Another interesting conversation today with my favourite optometrist, Michael Christian. A bit of an anarchist in the optometry world, he specializes in vision restoration.
Yes, you read right….. if you can commit to wearing the lenses that he prescribes and regular 6 monthly visits, vision improves. Different people progress at different rates. It seems to work on the principle that when you are ready for change, really ready, then change will happen. Similar to giving up smoking with hypnosis – won’t work unless you are 100% committed!
It’s not just about vision – the simplest explanation he gives is that the prisms in the lenses allow light to enter the eye and reflect differently. It’s about seeing things differently. Everything changes – including some big emotional shifts – as you see things differently…
He allows a half hour for the consultation and all sorts of things happen. Different lenses, different pictures to look at, shock and horror when you see yourself in the mirror with a funny headset and lenses, moving this arm here and that leg this way until all the intellectualization has flown out of the window and you just know that it feels and looks different.
Discussion flows about quantum physics (yes, I’m a fan of Bruce Lipton too) and our mutual dislike of fluorescent lighting, in particular the impact of it on children’s learning. The mercury is a powerful neurotoxin, they also emit more UV than incandescent globes which can affect some light sensitive people and protocols should be followed if one of these lamps breaks.

 My mother (Jean) died in June 1999 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease which was more than debilitating physically for her, it also took away her ability to draw which was her passion.

Reading newspaper and magazine articles about other mothers and daughters in the days leading up to Mother’s Day, I am struck at how little of her that I knew. We had a very remote relationship, quite possibly due to her upbringing and I am still finding out more about her as the years pass.
She was intensely private and rather than share her feelings or observations, she recorded them in her diaries. When she died, Dad gave me the diaries and I have the ones up to the birth of my brother, leaving behind in Perth those diaries of following years for him to sift through and read.
My mother was a twin, born in 1928 to Nora & William V Dumbreck. The family home was in Kent, although Grandpop was a Scot who migrated south via Liverpool. He was a keen historian and researched the family tree which has an impressive span. The armorial was drawn by Mum ( & illegally copied by Dazzle who are profiting from it). Her twin brother and his wife still live in the family home in Kent and their children are all nearby.
Jean was brought up by a nanny and was evacuated to a boarding school in Scotland during the war. She spoke of the happy times she had there and before we left the UK in 1964, we travelled up there to retrace her childhood footsteps (which I did again in 1984). Later she joined the WREN’s as a decoder and a driver, delighting in telling us that she had signed the Official Secrets Act & couldn’t tell us what she did.
She went to Art School and met my godmother Diana Brown with whom I have had a long friendship. I don’t think her family ever expected her to marry and she had a fairly sheltered, but active social life. A car accident resulted in rehabilitation and her hands had glass splinters from the windscreen for  many years. She travelled to Kenya and was there at the time of the Mau Mau.

She met my father toward the end of 1954 when he was “home on leave” from Malaya and they were married in April 1955 and they sailed for Malaya and the planter’s life  and the Malayan Emergency in May. Her  brother was in the Royal Navy and had a posting there and my father’s younger sister and husband were also there. Jean settled into the life of being Mem Sahib with aplomb and the social whirl of expat wives kept her occupied. Servants were available to do the daily work, so she had time to do her art work. Trouble was not far away and the rubber estate that they lived on had armed guards to protect them and was enclosed in a compound.

