Life Writings
FLORAL CRAFT; LEVEL 1
MY FLOWERS AND ME
There is an ancient American Red Indian saying, ‘I am afraid of nothing but the wind’. That Indian saying is very close to my heart and flowers have been my companion on a journey through suppressed rage to the present stage in my recovery from the blackness of a mental breakdown as a detained patient.
I have two passions in my life, mental health issues and flowers. Flowers feed my flagging spirit, and so they strengthen my inner being; my soul. They are God’s creation and therefore perfect in natural beauty, and so should be treated with respect.
I stumbled upon flowers, their importance and impact on me personally, during the black despair on an acute psychiatric ward. And the comfort of having them near aided my somewhat rocky road to the stage in my recovery where I am now. I will never lose sight of the healing quality flowers offer me. Since my discharge from hospital I have turned to flower arranging as a means of maintaining sound quality mental health. I wish to thank my God for all the flowers that have helped me, and the joy on the faces of those who receive my floral arrangements as gifts.
When I am playing with flowers, I am totally oblivious as to what is going on around me. It is only when I have finished the floral piece, I realise I have missed out on a whole load of stuff. Recipients of my floral gifts often offer to pay for the flowers but I explain you cannot buy or sell true beauty. It is important to understand flowers have the ‘truth’ in them; such is their perfection and individuality.
In my lifetime I have held the habits of neatness, uniformity and matching colours. Today, thanks to my recent breakdown, I enjoy the challenge of mixing contrasting colours and textures both in my home and handcrafts, including flowers, which I sometimes combine with feathers and jewellery in arrangements. Each one is individual and is tailored to suit the person who will take pleasure from it.
It is still early days yet, for flowers and my well-being. And I am still experiencing flashbacks to my hospital stay as a detained patient. But it is time to move out of my comfort zone and move onto new pastures. I feel challenged but a little apprehensive. And although I have enrolled on a number of courses, floral crafts are my priority. Such is the complex world of floral perfection and the chaos of a human mind.
MY FLOWERS AND ME, NUMBER 2
It’s the same clock, same tune, different time. There are new flowers now; an angel shrine decorated by a shocking pink spray of small carnations set in an angel stand. Roses and carnations go way back to that barren place that I made into my haven, flowers being the main feature. The sight of multicoloured primroses and hyacinths in my window garden, and a few vases of fresh flowers bought cheaply from nearby Morrisons supermarket, added texture and warmth to my fragile healing mind. It was winter, like now, but I had little experience of outside weather, being a detained patienjt already three months at that time. I remember little rain yet the saplings, firs and soft leafed holly, flourished outside above the sloping grass bank.
In the healing weeks following months of un relentless mental pain and confusion, I took comfort and habitual reassurance from my flowers. I cannot now remember which came first, the flowers or the three angels, once given to me in love; I placed around my bed to protect me at night. There had been visitors in my room while I slept. There was often disturbing evidence left behind and I felt very ill when I awoke. Unable to communicate, due to my isolation, this continued for many weeks, and I do not feel strong enough or ready to disclose what I found at these times in my bedroom and bathroom. Continuing flashbacks to my stay on a mixed sex acute psychiatric ward disturbs my subdued soul. It is days as these just passed when I have great difficulty in reaching the person inside of me trying so desperately to get out, I still find myself buried beneath a mound of debris from a life overrun by mostly bad experiences and too much untapped pain turned silent rage.
In days like these, the only reality lies deep in the beauty of my flowers, untapped and perfect. There is God in them and there lives charity, the pure love of Christ. No mortal has ever experienced this except for Christ alone; only He holds that perfection. I have in my life, experienced a joy in the service of my fellows and a deep love for my family. I learned then in my chosen faith that ‘when you are in the service of your fellow beings you are in the service of your God’. Although mentally ill and very tired, I received many great and wonderful blessings through my work in my faith. It helped me then, and I will never forget the challenges it provided for me. However the ensuing years have been unkind and friendships forged in Church died very quickly when I left. While I was a detained patient, my husband bought me a diary with quotes noted at the bottom of each page. The one I clearly remember states, ‘Going to Church to become a Christian is like going to a garage to become a car’. Now I belong to no Church or political party and have no intention of doing so. I have learnt a very painful and hard lesson.
