Sunday, March 13, 2016

a new blog home and a heartfelt thank you


Hello to all the beautiful people who visit and have visited this blog for the the past six years. I have had this blog for so long…it has been a wonderful little home for me. I have made lifelong friendships because of it. I have felt supported and heard and loved by everyone who has read my posts, left comments, and let me know in real life what my words have meant to them. Thank you so much for all your words of encouragement and love. I am so grateful.

In this blog, I wrote my discoveries about parenting and homeschooling. I documented the simple days of my life, my struggles and my celebrations. I wrote about loss and about dealing with serious clinical depression. And I wrote about finding the joy, holding onto it when you find it.

I love this blog and all the growth and hope and joy it represents. Now, I am ready to move into a new space, one that shows my new journeys, as a writer and a creative writing mentor, and yes, as a mother and a dreamer looking always for light.

I hope you might join me in my new space? You can find me at helenafoxdunan.com. It would be really lovely to see you there. I promise there will be a lot of photos of the ocean, as the sea is my oxygen, and I love to share what helps me breathe.

Much love to you all!


Thursday, November 26, 2015

my Anna

My beautiful friend Anna died a week ago.

She was in pain; she went to hospital; she was diagnosed with aggressive, advanced cancer; she weakened rapidly; and then she passed away.

All in the space of two weeks.


It is a lot to take in.

It is like a hole opening out from under you. It is like the stars being blanked out.

It feels a lot like the end of the world.


But her story is a lot bigger and more beautiful than this.

The story of Anna is about all the ways she lived and loved and inspired and created and healed and connected and transformed.

It is about her last days…and all the days before.

It is about how she is here now, living through us, and in spirit, everywhere.


This is the eulogy I wrote for my darling Anna. I spoke it at her funeral service yesterday.

I called it out, to all the wonderful people who loved her so very much, and to the world she loved back.


Eulogy for Anna

Hello everybody.

Hello [Anna's children, Anna's husband]. Hello dear friends. Hello to Anna's Lay Carmelite family and all those she worked with at [the Hospital]. Hello to those who cannot be here. Hello [Anna’s mum], and all of Anna’s loved ones in Czech and India. Hello rolling hills of Jamberoo, which [Anna's daughter] tells me look just like Anna’s village in Czech, where she grew up. Hello sky, hello trees that Anna walked among, hello beautiful sea. Hello artists and thinkers. Healers, makers, and companions. Hello family.

I have come to tell you a story about Anna. It is my story, but it is also yours, because we have loved Anna together, and we still do. Because we have been lucky enough to share someone extraordinary.

I want to start by saying, that the last week I spent with Anna, was a lot like the hundreds of moments I spent with her over the past ten years.

In those hospital rooms, we spoke as we always had, in words of wonder and love, and delight.

We spoke about how beautiful the world is. She had just told me she was leaving, but in the same breaths she spoke about the sea. And of art and her family, and how fulfilled she felt by the things she had done in her life. We talked about writing, colour, and amazing sunsets. We shared our thoughts, our new ideas and we laughed.

At some point, as we were smiling at each other, feeling so connected and so thankful, I said to her, “It’s beautiful,” and then I paused and said, “I know that’s a strange thing to say right now.” 

But she nodded, and said emphatically, “But it is. It is beautiful.”

That whole last week, all I could feel was Anna’s serenity. Her acceptance, her love, her peace. It radiated from her. Her serenity and her depth of spirit held me every second I was with her, and not just during that last week, but as it always had.

Anna has always been the person who saw further and understood the world more deeply than anyone I have ever met. Anna saw possibility, she made room for hope, she saw endings as beginnings. She was true and real, and she looked for beauty everywhere.

I hope you can feel that and see that with me now.

Anna meant the world to me, and to my children. She was their mentor and our dear, dear friend. We made and celebrated art with Anna almost every week for ten wonderful years. She was our ‘understander’, our supporter, our inspiration. 

She was my kindred spirit, my corner stone. Anna was light, to me.

She was all those changing forms of light, that you can’t always capture in a photograph. You can try; you can get close, but the best way to understand light like hers, is to stand quietly and breath it in.

Anna was that trembling, silvery light that comes off the sea in the morning. The rich, honey light that pours into windows in the afternoon. The floating light of twilight, the kind that feels like you’re suspended when you walk in it. She was the gentle light that wakes flowers. She was the brave torch light that travels into caves, despite the shadows. She was the dancing, electric light that comes with  storms, bright and filled with energy, and she was the searching light that stands tall on headlands, reaching and exploring, illuminating.

