Having endured the worst, wettest August since the Iron Age, London is awash with Autumn leaves & howling winds. People mutter climate change but within my memory bank, August was often like this as a kid.

 

Memory can be selective. The same happens in relationships when you scour over the past like Somerset professors on Time Team, scraping away with a trowel to find the jewel to make all the emotional pain worthwhile.

When you are knee deep in self-help books, in recovery or therapy it takes a while to dig deep, to find the innocent perfection that occurred before life became scarred, disappointing or laden with guilt.

 

Sharing pain, fears and selective memories in the beginning of any therapeutic process is like having a romance with the mind . .  it’s light, new and inspiring. After a while the concentration wavers, remembrance becomes painful and fight or flight turns up with a smirk to test your nerve. 

 

In her latest book THE NEW CODEPENDENCY Melody Beattie writes, in the chapter called Healing What Hurts :

The first point of reference in self-care is to ask for help and stay the distance. Journey on and avoid selective memory. Looking back over an unhealthy relationship past, it’s easy to use selective memory to convince that it " wasn’t that bad ". Many codependents air brush over truth, romanticise the pain and people please, rather than experience solo abandonment. This is what I call " can’t leave/can’t stay " bungie jump relationships, because when partners hit the wall of denial and fear they bounce back to a space of familiarity. Even one saturated in low esteem.

 

The easiest way to begin healing the hurts, in my experience, is to find another person in therapy, recovery or in groupwork. It’s harder to be in denial when you hear someone else telling your story.Then it’s more likely that the light bulbs will come on, when you realise the patterns of pain you can’t let go of. It’s hard at first to get into a group of like minded memory hoarders but the truth is it’s painful because the game is up.

 

Healthy relationships avoid babysitting, parenting and distorted truths.There is no point clearing the wreckage of the past, only to create another archaeological dig decades later. So it makes sense to tell the truth faster, to find your voice, your emotional equality and create a union worthy of remembrance. Today’s New Codependencies and attachments in the Internet age are as plentiful as self help groups so it makes sense to combat one with the other.

 

 

I was not one of those that got recovery straight away, it took 8 relapses over a 14 month period while attending Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings for me to find NA, my spiritual home. It took me a while to surrender the lot.

 

As long as we don’t pick up that first drug . . . . I haven’t and I’ve been clean of all drugs ever since. Booze was just fancy dress to the inner despair around using. In that awakening daze of discontent I had to admit financial defeat and sell the contents of my flat in order to eat and pay rent. I had no money a few days before Christmas and someone offered me a seat at their table and a week stay in Brighton, fares paid. 

 

Before traveling, my recovery sponsor suggested I went to a meeting in London, as I was less than 90 days clean. I don’t think she heard me when I said I had no money for the tube. She did, and said WALK there. Christ! . . the meeting was in Camden Town and I lived close to Archway. WALK there? It was miles. Well it was for someone born to taxi, who had to support 5 Bank Accounts and 15 Credit Cards. WALK?

 

It was harshly cold but I must have had the desire. I put on my leather padded zipped up to the neck blouson jacket ( well it was 1982 ) from Harrods and placed the sponge earphones from my SONY Walkman onto my ears for extra warmth as I walked to Camden Town. The meeting was called " a one bar electric fire meeting " for a reason. Bare boards, light green scuffed walls, a wobbly table with a huge battered kettle that even Mrs Bridges couldn’t lift. 

 

There was a similar NA meeting at the time – Monday night Millman Street Men’s Hostel in Chelsea, known throughout fellowship as a " wee-wee & wino meeting ". It smelt of damp and cabbage. Thankfully messages get carried in the strangest of places. Camden Town Meeting had a Millman Street ring to it, as many of the seats were taken by old alkies living round the corner in Arlington House, formerly Rowton House in Arlington Road. Some were silent while others ranted during the meeting munching on biscuits and steaming mugs of brew from said kettle.