As a mental health patient. I believe I am responsible for and to myself. My mental survival and well-being is very much my problem. These days passed have not been good. I sit alone; it is night and my little dog Bobby sleeps contentedly on a nearby settee. It is very cold outside and I sit cosily near the warm hearth. Directly across the room, my comfort, my flower spray stands bright and bold on an angel stand, surrounded by my slowly growing angel collection and delicate small ornaments. As I write this my earlier desperate words to my husband of my withdrawal from my interests and commitments, slowly ebbs away. And as my pen flows, slowly and gradually I feel a quiet, gentle surge of feeling somewhere in my buried soul. Maybe there is life, and there is some hope after all. My writing tutor, Carole Hopkin, noted on a written piece whether I had been through the ‘valley of death’ while travelling through many episodes following a mental breakdown in that barren place that became my temporary home. That place lacked kindness, like this house and others before it. Over a period of twenty seven years I have tried to create it into a home. I am lost in these four walls, drowning in my own weakness and pain. And outside my world spins and it is too much to cope with. The day is not long enough and mentally I become easily drained; sleep is not the answer. And yet, when I arise tomorrow I will sit here and across my warm room my beautiful floral spray will speak to me, ‘Where a flower blooms there is hope’.
Kay Reed
1.2.06
QUIET THOUGHTS – JULY 1ST O5 – AT HOME
The slow easy beat of the mantle clock ticking my life away, the rhythm of mixed memories, and I am still cased in emptiness within my usual four walls which should be my home; a place of sanctuary and love. Once upon a time there was a sort of happiness, the only one I knew, so many years ago now, when I wasn’t married and my children laughed and I laughed with them. The feelings elude me, now I am cold as a coffin. Medication now buffets life’s storms each day and yet I carry within me a void that happiness should fill, all hope of love still a distant dream, friends and family as distant as the shore from my window encasing a lonely spirit that is now me. There are words, ‘how’ and ‘why’, but no answers come easy these days. It is enough to survive each day with little thought for the morrow. I wish for a real poem written for me by him, for we are apart; strangers as we ever were. Love has eluded me once again.
Please my God grant me bravery to cup my life in the palm of your hand, grant me solitude and peace so that maybe still my spirit might soar like a mighty eagle over the cliff-top like the seagulls many years ago as I watched them flock at an isolated beach early morn while the world slept. Life still makes little sense even now, so much pain and many years later. Nothing changes like the seasons governed by nature at God’s hand. If I prayed tonight like I prayed before in that distant barren place, I would beg my God to grant me serenity, peace and love in my life, that is the life I have left.
I have reached this land at much cost, and my loss is unbearable to face. This night, as alone as a lark in a field, even my grief eludes my senses numbed by medicine. Those who respond in compassion suddenly disappear from my life like pins in an alley. Reassuringly, I have the faith and knowledge that one day I will know the answers and that which I do not know will be revealed to me. Tired now, I cannot make sense of the mysterious maze of events and damage that has consumed my life. I thank my God I still possess trust and a reassuring love for those I keep close to my heart. One day, I will arise with the revelation of my life, and then and only then, will I have hope once again in my world. Until then, please God keep your angels forever watchful over my children and their children, keep them safe and keep them sound. May the blessings of good health and happiness always be theirs.
Kay Reed
Kay Reed – 30.4.2013
LOVE
Love is all encompassing; it is a rock in the tumult of life; if we are fortunate it stays with us into old age and is not replaced by bitterness. We grow bitter when we feel cheated by love and life. Lest love and life render us bereft. In our disabilities, in old age, we may feel cheated in healthier years of lost opportunities in love. Passion in younger years is not love which endures to the end. It is slippers by the fire love; it goes nowhere; it is not passion or dying of life’s worth; it is constant; it is companionship; it is to death do we part; it is sharing and forgiving.
