Letting go: Part II

Today I have some happy news and some more reflections. The first news is that I've broken the 17 minute mark! I have had this problem with meditating for more than 15 minute. I'd get to 15, 16 or 17 minutes and suddenly started to fidget and find an excuse to stop. Well, not any more. I have sat quietly and practiced letting go for two mornings in a row as part of establishing a new practice of surrender. I'm doing this for 21 days to give the practice a chance to take root. I'm taking this one step at a time and for now I'm just practicing the art of letting go physically. This morning I set my alarm for 20 minutes after I started, not expecting to go that long but knowing that I needed to be done by then in order to get on with my day. Next thing I knew my alarm was sounding. I've done it! The barrier has been overcome. Who knows how long I will sit tomorrow, but now I feel that anything may be possible. My second piece of happy news is that the wonderful woman who gave me the Mary Oliver poetry compilation that I talked about in my last post has started her own blog. This is really exciting for me and I am looking forward to getting to know her better through her posts and to having the chance to cheer her on from a distance in her incredible work and life (I also hope to learn the secrets of her equanimity). My third piece of happy news is that Laini's book has had it's first review, and it is a very, very good review. If you are a fan of Laini Taylor (I personally am a huge fan, in fact she is my girl-crush of the year, along with the marvelous Alexandra) then read this wonderful review of her book and then see if you can resist going directly to Amazon to pre-order your very own copy. I know I can't. I've also been thinking about my holiday and extracting a few lessons. Some are very simple, like the old and oft-repeated lesson about the pitfalls of trying to fit too much into too little time. I'll probably never be that person who plans to do nothing on their holiday, and then does exactly that. But I will keep trying to remind myself that I actually cannot be in more than one place at a time. Also I'll try to remember that when I want to do three things at once it is unfortunately unlikely that simply throwing them all together to make one event will result in a happy mix. But the deeper lesson is about letting go. When I look back over those two weeks I see so many moments in which I was unable to let go of things that were getting in the way of my own relaxation. Even when the people around me were telling me not to worry about them, even when they were looking me in the eye and saying "you are not responsible for our enjoyment of this holiday", I was unable or unwilling to release myself from that sense of responsibility. I had invited some very special people to join the Commander and I on this holiday - the Commander's best friend C and his partner M. It was such a long way for them to come from Portland, Oregon to New Zealand. It was also going to be their only real holiday for a very long time. They got stuck in LA on the way, and were delayed for two days. It was a horrible start to their holiday and cut their time in New Zealand even shorter. So by the time they arrived I had decided to ditch my plans to combine their tour of New Zealand with visits to see my beloved tribe in Wellington and instead focused completely on the beach holiday that they so deserved. There were other options, I could have let them find their own way around for a few days while I went to visit my lovely ladies in Wellington and then met them again on the way back. I could have taken them to Wellington with me and found some decent surf beaches in that part of the country. But I had an idea of what would be the best holiday for them and I wouldn't let go of that. Nor would I let go of my sense of responsibility to make them happy. I had a wonderful time, we visited some of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand. I had a go at surfing, and we hand-fed stingrays (reviving my long-held dream to be a marine biologist). We ate fish and chips and drank Gisbourne chardonnay in Gisbourne. We swam in lakes and in the ocean. M and I went for several runs along the coast, and for walks through native bush and up to a hilltop lookout with amazing views along the coast. When our muscles were complaining about this sudden burst of activity we went for a delicious massage. We played cards late at night with red wine and chocolate and I introduced them all to my favorite ice cream, the New Zealand classic Hokey Pokey. Yes, I had a wonderful time, and enjoyed their company immensely. But I also had moments of regret that I was in my home country and not hanging out with my own tribe. As wonderful as these guys are I was longing for the company of people who have known me for so long that I don't have to wonder whether they are understanding or misunderstanding me. I also had moments in which I felt resentful that they were not helping me plan, that I seemed to be the one constantly left to make decisions and plans. In retrospect, and to some extent I could see this even as it was happening, I know that the reason they were not planning is because they didn't need to plan. They were very content with simply being on holiday and did not have high expectations of doing or seeing very much. It was me who had the expectations, and so it was me who was making the plans to meet those expectations. Sigh. I keep coming back to this lesson about letting go. I find it so hard, and yet (tempting as it may seem) I don't think that the answer is to let this lesson go. So instead I'll take it one baby step at a time, starting with my 21 days of taking 15 minutes to sit in quietness and practice releasing the tension I hold in my body. By the way, one lovely upside to being off-line for two weeks is the treat of having so many wonderful posts to read on my favorite blogs all at once. I'm glad that my big meeting in Kabul was postponed because it has given me space to ease back into my work gently and time to catch up on the other things that make my life here work (like reading your blogs and doing yoga). In fact I'm off to do a session of yoga with my new-found yoga buddy and teacher now.

