Only Connect

I took all my learnings and thinkings to therapy today. We unpacked them and chased some of my findings down various dark alleyways. Then I got more homework. Shortly after that, Elton John sang Circle of Life. The end. Except of course it isn’t.

After I wrote my last post I decided to have a bash at reconnecting with magical me and what I learned was that when it comes to me doing it for myself, I can’t. When I do this stuff for other people it makes my blood fizz with life. I feel calm and light and full of energy, like a glorious cloud.

When my son was small, he was obsessed by Rick Riordan’s books about mythology. In the ones about Egypt, the gods, and sometimes the heroes of the book, travelled through the Duat, which is the Egyptian underworld. I always imagined it a bit like a deep, magical motorway through which energy and spirit could travel, just humming along under the pavements. When I do energy work with people, it feels like I have my feet in the world of the Duat and at any time I can scoop my hand down into it and fish up the information I need.

When I attempt to do that for myself I feel like I’m in a lay-by near Goonhilly, next to a pile of gravel clippings. I can see the dishes turning, scooping information out of the ether, but I’m waiting for the RAC man with a flat battery and a pile of disappointing fish paste sandwiches.

We looked at why I cannot help myself when I am so good at helping other people. It appears that this is a pattern I run, not just in terms of magic, but in terms of other types of care. I am extremely good, thanks to my over developed mother muscles, at chicken soup and hot baths, pep talks and unconditional love - except when it comes to giving those things to myself. My therapist extrapolated that magical love and care is a part of the bigger picture of my female self and that I have been historically quite poor at embracing my female side unless I am being a mum, which I have coded as something that I am allowed to do and which is my job.

I sometimes wonder why therapy so often takes something that I know in a kind of offhand way and turns it into a revelation so huge that it feels like I’m being hit square in the face with a pan.

A lot of my growing up was marked by not being entirely thrilled with being a girl. I really wanted to join the Cubs because they made rafts and fires and ran around in the woods. In the Brownies we polished horse brasses and did a lot of skipping. I thought girls mostly got a bum deal and when puberty arrived I was sure of it.

I have always had a sneaking sympathy with Lady Macbeth who had an utter wet and a weed for a husband and unsexed herself to get the job done without all the whining. I always thought it was a shame she went mad, although I sympathised and certainly went mad myself for a while. I didn’t even have to kill a king to do it.

Biologically speaking I have had a fairly combative relationship with my female anatomy. Had I had the misfortune to be born a few decades earlier or in modern day America, I would certainly have died before I actually managed to produce any children. As it stands, my body is a historic battleground of my inability to grapple successfully with fertility without surgical intervention. It has, at worst, nearly killed me and at best been a huge inconvenience. Once I had my hysterectomy, I think I largely decided to shut up shop on the whole being female thing. There are cobwebs.

We did some work to locate where I might have left my feminine self. It seems to be stowed somewhere to the right of me, slightly in front and to one side. My hands, very weirdly, knew exactly where to find it when the therapist asked where it might be. I am allowed to step into that manifestation of myself for other people, but for myself it is, except in extremis, largely off limits.

There are times when I think about all this stuff and think; ‘Is that really what’s going on?’ Of course it isn’t entirely what’s really going on because I have a tiny human brain that likes stories and I have to find ways to explain things to myself which are mostly ineffable. Like a Jellicle cat. But there are signs that might be omens that are so clearly indicative of what is going on that I find it pointless to even attempt to argue.

Here’s a case in point.

Sometimes, when I get an idea for an art piece, if I don’t make it, the idea starts pestering me. It’s like an ear worm, and until I do something about it, it won’t be quiet. A few months ago, I had the idea that I wanted to make a doll version of myself. I am very bad at sewing so I filed the idea as nice but largely pointless. The idea wouldn’t quit, so I started to think about it. I reasoned that if I was going to get over the whole ‘you can’t really sew that well,’ thing I could simply buy a doll and modify it. I found a rag doll in a charity shop for £3 and brought it home. It sat on the side for a while until I got annoyed with it looking at me, whereupon I shoved it into a box, threw it into the dark recesses of my craft cupboard and slammed the door on it.

Then I got an email from the Royal Academy about this year’s summer exhibition. Entries opened yesterday and once you purchase an entry, you have until mid February to submit something. I gave it some thought and decided that I just didn’t have time or a good enough idea. I deleted my email.

When the therapist started asking me about my relationship with my feminine energy I suddenly thought about the poor doll that I had bought as a manifestation of myself. I had dismissed it, got annoyed at it and eventually squashed it into a box, before throwing it into the back of a cupboard. I couldn’t stop laughing at the very irrefutable and physical evidence of how I treat myself.

After the therapy session I retrieved the email and bought myself an entry. Then I went into the bowels of the cupboard and rescued the doll. My homework is the transformation process. It came as no surprise later that day when I was looking for something on the RA website and discovered that the theme of this year’s exhibition is Only Connect.