Quote on my chalkboard kitchen wall by Neem Karoli Baba: Love people and feed them.
I will squeeze lemons and peel ginger and add water and cinnamon and honey and then simmer, pour, deliver.
I will pick chicken from bone, add broth and vegetables, season and serve soup when you feel depleted.
I will make fresh scones and clotted cream and homemade raspberry jam and tea when you come home from England wishing you were still there, young and full of dreams of travel.
I will shave dark chocolate into full fat milk with sugar and just a touch of cayenne and cinnamon to warm February bones.
I will send cookies and brownies to your air force base and when you are home on leave I will fill the kitchen with every favorite, every dinner a Sunday meal and eggs every which way for breakfast.
I will step away and let yeast and water and salt and flour become better than the sum of their parts and bake in a blazing cast iron pot and call you to the kitchen while the bread is still warm.
I will let flour fly and sugar sparkle, berries will join hands, buttery crust will flake and pie will be served.
I will grind the beans and pour the water into the French press and pick a mug I think you will like.
I will pick and cook and peel and process beets in a kitchen stuffed full of hair frizzing humidity.
I will stir, mix, blend, chop and toss, simmer and grill, boil and broil, bake, saute and simmer, coat in olive oil and season with salt and roast for you.
I will feed you like an oak feeds squirrel and jay, like goldenrod feeds September bees, like snowmelt feeds streams and rain feeds puddles. I will feed you like a middle-aged lady feeds her birds.
Well my face couldn't choose between tears or smiles reading this aloud then through again on screen after adding to the story archive. That feeling of tender and also wistful joy I get from some of Mary Oliver and William Stafford's poetry. It's beautiful writing, as ever from you, but then this added pleasure of knowing that this is an actual gift you possess, and that those who get to spend time with you in real time/place eat this wonderful food! More and more now I dream of visiting over the years people met through my work here and on other projects - how I'd love to sit for an afternoon in your kitchen!
And that last paragraph. I'm going to put it here again just for the pleasure of savouring it once again, and because if you were here with me I'd read it back to you so you can enjoy differently what you've already made and given away:
"I will feed you like an oak feeds squirrel and jay, like goldenrod feeds September bees, like snowmelt feeds streams and rain feeds puddles. I will feed you like a middle-aged lady feeds her birds."
Now I'm the one who cannot choose between tears and smiles! That was such a lovely reply, the thought of someone reading back to someone is something I had never thought about before, such tenderness in that. It would be a delight to cook for you and I know it will happen one day. let me know if you are ever in the states. As another contributor mentioned, this was such an interesting prompt, the reaction of not wanting to write about a personal skill, but what a gift to all of us to help us recognize what we all offer. I am running out of ways to say thank you, but please know I am full of gratitude for you, for this community.
Ah, no thanks necessary. I love the energy we're creating between all of us. I used a quote from the end of your piece over on Twitter to give a sense of all that is happening here. Thank you again!
What a piece Shelia! Stunningly beautiful! I am popping in and out of here when I get a few minutes to catch up with the many memories that I haven't read or contributed to as yet and I must have missed this one from you. I love the way that you respond to prompts in very unique ways with prose that is equally extraordinary. Such a talent :-)
“Tell me about a skill you possess”. My heart sinks heavy and I want to hide. Please don’t ask me this. I don’t have any skills. Not now, age 50. Not anything that would mark me out as special, different, unique, worthy of the telling. My first instinct: to tell you about the skills of others. My friends, my family, the little boy who lives next door and pretends to be a dragon. Or to say that I did, once, have skills, but so distant in time it’s barely memory. Talents and abilities I possessed as a little girl. I could do backflips! Turn endless perfectly dizzying cartwheels until I collapsed in a giggling heap, the world still spinning around me.
And yet. My friends, my colleagues – have they not sung the song of myself to me, when I could not (or would not) sing the song myself? My friend who admired my hand-knit jumper, striped in the colours of the summer Hebridean sea, unknowing of the hidden months-long labour of its creation. A colleague who felt able to share with me some of her deepest worries, knowing she would be truly heard and seen by me in the telling. Awards given more than once for being ‘best educational supervisor of the year’ from former students.
Perhaps what I have lost is not the actual skills, but rather the skills of seeing, of recognising, of valuing. My skills. Myself. Perhaps it’s now more than time to regain this long-lost skill.
Oh my. This arrived as a bolt of light, of energy, of honest, as I sat a little sleepy at my afternoon kitchen table. I knew this month's theme would be more of a challenge to my community than recent ones on play and friendship. It was one of the harder things to speak of in my book. And yet I didn't mind if I got no responses for the first time, so long as perhaps the invitation was of use to people privately. And yet (as you say in your beautiful piece!), and yet...to receive this from you now fills me with admiration, gratitude. You voice in such beautiful, richly-textured prose, exactly how it is for so many of us for so much of our lives: that difficulty of apprehending our own gone and existing skills; that ease of celebrating (or sometimes envying) it in others. I would love to see that Hebridean jumper - being able to knit jumpers but not to any complex pattern - although I can also picture it of course. Here is your link to it in the book's story archive...
Thank you so much Tanya! Yes I rather startled myself with what I wrote swiftly, from the heart. Thank you so much for the encouragement to us all to give voice to our stories. I am a newcomer to your book, and have now read it twice in quick succession (and given a copy to a wonderful friend who I know will love it too). I intend now to spend some more time singing the song of myself and capturing it in words!
This is the enduring joy of this project - receiving so many powerful stories…but even more so hearing that my invitation, and your & others’ process of responding to it, has a use to you in your own creative journey. Xxx
Sometimes we don't recognise a skill we possess until many years after the event. And that might be because it's accompanied by a complete lack of development in other areas, particularly in young adulthood.
Shortly after I left home to go to university, my widowed mother began an affair with a young man only a year or two older than me. It was a horrible experience that I've only very recently been able to confront, because it brought out some very nasty aspects of my own personality. I finally found the words after reading about Thomas Hardy's complicated, messy feelings for his first wife after her death. I think it's possible that one or two of his phrases have found their way into this poem.
Miranda, I’ve only just received this through the wavering phone signal I have this week. What a truly difficult experience you went through - thank you for sharing here your later-in-life response/perspective on it.
