I am attending a session of Integral Coaching with my amazing coach on Friday.

I’m feeling a bit stirred up !

It feels a bit like a period of pre-exam revision as thoughts and feelings come pouring into my mind and I try to organise them into coherent stories to discuss with my coach.

My attitude to coaching is that it essentially it is I who have to prepare and although I am sure she does prepare to see me, my intention is to be prepared for her – my expectation is that I will be prepared for my meeting with her, not the other way round.

I prepare as follows:-

• I allow thoughts, ideas, memories to whirl around until I arrive at a point that I need to jot as many down as I can with minimum effort – if I have to force the stuff out, I have not allowed enough time to think freely.
• I review my last update and write down any progress or regression that I have experienced
• I review my previously agreed actions and think about whether I have made progress or not – I resist any feeling of guilt or judgement about whether I have done what I set out to do – that in my view would be counter-productive.
• I review my diary since I last saw her for themes that have been coming up that perhaps have the origins of a pattern of behaviour that I want to explore with her when we meet.
• I review any literature that I have read – particularly if she has recommended books/blogs/articles to me and I have a quick review to seek out any topics that struck a chord within me.
• I review my own blog posts and see if within them there are connecting stories which perhaps demonstrate my progress to my desired outcomes from the coaching process.

Out of all this preparation drops out a neat little list of issues that I feel would be good for me to discuss with her and so I write a brief update of issues/progress/setbacks together with a suggested agenda for our meeting.

This means that when I meet with her, I am prepared and she is briefed and has some advance knowledge of my place on the journey at this present moment in time.

And, I think I have a better chance of being able to actively listen when she does speak so that I am propelled forward onto the next stage of my lifelong journey of self discovery and self acceptance.

My next blog will be: Holding back

William Defoe

Yesterday I attended Mass at a local Catholic Church that I have not visited before.

As I sat in the pew with my wife, waiting for Mass to start I was very moved when a man in his mid-forties came and sat two benches in front of me and kissed his father on the cheek and then his mother as he sat down between them.

As he kissed his father he caught my eye and I smiled but inwardly I was deeply moved because I have never seen a man kiss a father or a brother or a son for that matter above say the age of twelve years old in the UK.

I tried to remember when my father had kissed me for the last time, or for that matter, the last time I had kissed him – I certainly was a child – he used to wipe his mouth first with the back of his hand and then after kissing me he would rub his stubbly face against my small face to make me laugh.

I have also followed the cultural conditioning of the UK culture to withdraw showing affection to my nephews for example with a kiss at about the age of twelve.

It all begins to feel a bit awkward and I think that the uncertainty and confusion rests first with the adult who tentatively puts out a hand to the upturned face and says something like ” you’re a young man now, lad – let’s shake hands”

I know that I have missed terribly the physical and emotional contact that I needed over the years with my father and brothers and uncles as I struggled to cope with my sexual identity.

To witness that man kiss his father so lovingly, unleashed within me a feeling of how I think it should be for all of us, because kissing a male relative has got absolutely nothing to do with being gay and yet our culture seems to infer that it does.

My next blog will be : Preparing for being coached

William Defoe

Sometimes I notice a thought or feeling shows up strongly in my consciousness.

I was walking from my living room to the kitchen when I had a thought that shook me intensely – here it is:

“It’s not your faith that you fear losing, it’s your community that you fear losing”

I’ll say it again:-

“It’s not your faith that you fear losing, it’s your community that you fear losing”

I have struggled to accommodate my Catholic faith with my suppressed gay sexuality for over twenty years but I have realised in recent years that to end my feelings of isolation, fear and anger I must find within myself the capacity to reconcile these two aspects of my identity.

My latest thoughts revealed to me that it is not my faith that I have feared losing, it is the sense of church that comes from belonging to a community that I have been scared of losing, but as acceptance of self has matured, I increasingly get the feeling that I would be more likely to be loved rather than judged by most of them.

My next blog will be: “A beautiful kiss”

William Defoe

My children enjoyed watching and reading the animated series of Spot the Dog by Eric Hill.