 

 

Archway Harry was in his late sixties and been in prison most of his life. He always spoke first. We always waited for his Yorkshire tones to boom the room. He started. " Me names ‘arry and I’m ever so grateful. He went on to share how he was in Arlington House with his own room but best of all he had his OWN TRANSISTOR RADIO. He proceeded to tell all that he had never owned one and how not drinking and attending recovery support meetings had not only saved his life but he had his own radio. " Me Transitor " Harry always ended his share by saying " I’m so happy ". It was Harry’s tagline and signalled the end of speaking.

 

Harry’s gratitude held me in a trance as I touched my warm leather jacket, my Sony Walkman and my oncoming Christmas trip to Brighton, all paid for by a supportive friend. Then I got it. I was so happy too. I caught " Harry’s infection " and still remember his unkempt hair, his broken teeth and his transistor radio that he showed to everyone like a beaming parent. I still need the memory of Harry, the welcome teapot and open generosity of sharing to keep my life in emotional and spiritual balance. I still need to be reminded that during that 1982 Christmas period I thought I would never make it, my arrogance and shame too overwhelming, my finances too much like telephone numbers and the simplicity of what was suggested too infantile. 

 

But I did make it, even though far worse challenges were to come. Someone said ‘The power behind you is greater than the task ahead of you’, and I took it on blind faith.

 

In those early days when NA had only one recovery meeting a day in far spread London many of us gained experience in " the other fellowship" from the likes of Harry, in corridors we would never had entered in our middle class lives, hearing stories that we had no similarity with but knew there was no difference between our journeys. Within those grimy down-and-out Camden, Kings Cross and St Pancras Hospital meetings I found a generosity of spirit that I never found in an overflowing glass, from people I would never have mixed with.

 

 

Last week, quite by accident, I appear to have invented a new syndrome - Social Laziness. Not my own personal syndrome you understand, but it appears to be an unchecked dis-ease of self waiting to solved. I scoured the web and it doesn’t exist, or should I say – the Priory hasn’t made money out of it yet, spotting a gap in the ever expanding treatment market. No self help book either. Yet.

 

The phrase suddenly dropped from my mouth, coaching a client on skype. I often say I’m being channeled by Doris Stokes, as I can’t remember what I just said, either in session or seminars, if someone asks me to repeat something. Blank.

It’s like I start and something takes over. Which is the opposite to social laziness, or is it? Instead of rampant energy increasing the flow of desire, something untoward occurs that equally takes hold. Can’t be arsed.

 

Londoners know that if an invitation comes from the opposite side of the river a fear sets in. Do I have to go? Or as example, people in Hackney are on facebook because no one visits them. No tube, no friends. No wonder they bicycle everywhere, it’s not greening, it’s essential. Which is why such a vibrant social scene has developed in Dalston’s East London. Who want’s to be pissed on your own two wheels or even a Barclay’s bike? . . .  .

 

. . . we might as well stay put.

 

Some years back, I had a client who only socialised in Earls Court because he felt fearful that he couldn’t find his way back home if he went into the next zone. In his case he drank before socialising in order to get to a bar, and would wait to be chosen by someone as a chat-up, then was too pissed to continue a conversation let alone find his way home. London is full of people like this and I dare say anywhere in the world that uses alcohol as dutch courage. It’s the nature of the beast. But social phobia with it’s symptoms of severe anxiety, sweating, panic attack, dry mouth or muscle tension is different from social laziness. The question here is did he suffer from social phobia or social laziness? My client had a mix of both.

 

Even in a short 3 month stay in Sydney I had formed close bonds with people with shared experiences and many knew of my imminent return to London. One guy asked me to dinner as a way of saying thank you for the support I had given him over his own liver health issues and drove me back over Sydney Harbour Bridge in his beaten up old Morris-Minor. Unlike the carefree chatty journey going, his sparkling aussie mood changed going back, as we clanked over the iconic metal bridge. He starts to hunch his shoulders up as he stared ahead, white knuckling the wheel. “ I need to tell you something that I can’t tell anyone and if I don’t tell someone I will go mad, so I’m telling you as you are going home in 2 days.” I see that he refuses to look at me.