I will be back in touch next week about moving it to the story archive.
Hello again Miranda! It's been taking me a while this month with holiday and children at home to catch up fully with messages. Sorry for delay. Before I transfer your piece to the story archive, I just need to check a few things - as I do whenever a written piece involves an identifiable person other than the one who is writing. Send me a DM on twitter or instagram with the best way to contact you? Tanya xx
Hi Tanya, thanks for getting back to me but I’ve had time to think it over and I don’t feel it’s the right forum for this piece at the right time. I hope that’s okay.
However, if you happen to want to contact me about anything you’re welcome to use my email ruth@waterton.name and mobile/text 0754 0104076. xx Ruth
I quite understand, although it's a very fine piece and I'd have been very glad to add it to the archive. I love how you write and the fierce insight of the piece was moving to me. I will always love receiving words from you. T xx
I think it will find its place somewhere but I need to sit down with those feelings a while. I’ve thought about working on a memoir at some point and certainly if I take that route I’ll need the right place to explore them. Right now I’m working through a course by Katherine May called WIntering for Writers and it’s really helping me to work some of this stuff out. I’m also in a local poetry group and that’s been a great experience, though I wouldn’t share it there, either. It’s held at a Maggies centre for cancer patients and their carers, so we work to a preset theme and there is a lot of trust involved. And I’m sure I’ll come through with something else for you before too long!
I feel sure that what you've written here will, yes, power a much longer work (as well as being a complete statement in itself in this form). I'm amazed now going back through old diaries to see some lines have gone complete into my book sometimes twenty years later, and that they not only survived three rounds of edits, but that my editor loved them the first time round. And things I'd first written about as stories or short non-fiction published pieces have also found themselves reworked into the book. Exciting to think of you working with Katherine - she's a remarkable writer and writing tutor isn't she?
I've always been an arty type, creative, handy ( that's what people have said - though I know it is true now }. I'm not a "main stream" teacher of things, but there's been quite a lot of teaching, supporting, encouraging, helping of others, sharing my "skills". I enjoy doing things differently - putting my creative spin on things whatever they are or have been. Sometimes rubbing people up the wrong way, never mind, I'm not for everyone - I didn't say that bit to be clear!
These days I think, well, perhaps my quirky way may nudge a different thought in someone?
The stepping stones along my path, my older wiser self sees now as my sign posts, opportunities, choices to make or not.
People, connections, situations have lead me to where I am today.
Now 61, hurtling towards 62 I teach children to swim. I didn't see that coming 10 years ago. I love it, it's joyous really being around young people. I didn't think I would feel like that but I do, it's refreshing, challenging at times too. Apparently, I'm told I'm good at it too!
Who knew, 30 years ago, I thought I'd be retired by now. Ha! no - that's not how it's worked out.
For the last 3 decades I've been a bodywork therapist ( Julie-ing a friend refers to it as ) - my hands on literally work eventually meant I would hang up my therapist hat due to my too painful digits.
Before that hat of choice, my younger adult self worked in the art departments, in the distorted male dominated then world of advertising. I couldn't, wouldn't want to go near that now. I'd definitely be more outspoken if ever I did.
Still, I have taken nearly all my skills from then with me, knowingly or not.
Actually, not too long ago I sort the "help" of a life/business coach to assist my twirling procrastinations. I was told straight off that" I have too many skills? - it can be problematic"!!! That might have been said in encouragement. It didn't feel like it at the time. It was a useful experience, though, fortunately, I went a different way with my suitcase of too many skills!
As my mother often said to me " Clever Clogs" me now - "Is this a loaded backhanded compliment"!?
Julie! Wow. What a fabulous blast of fresh air and energy this piece from you in on this hot and airless day. I love how you have taken the prompt and run with it...it was so exciting to follow you through your different incarnations - and how much I admire the way you have adapted over and again to circumstances, to keep finding ways to connect and render service. Wonderful! Here is your link to your piece in the story archive on the book's website... Tanya xx
I love this Julie! I too am in my sixties and like you have always been arty, creative and handy! A Clever Clogs or Jack of all Trades I was called (and I used to be so bothered by being a Master of None!)
I have utilised all of my skill in a multitude of roles and feel quite chuffed to be a Jack of all Trades! A beautiful share, thank you x
Ah Monique, how lovely of you to say this. Thank you. It's a good thing to look back sometimes. Those aha moments - previous experiences: good or not are worth it!
'There is no such word as can't were the words that I grew up with, and as much as those words would make me scream inside at the time, I have admitted to myself often over the six decades and more of my life that they have been a blessing.
These words turned me into what they called Jack of all Trades, Master of None, and Clever Clogs (also mentioned in a post by Julie, who has had a similar experience). Oh, how I used to be bothered by ‘Master of None but not that much, I guess, because I always wanted to try something new!
I was not allowed to go to Art College because continuing to study after age 16 meant that you were a lazy lay about! However, with those immortal words swimming in my head, I found myself in a hairdressing apprenticeship at a high-end salon on the posher side of the next town. I would be artistic here instead!
My new career was short-lived due to an (up until then unknown extreme skin condition), and so, work took on a higgledy-piggledy new life of its own!
From Mamma to Grandmamma, Ambulance Practitioner to Bank Manager, Counselor to Dementia Liaison Officer, Energy Healer to Librarian, Human Resources to Tarot Reader, and myriad others, this Jack of all Trades, Master of None this Clever Clogs created a working life that was and still isn’t ever dull!
Phew, this hasn't been an easy post to write but now it has been written, I am feeling like I should be celebrating what I do well!
I just have to figure out what it is exactly... :-)
Another moving piece from you, Tracey. I notice that you use exclamation marks a lot after sharing quite tender memories - as if to soften or laugh off the quite harsh things that were said about you or just about people generally as you were growing up. In adding the piece to the story archive just now, I've taken just a few of those out as I feel it brings out more strongly the full impact of the many conditions and constraints you had to work through and around growing up - to become this fascinating, many faceted woman that you sound to be...
Just like in your reading post, this is full of resilience and also a woman with a sense of adventure. My first thought when I read all of the careers you have engaged in is that they are the perfect chapter heading for a longer writing, a memoir or a series of linked essays...It just made me so curious and wanting to know how all this came about.
