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HAPPY

What does it mean to be happy? What does it feel like? What is the physiological response to feeling happy? So many questions. In the dictionary it means :-

Definition of happiness

a: a state of well-being and contentment : JOY

b: a pleasurable or satisfying experience.

For example it brings me great Joy that Joy is actually my surname (last name)

Even the word H A P P Y makes me smile. Despite that, I do have a huge issue with happiness, and it is not with the warm, fuzzy, nurtured state we experience. But that society seems to expect that we should be ‘happy’ ALL the DAMN TIME. To say otherwise is a social hand grenade, that will surely make you an outsider.

For example, lets say a friend comes up and says :-

“Hey, how are you? or “Are you happy?” They are probably just feigning interest in your well being, which ultimately makes them feel good, or they are using it as an opener to a conversation. Let me caveat now, that I do know that this will not always be the case. In short the acquaintance will expect you to say “yes” or “I’m good” but what if you go “well, no actually I am having a really bad day”, or “I feel awful and sad and I cannot stop crying. ” Now, that throws a spanner in the works and the friend, colleague, acquaintance, family member have to actually show up and either care for you or cringe in the shadows wishing that the rawness of your reality will disappear.

Why is it assumed that we have to be happy and content all the time? We cannot truly enjoy, accept and relish in happiness if we have not felt the sadness, the discontentment of life, real life at times. Have we not all experienced heart break, loss, hate, discontent, a harsh word, mental abuse, physical abuse? Yes? No? These things do not evoke the feeling of happiness or a warm fuzzy feeling, it will not envelope your body and fold you in the arms of bliss. No – It hurts, it makes you weep, it can make you angry, your heart may ache in sorrow and may never fully heal. It is from these moments of night that a light can break through, it enables a person to see the beauty in the ugly and rise above the discord, a goodness can filter in. The touch of a lovers hand, a letter from a friend, a child’s cheek against your own, the sun on your face, a cool breeze in your hair, the view from a mountain top, a promotion, a call from a family member, diving into a pool, running through a field of grass. And it is from those sweet, miniature moments that happiness blooms spreading internally and externally, a pure, honest, golden haze of joy.

The world is built on equilibrium, each and every feeling, action and thought has an equal and opposite. Harmony is built on opposites, without experiencing one we cannot embrace or understand the other.

To feel happiness is the ability to also feel and appreciate sadness. To love someone gives us the ability to experience loss. To live life, makes us appreciate how it will be to experience death. In my heart of course I want to feel happy, I want you to feel bliss. Yet, there is something so honest, liberating and open about feeling, accepting and appreciating what it is, to be sad. I appreciate it when someone is open and expresses their pain, it is brave and strong and is truly living life to its fullest. I learnt from a very young age that to live my life with emotion was freeing, to allow people to see it, was honest, and I was not lying about who I am. It also gives me the super power to be truly and unashamedly feel HAPPY.

So the next time you ask someone “How are you? or Are you happy?”, please be open to the fact they may not be and really need to share. Embrace their pain, see their pain and allow them to feel and help to put them back on the path towards JOY.

Love Kelly

Love on the Long Run

Where friendships are made and social barriers fade!

Today I am here as an observer, I am not here to put the world to rights, or solve your latest problem, that is what the “Long Run” is for.

The Long Run – from this moment forward will affectionately be called the LR, is generally a run that is over 60 minutes and essentially it has no limits in length, I have LR anywhere from 9 miles up to 32 miles depending on time and race training for. So, it is ALOT of time either on your own or with a group.

Regarding my running, it is where I have met in recent years the majority of my close friends. A 2-hour run could genuinely equate to 2 months’ work of regular hanging out, I am not sure why? Maybe it is the intensity of the work you are doing, the heightened serotonin, or you just talk a shit ton to fill time? Maybe, you just feel safe, as here is another person doing the same crazy stuff you are doing. I have been known to not knowing someone at the beginning of the run and occasionally revealing all trauma and inner secrets by the end, they never ran with me again :). The high from running, is similar to drinking for me, it makes me honest, ummmm sometimes too honest. But more open than I would be in a bar, or at a social gathering. I also do not trust people who hide their inner workings, trust is the wrong word, maybe I just feel unsafe with how genuine they can be. Maybe that is a 3 x long run crack the emotional crust kind of person.

Whatever it is, I am thankful for the people running has given me, raw, slightly bananas, very driven people. Who are usually outsiders, a little damaged (running keeps us together mentally) we may be running from problems or using it to be safe in the pain we inflict on ourselves to feel sane, happy, included? Running is tribal and religious, it is forgiving of your sins, I do not think it really cares about them. It lifts you up and gives you people you can geek out about paces, races, gear, nutrition etc. etc. all that shit that the rest of world thinks “you are so boring” for being maybe a lot obsessed about!

