The Childhood Stories

Over the past month or so I had had a collection of stories published up on Life with my Little Duck starting off during my teenage years, moving into my 20's and then ending today. It was a really interesting trip through thoughts and memories so I thought I would provide a little recap here and link them all in one place for anyone who would like to take a little journey through a few decades and a few countries... Five years ago I started to write a book loosely based on my life/experiences, but I gave up because it was both too close to home and because I didn't think anyone would be interested. I am now putting together several collections of essays which I think will be easier for me to work on and actually finish. In any case, here are the links to all of the stories... Thanks to Ally for publishing all of these stories, as well as many other wonderful and heartbreaking ones. You can see all of the stories from her Childhood Series up on her blog here. 

The Invisibility Cloak - wrap yourself in it as soon as you leave the house...

Survival Modes - high school is a real minefield.

Run, Run Away - everything is just too much and there is no escape.

Young Heart, Old Soul - a different life in different places.

Never Let Go of the Rainbow - a decade in a city that never sleeps.

Everything will be alright
Everything will turn out fine
Some nights I still can't sleep
And the voices pass with time
The Sisters of Mercy - Time To Cry

Ramblings: I dream of a house on a beach...

There is something that only those closest to me really know, one of my lifelong dreams.

I dream of living in a simple little house by an ocean or sea, preferable where it is warm and sunny, and spending my life writing, reading, raising my kids with my other half, and living in peace. The dream has obviously changed over the years, I used to dream about living in a cabin on the beach alone, now it has my family in it too, and in some ways it has become more attainable and in others less.

I am not one for seeking success in the form of fame and glory, or making more money than another person. I don't want to rule over anyone or take over anything. I would love to be able to change the world in some way, one word at a time, but I would also love to do that from my beach house.

I'm not looking for a huge sprawling mansion. Just a little house in a place where we can afford to work normal hours and live comfortably. By living comfortably I mean having fresh food on the table, enough to pay rent/mortgage and bills and enough to save for later so that the girls don't have to worry about us when we get old. I would even say enough to put them through college too, but by the time they get there I don't think anyone will be able to afford any form of higher education.

I used to dream of going off to other countries, writing about wars and conflicts and coups, taking photos of other cultures and traditions, adding experiences and stories to my already colourful life, and trying to make changes where I could. I used to dream of walking barefoot on every beach in the world, leaving a little bit of myself behind at every stop so that I always had an excuse to come back again. I still dream of taking off to a destination unknown, seeing things through my eyes and translating images and impressions into words over and over again. I used to dream about doing my bit about making this world a better place. And here and there I hope I have, and I hope I continue to.

Our beach house will have a few bright rooms, a quiet room to create, and loud rooms to be heard, a place where one will always feel at home. There will be delicious smells of freshly baked bread and cookies coming from the kitchen and the salty ocean breeze will constantly makes its rounds through the rooms; there will always be a view onto sand and sea, sun and moon; it is a place where you always feel safe and calm and loved. A real home for me is a place that feels completely lived in with its mismatched furniture and well-worn chairs, with photos and artwork on the walls and random children’s scribbles behind doors. It is a place of laughter and tears, of thoughts and dreams. A place where you can sit on the porch at night, count the stars and listen to the waves roll over the sand. A place that holds you close and where you always feel you belong.

I’ve been dreaming, dreaming, dreaming about this beach home for so long now, it has become an integral part of my future. The only problem is that the future is always the future until you make it your present. Magical things don’t just happen, you have to find a way to make them appear, sometimes taking a lot of work and hope and tears. Now that my dream has become a shared dream, one that my family also wants, I hope that this dream will be waiting for us to jump on be right around the next corner. We are going to work as hard as we can to make it possible, for us and for the girls. There is nothing wrong with dreaming big and dreaming far, it is what keeps us going on the bad days and gives us an extra skip on the good days. And on those in-between days? It just keeps us dreaming.

I dream of a beach and a little house, hibiscus flowers as big as my head and coconuts hanging from the trees. I dream of warm sand in my toes, a life barefoot, and a sky stretching further than I can see. I dream so hard that I can practically touch it. Almost there, not far now.

Many of my short stories involve the beach in some way or another. Of Hearts and Sea Glass, Of Instability and Growing Roots, and Autumn's Place are a few that I have up the on blog. I will finish my collection one day!