Back and puzzled (Sunday Scribblings)

Wow, I've been gone only two weeks and yet it feels like a lifetime. After 36 hours of travel from Auckland to Kabul and then a very slow flight on the ancient Antonov aircraft via Kandahar I finally arrived back to Herat this afternoon. Waiting for me were more than 350 work emails, a meeting set up for an hour after I landed to address a case in which one young man has already died and several other are living in fear, and a staff member in jail after being involved in a car accident in which a young child was injured. So that's the end of the beach holiday then, I guess. I was really reluctant to return this time. For the first time ever in my experience of mission work, of travelling to and from duty stations and of saying all those goodbyes, this time I was uncertain that I really wanted to be leaving. I wept as I embraced my darling younger sister and said goodbye, perhaps this time was just one time too many, or perhaps it was just the knowledge that this place has been a place of sadness and struggle for me in the past few months and a reluctance to come back and face that. I came back with lots of puzzles, and above all with the puzzle of how to do this, how to live in the place and do this work while maintaining my own sense of well-being and inner calm. Looked at from one angle this puzzle seems very complicated, and to require getting lots of little pieces all in the right places, at the right time, in the right balance and for the right amount of time. But from another angle it seems that the puzzle can only be solved by trying less, by letting go more, and by the very simplest of approaches, like breathing and resting and finding joy wherever it is to be found. Along with this puzzle, I've come back with some new insights, some new ideas and new approaches. Perhaps most importantly of all I have come back with a growing sense of emergence from the dark, sad place that I found myself in for much of the past two months. I'm still a bit jetlagged and my home and bed are calling to me - but I wanted to share three things that I found on the plane during my journey back. The first came from a wonderful gift from the gorgeous and thoughtful Alessandra who sent me some of her worry dolls, along with some other lovely treats including a copy of Yoga Journal magazine. I read it from cover to cover on the plane and found all sorts of wonderful reminders and new ideas for how I can continue on my journey to discover how to live this crazy life of movement and conflict and yet remain grounded and at peace within myself. One article by Sally Kempton about surrender and the practice of letting go particularly challenged me. I read and write and talk about letting go, but when I am honest with myself I know that I don't practice it very often. What I found especially helpful in this article was the discussion of the difference between letting go and giving up. I am going to keep thinking about this difference. A fear of giving up, of abdicating my responsiblity to make a difference in the world, is a significant part of my resistance to letting go. So it was helpful to read a story about a yogi who learned that "a true karma yogi is not someone who goes belly-up to higher authority; instead, he's a surrendered activist - a person who does his best to help create a better reality while knowing that he is not in charge of outcomes." That is an insight that I need to remind myself of in my morning meditations, which I am promising myself every morning for the next 21 days (thanks to Meg and Thea for the inspiration to use 21 days as a time frame to let this new habit take root in my life). The second place in which I found some words that my heart and spirit recognised was in a book of poems given to me as a gift by a woman who I am getting to know because she is the partner of my boyfriend's best friend. It is a lovely and unexpected treat to find that she is just the kind of woman with whom I would want to make friends wherever and however I may have met her. She gave me a copy of Mary Oliver's collection of poems "Dream Work" and I found myself drawn immediately to this poem: The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice - though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations - though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do - determined to save the only life you could save. The third place was in a booklet that had been left on the UNHAS flight from Dubai to Kabul, it is a little book called "The WFP Field Staff Companion" and it discusses the challenges of field life in a difficult mission like Afghanistan. It includes some very sound practical tips about things like exercising and maintaining close contact with friends and family at home, but it was the section on burn-out and coping after trauma that really resonated for me. Here they explained the symptoms of burnout and of traumatic stress and I felt once again that little shock of recognition, they could have been describing exactly my experience in the months following my experiences during the assassination of Amanullah Khan and the ensuing battles and casualties. There was very little here that I haven't read, or been told on many previous occassions, but now I was reading it with a little bit of distance from the experience and it seemed much easier to see what I had been going through. Again they recommend relaxation and avoiding self-judgement. Which brought me all the way back to the magazine Alessandra sent me, and a article about the importance and health benefits of resotrative yoga. Even further back, it reminded me of the words of a teacher from the Yoga centre in New Zealand where I took some private instruction when I was home for my sister's wedding last year, very soon after the trauma of the fighting. I had asked my teacher Jude for some intensive teaching on the Ashtanga primary series, in the hope of lifting my pratice of the asanas to the next level. She, in her wisdom, gave me some of this, but also insisted on spending some of the sessions focused on restorative yoga and yoga nidra (mediation). She saw my discipline and my drive to achieve and succeed. She acknowledged this as a positive along with my physical and mental strength. However, with kindness and good humour, she also suggested what I needed was not help to push myself harder into the difficult poses, but help to learn to relax and let go. So my 21 day gift to myself (I'm not going to call it a challenge, because somehow that seems too much like the kind of effort I always make, and this time I want to be easy and kind and gentle with myself) is to practice meditation every morning and some restorative poses every night. During my meditation I will practice letting go - not giving up on my commitment to do all that I can to make a better reality, but letting go a (false) sense of responsibility for the outcomes.