So, thank you running, for all the sunny, eclectic, wonderfully strange, fantastically beautiful friends you have given me.

Love on the LR

Silence

I am in shock. Today I wandered aimlessly around my soul feeling, helpless, lost, traumatized and empty.

Another accepted mass shooting of innocents, when a man, who is barely an adult decided to walk into a school and snuff out 19 lives. 19 young lives who had barely started to live. 2 teachers who had given their life and lives to caring and nurturing children. GONE, in the space of minutes, seconds, moments in time. A breath and then nothing. SILENCE!

I will never understand America’s fascination and desire for guns. They are killing innocents daily! But that’s ok, as long as you have an arsenal in your basement.

I am a mother of three young boys, similar ages to the children so brutally murdered this week by just going to school. I felt sick packing them up and sending them to the place we see as safe away from home. I began to imagine life without them, about never holding them again, hearing their voices, their touch, their laughter, their voices, wiping their tears, cleaning their knees, curling around as they slept after a nightmare. My heart has shattered into a 1000 pieces, my eyes keep weeping tears, I know I would never ever recover, I too would want to stop breathing, to stop feeling the pain. Just like the crushing, unfathomable pain the parents of those 19 children, who never came home with excitement in their eyes to show artwork in their bag. Children who will never realize their full potential, who could have made this world better, brighter, happier. Now all there is are empty seats, homes all left a little darker. SILENCE

I am too broken from afar to be angry, I am devastated, shocked, distraught and perplexed how none of this creates change. Lives are expendable it seems, lesser than money, a price to pay for power and control.

BUT we must change. We must address mental health, the childcare system, and gun laws for this to stop. It has to stop, we CANNOT as living beings accept this aimless, needless brutality and death.

It is the silence that kills me, the gap that is left when a person leaves this world. please do not let these kids’ lives be in vain, let a small ounce of goodness come from this hell, let them be the catalyst for change, for kindness.

I implore you, please as you navigate this fantastical world, reach out to the quiet ones, push for change, fight for what is good, look for the lonely ones, be kind to the hurt ones, be a mentor, give back, love with all your might, know that a baby is never born evil, a society creates hate. Create a society that we can feel safe and loved in, don’t dismiss another’s pain, welcome it and hold their hand. We are the change, us, the regulars of the world. Be that change.

No more silence, it is the silence that kills.

Be kind

Love true

LOVE

I would say that this is surely the most written and sung about subject in the entire existence of humanity. “Love”, such a short word that encompasses a plethora of emotions. All of which equate to, or are, the result of being in, feeling, receiving and giving love

LOVE – even has three meanings in the dictionary

1 – an intense feeling of deep affection.

2 – a great interest and pleasure in something.

3 – a person or thing that one loves.

The topic is huge, the breakdown of emotional and physical response of the word could take me weeks to discover each delicate strand that coils around to make the rope that curls around a heart. The heart, the organ that sustains life and is continuous in its persistence to keep us alive and to experience LOVE.

There is a wealth of love types, a love of a friend, dog, parents, partner, things, nature, life.

Yet I want to talk about the purest of love, the mothers love for a child. A love physically born from you. A love that shares your DNA, a love you carried inside for 9 long months, unbeknownst at that moment to be the most powerful love of all, a love you fed from your body. It is an untarnished, unquestionable love. I sadly do not have the super powered intelligence or breadth of vocabulary to explain it, but I will try.

When I look at my child it is like two warm soft hands are grasping my heart, crushing me so hard that the air from my lungs have been ripped away by a warm, persistent current. It’s like the sun caressing me on a slightly chilly day, illuminating each cell in my body and making them vibrate in harmony. When I look at my children’s faces, hold their hands, smell their hair, feel their soft cheek against mine as they whisper “mummy I love you” love pulsates out of me and covers them in a nurturing blanket. A blanket that will always wrap around them, ensuring they know I will always love them. It is infallible, unbreakable, a titanium tower of surety that I will always be there to care, with arms and heart wide open. I am theirs and no one else’s. Yes, I love Kieron my husband deeply, but that love can change with the day, the year, the person and circumstances, it is not necessarily forever, as much as I hope it will be.

