Then I left behind my married life and gone were the frills and luxuries one grows accustomed to.

My little part time job barely covered my rent and the bare necessities of life. It certainly didn’t extend to going out or eating meat more than once a week. So I learned to do things that cost nothing and that I enjoy vegetarian cooking.

I had no television and couldn’t afford to buy a licence anyway, so I spent long hours writing, training, studying and listening to music instead.

I only had one room in a shared house so I learned what it is that is truly important and how to appreciate the simpler things in life.

Time has passed and my situation has improved, I now have my own little house, but my salary is still very small and I continue to live by the lessons I learned in those months.

I enjoy that my life has a simplicity and clarity that others lack.

I am free to change my plans at a moments notice.

I have time, and I have learned to appreciate the richness this brings to my life. I can spend hours pursuing my interest, studying, practicing or writing
I am no longer bound by the wants and desires of someone else, I am completely free to be nothing more than me.

I am responsible for my life and how I live that life is entirely up to me. I choose to live it in a way that offers challenges and opportunities. I choose to live it in harmony with my ethics. I choose to live it filled with joy. I choose to live it in the best way that I can. Above all I choose to live a simple life that is so rich and rewarding that I can never truly want for anything.

It sounds as if I view the world through rose tinted glasses, but I don’t, neither has my life been without trials and tribulations, very far from it.

I have had, to say the least, a challenging life, marked out with times of great pain and difficulty. Indeed there have been times when I thought to end my existence so miserable had it become.

I lived most of my life feeling that I was completely worthless, never truly knowing who I was or what I was capable of. It is a dreadful thing to be told by those closest to you that you’re a failure and not worth the effort they expend on you. I have lived with being judged and lived in fear of constantly being found wanting. To know, without any shadow of doubt, that you are unwanted and should you die no one would miss you is so incredibly sad.

I have been afraid of so many things for so long that my world view revolved around the degree of fear I felt at that time. My fear, in part, turned to anger and instead of lashing out I turned my rage on myself.

Although I masqueraded as a happy person the truth has been so very different and living the lie was nearly more than I could take. But I have survived and lately come to a blessed place where, over the last few years, I have come to realise that not only am I a worthwhile person but that I have something to contribute to the world.

One of the greatest gifts I have received is the love of my friends, I have at last come to know and understand this most precious of gifts. To have people around me who want for me the very best and who will care for me even when I make mistakes. I no longer need to be afraid of judgement and at last I can stand proud and simply be me, knowing who I am has set me free and given me a zest for life and all the wonders it holds in store.

Knowing that I have started to achieve things that I never dreamt of and that I am capable of so much more is exhilarating and liberating and fills me with hope for my future.

I still wonder, in those quiet dark moments, what it is that others see that could possibly let them love me, what makes them think I’m worth the effort? It is hard beyond belief to break modal thought patterns, but slowly one day at a time I am learning.

My happiness comes from a deep wellspring, created in part by the love I have received, of certainty, I know that no matter how bad things might get they will get better again.

The things I have learned have informed my world view and broadened my horizons, I finally understand that nothing is good or bad in and of itself, that it is our experiences that create our perceptions and that it is our perceptions that dictate how we view the world around us.

So when things get rough, and they do, and I get upset, which I do, I’m able to refocus myself onto just how fortunate I am, how wonderful my life is, how much beauty I am privileged to see and that I and I alone am responsible for this situation and for it’s continuation.

Of course it also helps to have friends who whilst empathising and offering support, advice and understanding wouldn’t let me wallow, were I inclined to do so. I love that I have friends who will tell me I’m being daft and reminding me just how much I have to be thankful for.

I’m excited about the future and all that it holds, it is a bright shining thing that beckons me. So here I am understanding how far I’ve come, enjoying the challenges and opportunities that my life offers, busier than I have ever been and blissfully happy.

As days turned to weeks and weeks to months the outlook became bleaker and bleaker, eventually I lost a job I loved and my life shrank to four walls and I became steadily more and more depressed, my life was in free fall and I felt utterly powerless.

