I have been reflecting in recent weeks about my role as a provider.

I have come to believe that I am not really suited to that role, however, I have cultivated a system based on a traditional family role of a father to be provider, teacher and leader.

I have been unhappy, and I am at a point in my life when I need to change and I must change.

However, unsuited to my role as a provider, I have fulfilled this role for over thirty years of my life and now I sense within me an urgent need to shift the focus in life to something that is more balanced in which my role as a provider and my anxiety around this role is reduced.

I have been searching in recent weeks for evidence of this shift.

I have been trying to note down the occasions when my provider role is not linked to financial “bread winner” type provision:

• I have started to concentrate on my physical well being by running and getting fit.
• I have started to focus on my creative talent by painting for fun, which is deeply relaxing
• I have started to attend a french class for beginners in conversational french to excite my interest in that beautiful country and the french people.
• I have started to make an effort, and it is an effort, to read novels in my spare time.
• I have enjoyed knocking about on YouTube looking at political humour – William Hague is amazing!
• I have allowed myself to sit and watch a drama called “Doctor Foster” which I like because it has a limited demand on my time, unlike a soap which requires a commitment.
• I have been attending a weekday Mass for many months and I love the quiet simplicity of the small gathering around the altar and the prayers to Our Lady which we recite at the end of Mass.
• I have enjoyed many social occasions and I am conscious of the many friends that I share with my wife with whom we spend a good deal of our free time – I am conscious that they have an expectation of me to be humorous and fun and I am more aware of that role and whether or not it suits my well-being.
• I have prioritised each day time to write my diary and to reflect in silence on my inner self and I have been very aware of a heightened sense of anxiety and my need for calm.
• I write this blog which tells my journey to the world – whether the world is interested or not!
• I have spent time in the garden, preparing it for the winter space so that it gives pleasure to me and other’s in it’s plainness

I am learning through my development that to live in the present, nothing must command that my life is interpreted through a single dimension.

If life feels like that, i must expand my vision to bring in other interests and meanings – I am not just a provider, even though I continue to be one, I am a runner, an artist, a reader, a friend, I am a Catholic, a beginner in french!; a diarist; a blogger; a gardener!

What are you?

My next blog will be :   Long Sleeves.

William Defoe

Picture Credit : http://www.pinterest.com

Recently at a family event my brother, sensing my ongoing anxiety, said that we should meet up some time.

It was a kind gesture from him to recognise my need for his company.

In the intervening period, we have set up a date about six weeks ahead from now to meet up over a meal with drinks.

I have felt frustrated that in making the arrangements, I have not really explained to him my needs because if I had he would have seen me already.

In the midst of the confusion, which I have created between us by 1/ not being honest with him and 2/ allowing a judgement on myself that I am nothing but a nuisance to him, I have felt angry towards him.

My brother was the first person I told about my gay sexuality and on the evening when we discussed my dilemma he was incredibly supportive and generous with his promise to help me and be closer to me throughout my difficulty.

He praised me for my courage in telling him and said that he would support me.

Although we have met on occasions just as brothers more frequently over the last three years, I have not felt supported by him in the way that I want to be supported.

I cannot blame him for this – although I often do – but in my reflections, I have to recognise that I have not been able to explain to him what I actually want from him.

When I try to frame the question of what I expect from him in my mind, I come up with “I want a brother”

When we meet, we discuss all manner of issues except the one which I really want to be discussing with him, which is the ongoing struggle of my sexuality within my marriage, my alienation from the kids, my continuing sense of isolation and fear and my journey through Integral Coaching that I am undertaking.

He wants to tell me about his own difficult job, his work pressures, his family life, his ideas on our shared Catholic faith, which are increasingly different to my own.

I am beginning to understand that I need to find a better narrative to explain my needs to him. I have been struck by a thought in recent reflections which goes something like this:-

If you want a brother, you must first find a way of being a brother to him – perhaps this will be the route by which I finally get an opportunity to explain my needs.

My next blog will be:     Provider Role

William Defoe

Picture Credit – Find a Black Swan – zenbullets.com

Earlier this week I was involved in a minor collision in my car. No one was hurt.

I was surprised as I drove away how calm I felt.

I arrived home, explained to my wife that someone had gone into the back of my car and then we went out to our french class as planned.

This morning, I felt irritated by the hassle that I knew I was going to have to go through in reporting the accident, explaining the facts, dealing with the repair and inconvenience. Why me?

The answer to that question is clear to me.

I don’t live in a vacuum, I live in the world and two things happen all the time:-

• I happen to the world and in the world, and
• the world happens to me and in me.

The young lady was upset as we exchanged details.

