Stories As Medicine

STRANGE LITTLE GIRL

A funny little girl 
split from the start
Shy to her core 
yet vast fierce heart

We all have within us many stories, stories that are true, stories that were ONCE true but now we only cling to out of sentiment or because we haven't yet realised they are ripe for updating. I LOVE my stories, and I see how some of them stop being helpful unless, with presence and choice, I re-scribe them from the perspective of Medicine. So what follows is part of a story which has been claimed and crafted in order to support the remembrance of Wholeness and the power to Love. It is offered to you to inspire your own crafting of Medicine and it begins "Once upon a time there was a strange little girl..."

I was very much loved by my family, but we weren’t a family who naturally complemented each other. The primary affectionate messages given to me were in the style of “You’re a funny thing” and “You’re a strange little girl but we love you”. This internalised by a child can come out as “I’m ugly and weird” (the absence of comments about my being pretty or beautiful were noted by my seven year old self and onwards). It is quite understandable then that the natural shyness would deepen into something excruciating, and the lack of self-esteem create yet more social awkwardness and introversion. There was fundamental sense of being tolerated rather than accepted and I experienced myself as a lost soul desperately yearning to find a safe place to land. In the dark of night I would fervently pray to God and the stars to take me home, my being on this planet was clearly a mistake.

At home I was a tanty-pants, back-chatter and risk-taking tom-boy. Give this spindly limbed grubby faced ragamuffin a dare and it was as good as done. At school I faded into the background, humiliated by a teacher at the tender age of 6 then submitted to the torment of bullying peers from that moment for the next 5yrs. School was my hell. I couldn’t choose not to attend so I had to survive and did so by keeping myself to myself and living in my own curious world of fantasy. Of course this infuriated the teachers further and “day-dreamer” “lazy” “could do better” were regular scribbles on the school reports.

Flash forward to my late thirties (zooming through mucho experience and “opportunities for growth”) and it was “discovered” that I could proudly claim the labels dyspraxia, ADD and though I didn’t take the test, it was suggested by a friend who did assessments that a test would place me on the autistic spectrum. I also realised for the first time that I had been living with the symptoms of anxiety since those early years. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t wake with a flush of adrenalin pumping my heart out of my chest and the sense of dread running like a cold river through my veins. I just presumed this was natures alarm clock and that we all experienced it… until the first morning that I didn’t. My muscles and joints have given me pain from those childhood days too, and again I imagined this was the way it was for everybody.

I pushed the labels and explanations away to begin with, I wanted to simply “be” who I am without considering any of it a problem. Then I started reading tentatively around the subject of Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADD, Aspergers and Autism, largely to help my daughter find answers around her own challenges. I discovered links between these “developmental disorders” and chronic pain, anxiety and their loyal companion, exhaustion. I also discovered that this new found information, far from making me feel dis-empowered, actually gave me an enormous sense of relief. I gained a level of understanding that allowed me to turn a compassionate heart towards myself. The inner dialogue that had ran for so many years of being a failure at life, of being lazy, an underachiever, and a social misfit, stopped almost overnight. ​

I shared the news of my new labels and the little quirks that come with them with loved ones as if it was the most exciting new discovery EVER! And many of them simply stated, “yes, we knew this about you”.

Oh!

​My long time friends said things like  "I’ve always known you as the most illogical and quaintly weird person I’ve yet to meet, but I’ve never considered you a failure, you inspire me”; and “you're a quiet eccentric, always thinking outside of the box and bringing gold from the dark places that others are afraid to venture into”.

And so I took to considering how my story and my ways of being, are actually gifts. 

A little note before I go further… my experience is just that, my experience, and my choice in how I interpret and use it is mine too. As I share my interpretations let it not be misunderstood as a “this is how it is or should be” message for anyone else; and especially, please don’t misinterpret what I share as a statement that all people with developmental disorders, disabilities or illnesses ought to apply the same filters as I use to their situation. We are all on our unique journey and that journey and each person deserves ultimate respect…

​A FEW OF THE WAYS BY WHICH I LOVE MYSELF 
​EXACTLY AS I AM…

Exclusion - Being excluded by my peers at an early age was incredibly painful and confusing, I just couldn’t seem to find a way to develop friendships. In my adult years this has created within me a passion for inclusivity and a compassion for anyone who feels marginalised. This doesn’t mean I am now suddenly a social butterfly or find it easy to integrate into a group, I still have awkward moments a plenty. I will however step out of my comfort zone to aid others when appropriate.

