstood. Oh we’re all so misunderstood aren’t we….

My epiphany was so clear at the time, but even a few days later it feels less clear and less compelling, as fear and doubt seep back in.  All I have to do is trust myself. All my beliefs support my own truth: if I chose to believe that everything I’m getting is real, then everything I’m getting will be real. That’s it. That’s all it takes for me to reap the rewards of heaven on earth: to trust and surrender. Sounds easy doesn’t it?

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth.

So Help Me God.

 

If you’re interesting in subjects like these, please join Julie and I at Making Light: Two Humans Being. Julie is one of the folks who has gracefully surrendered into her truth, and continuous to inspire me daily! We discuss this particular topic in our upcoming episode “Is Ranting Ever OK?” scheduled for 21 October 2021.

Gary said, of my last blog “why do you always write about such misery?” I tried to think of the happy things I could write about, and despite my apparently miserable content, there are many, many happy things I could write about, but there is also a lot to offload too. And since he’s not my target audience, let’s go for a bit of anger instead then.

Allen Carr (no not the comedian with the big teeth, but Allen Carr of “the easy way to stop smoking”) says of drinkers “you don’t drink for the reasons you shouldn’t”. Allen Carr was the first author who moved me to tears with his understanding of my predicament, of me, of my human-ness, the first person in who’s company I acknowledged my darkest most shameful secrets to myself as I read his books, and I faced my reality about my drinking, and about me. You don’t drink for the reasons you shouldn’t. It’s a very subtle and clever line and it works in so many situations. You may know alcohol is killing you. You may know tobacco is killing you. But you don’t continue to drink in order to kill yourself. You don’t continue to smoke in order to kill yourself. This was the first time anyone acknowledged that knowing something isn’t good for you isn’t necessarily compelling enough to make you stop. That it is more complicated than just that are you are some weak-willed lily-livered wash-out just because you couldn’t, or chose not to, stop. Knowing that you are systematically destroying your health, your life and your sanity, doesn’t make it any easier to stop. In fact, it only adds to the reasons why you want to continue. Oh, and you don’t overeat because you want to be fat. Oh Eureka! Someone who doesn’t say “have a piece of fruit instead” when you complain about your weight. These smug bastards who observe your weaknesses and trot out common sense platitudes expecting you to smack your forehead, if only I’d known that before you say, dancing away, fully healed. 

Let me make this very clear. I don’t diet to make my life difficult. I don’t sit about dreaming up the most paltry food list I can think of (dust, as Gary calls it, rubble as my French friend Astrid translates) in order to make myself the most deprived person in the world. I don’t concoct the most miserly food regime that will almost certainly prevent me from ever socialising again just because I want to be that awkward tedious twat  at the table humming and haw’ing about what’s in the food and how it’s cooked. I don’t sit around scheming ways to make myself more and more miserable, through my diet, through my suffering , through my pain, for fun.

I don’t diet because I want to be miserable.

I don’t believe I deserve to be miserable.

Or do I?

To my horror, both my lovely sister Stella, and my mentor Annie, have gingerly implied that maybe, just maybe, there’s a bit of truth in that. I can’t get angry at Annie, she’s not my sister, but I admit to feeling livid at Stella. How dare she I raged inwardly. Bingo. I’ve been poking around enough at my ego to recognise the signs that she may just have touched a nerve. And where there’s a nerve there’s some unfinished business to bring to light.

Only I’m fed up with going over and over my diet. Truly, utterly, completely, gut-wrenchingly weary of  my diet. Just eat normally say people. What the fuck is normal? Eat intuitively, they say. Intuitively I would eat until I popped. That’s not going to work is it? This is one of those situations where I want to scream at people. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE. The fact that you even said that means you don’t have any frigging idea what it’s like to be hungry all the time. What it’s like to be obsessed with food from the moment you wake up. That you only ever feel satisfied when you’ve eaten 3 times more than whatever anyone else eats, and in 20 mins you could probably eat it again. That you have to stop eating because your tummy hurts but your brain is still sending you hunger messages. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE. Inside every fat person is a fucking furious one.

Gary is one of these people who drifts gracefully around food, he doesn’t have any urge to overeat, he doesn’t eat rubbish, but he does eat what he wants, when he wants. He’s only been on a diet twice since I met him, either to smugly “lose a few pounds” or, even more piously, to be “more healthy”. On both occasions, whilst he can be completely sensible about food, sickeningly so, put him on a restrictive diet and he won’t last more than 24 hours. He shows no compulsion or obsession about food, but as soon as he CAN’T eat what he wants, he gives it up. So if sensible, balanced, no-eating-disorder-in-sight, self-satisfied smug bastard Gary can’t manage it for 24 hours, when I can master months, years of restrictive, authoritarian, diet regimes, I know I am neither weak willed nor lily-livered. I know I have iron-clad control around eating. Until I don’t and then it goes to pot spectacularly.

