Back on the Horse

So I lasted 9 months and 1 day without drinking. The first 9 months were easy. The last 24 hours were agony. All of a sudden, on Melbourne Cup Day, I just really wanted a drink.

There may be a few reasons for this but the one I like to focus on, is that I'm happy. I met a boy. A wonderful, amazing, caring, smart, sexy man. And my desire to drink, to socialise, to have a beer or a wine just because I feel like it, returned.

And as my sexy man said to me, "You're just changing your relationship with alcohol". Did I mention that he is wise too? This statement is so correct. When I stopped drinking earlier this year, it was through shame. Shame at my behaviour when drunk, shame at the self-inflicted abuse of my body, shame at my self-destructive patterns that I carried all through my twenties (and allowed me to nurture a melancholy safety-net of negative self-talk that I would never be good enough to follow my dreams.)

And this shame made me scared to ever have another drink again. After I stopped drinking, I had dreams every night for months on end, that I got drunk either intentionally, accidentally or I was drugged by someone else. And each time I woke up, I was sooo relieved that I hadn't had a drink. I had a fear, a phobia almost, about what would happen if I drank. Not so much about losing control but more about being disappointed in myself. About regret and not living up to my own high standards, even though I couldn't really articulate what they were.

But on Cup Day, that fear took a backseat, when all of a sudden at my brothers house, nervous and happy after introducing my family to my beautiful boy, I decided to have a drink. To calm my nerves. To celebrate. To relax. To socialise. To live a little.

I drank lots of water. I only drank a little bit because I was driving anyway. And I felt great. So happy. And the next day, not a skerrick of a hangover.

Fast forward to last Saturday night. Celebrating my friend's 40th birthday, I had a few drinks. Not many. Two beers and four modest glasses of red wine. Again, I drank quite a lot of water. But for the next two days I had a hangover. That red wine in your veins, heavy limbed, dull headache and general blah feeling. After hardly drinking anything and eating a big wedge of pork belly for dinner! Surely the pig blubber would've soaked up any nasty hangover-producing molecules!

So that's where I'm at now friends. Two drinking experiences under my belt, one positive, the other less so and a gorgeous new boyfriend who helps me to articulate what I'm feeling. And now, with no sense of shame or fear, I know that I am merely drawing up a new contract with booze. A pre-nup if you will. For the first time in my life, I am renegotiating my relationship with alcohol in a refreshingly sober fashion.

Why I Write

I write because I need to put words on the page. Because it is the truest form of expression for me. When I write, I can confidently articulate exactly what I want to say. Some people say that if they had to make a choice between reading or writing, they would pick reading. But although I have a thirst for knowledge that drives me constantly, I would chose writing. Not because I think that I have anything particularly interesting or important to say but if I didn't let myself write when I got the burning desire, I would go insane. Die a thousand deaths. Drink myself to oblivion. End up in a psych ward. Lie in the gutter, mumbling incomprehensible sentences at the people stepping over me. I write because it's the only thing that makes life have purpose for me. It is my spiritual path and now that my soul has aligned with it, there's no turning back.

It's Been Awhile...

Blogging is an interesting beast. A bit like Facebook, I only tend to publish my thoughts online when I'm feeling positive or if not positive, at least objective about my state of mind.

Hence, it's been awhile since my last post but since it's now October and I totally skipped August and September, I thought I better check into cyberspace and blog to all the unknown readers out there...

So I'm currently unemployed (week 3 of being a bum) and I have to admit - I'm loving it! It's just soooooo nice to take it easy for a change. I woke up this morning (just before 9am, sorry I have to rub it in!) and my first thought was, thank god I don't have a job to go to today. I'm not sure if this is a bad sign? Could I possibly turn into a dole bludger? Or a nicer term unpublished author? It sounds so good doesn't it?

Anyway, I started off my work hiatus with a trip to Vanuatu a couple of weeks ago. It was a lovely, last-minute holiday. I was invited by one of my writer buddies (who I met in Fiji earlier this year.) She is a very generous, welcoming lady and seeing me at a loose end after finishing my banking job (woohoo! did I mention WOOHOO!), she invited me along to gatecrash her south pacific holiday along with her husband and some of her old high school friends.