It was thought best for Mum to stay in Kuala Lumpur after a couple of “false alarms” just before I was born. The need for an armed escort to get to hospital when in labour would have been stressful on top of the birth process. As it was, Mum had a severe anaphylactic shock from the penicillin administered to her during the c-section and we both had an extended stay in Bungsar Hospital, returning just a few weeks later when she had a post partum haemorrage.
On return to the estate, an amah was engaged and Mum began to recuperate. She sewed clothes for me and painted when she could. She created a wall frieze for my nursery, which I had restored and framed. It had been covered in contact which had yellowed and the silverfish were starting to get to it. The picture has some wicked humour in it and apparently the characters were based on people that she knew in the surrounding area.
Other pictures that were stored in her and Dad’s Subiaco apartment were totally destroyed by damp and insects by the time he left there 3 years ago.
There were several reasons for leaving Malaya – living in a “black area” saw us eventually shot out, Dad’s contract was finished and Mum was pregnant with my brother. Luckily for him, she declined the new wonder drug, Thalidomide. We sailed for the UK in May, having my 3rd birthday in Mumbai and my brother arrived in early August.
Life in the UK was still difficult for her. She was frequently unwell with pneumonia, pluresy and had some miscarriages. I think she found it easier once I started school at the age of 4, but she still had help and a part time nanny for my brother. I recall spending the holidays with my grandparents and cousins as I was a “difficult child”. Dad had the added difficulty of being a returned “expat” as well and didn’t really fit in to the English life and climate. His family had been in Rhodesia and India for many decades.
We emigrated to Australia in 1964, much to her father’s displeasure. He was dying of lung cancer and had disapproved of my father since meeting him and changed his will so that there were strict conditions on Mum accessing her inheritance.
If Jean was alone before, she was even more so in Adelaide. Dad had been sponsored by GMH but there were retrenchments soon afterwards and he moved to Woomera with the WRE. After his monthly visits home, Mum would get us up early in the morning to drive him to Edinburgh Air base to fly back to Woomera. While he was away, she had another miscarriage and then got quite ill with the mumps which she caught from us.I cannot recall her having friends over and it was quite an event when one of my teachers noted her unusual surname and we discovered a distant cousin in Adelaide.
We moved again, this time to Tarcoola on the Transcontinental Railway – even more remote and for the English gentlewoman that Mum was, even more isolating.
I was sent off to school in Port Augusta, travelling down with Mum to meet the family I was to stay with, the day before school started and not returning until the May holidays.  She seemed quite matter of fact about it as both she and Dad had been to boarding school. I have no idea how she felt about learving her daughter with complete strangers – we never discussed it.
I went back to school,catching the train on my own this time and returned in the September holidays to find that we were to move to Western Australia. We took the Tea and Sugar train to Kalgoorlie. which took some time and was quite an experience and stayed there for a week or so. I guess Dad was looking for work. All I remember is Mum going to the hairdresser after having to cut her own hair for years in the bush and Dad making comments about the perm gone wrong!
We moved around Perth after spending a horrible few weeks in a caravan out the back of the old Rose and Crown hotel in Guildford. Firstly to Balga and then back to Guildford. This was the start of my experience with Mum and Dad’s acquired outback drinking habits. This also served to keep our emotional boundaries well established. A heady mixture of social and emotional isolation combined with violence and adolescence!

We finally ended up in Caversham in a lovely old homestead that has been long since demolished. Just as well, as I remember one night the ceiling falling in as a plane roared over on its descent into Perth Airport.
School was my stability and I did remarkably well, given the circumstances. Mum did some art work while she was at Caversham, she involved herself with the CWA and everyone turned a blind eye to the addictive behaviours. I finished school, got a job because “there’s no point going to university if you are a girl” and moved out of home at 18 and to the Eastern States at 19.
As I look back on those years, I cannot remember a time when we sat and had a meal together or engaged in some activity as I now do with my daughter. I would dutifully write monthly while I was travelling around Australia and New Zealand and she would write back about events happening in the area, but never any emotional stuff – heaven help us – stiff British upper lip and all that! Even when a serious long term relationship ended and I rode home 60km at night from York (cold, dark and kangaroos hopping out) her only comment was that she never liked him because he was a Catholic!
Years later, when I was struggling after my own daughter’s birth & post partum haemorrage, I asked her for help and her comment was ” hire a nanny”. Not what I wanted to hear, but now there was the realization that she had so successfully stuffed all her emotions down for so many years, that if she allowed that chink in the armour….it had manifested as Parkinson’s.
I returned to Perth a couple of times in her last years. I did one late night transcontinental dash by plane, arriving to find her behind drawn curtains and the doctor saying that she was not expected to survive the night. I asked his permission to give her homeopathics and she recovered, lasting for another 18 months. While I was there for the week, I sat with her for hours. I bought her a poster by Peter Dombrovskis and placed it on the wall at the foot of her bed and that seemed to help her focus. As she moved in and out of consciousness, she had one moment of lucidity and turned to me and said “I’m so sorry”.
It was that one defining moment that you never forget.
We had another day together and then I had to return to my own family.
The following Christmas, I took the children over to see her, knowing that this would be the last opportunity to connect. We stayed for a brief time with my brother and his family and then house sat for their neighbours. We visited Jean every day for 8 days, sometimes twice a day. The children ran with her in her wheelchair, she enjoyed their company, but had no idea who I was. She called me Beth, who was her physiotherapist, probably because she associated me with the massages Beth gave her.
Months later, the day before she died, I was playing cricket in the backyard with the kids. The light changed and I saw a raven for the first and only time on the garage roof. I called the nursing home, to be told that today was the best she had been for a long time.
Later that night, I was sending absent Reiki to her and suddenly felt this surge of energy “yippee – I’m free” and some 20 minutes later the phone rang with Dad sobbing on the other end of the line.
If ever that was a connection, that was it.
I was a pall bearer at her funeral with my brother. Carrying your mother in a coffin is a difficult task but I am glad that I was able to do it. I wore a kilt made in her family tartan to honour her memory and while my brother chose to speak about her life, I think he too mourns the lack of a strong emotional bond with her.

