First Anniversary of ‘Transcending’

Does a blog have a birthday or an anniversary? Following the communicatrix and others, I’ll go with anniversary. In this case, it’s the first anniversary of ‘Transcending’, a significant milestone. So what did I start out to do on May 2 last year? After much research, reading and thinking, I decided that ‘Transcending’ was my theme. And it still is. Sometimes I wonder, for sure, and I still need to do more work to build this theme and this platform; but I know that transcending is it, that it is relevant to so many people and that I need to keep mining it, milking it and keep that vein of possible riches flowing.

It’s been a huge battle at times. I’ve managed nearly a post a week on average and given the demands of my day job, seven weeks’ overseas travel, my daughter’s final year of school, a couple of operations and other dramas, that’s not so bad. I could do better, but it’s an achievement, all taken into account. The main thing is that I kept at it: writing, researching, tuning in and reading to others, synthesising and reflecting.

And as the communicatrix says so eloquently in her sixth anniversary post, it’s really all about writing:

What I’m trying to say, albeit rather clumsily, is that a lot of the time, the reason to write is just that—to write. You can write to promote yourself or write to make money or even write to find yourself but ultimately, you write to write. To be able to keep on writing. To be able to keep on getting better at writing. To be able, god willing, to write long enough that you write well enough to actually say something that will live on after you are no longer there to write.

But even if you don’t, even nobody reads your writing while you are alive and all your writing dies with you, if you are a writer (and maybe even if you are not), you are the better for having written.

Now, write.

That’s an important motivator for me: writing itself, the value of it, the process and the product. It’s what my working life has also been about.  I’ve been happy with what I’ve written here and how I’ve found a voice here over the past year. It’s a voice that can do much more and stretch itself out a little now. I do know that the feeling of having written here, once I get through the resistance and work it through, is like birds soaring in the clearest of skies. One of my earliest posts, ‘The value of howling into the wind‘ captures this in a way I am proud of and still has the  most hits of all my posts so clearly strikes a chord.

It is also the second anniversary of my father’s death today. His death and my brother’s tragic death in November 2007 are key motivators for this theme: one transcended in many ways in a sometimes difficult life and the other, also an incredible achiever, did not make it through one night. It is for these reasons, and the grief that goes with them, that transcending has become a theme in my life.

It’s why I write about transcending and resilience: working through, rising above, moving beyond, climbing across whatever is difficult or challenging. It’s not so I can look down on anyone else or feel superior in any way; that connotation sometimes worries me. It’s so that I, and you through reading and engaging, can work through, create, connect, be productive, strategise and achieve success in whatever is important: writing, grief, work, blogging, creativity, family contexts, planning and progress. Cut through and move on to the next challenge with the support of all those bloggers and other writers and creatives out there who are similarly focused on their life’s work and next project.

So what did I say I was going to do here 12 months ago? Here’s my first post:

‘Transcending’ is an exploration of the ways that we rise, overcome, climb across and pass beyond.

It celebrates the extraordinary power of the ordinary self in creativity, writing, in love, in the workplace and in our family contexts, such as our family history and what it means. It is about  resilience, grief, love, loss, longing and the resonating shapes and forms we make to deal with this and move on and through. It’s about constructive approaches at work – strategies that cut through, synthesise and provide solutions. And it’s about images, structures, texts and ways of thinking that makes this possible.

This theme resonates and connects for me in all spheres of life and I hope connects and resonates with you also.

Join me in this journey as it unfolds. Some of the areas I hope to explore are:

• writing as a way of transcending and moving through
• my own creative journey as a writer
• poetry and the shapes and structures we find to manage our emotions
• music and images as vehicles for experiencing and managing feelings
• family history and its stories of how we connect and experience life
• constructive leadership behaviours and strategies
• reading and reflections on transcending
• connections with other writers and thinkers on this theme in all its guises

Reflecting back, it’s still spot on and it’s what I have focussed on. I can do more to hone my platform and that’s a challenge I welcome. I’ve revamped my page recently and it’s whiter and brighter: a new theme, Linen, to usher in a new year. Like my theme, there’s more to learn with the technology but I’ve also loved that learning over the year: learning wordpress, flickr, managing RSS readers, linking, taking photos and everything else that goes with a blog.

It’s been a wonderful journey this past year and I thank all those who have been here with me and visited. I also thank my inspirational guides and leaders in this online space, my seven stars that continue to be guides and fellow travellers in so many ways. I look forward to the next year with a sense of brightness and light. I hope you will join me here also in the shedding of that light.

Transitioning

There has been something of a hiatus here. Not for lack of things happening. I have been incredibly busy and it’s a time of change. Something about the end of one year and the beginning of another always means being busy but this year has been an extra busy time with much transitioning.

I have been finalising a challenging work role that has been the focus of my energy for much of this year. I was heartened to read Danielle LaPorte’s recent post on entrepreneurial spirit inside and outside the 9 to 5. Whilst my job recently was much more than 9 to 5, it was very much carried out in the spirit of entrepreneurship, of change and of creativity in solving problems with heart and courage.

I read this year about being a linchpin and a career renegade; more about the art of non-conformity and about being a fire-starter whilst in this work role over the past nine months. This spirit very much pervaded the way I tackled some long-standing issues. The feedback was positive and I appreciate how much my reading and engagement with social entrepreneurship has guided my leadership work this year. In fact, I don’t know what I would have done without it at times. It was fascinating how many times I became stuck or was trying to solve a crucial problem when a critical post from Chris Guillebeau, Colleen Wainwright, Danielle LaPorte or Jonathan Field, amongst others, came through to light the way.