They were an entertaining bunch and knew how to party, free from the shackles of their teenage offspring. Beer o'clock came around early each day, as it tends to on holiday, and it wasn't long before they were including me in their 'in-jokes'. After slapping loudly down the stairs one day in my thongs, I was nicknamed 'slapper' from then on in!

Port Vila (Vanuatu) has some magnificent scenery. Beautiful crystal clear lagoons, waterfalls, bays and beaches. It really is paradise on earth. The group had already been to Vanuatu a couple of years ago and they were amazed at how much progress has been made with building and infrastructure. A lot of foreign aid has been put to good use in Port Vila, with new smooth roads being donated by America. Also, alot of young people are seizing the opportunity to travel to Australia and do some agricultural work in Northern Queensland, signing contracts for 5 years of guaranteed work. 

We had a great driver, Mac (or Mike or Mark, we couldn't quite work it out with his accent!) who showed us around the island, introduced us to his new bride and told us about his plans to travel to Australia next year for fruit-picking. Mac is 23 and his new bride Sylvie is 21 and they are both signed up to a 5 year contract, consisting of 5 months hard labour, 2 months off to go home to Port Vila, then 5 months on again. For each 5 month stint, they will earn AUD$20,000 which is a hell of a lot of money to them. If they work hard and save all their money, they will make $200,000 by the end of 5 years, and then be ready to build a house and start a family.

Vanuatu is a kaleidoscope of beauty as I said, but flip a coin and you will see what appears to be extreme poverty. Most roads are full of potholes, mangy stray dogs litter the streets and the cost of food and groceries is very expensive. The only reasonably priced commodity seems to be the public transport, in particular the bus service. In Port Vila, buses are normally minivans that are identified by the letter B in the number plate and taxis can be cars or vans, identified by the letter T.

The standard bus fare is 150 Vatu or AUD$1.50 to get around the city centre and buses run all day until around 10pm or so. You don't have to wait at a bus stop (there aren't any) and there is no timetable to follow. You simply stand on the street and wave down a bus, the same as you would with a taxi. If the bus has room, it will stop and pick you up to take you wherever you want to go. This makes getting around very affordable and convenient, whether you are a local or a tourist.

Tourism is the biggest money earner in Vanuatu. The locals are very accommodating, friendly and polite. You get the feeling that the tourist is king in Vanuatu. For example, they sell fireworks in their bargain shops, however it is illegal for Vanuatuans to set them off. But it's fine for tourists to do this. I wonder how these double-standards make the locals feel behind their courteous smiles...

Well I better get off to bed now. I have a 6am yoga class in the morning. I've decided to have a productive day tomorrow for a change! Adios amigos!!!

Words In Winter Festival

Hi peeps! I am very excited to announce that I will be part of the amazing Words in Winter festival this year.

I will be doing a 'edgy' reading at 9.30pm on Saturday 9th August at the Rex in Daylesford, along with some very talented emerging writers.

Check out this link and hope to see you there!

The Kissing Disease

That's right folks. You guessed it. I have glandular fever.

The sad part is that I ain't been kissin' nobody 'cept my purdy twin nieces.

After 12 months of boot camp and general good health, I now have glandular fever, anaemia and a vitamin D deficiency.

I guess this is the universe's way of telling me to stop procrastinating with extracurricular activities, stay indoors and bloody well write!

Ideally I'd take some time of work to rest but I have no sick leave left, cos I kept getting 'colds' for the last few months and taking off a couple of days here and there.

Oh well, I'll just slash and burn my social calendar for a little while...except for something very exciting that I have coming up next month. It deserves a separate post though, so I'll sign off for now.

I did it!

Everyone...I just finished the first draft of my first novel! I already know heaps of changes that I wanna make but that's beside the point. I know there will be HEAPS of redrafting to do and I know that the end result will be nothing like the first draft is now but it doesn't matter. I FINISHED IT! It took four years but I did it!!!

