Life in Chiaroscuro - Day 52

Day 52 (Sunday 21st January 2018)

52 - the age at which Harry Houdini died - by this time he had amazed and baffled people
in much of Europe, Russia and the U.S.A. On 21st January 1903 he escaped Halvemaansteeg
police station in Amsterdam. 1903 was the year when Houdini really became an icon - he was
already known for being good at escaping handcuffs but he now began to make a name
for breaking out of jails. he also managed to break into a safe for a Moscow locksmith
(who had been trying to do so for 14 years) revealing a treasure trove of jewels and
earning Houdini $750 for 9 hours work (a significant sum at the time).

Today is my husband's birthday and we are going out for a family lunch. His mother is coming to celebrate with us. She is finding life without her husband very hard. Death is, in so many ways, so painful for those of us left behind.

The post you read today is by Jacqueline Davies. It is open, honest and at times a painful read (as well as being the second post in a row with a wonderful poem  written by the contributor). Jacqueline says much about herself below, so I will only say a few words... Some of you may remember Jacqueline's Call To Arms in the final post of last year's series. At the time of writing last year she was the Master of the Guild of Human Resource Professionals (@GuildHRprofs) and the first openly lesbian Master of any City of London Guild. She was also the HR Director for the FCA (the regulatory body for much of the Financial Services industry) - a huge and demanding role. In her post she made a statement of the role of HR that has resonated with me this year, we need to be:

"standard bearers for the best of what it means to be human. To hold ourselves and others to account and to be provocative when we see integrity or conduct threatened."

I genuinely believe that HR as a profession is in the best position I have ever known it to be in. Increasingly leaders, colleagues, clients and the communities in which we work are becoming aware of the importance of culture and conduct. That does not mean we should be complacent or smug - someone in HR clearly turned a blind eye to inappropriate behaviour in Miramax when Harvey Weinstein was at his most predatory. We need HR to be the moral compass (it is no coincidence that a compass is the symbol of the HR Guild here in the UK) and to ask the difficult questions. Since leaving the FCA Jacqueline has teamed up with Tania in their own business consultancy and I think you can tell from its name that she will not be shrinking from facing things head-on - Audacity Associates. In addition, she is an advisor to the Henley Business School, a Governor of Middlesex University and Chair of the National Skills Academy for Financial Services. You can connect with her on social media - her Twitter handle is @JacquelineLD.

The beautiful Chiaroscuro paintings and photographs used to illustrate this piece have all been selected by Jacqueline.

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The Italian’s use the term Chiaroscuro to describe scenes painted in ‘light-dark’, how tonal contrasts are created to provide shape, show character and tell stories.

Life in Chiaroscuro

Seven years ago my mother died. More precisely, I gave my consent for her life support to be switched off, then she died. This decision has weighed heavily with me, replaying while I wait for sleep and returning at dawn before I can crowd it out with plans for the day. This isn’t a post about grief, it’s a post about how we can re-mix the colours on our palette to make sense of living with both darkness and dawn. How I’ve learned that a ‘Chiaroscuro filter’ can distinguish the things that matter from the beautiful, daily distractions that fill our life’s canvas.

You see I lost my Mum some thirty years earlier. She disappeared inside a black cloak of depression. Up-to this point, she loved us unconditionally and taught us how to love back. As we progressed though high school, quite suddenly everything changed. She was unable to go out, unable to get up and when she did was so heavily medicated that when we looked into her eyes we couldn’t find her. This would mean returning from school never knowing if she would be in the kitchen or in bed or if the paracetamol packets would be empty. My father, a steelworker worked around the clock. My younger sister and I found coping strategies. I had wanted to be a painter, but being the oldest, I took charge and I followed my father’s lead; I dropped Art, working relentlessly until I could flee to university. I didn’t stop; travelling like a train through a tunnel, on and on while decades flashed by through the half-light.

The Young Singer by Georges de La Tour

Then, just before I turned 40, the same age Mum was when she became ill, I sat in the hospital, holding her hand and let her go. Just a year before, I had become a Mum and the wonder of holding a new life while letting another go, meant that even the most brilliant moments were outlined by loss.

