While i have had my head under my wing….
I have been sitting on the proverbial river-bank, head under my wing, feeling very despondent. All the time wondering how to fan life back into my crowdfunding mission – how to make it sexy and exciting when clearly it is not!
Most people would prefer to do anything other than spend time considering their mortality or that of those they love. In fact, generally we run like crazy in the other direction, smothering life with distractions and chat about the weather.
Raising this last £2k has felt insurmountable. I am not a social media person. I sit and sing with ageing and dying people, massage their hands with fragrant oils and spend time with them in gardens, not pressing computer keys or studying my phone for updates.
It feels appalling asking people for money, twisting the noose around those I care about with plaintive pleas to their innate generosity.
However tonight, I gave up. I too stopped running and I opened my Unbound dashboard. There, while I have been sitting in silent despair, some incredibly kind strangers, and a few less strange, in fact wonderful friends, have supported Leaves of Love, stories for ageing and dying. How GREAT is that!!
Thank you so much.
Your help and belief in what I am trying to achieve is very touching and very encouraging. At 63% perhaps we can make it after all. Let’s keep going….
Ignore the last update….
A poor me approach is not helpful right now. Standing in the shadows, no longer an option.
The truth is that Leaves of Love, an essential guide to ageing and dying well is also a handbook for our troubled times. Ageing might soon be a luxury. The opportunity to slow down, think deep and plan our future, something of the past.
Holding, loving, caressing the brow, cheek and hair of those we care for has never been more necessary. Why waste one more minute before coming in close, being real and honest and daring to be who we are destined to be – what else is there.
The ache of loss is all around us, the fear of fundamental chaos a groundswell movement. We are facing, not only our own finite existence but also that of all we hold dear… it is already happening. I grieve daily the empty skies, the lack of butterflies, the comparative silence of the dawn.
Europe is heating up. Change is inevitable. How we live, where we live, what we eat and the core values by which we live are all being questioned – and rightly so. Learning how to live on the point of the needle, dance the dance of life in all its magnificence and then let it go, demands a certain type of alacrity – a skill worth learning.
Cultivating confidence to tend to those endings and accompany our dying friends (the human and more than human, in creative, compassionate and fundamentally loving ways is another beautiful art worth re-kindling. We knew it once.
Waking up to the reality of climate change can also be an opportunity to wake up to what really matters in our own lives. The grief of loss is already too much to bear – let’s not add regret to that already heavy burden.