Several weeks have passed since I last wrote and I thought I would share with you the main reason for that. Some of you who have been following what I have been writing know that, as a complete technophobe and rather a luddite, setting up my blog has been a huge challenge. However, it is now really pleasing to see that there are quite a few readers and lots of visits to the blog.
I would like to increase the readership and plan to organise some more publicity including through Facebook. So, I have been trying, with mixed success, to create a form on the blog through which readers can subscribe and then be informed of new posts. Well, for the last couple of months this has defeated me as well as others whose help I have sought! I delayed writing my next blog in the hope that a form would be set up.
If you are reading this you will see that I have finally been successful and I hope you will subscribe.
Another reason is that I have been pondering whether or not to use the blog to generate some dialogue with those of you who comment on the site. Reading some of the thoughts about Mindfulness has made me think about my own Mindfulness journey so I thought I might share some of that.
I think I already mentioned that for some people there is an assumption that Mindfulness is all about meditation and the thought of meditating is intimidating and scary. After attending an 8-week course around 6 years ago, I started participating in a Mindfulness group. It became a critical part of maintaining my own emotional health and wellbeing and sustained me while I was caring for my mum. After my mum died, I found I could no longer participate in the group. Being alone with myself, which is what meditation feels like to me, became too painful. Others advised that it would be “good for me” but I could not get beyond the pain to experience the benefit they thought would be waiting for me. As a result, I am enormously careful about how I offer Mindfulness to anyone I work with. As Steve says, timing is all, and if the time is not right for a particular tool then so be it.
I have found that some of the “tools” of Mindfulness, my terminology not theirs, can be a really helpful way to dip a toe in the Mindfulness water. For some carers I have worked with, those tools have been sufficient, others have gone on to dive right in! My guiding principle is that if I can offer something that works for you and does no harm, then it is worth pursuing.
I plan to get back into my routine of writing every couple of weeks or so and next time will probably write a bit about resilience and/or follow up some comments from you, the readers.
Good to see you back. S