Ramblings: Daytime Thoughts

This started as one thought, evolved into about four others and kind of made it's way back to the first thought. Some real ramblings for you today...

I fully believe that it's important to never make a judgment based on appearances. But we always do, no matter how hard we try. Some of us try and some just don't really give a shit anyway and spend their lives judging others based on their religion, skin colour, language, background, clothing, whatever. I always hope that I'm in the first group, and that I have learnt from any mistake I may have made in the past, making sure that I never do it again.

If you don't really know me, then you probably don't know how shy and how anxious I am. I've spent many a year hiding it beneath layers and layers of toughened up skin and bone, but it always finds a way to pop up when I least expect it. I've worked on myself over the years, using alcohol to find a way to hide my shyness, then sobriety to find a way to accept my shyness and to get past it. I've learnt to get over my fear of calling people I don't know and accomplishing tasks over the phone. I've managed to get past my utter fear of putting my writing into the public eye and I've traveled to places and talked to people even though I often felt like I was crippled with anxiety inside. I've even forced myself to speak in public, although I don't really think I want to do that again. I'm actually quite happy working from behind my screen now, with my children playing in the background (or hitting each other or screaming at me, whatever happens to be occurring at that moment).

With motherhood also came a dip in the confidence that I had slowly built up over the years, and then, after the first few months went by, came an actual gain in well-being, confidence and strength. For the first time in my life I felt like I had actually finally become the person I was always supposed to be. So those days when my confidence takes a beating I seem to feel it even more. It is kind of like climbing a mountain and instead of falling a few steps right near the top you tumble a quarter of a mile down again. Even the stupidest of things can make me feel like I've fallen down the mountain, just as the smallest of things can often bring me right back up again immediately afterwards. It’s a strange feeling, trying to keep that middle ground of stability while your emotions are pulling you both up and down!

I've always been a good loner. I love my close friends from the bottom of my heart and miss them all terribly now that I have moved away, but I've always been good at creating and fully using my alone time. Books and walks and words and photos, lunches by myself watching the world go by and long trips to places where I didn't know a soul. None of those things ever fazed me. Put me in a room full of people completely sober and ask me to make myself heard, now that would give me anxious shakes and a desire to create a hole for myself to curl up in. I know, being a bartender and working in an extremely busy restaurant don't really seem to be the best jobs for an introvert from the outside, but that is actually wrong. Many of my fellow service industry workers are complete introverts. Many of my musician and actor friends are the same. That face that smiles at you and serves you your drink while chatting about the latest gossip is all an act, part of the job. An act that is pretty easy to sustain, a uniform that you mentally put on every time you walk into work. They are just jobs. Jobs that I absolutely adored before I became a mother, and would do again in a heartbeat if I didn't have two little children. I DO have tons of confidence, but only when I feel in control of my environment and comfortable in my place. It’s a bit of a two-pronged sword being both confident and shy at the same time, because sometimes you end up creating a role for yourself which kind of portrays how people want to see you rather than how you actually want to be seen. Sometimes it leads to a lot of bitterness and sadness when you can’t make your real self seen or heard when you really need to. And sometimes it makes it harder to explain that you need space and silence once in a while, time away from everyone and everything.

I'm still not confident as a writer, after all these years. I still hesitate every time I submit an article or deliver a job. I'm still always surprised when I receive great feedback and always a little hurt when something gets rejected. I kick myself when I read something similar to what I have written and hidden deep in my laptop's memory and wonder why I don't dare send these things out to others to read and love. Why do I watch others do it and sit back and wish that I had the confidence to put myself out there like that? Why do I hide behind my screen waiting for something that will never happen if I don’t “put myself out there” so to speak?

