When I was 14 years old my mother came into the kitchen unexpectedly where I was washing up after a family meal and she was shocked and concerned to see that I was actually crying.

In the rush of the discovery she was quite insistent that I told her what was the matter, and I recall in that moment, telling her, that I hoped I would get married and that I wanted to have children  but that it was inconceivable that I would ever be able to take off my clothes in the presence of a girl and so my hopes and aspirations would come to naught.

Her response was kind and re-assuring and she lead me to believe that when the time came, I would be absolutely fine and that I was feeling like this because I simply was not ready, but the time would come when I would be.

I’m sure she laughed to herself, but she did not make me feel small or ridiculed for my teenage tears.

Of course she was right, the problem changed over time into keeping my clothes on in the presence of a girl, not taking them off!

After a recently prolonged period of intense emotional pain, which has been very destructive to my mental state and within my family, despite my best intentions,  I have been trying to find a place in the past which signaled the start of my anxious life.

I recognise that my emotional strife did not start with the teenage tears in the kitchen, but my anxious nature had certainly taken hold at that time and it has resulted in a life of suffering, which I have not quite been able to overcome.

My mother says that a fall in pregnancy may have deprived me of the nutrients I needed to feel safe in that safe space, and being a small baby at birth, the period of separation from my mother in the first two weeks of my life (in hospital without her) affected again the security of the bond between mother and child.

Perhaps!

Perhaps not!

Perhaps I was sensitive to the economic and social conditions in which I was raised.

Perhaps I suffered as a result of not being able to fit in with my male peers at school.

Perhaps I was isolated because I had no interest in playing football or any other sport for that matter as a child.

Perhaps it was the periods of bullying and threats at school which affected me.

Perhaps some trauma occurred early in my life that I cannot recall which robbed me of my sense of safety.

Probing into the past has helped me to understand the here and now, so that I can lift up my head and say to myself,

“I survived”

despite it all

“I’m alive”

despite it all

“I will thrive again”

My next blog will be: Turning Point

William Defoe

The wedding vows which I made nearly 30 years ago contain these words:-

“to have and to hold from this day forward”

and these words too

“for better for worse, in sickness and in health”

I think we are all more inclined to hold when things are going well, particularly when there is a time of celebration and joy within the circle of our family and friends.

I think we are more inclined to hold when we are confronted with a physical sickness or a death within the circle of our family and friends.

Is the promise to hold (in a heterosexual marriage) made by the man, to the woman, or is it supposed to be an act of love and care which is both given and received in equal measure?

I have felt recently a yearning to be held, but my words and actions have hardly made that wish a realistic aspiration.

It’s not easy to expect someone to hold you when things are not so well, but this is the time when it matters the most.

It is in the worst times, and especially in times when the mind feels weak, that words should be hushed and all the effort, all the restorative love, all the future and the now should be put into a hug.

To hold is to be with someone you love, in that dark place, despite the pain and despite the hurt and that for me is the full meaning of my wedding vows.

My next blog will be: Teenage Tears

William Defoe

This week I decided to take a risk.

I entered into a text exchange with a family member with whom I had fallen out.

Things had been said between us, which cannot be unsaid, but the worst of it was my anger which would not be rested in the heat of the moment, leading me say things which I do not mean.

The intervening days have been difficult, mainly because I felt so ashamed and disappointed that all of my efforts to be calm, all my investment in strategies to keep me safe in the face of provocation had evaporated in the stressed moments of my meltdown.

Then there was the regret, and the opening up of the memories when these outbursts have happened before, such a raw disappointment which was hard for me to bear.

Next, there was this feeling of hopelessness for the future of broken aspirations to do better in which my relationships become warm and loving and open to accepting how things are, rather than how I wanted them to be.

So, I sent a text!

An invitation to meet and be together.

It was a risk because I could have opened up the poorly healed wound between us, but I knew in my heart that it was better to face in, than face away.

The initial reply was cool and curt.

My next text, followed up with an expression of my disappointment and sense of failure and how I wanted to listen to the effect my behaviour on them.

What followed over two days was a text exchange in which I had at least conveyed my regret and I had read back words which gave me hope that we could both move on.

The text exchange, took out of the encounter the quickness of the mouth to say unformed words, the quickness of the eye to betray sincerity, the quickness of the face to cry.

The text exchange felt almost clinical and sanitised in its directness, but it was a vehicle for measured and reasoned communication, which created the environment for a meeting and an embrace to take place very soon.

