The Making of Me: A Poem to my Family Tree.

October 17, 2015October 17, 2015 Sandra Love Letters Family Tree, poem, poetry

I’ve tartan running through my veins, along with Cambridge mud.
There’s peat bog in my DNA, and lots of English wood.
My gypsy blood, will, a wanderer always make me.
The ghosts of farmers, leaders and orators have spake me.
With so many Vikings in the family tree and Normans running wild.
A crazy mixture makes up me – the making of the child.

In my life line lies politicians, plasterers and trainers.
Tram drivers, cleaners, salesmen and entertainers.
My lineage has worked the land and riden on the horse.
We’ve driven trams in Glasgow and warmed the world with gas.
Weaving away in dark factories, we’ve skated, spoke and ran.
We all kept on daring and dreaming , through this allotted span.

We laughed, we cried, we broke, we healed and still we carried on.
We worked, we schemed, we loved and walked until we were all gone.
All gone but one, but then I remember – two; and then, that all my cousins count.
As me, we are all part of the mysterious family tree, in doing what we want.
So my words are my descendants and I birthed them all with joy.
Sometimes with tears and fears too, but who cares – whether girl or boy?

A life lived loud in solitude, full of feeling much, and friends.
My giving is my gratitude and may that never end.
I take, I make, I give, and I receive.
I play and rest and work, so long and lazy – all for my reprieve.
A legacy of love is mine, my influences and effects.
And I cannot know who I have reached, from this line or life, to the next…

Post Script: A collection of my ‘Love Letters to Life’ in poetry and prose, have been gathered together in to a book – ‘Peachey Letters’ – exploring all the facets of life and love, in its’ gore and glory. The book has been featured in Psychologies Magazine and The Lady, as well other local and national press. In it you will find the dark and the light of love, in a way that will make you think, entertain you and let you know that you are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ by Sandra Peachey, from book websites any where in the world, including Hive (paperback and Ebook) and Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)… Or else ask your local bookshop to stock it and order it in…

Love Letter to a Bug Eyed Monster

October 10, 2015October 10, 2015 Sandra Love Letters ‎WMHD15‬, Mental Health, Mental illness, World Mental Health Day

The calendar states a significant date, a date that asks me to respond to it, for so many reasons… It has been designated The Time to Change World Mental Health Day 2015… And that prompts me to finish my latest ‘Love Letter to Life’, a post I started several weeks ago, but found it hard to finish for many reasons. Now it is time to reconcile and to conclude…

Dearest Me

Do you know what – there have times when I have literally been crazy..? Crazy with anger, with grief, with self-pity, with sorrow and the injustice of life… And since life is a balance, I have also been sweetly sane too, yes, I have been happy, relaxed, connected. So it is that I have also walked the survival line – just getting on with the business of living, and getting myself from A to B – paying the bills and filling my time. Indeed there are many versions of my life, and so it follows that there are many versions of me…

This time I am writing to an ugly, gargoyle version of myself. Today, physically anyway, I am a bug eyed monster with grotesquely swollen eyes. It’s probably a simple allergic reaction, but I don’t like what I am seeing in the mirror and how I am feeling right now… So if it is true that we manifest symptoms from deep rooted emotional causes; then in every way I can conceive, I don’t like what I am seeing right now – in the mirror, in life and in practice. And here is a sick selfie of me – taken on that swollen day…

I managed to manifest these symptoms on Saturday, so it took too long to connect with medical support. The serious fact to me, that my eyes were nearly swollen shut, was of no concern to the ‘professionals’ (they said, without seeing me, from a far distant desk, on a phone somewhere, in a place unknown), just take an anti-allergic tablet and wait… Waiting is an anathema to me, being of little patience and wanting to be seen and to be ‘fixed’, right now, thank you very much.

But wait I do, and eventually, after days, my face shrinks back to normality in physicality. But the concerns and symptoms of fate and psyche still remain, so it is time to now to reckon up…

If I have been crazy, then I have acted crazy – I have ranted and cried and shouted and screamed and smashed at various times… Sometimes to rage and sometimes to vent. Sometimes for minutes and sometimes for months…

I can easily give what I go through diagnoses, and wear them as labels, (figuratively) on my lapel… ‘I’m depressed’ and ‘I’m menopausal’ have been 2 favourite badges. And I’ve taken tablets for both lord knows. I’ve medicated in other ways too, by swallowing wine, chomping chocolate and filling my belly to hurting with calorific comfort food to take away the pain, or even to help me forget about it momentarily.

But if I don’t like what I see, it’s not just about me – I see this particular pain all around me, with family and friends; people that I love going through this too – in tiny and extreme ways; medicated, going through therapy, going through life with other remedies, either keeping it screamingly within, or reaching beyond their silent situation, becoming loud in behaviour and crying out to be seen and for support.

Such pain has surrounded me for ever, lord knows – my mother was prone to what was known as ‘nervous break downs’, so I witnessed this from childhood – she was labelled with depression, paranoia, psychosis and so many other badges too. Then one day, my father had his own ‘nervous breakdown’ and it killed him. He didn’t survive his own deep dive into craziness, and became both physically, mentally and as it turned out – terminally ill.

I’ve seen the maladies in other family members and in dear friends. So many people so close to me. I’ve spent so many hours worrying, talking, hugging, and visiting hospital wards. I do what I can, when I can, since supporting others, somehow makes me stronger and means that in the cycle of life, I am better in supporting myself.

Still, my mind can wander and accuse me of not doing enough, and bringing guilt into the equation. Is listening to and loving people for a while, sitting with them and fighting for them – with soft velvet gloves on, really enough? I can only let them judge that. But here for me, is what works – now my conscious coach-ly brain kicks in – I support where I can, with the resources and gifts that I have – including coaching and writing. I choose to define myself by supporting others and symbiotically, this way this works for me too.

And if I have a failing, it’s that I don’t support myself enough. I know that I must take the best care of myself, so that I can do the same for others. It makes sense, but it is actually a tough thing to do. Ironically there is a feeling that this is selfish, when if you really think about it, taking good care of yourself is exactly the opposite to selfish.

So here is what I do… I take care of my health – I eat well and, yet still I treat myself with chocolate, drink and occasional excess. I exercise – mildly, doing only what I love to stretch myself, and still I could do more. I create a circle of love, with family, friends and trusted supporters, who I interact with and reach out to. I share constantly and I support constantly, conscious of creating a balance. It is an imperfect balance, but then I am not perfect. I am, as it happens the most glorious work in progress…

And I found the things that work for me. There is no one size fits all solution here. We have to reach out and explore and test what is out there, beyond us, to help us – uniquely. One of the major methods for me is to write… I have decided to share my stuff with my words, to keep learning and reflecting on my life’s lessons. And this feels like the most selfish, self-indulgent method of all. But no excuses, this is what I do and by doing it, I do good, for me and then the person, or people or world that I touch as a result – that I have some impact on. If that is one (me) or many (who knows who), then that’s my big ‘why’ for doing it.

So I’ve looked craziness in the face – in my face and the face of people I love. I’ve shared some of my crazy shit, and so often with the fear that I will be judged – silently, selfishly and stupidly.

For so many, such sharing, and such admittance of what is wrong with their world is a sad stigma. It is a shame in just about every way you can imagine. But it is no coincidence that so often therapy involves sharing – taking that brave step of speaking out, not keeping your pain and symptoms locked within. For believe me, I have seen these symptoms explode, so many times, within me and around me – when the brain and / or the body simply cannot cope with the pressure any more.