The kimono was opening within his spluttering - “ over 12 years ago I lived in San Francisco and while I was on a drug binge someone physically abused me. I wasn’t sure who it was but eventually I realized and befriended the person. I had to move flats so I ended up manipulating to live with the abuser and sharing his dealer so a bond was formed. It was not unusual for us to spliff up overlooking the Bay of San Fran, car doors wide open, music blaring from the car speakers, head well back, eyes closed in contemplation. We had done this endless times, but this time I opened the glove department, clasped a gun I had placed there and blew his brains out “. 

What? We are now going over the metal bridge, with me sitting next to a murderer. All I could say was “ what happened next? – trying to be all stiff upper lip about it as I stared straight ahead. He then turned to me, tears streaming down as he said quietly “ I went to the boot of the car where I had a change of clothing, towels to wash the blood, a packed suitcase and a one way ticket to Australia. I hailed a taxi to the airport and here I am 12 years later. I have never told anyone“

For a moment I said nothing, I wanted to ask questions but this level of grassing himself up only fueled the compassion churning inside me at his storage and outpouring of suppressed grief, sadness, anger and relief. All while he was still driving I might add. Consequently I was somewhat relieved to reach the other side of Sydney Harbour Bridge where he slowed down into a side street, stopped the engine and sobbed in my arms. I just held him as someone had held me before, when I required silent non-judgmental support. We never spoke of it again.

On returning to England I found that my best mate Barrie had his humdinger of a mother coming from Canada for a week of expectant turmoil, but this was overtaken by his mum having her handbag stolen a few yards from Barrie’s flat in Notting Hill Gate. The whole lot gone. Six months later, the day after Boxing Day, Barrie and I was due to see a Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank concert, but he didn’t turn up. This was a Tuesday and the next day I was out of town ready for New Year but I kept calling his landline, still with no answer. Eventually other friends called the police but they refused to break the door down until the Friday when I rang the Police and said I would pay for the door myself and that I was returning to London right now on a train. Two hours later I was told he was dead, murdered in his sleep, 67 stab wounds and his head decapitated. When the body was removed I was asked to go into the flat to see if anything was missing. The murderer had taken 5 suitcases, stuffed them with spattered duvets and curtains, had a bath, cooked a meal and changed into Barrie’s clothes before leaving with the suitcases in a bizarre way of dissolving evidence. Going into the bedroom on the arms of detectives I recalled my own memory of being stabbed in the face 3 years earlier, how I should have been living in Australia, how I should be dead with liver failure, how Barrie should be alive, how I had heard the outpourings of a planned pre-meditated murderer in Sydney and how I was witnessing the aftermath of a blood-stained bedroom in London 6 months later. 

I was stunned and humbled by this spiritual opportunity for forgiveness. All veils of anger toward the killer lifted as I realized that I know nothing. I know nothing about the order of it all. Why was I stabbed, why was I chosen to hear the Sydney confession, why was I standing in this flat? Why was Barrie dead? Why me, why this? It was not until 6 months later at the inquest that the kimono was opened. Even after hair and blood samples were taken from over 300 people in 6 countries the murderer was never found and we still don’t know the motive. What we do know was that the keys were stolen to order in June from his mothers bag so the murderer could enter the flat 6 months later at 2am the day after Boxing Day and kill him in his bed asleep. This planned premeditated murder remains unsolved to the Police, as does the one in San Francisco, a closed kimono that heralds the thought that resentment kills the container it’s kept in.

There is no excuse for murder but every reason to expose secrets as quickly as possible. Unburden yourself.

Trying to get people to attend Personal Growth Seminars & Workshops in London is like pulling teeth – I wonder why? Maybe it’s the product? It’s image? My view about NEW AGE is well versed – even though my path has been well etched with it : "Winging with Angels" is worthy but it’s not going to get the ironing done : footwork not visualisation puts creases in shirts. 

 

Ask people in the office what they think about therapy hug-ins, and personal growth workshop organisers lose 90% of the market as we speak. 