I know lots of people write novels but what you may not know is that there are hundreds more who start them and never finish. Finishing a novel is like running a marathon. Like birthing a babe. With a very long gestation period. And now my baby is here and it might be missing some fingers or toes and it might have a wonky smile but its here and I'm gonna love and nurture it into something special.

Watch this space.

Body Knows Best or My May Meltdown

It seems like everytime my brain tries to outsmart my body, my body turns around and opens a can of whop-ass on my feeble will. Huh? Well you get what I mean, don't ya?

No matter how hard you push yourself, how much you try to cram into your 7 day week, if you're burning the candle at both ends, your body will just stop and welcome in a virus with open arms. It won't even let you dwell on what you should be doing. It prescribes sleep, dead, delirious, drowsy sleep.

As you've probably guessed - I've been sick. No, not just sick in the head ;) I've been properly sick with a cold. This one was another doozy. It took 3 weeks to take hold, then a week of bed and snottiness and then finally, I gave up trying to fight this thing on my own and filled my antibiotic prescription.

So now I'm finally on the mend. Anyway, enough wallowing in self-pity, I'm here to blog goddamit! I've got lots to tell you!

For starters, May didn't go quite as I planned it. I was soooo excited about life in April, the weather was still good and I signed myself up for every possible distraction (from writing my novel) that I could in the month of May.

Then May happened and I couldn't keep up the momentum. I failed my yoga challenge (I went 18 times in 28 days instead of the prescribed 24) and only meditated a few times (I comforted myself by the fact that I would meditate for 5 mins at the end of every yoga class). Instead of having a totally zen month, I got sick and then my stress levels rose to an all time high till about a week ago.

Hence, why I've kept quiet on the blogging front.

After all my amazing bragging about my life and the changes I'd made, I hardly wanted to jump online to admit to you all that I am a charlatan. But I guess I'm doing that right now anyway!

But the yoga challenge ended up teaching me something worthwhile.

Listen to your body and leave your ego at the door. 

I realised that I couldn't do 24 sessions of yoga, not because of some personality flaw or lack of willpower but because my body, the dear old vessel that carries me around every day, was tired. It just needed a rest. It needed to get sick to clear out the debris - the ultimate detox.

The best thing to come out of 'My May Meltdown' was that it reminded me to focus on my writing. Although I haven't been blogging, I've been writing a lot more of my novel and I am so close to the end of my first draft, its scary! I never thought I'd get here. I bloody hoped I would but I'm not always 'follow through' girl. Most of the time I get bored and give up on things. Not important things like people, work and study, I mean little creative projects that I have started over the years. And this is probably because I haven't allowed myself to consider creative things as 'important' or acceptable ways to spend my time.

For example, I have a little black travel cosmetics case (probably about the size of an old-fashioned hat box) that I got given years ago. Inside I used to put all my writing from dinky diaries I kept as a child to teenage journals and angsty poetry. For about 20 years, this is where I put anything I wrote. Occasionally, I would bring it out and read through my scribblings, laughing at how much things had changed and how much they had stayed the same.

Sometimes I would even read parts out to my best friend or boyfriend at the time. But apart from that, it was sealed tight and kept buried at the bottom of my wardrobe.

It was only a few years ago, when I started writing my novel (and I couldn't keep my computer in this box!) that I realised what I had been doing. I was a bloody closet creative. I had locked away that part of my personality, as if it was 'wrong', as if it should be hidden from public view. It was my deep dark dirty secret.

And now, I know this is bullshit. I know I can allow myself to create. I know it makes me a happier, better person. I know it helps me make sense of this crazy world we live in. I know this is my path in life. Finally I have found my passion, my dream. (Maybe not found, more like rediscovered or admitted to myself!)

It feels so good, I want to join the bloody literary mari gras! I wanna get on top of a float, covered with books and magazines and periodicals and gyrate to songs about literature (if there are any and they can be mixed into dance tracks, that is!) I wanna wear my author status with pride. I wanna make a big badge saying "I write and I'm proud of it!"