She was my laughing light, my true light. She was all the colours that light brings.

One of my favourite memories of Anna was the morning she came to our house with an art therapy idea she had. We were to be her test subjects, she said, to see if her idea would work. So we filled these little squirt bottles with watery paint, which we then squirted onto damp paper, turning the pages into these kaleidescopic patterns of swirls and cosmic colours. We did page after page, and what I most remember of that day was our laughter, and the running outside with our wet pages to lay them on the lawn.

The sun was so rich that day, and Anna kept opening and shutting the sliding door, keeping an eye out for our indoor cats, as we leaped out and in, out and in, laying the pages on the singing grass.  The day felt filled with dancing. I can still see it, in technicolour. Anna’s smile was so wide you could have fallen into it and been happy forever.

And Anna was peace.

She was my safe space. She was that pocket of time every week, for years, that I could rest in, where I knew I would be heard and loved and valued.

She was the same for my children.  And she was a safe space for all the people she taught and shared her creative energy with, all the lucky, lucky people who were guided by her. We all were safe in her hands.

This is what my son wrote about Anna, and shared with me last night: 

“Anna brought with her peace, safety and joy, and an infectious excitement for art and creativity. She taught me the technical skills to draw and paint, and gave me the courage and inspiration to use my imagination.”

Yes. YES.

I remember early on, when my children were very small, she told them, “There are no wrong lines.”  

And because there were no wrong lines, they could go anywhere.

With Anna, you could do anything.  You could be truthful, strange, and fearless. You could experiment, you could imagine beyond, and without borders. You could go way past your comfort zone because here, walking or flying beside you, was Anna. Your own personal guiding presence, your calm fellow traveller. Always offering encouragement, suggestions, ideas. Telling you that you mattered, that your ideas were bright, good things. And that your journey was your very own.

Can you imagine the feeling this brings? The gift this is. I know you can, because I know she gave that to you. In her friendships, in her work, in her parenting, and in her marriage. She gave us all space to breathe. She gave us moments of inspiration. She delighted and energised us. She held us, and gave us room to beShe gave us the tools to see and love ourselves, and to heal.

And, very importantly, she gave — to herself, and to us — her art.  She shared her truest stories. She told, through her art, of her exploration of the world. She documented, more and more deeply, her contemplations and discoveries, her loves, her memories, her emotions, her celebrations. She painted her special connection with the world, physical, intellectual, and spiritual.

Here, in Anna’s art, lived, and lives, spirit and shadow, light and earth travelling side by side. Everything sacred. In her life-long work, Anna poured out the deepest parts of who she was. She lay down, on page after page, her soul self.

Anna’s spirit, her soul self, was and is, immeasurable. It reaches out far beyond anything the eye, or even dreams, can see. Her spirit is a singing note, resonating through every one of us. How extraordinary. How beautiful.

One of the last things Anna wrote to me, is something I would love for you to carry out with you today.

I’d love for you to keep it in your pocket, sew it into the inside of your shirt, write it on your skin, weave it into your hair like ribbons. Wear it. Hold it close.

Anna wrote:  

"Take care, and let your heart be not troubled, but filled with colours."

So today, I say her words to all of us who are here, walking this new path together, we who love her so very much:

Remember to take care. Let your heart be not troubled. But let it be filled with colours.



'happy brain'

Monday, August 3, 2015

Today: August 3, 2015

Flock of Birds in Flight

Today 

I watched a flag of birds wave
high above the front window of my car

They were a lifetime away from me
and they seemed so beautiful and distant I had to stop and see

Car idle
paused on driveway
the old letter box sighing beside,
its ‘no advert s ng mat r ls’ peeled into a scramble of once
words and the driveway lifting up 
because of the willow root

My children inside
waiting for me to be home again.




Saturday, July 25, 2015

Hello :)

It has been such a long time.

Hasn't it?

A year and a half, and I'm wandering my own pages like a tourist and an old friend.

I wrote a lot of words here, and I grieved here, and I shared here, and I found the joy here.

Time has passed, and I'm still the same. Still wandering. Still writing. Still (and always) looking for the joy.

How are you?

Is it sunny where you are? Are you snug by a fire or are the bees making paths through the flowers by your ears?

