Who wants to read the newspaper?

It's a matter of great courage to begin your day with the newspaper. You never know what gets to you; the horror stories of crimes against women or the victimisation of children who are barely out of infancy. It sets me thinking about the nature of humans - capable of so much violence and also of so much good. 

Even before a child is born, there is so much riding on his/her birth - is it a first born? a middle child? a girl? a boy? did they parents really want this child? or was it an accident? how difficult was the mother's pregnancy? And so on. By the time a child comes into this world, he/she has already so much meaning surrounding it. Once born, the child's environment continually influences her and how she reacts to this depends a lot on her genetic make up as well. 

What amazes me is that, despite all this, despite childhood's that are out of our control or incidents out of our control or environments that are out of our control, we, at every second of our lives, have the potential to turn things around on their heads. 

It might be a moment where you decide to get out of a bad relationship, or a moment where you decide to move out of a house that no longer makes you happy, or maybe you decide to let go of that grudge you were holding on to so tenaciously and let it go forever. It might also be a moment when you choose violence over peace or death over life. 

But every second of life has a potential; infinite potential. Whether you choose to act on it or not is immaterial, but the fact is, we have countless moments to do things differently. It might not be easy, but with help, the right kind of help, anything is possible. And that's what amazes me the most - its like living a million lifetimes in one.

Ah! I think ill take a moment to trash the newspaper and read my daily horoscope instead.

Really listened to her.

I was incredibly saddened when i heard recently about a young woman who had taken her now life. I don't know the details, but i heard she had been struggling with depression for sometime. 

I wish i could have been there when she had taken that critical decision to choose death over her life. I wish i could have been there when she was going through that terrible journey when all hope was lost and there wasn't a light in sight. I wish i could have reached her a few minutes before she took the final call to end it all. 

I would have told her that there's help, theres a way out. It might not be help of the instantaneous kind, but over some time, i would have told her, we could work together to find a better way. I would have offered to listen to her, without saying 'its going to be ok' or 'we all go through it', i would have listened and she would have talked. I would have respected her silence and her words, no matter how fast, slow or disjointed they came out.

Maybe, just maybe she would have chosen a different part then.

I see her picture, so pretty and full of life and its hard to believe she's no more. 

I wish she had reached out, i wish she had known whom to reach out to. I wish, if it weren't me, there was someone else who could've offered her a chair across them and said, 'I'm listening'.

Because now she has nothing more to say. I wish she'd chosen to speak, and someone would have listened, really listened to her.

The truth about strawberry cake.

I'm part of a group on Facebook where parenting issues are discussed, ideas are exchanged, knowledge is imparted to the lesser-experienced parents and so on. Quite a few interesting discussions come up and I find myself jumping into the dialogues with enthusiasm, or when something troubles me, i react with an opinion or two of my own. All in all, it is a place where new parents can feel secure in the knowledge that they're not the only ones walking through life half-asleep.

Today an interesting discussion caught my eye; it resonated with my own experiences in motherhood and i followed it with interest. Here was a young mother coping with all the mayhem of nurturing a newborn - she posted on the group that she was tired, sleepy and depressed most of the time. In her words, I saw a cry for help (of the counselling kind), while some other mothers responded with well-meaning advice - asking her to carve time out for herself, pursuing a hobby, going for a yoga class, handing over care of the baby to the husband once in a while, 'doing something that generated a personal income ' and also getting professional help for her depression. 

There were more than 50 responses for this young mother, and while i was jumping up and down, anxious in the knowledge that this lady needed counselling and nothing else, i also happened to notice some mothers, especially the 'stay at home' ones sharing their own ways of coping with 'post baby blues'. Some had learnt knitting, one lady took 'hairdressing lessons' at a local parlour (how cool is that!), some took up organising the house with maniacal vengeance and others still, learnt the fine art of baking. 

And that brings me to strawberry cake. Today, i made one. It's like this; every once in a while, the overwhelming desire to have control over something, even if it is the quantum of baking powder and sugar, takes over me and i head to the kitchen - my little kingdom where cakes rise like they're supposed to, ovens 'ping' on time like a neat little bow on the project, and for once, you can see the glorious outcome of your many little decisions. In all, its a fantastical little world that you can create all by yourself and actually eat. Nothing like parenthood at all (not the eating part, of course!). 

(This would also be a good time to mention that your 'bun in the oven', once its out, is mostly nothing like they show you in J&J ads.) 

I've heard some women say that they bake to de-stress, some bake to retain and nurture that little core they call 'just me', some bake to believe that they are changing the world, one glorious piece of chocolate cake at a time, some bake to say 'i may not be at 'work', but i'm sure as hell still working, some bake to stop a tantrum (in its mouth), some bake for some 'me time' by the cosy little oven and some bake to fill childhoods with yummy smells of baking. And yet some bake to tell the world 'i did a project today and it's called a cake'. 

So, I made a cake today. It's a strawberry cake. And it had a start and a pretty d*** good finish; it got eaten as soon as it came out of the oven. Tomorrow i might make it with blueberries. Or not. Because sometimes i bake just because i like to bake.

And for all you good people who read this post to the end, here's the recipe to a wonderful strawberry cake infused with mint and vanilla: 

http://angiecooksinportland.blogspot.in/2013/06/strawberry-mint-vanilla-bean-cake.html?m=1

A safe place.

On getting back to counselling work after a longish break, I often find myself wondering if i've lost out on something significant in the past two years while my peers marched right ahead. I think of all the training opportunities i've lost out on, the client's i could've seen, the very interesting 'talks' i missed - maybe world famous psychologists were right at my doorstep, lecturing on the greatest secrets of counselling practice while i was trying to nap between two nursing sessions.

And then a couple of weeks back, a client whom i will call 'A' walked in for a session. I was probably as nervous as he was, trying to think back to my days of training, the copious notes I had taken in class and the precious feedback from my trainers on 'how to be a more effective counsellor'. 

I'm probably a very good actor, because he suspected nothing. In fact, it almost seemed like he hardly noticed i was there. He spoke for a long time about his situation and I stayed in the moment with him as much as i could. I felt myself being drawn into the story and as it sometimes happens in counselling (but perhaps should not), i thought of the times i had felt a similar way.

And so it happened that we met for a few more sessions and while i did my homework, improvised and did the best i could, i realised something really significant. I realised that he was healing - not because of a new technique i was trying with him, a fabulous creative tool i had used, or because of my grand theories of his situation.

He was healing because he was in a space where he felt safe, safe enough to say all that he wanted to, safe enough to change his mind as often as he wished, safe enough to be silent for a while. I could do that much. Of course, i have a lot of catching up to do, but i can make space for my clients. I can make a safe place. And I can be there with them when they need me. 

I can do THAT much. And maybe, just maybe, for 'A' that's made a world of difference.