But with a child, through life and death it is there, tangible, visible, like a light flickering across water, a shooting star in the sky, a firefly dancing through a forest, it lights up all the dark corners and glows. It illuminates kindness, dreams, hopes, emotions and needs. It is powerful, constant, suffocating, it consumes all who come within its radius and breathes life into you. Once you have inhaled that love, without it you will surely drown. I would die for that love, I would place myself in front of my child and take whatever life hurls at me, I am their shield, their knight, their champion. FOREVER.

A mother’s love is the strongest of all loves

Love Kelly, A Mother of Dragons.

Tis the most wonderful time…..

OF THE YEAR…. If I sing loud enough will this make it true? PLEASE MAKE IT TRUE…

Hummm Christmas. Sits as a conundrum in my mind. A time of magic, fairy lights, stories, family, a fat jolly man and fantasies.

I still see Christmas through my child eyes, I dreamed of Victorian London, Carol singers, Father Christmas appearing down a chimney, elves, reindeer, Rudolph and brightly colored presents piling under a tree, that was so beautiful it used to make my heart flutter with excitement.

Christmas could stop right there for me as a child, when the magic was still tangible, and I could smell excitement in the air. As soon as that first present was opened Christmas was dead, the magical bubble POPPED.

Then came Christmas as a mother! First up, ALL MOTHERS OUT THERE, I SEE YOU, I see the magic you weave, the unseen grind you commit to from Halloween to Christmas its a full time job of……. FUCKING doing EVERYTHING which no one fucking really sees.

DEEP BREATH here goes

Costume making, candy buying, present wrapping, cooking, cooking, cooking, cleaning, cleaning, laundry, laundry, cooking, navigating family tantrums, family feuds, kid hyperactivity, kid meltdown, kid fighting (my boys go from Lord of the Flies, to Kill Bill then finish up with the Hunger Games), present wrapping, travel, travel organizing, packing, school plays, school carnivals, school parades, activities, kids party x 20000..

Mothers drowning under expectation, suffocating in the false Joy you emit as you sweat holding the 2nd turkey of the year and bring it to the table, which NO ONE EATS. Lets not forget the cards you create, mail, trying not to forget the random uncle who lives in the Outer Hebrides. Next on top of family gifts we have, teachers gifts, breakfasts, thank you notes. The list is endless… I make lists for lists, it is all about survival by the third Thursday in November.

Now multiple all of the above by 3, I have 3 kids, this is three of everything. EVERYTHING !!!!

Mamas of multiples – I SEE YOU.

Coping strategies equate to, but are not limited to….

Running away / drinking / drinking / hiding in cupboards (oh drinking) / Valium and drinking / hiring help if rich / running away if poor / screaming /learning to box / Running away / sitting in the car (hiding) / doing puzzles in the cupboard / changing idendity.

I want to love Christmas, but I’m too tired to even try.

Death by Positive Slogan.

As a baby of the 70’s, a kid of the 80’s, teen of the 90’s and Fully fledged (ISH) adult at the turn of the century, life has moved fast and emotionally evolved even faster. As technology boomed, so did our ability and acceptance to share emotion.

Gone are the days of the eighties, when we sucked that sad fucker up and put on brave face and held in mental and physical abuse. Where divorce was unacceptable, physical bruises were covered by clothing and mental trauma doused in alcohol, narcotics and silence.

As a product of childhood trauma, in a time when where there was no support for my parents, no voice for me to shout with, and no platform to speak up or find help. We were all left floundering. Our choices were either the adult “loony bin” with a splashing of straight jackets and padded walls, or the children’s ward of a General Hospital who were used to fixing the physical wound not the mental one. WELCOME to 1986.

30 years later and the evolution has come full circle. We are no longer a vast pit of shame and secrets, we are now a spewing dragon of emotional over sharers, yes you may include me in this. I used to share to garner some understanding and solidarity. To provide some acceptable “let out” for people who hide. This is no longer needed, because whatever you struggle with, as does many. Do not get me wrong this is wonderful, but we have come to a point where your emotions are trivialized, as everyone actively voices them, and this can pick at a wound that now may never heal due to uninterest.

Social Media as a platform for sharing is amazing. But, it can also be very damaging and minimalizing. I mean these days we all have an eating disorder, anxiety, childhood trauma, PTSD, experienced abuse, been divorced, lost someone and the world knows. Yes this is all awful, I am not demeaning or diminishing pain, with that sentence. However in the age of expression now your pain is the same as everyone else’s. You are not some special, wild, damaged artist, who stands on their golden stage of painful glory. Instead you are mundane and forgotten, forgotten when you really need to be cared for, probably more so now than ever. Social media creates a circle of me me me oblivious to those around you.

