Has Life Pulled the Rug from Under Your Feet?

Has Life Pulled the Rug from Under Your Feet?

My business card has on the back of it, ‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans’ (John Lennon). This was a deliberate choice, not only because it makes me smile and I like his music, but because of my own life experience of just that. In many different ways, including almost dying and the loss of so many different roles I had held, life happened to me!

So yes, life has a way of pulling the rug from under you especially nowadays with so many losing their jobs, the political and economic climate, illness, death, divorce and, of course, everyday problems that can arise unexpectedly. And that is why I chose to write this as I know that my life experience was quite a shock, to say the least to myself and others.   I know when people meet me they have no idea of what I’ve been through and, my brief story here is in order for you to reflect on the many Rugs in your life.

I didn’t just get cancer. I nearly died from cancer! I don’t remember waking up knowing that I was in Intensive Care in a London Hospital. I only knew that I was not able to move, or speak, my mouth so dry, being very hot, being under bright lights and being so, so tired. It was only when my son told me that I was in intensive care that I slowly began to put pieces of the missing two weeks’ jigsaw together. My family had been told not to hold out hope for my recovery and here I was coming round back into life.   That was my traumatic experience of loss and change.

And for most of us, life with all its changes can be hard work!   But like it or not, loss and change are part of life – for good or bad. I’m using a definition of loss here as the end of the life you’ve always known and also the beginning of a new and different life.

Life won’t ever be the same and this forces you to re-define and see what you are going to do with it. When something is lost, you don’t inhabit your world in the same way as before. You can easily allow yourself to withdraw and make yourself invisible by keeping tight control of yourself and making your world smaller and narrower. Or you can allow yourself the freedom of being you whether others like it or not.

I do want to say here that you don’t have to go to the extreme of almost dying to live your life – although some of you are still sitting on the sidelines waiting for life to happen!

It was a traumatic time for me and, of course, it is happening to others all the time. We are always left with scars internally and/or externally and they will surface at unexpected times. So the following are the lessons I’d like to pass on to you –

• Listen to yourself – that intuition or that inner wise woman
• Challenge the system that says ‘this is how it has always been’
• Ensure that authority or those in your life know you are an individual in your own right
• You can go further than the cultural norms you grew up with – spread your wings and fly
• Be open to the new – try it and if doesn’t fit then be open to other possibilities
• You can be ahead of the game and be part of creating the world in line with how it can be – whatever anyone else says
• Remember you are unique – there is no one else like you
• You are here to express your uniqueness by being you
• Life is simple – you make it complicated
• Live life with gratitude for being alive
• Have fun and remember laughter is good for the soul!!

Contact me for information on my Supervision of other Professionals, and my Residential Retreats for Women see www.thevisiblewoman.com or e-mail at irene@irenebrankin.co.uk    Looking forward to hearing from YOU.