And then I realize that I do. I do it every day. And maybe there are many, many things that I will not publish on here, just because they may be too personal or involve others or just don't belong here, they still belong somewhere, and some day I will find a proper home for them. I still have trouble with social media, with being more pragmatic and less involved in making friends and actually considering people humans rather than just one more person to read my blog, but I know there are others out there like that, who are trying to promote their work while making friends at the same time, and I'm happy to know these people, sometimes work with them, but mostly because their photos and comments make me smile, their thoughts are similar to mine and because they are all inspiring, funny and most likely have the exact same worries and thoughts and self-confidence dips as I do. I do admire those people who have been able to create a “brand” out of themselves, but I cannot do that, and at the same time I don’t know anybody personally who has. Anyone I have actually “met” on social media is like me, just another person using words and thoughts and images to touch others. The whole “brand” thing is really not me at all. And that’s fine, I don’t need to do that, I just need to work on what I really want in a better way. (Sometimes I regret not being so proactive in my 20’s and instead of writing a blog at that time that made no sense to anyone but me I could have actually created something a little more meaningful!). I think this is why I continue to refuse to make my blog into something more “streamlined” – it was always meant to be a platform for me to “publish” my creations, before I became a mother and after, and I don’t want to change it. I may possibly set up something else in the future with some friends, I don’t know, I would need to be more focused on one thing rather than letting myself be pulled in all types of directions.

Years ago I took all of my "things" that I had left with my mother for safe keeping back, including journals dating back to my first at 9 years old. There was however one missing, quite an important one, from my late teens in the late 90's. This past weekend my mother came back from her storage unit with a box with my name on it, and amidst my Cure 45s, some Ted Hughes and Shelley books was that journal. I'm not ready to go down multiple rabbit holes just yet, but I read a few pages of it and see myself, 20 years ago, so shy but so exuberant, angry and happy, and I'm glad I've lead the life that I have. And while I will always regret a few things, mostly those moments when I couldn't tell people how I felt, those moments when I couldn't explain how uncomfortable I was or even those moments when I didn't dare speak up and voice my opinions. But I can catch up on that now. And one day all of those stories that I have written along the way and all of the essays and the thoughts and the poems that I have jotted down will find their own place too.

I suppose all these words came about over the weekend when I was feeling a little down, seeing photos of my friends at the Rockaways, my favourite beach in the world, or at the Stone Roses concert in NYC and missing them, reading nasty comments posted by ignorant and bigoted people from all over the world on internet articles, and with just the sheer amount of utter shit that is going on in the world all the time, every time I look at my phone or check out my social media feeds. Some days it is very hard to live with having both a hurting heart and an overflowing heart. In the end we all bleed the same; I just wish I could stop the unnecessary loss of blood and life with my own hands.

So maybe, next time we look at someone and start to judge them based on something about them, maybe, maybe we should take a step back and remember that they are people just like us, with hearts and minds and souls and worries and stories and families and feelings. And maybe we all stand up and talk about everything that hurts and destroys us as a community, a nation and a world and bring about real change instead of just looking the other way. And when someone is trying to express themselves stop and listen to what they have to say, because it may be a moment to learn and grow, you never know.

And maybe I will remember to tell myself that despite everything I put in my own way my words will be heard by some, and in the end that is all that matters to a writer.

NO FEAR: Reflections After a Year

I asked Henna to write a guest post on From the Inside a while ago, and she decided to write about losing her mother, one year along. Henna and I have known each other for quite a few years now, going from coworkers to very close friends, watching each other grow in different ways and take on different responsibilities. Henna's absolute love of life, people and freedom is so engaging and her warmth and passion for everything she takes on are formidable. Losing a parent is never easy, I can attest to that, and Henna and her family watched their mother fight that evil disease known as cancer for many, many years. This is Henna's letter to us all about love, loss and freedom, and I hope that we can all take a little of it and keep it close to our hearts. RIP Amarjit Kaur Chawala, I hope your new playground is larger and easier than the last one.

There are moments that I’ve missed and then there are moments that have ignited me. Moments where I was afraid and moments where I said fuck it. And many moments where I literally told everyone and anyone I love you. Why? Because honestly, when you lose a mother at 23 the value of life becomes very transparent. You learn that we are all not here forever.  And that we choose how we live and all our realities are the ones that we create and agree to be a part of.

Losing a mother alters the world around you immediately. Now your surroundings are a jungle. Now I must survive because mommy is not here to hold my hand. Yes, I have dad, but we know that it’s not the same. I can’t bitch about how big my boobs got last summer to daddy. I mean I could, but I’d prefer not to.

 In the days that I’ve missed holding Mom’s hand I have cried a lot. I’ve had many walks home from work where I couldn't stop crying. It’s easier to cry in the dark. No one can see you. Oh God, that was a dark statement. I swear I’m a really funny person. I just cry sometimes. I’m human and humans cry, you know? I think crying is critical to the human experience. Like honestly, how do I know I love you if I can’t cry about you? If I can’t cry about you then I probably fucking hate you. JK JK JK. SMILY EMOJI WITH TEETH. This is just a dark topic. I’ve got to somehow make this tragic shit funny.

