Barren Land.

When we remove the problems that have become the focus of our life, how do we replant the barren land?

I remember as a child being in awe of all of the elder women in my mother's family who had more ailments than anyone could shake a stick at. I'd sit enthralled listening to them compare ailments for hours. By the time I was 10 my vocabulary was full of strange and unfamiliar words such as lumbago and diverticulitis.

I remember the most fascinating sight one time of my Nana, after a windy day on the beach in Wales, wrapping her extremely large bra around her neck to cope with the pain from her mashed up neck-discs. There's just no good medical terminology for that one!

As far as I know Nana had never been formerly diagnosed with a single complaint in her life. She seemed pretty healthy to me thankfully and she lived well into her 90's. She relied upon her stories because they created a narrative through which she navigated life. She was a shy person and nothing she said was to gain attention necessarily, but saying she had ailments often got her out of having to socialize. She also preferred to sit and read rather than be active so these supposed ailments helped her to do what she loved doing; sitting and reading in peace, rather than having to do anything strenuous. They became the crutches that she leaned on that kept her quite isolated at times when maybe she should have been out dancing instead.

These are light-hearted anecdotes of experiences that I had when I was younger with my Nana who I loved and who lived a long, healthy and comfortable life. But not all of us have that liberty, and many people that I work with as well as myself at times, face disruption in their own health and their...our...ability to enjoy the world around us; the relationships that we have with others, as well as being able to plan for a future, becomes like looking through an ever-decreasing keyhole. We start to loose sight of all that could be possible and stop paying attention to all the good things that might surround us here and now.

Most of us will try to get help and if we're lucky enough we'll find it, recover and grow strong again - sometimes stronger than we were before if not in body then at least in mind. But occasionally (and I feel like I should be whispering this because I feel a bit embarrassed on my own behalf here) our lives get so enmeshed with the way that we are feeling about whatever we're experiencing that these issues feel like they're becoming our life. The longer any problem exists, the more established it becomes and our focus can become very narrow with experiences that are frightening and overwhelming because they take so much of our time and energy to deal with.

In some instances we'll need someone else's help and support to recover. Sometimes we can do the work on our own depending upon whatever illness or emotional upset we're dealing with, but in many cases, where it's taken a long time to recover, removing problems that have spread across our emotional landscape takes longer because these are the after-effects of long-term issues. All that seems to exist are the issues that have grown there. It feels very unfair but it can be the price we have to pay for the investment we made in the problem that we didn't choose in the first place. It's not your fault. My issues weren't my fault. But either way it's still us that have to do the work.

I know now that when I'm helping someone and they're resisting changing the narrative, or resisting doing the work that they're holding on to something that has become familiar to them. Even after we are well and capable of flying rather than falling, we can have days where we fall back into familiar patterns that we've left behind and I wonder if that's because the land that has been left behind seems quite barren? I have had days during times when I've experienced ill health where I haven't been able to see anything but bare land and in spite of the fact that I felt so much better I also felt quite sad because whilst I never wanted the problems back I needed to see something of substance, something meaningful to hold on to.

I knew I have to replant that land rather than leaving it to grow weeds and I also knew that I had a choice about what I planted it with. I learned to do a little meditation where I would visualize this land and in it I saw myself planting flowers and trees and fruit. I saw a stream running through it and before long there were fish in that stream and birds in the trees. I let that vision grow and I found peace there and each time I returned to that landscape something else had grown there that was new. It has become a place where I not only meditate but I manifest and allow it to grow effortlessly around me.

Our ability to recover from anything we've experienced or any illness that's caused us damage or harm and that has affected us emotionally relies upon us being honest with ourselves. We don't have to talk about things like this to anyone else and we don't have to take onboard anything anyone else says either (including anything I'm saying here if you disagree with it). We just have to act as a witness to our own thoughts and behaviours and discover what's motivating them. Doing the work of recovery relies upon us knowing ourselves deeply and uncovering all of the places that we've hidden parts of ourselves in so we can reveal them and release them or heal them and bring them back to us.

If some days all that you can see is barren land just focus on that little meditation that I gave you. Try to plant something new instead of clinging to something old. It doesn't need to be a garden, you can plant a business or plant something you really want to do. At first it will feel like hard work and you might only plant one thing but one new thing is better than no new thing at all. Small steps can lead to big beautiful outcomes. With time it will become easier and you'll start to let go of what was damaging you through your devotion to yourself and your self-care.

' To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.'

Georgina