I wonder how it is for you, in all your places. I hope you have been truly well.

I have more to say…but for now, it's just a warm and heartfelt

Hello.

:)


Saturday, February 15, 2014

those holes are spaces for light



It took just ten seconds for him to die, for the fluid to enter his veins, for the drug to hit his heart, and there was just enough time for him to lick his lips, one two three times, just enough time for me to say, "Oh. Good boy. Good boy" as he left, and then he was gone.

Which was surreal, because one second he was still there, still warm and moving slightly under my hands, and then he wasn't.

And it hit me then that it was over, and hit me again and again, as we wrapped him in a blanket,
as people spoke softly about things and moved about the room;
it hit me in waves—until I felt nauseous, and I had to go outside and drink water by the car as they carried him out—that he was gone.

And I wanted to step back in time, to please sit a second more with the breathing him, but that's how it was now and I couldn't change it, and all I could do was keep on living while he didn't.


And now it's been two days and I keep crying.
I miss my dog, and I know people lose dogs all the time, but I can't stop how it hurts. And it has opened up all these holes I thought I'd filled as best I could. I miss my grandmother and I miss my namesake aunt and I think of my father and my friend from high school who died and I think of my mum's best friends and I miss Jennifer.

I miss the space my dog took up on the tiles. I think of the space the living take and how after they leave they're still there, but you can't talk to them and you can't hold them and you can't hear their breathing or their laugh or their voice. You can't read their new words or watch their tail wag as you come up to them for a good scratch and you can't talk to them on the phone.

Their spaces are empty and full at the same time, like the air has rearranged itself in their shape.


And I think of how much space the loved take up.




It's real, because there on those tiles, precisely, is where he lay,

and there in that chair of my memory is my grandmother saying, "Hello! Hello!" as I enter the room,

and there in that hospital bed is my aunt calling out as I leave, "And I love you too, so much!"

and there in that photograph is my dad flying a kite, his hair curling in the wind

and there in her words, is Jennifer always. Noticing, marvelling, guiding me to beauty.



And it is so beautiful when you see what they have left you.

It can take your breath away. Leave you weeping and smiling at once.

Those holes you thought you had to fill just so you could keep moving…
those are the spaces they made and they're not supposed to disappear.


You're not supposed to fill them. Those holes are spaces for light.




I think of my dog and how in his final weeks he lay right in the kitchen by the cupboard so you had to step over him to enter or leave.

On his last day, every time I went near him, he lifted his head and followed me with his eyes

as if to say

I'm here.

I'm here.

Remember me.



And on his last day, before I knew it was his last, I sat with him and brushed his old fur. And he and I looked at each other for long seconds until I put my forehead on his, and after a while he lay back down.


And when it's over you get to keep those moments

forehead to forehead

that you had

and the space they made.


And they follow you as if to say,

"I'm here.

I'm here.


Now you get to remember me."






Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Tale of a (Long Ago) Grand Adventure and a Wee Epiphany


[Almost five months ago, my little family and I set off on a Grand Adventure… to a tiny town up North to attend a week long circus training camp and festival, where my son was going to perform with his troupe and have One Excellent Week of training. In the meantime, the rest of us planned to frolic, explore the nearby towns, swim in the river, watch shows, and REST. 

Well, things didn't go exactly to plan, and what ended up happening was one of the most challenging not-quite-holidays of our lives. But at some point during the whole crazy mess, I made a discovery that left me feeling invigorated, truly alive, and most of all, grateful.

This is the tale of that discovery and the path that led me to it, told entirely in Facebook status updates! I never wrote about it here, on this blog, and that feels strange… because even though I'm hardly ever here at the moment, this is still my little Scrapbook Space. This is where I get to place the parts that make up the puzzle of me, and my family, and my very own precious life. And I want to paste those long ago words here… so I can find them always, and remember, and be glad.

So here goes!  

*with bonus photos at the end—never before seen footage and so on—of some really Good bits in between (and after) the Bad.] 


The Tale of A Long Ago Grand Adventure (and a Wee Epiphany)

September 26, 2013


This is a nice lake… I'm really glad we are camping next to it :) On our way to Mullum Circus and many beautiful adventures! Thanks to our dear pet sitter, all is well at home too—the cats aren't even fighting (yet)! Which makes this a great holiday already.