I reassured her that we were both okay and these things happen and so she should try not to worry.

In this I recognise my own growth through the Integral Coaching which I am undertaking.

My next blog will be:     Finding it hard to explain my needs

William Defoe

Picture Credit: ideas-for-happy-living.blogspot.com

I  came across a surprisingly beautiful film recently Called “Still life” (see below)

I often feel, that in order to feel safe, my desired option would be to live alone.

I enter the realms of fantasy in my mind, where I seek a life alone, but then somehow I am “rescued” by my wife (whom I have left at this stage in my fantasy!) or my daughter or my brother or my mother etc etc etc.

This film helped me to give some further consideration to the reality of living alone, particularly if the intention is to be isolated.

This council worker was dedicated in his role of trying to find relatives and friends of deceased persons who have died alone.

In many cases, he was unable to do so, or people would not come to funerals whom he did trace, and so the council worker himself would be the sole attendee having written a eulogy based on bits of information he had found in his investigation :-

“Sue liked Christmas – she spent it with her cat – and they exchanged gifts – cats were an important part of Sue’s life”

I have grown to really value periods of solitude. In fact, these times have become an important part of my intention to know and understand who I am, and not to feel frightened about the scale of my truth but to befriend it.

This film helped me to recognise that periods of solitude, is different to permanent solitude – this may indeed still be an attractive way of life for me or for others, but at least now I can face my choices with a smidgen of reality about its merits, rather than the fantasy which has hitherto clouded my thinking on the issue.

My next blog will be:   Why Me?

William Defoe

Still Life is a 2013 drama film written and directed by Uberto Pasolini.[1][2] The film was presented at the 70th Venice Film Festival , where it won the award for Best Director in the category “Orizzonti”.[3] It also received the Black Pearl award (the highest award) at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for “its humanity, empathy, and grace in treating grief, solitude, and death”; and for his performance, Eddie Marsan won the Best British Actor award at the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival. [4]

At Mass last Sunday the priest baptised a young boy aged about 4 years old.

After the welcome and anointing, the child and his parents and godparents were called to the baptismal font for the baptism.

The little boy was asked to stand on a little step and to lean his head over the basin for the water to be poured over his head.

As he did so, the priest noticed that he had a toy and said to him “Would you mind passing your chain-saw to your daddy while I baptise you?

As he did so, without a fuss – he was an angel – the priest said “now there is a sentence I never expected to have to say at a baptism”

This openness to how things are in the present moment, as opposed to how I expect them to be, is a key component of what it feels like to me to be in touch with living in the present.

Being open to the world, enables me to loosen my way of being in the world, and with the world, and it releases me from old judgments and prejudices which have served only to imprison me in a state of anxiety and fear.

My next blog will be:       Still Life

William Defoe

Picture Credit: bradlys-double-7.wikia.com

Earlier this week, I had a day off work and climbed Pen y Ghent in the Yorkshire Dales

I walked with a friend from the top of Pen y Ghent (A Yorkshire Peak) to Plover Hill and we enjoyed our lunch looking over the spectacular rolling hills above Foxup.

The view is what I take to be my reward, for the considerable effort that it takes to get to that remote spot, and in that place which I have visited alone, and with friends, I sense a deep connection with my need for calm, which is inspired by the beautiful rambling rolling hills which seem to go on forever.

I am overwhelmed by a feeling that to see the view I have to be high up – I would not see the hidden rolling hills without having climbed to be there.

So it is with my journey of self acceptance towards a gentler kind of love that I am seeking for myself.

I know that I must exert myself physically, mentally and spiritually to examine my life and explain it and hope to find a contextual meaning for it, in the past, and in the present, so that in doing so my future has the potential to be my very own rolling hills.

My next blog will be :   Surprised by an Unexpected sentence 

William Defoe

Picture Credit: http://www.theguardian.com

For a few hours last Saturday night I experienced a feeling that my life had become untenable.

Those feelings, in that moment, were so overwhelming that for those brief hours there seemed to be no way out of the situation that I was in.

A build of a tension within me have resulted in a row with my wife and unbelievably, considering all the effort I go to avoid this, I had sharp words with my daughter too.

We were all going out for the evening to a big family occasion and on the surface I was calm, but inside I was a mess and hopelessly incapable in that moment of overcoming my feelings of disappointment, frustration, anger and rejection.

The following day, I sensed a shift in my demeanor, which resulted in me washing the cars and cleaning them inside and out, washing the windows, being attentive to my wife.

I sent a message of apology to my daughter and I was able to ignore her acceptance of it “with strings” (by this I mean I did not react!).

In other words, I chose to move on from feeling that my life was untenable to embracing the life that I have.

