I have never had to live with the misfortune of loving someone whom I cannot have – I imagine that must be quite a burden to carry?

To love an individual for whom that love is unrequited, rejected, betrayed, lost, bereaved  – must be quite a burden?

I am aware of what I do carry, as a married man with a same sex attraction, who is fortunate to have a loving wife, whom I don’t want to lose.

I am aware of the weight of my feelings for my own sex, which is not specific to an individual – it is not that I love someone I cannot have, it is that I carry the attraction, a deep intensity which ebbs and flows but which is never far away and at times it feels very heavy.

The weight of these feelings were carried by me, in isolation, for many years as fear, judgement and rejection, but in recent years I have faced into my truth and accepted it and found a space to be open and loving to self with the help of my wife.

So, if I have accepted my situation, and my wife still loves me in full knowledge of my truth and I love her, what is this weight which I am carrying? – is it a burden?

I don’t think so!.

I think the intensity, the frustration, the longing is a cry from self to be heard, to be acknowledged, to be with these feelings calmly and courageously.

My body is weighed down to the pavement by gravity, and my same sex feelings are weighed down to my mind by the “gravity” of consciousness, freedom and truth which I am learning to understand are an essential element of my humanity.

My feelings are not a burden, they are components of self, which need my love, and also the love of those who know my truth and who love and support me on my way through life.

My next blog will be: Control Sense

William Defoe

In a week of funerals I have been contemplating my own mortality and the mystery of life and death.

In seeking to accept aspects of what makes me the person I am, after years of rejection and inner turmoil over my same sex attraction, I wonder sometimes how many more years I can reasonably expect to live.

Perhaps twenty, with reasonably good health and a few more besides – who can know these things?.

What really matters is that I live the days I have happy with self.

I now try to live my life in the peaceful acceptance of how things are, or with a clear intent to find the courage to change the things which I want to be different.

In this period, I have been pondering whether I have had the happiest day of my life already.

I certainly recall my own wedding day to my beautiful young wife and feeling a sense of overwhelming joy that we were married – was that the happiest day of my life?

I recall the birth of my children – each one of these a special day, but accompanied by a sense of anxiety and foreboding at the enormity of the responsibility we had been given – the love you have for your children can really hurt and for me I sensed this right at the start of their lives.

I have a wonderful family, and we have been blessed with many wonderful events at which to hold parties and celebrate, but into all these I carried my wound of non acceptance and fear.

I have had interview successes and examination successes which gave me a sense of achievement and confidence – but I cannot describe these as the happiest day of my life in the context of the family events which I have just related.

I have come to the place where I am foolish to wonder if the happiest day of my life  has been or whether it is still to come.

My focus in the present, will be on trying to make sure that the days that remain are open to the possibility of happiness.

By this I mean, that I am able to bring all of me to whatever life brings, not just on the special days, but everyday.

This means that in my future experience of joy or sadness, I will be fully present in my truth, free from fear, free from skewed judgement on self and others, so in that way even the saddest of days, can have the potential to be the happiest days, because:

I am,

I live,

I love,

I need,

I yearn,

I cry,

I laugh,

I sing,

I sit,

I can!

My next blog will be: Is it a Burden?

William Defoe

A friend of mine told me this week that he received a call from his wife informing him that she was on the bus on her way home from town and that she had bought the curtains they had seen last week.

She ended “Put the Kettle on Love – I’ll be home soon”

To which her replied “and what about the car – you went to town in the car”

I am intrigued by this ability in all of us to forget crucial details, most often when we are engrossed in other matters which consume our full attention.

Keeping hold of the whole complexity of the reality of our journey, that we arrived in town in a car, but we left on a bus thrills me, because it shows up massively in what it is like to be consumed in the present and not hung up with the past.

Of course, my friends wife had to get off the bus and walk back to town carrying heavy curtains to collect her car.

And for us, we too have to occasionally / frequently go back metaphorically to explore our past and see what it has to say to us today, in our present moment which is constructive and relevant, even if it is painful.

My friends wife, irked as she was by her error, and worse still that her husband pointed it out, had to laugh in the present, and regardless of the mess, he had put the kettle on and the hot coffee was waiting for her, as required on her arrival home.

My next blog will be: Happiest Day of My Life

William Defoe

As I drove home from Mass last week I passed an elderly lady walking in the spring sunshine

This lovely lady with white hair, whom I do not know, caught my attention due to  her smart appearance in a pink jacket and black skirt, tights and shoes which was striking to my eye.

She looked to me as though she too had been to a religious service of some sort, but no matter to me, she may have been on her way to the pub to meet friends – who knows?