I have retained for some reason within my memory a line of dialogue which Spot mutters aloud following receipt of two unwelcome pieces of information from his mum, Sally:-

“Can’t camp out: salad for tea”   (implied by Spot as a double-negative)

The line amused me and I have repeated it over the years, particularly when my children as they were growing up, complained to me or their mother about some aspect of our perceived restrictions on their immediate happiness.

On my current journey of self discovery and self acceptance the sentence speaks to my inner voice of two important aspects of the depth of my internal struggle:

1/ The influence of others i.e. external forces on my ability to be in control of my well-being; 

2/ The sense that my problems are multiple and that to overcome them can feel overwhelming at times.

I have been engaged for nearly three years. after many years of darkness, isolation and fear, of confronting directly attempts to contain or restrict my sense of self from external forces.

I have arrived at a place, which I work hard to maintain, through periods of reflection and calm to assert my sense of self, both to myself, and to others and to avoid all temptations to conform to another’s view or expectation of what I should be.

In dealing with a sense of multiple problems to overcome, I have widened my perspective on life to make my problems have a context of being small in the canvas of all my life and of all life and that problems don’t necessarily have to be overcome/solved, but rather nurtured and re-visited over time so that new perspectives on their impact on me, and on those close to me, begin to show themselves.

My next blog will be: Faith – v – Community

William Defoe

I am steadily preparing for a visit to see my coach next week.

I am in a process of continual dialogue with my inner self which has slowly evolved within me as I have  come to know and love myself after years of anguish caused by denial of my truth about my sexuality and my inability to overcome the conflict of my same sex attraction with my desire to remain married to my lovely wife and remain faithful to my Catholic faith.

I have been re-reading a book, kindly provided to me by my coach,  called “A Hidden Wholeness” by a wonderful author Parker. J Palmer which I have referred to previously, in one of my earlier posts called “Circle of Trust”

I have been studying again his teaching on facilitating dialogue in circles of trust by what he refers to as  “third things”

A “third thing” is a device by which a topic is explored metaphorically via a poem, a story, a piece of music, or a work of art which facilitates participants in a “circle of trust” to access their own inner truths through interpretation, without the need to be openly explicit unless they choose to be so.

His example of a “third thing” is a poem called “The Woodcarver”-  a Taorist Tale  from the teachings of Chuang Tzu and this wonderful poem which I recommend to you and Parker. J Palmer’s explanation of it, have deepened again my capacity to explore and illuminate the deep crevices of my inner struggle.

I have learned for myself from this “third thing” that in order for me to deal with my perceptions of external constraints (which have loomed large in my life, particularly so in recent weeks), I must not compromise my inner freedom which is a crucial element of my journey of self-acceptance.

In other words, I think I am saying that I can’t be happy in my marriage or in my faith if I have not first accommodated within me, my sense of self and the absolute truth of my same sex feelings.

My next blog will be:   “Can’t camp out; salad for tea”

William Defoe

Last week I was a few minutes early arriving for a meeting and on the spur of the moment I walked into an office, now empty, which I used to work in with eighteen other people.

In a re-organisation a few years ago, our team were scattered into many different organisations during a period of great uncertainty for all of us.

As I stood in that vacated empty space, I became aware of echoes from the past. I could hear the voices of all my colleagues as I remembered them by dwelling momentarily at their old space within the office.

The noise of laughter and chatter and of my colleagues shouting over the desks for information and updates but also the fun times and the gossip all came flooding back.

I then became aware, quite suddenly, of all my old insecurities, which are old in the sense that they were of that time, and I was able in a very unique way to see how many of my fears at that time had been based on futile expressions of my lack of confidence, fear of failing, fear of being ridiculed, fear of losing my job.

I felt, in the echoes of that vacated space, of how secure I had felt in that team, despite my fears and I was able to reflect on how I have had in the past a great propensity to fear the future for so many years of my life.

The nostalgia I felt in that vacated space moved me, but at the same time helped me to realise that a morbid focus on the “what if’s” of tomorrow has caused me real harm in the present as I have journeyed through.

My current journey of self-discovery and self acceptance has enabled me to acknowledge the future but to live in the now. 

My next blog will be:  Desert Island Discs

William Defoe