4.00am

BAIRES ABRIL 13, originally uploaded by frida world.

It is four in the morning. Part of me wants to write that I'm awake because I've just arrived home from a marvelous adventure. A little fantasy for tomorrow's Sunday Scribblings. But the truth is that I've been lying awake in bed for five hours. Tonight my mind is on a wild taxi ride, speeding through city scapes both familiar and unknown. Oddly, it wasn't until I got out of bed and sat here at the computer that I suddenly thought of the one thing which may be behind the alertness. Tomorrow I will probably be left as Officer in Charge of the Western Region. Last time I was Officer in Charge I had only been in the job a month and when the Head of Office left he said: "You'll be fine, as long as nothing goes wrong in Shindand, you will be fine." Last time, my OiC duty started on a Sunday and at midday that Sunday a successful assassination was carried out in Shindand, killing the most powerful commander in the district, Amanullah Khan, and his son. In retribution for these killings Amanullah's men attacked the villages populated by tribes aligned to the people believed to be responsible for the assassination. I heard about the fighting at about 1pm. By nightfall we were receiving reports of any where between 12 and 70 people killed. This came at a point when our national staff were all on leave for Eid, and all of my more experienced colleagues had taken the opportunity for an short break as well. I was out of my depth and felt as though I was drowning more often than I was floating. This was also the period when I first starting using this blog as an outlet for thoughts and feelings which had nowhere else safe to be expressed. In the midst of the craziest week I've had since I came here I even posted my first attempt at the Self Portrait Challenge.

I drew on every once of self-belief I could find and spent the week punching well above my weight. It began to emerge that a disproportionate number of the dead were children, boys aged between 12 and 18 years. Then, just when I thought it was over, it found a new lease of life and kept me in the hot seat for a few more days.

Looking back, I now notice that it was soon after these events that I started to suffer from the symptoms I described this week. One week after the worst of it all, the insomnia started. Two weeks later I was taking sleeping pills. I'm only now really seeing this. It seems blindingly obvious, of course, in retrospect. So, here I am, awake at 4.00am and it suddenly occurs to me that tomorrow, Sunday, there is a very good chance that I will once again be left in charge. More than that, this past week tensions in Shindand have been at their highest since that outbreak of fighting in October. The situation is considered to be unstable and the risk of further conflict is very real. But I haven't been lying in bed all night thinking about Shindand. I have a pretty strict rule about not lying in bed thinking about human rights cases. I've been lying in bed thinking about Enid Blyton's "The Faraway Tree", thoughts triggered by Laini's prompt for Sunday Scribblings this week: Fantasy.

I'm always up for climbing the Faraway Tree, I always have been. When I was 17 years old I left the small rural town I grew up in and headed off solo to Europe. Since then I've picked up my bags and moved to the Gaza Strip and to Afghanistan. But the thing with the Faraway tree is that you never know whether you are going to get The Land of Birthdays or The Land of Dame Slap. I developed this 'travel rule of thumb' when I was back-packing solo through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt about 12 years ago. I decided to always expect the best of people, places and situations, but to always be prepared to deal with the worst if it came.

