On necessary heartbreak

"You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens."

I’ve never met a Rumi line I didn’t love, and this sentence is one of my absolute favourites. It reminds me of a quote I read last year by the peerless Cheryl Strayed. Someone had written a letter to her ‘Dear Sugar’ advice column (BTW if you’re not familiar with the Dear Sugar series, you are truly missing out) asking what advice she would give to her twentysomething self.
Her characteristically eloquent response included reference to her decision to divorce her husband in her mid-twenties. She had still loved him, but even though she could not say why, she knew she didn’t belong in the relationship anymore. Cheryl closed with this quote, which I have loved ever since and never forgotten: “Be brave enough to break your own heart.”

When I first read this, it leaped off the page and dug its steely fingers around my own silently shattering heart. You know that feeling, I know you do. Something resonates with you so strongly you’re sure it was written just for you, just for that moment. It is the truest thing of all the true things that have ever been before. At the time I was in the process of completely uprooting my life in New Zealand and moving to Australia for no good reason other than the fact that I could not stay. And no matter how many times people asked me why I was leaving, I could not produce a better answer than “I need a change” – as if this were sufficient to justify the wrench of leaving all the people I loved. If you’re going to leave behind the people who define you, bolster you and imbue your life with so much meaning, you’d want to have a very good reason. I didn’t. Staying meant stagnation, but leaving meant losing so much. I knew ultimately that I would gain in the long run, but in that moment, surrounded by boxes, Customs forms and piles of the objects that had amounted to my life in Auckland, I could only see the losses.

You must be strong enough to break your own heart. Friends, I held these words to my chest and I repeated them at 2am when fear and despair kept me from sleep. I uttered them when I found myself shaking in the toilets at work and in the evenings when I ran out of tissues to collect my tears. These words reminded me that I had to do the thing I did not want to do – even though it made no sense - and proffered the dimmest promise of finding hope on the other side.

We do not grow when we stay stuck, we grow when we take risks and follow our instincts, even when common sense and peer pressure do not support us in those actions. I broke my own heart and I found – as I had suspected it would – that the being strong made me even stronger. It was the right thing and the best thing to do, and it was worth all the tears and all the despair.

My affection for Cheryl’s prose is matched only by my adoration of Rumi, and I firmly believe there is Rumi line for every occasion. On the subject of necessary heartbreak, he offers this: “The wound is the place where the light enters.”

And where light enters, growth happens.

(That last sentence is mine, but you can use it.)

Have you ever broken your own heart? I’d like to give you a high-five. And a hug. Because that is an act of bravado, not to mention self-love. Email me your story here.

Very superstitious, writing's on the wall

Yesterday I dropped a knife when I was doing the dishes, and it reminded me how a girl I used to be friends with years ago was so uber superstitious she would refuse to pick up a knife from the floor. (Apparently this is bad luck; who knew?!) She was very dismissive of religion on the grounds that there is no proof of a higher power, yet she regarded old wives’ tales with a kind of paranoid reverence (#irony). Now, while I respect everybody’s right to believe in what they want to believe in – so long as they are not hurting other people, nor shoving their faith down other people’s throats, of course – when it comes to superstitions, I’m baffled.

It’s madness, if you think about it, that people can act, even on a subconscious level, according to such random rules: if I don’t walk under a ladder, nothing bad will happen to me. If I wait until I’m outside before I put up my umbrella, I will be safe from misfortune. If I see a black cat but walk around it so that it does not cross my path, I’ll have a great day.

And even more bizarrely: if two bad things happen to me in a row, something else bad is going to happen, because bad luck happens in threes. What this means: therefore I accept my fate to have a shitty time and I will sit around and expect that result, and feel a twisted sort of vindication when it does, even though I’m really pissed off about said misfortune. Which inevitably means something bad will happen, because they’re constantly affirming that result to the universe so that’s what they attract. Ridic!

This reminds me of Harry Potter (to be fair, EVERYTHING reminds me of Harry Potter), when our hero pretends to give Ron the felix felicis “lucky” potion before a major game of quidditch. The potion works because Ron believes himself to be lucky, and that mindset is what attracts his good fortune, resulting in him delivering a solid performance on the pitch. Sort of the placebo effect, if you like. 

