The One about Gratitude

Everything that I write about is a product of my direct experience. Although I have read many books about mindfulness and healthy emotional living, I won't refer to anything unless I have practised it, internalised it or lived it. This is not a blog about theory, it's a blog about life and how I have managed to change the way I think, perceive and deal with the things are thrown at me! 

When it comes to gratitude, the last thing I want to do is preach about it, but I honestly believe that practising it on a daily basis is an essential part of a healthy emotional approach to life. 

A couple of years ago, I was having a very hard time and was on the verge of breaking down. I was under extreme stress for a variety of reasons. It got to the point where I was so low mentally that I believed that I was totally on my own with my troubles and that no one cared or was interested in helping me. At  precisely at that point,  an extremely wise and perceptive friend got involved, performed what I can only call an intervention and persuaded me to get some medical help. That worked well until I came off the medication when I thought I was strong enough and tried to go it alone. It was too soon, and I gradually spiralled back into depression and anxiety again because of the external stressors in my life. I had another crisis, and reached out to a relation who was also a life coach and counselor. He spent a lot of time supporting me and set me on the path that I still walk today. He helped me to  realise that it was not anyone's responsibility to heal me, I had to do it myself and that was the only way it could be sustained, through hard painful soul searching and the examination of my beliefs and thought processes. 

I must be very clear that the emotional problems I was suffering from were not of the clinical type, they were brought on purely by being under extreme external stress. The path that I walk is not one I would counsel anyone to take on if they have serious  mental health problems. For that, one must always seek professional help. However the journey to mindfulness worked for me. I embarked on a period of introspection, meditation and self healing. A year down the line and I can honestly say I am whole again. I must confess that I have a blip every now and again but I usually recover very quickly. 

So where does gratitude come in?  Firstly to the people who intervened out of love. I will never forget them, and will be eternally grateful. 

Secondly, when you hit rock bottom, practising gratitude teaches you that you are not unsupported even if you believe it to be true. 

So,what do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night feeling totally alone and unsupported, even if there is someone in the bed next to you? Or you feel let down by someone you thought you could count on and that leads you to the conclusion that no one cares about you? 

Breathe. Are you breathing now, or are you being breathed? If you stop breathing what happens? Your body kicks in and makes you breathe again, saving your life. So first of all your body is a most incredible support system. Even if you are ill, as long as your body breathes it is supporting you. That deserves gratitude, we should not take breathing for granted. 

Do you have a roof over your head? Many people don't.  In my work as Magistrate, I regularly come across homeless people who live on the street. So if you have a home to live in, that is something to be grateful for. 

Do you have regular meals? Can you afford to buy food? That is something to be thankful for. There are more and more people who have to rely on food banks these days. 

Do you have clean clothes to wear? There are many people who carry their possessions around in carrier bags and have no means to wash or replace them. 

Do you have someone who you care for? Even one soul that you love is something to be grateful for.  Does anyone care for you? Think about your friends or relations or both. Can you count one person who loves you? If you can, it's something to be grateful for.

Do you say thank you every time someone does something supportive for you? Do you say thank you to the Universe, or G-d or your body or whichever belief system you subscribe to when you wake up in the morning? It's an incredibly powerful thing to do. 

Whatever you give out comes back to you. Once I really started practising gratitude I was amazed at the wonderful little things that happened each day. It can be really challenging to do this to begin with especially when you feel you have nothing at all to give but a smile and a thank you costs nothing.....and it's a start. 

 

The One Where you Wake Up in a Panic in the Middle of the Night

"When we we are in a State of Panic, it is very difficult to focus our minds on the healing work. We have to take time out to dissolve the fears first" -Louise Hay-You Can Heal Your Life.

It's taken quite a lot of time over the past year or so to learn how to dissolve my fears in the depth of the night and mostly I'm quite calm but on Friday at 2am, I woke up suddenly with my heart pounding in my chest.

I lay there in the dark wondering what had triggered this. I then realised that it was the usual anxiety about my Mother in Law who had told us earlier in the day that she was feeling quite unwell. I am in Israel at the moment, where we are spending time with our children and grandchildren, who all live here. My Mother in Law is in Manchester. We spend about 60% of our time in Manchester and 40% in Jerusalem, where we have our second home. In Manchester I am the Primary Care Giver of my Mother in Law which means I am responsible for organising all her health and social care. I'm sure more of this will come up as I continue with this blog, but enough for now. 

Back to the panic attack.....having realised what had triggered it I then spent about ten minutes running through the most stressful and frightening scenarios I could think of, all involving my return to Manchester. What I was doing was scaring myself silly! This had to stop. All my mindfulness training had gone down the plug hole and I was lost in thought. 

What can you do when faced with fear in the middle of the night that has taken you by surprise? It takes a plan of action and hard work but it's vital to have these skills. This is what I do. 

