Caravans and parachutes

And so it was, I found myself letting go. On the bedroom floor of the spare room of the woman I met in the sauna.

She came round and had two breathing sessions with my son. Who, it turned out, was carrying such tension in his little body that after starting to let go himself, through the breathing exercises she is teaching him, he wanted to curl up and sleep all day. 

I chugged though some sun salutations in the kitchen while they were working together. ‘That’s not really going to do it for you’, she said. ‘I’d like to work with you as well.’

And thus, my journey into breathing and releasing in a whole new way, has started. Particularly into an area at the centre of my back which has always felt as though it’s harbouring something that needs shifting. ‘The back of the heart,’ she said. ‘The bit that’s isn’t always open and giving to others’. 

‘My tittage weighs a ton,’ I said. ‘It’s where my bra does up.’ 

She looked at me. ‘I want you to stop talking now, lie down, and do what you’re told,’ she replied. If she’d been a man I’d have been putty in her hands at that point.

Anyway. It felt good. I felt more relaxed than I have for a long time. Definitely releasing stuff. Apparently you can learnt to breathe in a way that has your diaphragm massage your heart. I’m going back for more. And as it happens we may do a skill swap as she wants me to help her with a writing/marketing thing. More serendipity. As I do, of course, have one eye on the 31 January when I am *supposed* to be returning to work. 

***

Before I decided to take this break, I happened to have a session with my work coach, in which I wanted to start thinking through my next steps, and what I wanted my immediate future to look like. I was coming to the end of my ‘Headship’ and didn’t want to return to Deputy. I’ve outgrown it. 

The ground I have covered with this woman - the ground we cover in every session - is incredible. As a regular self-doubter, she has really helped me get to grips with who I am, recognise what I have to offer, and actually articulate the skills and values I bring to the roles I take on, not just at work, but in all aspects of my life. 

It was in a session with her that I conceived of melting down various pieces of jewellery, including my parents’ wedding ring, and turning them into a talisman for my 50th birthday (a step in my journey of accepting all of who I am, and my life story). In another, I filled a metaphorical pencil case with the stuff I needed to help me feel prepared for a senior position I’d been recruited to. I’ve been really struck by how so much of being coached for leadership, especially as a woman, is about really understanding, owning, and learning to appreciate, who you are. So that you can be authentic. And enjoy it. Another time, I will write about the ramparts at the top of a tower I felt I had finally been allowed onto, in that senior position, and how it made me realise quite how much I value and therefore advocate for transparency in the workplace.

In this particular session, I really needed some prompts to help me think some specific things though. Start making some decisions about what to do next. She showed me some pictures. One was of a skydiver, just outside a plane. ‘God, no.’ I said. A picture had prompted what my tired brain could not express. Unusually for me, the last thing on earth I wanted was an Exciting Challenge. One decision made. 

She showed me some more images, which refined things a bit. And then a picture of a caravan. A simply-painted Romany gypsy-style caravan. My heart started to sing then and there. ‘Now you’re talking!’ I said. But why? I couldn’t say. I knew it was on a metaphorical and literal level that I wanted that caravan. My dad - who made things such fun and so exciting when we were kids - took us on holiday in a horse-drawn caravan on the Norfolk broads before the divorce. But I wasn’t harking back to that. Perhaps I was acknowledging a desire to have a tiny, womb-like space to make a den in. A place to hide away in for a while. Maybe it was the wheels that appealed to me: the symbol of journey, adventure and change.

I don’t know (yet), but that caravan has often entered my consciousness since that session; in fact writing about it is on my ‘creative list’. Alongside many other things, including the story I want to write that will link all the fragments of pottery I found on the beach at Lyme Regis last summer. Or was that the year before? Covid. The years are merging into one. I think maybe I want a space in which I can sit, unobserved and breathe. Call my own. 

***

Some weeks, and a fairly horrible attack of covid later, (made all the worse by the fact that I got it on holiday, and about as far north in the United Kingdom as you can go), and I had to make a decision about the work situation. I got some post-it’s out. Red for fears, green for questions and yellows for reasons why I needed to take a break. I ended up with one red: ‘that I end up unemployed and washed up’; two questions: ‘how much will it cost me?’, and ‘what terms will they agree to?’. Hundreds of yellows. On the first, I wrote: ‘Breathe.’

And so, as I say, here I am. Letting go. Learning to breathe. Taking time to do this reflective shit. Making some changes. Building my skylark. And, in the process, creating some ducking great flying thing of a caravan that I have yet to see the prototype of but which I know I am going to adventure in. My Phoenix will power it with her fire.