I don't think I was prepared to deal with children getting killed while I was Officer in Charge. I'm not sure if you can ever be prepared for that. But this time at least I can be a little more prepared for the possibility that events could escalate very quickly to a point where I would no longer have any power to influence or control them. I can also be a little more prepared for the possibility that if this were to happen, it might take a much heavier toll on me than I have previously admitted. A good friend wrote to me this week and told me, amongst other incredibly helpful things, that depression is very prevalent amongst humanitarian workers. Others of you have told me the same thing. Does that mean I should get out of this place? Out of this line of work? Possibly. But first I want to see what difference it makes to be more conscious of the impact that events and experiences here are having on me. I want to see whether that awareness can be used to more intentionally process the thoughts and feelings that arise within me in response. I want to see what happens when I take the time to work through those thoughts and release those feelings, through writing, through creating, through moving my body more and through this business of sitting still every morning (I'm building up to the day when I can say "I meditate" without feeling like I'm faking it). Today is Saturday, I can sleep as much as I need to today. So this sleepless night hasn't made me anxious or distressed. On the contrary, during those five hours somewhere in the space between full consciousness and sleep a new understanding found its way to the surface.

Black dog

BAIRES ABRIL 09, originally uploaded by frida world.

Okay, I can’t avoid acknowledging him any longer, there is a little black dog following me around. He’s been hanging about for the past few months. He’s not so big; I’ve seen others much bigger. Years ago one of his kind came and sat on me and I couldn’t get out of bed for six weeks. This little guy has nothing on that monster, but he’s here and I know better than to keep trying to ignore or avoid him. How do I know this is a black dog and not just the shadow from a passing cloud? It’s not just the tears that come out of nowhere, or the sense of being overwhelmed by the smallest thing. It’s also the fact that I no longer find enjoyment in things that I usually love, like running, doing yoga, or even reading. It’s also the ridiculous depths to which my self-esteem has plummeted, poor J only has to wake up a little grouchy and I’m convinced he doesn’t love me any more. The disrupted sleep is a clue, as is my inability to make even the simplest decision (J: “So do you want to watch The West Wing or do you want to check your emails?” Me: “I don’t know, I don’t know, oh god, I just don’t know!”).

To be honest, it’s also the fact that this has been going on for months now. So step one: acknowledging. Then what? I liked what Sue Chance said here:

"Black Dog" was Churchill's name for his depression, and as is true with all metaphors, it speaks volumes. The nickname implies both familiarity and an attempt at mastery, because while that dog may sink his fangs into one's person every now and then, he's still, after all, only a dog, and he can be cajoled sometimes and locked up other times.

Can I cajole this little guy? Tie him up? Show him the door? Last week I think he missed the plane to Ghor and I had a week without him casting his inky shadow over my every hopeful, cheerful thought. But here he was waiting for me when I got back. So it’s time to accept that he is here. I know some tricks that usually work with him. They’ve worked before and even really smart people with degrees in Black Dogs agree with me on these. Like psychologist Dr Carmel Loughland, senior researcher with the The Neuroscience Institute of Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders in Australia, who says people "can go off to their GPs and be assessed very easily for medication, or more specialist treatment". Oh, except not here in Herat they can’t, and the one time I summoned up the courage to talk to the doctor employed by my organization his response was that I was “having psychological problems” and not medical problems, so obviously he couldn’t help, Gee, thanks! But that’s okay; Dr Loughland has some tips for helping yourself:

“We reduce the amount of stress that we’re feeling if we can get out and about and exercise,” she says. “When people are feeling very blue or down they tend to isolate themselves, and in some countries that’s a form of torture; it’s used to break people down. “It’s very important that we get out and talk to people and socialise, even if we don’t feel like it or we don’t have a lot of access to people. Just getting out and taking a walk is really important.”

I agree, completely, especially about the getting out for a walk bit. Hmm, except “getting out” is not so much an option around here, neither to exercise nor to socialize, and certainly not to take a walk. Isolation and containment are characteristics of life here. We are isolated from the communities in which we work by chasms of cultural difference and by extreme security measures, which – if we were to obey them to the letter - prohibit us from even visiting our Afghan colleagues since their homes do not comply with the security guidelines. We are isolated from each other by restrictions on our movement and, in my case at least, by our own black dogs. I found this fantastic little book online today, and I liked what the author/illustrator had to say about his own experience with the black dog.