Many are medicated on their route to health and I have conflicting feelings about this. It is a path I tried for a short while and it didn’t work for me. But then it is my path. People I know and love tell me that drugs have really helped them. They are a recognised relief in our current health system. I’ve seen both sides of that equation, including many unpleasant side effects. Someone close to me has been on them for around 30 years and their belief is that it is simply a case of getting the prescription right, because their body chemistry is somehow out of alignment. It’s not aligned yet though… My own belief is that such intervention should only ever be short term and to help people to build back their strength, then come slowly off them again. But I refuse to be judge and jury on this for everyone – I cannot comment on every case and all of the pros and cons therein.

The motto of Time to Change’s Mental Health Day 2015 is “I want to live in a world where no one feels ashamed to talk about mental health”.

So let’s shed that stigma. Let’s share and discuss and seek the myriad ways forward – the ones that work for you, in your world. Speak out and reach out and get the support that will serve you best. And please, please, please – help me to keep doing the same. By sharing you never know who you will help – and if that is you – then good, and if this reaches beyond you – then good…

The bug eyed monster came, then went, and I’m back to a more symmetrical view of me in the mirror now. I’ve plotted my peace, then rested and laughed and talked and shared. I’ve discussed and prayed and watched over my loved ones, and myself.

And here is my most recent selfish selfie, taken on a sunny / windy day on a sandy beach; since life is both a bitch and a beach… It’s a picture that is more smiling and symmetrical, so I’ll share this one today too…

And the craziness may well return, for me and for many, but then so too I know, will the sanity and the beauty, if we keep speaking and sharing.

So good bye bug eyed monster and hello me, in all my imperfect glory.

I love you (and me) – crazy, swollen, beautiful and all.

S xxx

PS: A collection of my ‘Love Letters to Life’ have been gathered together in to a book – ‘Peachey Letters’ – exploring all the facets of life and love, in its’ gore and glory. The book has been featured in Psychologies Magazine and The Lady, as well other local and national press. In it you will find the dark and the light of love, in a way that will make you think, entertain you and let you know that you are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ by Sandra Peachey, from book websites any where in the world, including Hive (paperback and Ebook) and Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)… Or else ask your local bookshop to stock it and order it in…

Love Letter to a Recipe Book – Part 1

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015 Sandra Love Letters

Dearest Holly

I have in my possession a recipe book from my childhood. Looking at it now, it is a gorgeous and glorious gourmet scrapbook for my stomach. It is woefully worn, some what battered, spattered with food and stuffed full of / suffused with, love.

It is a simple thing and yet it signifies so much, this little book – and I am writing this latest love letter so I can wallow in unashamed nostalgia, see the seeds of my childhood growing into quirks and sense memories, and not least to search for any metaphors and messages for the me that is planted in the here and now, in this moment of foodie reflection.

Before the book there was food. Plain and basic. Cooked up by my mother to feed us by rote and routine. My parents had lived through the Second World War and created their own simple menu of post ration availability and nourishment. My mother told me that her own mother was a plain and simple cook. My father only liked plain and simple food. My elder brother ate up whatever was on the plate. But not me. Never me. I was the “fussy” one. My palate did not like plain and it would change its’ childish tendencies frequently.

To be fair to my mother – if I told her I liked something, she would serve it up again, and again and yet again. And then my taste buds would be bored to the point of nausea. The fussy one. It wasn’t easy for my mother in that sense; but then I wasn’t really allowed to be fussy. If it was on the plate I had to eat it, for I had a strict post war upbringing and no nonsense was ever brooked.

But my taste buds and sense of self would not accept that, even if I was sent angrily to bed with an empty stomach and no baby boomer pudding. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I could actually leave food on a plate at the end of a meal, when one fine day I realised the roots of my needy greed to leave a clean plate behind, as tangible evidence of a meal consumed.

So to the Recipe book… Sometime around the age of 10, my taste buds decided that plain and repetitive could not be constantly repeated – I had to take my stomach into my own hands. Given my mother’s draconian tendencies and the threat of verbal and quite possible physical violence if I decried the relentless menu, I came up with a plan. Looking back on it now, I can see that this sort of thinking has shaped my life so much – and how I believe that we are all creatures of both nature and nurture. I used my creative tendencies and innate mental intelligence to manage my mother, who I understood from experience could be persuaded by certain means – using my knowledge of her and my own brand of emotional intelligence.

I love good food – with a wide variety of tastes and influences. There are times when baked beans are manna and there are times when only fine dining will do. It is a combination both of being born that way, and a reaction to the plain food that I grew up on.

So the 10 year old me stepped up to my mother one day, with a plan on my palate. I told her that I would like to learn more about food and cooking; to try out new recipes and ingredients, and suggested that it would be terrific fun if we did this together… I knew too you see, that my mother loved me and loved spending time with me… Without hesitation or consciousness of manipulation, my mother agreed and was obviously pleased. And so the Recipe Book came into my life and a blossoming of my obsession with taste and tendency…

It was like divine timing. The very next time we were shopping in town, I came across this self-same (now battered, then pristine) book, nestled in its’ own orange box. Looking at it now, it seems like the product of a much more innocent era. The picture on the cover is of Holly Hobbie – a little girl, dressed in a patchwork dress and bonnet, who appeared often with a cute kitten in tow or doing sweet domestic things, like cooking… It was the current craze for little girls on both sides of the Atlantic at the time, with posters, dolls and other merchandise and so I had bought the brand, and also the opportunity to commit to my new food journey, now to be contained in its own, tasty journal.

From that point on, my mother and I taught each other how to choose and cook lots of new things. It broadened our horizons and in lingering history, my taste buds have long thanked me…

As I was learning at home, I was also learning at school and so I started to capture my favourite recipes along the way in the book. Christmas Cake was one such – I made my first one at secondary school in the Home Economics class and for many more for years after, taking and twisting the listed ingredients with my own ideas and spins and turns. I was also precociously pretentious and when it came to examination time, decided that by giving all my dishes a chef-fy French name, I would earn extra kudos and test points. Who knows, maybe it did, but whatever the result, still it was for me, an education both in food and in French, as I joined the dots of my learning life.

Later recipes reveal the summers I spent in the kitchen of the UK headquarters of what was then known as Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change), an ideological movement founded in America. My parents had been involved in it and from the age of 13 I volunteered to work in the kitchen of Tirley Garth – a stately home in Cheshire, helping to cater for upwards of 50 to a 100 people.

They were happy times for me, living in the grand house, with the run of the most amazing gardens, covering many beautiful acres and meeting people from all over the world. People of all ages, all with the united purpose of being committed to the transformation of society through changes in both human motives and behaviour, all starting with their own. I would attend meetings, sing, cook and chatter all through my summers and as a result my food love grew more international. I ate and cooked exotic new delicious dishes, including this constant dessert favourite of mine – Lemon Parfait.