NEW AGE needs a revamp. 

 

How many trainings have I done as the only gay in the village, hugged by an older bi-guy with a greying ponytail, who " understands my differences", while they hide in a loveless marriage. Where are the out hip gay clubbers searching for a new high? How many trainings have I been to where the " long-term partnership" is the ultimate goal, the World Cup of Relationship Therapy, instead of focussing on apropriate temporary fuck buddies to play with and enjoy? No where to be seen or heard. Even A Course in Miracles states " everything is temporary " why aim that high when it’s all happening on the ground? 

How many times have I witnessed Trainers with mystical names at seminars that bear no relation to real life. Plenty and I never went back. Many ask why I call myself SWARMITE ANANDA in that case. ANSWER : It’s a brand persona to take the piss out of myself and the guru trainers. I avoid setting myself up as a Guru - the only guru you need are the results in your life.

 

I am the Master of the Marmite Jar, reminding all not to take ourselves and projected experts too seriously, but it does not mean that my message core is a joke. Recovery is serious business. So we go back to the question as to why the average Joe won’t go near a workshop that says " please bring a musical instrument and food to share ". Understandable really when most of the week they are caning it and trying to remember their pin number let alone deep search of childhood. I was blessed by attracting The Loving Relationship Training into my life in 1988 that trained me, as it turned out to be the sanest, most businesslike vehicle connected to Breathwork at that time. Thank you Sondra Ray. At least some attempt was made to address urban issues and hold Seminars in Hotels not Healing Centres miles away from nowhere. You can heal your Life, right now if you put your mind to it, you don’t need incense or the right clothes. Bring willingness and your arse to any table of hope and it begins. Add all the frippery for focus if you like but it’s not gonna mean a monkey’s unless you do the exercises as aftercare . . . and work it!

So this Blog is not about attacking New Age, it’s value has served me well, but most of it ends up preaching to the converted rather than addressing 90% of the population that could use some soul searching and holding the stick rather than holding the can. Presentation is a key to success, marketing has it’s moments but somehow the Self Help Brigade has missed the fact that most urban people who could use a good talking to, use the net, use expletives and use drugs. Hallo.

 

The NEW RAGE is that no one is listening and still churning out what the Self Help market wants ( which is usually another book title, another Audio CD to merchandise), this is odd to me when the purpose of said market is CHANGE, but very little of it seems to be happening in the floating, flirty-flirty fantasy world of esoteric activity and I have to say – Breathwork Trainings. It’s not 1976 anymore. The NEXT STAGE to New Age is to rebrand to niche markets. Getting a businessman to a " Feelings Seminar " is as difficult as getting a fat man to a gym, so the industry needs to see that keeping the flaky, airy-fairy stuff is right for one market and hopeless for another. Niche Marketing is how we will survive recession and catch those people falling with job cuts, marital woes and raised alcohol consumption in order to cope. A rainbow just ain’t gonna do it.

 

Years ago a flyer in a Health Food Store would bring bums on seats to workshops in droves, now people order on the net. Practitioners used to pin up business cards now those practitioners are out of business. I am always busy and never slack with clientele because I work in a business-like way and wont give concessions until Tesco’s adopt the principle. This allows me to give work for free should I choose to. Too many New Agers are operating Spiritual principles without backup which is why many are still sitting on the scarcity survival pot waiting for God to do the errand for them. My experience is that when you use Karma Yoga ( work/action ) as Babaji said, you develop and materialise inner wealth and outward abundance. This is the divine right that each of us have but rarely gift to ourselves. If no one is buying you flowers – go to the Florist yourself – and witness the change in energy, change in thinking and change in RESULTS. Work the room and re-work your life.

 

http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-swarmiterehab-blog/coda-rehab-6-week-winter-evening-course-tuesday-november-2-9-16-23-30-december-7/415520148644  No best behaviour. Expletives welcomed, judgement is not.

 

I was hungry for results dealing with an incurable disease, liver damage and the many consequences of my past behaviours. 