“One of the simplest tools I’ve learnt is acceptance; acceptance is the one thing that deprives the Black Dog of his power. If Black Dog chooses to make an appearance I no longer take flight or burn huge reserves of energy trying to conceal it. I accept the Black Dog is there, I batten down the hatches, I try to unload some responsibilities and I live in the knowledge that it will pass because it always does. Like all bad dogs a Black Dog needs discipline, patience, understanding to bring him into line. Never, ever give up.”

Here’s what I’m figuring out. Doing this here, dealing with the black dog here in Herat, is something new. I have to learn how to do it under these circumstances, with these challenges and restrictions. I have to stop avoiding it and stop complaining that the things that usually work are impossible here. I need to work out what will work here. I need to not give up. I am also going to remember something else. The black dog can also drive me to do great things. Out of this sense of smallness and the fear of not being loved I can find the drive to do things which, hopefully, will earn me some love and admiration. Out of a sense of hopelessness and helplessness I can find the strength to act.

I know I am not alone in this, and although it may seem extraordinarily arrogant (especially for someone who claims to be suffering from such a low self esteem) to compare myself to Tolstoy, Churchill or Luther, I’m going to take this final thought with me into this day and the ones that will follow:

“[Churchill] was in lustrous company - Goethe, Schumann, Luther, and Tolstoy to name but a few - all of them great men who suffered from recurrent depression. Who doesn't have at least a passing familiarity with the notion that depression sometimes acts as a spur to those of a certain temperament and native ability? Aware of how low they will sink at times, they propel themselves into activity and achievements the rest of us regard with awe.” Sue Chance, M.D.

Sunday Scribblings: Kissing

“Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls,

because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath.”

">Eve Glicksman

When I started working for the Office of the Race Relations Commissioner in New Zealand I started to spend a lot more time on marae and at hui or meetings hosted by different Maori iwi (tribes) or groups. I had the wonderful chance to learn some Maori language and protocol. I think that I am suited to have a little more ritual in my world than modern, Western life usually provides. As a result, perhaps, of this I loved what I learned - rituals and ceremonies to help provide a pathway through some of lifes most difficult or significant moments. One of the aspects of these rituals that I love is the hongi - a form of kiss - that follows the formal speeches and prayers of a welcome ceremony and completes the coming together as one of the hosts and the visitors. The hongi involves pressing noses, but the significance is in the intermingling of breath, the joining together of that which is most essential in each person, the breath of life. Once you have been fully welcomed on to a marae in this manner (sealed with the hongi) you are no longer a visitor (manuhiri) you are now one of the people of that place. I have never got over the amazing privilege of being accepted and welcomed so completely, but I do understand why it could only happen after a moment as intimate as the kiss of shared breath. PS: My initial thought when I read this prompt was to write about the politics of kissing here in Afghanistan, but then I read Home in Kabul's post and knew that I couldn't put it better, so instead I recommend that you read her post. For more words on kissing see Sunday Scribblings

Reasons to stay

Because when the cruelty, selfishness and arrogance of the bad guys make me feel so angry and helpless that I want to escape this country, escape those feeling, I know that there are Afghans who feel so much angrier but who have so much less power to make a difference than I could have if I work out how to use it. Because I'm remembering how miserable it can feel trying to fit my square peg self into a round hole but I'm also remembering that there are better ways of responding than either: raging against the injustice or stupidity of the round hole; or rubbing off my jangly, sparkly edges until I fit in. Because I'm learning about Afghanistan. Because I'm persevering until I figure out how to do a job that doesn't come naturally to me, how to give my best even when I feel a hundred others could do better. Because I'm learning about how hard it can be to translate the rhetoric into reality. Because I have the following essentials for my survival:

• Lovely and long-suffering boyfriend
• iPod filled with NZ music
• iBook and an internet connection
• Moleskine journals
• Pastels and paints (courtesy of the aforementioned lovely boyfriend)
• Digital camera
• Aveda Replenishing body moisturiser
• Hema face cream and oil (100% deliciously NZ organic)
• Bodyshop hemp hand and foot cream (see a pattern? it's dry here!)
• Jarrah Chocolatte hot chocolate
• Lady Grey tea
• Scented candles
• Ugg boots
• 100% NZ made puffy jacket
• Yoga mat (somewhat neglected of late but always there when I'm ready)
• DVDs (The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Northern Exposure and Scrubs)
• Poetry books (Rumi and NZ's Janet Frame)
• Small collection of novels (including Rachael King, Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood)