Nearly two years after the initial onset I was to have two operations which largely mitigated but did not completely cure my symptoms, it did not, however, alleviate the pain and I continued to need strong medication to control the pain.  I regained a degree of use of my hand but lost almost all my dexterity and fine motor skills, indeed I couldn’t actually hold a pen or type, I also regained, although altered, feeling in the back of my hand and my fingers, but the palm of my hand remained completely numb.

The first major hurdle I encountered was trying to get back to work, my doctors were adamant that it would be a grave risk and would jeopardise what use I had in my hand, I eventually badgered my surgeon into letting me take on a few hours a week as a volunteer at a local wildlife hospital.  I was doing data inputting with a pencil wound between my fingers, the very act of holding the pencil started to strengthen my fingers and as time passed I slowly switched to two finger typing then slowly to using both hands to type.  To someone who blithely typed at a 100+ words a minute it felt terribly, frustratingly, slow, but it was progress and planted the seeds of an idea of how I could begin to regain some dexterity.

I began using the typing drills that I had learned so many years previously, patiently re-training my hand, I used the finger stretches and tucks to stretch taught muscles and stiff joints a process that was exhausting and excruciatingly painful.  I spent hours in the garden re-learning how to hold and grip things, adapting to my weakness but never giving in.  One thing I had to learn was how to judge pressure, without feeling in my hands it took many accidents before I was confident even holding an empty glass and needless to say quite a few injuries.

After 6 months I was offered a part time job at the hospital and after ‘negotiating’ with my doctor I returned to work 2 mornings a week, I can’t express just how wonderful it felt, like I had scaled a mountain and was standing on top looking at the world with fresh eyes.

Over the years I adapted to having no feeling in my palm and altered sensation in the rest of my hand.  As for the lack of dexterity well mule stubbornness at first helped me to adapt and learn new ways of doing things, including writing, badly, with my left hand: as the years have gone by simple refusal to give in has brought back much of the use that my doctors told me was gone for ever.

However, no amount of stubbornness or hard work was ever going to fix the damaged nerves and I have been repeatedly told that the range of feeling I have is all that I will ever have.

Thanks to my T’ai Chi Chuan, as other conditions have resolved, I have become more able to manage and alleviate my pain naturally, which has allowed me to cease taking pain medication.  I thought that life really was about as good as it gets pain free and in better physical condition than I have been in so very long.

Yes I knew that my physical condition would continue to improve and that I would get stronger but I did not expect the events of two weeks ago; I was doing some ironing when I put my right hand palm down on the ironing board and yanked it back as a blast of overwhelming sensation hit me.  Somewhat tentatively I touched my right palm with the index finger of my left hand, and sat down very abruptly, I could feel, impossibly and against all expectation I COULD FEEL.

I sat crying and laughing stroking my palm with my hands, cotton wool, feathers and gently rubbing it on soft material; anything that I could think of.  At first the feelings were almost painful and I was easily overwhelmed by sensation, the intensity of feeling is gradually normalising and I have spent the last two weeks in a state of wonder and incredulous joy.

To have suddenly regained my sense of touch is an intensely, amazingly miraculous event, I honestly expected it to not last and if I’ve been reticent in speaking out that’s why, also very, very few people knew that I had no feeling in my right palm, partially because it’s not the sort of thing that we talk about but mostly because after more than 20 years it was normal for me.

I’m still getting used to the new situation and can’t help but wonder how this miracle has happened; my thought is that the last four years of T’ai Chi Chuan, Chi Kung and regular acupuncture have created this miracle.

It is, as miracles go, a very small miracle but it is one that is born out of hard work and dedication.  I have so many reasons to be forever thankful for my practice and this adds another brilliantly, amazingly, wonderful fillip.

Yep you’ll get no arguments from me about that; and yet we all know that it’s not always easy to be honest, we tell little white lies to ease the passage of life, telling ourselves things like ‘I’m doing it to avoid hurting other people’, but in the end, whatever our motivation, we are still lying and that cannot be right.

I try to be honest in all my daily dealings and I try to carry that honesty in my heart as well as on my tongue. I’m not saying I’m perfect or that I never resort to a little white lie, but I at least acknowledge I’ve done it and try to avoid falling into the same trap again.

However, when it comes to personal honesty I have discovered that as honest as I can be about my faults, and I can be brutally honest, I have found it unbelievably difficult to be honest about my attributes even or perhaps especially to myself. Why is this? Probably it relates to my upbringing, but what I do know is that it is taking quite some work to become comfortable saying things like ‘I’m good at this’.

