Thank You

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert

Dear lovely readers,

I am pleased to say that I am back and there will be posts and business as usual! I want to thank each of you, my loyal readers for sticking with me and for continuing to support each other (and me!) in my absence. Also many thank you’s are owed to all who left such heartfelt messages here for me, and to those who have emailed me. I cannot express my gratitude enough.

You are generous, dear readers and I intend to continue to thank you for as long as I have a voice.

With love and caring,

Fiona

Happy New Year!

“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

― L.M. Montgomery

I am back after enjoying a bit of a holiday – a break in routine and an opportunity to recharge my batteries.

I’m so pleased to see the outpouring of sharing and supporting that happened in my absence. Each comment really is a gift!

I hope that each of you have found some space through the madness of the holiday season to rest, regroup, laugh and enjoy yourself. I wish the best of all things for each of you in 2012 and look forward to spending another year with you, my readers.

Happy New Year!

I Have Mail

Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.” 
— Frank Smith

You might think that this quote is a funny way to kick off an E-Stranged post, but bear with me. I have been sitting this morning reading through a rather significant backlog of email from all my lovely readers.  I want to thank you all for the interest you show in my work and for your trust in sharing your stories with me. These stories form the back drop of my work and certainly my writing, so I could never maintain this blog without your emails; your stories; your courage to share.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer quantity of mail I receive, I don’t always get to respond in a timely fashion – and given a very busy off-line career and practice, sometimes I don’t get to reply at all! I have been sitting and thinking about the best way to manage this happy conundrum of lots of emails, and little time and I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you, my readers.

1. First and foremost I want to share my view of blogging. I could have written a static website, or a book (or wait I have!), but instead I choose to blog. The reason for this is I think one of the most important things for people who are estranged is a sense of community. It can be very powerful to know that you are not alone in your story, that there are other people going through the same sorts of things. I chose blogging to give you all an opportunity to interact, to share, to create your own community around the ideas that I share here. In other words, my blog is an invitation for you to interact and share with each other as much as with me.

2. Often the email I receive is very thematic – possibly because many of them are in response to something I have written here but sometimes I think there is a certain synergy or serendipity to the things people share that has nothing to do with my writing. If we share openly, on the blog, these themes are made explicit, and can be explored in greater detail. Your emails give me clear direction about what you, my readers, want to read and what I should be writing about. For this as well, I thank you all. Sometimes I think that you might all be very surprised how much similarity there is in your experience and how much wisdom and insight you each possess.  As I have written about before, we are all our own best experts on ourselves and our circumstances.

3. Instead of answering the same or very similar email questions, I often choose instead to write a post about them. This is my way of ensuring that questions get answered and responded to, without responding to 20 or more separate emails. In short, I write a post which I hope addresses them all. Whilst this has seemed to be a reasonable way of managing things, I worry sometimes that in not receiving a direct response to your mail, that you may feel unheard, or unsupported. This is definitely not something I rest easy with!

What would work even better for me is if you were to ask your questions or share your thoughts with each other as well as with me. I’d like to pool our collective wisdom and highlight how much you all already know. It’s not then about me giving answers as much as it is about us having conversations and sharing with each other.

4. I understand that some things are just too personal to share. Many of the emails I receive are people’s individual stories and experiences. Often these emails are raw and not for public consumption. I honour these emails and the courage that it takes to write them. I will always endeavour to read and respond to these because they are important and they are an act of trust.

I may not be able to give you a therapeutic response. It can be very time consuming and labour intensive to put my therapist hat on and reply to emails. I also very often do not feel that I have enough information to give a truly considered response. As such I want to let you know that I do work as a therapist on-line through a number of different mediums which you can read about HERE. If you are looking for more intensive support, and would like to take advantage of my services, please don’t hesitate to contact me for further information.

5. As the Frank Smith qute above says, “Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience”. That is the spirit of sharing I hope for on this blog and I have seldom been disappointed. Some readers have shared with me the negative and often painful or marginalizing experiences they have had on other blogs and forums. I am deeply saddened that their on-line experience of sharing has been negative. I do moderate this blog and keep a pretty close eye on comments. It is my intention to ensure that this blog remains a safe space for sharing, whether that be points of commonality, or points of difference. What this blog is not about and will never be about is “ for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.” I promise to ensure this is so.

6. Writing and sharing on this blog is an opportunity to practice our compassion and tolerance. It asks us to transcend our own experiences and hear those of others. It also allows our stories to be heard so that we might be the beneficiary of that same compassion or tolerance. The skills of compassion and tolerance (and make no mistake, they are skills, which must be practiced and honed!) are often lacking in families where estrangement has occurred. Whilst I don’t cast blame or think that you are responsible for this in your family – I do believe genuinely listening, demonstrating tolerance and compassion is something we can all stand to grow and develop.

