Write To Recovery.

For me, there’s no real recovery, there’s a system of tools to use to get through each day. I have to write down all the things I need to do to keep me feeling well.

Fresh air is First. Not your freshly polluted air. No thank you. Not diesel fumes, I need fresh clean chem-trail free air. I have to spend hours every week sitting on a beach filling my lungs and my body with fresh sea air from the Atlantic.

Writing shit down is essential. Transforming the fucking hellish pettiness of my banal existence into sheer gorgeous unadulterated comedy is my special gift. At first, when the pen was new in my hand, I was filled with existential angst and my writing read like a good wallow in self martyrdom. An ex lover kept all my most horrific self loathings. Writing the life-shite releases grey toxins in my body. It has to be done or I get a bit shaky and my eyes go too-dark. It has been known for hair to actually stand on end and frizzle if I haven’t had a chance to make a reading rant for a month.

About 15 years ago I learned what ‘wired to the moon’ meant and I readily identified with it. So, I wrote down all my inner weirdnesses when the moon was full or new. Initially I ritually burned these offerings, but then ego kicked in and I began to buy myself notebooks – just school copy books – and fill every page with woe.

When the GP prescribed me something for post natal depression I thought my brain was dying. I wrote like my life depended on it. I wrote everything I saw, felt, heard, imagined.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s no one on the planet would describe me as ‘sane’ or ‘normal’. But, I have managed to function and stay alive, and even raise a child, so I must be doing something right, right?

Write it out. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar or any nonsense like that. It doesn’t have to make sense. Just put one word after the other. Do not ever get so intimate with anyone that they have access to your written subconscious unconscious thoughts, desires or fears.

Every day I have to still my mind, to transform any greyness into light. When my mind is still, I can pick up my pen. When I can write it out, I feel better, calmer, more relaxed, easier in my bones.

Everyone has their own routine. Mine is the beach for the breathing, then write. Straight home, sit down, put words together, sometimes making sense.

The heavy duty chemicals the GP gave me for the nervous sweats lie half used somewhere in my cave. The Prozac is still in the chemist’s bag, unopened for weeks now.

I have muesli for my bowels and medicinal marijuana for the rest of me.

Some tell me it all seems to be working. Here’s a photo of me; my kid took it when I was exercising and meditating this morning….