 

Along came a new language, words like " dysfunctional " " co-dependent " and " inner child " which asked more questions than they answered. One of the major tomes that became part of the regime I call " Airport Spirituality " was Scott Pecks 1978 trailblazer – THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED, an oft criticised landmark as being " too Christian " and too wordy. Airport Spirituality is what I call dip in, dip out working on yourself, as if snatching a spiritual best seller leaving Gatwick, to be read on a Greek beach in 40 degrees is the answer to the reason why you " need to get away " in the first place. It isn’t.

 

If you need to " get away " the best idea is often to stay put and work through it. Peck’s book challenged many ideas that people hold around the illusion of LOVE and the time spent leeching rather than loving. Whatever is unhealed we bring to the table and that platform of desire is riddled with remembered LACK than remembered MORE THAN I NEED – Abundance. If you felt you were dysfunctionally parented, then you will create the same kind of relationships as an adult. Peck writes,

 

A decade after Peck described " a passive dependent personality disorder " the personal development industry called it CODEPENDENCY, with Pecks illustration being just one symptom of " the disease of NEVER ENOUGH", that lay at the core of all addictions. Never enough LOVE, MONEY, Drugs, ALCOHOL, Food and yes, even SELF HELP BOOKS.

 

The affirmation " I AM enough, I DO enough, MY PRESENCE is enough . . .  is an instant pacifier for recovering Codependents, so stick that dummy in your mouth whenever a LACK feeling arises. Since many codependents think they gain LOVE through DOING, or gaining approval OUTSIDE of themselves . . . love, like charity begins at home, so check out the vision of love revealed in your early childhood years and work forward.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysfunctional_family

 

 

Self help books suggest that our past creates the present, and the present can be changed, so the future is more fulfilling. Most people suffer from lack in some form, rather than abundance from family of origin, and in my case growing up after the war this was certainly true, when it came to influences and possessions. When pressed to remember such things, I just can’t. I found Rebirthing in 1988 because I couldn’t remember anything up to the age of 12, and I still can’t. I have done the trainings, the groups, the past lives throwbacks, the meditations and I still get the Angel " sod all ". 

So be it – acceptance is a wonderful thing. 

 

 

Surprisingly, a few decades on, my flat is now crammed with books and I’m a total magazine whore, I always thought it was my 25 years in Advertising that paved the way to overload but the real reason turns out to be PATIENCE STRONG. The cloud is clearing. Patience Strong’s poems were first published in the Daily Mirror in 1935 under the bi-line The Quiet Corner and for more than 35 years in The WOMAN’S OWN weekly magazine. Every week my mother would wait for the magazine to come out, and so did I. Patience was my Pin-Up. 

Dad’s TIT-BITS never did it for me for some reason.

 

Patience Strong spearheaded, quite unconsciously, my route into New Age, Self Help, Personal Development and Recovery. I had no idea of her influence, until recently.

 

This is a sample of one of her poems always laced in a garland pictorial border on the back page of The WOMAN’S OWN in the 1950′s & 60′s:

 

If You Stand Very Still by Patience Strong

 

If you stand very still in the heat of a wood

You will hear many wonderful things;

The snap of a twig and the wind in the trees,

And the whirr of invisible wings.

 

If you stand very still and hold to your faith

You will get all the help you ask;

You will draw from the silence

the things that you need,

Hope and courage and strength for your task.

 

As a child avidly waiting for mum to finish her mag, I always thumbed to the back page as if led by magic. We had no books in our house. 

Books were considered for other people but Dad subscribed to The Readers Digest each month and Practical Householder. Not much glamour there, but each Thursday we would trek to my mums friends house miles away. It was well worth it for the daughter got JACKIE. I was made up. The combination of Patience & Jackie unknowingly ruled my teenage years, until drink and drugs became the new heroes, my saviours, my inspirational gurus.  In recovery we need to constantly check who is influencing us, who we set up as saviours and what we read.  In the internet age we can easily become consumed and influenced by the latest, newest gadget and pass by the wisdom and simplicity of achieving bliss and peace of mind. 