September 27, 2013



Road trips are never boring with this guy…


September 28, 2013







Our Mullum Circus adventure begins tomorrow…can't wait :)


September 29, 2013



We have entered Sugarcane Land. As far as the eye can see, cane waving...and little houses squatting stolidly inside the fields...and a boy digging with a stick in a bare field, looking carelessly for snakes? And then mountains like pointy hats rising.... Green is all around.

September 30, 2013

 

Just another day at the circus… :)


Writing with my girl...under fig trees big as churches...watching people take to the air on great red ribbons…bliss.


[And then… this]

October 2, 2013

Well the circus adventure hasn't gone quite to plan...our circus boy got sick! Four days and nights of coughing relentlessly, long nights of sleeping (not sleeping) upright in the car, asthma bad enough we had to find the circus doctor in the night, plus flu and fever. We have ended up in a local hotel just so my boy can rest and sleep, and he has missed almost all of his beautiful training camp. Such a shame! We are looking for the positives as best we can, and hoping things turn around soon. It is so beautiful here; silver linings are all around, I'm sure.


October 3, 2013

Thanks everyone for your lovely and kind comments on my last update! We are (I think and hope!) on the mend. My boy is (VERY gently) participating in his first training session in 3 days after being really sick, and I actually just saw a smile! I'm so thankful that the hours of tending have led to the beginning of wellness, so thankful that I have my endlessly beautiful family, so thankful that we've ridden this out together. Yesterday we sat over dinner and visualised this great, open positive energy flowing out, a whole lot of goodness and wellness beginning from that exact moment...no more feeling sorrowful, disappointed and sick. And now we get to live that lovely picture out. Lucky us :)

[And then…after days of heat and dust and coughing and doctor visits and sleepless nights and worry and feeling oh-so-far-from-home and trying to make the best of things and feeling sometimes overwhelmed and weepy,

I had a wee epiphany, 

which is actually the point of this whole blog post :) ]


October 4, 2013

What happens when you realise your life is yours? 

When you suddenly discover it's yours for the making, that it's entirely up to you how things are going to go? 

You can't always pick the direction... sometimes you find yourself walking a path you believe you'd never choose... in fact, maybe you hardly ever get to choose the path. But I find (and keep finding) that it's what you DO with the path you're on that matters. It matters hard; it matters big like a mountain. 

What you choose to do with what you're given... that's where the joy begins.

Last night at camp as wind rattled the tent and the night dipped into cold, my boy got his asthma back. He ended up coughing and weeping and totally overwhelmed. He was near panic, needing us to take good care, lift him out of the struggle, fix everything. As we hustled him out of the tent and into the shelter of the car, I felt all snarly and enraged, felt like shaking my fist at the world and saying, 'What did we ever do to you???!' And there was talk of leaving, finally bailing, accepting defeat. But it was close to midnight, so we settled my boy into the car with his sleeping bag and pillow, my husband beside him, and we grimly hunkered down 'til morning.

In the middle of the night I had to pee. I trudged across that long, cold field in the gusty wind, muttering and huddled in my jacket, wishing everything was different. But as I walked I suddenly thought, 'Hey. Hey. Why fight so hard? Why feel so lost? Look up!' 

So I did.
And saw a sky wild with stars. A sky bright and fiery, just gloriously alight. After the expected 'Wow!' I thought, 'Hey, Self. What if you just accepted all of this...What if you just kept on? What if?'

And somewhere in the remaining trudge across that ginormous field, in the peeing, in the turning matters over in my mind, my view flipped. Suddenly...in that crazy wind and the nose-nipping cold, I felt exhilarated...the 'Bring It On!' kind. The kind where a tramp across a field to the loo at 3am becomes a triumphant stride back under a blazing sky. The kind where you suddenly feel wholly alive, almost in awe of the adventure you're on. What will happen next? Bring it On! Bring it ON.

And we slept so well, my little family and I. My girl and I like beans in our sleeping bags, snuggled close. My husband and boy in the quiet warmth of the car. All of us... we rested well and slept deeply. No more coughing, no drama, just real rest. What a surprise.
As for today? Well, the sun has done its thing again and risen. We're awake, well fed, alive. So, Bring It, world. Show me what you've got.


