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“The extent to which you know your inner child is proportional to how well you know yourself.” Vig’s Trauma Theory
“Population growth is one of the most serious obstacles to world prosperity and sustainable development. ... Women's education is the single most important path to higher productivity, lower infant mortality and lower fertility." Gro Harlem Brundtland - The International Conference on Population and Development Cairo - 1994
Trauma, you now know, can be passed down from generations, but as far as you are aware, not normally through the application of a humble hairbrush. Perhaps something about the situation triggered discomfort from her childhood. You will never know.
"Vig! I’ve been on the plane finishing your book for the last 3 hours. Couldn’t put it down. I have a huge lump in my throat and I’ve been blinking back the tears as I read the last quarter of the book. I loved it!" _ Bonnie x
From our sofa in Athens, Ruby and I watched Grandad’s funeral mass, live-streamed from the near-empty Cathedral of the Assumption in Thurles. Grandad was well known and much loved, hundreds would have come… only 10 were allowed.
The fundamental elements for creating great scenes in memoir. Think of the first paragraph of your memoir as the opening scene of a movie or TV series. Every story, every movie, every book starts with a scene and after the first scene follows another, and another. Scene after scene after scene makes a chapter.
The end of writing marks the beginning of marketing in earnest. I’ve been looking forward to this part for so long. I get to be online and social and build websites and newscasts and design a book cover, and figure out how to publish and then sell the book. I love all this, especially the community and tech stuff.
Meet, Laura Davis, author of the remarkable memoir; ❝The Burning Light of Two Stars.❞
I’m living in a turbulent time right now.
Aren’t we all you might say and if you do, then you are right and I hope this life lesson of mine, might help a little to relieve your stress and anxiety.
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I’m trying, I’m really trying to get on with revision, transcribing voice notes and rewriting, while the drilling continues upstairs. our Athens building block is incredibly noisy with constant building works ongoing. I’ve my AirPods in at high volume streaming Smooth Jazz on Spotify.
I don’t think I can do it . . . I’m good at anything that requires connecting to others, #MyMenopausalMiddle with Moira’s Wealthy Minders for instance. But writing is a long, slow, solitary journey.
This might be just another displacement activity, but right now I need to be softly held somehow, that’s why I’m asking:
I’m eating chocolate and feel lazy and fat, her message said, I hope you feel better than me.
Nop, I’m not doing any better than you, I wrote back. . . . Swap chocolate for ouzo (while in Greece) and we’re in the same canoe.
(more…)
It’s re-write time and from the muddy pool of shitty drafts, a small jewel appears – at least I think it’s a jewel. I rinse it, I dry it and polished it down to the bone.
What’s left is a mere smidgen of a vignette, but it gives me hope. – A different kind of hope from what I had back then, – I hope. . .
He woke me in the middle of the night. “You have to help me now Vigdis,” I remember his stuttered whisper. His silhouette looked pitiful in the arched opening he’d cut – between my two basement rooms – years earlier. His figure crooked and unstable against the light falling in behind him.
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(more…)Since last week’s blog I’ve pondered the question of wether I can truly let go of knowing, of control, of my need to be right, even if it’s just some of the time.
I adapted this from Dr Shefali, who says ‘Connect before you Correct’ as a parent. I love that woman and I’m so grateful for how her work in the world and how it gives me a chance at becoming a better mother.
To Connect before I React is still a lesson I’m learning.
It’s not just about how I parent but how I’m a wife, a friend, a daughter and sister, and most of all how I talk to myself. To be honest I thought I’d got it by now but hey, there’s more for me to learn on this.
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Don’t be ok
when it’s not ok
Lean into the pain in your heart
when it breaks
for the smallest things;
a mum who says ‘wait’ when you need her ‘now’
a friend who says ‘no’ when you need a ‘Hell Yeah!’
when you feel belittled, and not invited
when you feel not good enough, or out of place
not heard, not seen
not valued
In 1910 Wallace D. Wattles wrote;
“The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two.”
I wonder if Mr Wattles foresaw the big business charity have become? And what did he mean by inspiration?
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I didn’t realise revising my memoir would be this hard or take this long, but now I see what I’m here to learn.