Quietness and joy

Perhaps it is the imminence of the New Year, perhaps the inspiration I'm gathering from all the blogs I've been reading, perhaps my rediscovered love of poetry is playing a part. Perhaps it is quite simply the end of one cycle in my life and the beginning of another. In any case I'm spending lots of time reflecting on what I want more of in my life, in myself, and what I want less. I want more fun, more joy, more creativity and more laughter. I want more quiet, reflective, meditative moments. I don't want to lose the gift of seeing injustice, of believing in the possibility of a better, more just world (see the Franciscan blessing posted yesterday) but I want to find the courage and the freedom to live with joy in the face of that injustice. I want to be able to maintain a stillness in my soul in the face of the raging madness of the world out here. I was struck by the words of another Rumi poem this week: Quietness Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour. Do it now. You're covered with thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. Now some of my lovely, loving friends have gently pointed out to me in the past that my constant movement, my need to be busy and "productive" at all times, my exhaustive lists of tasks and goals, might be a bit too much. I know they are right. So I've been making more time for quietness and rest over the past year. Now I think I need to take this one step further. With the guidance and encouragement of my cousin and dear friend Marc I have been learning about meditation. But I'll tell you right now, this is a real challenge for me. I have a CD, from a book that Marc recommended, with a "practice of meditation" track that is 38 minutes long. I brought this CD back to Afghanistan from New Zealand at the beginning of December. I have tried to go through it on several occasions and the longest I have lasted so far is 18 minutes... But I plan to keep trying. Adding perhaps a minute at a time. At this rate I should be able to sit still and quiet for 38 minutes by sometime in March. What's the rush? In the meantime I am carrying on with my newly acquired yoga practice, struggling with the stiffness of my body, but turning up on my mat more often than not all the same. I am reminding myself that the point is not to get my head to my knees but simply to be there in the moment, focused on breathing my way through each pose, through each struggle, through each thought that "I can't do it", breathing through until I've done it and until I've realised that it was the process and not the end point that really mattered.

A blessing for the New Year

I received a comment on my blog from a woman who seems to understand some of the challenges I'm facing here in Afghanistan, and while exploring her blog I found this inspiring post and this wonderful Fransican blessing: May God bless you with discomfort At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships So that you may live deep within your heart May God bless you with anger At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace May God bless you with tears To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war, So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and Turn their pain into joy And may God bless you with enough foolishness To believe that you can make a difference in the world So that you can do what others claim cannot be done To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

A community of the spirit

When I was home in New Zealand I bought my self a copy of "The Essential Rumi" with translations of Rumi's poems by Coleman Barks. I was inspired to read more Rumi after reading a few poems on Boho Girl's blog, and I am very pleased that I acted on the inspiration. This morning I read this wonderful poem and felt my spirits lift. There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise. Drink all your passion, and be a disgrace. Close both eyes to see with the other eye. Open your hands, if you want to be held. Sit down in this circle. Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd's love filling you. At night, your beloved wanders. Don't accept consolations. Close your mouth against food. Taste the lover's mouth in yours. You moan, "She left me." "He left me." Twenty more will come. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.

Grateful Friday

Last week I was struggling to find the courage to get out of bed, and Friday went by without any moments of thankfulness. This week, after missions to interview victims of recent tribal conflict and another up into the remote and deprived province of Ghor I feel quite the opposite, full of reasons to be thankful. Here are my top six: 1. My blues have passed and I'm again motivated, energised and ready to do this work. 2. My lovely man got back from his week in Kabul and we have this lovely, lazy Friday together before I take off to Kabul on Sunday. 3. The sun is shining again, but the past two days of electrical storms were pretty fantastic as well. 4. My family and friends are safe, with warm homes and enough food and clothes to keep them healthy. 5. I was born in a country, and family, in which I grew up with the chance to think, learn, question, participate and contribute at every level of family and public life. 6. I ran 13 kms on the treadmill this morning, starting well on my plan to get ready to run a half marathon next February. Enjoy your weekends and I hope they are filled with moments to be thankful for. x

Good advice and real work

So, the bromazepam helped me sleep well last night, but an even better remedy came along this afternoon in the form of an invitation to sit on the couch, drink red wine and watch movies from my fellow Herat blogger and friend along with some very good advice (which she says comes from World Food Program booklet on stress management for people working in these kind of missions). The advice was:

"accepting our feelings a little more,

and judging them a little less,

is a great stress reducer".