I will journal the text exchange word for word into my journal, so that I can mark out the kindness and the directness from my loved one and ponder over what was said in text.

And also to reflect back on my own sense of yearning to be better, my yearning to be loved, my yearning to love unconditionally, despite my broken soul which I had too conveyed..

My next blog will be: Hold Me

William Defoe

I have this continual feeling of being out of sync with those around me, with whom I share my life.

The best image I can conjure up of the situation, is the varying orbits of planetary paths in the solar system, which skirt around the sun on their own axis and orbital path.

Every so often the planets align, perhaps in a direct line from the sun, and depending on their proximity, they create an eclipse or a shadow over which their imprint is bathed on the other.

There is strength in having my own unique orbit within my family, because it signifies to me the importance of my individualism and freedom to be who I am, but this feeling of being out of sync, does not feel to me like a strength, it feels like a burden.

This otherness in my spirit, separates me in mind and spirit; and even in the body for periods of time from those whom I love.

It makes it hard for me to feel loved and to be loved and to give my love.

This feeling is so heavy and destructive that it saps my strength and cools my good intentions.

I have been trying to overcome this feeling of being out of sync by making an effort to connect.

These attempts to be in community, to connect with family, individually and privately and quietly is like swimming against the tide, but I must do so in order to save what is precious to me.

Experience teaches me that these periods come and they go, and that no matter how far my orbit traverses outwardly, eventually the gravity of my star will pull be back towards the light, back towards the warmth, back from out of sync.

My next blog will be: Text Exchange

William Defoe

If there is one aspect of crime which I cannot watch as an entertainment, say in a film or a drama, it is the vile crime of rape.

If I even get a sense that a rape will occur as the story unfolds, I will switch off the TV.

The reason is, that despite feeling entertained in shoot outs and bombings and throats being slit (in a film context); I can’t tolerate the emotional effect a rape scene has on me long after the scene is over.

A few years ago, I was watching the opening of a drama on TV when a man and his wife stopped their car to assist a man whose van had broken down.

In the next instant, the man giving assistance was knocked over the head and without warning the scene flashed to a rape of his wife.

I could not get out of my chair quick enough to stop the image and the disturbing image has lasted with me ever since – it affected me emotionally because it was so unexpected and so vile.

So then, I come to the subject of my blog,  Jill Saward, who died earlier this week at the age of 51, leaving behind her husband and three sons.

Jill Saward, at the age of 21 was violently raped in her own home by two men out of a gang of four who broke into her fathers vicarage in Ealing and raped her, whilst beating very severely her father and boyfriend.

Jill Saward waived her right to anonymity, to fight for victims of sexual crime so that their needs were put at the forefront of the criminal justice system.

As well as forgiving her rapist tormentors, whose sentences were less than those given to the ring leader of the gang, she turned her attention to counselling and supporting victims of rape.

I never met her, but remembering how appalled I was when her ordeal was major news in the UK, and being of a similar age to her, and being a man of deep sensitivity, I wanted to write this testimony to her.

MAY SHE REST IN PEACE.

My next blog will be: Out of Sync

William Defoe

There is always a strange moment at the point at which I am pulling out into traffic when I feel a mixture of apprehension; of exhilaration; of a heightened awareness, and a kind of nervousness, until I am sure that I have established myself in the traffic flow, and I am fully aware of all the vehicles which are in proximity to mine.

In fast flowing traffic, there is a sense of having to catch up, to be at an immediate peak of responsiveness until the established flow allows me to settle into the journey.

These feelings which I experience as I am pulling out into traffic, are similar to those I experience when I walk into a room of people, particularly when for that moment the focus is actually on me.

The outward signs of formality in the moment of the various greetings and introductions, masks within me an inner nervousness which is hard for me to explain.

Increasingly, the needs of my soul, calls me to pay attention to all that is around me in the moment and it is hard to do this, in the moment, if the external environment requires a response or a reaction or a signal that I am in control.

I think the learning from the experience of pulling out into traffic for me, is that despite the intensity of the immediate moment of entry into the flow, there will be a time when the routine nature of the journey will allow me to focus inwardly, whilst remaining alert to the changing space in which my car is travelling (or substitute “life” for “car”).

It is the knowledge that a time will come for me to focus deeply on the introspective, which enables me to stay calm and alert in those moments of extrospection.

My next blog will be: Jill Saward

William Defoe

On Boxing Day evening angry words were exchanged between me and one of my adult children.

Despite all my efforts;

Despite all my attempts to accept things as they are rather, than how I wanted them to be;

Despite all my longing to be seen and acknowledged for who I am;

Despite it all, I momentarily lost control and I was angry and I said what cannot be unsaid in a moment of madness.