We none of us want to appear to be a braggart or to be seen as big headed, and yet why shouldn’t we be able to say honestly and openly ‘I’m good at this’, it isn’t showing off and it isn’t bragging when it is a simple statement of fact. The biggest difference, I think, would be in the way you represent yourself, if you are all swagger and self importance then mayhap others will believe you a braggart, if, however, you present your abilities simply and with humility then there is no element of self aggrandisement.

It has been virtually impossible for me to see virtue in my abilities and I would usually try to brush off compliments. However, this becomes difficult when being told I’m good at something is not a compliment but a statement of fact, delivered by someone who definitely has the knowledge and skills to see ability in another. What then and how do I deal with this? It’s hard to know and yet slowly I have begun to see a little that I have some skill in certain areas and to accept what I’m told with an element of grace and humility.

Most people would not believe this of me, they see a confident person who knows she is good at things and places value in her abilities. Sadly it has all been a front, a mask I have worn so long that it has been hard to remove it, harder still to let people see the terrible insecurity that lay hidden behind it.

Therein lies my quandary, I’m caught, juxtaposed between my ‘modesty’ and my need to live honestly, I try very hard to acknowledge my skills, but I still find it, not only incredibly difficult but very uncomfortable to do. All I can do is keep trying, keep striving to let myself be honest and forthright about my abilities and not try to hide them or be self effacing. There remains such a lot of work ahead but if I concentrate on my heart and remember that there is nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of in presenting oneself with humility then I can continue making this journey one step at a time.

I have grown in so many areas over the last few years and I am now living joyfully and unafraid, I know that each time I face up to a challenge I will grow and develop as a human being and in that growth I will move closer to the person I wish to become.

I began my practice in very dark times, times that left me wishing for an end to my life. I believe that it was this very practice that helped pull me back from the brink, it came to me as a gift from a half overheard snatch of conversation between two strangers about a television show on which a ‘Thankfulness Diary’ was advocated.

This tiny seed of an idea rested quietly in my mind until one day I was walking through a market and there was a young man selling hand made books, they were quite beautiful and although I know I couldn’t afford one I stopped to look and admire them, as I examined them he explained why he made them. He had been fighting depression for many years and he had been taught to keep a Thankfulness Diary, gradually he regained his perspective on life, the depression lifted and he again found joy in living. The experience left in him a need to pass on this practice so he had begun making these books, at first he gave them away to friends and acquaintances then eventually he began selling them on the market; explaining to people what they were and why he made them in the hope that he could reach out and help someone else. I spent quite some time talking to him and felt heartened by his story and warmed by our conversation.

In the weeks that followed the idea kept coming back to me and so on one particularly bleak afternoon I sat with a notebook and tried desperately to think of something to be thankful for. Despondent I sat for over an hour before I finally wrote “I am thankful to be alive” which I promptly crossed out because it simply wasn’t true. I found that I was crying and in terrible pain I just couldn’t see any point in continuing with such a miserable existence, just then my cat ‘Nicky’ decided that he wanted some attention so I put the notebook to one side and spent time grooming and playing with him until he fell asleep on my lap, I picked the notebook up and wrote boldly ‘I am thankful for Nicky’.

It was several days before I picked the notebook up again, but when I looked at what I had written I felt a tiny little lift in my mood, I again sat with the notebook and eventually made a second entry ‘I am thankful for my garden.

Gradually over the days and weeks that followed I found comfort in this simple act and I actually began to see beauty again the more entries I made the lighter my world became. It wasn’t long before I was making regular entries and ultimately it became a part of my daily life.

Over time my life has changed profoundly, I no longer keep a physical Thankfulness Diary because the act of thankfulness is fully integrated into my daily life.

Each morning I offer a prayer of thanks for the day I have been granted, I accept this amazing gift with joy, I give thanks for the opportunities life affords me to grow and develop into a better version of the person I am.

Every time I eat I give thanks, thanks that I have adequate funds to buy food, when I clean my home I am thankful for having a home that needs cleaning, I love to go grocery shopping because it reminds me to be thankful for the bounty that fills my life. When I go to work I am thankful that I have a job where I can earn enough money to live comfortably, so I approach my work with a willing and joyful heart which makes my work fun.