I feel the most incredible sense of relief just reading those words. Of course it was terrible timing for me to suddenly be hit by this overwhelm, this insomnia, this rollercoaster of emotion just as Mac arrived in town. But spending so much time hating myself for not being able to control that wasn't getting me anywhere.

So - back to the real work, which is a great way to distract myself from these emotional maelstroms. Today I've been writing up the report of a meeting of different groups (government departments, UN agencies and NGOs) who are interested in coming up with a cooperative approach to the problem of hundreds of children who are working at the border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran.

It was a good, productive meeting and I really enjoyed the healthy debate between the pragmatists (who accept that the children are going to work and want to concentrate on their health and safety) and those who want to focus more on the fundamental child rights issues (most importantly their right to an education). I enjoyed watching people come up with compromises and creative solutions that, hopefully, will take all these different perspectives into account.

At the end of the meeting I was asked to write up the report of the outcomes of the meeting since, as the participants pointed out that my Language Assistant and I had done such a great job of the previous report (which reported on the findings of our joint survey of the children working at the border). But I told them all that I know the real reason they asked us to do the report is because it's the only thing we are any good at - writing reports. Well, it is not far from the truth, it got a good laugh, and for once I felt good about it!

In other developments today, I'm making prgress towards getting a fabulous Canadian lawyer (one of the first people I met in Kabul and a very good friend) out to one of the remote provinces in our region to run a three day long training course for prosectuors. The course is going to be on the basics of criminal justice, illustrated by cases involving women! It's an exciting project for me, and the fact that I get to work with a good friend just adds to the fun.

We had some wobbles getting the project off the ground, but now everyone is happy for us to go ahead and I'm feeling very excited about it. I'm planning to have it happen around 10 December - Human Rights Day, so that I can use it as a key event to focus celebrations of human rights in the province with a focus on rule of law and women's rights (not the official theme for this year but certainly amongst the most commonly cited issues of concern to people on the ground.

So things are ticking along and despite insomnia and anxiety and hormone related emotional meltdowns, I think I can chalk this week up as a good one.

Tommorrow is Friday, which means time for my list of reasons to be happy, so I'll make my morning soy latte wait for inspiration to strike. Til then.

Thank goodness for bromazepam

Somedays I just have to admit that I'm not coping. All the yoga, healthy eating, positive thinking and regular exercise in the world is not enough to keep me a float in the midst of this madness sometimes. My good intentions last night melted into a wobbly pool of tears and I decided to give up on being a good welcoming party for Mac and instead came home, took a couple of Lexotanil and wen't to sleep (slept solidly for the first time in days). I don't like it but I knew I wasn't going to survive another night without it. More when I'm feeling better. x

Thank goodness for new days

So, My American Chap (Mac - that's his suitably American blogname for the moment, until I think of something cleverer, suggestions welcome) arrived yesterday. In retrospect I did the planning all wrong, instead of baking a cake, shopping for his pantry supplies at the Italian PRT and preparing myself to cook a big pot of risotto for him and his boss, I should have spent my time meditating on this little gem of a quote from the new movie "The Last Kiss" -

"How you fell only matters to you.

It's what you do to the person you love that counts."

In the end all the "doing" I did wasn't quite the right doing. I busied myself with food preparation because it is an emotionally comforting (and comfortable) realm of activity for me. Then when Mac arrived, all excited about his new job, his new life in Herat with me, with his travel weariness and his nerves about first day in the office, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with his expectations.

He wants me to move into the wee house he has at his compound, which would be great - and much more homely than the big old guesthouse where I am living. But I didn't realise until I was faced with the reality of this change how badly I have needed the little bit of routine and familiarity that I have finally found in my life here. Moving again, and starting over from the beginning to carve out a little sphere of beauty in this world of ugliness suddenly seemed an overwhelming task.

But feeling that, in itself, would have been okay. It's normal or at least understandable for me to have those feelings. But how I felt didn't need to overtake what Mac needed at that moment. I could have put those feelings aside for another day - a day that wasn't Mac's first day in his new house, job, city and life. I could have joined in with him for one night in some unadulterated joy that he was here in Herat and starting all these news things in his life.