It was the contrasting colours in her apparel which caught my eye, and lingered with me long after the fleeting moment of driving passed her had gone.

To wear two colours of stark contrast reminds me of the potential in all of us to hold light and shade in any given moment.

I have developed a much greater capacity to metaphorically wear pink and black in a mode in which neither mood be it dark or light are able to subdue the other.

In my life of many years before development, an altercation at home before I set off for work, could cloud a whole day.

The rejection of my truth in respect of my gay sexuality and the fierce dilemma I struggled to overcome this rejection of self clouded big chunks of my life.

My capacity now to hold on to pink and black means that I can experience light and shade but the contrast allows a perspective, even in the darkness.

The pink came out of the black for me – not in an explosion of gay lifestyle, but in an explosion of truth, an explosion of acceptance, an unbelievable capacity to be Married and Gay, and Catholic and Gay.

This has enabled me to feel peace in the knowledge of my truth and curious to get closer to it, rather than push it away.

Smart Woman, Smart Me, Smart You?

Pink and Black!

My next blog will be: Put the Kettle On

William Defoe

I am quite often on the lookout to notice the comments that others make about me.

My attitude to this approach has shifted very positively into a direction which is constructive in my life, as opposed to being crushed by remarks others make about me.

In the past, before I started on my journey of self discovery and self love, I felt every opinion as a threat and a wound developed within me which grew and grew.

Now I have developed an attitude of curiosity and I have protected myself with a simple inner response to the opinions of others which is “that is their opinion, not mine”

I say to myself when I pick up on an opinion expressed about me, either directly of inferred: –

Do I recognise myself in that view of me;

Am I inclined to own that opinion;

Am I inclined to agree with that opinion;

Do I need to acknowledge that opinion whether it is true or not;

Do I need to make a change as a result of that opinion and if so, is that for my benefit or the benefit of others.

A recurrent theme that has emerged from others in comments about me is that I am a perfectionist.

It sounds positive – it might be, but it might not be.

I have lived a life in which the bar has been raised high, which if its attainment was down to what I could deliver, it might be acceptable, but when it is predicated on the choices that others make, which in my case it was, the striving for perfection made my life hell.

So, I have let go and I have let things be, and I have welcomed the change in me and the response in others and life feels a whole lot more perfect that it ever did!

My next blog will be: Pink and Black

William Defoe

I’ve been having a major clear out of clutter.

I find it difficult, because I value the things that I own and because I look after them it is not easy to justify throwing things out.

A few weeks back, I took three big boxes of books to a local book seller and handed them to him to support his market business.

The books I have kept fall into the following categories:

• English Classic Literature – Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Forster, Eliot
• Poetry – Keats, Popular Poetry, Poetry Anthologies, Children s
• The Natural World – David Attenborough’s BBC  TV Books
• Atlas’s
• The Bible
• Catholic Catechism
• Political Memoirs
• Shakespeare’s Complete Works – sadly not a First Folio
• The Royal Family
• The Papacy
• Journey of the Soul – a range of books that have supported my journey to be present.
• Stars and Planets
• Thrillers

This list speaks to me of a diverse interest in my country, my faith and the world around me.

Some of my reading has been inspired by my education, my formation as a Catholic, but others are at the heart of what it is that makes me who I am – the politics, the poetry, the wildlife.

My books on the journey of soul have released me from an oppressive attitude and a lethargy in life, to a new found energy to try to be interested in the world I live in – to be expansive in my capacity to be in the world and not to be overwhelmed by my small place that I occupy within it.

I have life which is a precious gift, I am unique, I am loved, I love, I feel, I cry, I breathe, I read.

What do your books say about you?

My next blog will be: Perfectionist

William Defoe

Don’t ducks just dabble?

Last week I was amazed to see several flying ducks as I walked along a beautiful stretch of the canal near my home.

I was fascinated by these flying ducks as they lifted themselves off the water, and flew in a direct line over the canal at about my head height, so that as they passed me they were level with my eyes.

I have always known that ducks fly, but rarely have I seen them do so, but to see them fly in a straight line from A to B further along the canal at the height of my head was wonderful.

The canal life seemed to be in flux, early spring, territories being claimed, the strong pushing out the weak, the weak trying their luck against all odds of succeeding to claim a patch of water.

How much of my life has been spent trying to claim a foothold, a home, a place to feel safe?

How much of my life has been spent fending off the aggressor, not just the playground bully and the insecure boss, but also the demons from within?

Through a process of internal scrutiny, coaching, reading, meditation, prayer, physical exercise and friendships,  and a growing acceptance of truth, I have found a life, I have found a space to call my own that lives within me, and is reflected out of me in a new found confidence and love of self.

Ducks don’t just dabble – they fly!