Charity, the pure love of Christ, will never be ours because it is perfect love that only he can give. The nearest is the love we have for our children. To receive love we must learn to love ourselves first. We learn to love others through relationship experiences, the rocky ups and downs of life with all its struggles and pain. Much strength of character is needed to overcome the pain of many years and losses. If we ever reach the blessed opportunity we will see great love in the wide eyes of our beautiful grandchildren in all its excitement and innocence. As the Saviour said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’. ‘Love is gentle!’’Love is pure’.
WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO ME – 30.4.2013
It depends how you define freedom and where you live in the world. I consider myself fortunate as a woman. Yet if I think too deeply about whether I have freedom or not, I will become mentally unhinged. Confuscious, a 200BC Chinese Philosopher said, “There are two types of people, those who give orders and those who obey”. I am though, momentarily comforted by the internet, it gives us a voice, a platform to be free as it is not regulated.
Back to basics, and what freedom means to me and all of us in general. Do you mean freedom to wear fashionable footwear for I cannot walk? Freedom from pain; not possible. Freedom from morphine; my constant companion. Freedom to vote for my political beliefs in a secret ballot; you might like to think you do but you do not. Freedom of speech; I’m afraid not. Freedom of the Press; certainly not. Freedom to speak in privacy on the telephone. No again. Freedom to go shopping without being watched and recorded. I’m afraid not yet again. Freedom to apply for a job without prejudice; not possible; it is who you know or if your face fits. There is no freedom from illness only coming to terms with its restrictions. We are all in the hands of fate. We are never in control and therefore we never experience true freedom, only momentary bliss. As Donovan sang, “Oh Seagulls I want your wings, I want your freedom and your life”.
‘Out of the crooked branch of Humanity, no straight thing can be made’.
There is no-one who reaches old age, (if they are fortunate enough) who is not making the best of a bad job. All we have is reflection on our past lives and we need to admit we have learnt far more from our defeats than our victories. We only develop into the person we become through the education of life which is our only ’truth’. We learn to face, accept and become who we are. And because it is such a difficult thing to do, there are those who cannot achieve this and they become embroiled in bitterness and hatred. Many who run away all their lives, are unable to face and accept, and therefore blame others for their own mistakes from which they have never recovered. Although suicide is very difficult to carry through, for some it is a merciful release from an intolerable life or situation. There are also those who live in fear of living their lives and never make mistakes, they have no history and therefore no life to reflect on and have learnt nothing; that then becomes their only regret – a wasted life.
Decisions can be most difficult to make and often very threatening and brave. We can never tell how or what the long term result will be. Life and death is out of our hands. Is it our will or God’s? Is it fate? Are our lives planned before we draw our first breath at birth?
We feel humbled by others difficulties in life and count our blessings. Should I ever pray again, like I did in that awful place, I would thank my God for being blessed with a strong, healthy family and a wonderful caring husband.
Kay Reed
REMORSE IN LIFE – KAY REED
I do not know if you would call it remorse as such but I regret deeply in the major part of my life, not caring enough about myself as I did for others. As I discovered too late my extended family I loved and cared for did not care about me. Even as late as four years ago, my serious health problems began when I collapsed while looking after my father when I was ill myself. He used to say to me each time I tried to improve myself, “I don’t know why you are bothering, you have children.”. My parents believed my life was over at 17 years because I got married and had a baby. Yet my father still expected me to rally to the call all my life as the obedient loyal daughter. My mother and brother both suffered from schizophrenia. After my father died I was admitted to hospital for 4 weeks because I simply could not walk. I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called C.I.D.P. – not a nice thing to have. That was the start of 4 years mainly spent in and out of hospitals accumulating a string of serious illnesses. I have nearly died on three occasions. I am lucky my illnesses at the moment are not life threatening but they will take my life away. I am lucky I have my husband and carers to look after me on a daily basis. I have nursed dying relatives whilst caring for my children alone. I ran and cared for people in three households, when my health failed myself and my children had no-one to care for us except one good friend Val who still walks by my side.