At the end of the day I examine how I have lived my day; I pray that I have been the best person I can be and that through learning from the experiences of today I can improve the person I am. Then I offer a prayer of thankfulness, for the day that I have enjoyed, for the wonder and beauty of the world around me, for the love of my friends, for my T’ai Chi, for the wealth and bounty that fills my life, for my home, for my improving physical fitness, for all the un-named gifts I have received and all the gifts I have yet to receive, finally I offer profound thanks for my life.

If all this sounds a bit pie in the sky and pious I do understand, however none of these practices is aimed at anything other than focusing me on what I have to be thankful for and reminding me of how much I have grown and developed and how I can become a better person. In the darkness when fear plagues your mind and all you can see is a future filled with darkness and pain, knowing that you have something, no matter how small, to be thankful for offers an anchor for hope and that is where the power of thankfulness lies.

I have an unutterable faith that my life will continue to grow more and more joyous, I have endured terrible darkness and pain and I am thankful for those times, quite simply I now understand that without them I would not be who I am. This knowledge instils a knowing in me that no matter how dark days may become in the future I will learn and in that learning I will grow and develop, so whilst the experience may be difficult I know that ultimately I will have something to be thankful for.

For me; as for the young man; this practice has been a revelation and salvation; I wish I could see him to tell him how he has helped me. I believe he was a guide sent when I was in desperate need and hope that maybe these words will reach out to someone else who is in need.

Outside my window is my 4″ x 18″ window box, it’s planted with cowslips, thyme, scented pinks and golden creeping jenny, it is a little bit of heaven on a very busy, very noisy street. It has been here for two weeks and today, whilst all the noise and bustle of city life goes on around it, a bee is busy flying from one cowslip flower to the next.

So close to me that I could reach out and touch his delicate wings, he moves effortlessly from one flower to the next harvesting food for his queen. It is an eloquent reminder that spring has well and truly sprung. A tiny scene of delicate beauty as the sun shines golden through flowers which are swaying in a gentle breeze, they bob lower as the bee lands and the spring back as he flits on to the next pollen laden larder.

A favourite quote of mine is ‘one is nearer to god in the garden than anywhere else on earth’. I often miss living in the countryside where seeing a bee gathering pollen wouldn’t be of much note, now I am firmly reminded that god [who or whatever you hold it/him to be] is everywhere and that our perspective colours our perceptions.

Thank you little bee for my lesson and for reminding me that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

Does this mean that we as humans are incapable of true forgiveness? Or, does it mean that in learning to forgive we become divine?

I don’t know the answer to these questions but I do know that in true forgiveness there is a wealth of healing.

It is said that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’, maybe so, but I wouldn’t know for I have never been one to seek redress by harming another. What I do believe is that you cannot truly forgive while your heart is filled with pain and rage. Once the heat of your emotions has begun to cool then it is possible to begin to forgive. I believe that harming another by taking revenge will ultimately hurt me further, so the only dish I’ll serve cold is forgiveness. There is a proverb that says ‘he who plans for revenge should dig two graves’.

The process of forgiveness really can produce great healing; much of forgiveness is not about ‘facing your tormentor’ but about allowing your wounds to heal. For many it is also about forgiving yourself.

Holding onto negative emotions; anger, shame, guilt, does not allow healing to take place. As long as we scrape at our wounds no scabs can form, if scabs don’t form then scars can’t form, if scars can’t form then how can we be healed? The only way for that to happen is for us to stop chewing on our pain. Turn away, look to the future and slowly, step by step, day by day the pain and anger will begin to fade.

This is the hardest time, this is when you have to make a conscious choice; do I let the healing continue and then find forgiveness or do I want to continue tormenting myself? If you want to heal then you must let go of all the negative emotions completely, accept that whilst you may not have had any control over what happened you do have control over how you allow it to affect the rest of your life. It is this acceptance that is the key to forgiveness and therefore to healing, embrace this control and you have taken a very powerful and positive step.

In forgiving we are letting go of our negative emotions, we are allowing scabs and eventually scars to heal over our wounds. We can again become whole and healthy individuals, who have found a measure of peace following adversity.