My next blog will be: What Do Your Books Say About You?

William Defoe

I am quite calm at the moment, which does not mean as I used to think it did, that if I was calm, everything was in order – what it actually means is that I am coping with the complicated realities of my life.

All lives are complicated – it is not that I am special – I am simply a human being with a heritage which claims me, a reality which wounds me, and aspirations which confuse me.

When I am calm, that is able to cope, I can sense what it has been like for me to experience havoc in my life.

Havoc isn’t chaotic, or untidy, it is living a life in which the inner most soul is restless, craving, needing, gnawing, wanting to be loved.

Havoc is a rejection of self, a wounding which hurts so very much that night never really seems to turn to day – and this can be for years.

Havoc is loss, loss of time, loss of opportunity to flourish, loss of being able to fully love others, whilst at the same time having this constant feeling of having fallen short as a human being.

Havoc from the perspective of my present calm, is beautiful to behold, because I have pulled through, it is in the past, it is not able to re-claim me because I have accepted self and now I am in a hurry to love those I cherish more deeply, more openly, more generously, more courageously.

Havoc is a reminder of how far I have come on my journey to  live fully present, and although I don’t want to experience it, I don’t want to lose sight of it either, because havoc ultimately has propelled me to acceptance and truth.

My next blog will be: Flying Ducks

William Defoe

In the last few days I have heard with sadness of the deaths of three acquaintances  – all men who have died at the young ages of 20 years, 40 years and 55 years respectively.

Lost Life  – gone too soon, and it was not unreasonable for my expectation of their longevity to have been longer than the time that they had.

Lost Life still, is the time I have spent throughout periods of my own life in which I have failed to connect with living each moment in the full knowledge of the present.

Lost Life when I have denied the needs of my soul – not to be indulgent and reckless, but to accept my truth and to be free of a sense of guilt and loathing for the things I could not change.

Lost Life for the times I sowed discourse and division, because of my complex relationship with self, so that those who wanted to be close to me were pushed away and hurt.

Lost Life in surrounding myself with unhelpful distractions to block out any meaningful attempt to home in on the truth that is me.

In recent years, I have suffered tremendous feelings of guilt over aspects of my parenting which was loving, but also controlling and tense and confrontational.

Then came the calm, the stepping back and the examination of self and the feeling of being crushed and a failure for the mistakes of the past.

Now comes the truth, the outward facing of my development and love for self, so that yesterday I had my first coffee with my adult daughter and we talked  and talked and talked and put Lost Life behind us with the promise of a closer and more open and honest father and daughter relationship.

So, I said to her – “bring me you, hide nothing, I will reject nothing, but lets us bring these things constructively and lovingly and openly”  – in a spirit of being present so that neither of us has to suffer any more Lost Life.

My next blog will be: Havoc

William Defoe

In the BBC TV dramatization of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” there is a wonderful scene where Elizabeth Bennet, played by the beautiful Jennifer Ehle, is reading a letter from Mr Darcy, in which each fresh revelation causes her to lose her breath and temporarily set the letter aside whilst she composes herself and her thoughts, for the next installment of the letter.

I have been reading a beautiful little book (a resource for my journey of soul) called “fail, fail again, fail better” by Pema Chodron an American  Buddhist nun.

This gift from my living angel (coach), to support my onward journey to love self more deeply, touched me in a similar way to Mr Darcy’s letter to Miss Eliza Bennet.

I felt breathless and I had to keep setting it aside as I came to terms with the simplicity of the authors message to expect and welcome failure and how to cope with it.

Her words resonated so strongly, because throughout my life I have endured a ruinous sense of having failed as a man, and from this space of deep pain and anguish and hurt, I have lashed out at others with angry outbursts of verbal aggression and addictive attention to unhelpful thinking causing me serious inner turmoil and guilt.

This wonderful book, supports the journey I started three years ago, to change my narrative from failure to love of self, and love and appreciation of those whom are close to me.

I have cultivated an inner discussion, to gain an understanding of my sense of failure, and in that moment of pain, I have worked hard to find some other name for it – hurt, disappointment, frustration or setback.

I have used my curiosity in these difficult moments to develop a deeper care for self, a compassion for self, which through quiet meditation has lead me to peace, calm and acceptance and a profound willingness to listen to my inner voice and take steps to change direction, or accept my truth.

This blog is an outward sign of my new found ability to reach out to others creatively so that my story as a gay and married, Catholic man, may help others to liberate themselves from suffering, and find, like me that:-

to fail is to discover,

to fail is to have tried,

to fail is an opportunity,

to fail is to experience the breathless curiosity for a hopeful future.

My next blog will be: Lost Life

William Defoe