70forseventy

  This isn't an easy story to write, but it's one that needs to be told both to honour a life that has come to an end, and because the story underpins much of my own life for the last few years. It's a major factor in who I am and am becoming today, and in the choices I'm making for my seventyfor70 experience. And it's not something I want to sit on it for the rest of my life - I'd sooner be open, and known for who I am and what I've experienced. The unlived life isn't mine, but J's, and it's one that he chose to end - one evening, in the swimming pool at home while I was out - just over a month ago. I realised a long time ago that J had issues that made it impossible for him to connect with other people, and with the world he lived in, in the way that others do. Although as a humanistic psychologist and therapist I really don't like psychiatric labels, there is no doubt that he had what's known as schizoid personality disorder (SPD). Peo...

 I first started thinking about my 70forseventy experience around winter solstice last year, and by 1 January I had the first draft of The List. Amazingly the challenge wasn't how to find seventy things to include, but how to limit myself to seventy things! So exactly six months on, I thought it was time to step back for a moment to see where I'm at. First of all, that list: these are the things that I've done or am doing. Write a blog about doing 70 for seventy ✔ This is it! Reach level at least A2 in Spanish ✔ I'm up to a 277 day streak on Duolingo and it tells me that I'm now at middle A2 level. I'm not so sure, but I'm carrying on doing my half an hour a day and can also often be found wandering round the vineyards with Indie muttering away to myself in (bad) Spanish. I started to learn on Duolingo last autumn when I was on my usual October holiday in L'Estartit - I'm going this year again so the truth will out when I open my mouth! Do Pilates a...

 As many of you know, J and I ended up buying a huge old stone farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in the Ariège, at 500 metres altitude in the Pyrenean foothills. It wasn't a ruin but it did need renovation to turn it into the maison d'hôtes that was part of our plan ... and the 2 year renovation project turned into 4 years of hard, 14 hour a day graft. Days off and days out were few and far between - to bring in some much needed funds I also worked as a massage practitioner at a nearby yoga centre and had a good number of counselling clients too. I wrote about this period in a blog, ironically entitled Slow Living in the French Pyrenees .  Renovation finally finished, we opened for business ... and immediately found ourselves fully booked from April to October, every year. For several years I cooked for guests 4 or 5 times a week - and here in France that means not just cooking, but hosting and eating with the guests. We had some fab multicultural, multilingual evenings, and ...

 1994 - 1998 : the mental health years In September 1994 I moved again, this time to Norwich where I became a full time postgrad student on the UEA year-long Diploma in Person-Centred Counselling. That proved to be another rather turbulent time, with a close fellow student friend attempting suicide after calling at my home for help and finding me absent. They didn't want to go into hospital, so in order to avoid sectioning it was agreed that I would live closely alongside them for a month or so on 'suicide watch' - which turned into a kind of hyper-intensive therapy. At the same time, and 2 hours away, after many years of increasing agoraphobia my mum was also now in a severe depression and had suicidal feelings that my dad found difficult to cope with. I had support from my student community and in particular from my supervisor but found being faced with such deep depths of despair - while still working as a therapist and group facilitator at the university - both moving a...

Moving to Sheffield didn't really go too well for me - I found going back to what felt like the daily grind of being an employee difficult in that it put a real cap on my zest for life. I worked in rehabilitation and citizen advocacy with the most vulnerable of vulnerable people: those with serious mental health problems, abused women, ex-prisoners, people with learning disabilities, and felt my energy being drained by so much of the appallingness I saw in their day to day lives. Needing to find something to help me ground, replenish and to keep myself safe without closing down completely, I found myself drawn to the ceremonies and the teachings of the medicine wheel and the Native Americans. 1989-1991: the shamanic path A summer camp run by the group Prana in west Wales found me participating in my first sweat lodges and other shamanic ceremonies, and connecting strongly with the earth and all the elements for the first time. I joined a local group of people following the Sweet Me...

Looking back on my life doesn't mean that I think I've done everything I'm going to do - far from it! It's more a taking stock - who am I as I approach 70, and what life experiences have helped me become that person? Once I'd started the looking back process, I realised that the life I've led is probably hors normes . I certainly haven't taken the '40-years-at-the-office and then retire' route; in fact my sum total of being an employee amounts to a piddling 15 years ... which is probably why I've never really related to or got my head around the concept of retirement and why my parents thought I was a selfish, lazy drop out (AND why I have such a pathetic pension)! But even from a very young age, my biggest fear was that I'd die with regrets for what I didn't do but had wanted to, or who I wasn't but had wanted to be. And so I've (mostly) followed my heart. I've had so many different experiences since I was an adolescent that ...

And so to the list.  I'm pretty happy with my life and having done a shed load of different things over the last 50 years, these days I get the most pleasure from simple things - and I'm lucky enough to live in a fabulous part of the world. So there are no eye-wateringly expensive journeys to remote parts of the world, no 'visit 70 countries in a year' challenges, no cruises, no skydiving. To some people maybe my life here and my life/lost choices are rather ordinary - but all will bring me joy, push me to live my life to the full, and are mostly things that I don't usually make time to do.  Some of them will push me out of my comfort zone, all of them are life-enhancing, and most importantly all of them are things that I can do if I only make the choice to do them. What's the point of making a bucket list of epic but undoable things that's going to sit sadly unticked in 18 months time because I never actually wanted to go to go ziplining in Alaska/bungee ju...