October 7, 2013





And in the end…
There was so much joy. :)






Bonus pics
as promised

As our boy languished in the hotel, so sick and sad,
my husband and I took turns taking our girl out for adventures…

which included kayaking on an insanely beautiful river
(pic taken by the kayak rental owner person)

here we were at the dinner where we Visualised Good Things


here my boy got to have a one-on-one training session with a beautiful juggler
who heard he'd been sick and missed all of the training week…
and who came to find him and work with him for an hour.
No words for how that felt.

And he actually got to perform with his troupe!


And on the last night, we got to watch a man flying through the air
while juggling three clubs.

Which means
there really is magic in the world.

Don't you think?


Friday, January 10, 2014

homeschool joy: when the learner becomes the teacher




I don't know if I've mentioned this, but

I love homeschooling.

I don't always love the specifics of it,

like, the day to day frustrations that can crop up ("Could someone please help clean the kitchen?" and "Ah, you forgot your music, and you're only telling me now we're here?" and  "Please stop niggling, just for a second so I can think" and "Don't throw the stuffed cat at your sister!")

or those wobbly fearful moments when you aren't sure you're doing it "right," or when you foolishly spend waaaay too long looking at Eduspeaky Websites that (very importantly and authoritatively) show you all the things you should be doing just because that's what everyone else is doing and that's the box you're supposed to tick (Breathe)

or… those times you'd really like a bit more time for yourself and (you feel) you simply can't have it (because home-edding can often feel like (and actually IS) a full-time job—even in those down moments when it seems like you're not busy at all. You're still, always, on call)

but

I still love the whole thing anyway.



I love the happiness homeschool brings

when you're totally able to drop everything (or not pick anything up to begin with) and spend real time playing, or learning, or chatting, or sharing, or creating.

And I love the satisfaction it brings

when your kids tell you about something they've learned or discovered — you either brought it to their attention and they loved it, or they found it completely on their own and have been immersed in it for hours, only surfacing with a grin to tell you all about it.

I love the peace homeschooling brings

when you realise this life fits you completely

because your kids are following their passions

and you find you do, in fact, have time to write your novel

and do art classes (with and without your kids)

and you ALL get to be in your Element, together.


That's amazing

and a gift

and a blessing.




And then.

And THEN!

You suddenly find something new has crept up while you weren't even looking.


There are now moments, many of them, coming over and over, more and more often,

where you realise

you've become the learner

and they the mentor.

Because look! —

they've learned some mad skills of their own

and want to teach you.


Last year, my son did a history course through Coursera, called "A Brief History of Humankind." It was 17 weeks long, and was taught through the University of Jerusalem.

Well, for 17 weeks (longer in fact, because the course has run a bit into overtime), we have been hearing about the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the rise of homo sapiens, capitalism, religion, the history of happiness and so on and so forth. Hours of information relayed to us by my 13 year old boy who has LOVED this course. Hours of discussion, hours of learning through my son, hours of knowledge relayed by him to me.

We are finishing up the course together. Just two more lectures, lying on the big bed with the cicadas chirruping outside, pausing to laugh at the lecturer's wry humour, or chat about the concepts he's raised. It's delicious, is what it is. Learning alongside my son. Learning through my son. So much joy.

My daughter has been animating and computer programming on Scratch now for a year, and has been producing hours and hours of projects on line. In the past six months, she has also been teaching her dad how to create games, working with her brother on creating silly animations, and just this past week, has begun teaching me to animate.

I can't believe I didn't start sooner! It's SO much fun.

I've had to let go of my adult (sort of impatient) self, who wants to have the skill now. I've stopped to listen to my girl as she has shown me each step and explained the purpose of commands that seemed to have no purpose, as she has encouraged me to take the reins with sometimes only a little guidance. It has been really hard to produce these few seconds of animation, but wow. It's been so rewarding.

In these small moments, that keep coming over and over,

I can see so clearly how incredibly satisfying it must be for my children, to be such independent learners.

It must feel pretty cool, to be encouraged (by me, my husband, their mentors, their friends) to find things that interest them, to explore them any time, practice them for hours, immerse themselves as deeply as they want until they are full.

I love that I can give that to my kids. I love that my children get to be full-time, all-day, any-time-they-want learners and then, and then! That they want to pass on their learning to the lucky people around them.

I love being their student.

I love that they are my mentors.

I love how much I've learned.



Here is my second ever animation. I am pleased as peaches about it. It makes me grin, every time I look at it.

When I win my Academy Award for it (in the not-too-distant future!) I'll say:

"Thank you. I couldn't have done this without my kids."