Hollows hopes and high fives - Day 9

(Sunday 9th December 2018)

nine-tailed fox (九尾狐), is a mythical fox entity originating from Chinese
mythology, that is a common motif in East Asian mythology with specific names in
Japan, Korea and Vietnam. These mischievous foxes could shape shift (usually into
the form of a beautiful woman). Nine-tailed fox (illustration comes from the
British Museum and is a Chinese woodblock depicting a nine-tailed fox and a court lady,
made circa 1849). The nine-tailed fox is depicted as a character in both
League of Legends and Pokemon e-games.

I am humbled by the various ways in which people respond to the Advent Blog's call to write on a theme and to have their words shared for the enjoyment and benefit of others. Each year I am amazed at the variety of was in which people respond. Today's post, by Maggie Marriott is a poem. It has a subtle message about self-care and awareness and yet is based around an activity that each of us does, often without thinking.

Maggie is a devoted mother and a generous friend. She runs her own business based in Gloucestershire, England, an organisational change consultancy ENKI that provides "balanced business wisdom". She specialises in supporting individuals and groups through desired transformation and is an effective coach - she has been the coach of choice for members of the civil service supporting the UK Government, helping effect transformation, especially in the areas of cyber security and assurance, and also for the National Crime Agency. She also works as a coach for Ambition School Leadership, providing support to the leaders of the future within Education, and for the Relational Change Organisation.

Maggie is a qualified Gestalt practitioner (she won the British Gestalt Journal Essay Prize for 2015) and she believes in enabling humane change via the approaches she devises. Maggie is deeply empathetic and caring and is also highly analytical and systematic - she commenced her career as an IT programmer and worked for many years in the Public sector moving from a technical team leader to a business change specialist. It may come as a surprise that someone with such a background could write the beautiful and thought-provoking poem below that she has submitted for this year's Advent blog.  However, those who know her will not be as astounded. She is a deep thinker (as well as a deep breather!) and believes in authenticity. Maggie is a warm and active voice on social media - you can connect with her on Twitter, her handle is @maggiermarriott.

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Each life begins and ends with a breath and so does each living moment. Becoming aware of the quality of each breath gives us clues about how I and those around me are feeling. Is the breath being held or released? Is the breath shallow or deep? Is the breath fast of slow?  And from this awareness, choices appear. And from choice anything is possible. And so my blog this year is a poem in celebration of the breath of life and hope.

Every breath I take - Hollows, hopes and high fives.

Breathing out

A hollowing

Releasing

Settling

Reflecting

Feeling

The pause

Holding

Waiting

For air again

Breathing in

A heightening

Learning

Connecting

Reaching

Moving

The pause

Holding

Waiting

For rest again

Every breath a moment of hope

Every pause a moment of choice

23,400 breaths a day

8,409,600 breaths a year

From the hollows and hopes of each breath I’m alive!

To my oft forgotten body I give a joyous high-five

 Pink Floyd, Breathe

A personal reflection on 2017 - Day 9

Day 9 (Saturday 9th December 2017)

Nine foot is the maximum height available for a commercial artificial Christmas tree.

The tallest artificial Christmas tree was displayed in 2016 in Colombo, Sri Lanka (see above).

It was 73 meters tall, decorated with pinecones, lit with 800,000 LED lights and crowned by a 20ft star.

Although many consider artificial trees to be more environmentally responsible than having

a real tree, the carbon footprint of an artificial tree is such that it would need to be used for 

more than 20 years to match the ecological "footprint" of erecting a harvested tree each year.

The second weekend of Advent and I am sure that you all have a lot to do. Having partied quite heavily yesterday, I must confess that I am not on best form for tackling all that I need to get done today. I only hope that you are having an easier time. 

I regret to report that today's post is not about having an easy time. It's author, Kerry Smith is new voice to the Advent Blog series, although she does write occasionally on her own blog HRKez. Kerry (or Kez as she is known) has decided to be brave this Advent and wants to share some of the darkness of her past year although there is also some light. Kez and I met via Twitter (you can follow her too, her handle is @HR_Kez). Kez lives in North Yorkshire. She works in York as the Operations Manager of TMS Development International, who produce a psychometric profiling tools that are used by many Learning and Development professionals. Kez is caring and compassionate. She is a devoted dog lover, for many years she has worked as a volunteer for the RSPCA. She also cares about people and is an advocate of being kind. She is actively involved with the CIPD and helps organise events for the North Yorkshire Branch. Kez is creative, good fun and prepared to give things a go.