Another great idea from you Shelia, thank you! I find your comments so helpful because you are showing me that there are many options to how we present our writings. Do you mean a series of linked essays that may then become chapters say, in a book? [Excuse my ignorance in these things].
Yep, it absolutely could be that, it seemed like a natural framework, but you will know when you start writing it if it is right for what you want to say. I think you will have a lot of fun playing around with it, seeing if there are other links there, who knows where it will lead you, maybe you won't like that approach at all. I think the idea came to me because I have always played it safe in terms of work and when I saw all the jobs you've had, I was intrigued. I look forward to seeing what else comes forth for you.
When I first met the world my senses were pummelled and stretched by a chaos of sights and sounds. An immediate, instinctive sucking in of my environment took over and so I hoovered up the wonders around me. Every breath I took filled me with curiosity. A mystery of sounds came for me, gathered me up in it's score and Pied Pipered me to where I danced to the brightness of my imagination. I soaked up the creaks; sighs, groans and whispers of the wild.
Black coated sentinels kept watch over me from their treetop fortresses, chastising me with a harsh, unmelodic " caw " and " caah". The cackling chorus of rooks cricked my neck with reverence. From the splendour of a sharp tongued, scolding jay floating gracefully through it's wooded by-ways; to the stylish red curved beak of a probing chough the corvids lie deep in our folklore and folk horror. Straight talking; no nonsense, heralds of doom and devastation; goths of folklore fancies piqued my inquisitive nature and fuelled my appetite to share spaces with these intelligent, worldly birds.
Isis, the youthful Thames seduced me; lured me to her clear, running waters and conjured up a cobalt blue, halcyon performer that unzipped the flesh of the world as it skimmed fast and low above the water leaving a shrill, tangy, "chee" "chikee" in it's wake.
My hungry head drew in the music of the birds. Scrolls of memory filled with songs; now always there. A musical library of trills; warbles, flutes, chuckles and whistles. I close my eyes and listen to the calls of the wild in this harsh land of humans.
My Wordpress site for the book is glitching badly, and I'm worried that story content is being lost. I am going to talk to the engineers this week about why this might be. But I hope yours doesn't do a disappearing act as a few others have all of a sudden!
Hi Tanya, Thanks again for your much valued reply. This has proved to be both a challenge and a channel for me to draw out and develop a tone of voice and style of writing.
Steve, I knew at the very start of the project how thrilled I would be each time a new person dated to share their words… but I couldn’t have imagined the different deeper pleasure of seeing regular contributions come through from a few like you. To watch your mind/prose approach each topic is so valued. I will add to archive tomorrow & come back here to give yi your link. Tan x
Oh…. That really got me thinking. I can list so many things that I lack and so many skills I wish I had. So, I’m always learning and always ready to start something new just to try it out for size.
I do have a very useful skill though that got me through my childhood and my 20s. I am my own best friend. I only found out that when I trained as a nutritional therapist and started working alongside doctors and counsellors at a cancer charity. I never realised until then that it was a skill. Of course, it doesn’t mean that I don’t need friends. I do. But … I’ve been able to self-counsel myself through anything that life has thrown at me so far. I’m never bored with myself. Me and I have some great conversations (not in public!). Sometimes we argue but never bear any grudges, never shame, ignore, or punish each other. We can find different perspectives in almost everything. I’m almost always honest with myself but I’m also good at lying for self-preservation or to put someone else at ease. I talk myself calm through tricky situations, like having a gun to my head. I can easily smile while crying inside. I can camouflage myself in any room if I need to (ok, this might be a wishful thinking). And I can play “dead” and still breathe with my head in the sand when things get tough.
I've so enjoyed reading this again, aloud, before adding it to story archive on the book website. A double pleasure: joy for you, that you have this in yourself, and also a wistful/hopeful idea that anyone else in our story-sharing community here that reads it might be able to be themselves infused with a new ability to hold that kind of self-healing, self-loving view too. What a lovely response to this theme - one of the more challenging ones I've put out in the first year and a half of this project! Here is your link...
Oh my. Just read this & your other powerful contribution. Thank you so much! I will be back here earky tomorrow with your links to them on the book website. So very glad to have you join our collective undertaking here. Xx
Thank you so much Tanya. Please don't worry if they are a bit odd to be put on the actual website. Im just so glad you got me back to my computer, even though it's uncomfortable and painful xxx
Hesitating over this prompt, reading the previous entries, I resort to the OED: ‘knowledge, aptitude or practice of doing something well’. That judgement of ‘well’. Imposter Syndrome whispers average: Inner Critic scoffs. The skilled painter is labelled an artist, the scribbler a published author, and skill becomes the person. Hmm. I can read a map, navigate through a landscape, choose appropriate clothes, but skilled walker? I write daily but am I skilled?
On safer ground, I possess the skill of driving. I wasn’t born with this skill, but acquired it with a friend’s help who entrusted me with her mini-traveller, wherever we went, for six months. Topped up with lessons from a qualified instructor and the bizarre confidence of a 17 year old, I passed my test first time. Considered a necessary life skill by my parents, it’s brought me pleasure, enabled employment, eased visiting family, allowed adventure and got the shopping slotted in on busy days.
My first long distance drive took me to central London, collecting my fiancé’s mini, to store safely at our home in Essex while his collar bone healed. Never living round the corner from family, my skill returned me to Essex from the Northeast, to Leeds, Lincoln, The Lakes and latterly Wiltshire. Family holidays in France were enhanced by shared driving. I’m infamous for thinking 100 MPH on The Paris Peripherique was mandatory! For miles read kilometres. Introducing a media club at work involved driving lively 13 year olds in the school minibus on Wednesday nights. Nicknamed ‘the bus of death’, it was often low on petrol and high on the smell of mud from the football team!
I’m not Ayrton Senna but I can change a wheel, check tyre pressure, top up windscreen wash and generally get us from A to B without mishap. Skilled enough.
Unremarkable. I hated how the word fell out of my mouth with such ease. But at that moment in time, nothing felt more like the truth. Based on our current worldview of what deems a person successful or worthy, my status was simply unexceptional. Nothing to write home about. This self-deprecating voice took centre stage through my depression.