As I reread one of the though chapters I wondered, was it the abuse, or that fear we all feel when something unacceptable and wrong happens to us at an age before we have the words to describe and share our experience with anyone, that is the center of my story? I’m not taking away from the pain I felt at the time, I see that its real, nor do I dispute the fact that what happened to me was wrong on so many levels, it’s the core of what we have come to know as #metoo.
As children, we love our parents even when they fail us. As we grow into adulthood and recognise their shortcomings, even neglect, love can give way to anger, frustration and hurt over how they failed to protect and comfort us. How they scoffed at our pleads and told us to get on with it – when a comforting hug was all we needed – or when they laughed when we shared our tender teenage feelings. They did not see me for who I was and so started my journey of becoming someone I hoped they could accept. On that journey, I sailed further and further away from my true self. It’s choppy water full of pain as I failed, again and again, at getting the acceptance I craved.
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In 2013 a study by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) found that over 95% of the world’s population has health problems. Lower back pain and major depression ranked among the top ten greatest contributors to disability, causing more health loss than diabetes, chronic lung disease, and asthma combined.
This is a bleak picture, one where illness is more normal than wellness. I’m curious if statistics like these are part of the cause of what, to me, looks like a dis-ease pandemic.
My instinct tells me to focus on solutions and with the 69th World Health Day on April 7, what better time to raise the questions;
What’s the Pain and Where’s the Gain?
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On this day (April 9) seventeen years ago, the most nurturing and positively influential woman, to me, took her last breath and left this life.
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I always thought there where two kinds of people – those with and those (like me) without confidence. Those WITH confidence seemed more genuine.
I never thought confident/genuine people liked me, maybe it was because I ‘felt’ fake. I was definitely not my self – I didn’t know how. I hadn’t even heard the word authentic.
Do you recognise the ‘feeling’ when you ‘think’ someone doesn’t like you?
Here are a few questions – to myself – I’ve been pondering.
Apparently, most new year resolutions have fallen by the wayside by February, so what can March offer us? Is it better to sit back and wait for another year before making a new resolution, a new commitment to move closer to the life we really want? How about making a new resolution just for March?
If you’re still going strong with your commitment for the year, you might know that achieving goals is healthy for your brain. Why is that?
Well, you see it comes down programming our brain neutrons. When we do something daily (like mindfully washing our hands) or once a week (like a class) – every time we achieve the goal our wonderful brain get an injection of dopamine, also known as ‘The Happy Hormone.’
Dopamine instantly gives us a happy feeling in our bodies, mine is a bit like butterflies in my belly or a tingling all over. A feeling of JOY, of achievement, of having done something great.
How brain research helped me be a better parent to my teenage daughter.
This week I had the great fortune to attend a keynote talk in the CAC Theatre by clinical psychologist Dr. David Gleason. In his talk entitled ‘Getting in sync with the teenage brain’ Dr. Gleason drove home the effects performance pressure can have on our adolescent kids. Far from being a wishy-washy psychology speech about taming teenage behavior, Dr. Gleason delivered an engaging introduction to neuroscience and brain development, compassionately told through real-life stories about disorders, self-harm, and suicide amongst teenagers. The audience was stunned as we waited for more.
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Whenever I struggle to keep up with my plans I ask myself; – have I broken down the steps into small enough chunks?’
I’ve been writing this book for more than a year and only now do I start to see all the pieces come together, – well, – sort off. Learning to dissect a big goal – like writing to publish a book, have thought me to break my plans into minute – sometimes 10 minute – sessions. It’s a journey that has taken much longer than I thought it would, and it’s been a lot tougher than I ever believed it could be.
There is nothing quite so luscious as getting lost in the FLOW, where you forget that you haven’t washed your hair in 3 days and you have a daughter in school, who forgot her lunch money and sent you an SOS email, which you forget to check, and Facebook and Instagram is as far from your mind as the room you’re in, right now, lost in the flow.
There is nothing quite so sumptuous than to feel the tips of my fingers tapping a dance on the smooth Apple keys, notes to a melody uncoiling stories on the page, to the tunes of smooth jazz coming from afar.
There’s nothing quite so delicious as the writer’s flow.
I light a candle, defusing healing incense into the space around me, and settle with my writing. It feels like I’ve been gone forever. I’ve been busy, things needed doing. A Nile Holiday, a video course, parties to go to, friends to meet, a blog to write, tenant turnover in Ireland, and figuring out (baby steps) how to best manage my fathers’ estate in Norway.