Anyways, the funny thing about death is that it doesn't stop time even though it initially feels that way. Death is a pause for the person not here anymore. I say pause because I don’t think mom has gone. I just think the universe has taken her to another place to play. Mom always said that the purpose of life was to play and that this world is our playground.

Mom was a wise woman, but she was always plagued with restriction, worried thoughts, and fear of judgment. She wouldn't allow herself be free and watching her die at 55 with all these fears was heartbreaking. Mom was afraid. She was afraid of death. She was afraid of the unfamiliar. I’ve had many nights where I thought her fear killed her. When people are afraid there are a limited amount of windows where light can shine through and remind them that it’s not that serious and that everything will be ok. I knew there weren't that many windows around Mom and holding her hand felt like the best way to reassure her and bring her some light.

In the last year, I’ve spent many moments dissecting fear and what this word means because in the beginning I was afraid. Afraid of possibly losing my father. Afraid of confessing my pain. Afraid of my future. Afraid of letting people see me. Afraid of being a good older sister. Afraid to even cry.

I had to let go of my anxieties. I discovered that the heart of anxiety is fear. That the only way to turn it off was to say the words ‘I am not afraid’. This sentence turns on all the lightbulbs and suddenly, I know that I am in the right place in the right time in my life. My trust grows and my faith in the universe expands every time I say these words. I can say I’ve become a much calmer person now and this is because I am not afraid.

Hi, my name is Henna like the tattoo and I'm confessing my freedom. In this last year I’ve probably taken too many risks, done a lot of stupid things, kissed a lot of dumb men, but I regret none of it. I don't regret my journey to my personal freedom. So yeah bitches, now I'm fearless and fucking my playground real good. I would recommend that anyone reading this do the same. Just play real hard everyone. It’s worth it. And for all those you see caged in the fear come at them with love because that will be the beginning of their freedom. 

You can find Henna on Instagram and on Facebook, and also probably running around the streets of NYC somewhere, chasing an adventure.

Henna today, looking much more like her mother than she realises.

Ramblings: Middle of the Night Thoughts

It just suddenly hit me, a punch to the stomach, so hard I had to catch my breath. They will never be little again. Not little, little, tiny baby little. Tears well up in my eyes when I think of those sleepless nights holding my little Luna, her brow constantly creased into a frown. I wish I hadn't shouted at her today. She's so fragile but so strong and likes to push every boundary as far as she can. I want to not snap but sometimes it's impossible. She will never be that teeny tiny screaming infant again, the one who only wanted her mother, unless it was 4am and then daddy would do. These days it's all "mama mama mama", a scream, an angered yell and then "mama hold me" or "hug?".

I don't spend enough time staring into Aurora's eyes and telling her I love her. Or maybe I do, but that happens in the middle of the night when we are the only ones awake. Her eyes teach me that patience really is a virtue, because she has so much of it, enough to give away and still be fine. I whisper in her ear how much I love her, kiss her soft little cheek and hope that she doesn't remember all of the times that her sister pushed her over. Or hit her on the head with a toy. There is something remarkable about being the second child... Putting up with all of that and still smiling. Maybe she is just remarkable. She is to me anyway. They both are. My little sunshines and moonlights and my reason for wanting a better life in a better place. My motivation to make sure we pursue our dreams.

I don't want to forget any of these moments. I embrace them, I snap pictures of them, I put them into words, store them away in my mind, in clouds, on paper. I embrace it all, the darker parts, the struggles, the dawns and the rainbows, even the passage of time. But I still shed a tear for those moments that I will never get back again, when everything is new and overwhelming and difficult, but beautiful and hopeful.

Ramblings: Golden, Rusty Days

This is actually a combination of two unfinished pieces that I thought worked well together. So many half-finished pieces "in process", I'm going to try to finish what I can this year!

