“Songs are ways that human beings explore emotions. They express who we are and how we feel, they bring us closer to others, they keep us company when we are alone. They articulate our beliefs and values. As the years pass, songs bear witness to our lives. They allow us to relive the past, examine the present, and to voice our dreams of the future. Songs weave tales of our joys and sorrows, they reveal our innermost secrets, and they express our hopes and disappointments, our fears and triumphs. They are the sounds of our personal development.”
There’s an article on the BBC website at the moment called “Is depression good for you?” about how some people have come out of periods of lowness and depression to a much stronger state. (Emphasis on some people is important here!) Given my own experience of emerging much stronger and more secure from a low period which briefly skirted mild depression, this makes a lot of sense for me.
The article makes some interesting comments on how depressin is dealt with in different cultures:
“Depression can be traced all the way back to the Stone Age, say Dr Keedwell, when close-knit communities of about 50 people would have identified it quickly. The rest of the group would have rallied round and changes followed, such as a new role for the individual… The Banda tribe in Uganda calls it “illness of thought” and those affected are allowed time out from the group, a concession not extended to many with the condition in the UK.“
I think there are many aspects of modern Western society that are conducive to depression – it’s no wonder so many people seem to get it nowadays. Not much exercise, distance from friends and family, pressure at work, the overabundance of choice, the stigma that is still attached to any form of mental illness, and the feeling that you should just “pull yourself together”.
There’s a lot of pressure to have it all, to be a superman/woman who never has moments of doubt or weakness. But that’s so unrealistic.
Sometimes stopping and reexaming what matters to you is painful – but from my own experience it is definitely worth it when the clouds start to lift!
Anyone know some good songs to encourage and console people who are feeling broken-hearted?
I’ve noticed that several people are arriving at my blog by googling various phrases that appear in my post “Songs to heal a broken heart“. So clearly I wasn’t the only one looking for songs about love that give an encouraging message to people whose love lives have fallen apart.
Music is so powerful – sometimes sad music that expresses all the agony of heartbreak is what we need, but I quickly found that if I only listened to that sort of music, it made me feel worse rather than better. So I started looking out for music that gives a more positive message – that it is possible to survive the loss of love, to rebuild your life either happily alone or with someone new. Songs that talk about regaining your strength, of putting yourself and your life back together!
I’d love to collect some more songs about healing the wounds of lost love – it would be a lovely theme for a concert or a CD! (talk about making lemonade when life gives you lemons!)
So please leave a comment with your favourite medicine for the heartsick!
To get you started, here’s one of my favourites – Pink Martini’s Hang on Little Tomato – with a lovely slideshow that someone posted on youtube:
(Sorry Scott and Lissa, yours came in after I wrote this!)
For more information on patchwork poems and other poems made from the same source material, see this post on the Patchwork poetry blog.
This is my first attempt at a patchwork poem, so all feedback gratefully received. It’s very interesting to see what phrases jump out and how they shape themselves into a different story. It’s also interesting how it partly expresses my thoughts but at the same time isn’t quite my voice – I’ll be intrigued to see what others come up with from the same material!
I’ve tried to stick to the rule of using whole lines and changing as little as possible. But I couldn’t resist taking one half-line from “endless possibilities” – the whole line wouldn’t have fitted either in sense or length! The poem structured itself around the line on fighting for love, which I made slightly different each time I used it.
Why is it that our friends are so much more likely to stay in our life than our lovers? We fall in love with people because they are special, because we feel connected to them on a powerful and intimate level. So you would think that, even if a romantic relationship doesn’t work out, these qualities would still make them valuable parts of our lives. But it so rarely seems to work out that way.
Is it just because we tend to expect too much of our lovers, and then are disappointed when they fail to be as perfect as we dreamed they were? Because so much of what we saw in them was given an unreal rosy glow by the hormonal intoxication of falling in love? Because we want to be their “number one” and can’t bear to be displaced from that top spot?
Of course it’s possible to stay friends with ex-lovers, and sometimes the friendship can work better than the original relationship. I’ve never not wanted to be friends with my ex-partners. But my most recent ex’s complete refusal to communicate makes friendship not only impossible but almost certainly undersirable even if he changed his mind: stability and willingness to communicate are some of the main things I look for in a friend!
It’s strange – I remember thinking, at an early stage in my relationship with this ex, that of course there was no way to be sure we would always love each other or be the right partner for each other. But I wasn’t worried because of the strength of our communication made me confident we’d always be able to talk, always be able to be friends, and decide together what was best for us. The fact that I was completely wrong about this is one of the most painful aspects of our break-up.
I don’t really know why he cut off so abruptly. It wasn’t something he’d done in previous relationships, so I suspect it must be the “personal development” course he went on. Indeed the course seems to have led him to cut off from all his old friends, in a way I can’t believe is healthy. Interestingly I was speaking to a friend of mine last night, who described how an old friend of his had gone on a “personal development” course and as a result completely cut herself off from all her friends – for reasons scarily similar to those my ex gave. If these courses were genuinely promoting “personal development” then they should deepen the relationships in your life, rather than ending them. Of course you may be in the wrong relationship and need to move on, but you should be able to do that in an open and mature way if necessary. And it certainly should not lead you to cut off friendships that have sustained you for years.