The truth of course is that my skills aren’t usually spoken of, let alone celebrated or sought after. Because what I bring to the party is far more subtle and often unnoticed. In fact, my skill is completely silent. I just have to show up and my expertise takes over.
All my life people have shared with me their most intimate and vulnerable stories. As a child, it was my neighbour or a friend of my parents. Often it was a stranger I met on a train or waiting at the bus stop. Today it’s a mum outside the school gate or the elderly lady who created a book-swapping library outside her house. Upon meeting me all veils are lifted and only the most honest and heartfelt exchanges take place. Tears are shed and apologies made. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all is. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s fine. Really. It happens more than you know.’ We often part ways with a hug, a gesture of familiarity and gratitude. They walk away slightly lighter; I stumble through my day wondering why I got to listen to the undisclosed whispers of a stranger's heart. Again.
Is knowing how to hold space for someone to expose the most tender parts of their soul a skill? Some might say I just have a kind face.
Kindness and compassion shouldn’t need to be learned. But in an increasingly divisive and fractured world, I’m proud to be a master in them.
Corinne...how moved I was by this beautifully-written piece. I share this skill - have, like you, been confided in by family, friends and strangers since earliest childhood, and I've even referred to it in my book. But I've never - the book or elsewhere - been able to articulate it or its use as you have here. Those last two sentences as well - their quiet power. When you move from being a receiver of stories to being authorial - stepping forward to make a statement about the world and how it is. Here is your link:
OMGosh ! Thank you so much Tanya. I'm blown away to be honest reading your feedback on my piece. I had twirled this theme for a while. Reminds me of an acupuncture treatment I once had - the therapist describing in Chinese medicine the meridian point she worked on referred to "standing behind the shutters looking outward - and that it was ok to step forward on to the veranda" Quietly beaming. Love this community of online writing. Thank you .. Julie xxx
I am truly excellent at planning and organising. Other people might be extraordinary artists or writers or athletes, but in my humble opinion my small unspoken skills are under recognised. If you need jobs done, tasks completed, I will get it done, if I start something then I finish it. I will find the extra time and squeeze and wring out the minutes and seconds of a day to Get It All Done.
But at times this skill feels like a curse, it tips me over the edge into anxietal overthinking, it’s frankly exhausting when my brain doesn’t switch off. To do lists are scribbled over and pressing tasks highlighted and post notes stuck on top for something that’s really urgent - and that’s only the physical manifestation of it all. My mind is often a whirling messy mess remembering this and that, ticking off the do lists, making mental notes of this and that for later.
And it’s burdensome because everyone around me knows that I will do all the planning and leaves the mental load to me.
I used to feel like I was a crazy person that couldn’t just go with the flow like everyone around me seemed to do. And I felt guilty for thinking ahead and making A Plan for the day.
But lately I’ve realised that this is my superpower, that without it my family and I would just fall apart. Without it I wouldn’t be able to work at a high level job or train for marathons or care for my family. All superheroes seem to have some sort of flaw or difficulty in controlling their power don’t they? So I work hard to maintain that delicate balance of using my skills to their best effect without totally collapsing from the exhaustion of it all. I’m not saying this should be the new plot line of the next Marvel blockbuster (Organised Girl to the rescue!), but these small soft unrecognised skills are what makes the world tick.
As promised, Jenni, here is a link to your insightful piece (and I'm still so glad to see organisation - even though it can be a burden - being celebrated in this way: I was ashamed of my orderliness for far too long!). Remind me of your last name if you'd like it added to your online credit... Tanya xx
Oh I love this! Thank you - it’s my skill too & I nodded in fierce recognition at everything here, so well expressed. It took me too too long to believe it could be used for creativity instead of being proof I couldn’t be… as soon as I’m back home from holiday on Monday I will add to the story archive & come back here to give you your own web link.. Tanya xx
I will go check now! For the first time since I started this, the amount of new notifications has meant I've missed just a few things - only a temporary glitch as I've now cleaned up my email inbox of old notifications. I will reply on the thread you submitted to once I've put it into the story archive. Thank you. xx
I've found - it's beautiful! - and have already added to the story archive. And that's kind of you what you've just said, but a big part of what I'm trying to do here is give people quite quick responses - as a writer moves deeper into submitting for publication, and then being published and working with editors, the wait times are often very long. But I feel that many people never get to that stage because the very first sending out of words is often too scary to risk, or the few times a person has tried it has been so unsupported that they hesitate to try again. In a small way, trying here to help as many people as I can through that necessary stage! xx
Quote on my chalkboard kitchen wall by Neem Karoli Baba: Love people and feed them.
I will squeeze lemons and peel ginger and add water and cinnamon and honey and then simmer, pour, deliver.
I will pick chicken from bone, add broth and vegetables, season and serve soup when you feel depleted.
I will make fresh scones and clotted cream and homemade raspberry jam and tea when you come home from England wishing you were still there, young and full of dreams of travel.
I will shave dark chocolate into full fat milk with sugar and just a touch of cayenne and cinnamon to warm February bones.
I will send cookies and brownies to your air force base and when you are home on leave I will fill the kitchen with every favorite, every dinner a Sunday meal and eggs every which way for breakfast.
I will step away and let yeast and water and salt and flour become better than the sum of their parts and bake in a blazing cast iron pot and call you to the kitchen while the bread is still warm.
I will let flour fly and sugar sparkle, berries will join hands, buttery crust will flake and pie will be served.
I will grind the beans and pour the water into the French press and pick a mug I think you will like.
I will pick and cook and peel and process beets in a kitchen stuffed full of hair frizzing humidity.
I will stir, mix, blend, chop and toss, simmer and grill, boil and broil, bake, saute and simmer, coat in olive oil and season with salt and roast for you.
I will feed you like an oak feeds squirrel and jay, like goldenrod feeds September bees, like snowmelt feeds streams and rain feeds puddles. I will feed you like a middle-aged lady feeds her birds.
Well my face couldn't choose between tears or smiles reading this aloud then through again on screen after adding to the story archive. That feeling of tender and also wistful joy I get from some of Mary Oliver and William Stafford's poetry. It's beautiful writing, as ever from you, but then this added pleasure of knowing that this is an actual gift you possess, and that those who get to spend time with you in real time/place eat this wonderful food! More and more now I dream of visiting over the years people met through my work here and on other projects - how I'd love to sit for an afternoon in your kitchen!
