How our childhood shapes us...

So this is the view I woke up to everyday of my childhood!  Utterly stunning isn't it!  Our home was a 40 acre smallholding in the Peak District where, over the years, we were lucky enough to keep a selection of pigs, cows, sheep, horses, turkeys, goats alongside the odd dog, cat, rabbit, guinea pig & hamster!  My Dad worked in London and was away most of the week and my Mum ferried us kids around, looked after the animals & tried to keep 3 unruly kids in some type of order.  But what has this got to do with my life now?  Turns out pretty much EVERYTHING!!!

I am currently working with an incredible therapist who has set me the challenge of looking back over my life & asking myself some key questions.  The point is to notice any themes that come up, differing family values, stories or attachments that shaped my beliefs & behaviour as well as the potential source (or sources) of dissonance, trauma, pain as well as joy!  We are working primarily with story & myth, unearthing a version of me before the layers of learned behaviours calcified around me. 

​I have never worked with myth, certainly not in a therapeutic sense, however, I am a big fan of Sharon Blackie's work and have recently devoured her new book Hagitude.  But it is her book 'If Women Rose Rooted' that I tend to recommend most.  Stories of wild women, aged crones and selkies take me to a totally different realm in my whole being & modern life seems to slip away.  It inspires me to do the deep work, to get in touch with the wild inside me & ultimately to become more impactful within my world and the world!  In Sharon Blackie's words; 

“To change the world, we women need first to change ourselves — and then we need to change the stories we tell about who we are."

Being brought up on the moors certainly shaped my way of being and I look back and see the wildness that surrounded me and was within me.  I am looking forward to some shape shifting as a result of reconnecting with her!!  In the meantime here are some of the lighter reflections I have had since I started out on this journey back in time:

Initially I asked myself; What gifts did being brought up in this environment give to me?

• It gave me a love & need for freedom & independence.  As a young kid of about 4 I would walk behind my older siblings, who were on their thelwell type ponies, up onto the moors above the house & they would hide me in the bracken whilst they went for a ride. I was perfectly happy & they grudgingly collected me when they’d finished a couple of hours later!
•  It also gave me a good grounding in responsibility & a hardy work ethic. Living with the menagerie that we did, we all had to muck in.  5am starts were the norm and this has stayed with me ever since. 
•  It also gave me a full appreciation of where our food comes from... we had a massive veggie garden that was especially productive during the oil crisis in the 70's.   I've been a vegetarian since the age of 13 having come to the realisation that I couldn’t disassociate the animal in the field from the meat on my plate... Mum cutting the pigs up on the kitchen table didn’t help, nor did the story of one of our pigs falling out of the horse box on the way to market & running all the way home!!!
•  Living on the moors gave me an absolute love & appreciation of the natural world & it’s rawness. It feels like every winter we had 6 foot drifts that stopped us being able to get cars up the mile long drive. We used to park the cars in the village down in the valley & walk up. This meant we sledged down again in the morning in our school uniforms, often seeing evidence of where Dad had crashed into the bushes at 5.30am whilst sledging down in his suit & with his briefcase off to work!
•  It was also FUN & it gave me the ability to see joy in everything! Living in quite an isolated spot meant that we became adept at making our own fun.  My brother kicking a rugby ball over the house & me running round to get it was my idea of heaven!!  We made our own go-carts, tried to teach one of the ponies to pull a sledge (hugely unsuccessfully I might add) & spent hours on end watching the frogs & tadpoles in the water troughs!

There is obviously much more you could do with these answers however recognising the strengths, inner qualities & values that reverberate through your life can be a great exercise in gratitude.  Here are some more questions that could be useful when looking back: 

• What can I learn from my younger self? 
• What were the family values I was brought up around (look at both parents/carers & their own family values)
• What made my heart sing or sink?
• What were the important thresholds or events and how did you deal with them?

Thank you for indulging me in reading my story - I look forward to maybe hearing yours one day!

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