Anyway, all this does make me realise just how amazingly valuable and precious my friends are. People I’ve known for years now, who’ve seen me grow and change, and have shared their stories with me. People who it makes me smile just to think of. People who don’t put me on a pedestal, or expect too much of me. People – both men and women – who have comforted me when I have wept, without feeling threatened or uncomfortable. People who have told me truths, sometimes painful ones, that I needed to hear, without making me feel bad about myself. People who will almost certainly still be there as lovers come and go.
Of course my lovers have been my friends too, while we’ve been together. But there seems to be something about a romantic relationship which means that the end of the romance damages the friendship, often beyond repair. I think if I could work out more about why, it would be an excellent basis for finding a loving relationship with the lasting stability of a friendship. I think it largely comes down to unrealistic expectations, and unrealistic perceptions of who the other person is – we try to make them fit our dreams, and then are broken-hearted when they don’t match up to the illusion we had.
At the end of the day I don’t need a lover, however much I might want one. But I’d be very lost without my friends….
In my last relationship I was naive and far too trusting. I believed my ex’s description of himself and his characteristics, and acted accordingly. I believed that he had a good insight into my personality, and wouldn’t say things without good cause. Unfortunately he wasn’t the way he had described himself, and my trust in him made me very vulnerable when he started behaving coldly and erratically. He didn’t intend to harm me, but simply wasn’t the person I trusted him to be.
A necessary part of growing up is developing protective mechanisms that stop us being too deeply affected by the judgement of strangers or people we do not trust or respect. My protections were perhaps weaker than they could have been, but still fairly effective in maintaining a good level of self confidence. The real problem was that my trust in him was strong enough to deactivate them. So I was wide open to the things he said, and believed them far too easily.
Ironically, one of his criticisms was that I didn’t trust him enough. And this and similar comments made the situation worse, because they made me try to ignore my fears and question my judgements. Without going into the details, I rapidly reached a point where his advice and judgements had seriously weakened my normally strong self-esteem. It was only after we split up that I began to see how much more his judgements had to do with his fears than with me. Our last conversation confirmed this, demonstrating just how bad the problem had become, and really kick-starting my recovery.
Now that I am well on the way to complete recovery, I am thinking about preparing for future relationships. I am vividly aware of the dangers of trusting too much – but I’m now at risk of falling into the other extreme of not trusting enough. I need to heal my ability to trust and to be open, without allowing myself to become so terribly vulnerable.
To retain my innocence and trust, but not my naivete.
To some extent it’s a question of finding someone who is trustworthy. Someone who is genuinely the way he claims to be, whose personality is secure and not subject to sudden crises of self-confidence. But in my old relationship, I saw the signs of trouble from an early stage – the problem was that I closed my eyes to them because I wanted to go on being happy in the belief that he was perfect.
So what really needs to change is in me – in my willingness to accept reality as it is. And to be open to what comes, with the knowledge that I will cope. I’ve made a lot of progress on these things over the last few months, and many of the mistakes I made have been seared into my memory deeply enough to be an effective deterrent!
Some vulnerability is inevitable in any relationship, of course. So I think I also need some sort of warning system that will alert me to take action to protect myself if needed. But at the same time I don’t want to be so alert and paranoid that I can’t relax into a relationship. Or am always wondering whether I should be with someone else.
I’ll need to experiment and explore a bit, but I think part of the answer lies in being open to what I am feeling at any one time.
To be alive to my experience of being in the relationship – enjoying the positive bits but not ignoring any fleeting moments of discomfort. Because if I’d paid attention to the moments of discomfort in my old relationship, I would have been alerted to the problems before they became serious issues between us, and much better able to protect myself. And then the second stage would be to act on what I see – to resolve the problem or step back to protect myself.
In that way I hope it will be possible to be open and yet protected, and at the same time fully present in the relationship. I’m sure it will be harder than that in practice, but it’s a nice idea to aspire to!
I’m sure many other people have taken this journey before me, and I’d love to know what your experience says!
I’ve been looking for songs about healing a broken heart, and as I said a few posts ago, I’ve asked a few singing groups for repertoire suggestions.
In this way I came across an amazing song cycle by Maury Yeston called December songs, essentially the journey of a woman recovering from a breakup. It’s fascinating because it is based on some Schubert song cycles (Winterreise and Schone Mullerin) that are profoundly sad, and portray hopeless despair at the loss of love. But in the Yeston cycle, the heroine seems to find consolation and recovery – the last song is called “What a relief”!
I’ve ordered a CD and the sheet music and am waiting for the deliveries to arrive – in the meantime I found a few MP3 files, one of which, By the river, is currently haunting me, in a consoling sort of way. Here’s the refrain (as far as I can make out the words):
People will be born, people will die
As before you were born and long after you
Young ones will find love and will fight, and hand will find hand
We will flow on and on, on and on
River calling, “Come join my journey
I will ease your burden, I will be your rest
River calling, “Call me, my lover,
I will bring you freedom, flow along with me to the sea!”
