[poem] Beginning

I expect this to undergo further drastic revision; nonetheless, it's for the lioness-oracle who knocked it free.

Step one: remove hand from the flame.
Don't grasp the nettle firmly.
There is no need to search out pain:
there will be always, waiting
in the wings, life-changing catastrophe --
o hurricane-spun far-flung butterfly.

Instead, seek ease -- seek joy.
You are allowed to change your mind.
You are allowed, when all seems hard & cruel,
to coiling curl on inwards; to ask for room to breathe;
to set aside complexity for just so large a space of time
as gives your ledge the breadth to find your feet.

Remember, when the earthquake peddler calls:
the soil that soft and silent lies beneath you
through nettles and through crystal-chrysalis
brings forth peacocks. Simplicity
is always present, too. Remember
that the peddler means no harm, that change
contains the seeds of growth, that
in the end, foundations weather all.

Why I talk about counselling

In part, yes, so that I have a record for my own sake, because it is so easy to lose bits and pieces along the way.

But mostly, it is to demystify and to normalise, to say not only "counselling is a normal thing that people do", but also to say "and here's what it might look like".

How sessions work vary between clients, between counsellors, between relationships, over time - and I've been told I'm a fairly unusual client in terms of the amount of work I do in my own time, the extent to which I usually show up to sessions with a list of things to talk about. I do think this is important to mention - as in so much else, it's often kind of unhelpful to use me as a yardstick - but: here. Here is an account of what sorts of things I talk about, of how much I get covered. A lot of the time, I'm paying a counsellor to listen to me and say "oh sweetie" at appropriate moments; but I'm also paying for the pause, and the quiet "have you noticed...?"

The hour in which to reflect once a week is ritual, is religious. It feels to me like the beauty of cathedrals in the stillness of the day; has the flavour of the confessional I've never used. This ties in all to well with the idea of the day of rest: after a session I need time to decompress, space to be slow and quiet, and indeed sessions go better if I've had time to do similar immediately beforehand. I'm not sure whether I've talked about therapy-as-religion before, but it's definitely a thing that is there for me.

But mostly - yes, mostly, I swear that there's someone - somewhere - someone: I want to tell you that this is a thing people do, and more specifically than nameless faceless people that it is a thing I do, and find value in; I want to show you some of the ways it can work; and I want to tell you that if you have questions about this, I will answer them. I will make time. I will make time for you.