And that last paragraph. I'm going to put it here again just for the pleasure of savouring it once again, and because if you were here with me I'd read it back to you so you can enjoy differently what you've already made and given away:
"I will feed you like an oak feeds squirrel and jay, like goldenrod feeds September bees, like snowmelt feeds streams and rain feeds puddles. I will feed you like a middle-aged lady feeds her birds."
Wow.
Thank you as ever. Here is your link...
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#sheilaknell
Now I'm the one who cannot choose between tears and smiles! That was such a lovely reply, the thought of someone reading back to someone is something I had never thought about before, such tenderness in that. It would be a delight to cook for you and I know it will happen one day. let me know if you are ever in the states. As another contributor mentioned, this was such an interesting prompt, the reaction of not wanting to write about a personal skill, but what a gift to all of us to help us recognize what we all offer. I am running out of ways to say thank you, but please know I am full of gratitude for you, for this community.
Ah, no thanks necessary. I love the energy we're creating between all of us. I used a quote from the end of your piece over on Twitter to give a sense of all that is happening here. Thank you again!
Wonderful! Another big smile!
Love it! So beautiful, tender and full of emotions bubbling up just under the surface
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it and it's nice to see this group expand!
What a piece Shelia! Stunningly beautiful! I am popping in and out of here when I get a few minutes to catch up with the many memories that I haven't read or contributed to as yet and I must have missed this one from you. I love the way that you respond to prompts in very unique ways with prose that is equally extraordinary. Such a talent :-)
Tracey xx
Tracey, Thanks again! I hope to have more time soon to read what others have been writing. Always amazed with what happens in this space! Xx
Thank you so much! Make sure you bring a pillow, that hot chocolate seems to put us all right to sleep!
“Tell me about a skill you possess”. My heart sinks heavy and I want to hide. Please don’t ask me this. I don’t have any skills. Not now, age 50. Not anything that would mark me out as special, different, unique, worthy of the telling. My first instinct: to tell you about the skills of others. My friends, my family, the little boy who lives next door and pretends to be a dragon. Or to say that I did, once, have skills, but so distant in time it’s barely memory. Talents and abilities I possessed as a little girl. I could do backflips! Turn endless perfectly dizzying cartwheels until I collapsed in a giggling heap, the world still spinning around me.
And yet. My friends, my colleagues – have they not sung the song of myself to me, when I could not (or would not) sing the song myself? My friend who admired my hand-knit jumper, striped in the colours of the summer Hebridean sea, unknowing of the hidden months-long labour of its creation. A colleague who felt able to share with me some of her deepest worries, knowing she would be truly heard and seen by me in the telling. Awards given more than once for being ‘best educational supervisor of the year’ from former students.
Perhaps what I have lost is not the actual skills, but rather the skills of seeing, of recognising, of valuing. My skills. Myself. Perhaps it’s now more than time to regain this long-lost skill.
Oh my. This arrived as a bolt of light, of energy, of honest, as I sat a little sleepy at my afternoon kitchen table. I knew this month's theme would be more of a challenge to my community than recent ones on play and friendship. It was one of the harder things to speak of in my book. And yet I didn't mind if I got no responses for the first time, so long as perhaps the invitation was of use to people privately. And yet (as you say in your beautiful piece!), and yet...to receive this from you now fills me with admiration, gratitude. You voice in such beautiful, richly-textured prose, exactly how it is for so many of us for so much of our lives: that difficulty of apprehending our own gone and existing skills; that ease of celebrating (or sometimes envying) it in others. I would love to see that Hebridean jumper - being able to knit jumpers but not to any complex pattern - although I can also picture it of course. Here is your link to it in the book's story archive...
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#suse
And if you'd like me to add your last name to your online credit, just let me know in reply, and I will update asap.
Thank you so much. Tanya xx
Thank you so much Tanya! Yes I rather startled myself with what I wrote swiftly, from the heart. Thank you so much for the encouragement to us all to give voice to our stories. I am a newcomer to your book, and have now read it twice in quick succession (and given a copy to a wonderful friend who I know will love it too). I intend now to spend some more time singing the song of myself and capturing it in words!
This is the enduring joy of this project - receiving so many powerful stories…but even more so hearing that my invitation, and your & others’ process of responding to it, has a use to you in your own creative journey. Xxx
Suse this is beautiful! x
Thank you Monique!
Sometimes we don't recognise a skill we possess until many years after the event. And that might be because it's accompanied by a complete lack of development in other areas, particularly in young adulthood.
Shortly after I left home to go to university, my widowed mother began an affair with a young man only a year or two older than me. It was a horrible experience that I've only very recently been able to confront, because it brought out some very nasty aspects of my own personality. I finally found the words after reading about Thomas Hardy's complicated, messy feelings for his first wife after her death. I think it's possible that one or two of his phrases have found their way into this poem.
LIFE LESSONS
How did I learn to mistrust my mother’s
dangerous show of innocence?
her lady in the tower pretence,
the purity that ran skin-deep?
I had a radar that would beep
within a mile of any creep.
I’d spent a childhood reading grown-ups
hiding in the corner, earthing
their barbed lightning,
grown an inner shit-detector
Conflict was so frightening that
I hoarded power through staying mute.
but sensed when things did not compute.
Yet, one time, I was moved to speak,
I saw the boy, confused and weak
her vanity could not resist.
saw that he’d never leave his mother,
he would rather steal another,
mine, the only one I knew.
That time I knew what I would do.
I also knew it wouldn’t work,
and yet I tried it, anyway.
I couldn’t bring myself to say,
or even quite acknowledge to myself
what I sensed would transpire.
Don’t touch, I warned her. Run a mile,
She thought my jealousy was vile,
called me a religious prude,
scared of my sexuality,
Well, she had stolen it from me.
She stayed, and it was I who fled.
and for a while,
I had no place to lay my head.
I threw myself on God instead,
who, it turned out, tells lies a-plenty
but who knows that at one-and-twenty?