It’s strange, because this song is in some ways similar to the last songs of Die Schone Mullerin, Der Müller und der Bach and Des Baches Wiegenlied where the protagonist ends up so desolate that the only place he can find rest is the crystal blue depths of the river i.e. through drowning himself… That’s one interpretation of the words of the Yeston song too, but somehow the Yeston song feels more about staying alive and immersing yourself in the flow of life, with all its ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs.
The Schubert songs are incredibly beautiful, and I have loved them for years. But right now the mood of the Yeston cycle is what I am drawn to. It somehow speaks to the “when life hand you lemons, make lemonade” space I am in now about the breakup.
There are moments now when I am as happy as I was in the first days of falling in love, not just alive and interested in my life, but also exhilaratingly aware of my own strength and worth and lovableness. The dawn is so beautiful after a difficult night!
I can hardly remember what he looks like any more.
It’s been 4 months, more or less, since I last saw him. (I used to know how many weeks it had been, without having to think, but this time I had to check my diary…)
At the weekend I came across a photograph of him on my computer, and it was like going back to your home town after an absence of 20 years. The strange sensation of seeing things that you don’t remember until you see them again. And, even stranger, feeling how dramatically the emotional significance has changed.
I remember the delight with which I pieced together his image in my mind while separated from him in the first heady weeks of our love. I would always start with his eyes and the angle of his browbone, which I found irresistibly attractive. And from there there the mental image just fell into place – a face, smiling, and haloed in the glow of our radiant happiness. I remember that feeling – but I can’t see the picture any more.
Now when I try to remember what he looks like, the image is clouded with echoes of the pain of the break up. I remember the coldness with which he turned away from me, the arrogance and defensiveness he showed in those last conversations. But the pain is fading, and the mental image fades with it.
Shortly after we broke up, I changed my computer screensaver, because each time it flashed up a picture of him it was a painful reminder. The person I loved had vanished, leaving behind someone who looked the same but behaved completely differently. And each time I saw his photo, the pain I felt at his rejection of my love and my honesty stabbed my heart all over again.
For a long while I avoided these reminders, and just got on with healing from the pain, and learning from it what I needed to learn. And now the pain is almost entirely gone, the mental image I have of him is fading, and seeing photos no longer brings back the pain.
It feels strange, but much more peaceful.
Each day now the memories slip further into the past. If I try, I can remember our happiness and the fun things we did together, and I smile – as you do when you hear a story of happiness which happened to someone else, a long time ago.
In the present I feel just a little wistfulness, plenty of compassion and the occasional flash of anger.
It is the future, with all its challenges and hopes, that interests me now.
The image above comes from one of the sites mentioned by Jonathan Harris – it’s called “we feel fine” and it depicts the emotions from bloggers all over the world as random dots, as phrases, photos with quotes, or even as wobbling jellies – weird and wonderful!
There’s a fine line between taking much needed thinking/recovery time and just being lazy – and I’m not quite sure which side I’m on just now!
Towards the end of last year I was struggling to deal with the double whammy of a break up and a series of set-backs in taking forward singing professionally. And I made things much harder by pushing myself to recover quickly – I couldn’t mend the relationship but I hoped at least to be able to take forward the singing. But I underestimated just how deeply these blows had affected me, and how long I really needed to recover.
Having problems simultaneously in different parts of your life makes it so much harder to cope with each than it would be if they came along individually. The problems were also all compressed into such a short period of time that I had almost no time to process my emotions as they came up, so lots of the stored up emotion took time to really make itself felt. My ex’s sudden termination of communication left me with a lot of unanswered questions and unexpressed feelings. And all the time I heard in my head a drumbeat of “it’s almost too late, it may already be too late” to take forward my singing – which was tormenting me because at that time I was unable to practice, still less take forward my audition plans. It all added up to a really difficult time.
Eventually, with the help of some wise friends, I started to give myself space to
recuperate, to accept just how much I needed space and time – to think, to feel deeply, to recover. And almost immediately I started to feel so much better!
That was several weeks ago, and I’m doing hugely better. So I wonder now if I’m getting too comfortable. There’s something addictive about having low expectations of yourself, and allowing yourself to do whatever you like, because you’re convalescing. Yes, I needed some down time. But there are also things I want to do, plans I want to take forward, and I don’t want to get stuck in an endless period of reflection!
My favourite of Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements is the last: always do your best (no more and no less) and recognise that this changes from day to day. It’s a good principle to try to live by!
Why don't I have a lot of different blogs? Because there are connections between all these themes which are all important to me.
And through all these different types of content, I try to keep a consistent mood - refreshing and peaceful and inspiring. And so while I try to do justice to difficult and painful thoughts as well as more positive ones, I try to find a bit of light at the end of every tunnel.
The first post, Breaking the silence is a good place to start as it explains why I started to write this blog.
More recently, 100 posts and counting summarises some of the changes that have come about since I started blogging, and how the blog has developed as a result