With the big projects and jobs done, for now, I find myself back writing my book. (more…)
It’s been 12 years since the last time we went on holidays, just the two of us, without the Awesome Kid.
We tingle with excitement walking through the school gate at 9 on Sunday morning. It’s the first time since Ruby started Middle School I’ve been let walk her onto campus, and today I get to follow her all the way to her classroom, which is abuzz with even more excitement. I hand her passport to Andy, her advisor, and nearly forget to hug her goodbye, and have a great PRIME Trip before I bounce back to the car. She will be in Luxor with her grade level for five days without any electronics and we’re strongly advised against calling her.
Dear Ones,
[SEPTEMBER 2018] You may know, my father, The Captain, died in July and I went to Norway for his . . . . . . . – no, I didn’t just go for the funeral or to bury him, I went to find him or to find something I’ve lost. And I did. I write about it in Speak #TRUTH Lies.
‘The Captain’s Island,’ stands out as a good contender for the first chapter of the book. It starts as I arrive at his island on the ferry. My brother, Ruby and I had been driving all day from Ålesund. It was hot and the sea breeze felt cooling.
I hadn’t seen him in 14 years, which was the last time I visited Atløy, the island where he lived for 17 years.
[UPDATE AUGUST 2023] And now, is published and you can buy a copy right here.
I’m reading ‘Some Rain Must Fall’ by my fellow countryman and memoirist Karl Ove Knugsgaard at the moment.
It starts with his student year at the Writing Academy in Bergen. The same year I studied Graphic Design in Stavanger. This is the 5th book and his writing, which dazzled me from the start, hugely improves with each book. I feel like I’m growing as a writer with him. I started with the first book in his ‘My Struggle’ series, which I don’t necessarily think have to be read in chronological order. I couldn’t get book 3 but didn’t feel I had missed anything when I read book 4, which was the book I read on The Captain’s Island.
Dear Ones,
This is one of those strange times in my life, when all I can do is lean into love and be ok with all the questions. My Dad was not a good father, still he was the father I had, he was my only father.
Some believe we pick our parents so they can teach us some of the big lessons we are meant to learn in life. In that respect, he was a ‘great teacher.’ Accepting his view of the world without judgment and without having to agree with him is where I’m at today.
Today feels like starting all over agin.
The surge of fear swells up from my gut like burning indigestion. Halting my breath as if I’m reacting to a tiger about to eat me alive. Striking at my hip and shoulder where I carry my emotions like numb pain.
At first, fear so vivid, I can see the tiger, before I remember to breathe.
Last weekend, having lunch, I saw a good mum feeding her 10 year old daughter. It wasn’t a very healthy lunch and the daughter could do with healthy. I judged her, and I don’t even know her WHY.
A few days ago I went on a field trip with Ruby’s school. The day was extra hot and dry with the sun beating down on us in the desert landscape of Waadi Digla. I was in the back troop as we set out on a big hike. Climbing the steep hill, sand and rocks coursed down the hillside, under our trainers.
My god, what am I like?
So yesterday I wrote about showing up on time for our Write-In’s and today I turn up late for Ruby’s reading celebration?
– What the heck, like? I hate it when I find my own ‘behaviour’ unacceptable.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ I know, but . . .
It’s one of those #metoo stories I never told.
Buried in my subconscious, it first raise it’s ugly head, when in my teens, my boyfriend and I played at having sex.
When authors talk about it taking a year, or more, to write a book, they’re not wrong, For it’s stories like these that slows us down.
I know that every time I have a strong emotion around something, especially the kind of resistance I felt against the Shitty First Draft lesson – there’s something juicy in it for me to learn.
I had to give this lesson a lot of time to percolate in my mind before I arrived at my own truth.
I don’t want to write a memoir. It’s too raw and scary. Too ‘laying it all on the line,’ too vulnerable. I’m afraid I won’t find the #TRUTH, I’m afraid my story will be lopsided, with only my point of view. For whatever happened to me, happened because of something else that happened to someone else.
And I don’t know their truth, for if there is one thing I’m learning from writing my memoir, it is that the TRUTH is elusive, it changes and morphs into different forms the closer I get to it.
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Discover something about me. From London, Bangkok, Cairo and Athens to Castleconnell, a village in Co Limerick, my journey spans successful ventures in photography, publishing a memoir, and helping women build thriving personal brands.