I read articles in today’s paper about mothers and daughters and finally mourned for my mother.
One writer told of the isolation she felt with her friends during the grieving process and I related to this. I travelled to Perth on my own for the funeral and returned with a suitcase of small memories a few days later. 71 years condensed to a few bits and pieces.
I was teaching at an Anglican school at the time and thought that there would be some understanding from my colleagues when I returned to school after the holidays, but there was just awkward silence or was it indifference? The silence from most of my friends and family was also deafening. One friend gave me a rose bush for rememberance and today there was a late autumnal bloom. 
Death liberated her from the double pain of Parkinson’s and not being able to communciate through her drawings.
She lives on in my memory as a gentle, artistic soul who, for cultural and social reasons was never fully able to express herself. I know that my children have an understanding of her love of beauty, sense of humour and the suffering she went through in her last months.
There is some regret is that we never had long and easy conversations like those I have with my daughter, but that is fleeting as she has handed me a gift of self sufficiency, strength and resiliency.
The few pieces of her artwork that survive are treasured as is the love of old wares and books. She also lives on through her two grand-daughters, one of whose second name is Jean.

Happy Mother’s Day Jean.

28-1-1928   –   29-6-1999

Sunday was a soft grey day, with intermittent showers but not enough to really dampen the soil. Allowing myself to be distracted by watching the magpies outside my office window, my gaze rested once again on the remains of the tree fern. The once green and shady area now reminiscent of TS Elliot’s Wasteland even though it is now early May and autumn.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring 
dull roots with spring rain.

After trimming the ivy hedge behind the tree fern and temporarily draping the cuttings on and around the trunk to create an illusion of greenery, I decided to visit the garden centre for some other ideas. I did think about getting some stagferns  to attach, but remembered that we already have one at home. Another consideration was to buy some interesting groundcovers, but the violets are already in residence and starting to flower.
In the end I bought a Gelsemium creeper – perhaps I will be able to make my own homeopathic flu remedy from that one day, and some interesting texture plants that are drought tolerant. 
I also couldn’t resist some pansies for colour.  On arriving home, I discovered that the tree fern had been chopped down and was now residing in the green waste bin! An opportunity to create a new garden canvas …. 

The bed has been tilled and weeded, the new plants have been placed and there is still space for a lilac…. 
 

It’s the end of April already! Workwise, there have been a number of changes and everything is falling into place.
I have written the vision and values statement for BrightLight and word of mouth is starting to generate regular clients. I have read the E-myth and the process there has resonated and I have taken off the procrastination hat and begun work on an operations manual.
Surprisingly, I have had a number of massage clients this month, rather than Hypnotherapy or coaching and one has expressed an interest in me teaching her Polarity Therapy. I am seriously considering this as there are no other Polarity courses around at present.
The HypnoCoaching is proving successful and clients are able to remove longstanding blocks when in trance and the coaching model is moving them forward effectively. I am looking at different advertising mediums, as the current one I have been using is not cost effective as it is not delivering projected leads. I have been given a couple of suggestions by a colleague that are working for her, so will try them out.
Again, the question of where to practice from is under review. I love my home office & the dog, but he sometimes overenthusiastically welcomes people and not everyone loves dogs. His other, annoying habit of whining outside the door, invariably when the client is just about to enter a deeper state of relaxation, is frustrating to say the least. I remain for the time being, at the Osteopathic clinic one afternoon a week, but there are not the referrals that I had hoped for & the location is quite isolated later in the afternoon.
I feel sure that there is something more suitable on the horizon.

Anzac Day weekend.
Probably not politically correct to mention that one of my grandfathers was in the area at the time, but as an officer with the British not the Australian army. Also not being a morning person, means that I am not a candidate for attending the Dawn Service.
My father, who is nearly 89 did go to a service earlier in the week althought he was also in the British Army during WW2.
Otherwise a quiet weekend, celebrating my father in law’s 79th birthday on Saturday afternoon and catching up with a friend who has just moved house on Sunday.

 Not knowing what to give as a housewarming gift, and seeing how exhausted she and her partner were, I gave them both the gift of a Polarity massage. Great that they didn’t have to drive anywhere afterwards by the looks on their faces!
 Had a couple of moments earlier in the day when I got caught up in reading stuff on Facebook about workplace bullying. Watched a couple of videos and realized that I still had some residual stuff happening from my experience. I did a self hypnosis session and reframed in a positive manner. Whilst driving over to my friend’s house listened to a couple of podcasts that continued the process – NLP works really well.
Looking forward to the next couple of weeks with a few new goals to achieve. I have already re-visited my website and edited the About page, adding values and beliefs.