I took a year out from paid work but I didn’t stop. We moved house, I also took on the Chair of a national charity and wrote a book. I then returned to work and ploughed on. Alongside this, becoming ‘THE BEST MUM I CAN POSSIBLY BE’ became my chief preoccupation. As any new parent will tell you, our radiant daughter brought a new type of light into our lives. It was initially, searing, so bright, I had to blink through the first year learning to adjust to the profound joy and then to the greying fear that arrived. Fear of loss, fear of repeated patterns, fear of not knowing what to do next. Learning how to live with this felt like picking glass splinters from my heart.

Madonna and Child with St Anne by Caravaggio (c1605-6)

Some seven years later, I sat still in a hospital bed watching the sun rise and fall through an oxygen mask. Pneumonia had pressed the pause button on my life. A close friend, shared a conversation with her husband that stopped me in my tracks; ‘your on the top of our list to go first because you’re living faster than anyone else’. In the year that has followed this I’ve stopped permanent work and started painting again. I’m learning to slow down, middle age is helping. I’m learning to look, to see darkness and dawn as an artist might. Noticing the line and shadow in the everyday and being able to distinguish what really matters and to teach this art to my daughter.

Photograph of an apple by Jimmy Wen

I wrote this poem to make sense of things.

Three Daughters

After you left us I waited,

Holding your hand until the silence

Holding my breath until

       the sun came up again and I could escape outside

Gulping the new morning air

And watching the circling gulls

       shrieking their songs of loss and longing, high above the hospital car park

I mostly remember your hands

How they put plasters on my grazes

Turned pages at bedtime

       stirred pots, brimming with love

These are my hands now

Life hardened palms

Stretching out to reach my daughter

       to teach her how to hold time

       and when to watch the sky.

Detail from "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" by Caravaggio (c1586)

The Mother Song, written and performed by Andrea Menard

Home - Day 51

Day 51 (Saturday 20th January 2018)

51, the age of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was first elected to be President
of the U.S.A., in 1933. On the 20th January 1945 he was sworn-in for an unprecedented
(and never to be repeated) 4th term as US President. He was the first sering President
to fly in a plane, the first to speak on television (when he opened the World Fair in 1938)
and the first to appoint a woman to the US Cabinet (Frances Perkins, who was Secretary
of Labor from 1933 to 1945. She was one of only two cabinet members to remain
throughout his presidency. She helped establish many of the important aspects of the
New Deal, including laws against child labor, the first minimum wage and overtime laws,
assigned the forty-hour work week, a policy for working with labor unions, established
unemployment benefits, pensions for uncovered elderly, and welfare.)

Today is Saturday and I am relieved, as it has been a busy week. There were moments when I wondered whether I would manage to keep a flow of Post-Advent blogs running for you. I am looking forward to a period of calm. Despite the rain, some of today will be spent pootling in the garden, filling bird feeders, etc... in preparation for next weekend's RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch - something I do every year; playing my part in the annual assessment of  birdlife in the UK. Last year's results showed that there has been a 44% increase in the numbers of goldfinch since 2007. I love goldfinch - social, chattering flashes of yellow, with red patches on their heads that come to feast as a family on the Nyger seeds. Goldfinches are the connecting imagery through the pages of the beautiful book, The Lost Words, given to me as a gift by fellow nature-lover Simon Heath. The book was inspired by the words that were being removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary and hence being lost to parlance. Robert Macfarlane (one of the authors) wrote a beautiful piece, Badger or Bulbasaur, about the book and our diminishing connection with nature last September. We may not like it, but we are a part of nature and should be more careful with our home - the Earth is the only one we have.

Today's post, whose theme is "Home" is written by an Advent Blogs pioneer - she was one of the very first to become involved when the series was founded and established by and she has remained loyal ever since. This piece comes all the way from New Zealand and has been crafted by Zoe Mounsey. Zoe was born and raised in the UK, in Nottinghamshire. She initially studied Psychology and commenced a career linked to the Education in the UK. In 2013 she, her husband and two children emigrated to New Zealand. She has retained her close links to Academia and now works as a Senior Research Programme Advisor for the New Zealand Fire Service (a job she started last February, having previously focused her academic attention on Disaster Research at Massey University). Zoe and I first became acquainted via Twitter (you too can follow her on Twitter, her handle is @zoemounsey). 

