Take a Walk

Mindful walking is a thing. I did this walk along the River Brent from Ealing Hospital to Brentford when I was in a very bad place psychologically, so memories of it are mixed up with how bad I was feeling at the time. It is also a lonely walk, which kind of didn't help. My favourite walk by water is the Thames Path between the Royal Festival Hall and Southwark Cathedral. I think walking where there are people around rather than being too solitary is possibly more therapeutic, but I suppose it really depends on your state of mind.

Remembering 2012

Twenty-twelve feels like it was quite a successful year for me and Britain. It was dominated by the London Olympics which meant my hometown had a celebratory feeling about it for much of the year. It is nice to look back on a year that was about achievement, large and small, and visiting the London Olympic park in July 2020 bought it all back to me.

  

  

Below are the top 12 reasons why 2012 was such a special year for me and my family.

1.    The 2012 London Olympics

2.    Helped with Golden Wedding Anniversary celebrations for mum and dad

3.    Last holidays with my dad to Cornwall and Edinburgh

4.    Amy’s Saturday morning French class

5.    Amy’s singing class and concert

6.    Church concerts every first Sunday of the month

7.    Played piano at two of my piano teacher’s concerts

8.    Success with piano teaching (3 summer certificates including 2 merits)

9.    Did my piano teaching diploma

10.  Wrote ‘The Good Mothers’ Club’

11.  Produced cards, pictures, dolls for the church Summer Fair

12.  Enjoyed BBC favourites; Outnumbered, Merlin, Dr Who

Loving Kindness

I started doing the Loving Kindness meditation with Amy in July 2018. These are the basic sentiments expressed in it.

May I be kind and patient with myself
May I love and accept myself for what I am
May I forgive myself my mistakes
May I be safe and free from suffering
May I feel happy and healthy
May I find peace, joy and ease of well-being

These feelings start in the heart, spread throughout the body, limbs and head, throughout the house and reach out to other people and beings, to family, friends, neighbours, the whole world, the solar system and all corners of the universe and then all the way back into the heart once more. This meditation also includes breath awareness, slow and calm, and a body scan.

The Loving Kindness meditation is used to help treat sufferers of PTSD. I have found it particularly helpful.

Music Therapy

Sometimes I forget how healing and relaxing music can be. I have taught the piano to adults and children since the late 1980s, most intensively from 2008 to 2018. Sometimes when something you love becomes more of a business, the fun can be zapped out of it. Dealing with the pushy parents of my young piano pupils was the worst thing. However I have learnt to get the most out of listening to and playing music once more. Music I find most relaxing to play and to listen to is Einaudi, Debussy, movie music, jazz and pop music from my teenage past.

Spring Term Therapy

January is a traditional time for making resolutions. According to quite a few studies it is also not a very good time to be making resolutions. March and the beginning of Spring are the best times to be making positive changes. The therapies I have been exploring in the Spring Term reflect the fact that January and February are still winter months, a time to enjoy indoor activities like arts and crafts, watching films, reading books, listening to music and playing games.

25 Years in the NHS

I started work in my NHS London library in September 1997, a month after the death of Princess Diana. Celebrating 25 years of working in the NHS feels like a big thing. Recent years have been quite fraught, so I thought I would celebrate by living a more wellbeing-friendly life. These are the five areas I will concentrate on.

1. Enjoy Music, Art and Literature

2. Mindfully Meditate everyday

3. Continue with Ecotherapy

4. Help five people

5. Live a good enough life

Hopefully I will review my celebrations later in the year.

 

 

Moments to myself

I nearly forgot that I was trying to live more slowly and mindfully in the 1990s. In the 2000s and 2010s I have been busy rushing around as a working mum. In the 2020s I hope to make more time to just slow down a bit and smell the roses and the coffee, before they disappear. These two songs, I wrote in the 1990s, were unearthed when I was looking for more of my own material to perform with my daughter in public. I had forgotten how mindful they actually are.

Ignorance and Want

 

Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' has long been one of my favourite stories. One of the most stirring parts of the tale is the appearance of Ignorance and Want beneath the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. 'A Christmas Carol' is relevant and poignant every year, it has helped make me a more generous person and generosity always seem to be something we could do more of along with love, kindness, patience, compassion, forgiveness, peace ...

