despair – Page 6 – Hues of Hankinson

Migratory Musings

Under the vista of a starstruck night my heart bleeds for the inner peace I had known before we travelled to these rugged shores.

Your name melted in my mind’s eye as I recall the moment of our last goodbye, the hurt and anger and pain and the baring of souls amidst a calm and serene landscape and virtually cloudless sky.

But neither you nor I able to appreciate the lull before the storm or the gentle lines of familiar people and places.

We travelled on silently through tumultous skies to crash upon the rocks of beauty.

What should have been paradise found was lovelorn and lacklustre and the colours of real beauty comes from a richer palette.

From family loved and lost and left behind.

alison H 030

This is for D’verse Meeting the Bar – Caravaggio and Chiaroscuro.

Again it is my first effort at this- I am a novice. Love to all

Portrait of a Princess- Our Diana- The People’s Princess.

Series Handmaidens of the Lord. 2. The People’s Princess. Princess Diana.

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She had innocence and beauty and to an entire generation of women who were teens in the 1980’s, she was our princess the People’s princess. We talked about her in our backyards, we searched for the latest photos in our newspapers and she was in our living rooms on our TV screens almost every day. We even had the Princess Diana haircut. Everyone got a day off to watch her fairy tale marriage on 29 July 1991. She was an ordinary girl come good, it was a Cinderella story. I think we all idolised her, even in those later years when it had all turned to custard and the cracks appeared in the marriage and she had that last summer of love in Greece in 1997. We didn’t mind that she wasn’t perfect, we didn’t mind that she was like the skin horse and some of her hair had been loved off, she was real. She had fragility but she didn’t break and she always had time for those who needed her most.

We all cried the day she died. We cried for days and more, we watched and cried at her funeral and the date of her death is forever marked in my memory as my mother died on the same day 11 years later.

She touched the people that no-one else would touch.

In those days we had something called section 28 in the British Law. It forbade teachers to promote or teach about homosexuality, it was an era where the GLBT agenda was just becoming less marginalised and it was still taboo especially with the ravages of HIV and AIDS. I taught in a rural idyll where farmers and wellington boots were the norm and had to turn down a proposed visit by the local GLBT health promotion specialist for fear that someone might slash his tyres.

In order to best serve my community, we had “that article 28 lesson” where I wasn’t allowed to teach or promote anything to do with the GLBT agenda but could attempt to answer questions with a degree of restraint. Those were the days of non-exam RS, and contemporary moral issues where we explored the burgeoning issues of HIV awareness and protocols associated with it and this is where Princess Diana really stole my heart.

She showed compassion and kindness to people that no-one else would touch. She didn’t just talk to them, she held their hands when no-one else dared and demonstrated openly that HIV couldn’t wouldn’t be passed by normal social discourse and normal social action. She gave forbearance to the weak and marginalised. She had kindness. She touched their hands “without gloves” and she touched our hearts and our souls with her insistence on doing what she believed was the right thing to do. She became the patron of the National AIDS trust and worked tirelessly with the Terence Higgins Trust. She was a fine mother to her two lovely sons and they too have continued to work with the causes their mother supported so dearly.

Speech by Princess Diana in 1991

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vijH40aUuAo

Princess Diana opened the AIDS ward at the Middlesex Hospital in 1987. There was much speculation about if she would be wearing gloves. She didn’t God bless her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rTDm5lTwHs

Section 28 stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

Musings on moons and life at 50.

So in one of the photos I am definately younger than now…confession over.

It has been one of the lowest weeks I have had in the last few years and I have no ryhme or reason why, except the moon was out of joint. I celebrated my 50th birthday in style and having surgery-staying in Ward 3 at Whangarei base Hospital, but the time to heal was interrupted by the kind of stuff that saps energy and confidence and replaces goodness with self-doubt and hurt. It is a long story and it will be told but in a different time and place. You meet all manner of people who’s journeys are equally painful in life and I am eternally thankful for the kindness of those souls who give compassion and love even when their own cup overfloweth with tragedy and despair.

The moon was to have its pull in many ways and there but for the grace of God. To all who suffered from the Earthquake in the south island and will continue to suffer from the harm of aftershocks, destruction, devastation, uncertainty and all the things that will follow in the coming months and years that will drain crush and need to be conquered. Our lives are complex and often the calamaties and crisis we face are not of our choosing.

We all have battles we did not chose to fight. We all have to continue to walk on with some semblence of dignity and pray that the kindness and spirit of those around us will continue to help us walk humbly onwards on our journeys into whatever uncertain futures we are heading towards.

I have been glad to move into a new week, and know that the newest phase of my life will bring joy and heartache. A single moment can alter the course of our lives so quickly and yet a similar small seemingly insignificant moment can enrich beyond all expectations. On this positive note- I got an A for my final assignment- a wonderful 87%…and I learned something new about my Dad and those moments are the best. So Sunshine on Leith it has been indeed this week.

Climbing out of the hole.

Being positive is it actually a strategy- or a skill or is it just one of those platitudes….fake it till you make it. It does actually work, so don’t knock it-the more you practice the easier it becomes and the more skilled you become at changing what you feel experience and see. Reframing- the more you actually do just that, change your perspective, see it differently..the more you are able to see the positives..does that make it a life-hack then?

Does that mean you have to be forever shackled to smiling your way through with an irreverent “fine” and a disingenuous smile.

There are odd days though, and just occasional moments when there is no ability to fake it until you make it. Days where for some reason it was just all too much and you found yourself falling into the biggest blackest hole and knowing that the best course of action was not to try to see it as a bright and airy space with hidden silver linings but to accept the dank and dismal despair and let it wash over you like an incoming tide and just own it. Allow its waves to lap quietly at the edge of your soul and know that the darkness comes before the light and whatever pain washes over you is there to be experienced and cherished as much as all the other things. johan_tobias_sergel_-_plunging_into_despair_-_wga21160