 

Spend a walk today in remembering the influences that shaped you, for good or for bad. Then look up to the trees and remember that help is still required.

 

 

 

Not many of you would know who James Hanratty was. I say was, because he was hanged in 1962, when I was 15 and he was our window cleaner. A nice enough chap, always with a fag on the go, a smile and an eye for the ladies. A bit too much of an eye it turned out, as he was accused of rape and murder by Valerie Storie, victim and only witness of the famous " A6 Murder ".

 

His family and eminent writers maintained his innocence for years but he was a gonna. Not so innocent was Cumbria’s Derrick Bird," Birdie " whose well documented rampage of resentment filled last months papers and gave brief attention to a selective huddle of " TV Psychologists " who told us bugger all we didn’t suspect ourselves, which is that " the quiet ones are always the worst". James Hanratty was a Londoner and went to my school, I remember petitions and whispers beside trestle tables placed outside Kingsbury Gaumont Cinema. How could our nice window cleaner murder someone, he MUST be innocent?

We didn’t have TV Psychologists on the NEWS in those days, not many of us had a telly, and to be frank it was all quite exciting thinking one minute he was polishing our windows, then the bakerlite transistor in the kitchen was telling us there was no hope from the rope. This was not the case in Cumbria as cameras offered a blow by blow account almost as it happened, complete with neighbours offering home spun accounts of " the quiet man, looking after his mother ". 

 

A phrase that I repeat & caught my ears as I trawled through my personal development was RESENTMENT KILLS THE CONTAINER IT’S KEPT IN. A telling story.

In my using days I came across as someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly, a humorous people pleaser. Yet one night I threw my lover James through a plate glass window and he ended up in intensive care for a week. The reason? Well two reasons actually, first jealousy and the other was he tried to strangle me with a telephone wire while drunk. 

I only released myself from the grim reaper by crashing a rare Susie Cooper cup on his head. I never forgave him for breaking that cup, and the main artery in my right hand, the scar still bears witness to the power of fury and the excitement of blood to this day.

 

The power of destruction is in all of us, perhaps not all with murderous intent, but self harm and the desire to harm others for revengeful spite can linger like beer on a pub carpet. In recovery terms it’s best to constantly check out those harmful practices that reside inside, the perceived attacks, the victimhood and unfairness of it all that justify acting out with intent. Our innocence will save us from hidden death, should we seek it. But innocence, like the face of a sleeping baby, is buried deep amongst the grief and escapades of survival that got us to this point of awareness. Getting even never works. Acceptance does.

 

Even Scott Peck’s opening line to The Road Less Travelled admits that " Life is difficult ", so accepting that betrayal, injustice and personal attack is only a perception of a situation is useful in exploring innocence. Separating ourselves from the perceptive thoughts of others is the key to inner solace. The drug of choice for many is being " nice " while harbouring agendas of attack.

 

"Not my stuff" is affirming lack of attack. The quiet ones who look nice and harbour revenge are aplenty in the codependent society we have created, who people please with murderous intent, who remember every grudge like a learned cleric quoting chapter and verse. The long term solution is to daily practice clearing emotional house, and as THE SHAKERS philosophy practiced " creating a house and mind ready for God to visit ". Now THAT is quite a task, but not impossible.

 

Let emotional house cleaning be the new OCD.

 

 

 

If you need any more evidence that Fergie is still a child living in fantasy land, hear this : Some 24 hours after being exposed as an aristo money grabbing compulsive, no different from a street junkie mugging a hit, she declares at a charity event in Los Angeles – " When I got on that plane tonight, I thought, phew, what a heavy day. But when the children’s choir came out tonight and saw their little faces, I turned round to my friend and said " You know what, I’m glad I did because it’s about the children", she added. " I learned today about making a difference. Most importantly I learned I hate grown-ups and I love children " she said.