Those times gave me a real world view in many ways and long before I left Britain’s shores to explore the world, the world instead came to me, in presence and in taste and this gorgeous global experience has most definitely opened my mind and shaped my psyche

And as I grew from girl, the Recipe Book travelled with me, even when I left home and started my adult life at University and now even that time is long ago history for me, I have the proof of my growth, still here, to be turned in my hands… To linger and hunger over, to treasure and digest…

And I’ll be back to share some more love / food soon…

Yours, stirringly…

S xx

PS: Did you know that a collection of my ‘Peachey Letters’ have been gathered together in to a beautiful book, exploring all the facets of love in its’ gore and glory? This is love seen in every aspect of the life that I live. In it you will find the dark and the light of love, in a way that will make you think, entertain you and let you know that you are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ by Sandra Peachey, from book websites any where in the world, including Hive (paperback and Ebook) and Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)… Or you can ask your local bookshop to stock it or order it in…

Love Letter to Letting Go

August 23, 2015September 1, 2015 Sandra Love Letters

‘Orlando’ the novel by Virginia Woolf, chronicles the adventures of a character through many centuries and changes, through time and tide. Orlando learns to live by changing location, situation and even gender; moving on and letting go, each time…

As a coach one of my fundamental roles is to support my clients to let go of many things in their lives too – the behaviours, emotions and situations that do not serve them… It’s a lesson that I have to keep learning too…

Dear Orlando

I was driving to a party last night anticipating who might be there, what hugs there would be, and all the positive possibilities of the evening ahead of me.

I’d already been through the negative thoughts… That I might be on my own, that people might not talk to me, that they’d judge me in some way, shape or form… Yes all those old moths of pessimism had already flown around my brain. They are old adversaries those moths, so they flapped about a bit in my head, until I realised that they were blocking the light and then opened a window and let them fly away… Tonight it was actually time to be a (social) butterfly, colourful and free; not doleful and regretful.

So that’s me – patterned as both moth and butterfly: with dark thoughts worn by default and positive ones through choice and practice…

There have been many such moths and butterflies flying about my world in this month of August 2015. Curiously it has been an unprecedented time of meeting up with old friends, of sifting through my past and thinking about what I will compare, treasure and let go of in my life.

One of the first coaching experiences I ever received was to map out my past life and soon it became apparent that there was a very clear pattern which I repeated over and over… Up to that point I clearly had not learnt my life lessons and so occurrences, relationships and more had to be repeated again and again in my life…

Sometimes I feel like my quietly unconventional life has been created to give all my friends a real life soap opera to watch from the side lines. But when I sit down and analyse it there are a number of recurring themes and one of them is around my relationships.

As a friend, you will find me loyal, lazy, loquacious and prone to making you laugh, either by tickling your funny bone with my observations on life, or by recounting with sardonic self- mockery, its ups and downs. I must admit that I prefer the laughter to the loathing, and the self-mockery to the self-pity which will also characterise my chatter if I am not careful.

And encountering so many people from both my recent and distant past was an interesting introspection, not just into myself and those I was reunited with, but also about the absent friends who we discussed and dissected, or else dismissed.

Making my way to yet another reunion this month, I realised that this is the umpteenth time in just a few weeks that my past and present have colluded in this way, and rather than this being a curiosity, I am seeing a synergy – a coming together of some ancient alchemy, a pattern of occurrences that have coerced into a concentrated continuum of time, all neatly packaged into a yellow box named (the month of) August.

As always I start to see two views… The first being that this is simply is a random sprinkling of events, which by coincidence have happened in a late summer month, when anniversaries are created and then repeatedly celebrated; or that is what the moths would have me believe…

Or, secondly that a special ‘butterfly’ energy has bought all these latent happenings into my life right now, all clustered around this time, because there is something I need to learn / to change / to do / to heal / or some other onwards action I have yet to fathom.

Interesting… for now is most distinctly a time for change in my life, for re-evaluation. And I go through many such minor metamorphoses in this spinning span of living I inhabit, but now I know, this is a major one and I have to treat it differently – to listen, to think, to re-calibrate – where and who I am.

So I stop… What are the patterns here for me and why would all these reunions cluster around my consciousness at this particular time?

So many things in my life are shifting and changing right now and it is as if the past has come back to anchor me, so that I can start to reappraise and reapply myself – looking backwards, so I can move forwards; for somehow I have been stagnating, under the guise of surviving, and I know that what I am (being and doing) right now, is simply not enough…

So I am thinking through this month’s gathering stories, for me to see what the patterns are, then trace them back to whatever it is that I need to remember and to learn…

One of my many reunions this month was with two of the flat mates I shared rooms and lives with at university in Newcastle upon Tyne, long ago, as a teenager turning into a young adult. I was simply excited just at the thought of reliving that part of my past.

The most delicious aspect of that anticipation though was the thought of seeing my old friends again. We’ve rarely kept in touch in the decades since – for any number of reasons – mainly circumstance, scattered geography and that we all simply got on with our lives in other ways and with other people…

Yet I was so excited to be seeing them again. They said they both felt that too. On the train to the North, I started texting them both and suddenly my phone was buzzing and fizzing with all our messages criss-crossing the country, as the delicious build up to our get together.

It was a clear, gorgeous happiness to see them both again and to hug and to chatter as if it had been days, not years, since we had all seen each other. I love that particular currency of the past, one that we can spend again, not having expended our friendships and memories and now being prepared to keep investing that into the present.

On this occasion we three had a few hours together and it was wonderful. I felt ridiculously happy. We laughed so much in that small parcel of time we had. We asked questions of each other that only close friends could and we listened to and accepted all the answers.

I found it fascinating that we were now evaluating the time we had together (back in the day) and each other with the perspective of distance. We had all changed and yet we were all the same in so many ways. It certainly opened new windows and nuances of knowledge for me… Of how I was perceived then and now. Of the things that I never even realised about myself – about what I bought to the mix of our relationships and what I bring to life, in every way that you can frame that concept. It was fascinating for me to ponder on how the past can shape us, or more interestingly how we (you can hear the cliché coming here) actually shape our past – and can choose to respond to our time travels in a positively meaningful way and learn our lessons from them.

And this was just one in a circle of get-togethers, where I met old friends, went to parties, celebrated with and chatted to long lost friends. I’ve always found it so hard to let go of so many people in my life – whatever I did to them or they to me. And sometimes I have just walked away and shut all the doors.

Much as I have consciously wanted to keep so many of my connections, life does not allow for that. We don’t have room for all of them physically or emotionally, and likewise they for us.

In this past month there have been hugs, laughs and much nostalgia. There have been questions and spaces too, where former friends created a gap, which the rest of us closed in with life and talk and eating and dancing and walking and carrying on with what we have in front of us.

At the beginning of the month I craved (to give and receive) silent forgiveness, to look into eyes of friends long lost as well as the ones re-found. But it didn’t happen that way, I didn’t get all the fairy tale endings that I planned, greedy girl that I am.

But still I got to celebrate a wedding, an anniversary, a couple of birthdays and the simple act of catching up and catching my breath – taking stock of the things I have, rather the things and people I have missed.

And that is always the key for me – delving into the gratitude of what I have, then filtering out of the thoughts that make me bitter or regretful and choosing to let them go. And that often means having to let go of people too, for any number of reasons…

I can see broken bonds with those absent friends or I can accept that I have brilliant memories and so many life lessons learnt. With that acceptance comes a clear (head) space which is liberating and gives me the air and creativity to push on and plan.

And whilst all these things are churning on in my life, I realised too that I have an urge to clear out my house. It feels like it is stuffed with baggage and rubbish and materialistic crap. I want to clear the space and free myself from things that no longer serve me and in doing so I make a choice about what few things stay with me too.

What is now surplus to requirements was once a treasured possession, a sought after object, or a thing of greedy joy and so I will celebrate each and every piece of bric-a-brac, of clothing, of anticipation, of duty and let it go, with love. And the same process applies to the people in my life. No doubt along the way there will be some memories and if it comes to choosing between the moths and the butterflies, well that’s easy – today I choose to fly with colourful wings, out in the day light.