I wanna go back upstairs now from my lunch break and tell them that I quit. Effective immediately. They can stick their office job where the sun don't shine cos I am worth more than all the dollars and pounds and yen in the world. I am a writer!!!

Hmmm...maybe I've had too much caffeine today? ;)

Minding the Gap Within

Hi guys! I've missed you. I've been itching to blog but stuff kept getting in the way. I know, excuses excuses.

Anyway, we're halfway though the month of May, so I thought I'd give you a bit of a rundown on how my mind and body challenges are panning out so far.

The meditation challenge has been difficult. I have kind of improvised on this one to make it fit into my day. I meditated for the first few days by using the 'body scan' meditation supplied by Mindful in May but to be honest, I found it really boring. I didn't like the voice on the meditation and I found myself becoming really restless.

I think the voice on a guided meditation track is REALLY important. I guess I have been a bit spoilt because my meditation teacher, Sara, has a really soothing, calming voice. Her voice makes you relaxed but even more importantly, it doesn't distract you from your meditative state. A voice that is dull or too quirky can be very distracting.

So anyway, after a couple of days of using the supplied meditation, I switched to some chakra meditations that I already had in my iTunes. I instantly was able to connect better with my inner stillness. These tracks have music only, so I simply listened and let the music take me deep within.

I've been meditating off and on for the last decade, and pretty solidly for the last four years. It's something that I've been aiming to do everyday but  haven't been able to settle into a pattern. What I realised with this challenge is that I feel like I have 'moved past' guided meditations and need to experiment without a guide.

Which brings me to my yoga practice. This has been going great guns (what the? where did I pull this stupid saying out from?) I am on Day 11 of my 28 yoga detox challenge and I am loving it! And the great part is that we finish each yoga class with a meditation! So I have been able to combine both my challenges.

The hardest part of the yoga challenge is the detox. In particular, the no sugar part. It's really tough. I didn't quite realise how much sugar I had in my diet. I've always been more of a savoury person but for the last couple of years, I have managed to grow a sweet tooth. A really big one. Not a day went past that I didn't eat some chocolate or biscuits or cake. My sometimes food had become an everyday food. But because I have been exercising consistently as well, I didn't really see it as a problem. Until now.

Why you may ask? Cos sugar makes you feel like shit. It shoots you to the moon but instead of doing a Buzz Aldrin, you come plummeting back down again to earth with no parachute. Ok, maybe I'm being slightly dramatic but now that I have moved past the difficult first week, I am feeling alot better. Happier, more energy, more pizazz! No people, not pizza...pizazz!

So far I have drunk a couple of green smoothies and although the ingredients were highly questionable (think spinach, coconut butter, chia seeds and chlorophyll - yep the green stuff from plants!), I really love them! They taste good. Really good.

I'm not sure what's going on with me...maybe I'm having my mid-life crisis early. Nah, if the was the case I'd been doing something far more exciting, like cougaring the neighbourhood and cruising around in a sportscar...

Until next time folks. Arrivederci!

Mindful in May

I have a BIG month ahead of me. For starters I'm doing Mindful in May which is an absolutely amazing initiative! The idea is you make a donation to Charity Water - a fabulous charity that passes on 100% of donations received to setting up clean, viable, easily accessible drinking water for developing countries.

In return for your donation, you sign up to a one month online meditation program, whereby you get daily emails, a meditation journal and tips on how to mediate.

I have joined Sara's Space In-Betweeners to raise money for Charity Water. We are trying to raise $2000 and have raised $800 so far. If you'd like to join our group and make your own life and a lot of other people's  a happier one, click here. Or you can just make a donation. 

I am still yet to meditate for Day One, so I better stop dilly-dallying and switch off my laptop! Just before I go, I wanted to mention that on top of meditating every day, I will be doing a 28 day yoga detox course starting this Sat 4th May. My challenge will be to do yoga 6 days a week, go on a detox which will involve drinking green smoothies and god knows what else and generally curse myself for getting over excited and signing up to do every interesting course or challenge I come across!

Watch this space! I may need some encouragement this May! 

