Entry #94
I’m stopping the Friday Flow and giving myself unbridled permission to just write when I feel like it. So today is Tuesday and here I am.
Who knows when I will write to you again.
I hope you understand that nearly three years of sustaining a pattern is a huge fricking deal for spaghetti-queen Michelle Howie, but I’m done now.
I’m moving on from Fridays, but the writing won’t stop.
Today I hoovered and had some thoughts. For no obvious reason I remembered a technique I read in a book by an American midwife (name escapes me) who used to run ante-natal classes. She would get the expectant mother and father to use ice cubes in class to explore pain and their comfort levels with witnessing pain.
The activity - in case you’re interested in some fun one day - is to take an ice cube and hold it against the inside of your wrist. Your partner just has to witness. You have to hold the ice there for as long as you can handle it. There is grimacing and dripping involved.
Now, this sounds simple enough, but it’s a beautifully complex activity with such a lot of great material to cover in reflection afterwards…for both people.
Why was I thinking about ice? Well, I think I was thinking more about pain.
I can handle physical pain quite well and I can witness people in their own pain too. Physical or emotional. Other people’s pain often seeps into my own wrist, but I can be with it, ache with it and I don’t flinch away.
I am painfully (pun) aware that other people differ from me in this regard.
Photo by Enrique Zafra.
My own emotional ice cube creates pain that is a little more complicated… I am sure I was thinking of this on some level as I manhandled the Dyson all over the house.
This ice cube insight made me think immediately of a very special friend and how she is good with my pain too. I felt compelled to leave her a tearful voice message expressing love and gratitude for how she offers me unconditional friendship.
It was a nice moment. We swapped messages back and forth, sifting out the lovely little details of a solid, grown up friendship and how valuable that is.
And I also have a clean floor. Bonus.
And that is all for today. As always, I look forward to hearing what you heard, saw and felt when reading this.
With love,
Michelle xx