Sometimes you have to be still.
Sometimes you have to pause, ponder and be patient
And trust that time heals
That pain yields
Gives way to peaceful easing
And we are born again into a new beginning, a new being and a new belonging.
It has been a while
But sometimes you have to be still.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
They say a stitch in time saves nine
But who knows that we are broken
When our smiles catch the light and we mesmerise with our stories of hope
And our lives unfold like a picture book
Full of Princes, Princesses and perfection
No poverty here, no lack of good cheer- no sleep deprived hell
Or whispers of madness.
They say a stitch in time saves nine
But who knows we are broken
When we give with compassion
And our public persona is playfully convivial,
Full of charismatic colourful conversation disguising the trivial.
No hidden hopelessness here, no silent solitude, no depth of despair
Or signals of worthlessness wounding within.
We march on.
We playfully tease.
We make small talk
With skillful ease.
We wish you had seen our innermost thoughts.
We wish you had been a true friend of sorts.
We wish you had held out your hand to take ours.
We wish you had noticed that whilst we spoke through flowers
We were broken, bereft, beyond all life’s care.
All we wanted was you to be there, to lift up our spirits
Make the sun shine,
And be the stitch in time that saves nine.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
I wrote this for a prompt earlier in the week at d”verse but missed the widget, so here it is for open link night. Love to you all. XXXXX Love for the lost. XXXX
I will not falter
I will not fall
I will not bend and break
This is not your call.
I will stand my ground with shoulders squared
I will keep my faith even when you lose yours,
I will trust in truth and walk tall with head held high.
You shall not define me or my dreams deny.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
A final one for mental health awareness week 2018. I think this one is about getting back up again…
The car is at the garage
The engine is Kaput
Another worry in the bag
And now it won’t stay shut.
We appear to haemorrhage money
There’ll soon be nothing left
It isn’t remotely funny
Friends family fortitude bereft.
Pakaru and redundant
For all my story’s worth
Broken beyond replacement
Nothing left but mirth.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Pakaru- broken for Mental Health Awareness week 2018.
My bag is getting heavier
It is full of stuff you know
Not all of it belongs to me
I worry about it though.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Another one for Mental Health Awareness Week 2018, for all the worriers….
This is again for mental health awareness week. I spent some time today at the archives in Preston. I am currently participating in a local history/arts/creative writing/mental health project. It is based around the Whittingham Asylum at Preston and it aims to give a voice to the lives and stories that played out there. It was a very large Asylum and Preston was very proud of it, there were about 500 staff and often as many as 3000 inpatients.
I have learned a lot in such a few sessions and certainly had some of my own assumptions challenged. The Asylum opened in 1873 and had patients sent there from all over the north-west of England, many of the other Asylums, workhouses, almshouses were already bursting at the seams. It was regarded as a model Asylum and postcards of its external facade were sold as memorabilia. There were extensive gardens where fruit and vegetables were grown and it even had its own orchestra. Underneath this facade still lurked the very real horrors of Victorian poverty and the mental health of a scarred nation. End-stage syphilis was one of the significant causes of the mental and psychotic decline that resulted in many people spending their end of days in the Asylum and in the period of World War 1, both shell-shock and a form of hydrocephalus resulting from the Spanish flu were responsible for increased demand for spaces and places within the Asylum. The superintendent’s journal from 1873-95 was stark to begin with detailing the very worst events including the frequent dismissals of staff for what can only be described as physical abuse of the inpatients and the frequent outbreaks of scarlatina, diarrhoea and typhoid, whilst rules and regulations resulted in greater detail in later entries, including the deaths from misadventure, poor health and at their own hand.
The Asylum had its own cemetery. People came and went though, it wasn’t always the end of the road and when the photographer that came to capture the newly admitted, those well enough would ask to have images taken to show they were well and recovered to send to their loved ones with the plea to come and take them away.
Today we were considering restraint, emotional, physical and chemical.
I wrote this for Charlotte.