Miranda, I’ve only just received this through the wavering phone signal I have this week. What a truly difficult experience you went through - thank you for sharing here your later-in-life response/perspective on it.
I will be back in touch next week about moving it to the story archive.
Don’t worry if it’s not a good fit this month. I won’t mind at all. I think showing up is the main thing.
Hello again Miranda! It's been taking me a while this month with holiday and children at home to catch up fully with messages. Sorry for delay. Before I transfer your piece to the story archive, I just need to check a few things - as I do whenever a written piece involves an identifiable person other than the one who is writing. Send me a DM on twitter or instagram with the best way to contact you? Tanya xx
Hi Tanya, thanks for getting back to me but I’ve had time to think it over and I don’t feel it’s the right forum for this piece at the right time. I hope that’s okay.
However, if you happen to want to contact me about anything you’re welcome to use my email ruth@waterton.name and mobile/text 0754 0104076. xx Ruth
I quite understand, although it's a very fine piece and I'd have been very glad to add it to the archive. I love how you write and the fierce insight of the piece was moving to me. I will always love receiving words from you. T xx
I think it will find its place somewhere but I need to sit down with those feelings a while. I’ve thought about working on a memoir at some point and certainly if I take that route I’ll need the right place to explore them. Right now I’m working through a course by Katherine May called WIntering for Writers and it’s really helping me to work some of this stuff out. I’m also in a local poetry group and that’s been a great experience, though I wouldn’t share it there, either. It’s held at a Maggies centre for cancer patients and their carers, so we work to a preset theme and there is a lot of trust involved. And I’m sure I’ll come through with something else for you before too long!
I feel sure that what you've written here will, yes, power a much longer work (as well as being a complete statement in itself in this form). I'm amazed now going back through old diaries to see some lines have gone complete into my book sometimes twenty years later, and that they not only survived three rounds of edits, but that my editor loved them the first time round. And things I'd first written about as stories or short non-fiction published pieces have also found themselves reworked into the book. Exciting to think of you working with Katherine - she's a remarkable writer and writing tutor isn't she?
Ah, I agree - but it’s only that I’m away without my laptop & enough Wi-Fi to create the new month late in archive! Xx
Clever Clogs?
I've always been an arty type, creative, handy ( that's what people have said - though I know it is true now }. I'm not a "main stream" teacher of things, but there's been quite a lot of teaching, supporting, encouraging, helping of others, sharing my "skills". I enjoy doing things differently - putting my creative spin on things whatever they are or have been. Sometimes rubbing people up the wrong way, never mind, I'm not for everyone - I didn't say that bit to be clear!
These days I think, well, perhaps my quirky way may nudge a different thought in someone?
The stepping stones along my path, my older wiser self sees now as my sign posts, opportunities, choices to make or not.
People, connections, situations have lead me to where I am today.
Now 61, hurtling towards 62 I teach children to swim. I didn't see that coming 10 years ago. I love it, it's joyous really being around young people. I didn't think I would feel like that but I do, it's refreshing, challenging at times too. Apparently, I'm told I'm good at it too!
Who knew, 30 years ago, I thought I'd be retired by now. Ha! no - that's not how it's worked out.
For the last 3 decades I've been a bodywork therapist ( Julie-ing a friend refers to it as ) - my hands on literally work eventually meant I would hang up my therapist hat due to my too painful digits.
Before that hat of choice, my younger adult self worked in the art departments, in the distorted male dominated then world of advertising. I couldn't, wouldn't want to go near that now. I'd definitely be more outspoken if ever I did.
Still, I have taken nearly all my skills from then with me, knowingly or not.
Actually, not too long ago I sort the "help" of a life/business coach to assist my twirling procrastinations. I was told straight off that" I have too many skills? - it can be problematic"!!! That might have been said in encouragement. It didn't feel like it at the time. It was a useful experience, though, fortunately, I went a different way with my suitcase of too many skills!
As my mother often said to me " Clever Clogs" me now - "Is this a loaded backhanded compliment"!?
Anyway, I'm off to blow my own trumpet!!
Julie! Wow. What a fabulous blast of fresh air and energy this piece from you in on this hot and airless day. I love how you have taken the prompt and run with it...it was so exciting to follow you through your different incarnations - and how much I admire the way you have adapted over and again to circumstances, to keep finding ways to connect and render service. Wonderful! Here is your link to your piece in the story archive on the book's website... Tanya xx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#juliebenham
I love this Julie! I too am in my sixties and like you have always been arty, creative and handy! A Clever Clogs or Jack of all Trades I was called (and I used to be so bothered by being a Master of None!)
I have utilised all of my skill in a multitude of roles and feel quite chuffed to be a Jack of all Trades! A beautiful share, thank you x
Ah Monique, how lovely of you to say this. Thank you. It's a good thing to look back sometimes. Those aha moments - previous experiences: good or not are worth it!
Clogs on. ;-)
'There is no such word as can't were the words that I grew up with, and as much as those words would make me scream inside at the time, I have admitted to myself often over the six decades and more of my life that they have been a blessing.
These words turned me into what they called Jack of all Trades, Master of None, and Clever Clogs (also mentioned in a post by Julie, who has had a similar experience). Oh, how I used to be bothered by ‘Master of None but not that much, I guess, because I always wanted to try something new!
I was not allowed to go to Art College because continuing to study after age 16 meant that you were a lazy lay about! However, with those immortal words swimming in my head, I found myself in a hairdressing apprenticeship at a high-end salon on the posher side of the next town. I would be artistic here instead!
My new career was short-lived due to an (up until then unknown extreme skin condition), and so, work took on a higgledy-piggledy new life of its own!
From Mamma to Grandmamma, Ambulance Practitioner to Bank Manager, Counselor to Dementia Liaison Officer, Energy Healer to Librarian, Human Resources to Tarot Reader, and myriad others, this Jack of all Trades, Master of None this Clever Clogs created a working life that was and still isn’t ever dull!
Phew, this hasn't been an easy post to write but now it has been written, I am feeling like I should be celebrating what I do well!