Then we have the next layer of emotional destruction, enter stage right the “snappy” “positive” slogan. We are slowly suffocating in their zippiness of “you’ve got this”!?! “No I fucking have not! Usually posted by someone who is trying tp convince themselves, they feel fabulous and are all fixed, or they are charlatans of true emotion. Attempting to creating layers so they too have a tragic story to tell. People want to be included, people want to be the same as everyone else, that is why people join groups, go to church etc ? Harsh, but true?

Yes we all love a upbeat saying, but not every second of damn day. Shit people it’s ok to wallow, it is ok to be sad, and if I am feeling like that, not one single pretty painted post will make me feel better. A hug will, or an ear that listens. Sadly, over emotional sharing, means we actually stop listening and reflecting. I truly feel like the world shut it’s ears to pain, it just became too overwrought in its own issues. People now apologize for sharing their thoughts and feelings, exactly as they did 100 years ago. Back then, they did not want to seem weird, these days they do no want to add to another persons personal trauma.

Full circle, still no one listens.

My head breaks through, and I breathe again.

My anxiety is triggered by many things, many things I have to manage on a daily basis. Yeah the whole world has anxiety I know – YAWN – The modern day excuse for not coping with life.

How I see it though, is when my anxiety kicks up a notch and smacks me over the head with a BIG SCREAMING SURRRRPRRRIISSSSEEEE , I am always actually surprised, even though I have been navigating this for about 38 years. Because, after every single episode; that can be as long as a month, but is usually 2 weeks, I think I have it beat and I’m like oh if this happens again, I have totally got this bitch covered.

NOPE! Here I am again, curled up, struggling to breathe, frantically checking my heart rate over and over again, desperately trying to act like all is cool when I am fighting back tears, and crumbling back into the child who is crushed against the floor.

It really comes out of the blue, but I do get clues, when life is busy and I’m continuously coping with its pace, I am not sleeping enough or not getting enough alone time, multiple stressors are thrown at me, and I cope, I cope, I cope and then BOOM I am not fucking coping …

I have just realized that racing kicks me off, WHY? I have goals , I do not want to fail, and now I am in a semi elite group (I am not a semi elite), as the almost oldest and definitely the slowest, I am terrified if I do not perform I will get laughed at or worse kicked out. This is all self inflicted and my own insecurities blooming with the stress of my own expectations.

I AM WORKING ON THOSE!!!

Please understand that anxiety and panic attacks are not me failing to cope, IT IS me coping! I am accepting my own imperfections, sitting in them, falling apart and rebuilding a more resilient version of myself.

Anxiety is not something you can always see, it is a silent manifestation of the mental and physical. Panic attacks are actually my overly sensitive personality combining with my overly busy life, plus dragging up my past and forming its own little package of hellish survival.

I have said this before, but the strange thing is, as much I struggle with my anxiety, I would not give it up. The constant state of high I sit in is beyond anything, my whole entire body is alert and buzzing, the world snaps into ultra HD and colors can hurt my eyes. When I fall out of the cycle, the calm is mesmerizing, and I sleep dreamlessly, my whole body falls loose and the world spins back down to normality, which I cherish. I will never conquer my panic attacks or anxiety, but I accept what they are, they no longer terrify me like they used to and I always know in time they will pass.

This too shall pass. To live my life, is to feel my life in all its gory, painful glory.

This is for all of you who suffer, I see you, I know you, I am you, I am here for you.

Love Kelly (just had another episode and survived) Joy

Why I run! A Poem

I run to release,

I run to reflect,

I run to breathe

I run to perfect

With every stride my life unravels

With every breath another path travelled

I lift my gaze, my sight glazes, the sunlight hits my eyes

I pick up pace, my heart pumps harder, problems simply slide.

Away to the wind, away with the beat, away with the thrum of the race

Pain is rising, heat is building, sweat pours from my brow, mind loosens, no thought is given space.

I flow

I pound

I slow

I float back to the ground

STOP, BREATH, SWEAT, ACHE, BEAT , HEAT, ITS DONE!

Blue Skies and Sunshine – The Grandmother.

Struggling to find a title to sit with this post, so you may be reading the original one or one of its many variations. I am wanting to write about your mother’s mother. The maternal grandmother, or in my case “nanny”.

My Nanny was called Joan Winifred Laffan (nee Haines) she was in her early 40s when I was born, my mother was 20, still a child herself and then there was me. A screaming infant, a month early, jaundiced, slightly deformed and due to this I almost killed my mother on the way out. Sorry mum.