More on Reiki

Friday morning, I was thinking in the shower. As you do. I think great things in the shower. Especially when its something positive and not a silly nagging worry to set the tone of the day. I did yoga that morning at 6am, so I was feeling pumped and also excited because it was my Mum's 70th birthday.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I've always felt divided. Split in two. Like there are two sides to me, one being the good girl, the angel on my shoulder. The other, I'm sure you can guess, is the bad girl, the devil incarnate. Ok, so it's kind of an extreme view, and really I'm not usually so black and white, instead I revel in the grey areas of life. But when it comes to myself, I'm highly critical.


Scrolling through my phone the other day, I found some shit poetry I wrote a while ago. As mentioned, it is shit but it kind of encapsulates they way I have always felt about myself. And how I have always tried to keep my shadow side just that, in the shadows so no-one can see.


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

Split personality,

Whatever you want to call it,

I have two sides to me.


But I'm not torn;

Each side works in isolation.

Each side gets airtime.


I have a hunger.

It starts with a tired lethargy,

Then moves into a twisting knot in my belly. 

It becomes unbearable - well almost,

Don't think I've ever really tried to resist.


Yoga, beer, running, cigarettes, vegetables, 

Talking to strange men,

In the wee hours of the morning.

I've always had this.


I wrote this on 7th September 2009 at 11.32pm. Exactly 1329 days ago. No, I'm not autistic but my iPhone is. It tells me this kind of stuff ;)


I guess you're wondering what the relevance of this is to the title of this post. Well folks, in the shower the other morning, I was thinking about how lately, I no longer feel divided and that is thanks to, you guessed it, Reiki.


During the Reiki I course, I had a bit of an epiphany or maybe it was simply a merging of myself, my separate halves. On the second day, Sara from The Space in Between, gave the group several attunements as a kind of initiation into Reiki.


Attunements, for those that don't know, are a spiritual ritual performed by a Reiki master to open up the student to the Universal Reiki Energy. The student goes into a meditative state whilst the master performs the ritual. Once a student is attuned, they have the Reiki energy for life. For more info on Reiki, click here.


So during the last attunement of the course, actually it was during the last moments before we came out of the meditation, I experienced a powerful merging of my halves. At first I saw a vision of two people making love, one black, one white. At first, I thought to myself, bloody hell I shouldn't be thinking of sex right now! Haha. But then I realised that it wasn't a titillating experience, it was more like watching a dance, the bodies swirling around in space and fading into each other. The more I watched, the more I realised that this was a metaphor, the black and the white was my good and my bad self merging, I was becoming whole again. My soul was returning home.


The attunement has proved to be a kind of healing episode that has allowed me to make changes in my life. I no longer have to hide my 'bad parts' from people. I am a normal human being with good and bad traits. By shining the light on my darker half, I have been able to accept the negative parts of me and through dong so, I have the power and the will to change them. How crazy it is that we fight ourselves so much, that we would rather live in denial, than approach our failings with the same love and compassion we would give to our family and friends.


All of a sudden, I feel like I am back to where I left off in my early teenage years. The years when I was beginning to work out who I was and what I wanted from life. When I had so much creative energy and the world amazed me. When I felt like I was a massive sponge, wanting to absorb as much information as I could and experience everything I could. When I had an amazing memory for facts and languages and schoolwork was a breeze.


The time right before I started drinking, doing drugs, partying and basically trying to wash it all away. Wash myself away...into the shadows.


But now...I'm back baby! Sober and loving life!

Writers Read Too

Ever since I can remember, I've loved to read. When I was in kindergarten, I told my Mum that I wanted to be an author, so I guess that shows how much I loved reading and storytelling even back then.

I remember spending hours in libraries and the excitement of looking at the shelves and picking a juicy tale to sink your teeth into. I couldn't believe the generosity of libraries; fancy choosing as many books as you liked to take home for free! In primary school, I loved to play in the schoolyard with my friends but what I loved more was the library.

I think our primary school librarian enjoyed a tipple or two. I remember when my friends and I found her cask of red wine and took turns opening the little spout right into our mouths. It tasted horrible but we knew it was wrong and it was so much fun to break the rules.