When I think back to those days they seem golden, hazy and golden, like a fluffy white cloud surrounded by late afternoon sun rays. Even though I know they weren’t really, they were full of unnecessary worry and timidity and longing and soul searching (as well as fun and games and friendship and love and passion and many a bottle of wine). If I close my eyes I see myself back then: slim (even though I thought I wasn’t), scared (of everything), worried (I wasn’t good enough for anything), unsure about my looks (wishing I were prettier), happy (because I had wonderful friends), in love (I feel like I was always in love in my late teens and early 20’s), sad (because I only fell in love with the guys who were not in love with me), bored (because I had no idea what I was going to do with my life) and crazy (the number of stories I have regarding my group of friends and our nights out is phenomenal).

The amount of freedom we had in those days in incredible. Even more incredible is the fact that we didn’t even realize it. We had no real responsibilities apart from turning up to our classes at university and passing the year and making it to work on time (if we had jobs). For the first two years I lived at home, the last two shared an apartment in the city with my best friend at the time. We both worked part time and spent the rest of the time on “campus”, going to class, hanging out with our friends in our regular bars, and roaming the city at night drinking wine and causing all types of mayhem. Those days come with a soundtrack by The Cure, Mylene Farmer, Bob Dylan, Muse, Placebo, Marilyn Manson, Bauhaus, and mixed tapes, rolling down hills in the dark and many a long night discussing everything that we would like to change one day.

I love how easy it is to look at everything more clearly but coincidentally through rose-tinted glasses, gold-edged but slightly rusty, sepia-toned in the light of the afternoon. Strings of happiness, sometimes thinning out, sometimes broken, some areas rugged with knots, but pulled tight through the years. Lanes that span through the countryside and the hills, through the cities and over beaches and oceans, coming across dead ends and turning back to choose the other side of the fork in the road that had appeared a few miles or a few hundred miles earlier. Pulling those strings with every step, stopping to reinforce them or to tie two broken ends back together again. So is life, we just never know what a right turn may bring, and such is the beauty of it all.

It was half a lifetime ago, that 18 year old me. 18 years later and while so much has changed, I am still her, just a lot older, a lot less scared, more knowledgeable (I hope), more cynical and less trusting. Nowadays I stand up for myself without even thinking about it, not worrying what someone else is going to think if I open my mouth.

You know that thing you do when you are able to pretend that you are all sorted and together on the outside when your insides are melting in anguish? That won’t really go away. It just gets a little easier to let go sometimes and stop pretending that everything is OK. Nothing bad will happen the day that you drop everything and burst into tears in front of a bunch of strangers. We are all human and the only person you have to prove something to is to yourself. Remember that.

Don’t change anything; everything has its own way of working out just fine in the end. You are going to make some wonderful decisions and some really, really stupid ones. You are going to travel to places and meet people, fall in and out of love. You are going to smoke too many cigarettes and drink too many glasses of straight vodka (my head hurts even thinking about it). You are going to hurt some people and some people are going to hurt you. You are also going to make some people very, very happy, and others are going to make you happy too.

There are days when you will not want to leave your bed, but you do. It is worth it. All those mornings getting up at the crack of dawn after a few hours sleep. It is worth it. All those late nights, working, in bars, reading books, dancing in the streets, they are all worth it. All those journal entries, day after day of rambling thoughts, they are all worth it. All those words left unsaid, they are all worth it.

I promise you, you will fall in love again. Many times. You will get your heart broken again, quite a few times, and you will also break a few hearts yourself. It may take time, but when the real thing hits you, it will hit you with such power that you will fall over. Love isn’t always all happiness and birds of paradise, but once you have it you will never let go. Never lose hope. Just continue to do what you always do, when life gets tough, hug those you have close to you, look after them, pick up the pieces and continue on your path.

There will be forks in the road, and there will be times when you get lost and go round in circles. There will be times when you turn back in your footsteps, backwards towards the last fork so you can take another direction. Some things just won’t work out, no matter how hard you try, and other things will just have a knack of falling into place without any effort at all.

I can’t say “don’t do that” or “watch out for that” because everything that you go through is part of learning to be yourself and how to deal with whatever life throws at you. Just know that whatever happens, it will all work out in the end, even though there are times when everything seems worthless and wrong. I promise you, it will all be OK in the end. You will turn out OK. Well, I am still working on that part now, but I suppose that is a continuous work in progress, right? I am more than OK.

I suppose that one day these current days will feel so far away and I will look at them in the same way, remembering life in New York City, pregnant with my second child while cuddling and kissing my first. Every moment full of beauty and joy. May we all aim to live and love a life full of everything we aspire to, the simple and the complicated, because in the end it is all worth it.