I also regret not knowing I have suffered with bipolar disorder, a major mental illness, since a young teenager of about 12 years old. I have felt ill most of my life until I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983, for 5 months. It was then I was diagnosed, at the age of 53 years old and realised how ill I was. I wish I had earlier treatment because I would have had more energy to have fun with my lovely children and enjoy them instead of fighting constant exhaustion. I struggled on the poverty line with basic appliances in the home. I worked hard for my family and my health began to break early on. I was vulnerable with all men in my extended family and was bullied into caring for all of them as well as my own 3 sons. Exhaustion and pain were my constant companions. I am so fortunate my three boys are OK. The only remorse I have, when I look back, is that I was never brought up to say ‘No’. I was used and never appreciated by the men in the family and I spoiled my own three sons. I was brought up to care for men – it was my duty as a woman. When I reflect, I wish I didn’t work so hard and I also wish I had the good health and energy to enjoy my boys more. Today I have beautiful grandchildren whom I would like to have more fun with but due to disabilities I am unable to. But I do count my blessings and am grateful for a great many things I do not take for granted.
Kay Reed – 30.4.2013
WHAT DO I BELIEVE IS THE AIM OF LIFE
The main aim of life is to keep breathing and then to pass through life as best as I can. I believe mistakes travel with me through life and they are very much a part of the learning process. Indeed I also believe I am making the best of a poor job. I have learnt as Napoleon said, “Far more from my defeats than my victories”. I am now reaping the joys of all the good in spite of all my illnesses. They will not kill me but will ‘ take my life away’. My family are very precious to me and I have much to be proud of. In so many of the people who surround me now. I have also been told I have comforted many by writing letters to those who find themselves travelling through difficult times. This became a beautiful hobby, and in a way became one of my life’s aims. From a young woman one of my main aims of life has always been to help others and to be kind when I was able. Because of my difficult and unfortunate life and the fact that for most of it I have suffered from a severe mental illness called bipolar disorder, I have always used wise opportunities to highlight social injustices and served charities on a voluntary basis. I have also suffered poverty.
May 2013
WHAT DOES EQUALITY MEAN TO ME
I was born in 1951 into a working class background, where my mothers place was in the home and my father worked. I was also born into a life of discrimination and inequality. Last week my husband told me I am cleverer than he is and now it is my turn to shine. I am 62 years of age and riddled with illness. But it is never too late and my web site is developing nicely. My life has been spent serving others where I have been considered way down a steep line. Others have benefited from my service and some have died. I would have liked to have had equality of opportunity but there were no crèche facilities. All my family lived in the next street and believed women should be seen and not heard and that women’s place was in the home serving others. Should I have had an intellect I was a threat to all males especially in the family. I lived in constant fear of a drunken uncle who visited regularly.
Equality of respect especially during pregnancy was non existent. Other women, alcohol and violence were the norm. Equality in income didn’t exist and meant never knowing what your husband earned and being grateful for a meagre handout on paydays to pay all the bills and feed my family. Legal inequality was common place and I was treated with contempt in the court offices to dare expect my children’s father to pay maintenance on time.
Equality in education was even difficult because I won a scholarship to Neath Girls’ Grammar School and was ostracised by all my new friends on the council estate I had recently moved to. It was to be the beginning of bullying all through my teenage years.
Since my day, women’s lot has improved somewhat and I am grateful for that and for their children. I would not like to face my struggles again and I am so pleased it is in the past.
Kay Reed
FRIENDSHIPS
Friendships have weaved in and out of my life like the river weaved through the valley of my youth. Times have never failed to amaze me over half a century how these special people have turned up when I have needed them at challenging times in my life. I have called these people my friends. I might not see them for many years but feel the strong bonds of friendship still, and will always fight for my rights as a friend myself for these special relationships and also my rights as an individual. There have been times when friends have cared more than family. And there is truth in the saying, ‘actions speak louder than words’. The Bible says we will be judged by our works. It doesn’t state we have to belong to a particular religion. As I am in my more mature years, I find I may believe in Ghandi’s saying, ‘All religions are true’. I also believe people join diverse religions because of fear of the future and the unknown, especially after death. You might well ask what has this to do with friendship. The connection lies with love and service towards each other, which is one of the fundamental principles of any religion and life itself. Bonds of service, love and friendship are very important in our lives. Sharing, giving and receiving, this is what life is all about.