I think that being able to move forward from anguish and pain, requires a certain amount of personal resilience, which I have invested in quite heavily in recent years through Integral Coaching.

A deepening self awareness through spending periods of time each day in silence with myself has given me the capacity to say sorry and move on.

My next blog will be:     Rolling Hills

William Defoe

 Picture Credit: http://www.clydefitchreport.com

A few years ago I lost approximately three stones in weight through managing my diet and regular exercise of running and swimming.

When I subsequently found my life untenable as a result of my repressed sexuality within my marriage and my Catholic faith, I struggled to keep up with my dietary and exercise routine so that the weight that I had lost rapidly reversed.

After many false starts at exercising, I have in recent weeks established a routine for running again and I have noticed that this is a response to my inner teacher for me to create a mindset for physical exercise which has its origins in mental strength and mental discipline.

Whilst running, I am in tune with my body and I am aware when I am tired physically or mentally.

I have noticed my breathing and my capacity to push myself at periods during the run or simply my need to just get round the course and finish.

When I am running I find myself chanting to myself “I want to lose weight, I want to lose weight” I speak the words out into the air when I am pushing myself to gain speed and stamina.

I have been fascinated by what I can only describe as my “fat rhythm”.

I focus on the layer of fat around my stomach area as it seems to move counter-step to my footfall. The fat seems to come back to the right as I stretch out my left leg and vice-versa and it seems weird.

Although I am on a mission to rid myself of this excess body fat, I feel strangely connected to it, because being aware of its rhythmical movement, I feel that this part of my body is actively supporting my mental effort to keep going.

So I am conscious in the present that I am more than a head with an intention to lose weight, I am a whole bodily system, and as I call out for God to help me on the tough bits (up hills!) , I connect to my spiritual self as well.

[I’ve lost 6lb’s in weight – only 22lb’s to go !]

My next blog will be:    Untenable

William Defoe

Earlier this year I attended a wedding which took place in the grounds of a hotel on the most beautiful sunny day imaginable for such a happy occasion.

During the ceremony, the best man, all of a sudden jumped up from his seat, looked aghast and without comment went running as fast as he could in the direction of the hotel.

The reason for his sudden departure became apparent shortly afterwards when the ceremony was halted at the exchange of rings – the rings had been forgotten.

It was quite nice to have a pause and enjoy the scene which was beautiful until he returned to a brief and polite round of applause and laughter and the ceremony continued and concluded.

What had been a small hitch in the ceremony, and what had the potential to be a happy anecdote in the future recollection of the wedding ceremony, took a different turn for me when the best man referred to his feelings of the situation during his speech in which he wanted to make it clear that the Groom was to blame for the rings debacle.

I think this is an example of when the need to move on from our past quickly, can be understood in the context of a moment, rather than thinking of the past as having taken place years ago.

The forgotten rings had been a temporary blip in a flawless morning, but the reference and blaming comments intruded in a bigger way in the present of the speeches and it was at that moment that the issue had the potential to spoil the day.

I am learning all of the time of the importance of moving on quickly and investing as much as I can to the present moment and not allowing the past, however painful, to rob me of the present moment.

Sadly, I am not always successful, but I am always aware when my aspiration to be calm in the present, is being clouded by the past – even when the past can be an incident that has occurred in my life earlier on the same day.

My next blog will be:   Fat Rhythm

William Defoe

I’m a little bit tentative as I immerse myself in the sea.

I see men and women launch themselves under the waves and start to swim effortlessly, but I find it necessary to take my time and gradually acclimatized myself to the cold water.

On a recent holiday, I noticed that the area at the back of my arms seemed to take longer than other areas of my body to get used to the change in temperature and my attention was drawn to this area of my body which does not, in normal circumstances, receive my attention.

To reach the back of my arms and touch them I have to hug myself across my chest to create the reach which is necessary to touch them.

My left hand cannot touch the top of my left arm and vice versa.

This lingering coolness at the back of my arms, brought them into focus and this is what it is like for me when I  enter into periods of quiet reflection, which I have been taught to call, “sitting practice”

Whilst sitting, in silence, with my mind free of external stimulation, my attention is drawn inwards and very often it surprises me with the randomness of the issues that it brings to the surface of my consciousness in the present moment.

These hard to reach issues can be of deceased relatives and friends, long lost memories of my youth or childhood, old friends, happy times, sad times, crisis, love, longing, words, songs, pride, shame.

The practice of hugging our bodies to reach the back of the arms, is the same action that I require myself to undertake, to welcome whatever the sitting practice brings. I notice it, I acknowledge it and I dwell on what it is trying to tell me in the context of my life today.

My next blog will be:    The Best Man

William Defoe