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I’ve been working out how to write a blog about my 2017, but didn’t know where to start as it’s not the easiest thing to write about – then I noticed the theme for Kate’s advent blogs this year: Darkness and Dawn – and just sat and wrote this, in less than an hour, amazingly for me without a tear – thank you Kate for unlocking these words!

What do you do when you’re in your darkest hour when all you really want to do is hide away?

Turn that on its head, how can you support the people you work with to allow them to go from Darkness to Dawn in the least traumatic way?

2017 hasn’t been the best for me but then actually it has…how so?

• ·  I’ve gone through two of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever had to cope with – making it the worst year ever on the personal front.
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• · I’ve had fantastic and amazing support from work to help me cope with these events – making it the year of my best employee experiences.

Being on the receiving end of the support of the kind of support I normally give out, has really highlighted for me how good people stuff can positively impact those you work with, even in their darkest hours.

April (as anyone who knows me will know) was what I thought would be the worst month of 2017 – we lost our furbaby Savannah to spleen cancer, all very sudden, all very traumatic – and I wanted to hide away for a long time. The support of TMSDI and my colleagues was immense and there was a huge understanding that Savannah wasn’t ‘just a dog’ she was my family and we’d been through so much together. 

And so I was given the freedom and time to grieve, to choose how I wanted to work, be that in the office (sometimes with my door shut when I couldn’t face people) and at home in silence. Recognising that every loss is unique to the person and giving them the freedom to manage that loss in their own way is so important and I’m sure it helped me return to ‘normal’ (as normal as that was going to be) sooner than had I been forced/coerced back to work the next day to carry on regardless.

And so we moved on, Savannah still there in our hearts and minds. From the darkness of losing Savannah we had a new dawn being able to help another rescue dog, Sheba, who was being rehomed because her family couldn’t give her what she needed any more. Incidentally we’re still trying to discover what was so difficult to fulfil…other than a little extra time and patience to give her confidence to do the stuff most dogs do instinctively….3 months to get her confident enough to go on the sofa – wow!

We were happy and content – and life felt good although we missed Savannah a lot and always will. Little did we know that a new darkness was around the corner, one that we’d struggle to understand or make any sense of, largely because we knew so little about it. No one talks about this stuff so we really were in the dark.

I have chosen to be open with those I’ve spoken to since, because I really do feel it’s a taboo topic (like mental health used to be), yet so many people suffer this darkness. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve told who then said things like ‘that happened to me, it was awful, I wish I’d been able to speak to someone about it…’.

In October we were hoping to be able to spread some happy baby news – something we’d hoped for but weren’t sure would happen given life didn’t put us together until so late in the game. July and August were spent being excited, hopeful, and careful (I was the tourist travelling around London on tubes insistent on sitting down whenever possible etc).

Sadly on 8 September, we had another day of darkness, yet it took another 2 weeks to have our worst fears confirmed, that our mini me had decided they didn’t fancy our big scary world (that’s how I have to choose to look at it because it feels less painful that way). I told 2 of my closest colleagues what had happened on the 8^th – they knew before we’d actually left the hospital and they were the only other people to know until everything was confirmed on 22^nd, and I felt able to tell them because we have a culture of trust and support.

Because of that culture, once everything was confirmed I felt comfortable with all my other colleagues knowing – and their support has been amazing and invaluable. Over the last few weeks I’ve been able to work in whatever way I’ve needed to, to get me through the exhausting physical side (the emotional and mental recovery takes a back seat to start off with – and I know I personally have a long way to go on that journey). The flexibility, understanding and compassion really has allowed me to keep working, and not lose myself in a very dark hole that I might otherwise have done.

One important piece of learning that I had no idea of, the physical side of a miscarriage does not just happen in one go – for some it does, but for many it doesn’t – it can be a very complicated and lengthy process. What we see on TV programmes when these things happen in isn’t what happens in reality – we’re 11 weeks in and still ongoing on with the physical stuff. This has meant it’s been even more important to have the culture we have at TMSDI – without it I suspect I’d have had to take long-term sick leave, with it, I’ve been able to carry on in my role albeit we’ve had to flex a few deadlines.