But some would say life is all about accumulating money, property, foreign holidays, or even owning a second home, either abroad or at home in the country or on the coast. It is important though that we should not forget our roots, it is this that keeps us humble. Wealth and pride make us hard-hearted and self-centred. Our goals and ambitions are also important and should not be underestimated, but love, commitment, sharing and giving, are all qualities we should aim for. And sometimes friendships seem more important than the families we are born into. As the saying goes, ‘You can’t choose your family but you can choose your friends’. I believe this is not necessarily so. Friends can suddenly appear on life’s path, sometimes they help us and other times we feel the need to help them. This we often do in good faith and invest practically and emotionally but find we have to walk away to protect our own well-being. And also I have discovered during desperate times of crisis that frighten away even the best of friends, I have needed to turn to my family.
It is all about swings and roundabouts; what we give is what we receive in turn. We learn to fill our needs by sharing and giving to others who need our help at particular stages in theirs and also our lives. Some of my happiest memories are of times with friends. Unlike family members, friends don’t expect ‘duty’ from us, but gladly receive any help with gratitude and kindness. Friends don’t take us for granted. And true friends would not turn their backs on us when we are at a vulnerable low in our lives.
Bonds of friendship can last a lifetime. And it can take a lifetime also to get to know and understand them. Friends are a pleasure to have in our lives and we often don’t know what we would do without them. Also we should look after our friends. Although, sometimes even good friends can let us down and we feel bereft for a while, but soon around the life’s corner there are more waiting to step into life’s path. Also we never know when we might need our friends. And true lifelong friends are hard to come by. I met my oldest friend at school when we were both three and a half years of age and now at fifty two years, we still keep in touch and both know the bond of friendship is still there.
Beware though of false friends who only mean to harm us when our backs are turned. Our true friends will be on their guard ready to protect us at these times. The blessings for them are a strengthened bond of friendship with us. Sometimes we get confused at difficult times in our lives and we unwittingly push friends away when we need them the most. When this happens sometimes the rift caused does not heal with time and the sadness in our hearts is for that loss. My friends are important in my life and I love each and every one of them. Above all, I thank God for the blessings they bring me.
Kay Reed
27.1.04
HOME FROM HOME
I rest my feet on the bar of a small square table, uneven with time and painted well to cover a multitude of dents and stories. The matching black beams lay low and strong, as old as the hills that overpower this quaint old building. The seating is as red as blood and heavily patterned, mixed in this small bar of closely situated tables and chairs eagerly awaiting their fill of occupants ready to join in the musical evening.
The welcome from staff and regulars is always the same, home from the home I felt I never had. The old stone walls grace many framed old photographs tellingstories of the town and people now dead. In contrast, the opposite wall proudly displays a Welsh Rugby portrait and memorabilia. And our Nations flags hang ceremoniously from the low black beams. Ceiling fans stand silently still. The whole evening is inexpensive and we savour our pot of tea for two or coffees and sometimes a delicious chicken sandwich.
I enjoy the sounds here, where regulars sing their favourite songs with such talent and ease. This place is rustic and clean; the natural stone floors enhance this old traditional bar. I look forward to my Thursdays at Schooners more than any other evenings away from the home that has been my prison for so many years. On Sundays, families flurry to Schooners for traditional dinner in the adjoining restaurant, and young children laugh with glee at the talking lobster and fish on the wall while clutching a much treasured possession, a lollipop given lovingly by the owner of Schooners, Graham.
On an old piano at the far end of the bar, stands a floral arrangement I created a while ago, and a wall light, directly behind, shoots sharp beams in between the flowers, enhancing their beauty. There is much symbolic feeling in them; they reflect my bond with these people and this place; a small corner of me, where I feel at peace with my world and the people around me.
Thank you all so much!