1. Breathe. Stop thinking and focus on the breath. Take a long breath in while counting up to eight, hold the breath for four counts, exhale for six counts. Do this ten times. If you can, place the second and third finger of your right hand on your chest, just over your heart so your energy and intention is directed there. By the time you have got to ten cycles, hopefully your heart rate will have slowed down and your body and mind will feel calmer too. 

2. Now take some normal breaths for a minute or two, just focusing on the in breath and then the out breath. Every time you realise your mind is wandering, go back to the breath. 

3. Imagine you are in a body scanner and  very slowly, from the top of your head to the end of your toes, focus on each part of your body bit by bit. If you feel any discomfort or pain, just notice it. Don't judge it or think to much about it. Just say to yourself, oh, I have a buzzing in my right ear, or oh, I have a twinge in my lower back. That is all. Focus on your body and every time you become aware that you are lost in thought, go back to the scan. 

4. Go back to the breathing again for another minute or so.

Hopefully by then you will have calmed down enough to be able to go back to sleep, if not, repeat all over again. If you still can't sleep, get up, make yourself a drink and read something a bit lightweight until you feel tired and ready to drop off. This is not the time to analyse your thoughts and feelings, it's time for you to care for yourself and give your mind a break! 

The important thing is not to get lost your in your thoughts or to overidentify with your mind. You are not your thoughts, they pop in and out of your head with no input at all. You don't have to believe everything you think. It's really important to know that. When I began to realise that not everything my mind was telling me was true, I felt such a sense of freedom and happiness. I didn't think it was possible! 

I know that I am not immune from waking up in fear in the middle of the night, but at least I know how to deal with it now. You too can dissolve the fear that scares the daylights out of  you, it just takes a bit of work but it's worth it! 

David's Diagnosis

This is not the journal I anticipated writing but I must because I need to record everything that happens from now on.

David has had a diagnosis of  prostate cancer. There, I've written it so it's true. Hopefully it's been identified in its' very early stages but the truth is that until we see the oncologist, we won't really know.

The biopsy results show that one half of the prostate is normal, that is of six samples, none showed any cancer cells but the in the other half, four out of six samples had cancer, a Gleason of 3+3, which taken together with his last PSA gives him a T1 diagnosis. This means it's borderline and that there is a chance that if we were to do nothing, nothing may happen, but it's a risk.

In any case the prostate is very enlarged at 190ml so something will have to be done to prevent any bladder problems in the future. The consultant thinks the bleeding he has had on occasion, the investigation of which has brought us to this, is a symptom of his large vascular prostate.

We are waiting for our first appointment with the oncologist, when we will be given options, none are particularly pleasant and I am so scared. Living in limbo is horrible and I am finding it hard to concentrate on anything. This is a journey I did not expect but I need to write it as it happens because one day I will look back and say "we beat it" . 

The Alarm

It's that really scary moment, the one where your heart starts to race and the panic sets in, the phone call in the middle of the night.

I've been having bad nights anyway, we're in Jerusalem at the moment for the Chagim but there are issues back in the UK which are preoccupying us and in addition my elderly,frail, recently widowed mother in law is staying with us for the duration and needs a lot of  TLC.

So when the phone rang at one in the morning I got the fright of my life. It was the alarm monitoring centre to report our alarm going off at home in Manchester for the second time in a week. I had to call a friends and ask him to go out and check if everything was OK. Somehow our electric garage door had opened itself and the contents of my garage were exposed for all the world to see.

Everything got sorted, I sent my friend a thank you text and tried hard to go back to sleep, but of course it wasn't so easy and I lay awake thinking about alarms.

It's Erev Yom Kippur and all our internal alarm bells are ringing at the moment alerting us to the Awesome day ahead of us and the fact that our fates will be sealed and we are thinking of all the things we can do to change what has been decided for us. It's especially poignant for me.

Last year my husband sat with his beloved father in Shul on Yom Kippur listening to the beautiful choir at the Great Synagogue singing Unetaneh Tokef. This year we are in a different Shul, in a new neighbourhood and my father in law is not here, he passed away just before Pesach. His destiny was sealed last Yom Kippur  and now we are dealing with life without him.

My alarm bells are ringing,  I've done nothing about it, I've been so preoccupied with making Shabbat, Yom Tov, caring for my mother in law, having my children and grandchildren to stay so my mother in law can spend time with them, spending precious time with my youngest son who is in the IDF, that the spiritual side of things, my Teshuva has gone by the wayside. I hope that what I have done is enough, that I am forgiven for my wrongdoings and that Hashem looks favourably on me and my loved ones this year. I also pray that Hashem gives clarity of thought  and wisdom to our leaders so they will open their eyes and see the truth of the evil that is taking over this world and to stop appeasing our enemies.