Both photos are provided by Zoe, I added the music at the end.

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Recently I have been thinking a lot about home and what it means to me as an immigrant. I use the word home to mean one of two places - firstly the place where we live in Kapiti, New Zealand. When driving from Wellington there is a point on the road or train line, where you suddenly see the sea and Kapiti Island which always tells me I am nearly home. Home, also means my parents house in the UK where I lived from aged 11. This year my parents will move into a new house and it will be interesting to see how I feel about their new place - will it be home for me? Or will their old house always be ‘home’ because of the memories. Is home about four walls or is it about people and connection? Is it about a space where you feel safe, accepted for who you are? 

My work in disaster research has taught me about the importance of home for those who experience disasters - those that have to relocate due to damage from fires, floods or earthquakes often experience more negative psychological outcomes. This has been on my mind, especially with the Grenfell disaster, as I know the community has been dispersed and I worry what this means for the people impacted by the tragedy. I know I feel more secure in New Zealand now that we have bought a house and have slowly made it our own. It’s more than security, it’s about having our own space and being able to make decisions about how that space looks. 

When I was 13 I wrote a poem called Home which was published in a children’s poetry anthology. 

Back when I wrote that I was the one growing up and home was very much a place of safety and security for me. Now I am the parent and it’s my job to create the home where my kids feel that they can tell the tales of growing up. It’s harder than I ever imagined - this year has involved bullying, friendship difficulties, first boyfriend and first kiss, anxiety about academic performance, concerns about appearance, internet boundaries and discussions about sex, pornography and suicide. Technology has been a key theme and her ability to access information that she is not yet mature enough to process. YouTube and a series of vloggers are Miss 10s preferred sources of information and provide her with insights into the world. I have learnt that while we can restrict access the best approach is to discuss with her what she has been watching and try to put it into context for her. Not always easy when I am often the last person she wants to talk to. 

So I am still musing about home, what it is, what it means and how I can create a space/place that my kids will always feel is home. And hoping that there is still a ‘home’ for me in the UK.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Home Is Where The Heart Is

A Cheeky Little Smile and a Work Life Balance - Day 8

Day 8 (Friday 8th December 2017)

Eight reindeer pull Father Christmas' sleigh, according to the
1823 poem, Clement C. Moore "A Visit from St. Nicholas"(also known as"Twas the Night
Before Christmas". Their names are: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder
(variously spelled Donder and Donner), and Blixem (variously spelled Blixen and Blitzen), with Rudolph being a 20th-century inclusion.Reindeer can run at speeds of up to 48 mph (Usain Bolt ran at 27 mph).
Illustration by Scott Gustafson

Wow that first week has passed swiftly. We are having our team Christmas lunch today (yes I know it's a bit early, but some of the team are going away for a few weeks and so it makes sense to meet up now, while we are all still around). I wonder what Secret Santa will bring me. I love this time of year: the sparkle, surprises, smiles and generosity (more of spirit than of gifts).

Today's piece should raise a smile. It is always a joy to read about personal transformation based on values and who doesn't love a happy ending? It is written by Craig Kaye, who works as an L&D specialist for the charity Addaction, one of the largest Public Health Services across Substance Misuse, Mental Health, Young Persons, Safeguarding and Criminal Justice Sectors. He studied Criminal Psychology at university. He is active on social media (his Twitter handle is @TheCraigKaye ) and occasionally he adds pieces to his fine blog, also called theCraigKaye. Craig, as you will see from below, is a keen football player. He is also interested in Science, Politics, global affairs and things that make the world (and the people within it) tick.

NB All the colour illustrations were selected by Craig.