The librarian trusted us. Silly lady. She used to let me and my girlfriends into the library alone at lunchtimes. Some lunchtimes she shut up shop (maybe go stock up on more red wine from the bottle-o) and she let us stay inside as long as we promised to be very well behaved. Little did she know it was party time for us 10 year-olds. As soon as she left, we pulled out our favourite book - 'Where Did I Come From? - giggling over the pages and sipping our Shiraz.

Each year I would enter the MS Readathon competition. I would ask every adult I knew to sponsor me 5 or 10 cents a book. They all agreed, chuckling at my earnest efforts to raise money for MS sufferers. At the end of the reading challenge, I would visit my sponsors to collect their donation.

"What?! You read 48 books! At 10 cents a book! That's $4.80! I don't have that kind of money!"

This would be the usual response from my family members and their friends. (For all you Gen Y's out there...$4.80 was a lot of money in the 80's!!!)

But a deal's a deal and I could usually get most of them to pay up by looking very sad and deflated. And although I was doing the readathon for a good cause, for me, the love of reading was enough of a drawcard. I was hooked.

Places I used to read (when I wasn't allowed too):

In bed under the covers with a torch
On the toilet (even public ones)
In the backseat of the car at night with no light except for the street lamps we periodically passed on our way home from Nan's
At the dinner table - this normally lasted for all of 5 seconds before my Dad realised and yelled at me - (again for the confused Gen Y's out there, parents were strict in those days!)

I wanted to read (and write!) so much that when I played with my best friend, I used to insist that we write letters to each other (I normally specified that they had to be 10 pages in length, yes I was a hard taskmaster) and then go off in private to read them. Her letters always started with the same line -

Dear Lizzie,
                     I hope this letter finds you in the best of health.

How cute. Her Mum had taught her the polite way to start a letter. It was just so ludicrous coming from one 10 year old to another...who saw each other daily in the street!

Anyway, I stumbled across someone's blog today who does a 100 book reading challenge every year and it got me thinking about how much I read when I was young and how that little version of me, puts this big version of me to shame!

As a writer (and I use that term with increasing confidence the more courses I attend and writers I meet), probably the number 1 tip you are given is to read. Read everything. Read books you hate and books you love. Read all genres. Read all mediums; online and print, magazines, literary journals, nonfiction, newspapers, blogs etc. Just read.

So I've decided to start my own 2013 Reading Challenge. I know what you're all thinking - 'But Lizz, we're already a third way through the year!' And yes my cyber smarties, you are quite correct. But I will be backdating this challenge to books I've read since January 1st this year. Although that's not really going to help my tally too much because I've found it hard to commit to reading a book the whole way through this year! I'm worried about my attention span actually...bloody smart phones!

So my challenge is to read 50 books this year. I decided on 50 instead of 100 because damn it, I have a novel to write as well! I really think I'm gonna have to quit my day job because I've got far too many commitments now outside of work. Well, one can always dream!

I will be putting my reading tally on this blog as motivation and hey, I might even write the odd review or two :)

Who's gonna join me?

The Power of Reiki

Reading back over my blog entries so far this year, I can see I have already made a lot of changes in my life. Moving in with my parents, quitting alcohol and travelling to Fiji to meet like-minded writers and renew my passion for storytelling, have all been big milestones for me.

And then came reiki. A week after my trip to Fiji, I did a 2 day intensive Reiki 1 course with my wonderful meditation teacher and guru, Sara Brooke, from the Space in Between. Sara had just completed her reiki mastership and was buzzed about passing on her knowledge to some new recruits.

I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical and unsure about reiki. I've had reiki before from a few people, including Sara, and I knew that it made me feel relaxed and in a meditative state. But I guess I didn't really think that I had the power to heal others. I didn't really believe that simply laying my hands on someone would actually do anything. All I knew was that I was curious and wanted to learn more but I didn't expect any concrete outcomes from the course.