Another happy side-effect is that I am very content in my own company. I don’t think twice about taking myself on dates to the pictures, for a meal, to a gig, a workshop, retreat etc. If I have a desire to do something I don’t wait until someone is able to do it with me, though I DO enjoy sharing these experiences with others too. I have a small number friends but those friendships run deep, all of them.

Day-Dreaming - it is NOT a negative, I have gone so far as to make it a practice. Free flowing day-dreaming powers up my imagination for use in creative endeavours; structured day-dreaming (i.e. choosing a specific theme) becomes a contemplative practice which is a spiritual art form. Regular stimulation and indulgence in this way forms the basis of the Medicine I carry as a Shamanic practitioner, it helps me to find the words, visions and imagery to support others gaining a deeper understanding - it underpins such methods as Soul Retrieval and Journeying and allows me to access other dimensions by entering a light trance with ease.

Lack of Logic - I can’t see the sequential flow of events or the easiest ways to “do” things (as my oft exasperated father would point out - “you never do things the easy way do you”). Well no I don’t… however, I find many many different ways of doing the same thing, each time learning something new. This means I develop a broader perspective and can hold space for multiple points of view. In my illogical twisty-turny journey, never moving in an A to B to C direction but more from B to A to C to Q kind of way, I experience things from all angles so that when I do finally get the gist of something, I truly “know” it.

Lazy - Occasionally I still experience overwhelm and minor symptoms of anxiety… I now know that this indicates that I need to immerse myself in a state of non-doing for a while or at least drop a few projects and simplify my life. It amuses me (and also makes perfect sense) that a learnt strategy to cope with anxiety also forms the central tenets of most spiritual paths - do less, be, simplify.  One of the expressions of dyspraxia is the inability to attend to simple tasks such as household chores, or use will-power/discipline to force oneself to take action - many people with dyspraxia are labelled as lazy which can lead one to feel ashamed or guilty. Having more understanding means I can now go easy on myself and use strategies to support myself, or ask for help from those around me. I can discern the difference between the ‘overwhelm indicator’ prompting me to take time out, and the paralysis of dyspraxia which just needs a little bit of support to allow the flow to continue. Understanding this about me enables me to understand the needs of others and how unique we and our needs are.

ADD style Hyper-focus - I get a lot done in a short space of time then go back to non-doing or rest. Now that I know how my productivity functions, wham-bam-whizz-woo-done, I can surrender when the motivation and drive bottoms out and not a thing is happening. I trust so deeply in this flow even though it runs counter to any 9am-5pm five days a week social norm (or for some these days, 12hr work days throughout most of the week), that I can now see the insanity of such social norms and the amount of stress it causes people. My work is predominantly about helping people find their own unique rhythm by calling them home to the centre of their Self so they can overcome the stresses, strains and trauma that living an unnatural and burdened life creates.

I’m sure if I reflected a little longer that the list could go on quite a bit more but I’m feeling the “end point” approaching as a tension begins to rise in my body. So to surmise, I do look at all that I experienced as a child, the messy adult relationships I encountered, and the challenges (of developmental disorders, anxiety, pain, exhaustion) as being fundamental to the deepening of my relationship with spirituality, and the development of all of the skills that I now use in my work as a teacher, guide, body-worker and healer. My struggles to land as an embodied soul created the drive to study buddhism, yoga, theosophy, cosmology and many other esoteric and occult teachings and this in itself has introduced me to some fascinating people and rich life experiences. I have been better able to support my daughter having already lived through some of the difficulties she had during her childhood years, and any relationship I develop holds potential to be incredibly rich and deep as my ways of being automatically filters out those who can’t cope with me.

And so this part of my story ends quite simply, with a declaration...

I am Amanda, within me lives a strange little girl and spindly-limbed, grubby-faced ragamuffin. 
OH HOW I LOVE THEM BOTH SO!