I have wanted to hang on to so much in my life, but there simply isn’t room for it all. I don’t need it all. I don’t need all the things I have possessed and I don’t have space or time for everyone who has crossed my path, to walk the whole way along it with me.

Now I can see the metaphor and of course realise the metamorphosis that I am going through. It is clearly time to cleanse, choose and change.

I teach letting go techniques to my coaching clients and in doing so, learn to let go more myself, always analysing, then learning, accepting and moving on…

I’m letting the painful things in my past go, with gratitude for all the lessons I have learnt. In this crazy, amazing life I lead, last night I was dancing and singing in a hot and happy crowd; today I am quietly pondering the notes and the steps; and then of course, just what it is that I will do with tomorrow.

Then the moths are gone… And it’s time to fly, again, free…

Yours – then, maybe when, and always,

With love and laughter.

S xXx

Love Letter to (Emotional) Resilience

July 26, 2015July 26, 2015 Sandra Love Letters Blogging, coaching, Emotional resilience, love letters, menopause, Women

Dearest Friend

I’m writing to you today because I want to get in touch with you again and to have more of you in my life – because right now, I miss you…

I see you out in the world and you are quite ‘the thing’ now aren’t you? You are bandied about in corporate circles and trotted out for magazine articles and so you’ve become very fashionable of late and I wonder if you have time for me anymore, so I’ll put my own petty predispositions to one side and unashamedly reach out to you instead.

If I think about what you are, I can chew up a dictionary and spew out a definition of you: Emotional resilience is having the ability and resources to adapt to difficult emotional situations or surprises. When you are emotionally resilient, you are more able to accept such situations and better able to adapt – rolling with the punches of life, rather than being knocked out by them.

Interesting that I should start sprinkling boxing analogies in there… But not surprising, because I have of late, starting feeling that life has been punching me in the stomach a little too often…

I like to think of myself as a strong person, but woman cannot live by thoughts and preferences alone. As an observer of mankind and myself – womankind – the kind of woman who watches and tries to lovingly learn; I have noticed how I am subject to the rhythms of my life. So I am deliberately putting some time aside to analyse the waves of those rhythms and to decide whether to swim, surf or take a boat across them. Frequently you, see, I seem to be drowning in them; so it is time to traverse, rather to tread water. What I wonder is going on with me that seems to weaken my resilience, and what steps can I take to consciously build it up again?

So if I look at myself and where my life has taken me recently – there are both external and internal considerations. I made a big change to my work / life path around 9 months ago and I realise that I am still adjusting and balancing all the options around that. I am, I now realise, missing certain elements of that old life that filled me up emotionally and psychologically, and I want to redress the balance.

The first part of that process is to be really sure of who I am and what I want to bring to the party of life. So here is my Soul Manifesto: I want to earn a good income, doing work that supports others and enervates and pushes me. I want to go beyond existing and paying bills – to a state of feeling fulfilled. That involves putting positive energy into my corporate work, my coaching and my writing.

When I am clear about what I bring to each of these activities, then that clarity gives me a surety and strength in myself; and means then that I am not so desperately vested in the misaligned words, actions and opinions of the players and partners around me – all with their own agenda; but rather that I understand what these are, and so I dance with rather than deal with other’s demons – doing a do-si-do and a step to the side, rather than an intense one on one tango.

To be honest with you, dealing with my own demons is hard enough work and I cannot serve my soul’s purpose if I am drawing daggers with other people’s devils… But frequently I forget this and find myself out there with them in the boxing ring. So I’m standing there, thinking I’ve got the friendly audience and the outfit just right and that I’ll execute a few nifty and graceful shadow moves, when… Blam!!! Suddenly and without warning I am punched hard in the stomach by my opponent – who I thought was actually my partner. But no. Biff! Duff! Thwack! Now the punches keep raining down on me, even though I am now knocked out and lying on the sawdust strewn floor finding it hard to breathe. And then I realise that I am actually beating myself up. For the love of… Ouch!!! I can’t decide which kind of punch (internal or external) is more painful…

I’m also out in the audience, watching myself from the side lines – shouting encouragement one minute, then counting to ten the next, and I think ominously that this woman on the floor has a physical disadvantage as well as an emotional demon to fight…

And that demon / disadvantage or whatever you may call it is the menopause. I feel that I haven’t weathered it well. My hormones have raged and rampaged over my life for some years now and I feel like the layers of strength and learning that I have built up around my heart have been eroded away. It is as if my emotional resilience has been burnt out – has given up, along with my body, which has been fighting the transition with all the indecorous furore of a bull in a china shop. And I’m left, naked to my emotions and therefore open to the various blows that circumstance and psyche will inevitably rain on my heart.

Out in the audience, as I watch myself sitting up slowly, with the moths of pain and pity flying round my head (instead of cartoon birds and stars), I walk over to myself and whisper in my ear, the same things that I tell my coaching clients…

“You are sitting up, you are breathing – you are safe. Acknowledge the pain – accept it and that you are in it, for now. This too shall pass. See it for what it is and choose what you want from this. Choose to learn and if you feel that you are beyond choice, then ask yourself what you would choose if you could and ruminate on those thoughts – even disassociated choice will heal and change the psyche. Analyse and accept what has happened. Don’t fight it with recriminations, angry self-talk, and victimised surmises. The surmises that equate to you making up tales and stories – ‘but they did X / I always Y, oh why, oh why’ etc.)… This is just your mind creating tall tales, it is not your reality, so change the ending. Fighting (in whatever form it takes) is always painful, so take off the boxing gloves.

It is always tempting at times like these to drug the pain – with tablets, wine, television or whatever our real or psyched pharmacy of choice is. But instead of drugging – how about distracting instead? Take a walk, take a break; breath deep and a get a change of scene and perspective – even if that is just walking into the next room.

Find a supportive friend, colleague or coach who will be a positive sounding board. Get it off your chest. Then listen – to them, and most importantly to your self – that self that goes deeper than those perceived punches in the heart. What is really going on here for you – what is the lesson to be learnt?”

And sometimes at this point I’ve seen myself and clients snap right out of it and of course, at others, it takes a little more energy to be able to get back on your feet.

Out of that imaginary boxing arena now, these are the two vital underpinning elements to bolster emotional resilience:

Firstly – consciously keeping the right company. Not just running to someone to moan and unload, but being part of a group/community where you give and take. Somewhere where you learn and teach. For some this family and friends, others combine this with being part of communities like Broadband Consciousness or Damsels in Success – any number of options are out there and available for you to explore.

Secondly – keep up a routine of self-development practices. Read the right books (and given your situation, the choice of these will change); learn to meditate, and journal. Get a notebook and as a minimum – write out 10 things / reasons / situations / people every day to be grateful for. What can you be grateful for in those emotional punches..? This is training your brain to find positive thoughts and is ultimately building your resilience.

These two practices become even better if you combine them with getting a deeper level of support from a coach or counsellor – work through your stuff – not just in times of crises, but as a matter of course / routine. Please don’t tell me that you cannot afford the time or financial investment that this will involve. There are many forms of support out there – from free to expensive. A lot of what you choose (including doing nothing) will depend upon your concept of value, but where ever there is a will, there is a way, so find the right resources to invest in yourself.