Although I don’t go out of my way to walk under ladders I certainly don’t bother to avoid them. I wouldn’t despair over a broken mirror and I have no fear of the number 13.

About a year ago I interviewed a psychologist about superstitions for a magazine article (a very random story, that one) and he said that the reason people embrace these rules, even though they know they’re silly, is a desire to have some control over the uncontrollable.

Holding on to superstitious beliefs also helps alleviate people’s anxiety over the unknown. After all, we live in an uncertain world . Sometimes, he told me, a false sense of certainty is more comforting than none at all. This makes sense. Except, it also doesn’t.

People, we don’t have a lot of control over what life throws at us, but we do always have the power to choose our response. In short: attitude is our superpower. And that is what ultimately attracts better fortune into our world.

In 1944 psychiatrist Victor Frankl was sent to a concentration camp, where his wife and parents died. It was a life of abject misery, every day a fight for survival amid unimaginable suffering. And yet, as his exalted book Man’s Search for Meaning details, he dedicated his days to finding happiness in the most bleak of circumstances. He wrote: “The last of one’s freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

So, tell me again how you think breaking a mirror means your life is doomed?

Yes, I know it’s not a fair comparison, but my point stands. The course of your life is not governed by random events that, centuries ago, some old wives connected with misfortune. Bad things will happen to you, but they have f**k-all to do with dropped knives. You will be fine, no matter what happens, as long as you set your attitude. Pick up the knife. Be positive. Be resilient. Believe in hope. You hold all the cards.

Facing up to the reality of Facebook (LIKE!)

I tried to stay off social media for a week; I lasted three days. In the end what tipped me over the edge was not boredom, FOMO or loneliness but sheer inconvenience – I needed to contact someone and found I had no means of contact without Facebook Messenger. Once I’d logged in to do that, the whole experiment seemed redundant.

If I wanted to demonise Facebook, I wouldn’t have to look far for fodder. It’s distracting! It makes you feel crap about yourself! It turns some people into narcissists! None of these things is untrue, of course, but there’s a common denominator… the internet, obviously, but more significantly – the user. 

That’s partly why I wanted to take a break from social media, which I figured would be a great tool for measuring my own dependency – something I’d become concerned about on a recent weekend away from reliable internet access, when I felt a mild form of social-media separation anxiety (more about that experience in this post).

But my feeling at the end of my abandoned experiment is not disappointment over some failing of willpower on my part but a peaceful acceptance of the fact that this insidious time-vampire is now so entrenched it’s simply not practical to be without it. I now know that I AM dependent on Facebook, but not in an unhealthy way. Facebook doesn’t make me feel unfit, lonely or inadequate, it allows me to feel more tuned into my relationships – a pretty essential part of the human experience. Facebook isn’t doing anything more than my mobile phone and email were doing for me 10 years ago (ie keeping me connected with those I care about). Yes, of course it would be better if I went to see those people face to face, but in so many instances, that just isn’t practical. For all the moments in between, we have Facebook.

I read a few medical journals (this is partly due to my job as a health writer, but also because I'm a geek) and it feels like there’s no shortage of science-based reports painting Facebook in a negative light. Like the University of Michigan research revealing this site can reduce users’ sense of wellbeing and life satisfaction. The Canadian study which concluded Facebook can increase feelings of jealousy within romantic relationships. Or the University of Missouri-Columbia study which found that people who use Facebook for “surveillance” are more prone to depression (they don’t call it Stalkbook for nothing!). 

But none of that matters to me. As long as I keep my Facebook use in check – no logging in when I’m bored (pick up a book!), no logging in when I’m having convos with real-life people, no logging in when I’m at work or completing another task – I feel like I’m doing it right.

NOTE: Yes I am aware of the irony of writing about Facebook on a post which I will go ahead and promote on my Facebook page. Thanks for pointing that out. I’m fine with it. 

Dubious Valentine's Day card.

Hello? Yes, I have a problem. Thank you, bye

I had to spend most of my weekend without internet or mobile access, and it was HORRIBLE. This is not the most significant event of my weekend – it was a beautiful getaway with friends to a country house about two hours north of Sydney, in the Hunter Valley wine region – but this struggle with switching off is what I want to talk about here.

