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I live in Glasgow, Scotland and was born here in 1970 in Govan though, back then,
I was living in Garnethill, near my grandparents old tenement flat on Buccleuch St.
I spent a wee while in the Maryhill high flats before moving down to Burns country:
to Girvan, on the Ayrshire coast ~ where I grew up with my mother and elder sister.
My mother left my father when I was born ~ and like many people born into conflict
there were difficulties and consequences. That's a long story and relates directly to
how I find myself working in the field of Creative Listening and writing these words.
Yet ~ we are all more than our story. Something I needed to learn and understand.
I left home at 17 to study Architecture at Glasgow School of Art and I am amazed
at how I managed to get a degree at all ~ as I spent most of my time playing piano
in a few bands, which helped keep me sane.
After getting an ordinary degree in 1990, I spent a year working in Oban for a local
architect and then a year in Paris, working for a much larger more profit driven firm.
This was just an excuse to eat a lot of great pastry. There are no Greggs in Paris !
In Oban I found myself playing piano in local restaurants and began to write tunes.
I regret not managing the same in Paris ~ too busy living the nine towell past 5 life.
I returned to Glasgow in 92' to finish my degree, though life had other plans for me.
My grandfathers death, on Christmas Eve 1992, turned my life totally upside down.
It was very much two things at once ~ some obvious grief and something else too
like a door opening or a new permission to connect with myself and everything that
I was cut off from on the inside and had not really sensed into much up to that point,
including the emotional charge leftover from childhood trauma ~ and my relationship
with my father. who I had not seen for around 13 years.
We all went through things as children and my story still carried ' weight ' within me.
I found myself re-living memories and re-experiencing situations ~ still unresolved.
Whatever I found that helped me digest all that emotional dinner and the backlog
of information that needed my attention ~ I know it may only be right for me !
This was a very creative period of my life, which, does not seem so strange now.
Grief can open doors inside us and expand what we may feel or experience and
there is nothing to be feared from that.
more to come . . .
I am currently a member of the British Focusing Teachers Association ( B F T A )
You can read more on what other people have to say about Focusing on their site:
