Ma Wa Gray

Ok it has definitely been more than 40 days since I started numbering my blog posts. This was no Lent feat. But this conscious numbering of blogs was a way for me to clock my progress. As I've said before, I am on a journey to try and find ways to manage my central sensitization and help my nervous system cope with the day to day challenges of over stimulation. Part of my therapy has just been to stop, shut off noise, and get my body and head to reconnect. It has been immeasurably helpful. Every morning, once my family have left for school, I have tried to do something mindful. Write a blog, reach out to someone with a prayer, breathe. Book marking times of predictive overstimulation with intentional stillness really does wonders for the nervous system.  Like I've said numerous times my view has been a huge part of grounding me. So has the bird song and the slow swelling of our garden with the spring rains. Things have regenerated, and sprouted and bloomed.  And thats what thi...

 Eva: 'Mom you are looking old. Is it because you're going through the ramapause?'

Eva and her cousin Benjamin are in a hockey team. They are the Mighty Cubs. They are 7. Eva has never played a game of hockey in her life.  My impression of her on a hockey pitch is a little ferret motoring around, stick held high in the air, her mind in a dimension that makes no reference to hockey. When I ask her about her contribution to the game she says, 'I just spend so much time thinking about what to do next. That I don't do anything.' I would concur.  The tournament that these small people are playing in has different age categories. Unfortunately the first category includes 7, 8 and 9 year olds. The difference between a 7 and a 9 year old on a hockey pitch is quite startling. I wasn't able to watch the Mighty Cubs in action last week but based on the very sweet and encouraging messages on the parents group afterwards that they 'tried their best' I suspect that our little team won character points, and not actual points.  Yesterday, on the side of the n...

 There's a popular meme going around saying that 'Nobody has embarrassed me more than myself when I posted statuses on my Facebook from 2009 - 2012.' I would like to counter that with, 'There is nobody that I recognize less than myself in my matric school magazine.' Cringe. That's literally all I can say. This weekend I had lunch with a school friend who has been doing a deep clean and came up with the dirt from high school. I haven't read my school magazine since I left school. Boy oh boy was it triggering. And again, God's timing is perfect. I have really been battling to process the behaviour of some of my matrics in their final days at school. Impulsive, selfish, entitled, irresponsible. And then this weekend I was reintroduced to Emily, circa 2001, and it has brought up so much because my frontal lobe was also short circuiting all over the place. And I was miserable.  My matric year was kak. I was freshly diagnosed with panic disorder, was taking he...

I have a friend who, for many years, lived in a beautiful flat on Durban beachfront. Most of the pictures she posted during the years she lived there were of her view. Sunrise, sunset, full moons, celebrations in the waves, beautiful days.  I'm not going to lie, they did get a bit long in the tooth.  But for her this view, and capturing it in pictures, must have given her stabilization. Must have grounded her and positioned her back into her natural environment.  And now I feel the same about my view. I could write about it every day. Specially on days like today where I feel that things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold. Days like these will come and go. But my view won't. It will continue to anchor me and remind me that God's natural world will always be the centralization that I will seek when all else feels flimsy. 

 He doesnt know it but one of my past matrics sent me a message completely out of the blue yesterday on a very auspicious date. Two years ago today, when he was in matric, this boy made some very bad choices. Choices that got him expelled. It was a deeply traumatic time for all involved.  He left in a dark cloud and I was very worried that that cloud would stay on him, infiltrate him and become him.  But a few of us never gave up on him. And I walked his final exam journey alongside him, if remotely. He went on to get an A for Drama and is now studying at one of the top theatre schools in the country.  Yesterday he sent me poster for the two productions he is currently rehearsing for under the direction of undoubtedly two of South Africa's most talented and renowned directors.  My boy even snuck me a little glimpse of a rehearsal. And he is doing magnificently.  And he doesnt know that yesterday, two years ago, his world looked very very different.  Th...

 Creatures and Critters fills a small plastic container with a multitude of tiny little black worms. For three days your enraptured daughter lovingly feeds them mulberry leaves. You go on holiday. The worms come along. The holiday delights completely distract your daughter. You feed the silkworms.  In a week the tiny black things grow 20 times their original size. Your realise Creatures and Critters did you a solid disservice. A head count is taken. Over 150 silkworms. They now eat breakfast, lunch and supper. Their living quarters consist of two massive plastic containers.  In your regular feeding sessions you will them to start spinning their cocoons. So does the lone exhausted mulberry tree at the bottom of your garden.  How often does something seem like a good idea, grow into something exponentially overwhelming and then generally gets abandoned by the bright spark who had the idea in the first place?