At first I welcomed the opportunity to distance myself from the outside world and settle into the stillness. That lasted about half an hour. The only thing that settled was a feeling of restlessness into my bones. At the heart of it: fear of missing out (I think the kids call this FOMO), fear of boredom and fear of being alone with my thoughts, in case I would be confronted by something I didn’t want to deal with. I suspect this latter reason is at play in many modern-life distractions: everything from excessive food and alcohol intake to dead-end relationships.  

Luckily – or unluckily, depending on your perspective – someone mentioned they’d received a good signal in the driveway. Rejoice! From here I was able to check in on the blog, do my daily angel card posts (which appear on the home page, and on my Instagram @onegroundedangel). You can probably guess what happened. Once I had taken care of those tasks I found myself checking Facebook, Twitter, the weather, the cricket score (I don’t even like cricket!), the weather (yes, again), various news sites, my five email accounts… No longer was I relaxing, enjoying my friends’ company and breathing in the fresh country air, I was engaging with people and situations elsewhere. Not being present. Not being with my friends. Not being here, in this moment, the only moment that is real. What a waste.

By distancing myself from the group (no one else seemed to have a problem staying away from the internet) and standing very still (internet coverage was patchy) on a gravel driveway by myself, what I was essentially saying was that I care more about the lives of people in other cities, other countries – most of whom I don’t actually know – than I do about the people who had been sitting next to me, spending time with me in the here and now.  

Recently researchers at the University of Missouri in the US identified a trend called iPhone separation anxiety. Although not a clinically recognised disorder, this term does describe what appears to be a growing problem – our inability, or reluctance, to switch off. You see it in restaurants when couples don’t even talk to each other – they’re too busy on their phones. In this study, participants reported anxiety and poor cognitive functioning when separated from their iPhones.

This, coupled with the events of the weekend, have spurred me to do a study of my own. Starting from tonight, I’m switching off all social media for a week. I’ve done this before, and really felt the benefits, so I’m confident I can follow through. I’ll still log in to do my daily angel card reading and will update the blog, but that’s it. It’s time to remind myself that my life exists in the here and now, and not on a tiny screen.

God help me. 

The beautiful spot where I spent my weekend.

A big year

How are you going with those New Year Resolutions? Oh. Yeah, those.

If you're feeling like 2015 is racing away from you already, now could be a good time to revisit your goals for the year and get them back on track. It's going to be a powerful year, so it's important to focus on exactly what you want.

Regression therapy specialist and numerology guru Toni Ashton has kindly given me permission to reproduce part of a piece she wrote explaining why 2015 is such an important year.


If you'd like to read the rest of the story - and I'd highly recommend you do - click on the link at the bottom.

2015 is well and truly here and what a fast paced, action filled year we are in for. 

2015 is a Universal Year 8 globally (2+0+1+5=8) The energy of the number 8 relates to abundance, balance, empowerment, ethics, responsibility, values, power, drive, ambition, determination and father energy.

2014 saw many people delve into who they truly are at their core, to free themselves of limiting beliefs and be true to themselves and 2015 will continue with this theme on a larger scale.

More and more people will have light bulb moments, encounters or challenges come in to help awaken them to their true potential and search for answers within themselves for personal growth, balance, development and empowerment.  The number 8 demands balance and with the polarities many people live with, this energy will give people the opportunity to create balance and order in your life where there is imbalance.  This could relate to any number of things such as too much thinking vs not enough feeling, anxiety vs trust, too much work vs not enough play, too much focus on material wealth, status and gain as opposed to compassion and humanity, too much giving vs not enough receiving, being rigid vs being flexible, disempowering vs empowering, authoritarian vs equal etc.  The more we resist the changes and continue with the imbalance, the harder our challenges and life will become.  

This is a time to overcome pain, shame, defeat, struggles and obstacles. It’s a time to open up, dismantle the armour, let go of the old, bring in the new, have confidence to go with the flow and embrace the changes to bring order and balance back into our lives. Love and happiness are two simple things yet so hard for many to achieve. We can’t find this in anyone else.  We have to find it within ourselves first and everything then falls into place. This year will see people finding this within themselves and creating life changing shifts and outcomes. 

To read the rest of the article, click here.