Sarah Margaret Ferguson, Duchess of York is 51. Time you would think to have processed out all the rejection issues in her life, the parents divorce when she was 13 and her mother leaving for Argentina with new lover in tow, the English Boarding School syndrome of rejected emotions and family ties, and living alone at 18. She has always said she lived simply in Clapham, South London but wondered how she would pay her bills, however she managed to scoot across to Swiss chalets often enough to attract paying partying boyfriends. Nothing unusual in that you might say, a pretty lively stump of a gal from aristocratic stock, up for a laugh. But when Mum rejected you at a time you need a mother and Dad rejected you through remarriage, then later on the new husbands Royal family rejected you for being "out of line", it’s easy to see how rejection is Fergie’s drug of choice. Records have it that her Mother-in-law The Queen has spoken to her once in 18 years. The Press rejected her, her body rejected her and eventually she rejected herself sky high from the ejecter seat on video. You Boob. One wonders why Fergie is the common denominator?

 

She must have had an awful childhood to have smothered her own children so much, to create them in her own image, to hostage their identities in such a chronic codependent fashion. Her own dependency on rejection in order to survive, means that she waits to be rescued, by anyone really, she doesn’t care. That’s why she keeps creating drama in order to be motivated by fear, to create more debt, deeper challenges, more mountains to climb. Fergie calls herself a survivor for a reason. She was rescued before when she ran up debts of over £4 Million at Coutts the Bankers, promising never to do it again, and in fairness she rescued herself into solvency. Though nobody rescued her from her childhood traumas, she was clearly poorly parented and relies upon, like Blanche DuBois " the kindness of strangers ", such are her victimized explanations of why a grown woman of 51 can’t keep house. She needs the love, you see.

 

Like a junkie whore she sells herself to the highest bidder while hiding behind the shields of royalty and charidee approval. Like Heather Mills, another fantasy merchant unable to take responsibility for herself, Fergie does charidee so she can think of the little children and remember a time of innocence and protection and be seen as responsible by adults. No wonder she loves kids and hates grown-ups, kids don’t send the bailiff in.

 

It’s true that many people doing charity work find it difficult to be charitable to themselves, in Fergie’s case she needs approval so desperately and loathes reality so much, that looking into the eyes of the under-privileged kids choir takes her away from her own stuff. All fine and good, we need a bit of comparison sometime to greet gratitude in the face, but greeting bills in the face and un-opened brown envelopes is the most charitable thing we can do to ourselves, to do the detail, to own the compulsive spending, the unconscious credit card abuse and lavish lifestyle demands described by Benjamin Fry. Awareness, surrender and courage have always played the musketeer to win respect.

 

 

In truth she would rather put up with the drama, the denial and the rejection than look at herself. Having pointed out that if she leaves the marriage and the garden she would be saner, she refused to hear it. Like Fergie clinging on, she refused to let go. Coming clean to ourselves about our behaviors is a First Step to recovery, avoid denial at your peril, by observing The Duchess’s plight you may avoid your own.

 

As London deals with political change, CON-DEM love-ins and Tory principles of austerity we think back to Prime Minister John Major with his BACK TO BASICS campaign in 1993 which resulted in all manner of jiggery-pokey after Black Wednesday the previous year. Yes, we had to pull our belts in, address moral principles and recover. Thankfully Major had already had the 4 year affair with Edwina Currie while married to the opera loving Norma, the coda shield of family values, but one would like to think that as a young married MP, Major – like any student – enticed Edwina into his room with the seduction of a promise, the promise being a Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pie. Now you’re talking.

I have found myself in a few dire situations in recovery but going into a Homeless Hostel 11 years clean was one of the lowest moments on the personal failure scale of things. They say darkness is before the dawn, but the sun really did come out when I was offered a flat for life by the local authority a few months later in 1994. I call my flat ‘gifted’ social housing and boy did I earn it. Ten years before, listening to Louise Hay meditation tapes, I laughed out loud as Louise blessed her refrigerator every night, thinking it ludicrous. Now I bless my flat every day in gratitude. We laugh & learn. Once I got in the flat I had no furniture except a 1950′s formica kitchen table, no chair, one single bed, an oven and telly from a friend. Home Sweet Home.