In Chains
Into the light, beyond the bands that bind me tight,
Into the dawn, beneath the hands that hold me down,
Into the sunlight, the stench of starch and sulphur stings my eyes
Into the madness, my muddled mind festers in fetid fettered manacles.
Deliver me.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Thirty-three things to do
Each one causing stress
If only I could get off my butt
Step up and procrastinate less.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Procrastination- the action of delaying or postponing something usually related to depression, anxiety or psychological distress.
Each moment is distinct
it may or may not relate to the preceding moment
it may or may not be followed by a moment of equal or even greater magnitude
it is what it is- a moment.
It will pass
It will be superseded
It will be vanquished, resurrected, redefined, it will shine redolent as the star in its own story
And then be gone….to make way for the next moment.
Always remember this.
It is but a moment.
unremarkable yet remarkable
It will pass.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
I first published this in 2018 for Mental health Awareness week, but have made some small edits. It was World Suicide Prevention Day on Sunday 10th September. Suicide has a profound impact on all whom are touched by it, and I certainly don’t have any answers, but I know in my heart of hearts that what looks just so in one moment, can look entirely different in the next moment.
I think this is what I was trying to capture.
This is for Open Link Night at d’Verse.
The sun set slowly
reminded us of the glory days
When we had youth and fortitude.
We cannot all age well
Yet we all remember our youthful ways,
when we danced playfully at the murky edge of maturity.
This body frail as it is now
was a totem, an emblem of our love and lives together,
hallowed in the summers of our spiritual enlightenment before we had children of our own.
The sun sets slowly.
Death washes over us,
creeps through the open window in the dead of night.
©Alison Jean Hankinson.
napwrimo 18 Day 29 the penultimate.
This is for d’Verse open link night.
I always believed in the ripple effect, it is just that sometimes we don’t get the opportunity to acknowledge the impact that things have on us, and sometimes relatively, seemingly small things have the biggest impact. This is the story of Jo, and Ray and the meaning of life. The link to Ray’s little ride is at the bottom of the page.
In 2014 I had an operation, the risks of the surgery were classed as incalculable and I made my very skilled and wonderful surgeon promise not to let me die on the table…He kept his word but had to fight a little to keep his promise. I got better but lost a few little bits of me in the process. It was just a part of my life that was fraught with struggles and relative suffering, and during this time Jo, an old family friend from my school days had sent me several messages of encouragement and support and she sent me a link to a blog article called The meaning of Life in a blog- Ray’s Little Ride.
I read the story and the message I took on board most was the one that I used in the title- it was the message he wanted to share-If you’re stationary, you’re not moving. The truth is that when things are difficult, and life is problematic this kind of pragmatic way of being is the most useful. Sometimes there is no way of things getting better at this particular point in time and sometimes the only thing you can do is just keep moving and know that however difficult you will adjust as best you can to the new circumstances. Ray had ALS, many of you might know it as Lou Gehrigs’s disease, he went from being perfectly fit and able in 2014 to being very dependent by 2015. He completed his amazing bike challenge of cycling across America between October and November 19th 2015 and it was an amazing feat of physical, emotional and spiritual endurance and he passed away in August 2016. I read the blog and took the message on board and continued to follow the blog, and learned so much from this amazing man in the last few months of his life.
It was this blog post and this blog story that in a sense inspired me to begin my own blogging journey, I felt that if there was anything that I could say or speak or tell that might act as a ripple for someone else then it was something that was okay to do. It also gave me an insight into new things that I could do that would give me a new me. It represented new challenges, new growth and new meaning. It represented moving forwards and not being stationary.
I just wanted to say thank you to Jo and Ray for the ripples they set in motion that day that have continued to contribute to my own journey. And Jo you are right, we have friends and family, and a roof over our heads and can still live our lives well. We have much to be grateful for. XXXXXXX
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Ray’s Little Ride- The Meaning of Life.
Hues of Hankinson 