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As I sit on the 8 hour train journey from St. Helens, Merseyside to Truro, Cornwall I thought I would use this time to make a contribution to Kate Griffiths-Lambeth’s (@KateGL's) Advent Blog Series. With the title of Darkness and Dawn I had the intention to write about: Trumpism, then Brexit and give an anthropological, objective view of why society has decided to take these long lasting political decisions. I'm very, very passionate about decision making processes and behaviouralism, so this initially appeared a really interesting opportunity to air my observations - but would I class this as being in a personal category of darkness and dawn .......... 

The answer is ‘no’ - I want this blog to have more internal, meaningful resonance!! 

So, as I depart Birmingham New Street, my thoughts instantly turn to being a father to our two year only little monkey Oscar Kaye - and the contrast between the person sitting on the train writing this blog and the one of three years ago - this sounds deep. 

Three years ago, I would class myself as first and foremost a loyal husband, however what came next where two personal obsessions of mine: ‘work’ and ‘football.’ 

Firstly, ‘Work’ - prior to joining, in my personal opinion, one of the best Learning and Development Departments money can buy for quality, enthusiasm and professional insight, I was a Manager involved in a service working directly with ‘Vulnerable Adults and their Families.’ When I wasn't working in the office, I was working at home, when I was on annual leave I'd always have my work phone accessible - just in case someone needed my professional guidance or a decision which needed to be made. Yes, I'm putting my hand up - not only was I a careerist but also identified with the term Presenteeism. I didn't wish to take annual leave, just in case a decision was made in my absence and didn't wish to take a day off poorly in case this affected my chances of a promotion. 

Then ‘Football’ - The above amount of work needed its own avenue of stress release, I had been playing football since I can remember and three years ago was easily playing up to five times per week with various teams, friends and work colleagues. If a match at the weekend was called off I'd have a little sulk to myself, if something else occurred, e.g. being injured or feeling poorly, this didn't not matter one inch, my football boots were still going on my feet, eager in anticipation to walk on to the green turf.

Then on the 19th November 2015, a cheeky little monkey, weighing in at only 5lbs was placed in my arms. I still vividly remember his little baby-blue Winnie The Pooh Cotton Hat and Gloves and he made no more than a tiny squeak whenever he wanted a few mls of ready-made milk formula.

What followed, due to complications very much not spoken about in pregnancy, meant remaining in the hospital for an additional four weeks due to his amazing mum's health. You don't really see it in the soaps, I assumed prior to then that we would be in and out with enough time to catch the end of the match and the start of the new series of ‘I'm a Celebrity Get Me Outta Here.’ - we weren't!

A vast number of people told the Craig of three years ago, that having a baby is the biggest life-changing moment in your life, I gave the usual smile and nod without paying it too much notice.

‘What do they know?’ I thought to myself. ‘I manage my time brilliantly, it won't change my beliefs, views or attitudes that much’ I reflected at the time - it does!

I started my new role in Learning and Development in January 2016, based from home. Some can struggle with not working in close proximity with colleagues and no office politics or banter. I very much do not, I have someone working next to me with a cheeky little smile and day by day watching him develop into a confident and happy little toddler who loves nothing more than to get his hands on Penguin Chocolate Cake Bars and to play Hide and Seek behind Daddy's Office Door.

What happened to me in November 2015 was that, before any thought process I had, I weighed up what Oscar needed first. Seeing him and his Mother smile became my primary goal, not work, not football but both their health and happiness and seeing the slightest progress in his emotional or physical development filled me with more joy than a promotion or scoring any goal could.

What's more is that my new role placed a strong emphasis on a healthy work / life balance, personal and professional development through expert coaching and internal opportunities as well as a team who all have such strong specialisms it can only make you even better at what you do when in their presence.

As I reflect over the last year or two and losing my careerism and presenteeism where I would beat myself up if I wasn't the best at everything I did either in work or on the football pitch, I have become a far more skilled, empathic and resilient professional than I ever was pre-2015 and my goal scoring record is actually better too!

I'm incredibly thankful to my Wife and Son for helping me become the incredibly happy person writing this blog, my Manager and Team in Learning and Development who help me become a stronger, more confident professional and my friends and family who regularly listen to my rants about such topics as: Politics, Science, Football Results and Social Injustice.

And a massive thank you for spending the time reading the above!!!!

Craig