Later in the week, my wife said she was surprised (disappointed being her meaning) at how quickly I appeared to have moved on from my damaging outburst.

I simply answered that I had not, and that I never quite would.

No further words were spoken by either of us.

She cried and I held her close waiting for her emotions to calm.

No words could soothe.

No words could undo.

No words could put it right.

No words, in that moment was my strength.

No words to defend or to explain or to complain or to justify or to contextualize.

And yet, through her tears, and through my silence and by holding her close, all was said that could be said, no words were said.

My next blog will be: German Guests

William Defoe

At this time of year in  the UK, the sun sits low in the sky.

On a clear, cold, crisp morning last week I was temporarily “blinded” by the winter sun.

The sun was sat on the horizon as I turned round a sharp corner in the road, which rises on an upward curve to a very narrow part of the road where drivers need to show courtesy to let each other through.

Not an ideal place then to lose complete sight of the road, however momentarily it was.

In the moment I was aware of the shape and feel of the road, the extent of its curvature, and the proximity of parked cars along the kerb outside the church on my left.

I had to hold a steady course, slow down, but push through to overcome the “blind spot” until it passed.

How often have I been able to do that when provoked or challenged by a situation in my life?

Have I been able to hold a course through a difficult patch, drawing upon my own knowledge and love of self to see me through without reacting in ways which make a bad situation even worse?

Sadly, despite my efforts, sometimes I fail.

Perhaps the winter sun in my life, occasionally has the power to cause me to actually stop, however briefly, on my journey to be calm.

The winter sun on the horizon, may temporarily take away my vision, but it illuminates the wider landscape around me.

It’s sepia light, on the forms and shapes of both my inner and outer world, provide me with what I need to find within me, to push through.

My next blog will be : No Words

William Defoe

I have a vague recollection of posting a blog with the same title last Christmas – Descant!

I haven’t checked!

It is of interest to me at least, that the themes which come up, on which I feel compelled to write, will re-surface from time to time.

The blend of voices, in Christmas choral music speaks deeply to me of the power and authenticity of the range within the human voice.

From the angelic soprano voice of the choir boy (or girl) through the range to the deep bass tones of the men, blending to make each Christmas Carol sound rich and full and giving.

I have noticed the absence of voices in certain sections of the music, which enable the remaining participants to stand out and shine in the glow of their special contribution.

The descant, be it high or low, shrill or deep, beckons my ear to the depth and peak of the range within the performance, and it is those voices holding the melody, those voices doing the seemingly ordinary part, which give the descant its special place – without them, the descant would be out of place.

I have tried to think about my own voice being part of a choral piece in the everyday reality of speaking.

Can I be satisfied with being silent while voices around me engage in conversation?

Can I be satisfied in participation through listening, rather than speaking?

Can I be part of the melody, part of the crowd, blended in, so to speak, in my interactions with others without needing to be centre-stage?

Can I play the part of the descant, when called upon to do so, exhibiting my special skills in my areas of expertise, whilst recognising the support given by others?

Silent, listening, participating, descant – this is the range in which my voice should find a place within the world, be it speaking or singing.

My next blog will be: Winter Sun

William Defoe

On Thursday morning last week, I set off for my morning run in the normal routine which I have established for myself.

At approximately halfway round the circular route, I began to feel dizzy.

I noticed the sensation of light-headed-ness and I experienced a growing sensation of detachment of my mind from my feet in this dizzy spell.

I began to fear that I would fall, or worse faint onto the hard pavement.

These fears at first had no hold on my intention to finish the run which I had embarked upon, however, a little later, the feelings of detachment grew so strong, that my own concern for my safety compelled me to stop running and to walk back.

I was in the fortunate position of being able to explain to myself, what had caused these bodily sensations, without having to consult a doctor.

I had taken a sleeping sedative to calm my mood the evening before, in an effort to relax and the effects of the medication had obviously not finished their course within me.

It made me think how I often want to rush on to the next thing in aspects of my life without dealing with the here and now.

The here and now craves my compassion both for self, and for others, and it is from that deep formed well of calm, that ultimately my feet will remain in a rhythm with my head.

My next blog will be: Descant

William Defoe

I would like to wish my dear friend and life-coach a very happy birthday today (which is St Stephens Day) and to thank her for illuminating my journey with a profound sense of hope, an intense sense of what it is like to be (who we are); and a growing sense of the depth of my capacity to love.