A constant positive self-analysis along with supportive guidance, is a powerful combination. The external support means that you have a wealth of resources to draw on. The inner practices – that you can be more simultaneously wise and resilient, because you keep up a constant and conscious practice – meaning that you become humble enough to keep learning, and quiet enough to let the answers come to you, all in in their own good time.

How you do all this is part of this process, you will inevitably experiment with what works best for you and don’t think that you will find one easy source for all this support. By varying what you do, you will strengthen what you do – as with most things in life – don’t put all your eggs in to one basket.

So, my friend Resilience – of course in clichéd fashion, I find that you have been with me all along – I had just forgotten you, but knew secretly too that you were always there within me. And if I have been stripped back, and emotionally laid bare, then all to the good – it is time to build myself up again – to be better, and to be more. Always of course, with a little help from my (internal and external) friends.

So now, my emotional vulnerability becomes my learning and of course my ultimate strength and turns back in to my emotional resilience.

Thank you my friend, for all that you give me: the love, the learning and the strength to serve – myself and so too then, the world.

Yours, with dancing feet and dry eyes…

S xXx

PS: Did you know that a collection of my ‘Peachey Letters’ have been gathered together in to a beautiful book, exploring all the facets of loss, love and life in all their gore and glory? This is love seen in every aspect of the life that I live. In it you will find the dark and the light of love, in a way that will make you think, entertain you and let you know that you are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ by Sandra Peachey, from book websites any where in the world, including on Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)…

Letter to the Expression of Love

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 Sandra Family, Friends, Love Letters, Loved Ones

That’s me, sitting on my big brother’s knee…

Dear Sue and Arthur

I was up and writing early this morning, roused by circumstance and also awakened by the shimmering summer sun light and its’ promise of another dancing day.

And on this day my mind turns to love, as it so often does, and the evolution of that delicious, bounteous phenomenon in my life…

Now, there are many notions and shades of love, and so I begin on this musing reverie by remembering my earliest influences and inferences…

This begins with my family and the love I have for each one of them in turn – something which has fluctuated with teenage mood and stomping circumstance; but now – looking back, is I realise, a deep well of certainty – in them and in me.

Then always in my heart, there was the desired romantic attachment of which I always dreamt and that I knew would come my way one sudden gorgeous day; and so it did, just not the way I had consciously planned…

And on to recent time, when I wrote a whole and beautiful book on the vast and shifting facets of love and how you can find it if you seek it, everywhere…

Yet still there is more love to be learnt and so, running randomly back down the spine of my living time, today I remembered one particular day in my life when I said ‘I love you’… and this is how it was…

One of my oldest childhood friends – Susan had just had her third child. I had been to visit them in hospital and had the joy of arriving, just as his 2 oldest sisters saw him for the first time too. We looked into the cot – me looking down, and them craning up, to see him. And there he was – a tiny sleepy being with a strong thatch of dark hair, already formed as a personality in so many ways; in other ways yet to be formed, and still to be unfurled and informed to us all in times to come…

“Ahhhh..!” His oldest sister Elizabeth said and we all smiled and coo-ed and then carried on with that day, flowing through time in that place and then back on to our own lives and own tempos elsewhere.

Later, close to bed time, the telephone rang and it was Susan’s husband Mike, now a busy a captain (well, CEO) of industry, and normally in our double dealings – phlegmatic, sardonic and measured… But not this time…

“It’s Sue” he said, and in fast, faltering words told me that still in hospital, she had had some kind of fit and nearly died; but then she had been revived and saved, and she wanted to see me…

So I put the telephone down and cried, and spent a sleepless night, waiting for day light to allow me to see her. Then I marshalled my whirling thoughts and spiralling emotions, and knew with absolute clarity what it was I had to do, as my response. I was going to go to that hospital bed and tell Sue a truth I had never shared before. Not shared because it was not then my habit, and also, that until that moment, it was my unconscious secret.

I breathed in deep and travelled to that place with sure steps and I ran to Sue’s bed and there she was, all fine – breathing and sanguine, having just looked life and death in the face, in such a short space of time. So she told me her story and how as a nurse herself, she recognised the danger signs and before she had shot off into her shocked bodily state, had pressed the call button and the hospital staff ran to her side and so she and they saved her, with their own urgent actions…

So now I heard it from her, I held her hand and I said: “I thought of life without you and it was the most dreadful, dark, entirely bereft feeling, even just the thought of you not being here in the life of everyone that you love. Now I want you to know that I love you and am so grateful for this moment with you and for all our moments together, past, present and future…”

And we both cried… Tears of release and joy and love, with the cherished indulgence of having what we had, there, literally in our hands at that time…

And there were more words between us, which I won’t share with you now, for they were ours alone. And I knew instinctively that such a momentous happening could not be confined to this single moment alone, and indeed that was not the end of this episode for her; for life given back has its’ reckoning. Yet with characteristic love and strength, she pulled through that and pushed through, on to pastures new…

And that bed side confession was an important stage in my evolution of love: an undamming of spirit and words and emotions. Not this time a phrase mumbled to a parent or in the throes of passion; but a deep and clear recognition of what I felt for another person; a force compounded of all the elements of myself and of hers, of our combined characteristics, history and personality. And it was done. And to this day those three words are repeated… Not with forced regularity… Just now and again… When I am struck by the simple urge to feel and speak them…

And thanks to this, I became freer with my love words and who I would share them with; in every degree and shade of my being; and on I journeyed through life and opened my heart more by protecting it less. That sweet tactic has had its’ burdens and its’ rewards, steering me through the inherent complication of connections and crossings and along journeys I have taken. But taken them I have and so now, I would not and could not have it any other way…

Love has become a better habit, and now I express it free of embarrassment, as I have grown up and grown older. Yet still this loving expression evolves…

I’m not in the habit of telling my big brother that I love him… Simply because that is characteristic of the parameters of the relationship that we have evolved over our own aeons… The last time I said it was, just as with Susan, at a time of emotional crux; being when our mother had just died. We had had the funeral and she was buried and that was that… A few days later we were talking on the telephone and I told him that I loved him, for I was suddenly frightened I would never see him again… So we agreed to stay in each other’s lives and that bargain was my reassurance.

And to a greater or lesser degree we are in each other’s lives. I feel somehow as the little sister that I am the bane of his life and someone he has to take care of, sometimes, even now… And I wonder what he gets from me, apart from memory and similarity.

Well, let me state for the record, that my big brother gets my love and my deepest, happiest gratitude.

So I state for the record: I love you big bro. There it is.

And I haven’t written about him in my blogs before because I feel, so different as he is from me (the one freely proclaiming my emotional stuff out there in the ether), that he would be embarrassed, in the same way that he seemed to be, all those long years ago, when I was a small child, and insisted on giving him a big, wet kiss before I went to bed, every single night, even though he fended me off. But I always got him in the end…

So, you know, I was a persistent little sister back then and I’m being that again now… And this declaration of love is accompanied by typing and tears, and has no statute of limitations, not just being born along with my birth certificate, but from many, many things, including his constancy to me. And he may never say it to me, for that is not what we two do and may not feel it that way; but I will continue to see his love for me in his many acts of service, and the time he spends with me, and the customs that we have created in celebrating our birthdays, and reminiscing on our history; and all the elements that go into this particular evolution of love. The revolutions of which will continue and will I know from experience, will never, ever end.