I do not suggest for one moment that this is an easy thing to do, far from it, but the alternative is to allow our pain and anger to fester inside, where it will eventually poison every aspect of our lives and destroy any hope of finding peace.

I believe that if we deny ourselves healing we are declining to take control of our destiny and making victims of ourselves.

Forgiveness is hard, one of the hardest things we’ll ever have to do in our lives, and the path to forgiveness can be lonely and fraught with pain and difficulty. It takes courage, determination and great strength of character; it also takes love; love of self, for if we love ourselves how could we not want to heal.

It is almost my first thought on waking and very often my last at night.

Is this an addiction? Well, although you could be forgiven for thinking it is, it isn’t, because I could stop if I wanted to, it is simply that I don’t want to give up something that has changed my life in so many wonderful ways and given me so many wonderful gifts.

Is it an obsession? Possibly, it certainly dominates my life. However, I have, and actively pursue several other interests, some of which, incidentally, I would not do if it wasn’t for Taijiquan!

The more I learn the more there is to learn, it is the nature of the paradox inherent within Taijiquan that constantly takes me deeper and the deeper I go the more I glimpse yet greater depths to attain.

There is so much more to Taijiquan than ‘a health regimen’ or ‘a martial art’ or ‘a philosophical practice’, it contains each of these but is more than the sum of its’ parts.  Each element is inextricably linked and when practiced as a whole it is an unutterably wonderful, formidable, enlightening experience.  If you allow yourself to embrace the full potential of Taijiquan then it will give you more than you ever dreamed possible.

In its’ form there is amazingly beautiful movement; which, to the untrained eye, masks incredible power.  I see in it a complete, elegant, demonstration of Yin/Yang theory, it speaks eloquently of how softness overcomes hardness, of how without roots we cannot be sustained and how everything comes from the centre and that is what Taijiquan has become for me, the core of my being.

Taijiquan has impacted my life in ways that I wouldn’t have believed it could but that’s what Taijiquan does, it works on all of you, your body, mind and spirit so the gifts I have received continue to grow.

I have done away with many of the trappings of modern consumerism and find that the more I have simplified my existence the richer it has become, my daily life is profoundly richer and far more beautiful than I had ever imagined possible.

I look at my previous life and believe that I actually didn’t ‘live’ the first 43 years, I simply existed, I was unconscious and life happened to me.  I was unaware of the beauty and possibilities that life holds and had abrogated responsibility for my life and made a victim of myself.

In the last 4 years I have learned that I have choices and have chosen to take responsibility for my life.  I have learned so many things about myself, but mostly I have learned quite simply to be.

I no longer ‘wait for …’ I enjoy being in a place, seeing the people around me, enjoying the atmosphere, admiring the beauty of the world.

I am fitter, stronger and healthier than I have been in many, many years and I am starting to enjoy being in my skin for the first time in my life.

I am deeply contented with my life, it is full; full of joy, full of learning, full of challenges, full of opportunities, full of laughter, full of peace, full of beauty, full of love, the list goes on.

There is at the core of me a growing stillness, I can now sit in meditation for hours, or simply sit and watch the world around me, I see beauty wherever I go and my creative life has unfolded, I can spend hours writing poetry or more philosophical works.

I have always loved music and even here Taijiquan has had an impact, music often accompanies when I’m training alone and I now feel the music acutely, it has gained movement, sometimes when I close my eyes I can almost see dancers or ice skaters but always colours moving and interweaving to the music.  I am also starting to dance again, something I haven’t done in many, many years.

I am walking unafraid and joyfully into a bright, beautiful future, so much of this has been made possible by my practice, it has unlocked long closed doors in my mind, healed old wounds and given me the strength to face and finally deal with some hard truths.  I grow daily more profoundly grateful for my practice of Taijiquan and for all the learning and growth it has stimulated.

So to my constant companion I can only say ‘thank you for showing me the way’.

Life is challenge enough without we wall ourselves away

Open your heart and share a smile

Stop look at this stranger before you

Don’t you know, can’t you see

This stranger is only a friend you have not met

Open your eyes and see

Open your heart and feel

Open your life and smile

In my stillness there is infinite movement.

In my movement there is absolute stillness.

I am still and yet I am moving.