I have tried every method in existence. Well most. I couldn’t face making myself hurl for very long after I’d popped a few veins in my eyes, (hard to explain away) and my body did start to reject my attempts to vomit. It was too hard. I didn’t manage laxatives either, it just felt too high a price to pay. But in terms of what I put in my mouth, or rather, not put in my mouth, I’ve tried a version of most of them. Some work, most don’t, all fail eventually. I’ve done the original very low calorie diet (450 KCals a day) for months, and I did lose a lot of weight. I also learned that it isn’t JUST hunger that makes you eat. I’ve done intermittent fasting, living again on 500KCals a day for 2 days a week. I’ve been most successful on keto – high fat, medium protein and no carbs, and learned that I can eat a lot more calories on this regime. And this suits me. I love meat, I love fat. I love dairy. Unfortunately some other regime made me give up artificial sweeteners, and now keto holds no appeal at all without the promise of a little bit of sweetness occasionally. It’s like every diet is a compromise between being healthy and being thin. Stay thin and poison yourself with artificial sweeteners. Or eat completely healthy food and put on weight. On a diet that includes fruit and nuts, even avoiding grains and other carbs, I will still put on weight. As my awareness has grown I have looked at my emotions around food but I haven’t really come to any conclusion other than I want to eat because I feel I deserve to eat. If I am a child of the Universe, and the Universe loves me, what can’t I eat what I want? What can’t I at least eat SOME of what I want?

About 2 years ago I found Bright Line Eating and allowed Susan Peirce Thompson to change my life. She really did. I finally found a reasonable compromise. Dr Peirce knows what it’s like to be a victim to food, and tells us that it has been scientifically proven that sugar is more addictive than cocaine and explains why some people are more susceptible than others, and that the addiction is REAL and your body is going haywire. So it’s not greed, I’m fighting every fibre in my body that is telling me to EAT, baby, EAT, EAT, EAT. Determined to be the best at everything, I weigh in at a 10 out of 10 in her susceptibility scale. That’s an indication of how likely any deviation is to send me spiralling into oblivion. Her regime is rigid, oh so rigid, but I could live with it. I was still hungry but I began to stop obsessing about food, and the weight started to fall away. And it worked perfectly, I lost some of the weight, I would have liked to lose more, but I was OK with where I was. I really want to be a skinny bitch, I love tall willowy women, and whilst I may never be tall and graceful, I am surprisingly slim built underneath my padding and baggy clothes. Everything, including lettuce, is weighed. There is nothing outside mealtimes, not even milk in coffee. There is no sugar, no flour, basically no artificial or processed ANYTHING, fixed portions, fixed meals, no snacks, no leeway, no excuses, no judgement, no thinking (hence the Bright Lines – lines you don’t cross. Lines you don’t have to think about. Lines that become automatic instead of relying on willpower). Hard, blatant, militant rules, but it worked. She promises freedom from food, and It worked. For the first time in my life I would forget about food. Not completely, but I was genuinely letting go of thinking about food between meals. At target weight you get to add in a bit more food, and that’s what I was doing, a few months later, not because I was at target but mostly because I was hungry more than I was desperate to be willowy. Gradually I added a bit more in, food-wise, and each time I marvelled at the fact I wasn’t putting on weight. Nothing outside the rules, just gradually increasing the portions as I would if I were at target. I didn’t put the weight on. A bit more food would creep in. I didn’t allow myself to think about it, so I didn’t and the weight didn’t reappear. However I was suffering from digestive issues that seemed to have started when I started her regime (ironic given how it is a completely whole food diet), and no matter what I gave up I just couldn’t isolate what was causing the problems, it was really random. I suspect it was nuts and dried fruit, but now confident in my diet I was NOT prepared to give them up as my sole “treat” foods. Actually, I would give them up for a few days and my digestions would improve, and then not. I was completely flummoxed and began to get annoyed. Here I was, following all the rules, finally having found a regime that worked, but SOMETHING was sabotaging it. Meanwhile, I added a pint of milk with a banana, a banana milkshake mid-afternoon as bananas didn’t seem to bother me, but other fruit did.

Then as I live and breathe I can contest that the Law of Attraction gave me absolute and complete evidence of its existence. I do know that in theory in order to be thin and gorgeous, I have to think of myself as thin and gorgeous. Feel, luxuriate in the knowing that I am thin and gorgeous. Which is why when you are motivated in a diet, it works, when you lose motivation, it doesn’t. It’s so much more than what you put in your mouth. So, if it doesn’t come easily to you to feel thin and gorgeous, at least try not to think about it at all, and I was doing a decent job of that until suddenly, it all just broke. Fed up with my bad stomach and bewildered by what was causing it, desperate not to give up my nuts and dates, I raged about how unfair it all was. I gave in to all the anger and disappointment, the unfairness, oh the unfairness of it all. How hard I try, how I sacrifice, how I suffer (bit of a theme here you think?) Then the bargaining. If fruit was giving me a bad stomach, maybe I should eat honey instead, but I wasn’t allowed honey. I wasn’t allowed stevia. I didn’t want to face a life without any sweetness at all, how these diets had robbed me of any joy in my life, how at last I was happy eating what I was eating now, but my stomach wasn’t and anyway I was BOUND to put on weight. It all began crashing down on me. I MUST be putting on weight, I yelled. And literally, in the space of 2 or 3 days of deciding I was putting on weight, I had put on nearly half a stone. Non-dieters think that can’t happen. Anyone who has dieted like me knows that looking at pasta can put on 3-4 pounds. It was as it had all been holding off: fat, swirling round in my vortex, just ready to manifest at the moment I lost faith, and believed I was putting on weight. I knew what was happening but I couldn’t stop it. I had lost the faith. I had dropped the ball. I had succumbed to the worst version of myself. My fat self. My greedy self. My wanton, feckless, slovenly self showed up, and manifested.

To be continued….

If you want to hear more about food and dieting and all that goes with it, join Julie and I on Making Light, Two Humans Being – The Food Minefield.