But so it is that this letter has to end… With love… Of course… Always…

Yours, with… etc…

S xxx

Letter to My Father on his Birthday

June 19, 2015June 24, 2015 Sandra Family, Love Letters, Loved Ones Fathers Day

Your birthday cake…

Dear Dad

You’ve been on my mind this week…

Several days ago I drove through Cambridgeshire, near to where you were born and where I spent so many happy holidays with you and my grandma. I waved as I passed the local signs and smiled because I was in long ago familiar territory, albeit this time, just passing through…

And strange how these things happen, but then I realised that your birthday was happening this same week too. Birthday – ‘birth day’ – an odd word to describe an event for someone who is no longer alive. But then you were born and today is the anniversary of your birth, so there it is.

Then I start to number crunch… I am astounded that it is almost 100 years since you were born and that you died nearly 30 years ago. How can my own seemingly short life encompass such long centuries and decades? It doesn’t seem possible… We spent 23 years together in the living realm, less than half of this life lived, yet here you are, still in my heart.

I’ve been having a tough time lately. In the last few weeks I’ve felt like circumstances have bitch slapped me – a cold hard slap of circumstance having hit me roundly, in the soft, sensitive core of my emotional being. The core that I so often cover with a hard shell of external equanimity to the outside world.

The bitch slap came from someone who had misread me and so misjudged me, with strange far reaching consequences not all even beyond my own control; yet even though this incident has gradually dissolved and been resolved over slow time with my gentle encouragement, it feels like my emotional thermostat has stopped functioning and I am still reeling from the first shot of enmity fired recklessly at me, instead of rejoicing in a situation saved.

So what can a girl do? What can a confused menopausal woman do? What can a coach do??? I am all these things and none of them at the same time. So I employ the tactics of all. I get angry and self-righteous. I coach myself. I use the trigger to start some positive thinking and habits and I work hard to carry out all the necessary transactions of life and constantly explore my options. I distract myself with treats and time with loved ones. I spend time making a difference to some else’s life and help them to free their own pain. I unburden myself, bending my friend’s ears. And this feeling ebbs and it grows, but still it doesn’t shift. Instead like a magnet, it attracts other similar (so called) injustices, adding insult to injury and shows me, in doing so, that it isn’t properly healed yet, is not truly resolved. That different resolving tactics are called for. That I need to go deeper, further back and farther in. I can start to see the lessons to be learnt and I seek the teachers – both within me and without.

And so at this time, my father comes into my head, bought in by proximity and date. I follow these thoughts and remembered how in similar times of attack and trial, when I was bullied as a teen ager, that my father fearlessly defended me – not with fists, but with wisdom and words. He sought out my attacker’s family and talked to them and made it stop. He did not go armed with anger, he went to them instead with his calm power and strong reason and as a result that particular evil silliness stopped.

So this week, going through my mini hell of unreasoning internal attack, I remembered my father and spoke to him, and with a smile I asked him to intercede. “It’s your birthday on Friday” I said in my head “and I want to celebrate that day with you, so please help me by making everything right by then”.

As soon as the thought was spoken, I felt immediately light and happy. Instead of weighty gnarling turmoil, suddenly I felt love and laughter – two things I always got from my dear father in abundance.

And the days of this week moved quickly on and soon it was the day – the 19^th of June. Your birthday. Out of my head and back in the world, I had a conversation that resolved the ‘bitch slap’ misunderstandings and ill issues. So at lunch time I went out to celebrate and, of course, bought a cake for you, and then I sat down and looked at it. And in my heart I sang “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Daa-ad, Happy Birthday to you”! And I promptly ate the cake. It was delicious. Thank you.

And I smiled again, because I knew how much you would appreciate that gobbling happy moment. And I remembered how you always wanted to support me. Then I thanked you for helping me again and being such a force of love in my life. It was a wonderful reckoning, to have that loving healing. A positive feeling replacing the tumult.

Now regardless of whatever your beliefs may be, my father helped me, and whether that was from heaven or from the simple memory of who he was for me, it really doesn’t matter. I live in the here and now and that is what I deal with. Still, my past and the people in it have influenced me in a myriad of ways and 30 long or short years after he left this life, my father’s love and support continues to serve me and save me. Again.

And that, whatever way you look at it, is an incredible legacy of love.

Happy Birthday Dad.

I love you still and always will.

Your own Cassandra Peewee xx

PS: Did you know that a collection of my ‘Peachey Letters’ have been gathered together in to a beautiful book, exploring all the facets of love in its’ gore and glory. This is love seen in every aspect of the life that I live. In it you will find the dark and the light of love, in a way that will make you think, entertain let you know that you are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ by Sandra Peachey, from book websites any where in the world, including on Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)…

A Love / Hate Letter to My Own ‘Dear’ Devil

May 2, 2015May 2, 2015 Sandra Love Letters

Dearest Devil

I am writing to you now to out you, to name you and shame you, for you have ruined me and ruined my world for a few precious moments of this cherished life; and so it is time to bring your distinctive darkness blinking back into the light and to stand up to you, squarely in the face, in the light of day, not in the shadows where you love to lurk and pounce, trapping me in the darkness of your wretched, dreaded deeds…

I let you possess me again, as I often allow, you familiar old fiend. Yet usually I am alone and so your poison runs darkly through me and spills out of me in anger and tearing tears, wiped away by me alone, until I can see the light again and recognise you for what you are – a familiar figure… When I see you, I see me, tormented and frustrated, for of course you are me too, a devil in my DNA, the insane side of my psyche, dressed elegantly and evilly in black, with wrinkled skin and dead or reddened eyes, stating the evil obvious, that this is who I really am – chilled and still, invisible to the world, rotten and forgotten.

None of this true is it, when I shine a bright light upon it? When I bring instead the beautiful incandescent truth of who I actually am, out into the open… You hate the open though don’t you Dear Devil, when you are discovered for what you are and your shadows are blasted away in the warming sun light…

Yet still sometimes you will show your face, and play me out in public too, just as I have named and shamed you… And this latest episode was your biggest victory yet wasn’t it, for I have clearly (according to you), been smiling in the sun for far too long..?

Yes, after a long period of peace and calm, you pushed my dark insides out, splattering clotted blood and gory guts all over my nice white world, and slashing and splashing my mess in an explosion of emotion, across someone on my path; a happening which still now, several days later, has rocked me to my core, and shocked my soul…

It all happened in the midst of a perfect and ordinary scenario, as the scene was all set for a ripe and gorgeous day, one in green pastures, far away from my own home doorstep. But it started dangerously instead with a gift, a part of myself that I gave to a friend, one that was not appreciated at that moment and then quietly repudiated and soon forgotten…

Many such conversations and interactions happen in the day to day ordinary, in the complex bank of activity and chatter of life; and I either let them pass or open them out for discussion… But not this time… Something said to me this time pushed a detonator in my heart and started a chain of evil explosions as one negative thought lit a match to another and another, and then even another, and soon I was a blazing barrel of gun powder…

Even so I kept a lid on it, I refused to spout and shout, and turned heat and tears into cold fury instead. So I put on a frozen face to my friend and said that I was leaving and then I ran, pretending I had a plan, and that I knew where I was going… But I didn’t, I stumbled blindly for hours and miles, crying quietly when no one could see me. I had made my mad decision and through stubbornness and circumstance, had no choice, either physically or mentally, but to act it out to a long and bitter conclusion; to get back to my own soft, silent sanctuary of home.