Of course, I didn't manage that as well as I wish I had - which is why I'm writing this now. I did my best but in the end what I did to the person I love was that I took some of the fun out of his arrival by starting to worry about the implications of all these changes for my life. I took some of the joy out of his daydreaming about making a new life here, and instead worried about security (his compound doesn't meet the security requirements of my organisation).

Well - thank goodness that new days keep coming and today I get to have another go at my life.

My gorgeous friend Ms Parker this morning reminded me that wishing I was a different kind of person wouldn't make me anything other than who I am. Oh to be an easy-going gypsy type, picking up my rucksack and settling wherever I land, it would certainly make this line of work easier. But I'm not - and setting up my wee sphere of beauty is part of what keeps me sane.

In the meantime, tonight I get another chance to focus on how Mac's first full day in his new job went, and I'll still prepare something scrumptious for dinner.

Six reasons to be happy

Inspired by Susannah 1. It is the beginning of November and, still, when I wake up every morning the sun is shining; 2. This morning I opened the fridge and found, for the first time since I came here, soy milk (our cook has been searching for it all over Herat for the past two months and eventually, it seems, convinced a shop owner to bring some in from Iran); 3. Putting 1 and 2 together - this morning I get to drink a big soy latte in the morning sun; 4. I just got off the phone from Portland where my gorgeous man was about to get on a flight that will (eventually, on Tuesday) bring him to Herat; 5. Last night I defied my Thursday evening weariness and went to the 'Mobile Bar' and met new people, great people, living here in my neighbourhood who were ready to talk about Peter Jackson's movies (a very nice change from the insurgency in Afghanistan); and 6. Amongst those great people is a yoga master who regularly runs group yoga classes, and I'm invited!

The secret dancer inside

Last night on Euronews they were covering the opening of the musical 'Dirty Dancing' in London. This movie has lots of special memories for me - from the original memories of being a teenager and listening over and over to the soundtrack, remembering the scenes of the movie (in the days before DVD or even home VHS), dancing around my bedroom. I also have lovely memories of special birthday screenings of 'Dirty Dancing' in Wellington - the lovely Jason providing the projector and screen and the Brunette Mafia providing the commentary and collective recitations of key dialogue (and playing spot the 'overactor' in the final dance scene). The Brunette Mafia even considered travelling enmasse to Melbourne to see the musical when it opened. My mother and sister did go to see it, and loved it. So what makes 'Dirty Dancing' so popular with us all? Why, as women in our 30s, are we still drawn to watch this teen movie over and over again? Maybe Eleanor Bergstein, the original 'Dirty Dancing' screenwriter who adapted her own screenplay for the stage version, has the answer. There she was all silvery and gorgeous at the premier, and when someone asked her why this movie, and now the musical, was so popular she answered that she though the story "connects with the secret dancer inside people, and that they suspect that dance could transform their lives". When I think about the films that really engaged me as a teenager, the ones that I replayed in my mind over and over again, they were all dance movies. I loved 'Footloose' and my Brunette Mafia ladies know that my favorite scene is the one where Keven Bacon teaches Chris Penn (may he rest in peace) to dance - thus transforming his teen life in a significant way. I loved 'Flashdance' and like millions of other teen girls I practiced the audition dance routine in my bedroom, with the soundtrack running on the cassette player and dreams of a life of dance, travel, mystery and glamour running through my head. Perhaps most of all, I loved 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' with Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt. Like all great dance movies this has the audition scene in which all sorts of weird and wonderful dancers get their 30 seconds of fame, it has the montage of SJP's character being taught by her older, more experienced dance partner to let her passions out into her dancing and in which she slowly learns to dance with more abandon. It has a finale dance-off in which she finally pulls off the "big move". They are formulaic, they are entirely predictable (although let's give DD the credit it is due for tackling heavier social issues than most teen dance movies), and they are pure viewing pleasure. In our 30s dealing with our careers, our mortgages, our children, our relationships and our car repairs, we all need to reconnect sometimes with the secret dancer inside, we all need to remember our belief that dance can transform our lives, and we all need sometimes to turn up the Flashdance soundtrack and dance like mad around the bedroom. This posting is a tribute to Eleanor Bergstein for knowing that.