I just have to figure out what it is exactly... :-)
Another moving piece from you, Tracey. I notice that you use exclamation marks a lot after sharing quite tender memories - as if to soften or laugh off the quite harsh things that were said about you or just about people generally as you were growing up. In adding the piece to the story archive just now, I've taken just a few of those out as I feel it brings out more strongly the full impact of the many conditions and constraints you had to work through and around growing up - to become this fascinating, many faceted woman that you sound to be...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#traceymayor
Txx
Ah yes you are exactly right Tanya, I do tend to make light of memories with exclamation marks and maybe it is also to do with exposing myself here...
I appreciate your decision to remove some of them and will remember this when writing my next piece.
Thank you for taking the time to read my words, this means so much to me Tanya.
Tracey xx
Just like in your reading post, this is full of resilience and also a woman with a sense of adventure. My first thought when I read all of the careers you have engaged in is that they are the perfect chapter heading for a longer writing, a memoir or a series of linked essays...It just made me so curious and wanting to know how all this came about.
Another great idea from you Shelia, thank you! I find your comments so helpful because you are showing me that there are many options to how we present our writings. Do you mean a series of linked essays that may then become chapters say, in a book? [Excuse my ignorance in these things].
Tracey x
Yep, it absolutely could be that, it seemed like a natural framework, but you will know when you start writing it if it is right for what you want to say. I think you will have a lot of fun playing around with it, seeing if there are other links there, who knows where it will lead you, maybe you won't like that approach at all. I think the idea came to me because I have always played it safe in terms of work and when I saw all the jobs you've had, I was intrigued. I look forward to seeing what else comes forth for you.
Think of a world without any birds.
When I first met the world my senses were pummelled and stretched by a chaos of sights and sounds. An immediate, instinctive sucking in of my environment took over and so I hoovered up the wonders around me. Every breath I took filled me with curiosity. A mystery of sounds came for me, gathered me up in it's score and Pied Pipered me to where I danced to the brightness of my imagination. I soaked up the creaks; sighs, groans and whispers of the wild.
Black coated sentinels kept watch over me from their treetop fortresses, chastising me with a harsh, unmelodic " caw " and " caah". The cackling chorus of rooks cricked my neck with reverence. From the splendour of a sharp tongued, scolding jay floating gracefully through it's wooded by-ways; to the stylish red curved beak of a probing chough the corvids lie deep in our folklore and folk horror. Straight talking; no nonsense, heralds of doom and devastation; goths of folklore fancies piqued my inquisitive nature and fuelled my appetite to share spaces with these intelligent, worldly birds.
Isis, the youthful Thames seduced me; lured me to her clear, running waters and conjured up a cobalt blue, halcyon performer that unzipped the flesh of the world as it skimmed fast and low above the water leaving a shrill, tangy, "chee" "chikee" in it's wake.
My hungry head drew in the music of the birds. Scrolls of memory filled with songs; now always there. A musical library of trills; warbles, flutes, chuckles and whistles. I close my eyes and listen to the calls of the wild in this harsh land of humans.
Here, Steve, is the link to your (characteristically) fully alive piece:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#steveharrison
My Wordpress site for the book is glitching badly, and I'm worried that story content is being lost. I am going to talk to the engineers this week about why this might be. But I hope yours doesn't do a disappearing act as a few others have all of a sudden!
Tanya x
Hi Tanya, Thanks again for your much valued reply. This has proved to be both a challenge and a channel for me to draw out and develop a tone of voice and style of writing.
Steve.
Steve, I knew at the very start of the project how thrilled I would be each time a new person dated to share their words… but I couldn’t have imagined the different deeper pleasure of seeing regular contributions come through from a few like you. To watch your mind/prose approach each topic is so valued. I will add to archive tomorrow & come back here to give yi your link. Tan x
Oh…. That really got me thinking. I can list so many things that I lack and so many skills I wish I had. So, I’m always learning and always ready to start something new just to try it out for size.
I do have a very useful skill though that got me through my childhood and my 20s. I am my own best friend. I only found out that when I trained as a nutritional therapist and started working alongside doctors and counsellors at a cancer charity. I never realised until then that it was a skill. Of course, it doesn’t mean that I don’t need friends. I do. But … I’ve been able to self-counsel myself through anything that life has thrown at me so far. I’m never bored with myself. Me and I have some great conversations (not in public!). Sometimes we argue but never bear any grudges, never shame, ignore, or punish each other. We can find different perspectives in almost everything. I’m almost always honest with myself but I’m also good at lying for self-preservation or to put someone else at ease. I talk myself calm through tricky situations, like having a gun to my head. I can easily smile while crying inside. I can camouflage myself in any room if I need to (ok, this might be a wishful thinking). And I can play “dead” and still breathe with my head in the sand when things get tough.
I've so enjoyed reading this again, aloud, before adding it to story archive on the book website. A double pleasure: joy for you, that you have this in yourself, and also a wistful/hopeful idea that anyone else in our story-sharing community here that reads it might be able to be themselves infused with a new ability to hold that kind of self-healing, self-loving view too. What a lovely response to this theme - one of the more challenging ones I've put out in the first year and a half of this project! Here is your link...
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#Elena
Tanya xx
Oh my. Just read this & your other powerful contribution. Thank you so much! I will be back here earky tomorrow with your links to them on the book website. So very glad to have you join our collective undertaking here. Xx
Thank you so much Tanya. Please don't worry if they are a bit odd to be put on the actual website. Im just so glad you got me back to my computer, even though it's uncomfortable and painful xxx
They are wonderful. Each time a person brings a new & distinct sensibility to the project, I’m thrilled all over again. X
This piece makes me think you have quite a story to tell, how it starts with the regular day to day and then adds a shock!
Thank you, Sheila!
Skill
Hesitating over this prompt, reading the previous entries, I resort to the OED: ‘knowledge, aptitude or practice of doing something well’. That judgement of ‘well’. Imposter Syndrome whispers average: Inner Critic scoffs. The skilled painter is labelled an artist, the scribbler a published author, and skill becomes the person. Hmm. I can read a map, navigate through a landscape, choose appropriate clothes, but skilled walker? I write daily but am I skilled?
On safer ground, I possess the skill of driving. I wasn’t born with this skill, but acquired it with a friend’s help who entrusted me with her mini-traveller, wherever we went, for six months. Topped up with lessons from a qualified instructor and the bizarre confidence of a 17 year old, I passed my test first time. Considered a necessary life skill by my parents, it’s brought me pleasure, enabled employment, eased visiting family, allowed adventure and got the shopping slotted in on busy days.