So much went wrong that day… you Dear Devil had such fun with me, throwing up obstacles to my journey home at just about every turn. And when finally I reached my own darling door step, it was barred to me and I sat on the step like a run away child, until some one finally, heard my calls for help and came, grumbling, to rescue the reprehensible me.

Inside my sanctuary and finally alone, allowed to keen and grieve, I counted my stupid losses – my sanity being one of the first names listed – etched out on the cold hard stone memorial commemoration of my long, horrible and horned day.

Why did this have to happen? I felt like I’d been put in a time machine and transported back to my hot headed twenties, when I would yell and blame and smash plates to release my latent demons. How long I have journeyed and travelled through knowledge and practice to change this reddened side of me, to be kind to myself and give that gift to others too? And yet here I was back to square one… Furious, empty handed, loveless, childless, single and now to boot, old and washed up.

My body has succumbed to time, given up because its’ womb has stayed empty; I’m now noticeably invisible or unattractive to men, as if they can smell the raging menopausal hormones and the rotten decay of my heart. So that’s it, I have given up on romance, on coupledom, on being part of an us and finally given in to letting go and never looking for anything beyond my suspiciously sniffing nose.

And we both know, don’t we Dear Devil, that you absolutely love my menopause… Yes – you ride bare back on my heated hormones, you revel in the sweating sleepless nights, and the angry waves of frustration and lost femininity.

Then too I remember that despite resting and taking good care of my self – inside and out, still I am ill and tired, plagued by headaches and exhaustion, with just the prospect of merely surviving, instead of really living, until that day when I die.

Whilst I have felt many horrible things in my life, I am shocked by the level of hate and loathing that I feel for myself, in these last few insane and scaly days. And what rocks me to the core even more is that I spewed all this over some one else too. Having been spattered by others with such blue gluey crap in my life, I thought I had learnt to deal with things differently, to expunge rather than to explode, and so I feel ashamed…

So back to now, and for days I have sat alone with the fall out pain of that evil explosion, deciding that time and tide will start to lessen its’ grip on my fast beating heart. I have rested, distracted and started to take firm steps to a future of mere occupation and survival.

And this explosive episode started with the unknowing and softly wielded weapons of words, but I cannot blame someone else’s words for my predicament, so I ask for forgiveness and gladly give it too.

Finally the anger at those first igniting words has given way to truth and tears. It was said. The sayer could not have known how I would allow them to hurt me, and the long historical complications of why they did so. They were simply conversational, and yet too they were a spell. So now it is now done and that is that.

Yes, it really is time now for forgiveness, for reconciliation of all the parts of me – devil and angel. And it is clearly time for change. What ever complex stew of emotions and demons poured out from me, they are flown, leaving me behind as a painful shell, pretending to be alright. But I’m not alright, I see that now! And knowing this and realising Dear Devil what your putrid outputs mean, actually means that now I have a choice…

I will stop masking my inner reality and living in a surviving ordinary. It is time to learn and to change. To take responsibility. To reach out. It is time to right and to write – always my greatest meaning, and my most gorgeous gift. To write and let go, to write and create a new reality that reaches beyond my heart and out into the world, where a desire bigger than my selfish self wants to touch and change and shine the light in other’s lives.

Next I shall give gratitude, I will write a long, detailed, gorgeously grateful list of all I have to be thankful for. This prolonged act of thanks is easy, and reminds me of who I am really am, what bounty I have, what the perfect possibilities and realities of my future are… It is a daily practice that I have forgotten for a while. I will now return to this perfect pattern of thanks.

Maybe it was time for this exploding friendship to end or to grow stronger? I don’t know yet, but I accept what is to come.

I ache because I have hurt so much and hurt others too, but this crazy episode has to have made a difference, otherwise it was all just empty anger and ridiculous rhetoric. Things will change now – I don’t even know how, yet I will trust the change and remember the dark time passed as a mere past memory, a passing place instead to greater glory. There can be no other option now.

And so, I let go of that dark part of me: Dear Devil – Good Bye.

Yours sincerely

Sandra Peachey (Miss)

Picture from: http://delere.deviantart.com/art/Angel-and-Devil-antart-135309384

Mother Nature Set Her Jewels in the Eyes of a Cat

February 28, 2015 Sandra Love Letters

Number 28 out of 28: This piece is part a Blog Challenge to write and publish a post, every day of the 28 days of February 2015, from Coach and Writer Sandra Peachey – the author of ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’.

Mother Nature Set Her Jewels in the Eyes of a Cat
~ Indian Proverb

It’s day 28 of my 28 day blog challenge – hurrah! And it’s a happy day, for so many reasons. I think the best reason of all is that I feel really motivated to keep writing. I wanted to create this month of momentum to kick start a new book project… And the question for me was – which book?!

You see, I have many ideas whirling around my head, waiting to fly out of my mind and be transferred into written word and these impulses have always been within me, since I have always had the sense that I was born to write… It feels like an urge that is zipped into my DNA, coiling round my being like a soft snake.

I then had a father who read to me every night as a child, developing a love of, and a loving security around, the written word. At school it was a favourite subject, some thing I was average to good at – or so my teachers said… And when I left with an ‘A’ at A’ Level in English Literature I remember one of those teachers telling me that he was so glad that he was wrong… (this at the time when A’ levels were at their hardest to pass and 90 % of the people I knew failed them…).

And from school I left my home, parents and cat to go to a red brick University and there gained a BA (Hons) in English Literature… So for three years I was immersed in words and genres; social history and personal mores; poetry and prose; novels and philosophies; all weaved through with the joy of language and literature’s spikes and nuances.

But that was the end of my time with words… A short life time lived with the protestant work ethic of my origins, meant that I felt impelled to go out into the world and earn a ‘serious’ living. I had no concept of how to do that with words… I didn’t want to teach; journalism was a tough nut to crack, and so I turned to another imbued inclination… The observation and support of people, rather than prose. So it was that I walked into my corporate career in Human Resources…

There followed a life of compartmentalisation, where I ruthlessly segmented my existence in to work, play, travel and occasionally – love… And there was no writing, unless you count the beautifully composed letters and policies at work, or the poetical letters, which evolved into emails, all made at ‘play’…

I shan’t bore you with my long life details after that, but some how, many decades later I am managing to better combine all the elements of my life… My people skills, my creativity, my writing and now of course – my cats! Having, during the course of this month of blogging, done some un-thorough research into my chosen subject, it confirms what I knew, that cats are the most popular pets on the planet – or the most Westernised pieces of it, any way… And this not just for all their fabulous feline features, but largely because they combine a measure of dependence (on us) and independence that renders them completely convenient and complimentary to the way of life that so many of we modern day humans find ourselves in.

For me there are clearly many feline lures and allures. Cats were childhood companions of mine and have accompanied me in my adult life too. I find that they suit me temperamentally – I love their independence and feline form of intelligence… I realise this usually where you can get drawn into the cats vs dog debate… But whilst I used to be polarised towards cats, I am more and more drawn to dogs – not to live with one (or not yet).

May be it’s a symptom of my more mellow middle age… Having reached this age, I have spent a lot of time in the company of cats, observing them and learning about them. Some of these musings have now been brought out and played with in this latest series of blogs. The vague research carried out during these four weeks, has also expanded my cat knowledge, width ways, joyously…

And so have used my moggies as metaphors and muses; I have used their behaviours to deepen my learning of life and find a subtle and easily accessible way to share my thoughts. Cats are popular in so many ways, they give so much pleasure to so many, and so it has been a perfect privilege to spend so much more quality time exploring with them.