I would urge everyone to find out a little more about miscarriage and how you can support those going through it (the mums AND the dads who’ve lost their babies) – because at least 1 in 4 pregnancies end this way, so for every 3 pregnancies you know about you can bet there is at least 1 couple you know going through this. The Miscarriage Association provides some great support and they also have a leaflet for employers - www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Miscarriage-and-the-Workplace.pdf

We’re hoping we get a new dawn in 2018, and will be very glad to see the end of 2017. However that’s tinged with sadness because this is one of those times when ‘time is a great healer’ really doesn’t really. The further we move from 8 September, the closer we get to Christmas and the ‘enforced happiness’ it brings (we’ll do our best but it’s going to be hard) and then more importantly even closer to our early April due date – and the closer the 4 people we know who are having spring babies also move to their due dates. We don’t know what seeing and hearing about these new babies is going to feel like, or what emotional roller coaster it will involve, but I do know that there is support and understanding not just outside work with friends and family, it’s also waiting at work, if I need it, with my ‘work friends and family’.

You can’t write policies for this kind of stuff, but you can create cultures of trust, kindness, compassion and understanding – we have, and having been on both sides, I know it really does work.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a 2018 full of kindness.

Melancholia on Ice

Day 9 (Friday 9th December 2016)

9 months after being appointed Manager of Leicester City
(the UK football club, who were seen as underdogs, having narrowly avoided relegation
the previous season), Claudio Ranieri led the Foxes (as the club are known) to win the Premier League title.
The win has been described by football experts as the most improbable win in sporting history.
The Foxes were at odds of 5,000/1 at the start of last season
(worse odds than Elvis being found alive, which were 2,000/1)

We have reached the end of the week and I am sure you will agree with me that the blogs so far have been stunning - we have read about love, loss, legacies and lessons. Today's post maintains the high standard that has been set before. It is written by my friend, the ever-insightful Simon Heath. Simon describes himself as a "pragmatic idealist". He took advantage of a redundancy opportunity to leave conventional corporate life, having been Head of Operations and Global Workplace Strategy for a global commercial real estate business, and having earned his spurs in financial services. He is now a consulting artist. Using his considerable artistic talents, combined with his genuine understanding of business and the world of work, he produces illustrations that help communicate and make messages stick.

In addition to being able to make people and organisations see things in a different way and to draw inspiration, Simon is a devoted family man. He lives with his wife and two children close to Henry VIII's former palace to the west of London. He is well-read and interested in and knowledgable about films. He cares about the world and the environment. I suppose he can best be described as a wonderful polymath who remains observant and curious. He and I both share an interest in polar exploration. If you want to know more about him and his thoughts, I urge you read his blog: Murmuration or else follow him on Twitter, his handle is @SimonHeath1.

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Melancholia on Ice 

The 6^th of August 1987 was the day before my 16^th birthday. I had spent the previous night in a small 2-man tent on a patch of fine white sand at the bottom of a tumble of moraine at the side of an as-yet unnamed glacier. 

Glacier at Raudfjorden

From the entrance to my tent I could look out across the ice-flecked waters of Raudfjorden and to the left the open Arctic Ocean and over the horizon, some 500 miles away, the Pole. After a hurried breakfast we climbed the glacier to the ice-field beyond. Our destination, a previous unclimbed peak, lay off in the distance. This early in the morning the ice was still firm and we made swift progress. As we prepared for the final push our team leader turned to me and offered me the chance to lead. And so I did. A first ascent. Heart-pounding, I turned full circle. At that height, the ice-fields of north-western Svalbard stretched as far as the eye could see. 


From that height the only way was down. 

From the highs of polar exploration the only way was down. Down to the more prosaic concerns of teenage life. I didn’t bring my heart back with me. I’d left it in the Arctic.

I went back to the Arctic again three years later. And there, among the wolves, 

wolves chasing muck-oxen

the hares and the musk oxen, 

Arctic hare

I found my heart on the tundra. 

But, returning south once more, a piece of it stayed behind. I swore I’d return. But I never did. Ever since, I’ve felt the hollow sensation of its absence. I had dreamed about the Arctic since I read about the exploits of the early explorers as a wee boy. 

Shackleton (left) at Ocean Camp 1915

I never dreamt it would claim a part of me so profoundly. So profoundly that many experiences since have felt a trifle hollow. This missing part of me isn’t filled by the whisky of which I’m so fond. Or by going up mountains to ski. It’s where I am when I’m not here. On a train, but not here. In an office, but not here. In the canyons of the city, I’m most often there and not here.

The Arctic I saw is long gone. Cruise ships now visit the fjord where I first lost my heart. The tourists return more reliably than the sea ice. And gone with the ice are the seals. And with them, the bears. 

Svalbard polar bear photo by Mike Reyfman 

The boy is gone too and I don’t know how to go back.

Simon in the Arctic