So there we have it. A few ideas about why I think blogging is an amazing platform, and why I also think that it is an important way of building community and giving and receiving support and caring. This is a shout out to both have compassion for my over flowing email box – and to also really consider the benefits of leaving your comments whether openly under your real name, or with a safe alias if that feels better for you.

What do you think?

I’m Sorry!

 I’m Sorry!

Just a quick update, and thank you for your emails! No I’m not sick and I haven’t given up this blog, I’ve just had a couple of intense offline work weeks. I had been delivering every other day content, however, for the next couple of weeks will scale back to a weekly posting on Fridays.

Again than you for your concern and your many warm messages!

MORE Exposure For Family Estrangement

Just a quick note to say how pleased I am to see family estrangement capturing mainstream media attention. The April edition of More magazine featured an article, How to deal with family estrangement, It’s never too late to fix the broken ties that bind By: Sarah Treleaven. Not only was this article topical for those of us dealing with estrangement issues, it also featured my work and this blog!  Have a read!

I’m Listening

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”

~Maya Angleou

I realized, somewhere between Christmas and New Years,  that this little bitsy baby blog of mine is growing up – my goodness we’ve passed the momentous occasion of 10,000 views! I have some good things on the horizon for you, dear readers,which I do hope you’ll hang around to see! In the meantime, I want to thank you all, not only for your readership and comments, and supporting and promoting this blog, but also for all the wonderful ideas and suggestions you have given me. You all shape my work in so many ways!

I want you to know I am listening. Your feedback is so important, I have created a small survey so that you can gimme some more! If you can  give up a few moments of your time to answer a few quick questions, I’d be most grateful.

Help Me, To Help You!

Thank You, Little Wild Mothers

 

Little wild mothers guide you, burst with pride over your accomplishments. They are critical of blockages and mistaken notions in and around your creative, sensual, spiritual and intellectual life. Their purpose is to help you, to care about your art, and re-attach you to the wildish instincts and to elicit your original best. They guide the restoration of the intuitive life.”

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This woman is my adopted Little Wild Mother. I spent ages pouring over a million images looking for just the right one, and I found her in Pankaj Trivedi’s  Flickr photo stream a few years ago. I hold onto this image, and every once in a while I pull her out and continue my relationship with her. She makes me smile, absolutely she warms my heart just to look at her. But, she does something even more important, she reminds me, speaking in her mythological voice, that my creativity is valued, supported, is my birth right.

The Little Wild Mother is an idea I picked up from the lovely Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who is in her own fashion, a Little Wild Mother to me as well, through her touchstone book, Women Who Run With the Wolves; the most highlighted, re-highlighted, and highlighted again, book that I own. I have two copies myself and have bought and gifted more copies, to more women than I can remember.

I was inspired today to bring the Little Wild Mother out, because across the last couple of months I have been hard at work writing, after a rather long break from it. I am living in Australia, far from my creative community. As most of you will know from my family estrangement work, I am estranged from my biological family and there are certainly no Little Wild Mother, fathers, aunties, uncles, grandmothers or grandfathers there.

And yet, I am warmed, by real, lovely people who take the time to recognize, nurture, appreciate and support my writing.  I believe that very few people can sustain genuine creativity without the regular appreciation and support of others. I definitely know I cannot.  This is when Little Wild Mothers are the life force that keep me writing. Little Wild Mothers are not only female, they can also be male, and I am fortunate to have at least a half-dozen men in my life, who consistently value my work, as well as many more women. Male, female, younger, older, writers, non-writers, all of you are Little Wild Mothers.

I posted this on my other blog, however, it certainly bears repeating here. Today, I would like to take a moment to recognize and thank all of you, the precious Little Wild Mothers who regularly sustain my creativity with your facebook comments, your liking and twittering of my posts, your sharing my networked blog posts on facebook, and on your own blogs, for your comments on my blogs, and for your regular emails. Each and every comment, “like”, tweet, share you offer sustains my writing, and I am so grateful to you all. Thank you , thank you, thank you.

Because of you, I keep writing, one star fish at a time. (thanks Kirstin!)

Oopsie!

 

 

 

Oopsie!

For any of you lovely souls who have been trying to post, or subscribe to this blog, and have been unable to … I have now fixed the settings and you should be able to subscribe and post to your hearts content. Sorry! and thanks Tender for letting me know!

~Fiona