Finding Our Voices

When did women lose their voices in Shul and at the Shabbat table?

I was at a Communal Seuda Shlishit recently where the women were sitting separately from the men. I don't go to Seuda Shlishit at Shul very often but I accept that this is common practice. What I find hard to accept is that we have lost our voices when it comes to singing Zemirot and Bircat HaMazon. I understand and respect the concept of Kol Isha but surely at a communal event where no individual voices are heard, there is nothing wrong with a woman singing praises to Hashem. After all in the last weeks' Sedra Beshalach, Miriam led the women in singing after the Splitting of the Red Sea. 

The net result is because women are not encouraged or feel dissuaded to join in they say nothing, at best mutter the words under their breaths in case someone should hear them, or opt out altogether and talk. We don't have to shout or sing at the tops of our voices, but since when was singing praises and thanks to Hashem something that can be looked on as an erotic act?

We are accepting these impositions on us too easily and not questioning them enough. I understand that nobody is going to embarrass their host and hostess by singing enthusiastically if no other women are participating but it seems to me it's all part of the same mindset where women are being pushed to the back and they are being made to feel and are making themselves invisible.

Any Questions?

I took part in my first ever panel discussion last night, organized by a local synagogue. I have to admit that I was not the first choice, I was the substitute for our new local Jewish TV celebrity who had to back out for personal reasons. She is also my friend and I was very pleased to be asked to fill the breach.

David spent the whole weekend firing questions at me to prepare me and I must admit he did a very good job and I felt quite jaunty and confident about the whole thing until about an hour before, when I started to feel sick. The rest of the panel including the Chairman were a pretty erudite group, all have at least one degree if not more and are experts in their fields. I have a degree in the University of Life, I dropped out of college when my mother became ill and never went back after she died. I had kids, raised my family and got involved in other things, the time was never right to go back. So I suddenly had this huge crisis of confidence, why had I been asked to do this, surely they could have chosen someone far more qualified than me? But there I was and it was too late.

My sons found it very amusing that I had been asked to join the panel; they just couldn't understand why people would want to fire general questions on current affairs at a random group of panellists. My oldest son explained that if he had a query he  would ask a specialist, why would people be interested in my opinion on things? Well that was a great confidence booster!

It didn't help that one of the other panellists had been unavoidably delayed and only arrived for the second half, which left me and the other two, comprising one of the most senior and respected Rabbis in our community and the Director of Community Services from the United Synagogue, who had come from London for the event. I was outnumbered. As the Chairman read out my modest CV to the audience I sat there, terrified.

The first question was OK, it was about the impact of Social Media on the recent riots, and the questioner asked if Facebook and Twitter should have been shut down. That was OK, I know a fair bit about Social Media and I didn't agree that it should be shut down, why punish millions of innocent users because of the abusers. It seemed to go down quite well. I started to enjoy myself.

It's very hard in these situations when unseen questions are fired at you. You have to very quickly construct an argument and deliver it cogently and clearly and in hindsight there's always something else you could have added. When I got home,  I spent the rest of the night thinking of all the things I didn't say and could have kicked myself about.

All in all it was a good experience and a learning curve, I realised that despite my self doubt, I was quite capable of holding my own and I wouldn't mind doing it again...

One good deed...

I was driving to the Magistrates court yesterday, it was my first day back on the bench rota after my summer break. I happened to tune in to Radio 4 and started listening to one of the saddest interviews I have ever heard. It was a tragic story about a profoundly disabled woman and the trials and tribulations that had beset her throughout her life. Every time she thought she had found happiness, tragedy struck her again, until she lost her faith.

I started wondering why some people are dealt such a rotten hand in life and at the same time felt obligated to say brief prayer of gratitude. I have had  a lovely summer, with two fantastic 50th birthday celebrations, surrounded by friends and family, I have lot to feel grateful for. Then I started thinking " I wonder what's around the corner?" I didn't have to wait too long.

I drove down into the underground car park and swung effortlessly into a parking bay. As I drove in, a woman in an MPV struggled to park in the adjacent space; she rolled down her  window and shouted "Lucky You, driving a Mini!" I started to worry that maybe I was too lucky, and that I should leave this large parking bay available for someone with a larger car and that I should park in a smaller one. So I did, I reversed out of my lovely space and found a smaller one, only to collide with a large cement column as I swung in, knocking off the wheel arch cover and giving the front bumper a really good bashing.  So much for altruism!

Did I tempt fate? Was I asking to be tested? Did I feel guilty for everything I had when this poor woman on the radio had so little? I suppose the answer is "Yes" to all of it. Have I learned anything? Apart from "Don't be a Twit  in a Carpark", I should have stopped at the prayer of gratitude, it was enough.