Went to dinner this evening with the Osteopaths & crew from Total Osteo, where I am working on Monday afternoons.
Dinner was to celebrate one of the Osteopaths birthday and we enjoyed Chilean cuisine. (Thankyou Lee!)
I had a treatment earlier in the day from David and there is that good sore/stiffness that comes from being put back into shape! I know that I will feel better tomorrow. Earlier in the afternoon, I had a LifeLine session with Tracey and loved wearing the red glasses – what a hoot!  All sorts of things came up, probably a combination of being open from the Osteo treatment. Particularly interesting was the going back to the past to discover limiting belief patterns.

Don’t you just love it when you think you have written something awesome and hit the wrong button and it disappears into the ether? Lesson in humility and backing up your work!

Home is a hive of industry today after months of just getting by. Amazing what having down time and a “healing crisis” does to your perception of what is OK. Perhaps it was the Easter/Equinox energy that spurred me from inaction to action. Mind you, it’s not just me being active, I have the luxury of having 2 ladies to clean the house and the carpets are being steam cleaned too. I am sorting out wardrobes and culling the clothes that haven’t been worn for a long time, finding dresses & suits from the 1980’s still in my collection. Practically antique! Time to move on…

Easter week was challenging in many ways. Old friendships revisited, a bit of travel and some chocolate! We made the annual trip to Redcastle and enjoyed Pete’s hospitality. The block has taken on a green tinge and one of the billabongs has a little water in it and there is a small puddle in the creek on the boundary. We discovered that the bees in the “bee tree” were no more. Although allergic to bee stings, they have never bothered me, but have made their presence felt by stinging others over the years. One labyrinth has started to go green, which was the intention when I built up the dirt walls, so no excavation this year and it was left to see what else would eventuate. Right in the centre was a small purple flower, and no, it wasn’t Salvation Jane or Patterson’s curse. I walked the labyrinths at sunrise, taking video and will find a way to post them here at some stage.

This year we explored the surrounding district and ventured into the Heathcote – Greytown National Park. We caught the Easter Parade at Rushworth on Saturday, which was lots of fun and I explored the crystal shop in the main street. A leisurely lunch and then off to see Whroo and surrounding forest. Returning to the block, we lit the camp fire in preparation for a roast dinner done in the camp oven, which we shared with friends. A large stump was put on the fire and we had a great time sitting and discussing life in general. A moonlight walk to the junction and back finished off a relaxing evening.
An exchange of chocolate on Sunday morning and then more exploration, this time heading off to Greytown and surrounds.

 Autumn days have a special feel to them. The morning starts off cool, just a bit on the cold side and although the forecast may be for a clear day, you can never be sure…..
It’s the day after the second blue moon for the year. Two full moons in January and now 2 in March. Birdsong is punctuated by the drone of the police helicopter as it does laps of the parkland at the bottom of the hill.
It’s harder to get up in the mornings now with the darkness, which will ease slightly when day light saving finishes over the Easter weekend. Once the equinox has passed the days seem to draw to a close very quickly.

Sweeping up the leaves that have changed colour and dropped and pausing to remove the cobwebs festooning the windowsills and nooks and crannies around the downpipes. Drifts of leaves in corners of the verandah and against the borders of the garden beds. Shoots from winter bulbs starting to poke up through the soil and must remember to replant the tulip bulbs that have been in the vegetable crisper. The tree ferns have finally given up trying to exist. They were burnt to a crisp last year on Black Saturday when the temperature reached 47C. Another year of drought has finished them off, so the stumps will come out soon and the garden outside my clinic room will be re-done.
New soil will be put down to level out the garden bed. Drought tolerant plants will do and I will trim the ivy back along the fence, which I will also extend by a metre or so, with a screen to improve privacy in the clinic.

Today was challenging. I decided that I would hand in the keys to the room in Glen Waverley and focus on my more mainstream practice at Mulgrave.
Challenging because I went with an intuition and as a result felt much clearer about the outcome than I expected.
Having been in a couple of workplaces where the boundaries and messages have been unclear and resulted in stressful outcomes, this time I am aware that “try to sort it out” is not an option.
It all comes down to choice and this time I have chosen to walk away.

Recently I have joined up on Facebook, LinkedIn and now also have a WordPress blog as well as this one. I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and to complete my electronic interface – I’m loving my iPhone! The blogs and wiki’s help me to put out the information that I have been accumulating over the years of study.
The challenge was what to do with the essays I wrote for my Homeopathic and Polarity Therapy studies. Better to have them “out there” than lurking in the bottom of the cupboard, so I’ve put snippets up on the blog.
In the meantime I have also written a 5 week goal setting course, found the Homeopathic booklets I wrote 8 years ago and even a meditation course that I began writing 10 years ago. These will form part of an ongoing workshop program.