My first long distance drive took me to central London, collecting my fiancé’s mini, to store safely at our home in Essex while his collar bone healed. Never living round the corner from family, my skill returned me to Essex from the Northeast, to Leeds, Lincoln, The Lakes and latterly Wiltshire. Family holidays in France were enhanced by shared driving. I’m infamous for thinking 100 MPH on The Paris Peripherique was mandatory! For miles read kilometres. Introducing a media club at work involved driving lively 13 year olds in the school minibus on Wednesday nights. Nicknamed ‘the bus of death’, it was often low on petrol and high on the smell of mud from the football team!
I’m not Ayrton Senna but I can change a wheel, check tyre pressure, top up windscreen wash and generally get us from A to B without mishap. Skilled enough.
Jean Wilson
Big smile reading this, Jean. Love the… well, ‘drive’ of it. You in constant (skilled) motion!
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#jeanwilson
Txx
Thought it was time to have some fun! Thanks for responding. So kind considering all that's happening for you.
My pleasure. These exchanges have been a bright thread through those suspended, overcast weeks. xxx
Unremarkable. I hated how the word fell out of my mouth with such ease. But at that moment in time, nothing felt more like the truth. Based on our current worldview of what deems a person successful or worthy, my status was simply unexceptional. Nothing to write home about. This self-deprecating voice took centre stage through my depression.
The truth of course is that my skills aren’t usually spoken of, let alone celebrated or sought after. Because what I bring to the party is far more subtle and often unnoticed. In fact, my skill is completely silent. I just have to show up and my expertise takes over.
All my life people have shared with me their most intimate and vulnerable stories. As a child, it was my neighbour or a friend of my parents. Often it was a stranger I met on a train or waiting at the bus stop. Today it’s a mum outside the school gate or the elderly lady who created a book-swapping library outside her house. Upon meeting me all veils are lifted and only the most honest and heartfelt exchanges take place. Tears are shed and apologies made. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all is. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s fine. Really. It happens more than you know.’ We often part ways with a hug, a gesture of familiarity and gratitude. They walk away slightly lighter; I stumble through my day wondering why I got to listen to the undisclosed whispers of a stranger's heart. Again.
Is knowing how to hold space for someone to expose the most tender parts of their soul a skill? Some might say I just have a kind face.
Kindness and compassion shouldn’t need to be learned. But in an increasingly divisive and fractured world, I’m proud to be a master in them.
Corinne...how moved I was by this beautifully-written piece. I share this skill - have, like you, been confided in by family, friends and strangers since earliest childhood, and I've even referred to it in my book. But I've never - the book or elsewhere - been able to articulate it or its use as you have here. Those last two sentences as well - their quiet power. When you move from being a receiver of stories to being authorial - stepping forward to make a statement about the world and how it is. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#corinnekagan
Txx
OMGosh ! Thank you so much Tanya. I'm blown away to be honest reading your feedback on my piece. I had twirled this theme for a while. Reminds me of an acupuncture treatment I once had - the therapist describing in Chinese medicine the meridian point she worked on referred to "standing behind the shutters looking outward - and that it was ok to step forward on to the veranda" Quietly beaming. Love this community of online writing. Thank you .. Julie xxx
Ah! Love that analogy of the acupuncture treatment and the flow of good energy! Yes, this is what we're all doing here too! xx
I am truly excellent at planning and organising. Other people might be extraordinary artists or writers or athletes, but in my humble opinion my small unspoken skills are under recognised. If you need jobs done, tasks completed, I will get it done, if I start something then I finish it. I will find the extra time and squeeze and wring out the minutes and seconds of a day to Get It All Done.
But at times this skill feels like a curse, it tips me over the edge into anxietal overthinking, it’s frankly exhausting when my brain doesn’t switch off. To do lists are scribbled over and pressing tasks highlighted and post notes stuck on top for something that’s really urgent - and that’s only the physical manifestation of it all. My mind is often a whirling messy mess remembering this and that, ticking off the do lists, making mental notes of this and that for later.
And it’s burdensome because everyone around me knows that I will do all the planning and leaves the mental load to me.
I used to feel like I was a crazy person that couldn’t just go with the flow like everyone around me seemed to do. And I felt guilty for thinking ahead and making A Plan for the day.
But lately I’ve realised that this is my superpower, that without it my family and I would just fall apart. Without it I wouldn’t be able to work at a high level job or train for marathons or care for my family. All superheroes seem to have some sort of flaw or difficulty in controlling their power don’t they? So I work hard to maintain that delicate balance of using my skills to their best effect without totally collapsing from the exhaustion of it all. I’m not saying this should be the new plot line of the next Marvel blockbuster (Organised Girl to the rescue!), but these small soft unrecognised skills are what makes the world tick.
As promised, Jenni, here is a link to your insightful piece (and I'm still so glad to see organisation - even though it can be a burden - being celebrated in this way: I was ashamed of my orderliness for far too long!). Remind me of your last name if you'd like it added to your online credit... Tanya xx
https://thecureforsleep.com/july-issue-skill/#jenni
Oh I love this! Thank you - it’s my skill too & I nodded in fierce recognition at everything here, so well expressed. It took me too too long to believe it could be used for creativity instead of being proof I couldn’t be… as soon as I’m back home from holiday on Monday I will add to the story archive & come back here to give you your own web link.. Tanya xx
I will go check now! For the first time since I started this, the amount of new notifications has meant I've missed just a few things - only a temporary glitch as I've now cleaned up my email inbox of old notifications. I will reply on the thread you submitted to once I've put it into the story archive. Thank you. xx
I've found - it's beautiful! - and have already added to the story archive. And that's kind of you what you've just said, but a big part of what I'm trying to do here is give people quite quick responses - as a writer moves deeper into submitting for publication, and then being published and working with editors, the wait times are often very long. But I feel that many people never get to that stage because the very first sending out of words is often too scary to risk, or the few times a person has tried it has been so unsupported that they hesitate to try again. In a small way, trying here to help as many people as I can through that necessary stage! xx