In life we all have people that impact, imprint their lives on our young nubile minds. These people can be for the good or the bad, it is then up to us to how we navigate these influences. In many cases this may not be just your parents, but a grandparent, a aunt or uncle – mine was Joan aka Nanny.

The one thing you need to know more than anything is that she was my most absolute favorite person in the “whole entire world”. She was my sunshine, the gentle moon on a glistening lake, the stars, fluttering butterflies, rainbows on a drizzly day, a gentle breeze on my skin, she was my everything. Her smell, her tight hugs, her perfect beehive hair, her Teasmaid in the morning, her skin, her laugh, her twinkling eyes and her nicknames for me were magical and wondrous. She was an angel, my magical sprite, my fun-loving, kind, gentle, caring forever happy nanny. God (and I am not religious) I loved her with every single cell, fiber, heartbeat, filament that came from my child’s body. She kept me safe and loved me with such a force I never ever doubted what I was to her, I was her “Kellykins” and I miss her.

Sadly my gorgeous, glamorous cigarette holder, smoking, whiskey drinking, hardworking, jiving nanny had to leave me at age 31, just before I gave birth to Arthur and my 32nd birthday. Lung cancer stole her; even though she had given up smoking years before. It was quick and brutal! One day I was hugging her so tight, her frail shrinking body and then she was gone, a light was extinguished and the world became a little darker without her in it. Just gone, no more, no more wafts of Coco Chanel floating in the air, no more laughter, no more bone crushing, soul lifting love. Her white hair and penchant for Cornflower blue outfits, just gone! SNAP.

Almost 13 years later, I still miss her everyday. My heart just hurts when I think of her, I feel crushed and lost and I will never ever get her back. She never met my boys, and man she would have loved them more than she loved me. She adored Kieron and always said , “Oh Kelly If I were 20 years younger I would give you a run for your money on that one”! Thankfully she was not 20 years younger as I feel like I may have lost that battle 🙂

There was a beautiful connection that I had with her, that she just knew me, she didn’t want to change me, it was like we were bonded in a way I have never ever felt before. Yes, I was her favorite, I knew it, she knew it and so did everyone else, but it was a magic I had never felt before. When we were together, life just felt easy, it felt safe, it was just nanny and Kelly, we liked the same things, we had the same style, the same dreams and personality, we were just 40 years apart and life was very different for her compared to me. I was a 70s baby, she was a 30’s baby.

She gave me so many gifts that I truly could not describe, but I love the fact she gave me a style and ease / confidence in clothes that I cherish to this day, I am not scared to create feelings and stories with the way I dress. We shared a love of Chanel, fine bags and good jewelry. Joan Laffan, was seriously one of the coolest humans I have ever met and I miss her, I am not the same without her, but I know she is with me. I still on occasion can smell phantom smoke, when I am all alone and no one is around, I can look up at a Cornflower sky and feel her energy swirl round, I see her in my dreams and I can still feel her hugs and her soft sweaters on my skin.

She was my favorite and I wish she were still here.

Love Kellykins

T I R E D

Tired is a feeling I know well. From a very early age, It has been a significant safety net in a world that has always felt a little too fast, a little too loud and a little too busy to me. However, over the years I have become sloppy with my wanton usage of the word “tired”….

The conversation being…

“Hey are you ok? yes, I am just a bit tired!”

Now just change that word, the word “tired”, that innocuous, innocent 5 letter word to reflect its excuse to my real meaning. We then could replace tired with a multitude of hidden feelings that I am not quite ready to share…

Sad / angry / annoyed / scared / bored / uninterested

It is also my blatant lame attempt to avoid, confrontation / talking / expressing feelings / facing truths / doing something I do not want to / avoiding sex / avoiding physical activities that bore or scare me.

It’s true meaning is….

TIRED – in need of sleep or rest; weary.

an anagram of ..

TRIED – found good, faithful, or trustworthy through experience or testing

Yet, 50% of the time when I say I am tired I am not “found good, faithful or trustworthy”. I am lying through a façade of sleepiness to avoid revealing the real thing that has me off center.

I am not entirely sure when I started to do this. I mean, do not get me wrong I do experience true exhaustion daily. I am a mother of three boys, and I am running after them, on top of running just shy of 60 miles a week. No I do not take naps, there truly is no time, so in reality, YES I am pretty knackered. I daily would love to lie down and stay very still, but no, instead in my world I am putting on ANOTHER WASH!!!!!

So when I say I am tired as an answer to a question, I truly may be tired, or failing that I just do not want to talk to you.

Love Kelly – so so tired – Mother of Three.