Last week I attended a funeral of a man who had died in his mid-fifties, a friend connected to me through other friends of mine who were much closer to him than I was.

After the beautiful funeral service, I felt a huge swell of emotion arising within me, as his coffin was raised up and placed on the shoulders of six of his friends, one of whom was crying uncontrollably, to be carried from church.

As I filed out of the church, I noticed that there were many men who had tears in their eyes, overcome by the emotion of the occasion and having lost a friend too soon.

Over the years, I have cried, almost always privately, and arising from a sense of frustration in the anguish of my circumstances.

It is a long time since I experienced my tears as a weakness, I believe them to be a strength, because they are a response to the difficult work of being with self.

Tears are a reward for love, love of self, love of others, love for those we have lost, in life or in death.

When men cry, I feel vindicated, I feel empowered, I feel connected because my tears are not something to feel guilty about, they are a common emotion experienced by many of my own sex and now I have evidence to prove it.

My next blog will be: “I Think It Is Going To Rain Today”

William Defoe

I was reminded recently of how my past behaviour contributed to my own sense of isolation and fear.

In a film “The Best Years Of Our Lives” a soldier returns to his home after the war with hooks where his hands should be.

This soldier, although exceptionally brave in coping with the mechanical hooks, assumes that his sweetheart is better off without him.

In fact she loves him all the more, if he would allow her to.

He confides in an uncle that he hates being stared at, and he hates it when people pretend there is nothing wrong.

“In other words” says the uncle “Whatever They Do is Wrong”

This sentence resonated with me strongly.

When I first came to terms with the truth about my sexuality three years ago, after many years of anger, rejection of self and an heroic attempt to keep my truth hidden, I wanted to know who in my family knew about my truth, but had not confronted me with it.

I came to realise, through coaching and meditation, that I made any such disclosure absolutely impossible.

First – I would have denied it – no question, because I had not accepted its truth compassionately, I had understood it but rejected it, hoping it would go away – it didn’t and it won’t!

Second – I would have made them regret asking me such a question and hurt them hard with an emotional outburst and feigned denial.

Third – I had already built an impregnable barrier around me which made it impossible for anyone to dare confront me with it.

So, in not braving my wrath, and in staying silent, they had done me harm!

Whatever they did was wrong!

I have come to realise, that if I need a soul mate with a difficult aspect of self, I must first find compassion for self and courage to reach out to someone whom I can trust.

If I am going to convey a truth, then I must be prepared to accept that once spoken, it cannot be unsaid, if the response I get is not what I anticipated it would be.

This leads me to say, reader, that in conveying my truth, I must be open to the risk of losing someone if they reject my truth, however unlikely this maybe.

This stuff is difficult, but it is an essential part of being present, and that is why these decisions take time and should not be rushed because the longer I am able to accept my truth, the easier it is for me to accept and love still, those who cannot.

My next blog will be: When Men Cry

William Defoe

I have moved from a place of trying to control everything, in a world in which I myself was being thrown about in a sea of huge rolling waves over which I had no control.

In those days, it felt like the world was happening to me, and I in my weakness must do all I could to protect myself and those whom I love from it.

My attempts to protect were herculean, but they were damaging to my own well being and to the important relationships in my life, most particularly my adolescent children who needed to break free and did so causing me huge pain.

In my life of living in the present, I now exercise a sense of control in my interactions with self and with the world.

This is a constructive change, because this new control sense helps me to keep a perspective and balance in difficult situations which I encounter as I journey though my life.

This control sense prevents me from reacting to emotions which I am feeling in the moment, or to events and people with whom I interact, particularly my family, so that I take my time and I am more reflective and precise when giving my response or choosing not to give a response as the case may be.

I have learned to live with the discomfort, to notice it, but be passive in the moment.

I no longer give an opinion on everything, in fact I will only do so after much reflection and soul-searching if I think my intervention will help in a given situation and even then, I have to allow for the fact that my opinion may not be accepted.

It almost sounds cold and calculated, but this new sense of control, enables me to journey through my life less reactively, less critically, less helplessly that was hitherto the case.

In my quiet moments, I can feel the control within me, it’s rhythm beats to the music of my heart, because it is balanced.

If I am agitated, I love being able to feel into the wonderful imbalance – I’m not scared by it, I’m thrilled to be on to it, because it has not announced itself in anger earlier in the day as it used to do in the past.

By listening to my inner voice, I can calm the uncertainty, by learning to accept it, to change it if that is a possibility, to take it forward with me courageously by acknowledging that this is how it is at this time.

My next blog will be “Whatever They Do Is Wrong”

William Defoe

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