Kay Reed
QUOTES
‘….The vision of life seen in depression has the truth in it…………Reality, however terrible, is bearable if others allow its reality. When they refuse you that, when they skip around you pretending you’ve got it wrong, that’s rock bottom time….’ Jill Tweedie – Guardian. 17.4.82
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‘We live in a web of ideas, the fabric of our making’. – Susanne K Langer.
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‘I realise that I was brought up to be the person others wanted me to be, so that they would like me and not be bothered by my presence. That person is not me’. – Liv Ullman – ‘Changing’. 1977 Autobiography.
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‘But you must fear his greatness weighed, his will not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth’. – William Shakespeare – Hamlet.
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‘Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened by education, they grow there firm as weeds among stones’. – Charlottte Bronte – Jayne Eyre.
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‘The only inequalities that matter begin in the mind. It is not income levels but differences in mental equipment that keep people apart, breed feelings of inferiority’. – Jaquetta Hawkes – New Statesman. January 1957.
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‘We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time’. –
T.S.Eliot – Little Gidding in Four Quartets. 1974.
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‘To be able to experience love one must be ready to receive it. But it will only come to one as a gift. This experience contains the meaning of life. The right aim of living is to exist in order to enter the consciousness of love…..We are the sum of everyone we have been and everything we have learned and everything we have done. We cannot eliminate it all and start again. Be aware of it and take command. Learn from it and grow’. – From – Try Being Human on Love.
Kay Reed
One Liners by me – Kay Reed
1. I have looked in the face of poverty.
2. There are inside of me still many myriads of dreams.
3. He spent his life chasing rainbows and never found his crock of gold.
4. A flock of birds surround above as free as the sky they live in.
5. The broken rose belongs to the angels.
6. “….like the broken flower of the suffering mind”.
7. Even dreams can be painful; slumber a long way off.
8. I have been waiting all my life for something I now realise will never happen.
9. Are the people who struggle in this earthly life really broken Angels; are we fallen Angels trying to regain standing with our Father in Heaven before it is too late? I am damned.
Kay Reed May 2012
The following three conversational extracts are true and recent; they are between psychiatrists and their patients during outpatients appointments.
Male psychiatrist – ‘How have you been?’
Male patient – ‘Not too bad. Something’s worrying me a bit…,.I’ve been collecting and playing with toy soldiers…….going back to my childhood sort of’.
Psychiatrist – ‘Funny thing…..I’m doing the same’.
Patient – ‘Swop places?’
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This female patient spent most of her appointment time helping this psychiatrist to enter her details on a blank piece of paper as he did not have her records. Eventually…………..
Male psychiatrist – ‘How are you?’
Female patient – ‘I’ve been very depressed’.
Psychiatrist – ‘When you wake in the morning, you open your curtains and look to the sky; if it is cloudy and raining you feel depressed; when you look up and the sky is blue and the sun is shining you feel happy.
Patient thinks to herself……….What planet is he on!
She walks away.
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For the past three years this frail female patient has suffered intolerable back pain which has affected her mentally.
Male psychiatrist – ‘How have you been?’
Female patient – ‘The pain is so bad I want to kill myself!’
Psychiatrist – ‘Think happy thoughts.’
Comment – There is no answer to that is there!!
Kay Reed 31.1.07
Dear 1983 And All That,
I would like to take the opportunity to share some 'GEMS' of advice given to me at recent times of distress when I have needed to contact 'out of hours' or 'crisis resolution team', take your pick because they are the same staff and a mystery; a question of 'who's who?' 'Does anyone know?'
The following are recent telephone responses to me when I have been very depressed with suicidal tendencies asking for support and advice. Please note I am a 117 patient in the community.
Go for a walk.
Make a milky drink.
Have a soak in a hot bath.
Take a tablet.
I can't see you I am going to Abergafenny.
You do get these pulls from time to time.
I'm going on holiday.
Keep busy
Pace yourself.
Go to a sanctuary for a few days.
During one conversation we got disconnected and on redialling I ancountered an answerphone. How convenient.
Where I stand it is very difficult to trust anyone without the above 'words of wisdom' I could do without. It fails to instil confidence in those paid amply to care.
Kay Reed 22.6.07