 

Poetry Therapy

 

I have enjoyed reading and writing poetry since I was little girl. The first poetry I fell in love with was contained in Peacock Pie by Walter de la Mare, in my adolescence I became obsessed with Sylvia Plath and the poems contained in Ariel. From 2000 to 2005 I ran my own poetry group 'SubVerse' which explored 'the Poetry of surrender'. We also ran art events and unassertiveness courses, looking back it was all fun and therapeutic, I kind of miss it.

Moving forward I encountered more poetry as I moved away from Christianity into Buddhism, there was much talk about Rumi. A favourite poem among the mindful is Leisure by WH Davies. Below is a wonderful poetry anthology you can dip into throughout the year, it includes many therapeutic poems including Leisure.

Reality Bites - Time and Space

 

I did my first 6by6 reading challenge in Spring 2019 and really enjoyed the Big Book2Film challenge of 2020 and the Fantastic Reads of 2021.The above books represent the Reality Bites selection for 2022. Below are the history, scifi and journey titles for my Time and Space challenge of 2023. For the time challenge I also hope to read 2 books representing the 2 world wars, Goodbye to all that and Inside Hitler's Bunker.

The Midnight Cat

'The Midnight Cat' is a piece of flash fiction inspired by our cat Maddie. It is part of my flash fiction collection 'Bubble Universe'. This story did not make it onto WattPad, so here it is, in full, on my blog.

The midnight cat by LJ Finnigan

Jasmine couldn’t sleep. She was restless in her bed; the atmosphere oppressing her, the air stifling and the rain beating hard against the window.

‘What a day and what a night. If I don’t get to sleep soon I’ll be late up in the morning,’ she thought, ‘I wonder what the time is.’

She reached over to her bedside table and pressed the night light on her clock.

‘Midnight.’

Somewhere outside, beyond the rain and the wind, a cat’s meow pierced the dark night.

Jasmine rolled over and stared through her rain splattered bedroom windows at the deep grey night, the shadows and the swaying trees. She closed her eyes and the sound of the midnight cat’s plaintive cry broke into her waking dreams.

Suddenly she was outside, following the serene, soothing creature through the stormy night. Her nightie was thin, she should have been freezing, but the cat had an extraordinary presence; an aura of coolness, warmth and calm emanated from it; an aura whose sphere of influence surrounded Jasmine.

She walked on behind the cat; through the sparkling city streets, along the haunted canal, through the lush park and the sparse forest on the edge of town. All the while the cat walked through the weather and was hardly affected by it, its velvet paws hardly touched the ground, yet is senses were acute; seeming to register every light footstep, feint car hum and gentle leaf rustle that stirred in the darkly hostile night.

The motorway loomed and the cat turned to face its follower. Its eyes gleamed a glowing green and transported Jasmine back to her bed. She rolled over to check her clock once more.

‘One o’clock.’

Jasmine sighed, before becoming aware of the soft purring, emanating from the furry mound that now inhabited the space beside her.

(302 words)

Summary: A sleepless girl’s troubled night-time is soothed by the mysterious influence of the Midnight Cat.

Tea Therapy

  

I started drinking tea when I was about ten and have now been enjoying it for over forty years, other rivals have come along like Guinness and Lattes, but they have failed to overtake my love of a good cuppa. I ran the SubVerse Poetry Tea Room from 2000 to 2005 which was inspired by my love of surrender, tea and poetry. Above and below are some of the tea related art I have created over the years.

Walking with nature

 

I first discovered the joy of nature walking in August 2019 when I visited our local House Gardens in Hillingdon. By March 2020 we had found six special nature spaces we could visit on the bus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covid 19 and the national lockdown meant we had to find nature places within walking distance. Thanks to Google maps we found a different local nature walk for every day of the week.

In Summer 2020 we were able to return to our original six places and we found even more green spaces to explore in the Autumn. The Winter brought fresh restrictions, but our nature walking continued, nearly every day, which really helped us through this very difficult time.

When Spring 2021 arrived, I was determined to visit the House Gardens at this special time of year. We managed to visit them once in March, once in April and twice in May.

It has been good to visit all our special places in Summer 2021, they have been very important for our mental health and wellbeing over the trying times of the pandemic and beyond. I hope we will continue with our local nature walking well into the future.