And from the expansion of my experience of cats, the time I have with them can concertina in to a thousand tiny diamonds of time… This morning I woke up, came downstairs and found my littlest feline Sophia curled up on the sofa. She opened her sleepy eyes and looked at me with such sweet affection and blinked slowly – a cat’s display of trust and comfort.

The eyes of a cat express so much – Taz has huge green crocodile globes of eyes that bore into you and peer into the world, and quietly take so such in. And last, but never least of course, there is my George, with those azure blue orbs of his… so often he will sit by me and lift his eyes to look into mine, and then the purrs will start; and for a few soft seconds, we are locked into a tiny eternity of love…

So yes… Mother Nature did indeed ‘set her jewels in the eyes of a cat’, and not just of course the eyes….

PS: Did you know that a collection of my ‘Peachey Letters’ have been gathered together in to a beautiful book, cats and all? I’m completely biased of course, but it makes a purrfect present, whether you be a cat lover or no. All of human life is in this gorgeous book – all the fear, light, dark, and of course love, for any one who wants to be entertained and to know that they are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you, even if it isn’t all about cats… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ from book websites any where in the world, including Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)…

What Cats Teach Us About Life: Cats, Coffee and the Compliance of Civits

February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 Sandra Love Letters Blogging, Cats, civits, coffee, DISC, personality

Number 27 out of 28: This piece is part a Blog Challenge to write and publish a post, every day of the 28 days of February 2015, from Coach and Writer Sandra Peachey – the author of ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’.

The ‘Coffee Pooh’ Civit

Over the course of this month’s blog challenge on my twin themes of Coaching and Cats, I have been digging deeper into one of the coaching tools I often employ, which is a psychometric inventory based on the DISC personality assessment system. The letters stand for the four main personality traits it describes: namely Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. I have been gently evolving this in to DISCC – ‘DISC for Cats’, since, as well as personality assessment, I also have extensive experience in the field of cat guardianship (not ownership – you never own a cat) and so I shall now be consciously combining the personality and the puss.

The cat trait I shall be investigating today is the ‘C’ of the DISC model, which stands for Compliance. And my four legged muse to assist me in this exploration, is a very intelligent and self-possessed puss I used to be the guardian of – a handsome ginger tom by the name of Muttley.

Muttley was an urban tiger, twice the size of the average domestic cat and probably three times as clever. He was a rescue cat I took guardianship of (from a cat charity) when he was, we guessed, around eighteen months old.

On first acquaintance he was neutrally grateful for his warm new home, then gradually, slowly, more of his personality started to emerge. I only ever had to tell Muttley anything once and he got it. I soon realised too that this cat understood all the rules of the house instantly, and in fact knew them better than I did.

Not long after he arrived in my life, I went away for a night and left him alone with a cat feeding device – a machine with a timer that was programmed to pop open at a pre-determined time, in order to dispense his dinner. It was a new fangled, fan dango’ed sort of machine that took me around 2 hours to figure out, assemble and then set up. Despite this complexity, I discovered, when I returned home 24 hours later, this same device, broken in to little pieces, easily dis-assembled by my cat and now scattered across the kitchen floor…

I never left Muttley on his own again – for he had taught me the intricacies of Compliance – not a sissy, ‘do as you are told’ sort of compliance, but a ‘I know it all, so let me show you how’ kind instead…

The C in this trait stands for Conscientious as well as Compliance. It is all about detail, preciseness and perfectionism, which was why, when I was casting about for a wild cat to cast as a representative for it, that I thought of the Civit – or to be compliantly precise – the Asian Palm Civet…

Some where, way back, down along their long genetic lineages, it is thought that the cat and the civet had a common ancestor. Over the morass of millennia, convergent and parallel evolution has produced different animal lines, which because of their common ancestry and habitat may even develop some similar traits, including the ‘C’ one.

The Asian Palm Civet is actually a small, (domestic) cat-sized grey / black, long tailed creature. It has a more pointed muzzle than a moggy – and looks like a hybrid between a cat and a raccoon. In fact, rather than being a cat, it is more closely related to the modern mongoose.

It is a carnivorous creature, living most notably in Indonesia and feeding in the wild on rodents, insects, fruits and curiously (for us humans), coffee berries. Because of its’ coffee habit, this Civit has a paw in the production of ‘Kopi Luwak’, a coffee that is prepared using the coffee berries which they eat and partially digest. The beans are then harvested from their fecal matter. The reason that this coffee is so prized, is that Civits only eat the finest and ripest beans – since by sense and smell they know exactly which are the very best.

The civet’s efforts allegedly add to the coffee’s prize aroma and flavour. As such, this ‘Civit Pooh Coffee’ is therefore the gold dust of the caffeine world, commanding big dollars in comparison to its’ non-digested coffee cousins.

So just as my mog Muttley could see exactly how everything worked, consequently the ‘coffee pooh’ Civit can also only select the correct coffee berries. It is, of vital importance to the ‘C’ trait, that things are done exactly the right way and according to the rules.

This all works when the ‘C’ characteristic knows what the rules actually are… I remember taking Muttley with me to stay with family for Christmas, and on the first night he wandered around the strange house, dis-planted from his territory and meowing constantly, whilst the rest of us attempted to sleep… At this juncture, if he were a human ‘C’ – out of his comfort zone, his meows would be signifying a whole range of questions – where, why, how and what..? All asked in order to re-establish the direction of his internal compass.

The ‘C’ then, is most comfortable when things are ‘right’. So they tend to be motivated by getting things right and hence, by being right; and they are very good at it, for they are great listeners and attentive to corrective detail. Then, with all these details established and to hand, they can then make sure and certain decisions; yet without all the data, statistics and cogent facts at their disposal, they are reluctant to commit to a conclusion. C’s do not tend to thrive on tension and will avoid it or will pick at the holes and flaws of its’ concern, (which they can see a hundred paces ahead), in order to steer clear of combustible conflict.

So where Muttley knew his territory, tricks and escape routes, he would stand his ground, yet where there was any element of uncertainty he would flee, back to his safe home and to me. So whether human, cat or small, (lithe-bodied, nocturnal), mongoose like mammal, the ‘C’ has its’ detailed role to play – notated and checked to the nth degree – to check and perfect and to get life right.

In amongst all the mnemonics in DISC I can see the need for ‘C’ and all the different elements in my world. And, like a lot of people, cats and civits, have many of the traits blended to a certain degree, to make a constant and evolving recipe of me.

PS: Sadly the Asian Palm Civit’s coffee talents have been abused by some in their native Indonesia, who have force-fed them a debilitating diet of coffee berries in diabolical living conditions, in order to harness their excreted harvest. Fortunately there is now a campaign under way to encourage ‘ethical’ civet coffee…

PPS: Today’s Civit centric information has been digested and regurgitated from the websites o: f A-Z Animals, Wikipedia, messybeast.com/cat-prehistory.htm, and Cat Poop Coffee Inc.

PPPS: Did you know that a collection of my ‘Peachey Letters’ have been gathered together in to a beautiful book, cats and all? I’m completely biased of course, but it makes a purrfect present, whether you be a cat lover or no. All of human life is in this gorgeous book – all the fear, light, dark, and of course love, for any one who wants to be entertained and to know that they are not alone in life, what ever it holds for you, even if it isn’t all about cats… You can buy ‘Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life’ from book websites any where in the world, including Amazon (in both Paperback and Kindle)…