I have also been travelling and busy getting organised to leave a warm Sydney to visit a very cold UK and Europe. I have enjoyed again the feeling of transitioning across countries, being in the air suspended between and the arriving. I have been visiting East Sussex and the place where some of my ancestors lived for hundreds of years before part of the family broke itself off and moved to Australia for warmer climes and a new life of opportunity in the 1830s.

I am especially interested in one ancestor: my great, great, great grandmother, Jane Honeysett, and her journey. In the end, it was not a happy one but I am inspired by her transition, her hope, what she left behind, where she went and why and what it was like living in Sydney as an early woman settler. The female migration experience is not much written about it seems. I am keen to find her voice and that’s why I have been visiting East Sussex and listening to the voices and the accents; feeling the icy weather; walking around the church where she was married in 1825; driving through lanes with their high hedges, the worn and ancient stone homes with moss on the roof; and visiting the castles, inns and abbeys that were the centrepieces of life in East Sussex then and now.

I am also beginning to write that story now. That is my goal: to write a novel that is the story of Jane’s life and the female migration experience. Visiting the land of my ancestors seems to have enabled me to start to write finally, breaking through that invisible line of resistance. I am grateful for The Writers Cafe software by Dr Julian and Harriet Smart, which I found through Joanna Penn and her podcast conversation with Harriet. The software really is very good. After all my procrastinations about starting to write, it really was as simple as blocking out some scenes already lined up in my head and filling them out.

This transition to actually starting to write seemed to need to occur in the location. I’m not sure why but I had a keen sense in arriving of returning to the place where Jane could not return after she left. Maybe she is my guardian angel, some ancestral support, helping me. I know she could not read or write so maybe I am her voice, her writing, her words and her song and being in her birthplace and her home was a catalyst for beginning.

I have also been Unravelling this past few months, working through the online experience Susannah Conway creates that is very deep and unlocks so much.  Through creating a supportive environment focused on images and words and enabling an online network of participants, Susannah successfully creates connection between people and within souls that is magical. It’s hard to describe and the unravelling is still occurring, but I suspect this experience has also been the backbone of much of this transitioning. I’m comfortable in my own skin and its various guises of leader, researcher, writer, reader and blogger and enjoying the connections and cross-fertilisations this year has brought, most recently culminating in so much arrival.

What transitioning is happening for you at the end of this year?

 

The healing power of family history

My family has had a traumatic time over the past few years. My younger brother died very tragically in November 2007. It was the saddest day and life was never the same. My father then died suddenly in May, 2009 so another wave of loss ensued and my happy, stable family of four was halved. Like all people dealing with grief, I struggled to get through the days, the weeks, the months after each episode and still feel the deepest sense of loss. I connect to them, especially my brother, through music as I drive to work first through the bush and then through the traffic. Music is such a powerful source of memory and connection.

Another way I found myself managing these terrible waves of grief was through family history.  I had already begun my search before these events, tracking back like a detective through the generations following the links. With the separation and the trauma from the deaths of those so close to me, family history and  ‘looking back to look forward’  has become a link to my brother and my father. My extended family, also their family, the closest link.  I could find the line anchoring us. I could lose myself in the research and discovery about where we came from. And from that, the story of our history could emerge and connect us. New narratives could form; old buried stories could be brought alive. Christina Baldwin in Storycatcher (details below) talks about tending the fire, the responsibility of being a storycatcher and the power of story to connect, ‘heal, remind and guide us.’ 

It’s not the only answer but:

• if moving through is having something to cling to that helps you think about the future, ironically by planting you firmly in the past….
• if moving through is knowing more about where you came from and the shared history you take forward…
• if moving through is finding stories that connect you, knowing more about the stories of your ancestors and finding those that resonate…
• if healing is about losing yourself in something so you are not completely overwhelmed by thoughts of grief and moment to moment anguish…
• if story helps anchor your creativity and move you forward into something new, to integration and resolution even if it’s all not perfect or ever the same as it was…

then family history offers a healing place, a space to learn and engage with your origins, as far as you can, to take you forward to help you face a new future.

I am not a therapist or an affiliate of any family history sites or the resources below. I speak from the experience of working through family history as part of a  personal healing journey over the past few years. For me, it has led to an immense inner resource of narrative that I wish to tell in other ways such as through the writing of novels based on the stories of my ancestors. I am researching and planning this work at present.

For some people, family history research may not be possible or easy for various reasons, but I encourage people to consider the value of story to help connect in whatever way possible. Our stories of being disconnected also need to be told. The story from my family history that is the most compelling is one of absolute disconnection and  it is demanding to be told.

Some resources I have found useful on this journey are:

Ancestry: Amazing site with so many electronic data bases of records and existing family histories. You need to join up for the full benefits but there is much to gain from this.

Storycatcher: making sense of our lives through the power and practice of story, Christina Baldwin: an excellent book on story and the value of narrative to help frame new worlds

The pictures on this page are some of the relatives I have found out more about through my searches. The woman above is one of my great, great, great grandmothers, Susannah Morris ( nee Richardson). The man to the right is her husband, William Morris. Both were early Australian settlers. How these photos have survived from such an early time, I do not know. My thanks to extended family member, Allan Morris, for passing them onto  family member and fellow researcher, Alex McDonald and I. This is the other thing that happens – you find new family connections and forge new links that you never knew you had.

Do you have any stories to tell about the healing power of family history?