Boy was I wrong. At the end of Day 1, I was a converted woman. Leaving the workshop, I was on a high, not knowing whether I wanted to socialise or to be by myself to absorb what I had learnt that day. But getting into my car, I decided to go visit my sister and her beautiful twin girls.

Sara had mentioned to us that we may notice people or animals acting differently towards us because of a shift in our vibrational energy. The first thing I noticed when landing at my sister's front door was that her cheeky little toy poodle that normally jumps all over me and scraps his nails on my bare legs with excitement, was totally chilled out. It was incredible. Rather than having a conniption, Link calmly rubbed on my legs and then came to sit on my lap on the couch. I was very grateful because although I love the little bugger, the leg scraping and face licking does get a bit too much sometimes.

Then I went to visit Mum. She was having a very bad day. When I walked in the room, I could see the clouds on her face straight away. She told me how the family don't love her anymore and have shoved her into a nursing home because she's too much bother. I tried my usual tactic of listening, then subtly trying to change her thinking to being more positive or simply changing the topic. Then suddenly, I realised I now had a new tool in my kit.

"Mum, do you want me to do some reiki on you?"

She hardly looked at me. "Ok" she said like a stubborn teenager finally giving in to their parent's wishes.

I set my intention for a great healing session by placing my hands on her chest in a T position, allowing me to connect with her heart chakra. I then moved to her head, cradling it in my hands and closing my eyes to enter into the zone myself.

Within seconds Mum's breathing slowed, her muscles relaxed, and most importantly, SHE STOPPED TALKING. Which is always an amazing occurrence where my Mum is concerned. Normally the only things that stop her from speaking is sleeping or eating ;)

I worked on her whole body moving from her crown chakra, down to her root chakra and then below to her knees and ankles. When we were finished, I gently touched Mum on the shoulder and told her to open her eyes when she felt ready. She opened her eyes, looked at me and said, "That was amazing, love."

It was such a relief to see her calm again, smiling and zen-like. I couldn't believe that the reiki energy had brought her back to earth, allowing her some space in between the fear and anxiety.

Next, I went to visit my best friend, who has been having a hard time lately with various stresses in her life. We chatted a bit, nothing really deep or meaningful, just the usual shit we chat about. TV shows, our family, our cats. Then out it came...

"I'd love you to give me reiki sometime," she said coyly.

"What about right now?" I asked.

So then I proceeded to give my best friend reiki and all the while, her cat was chewing her hair and walking over her body, and she didn't move a muscle. She was gone. Totally in the zone.

When we finished, she could hardly open her eyes. It was like I had drugged her. "Dude, that was so good," she said. "You are so good at this."

"Nah, it wasn't me. Sara told us not to let our ego get in the way. All we are is a vessel to allow the reiki energy to flow through us and heal others. And ourselves in the process."

She laughed. I guess she's not used to me being so humble...

Anyway, the following day was Day 2 of the course, where we received our attunements and a certificate of completion. I wasn't sure if I felt as though I deserved that certificate, having only been practising reiki for two days and still feeling like a complete novice. But Sara explained that we were now about to embark on 21 days of self-healing. We had to focus on healing ourselves, before we would be ready to heal others.

That said, she encouraged us to practice on friends and family but advised that we weren't allowed to receive payment for giving reiki until we had more experience and had completed our Reiki II. I felt comforted by this, knowing that there was a right of passage and the proper guidance for practising this ancient healing modality.

So since the weekend, I have been giving myself reiki almost every day. I think I missed 3 days in total out of the 21. Two days when I was sick with a cold and one day when I was super anxious...looking back those were probably the times I needed it the most but I guess this is all part of the journey of realisation.

The 21 days are now over, so I can look back and reflect on what changes have occurred since that weekend. And they have been numerous. It is so weird but I feel as though things are starting to click into place. I've identified what's important to me and what doesn't justify my attention, such as silly confrontations at work. Or the opposite, learning to stand up for myself with people I normally let walk over me. Setting boundaries and embracing my personal power.

I have brought more balance into my life, creating more 'me time'. And I say creating because people who say they are too busy to make time for themselves or call themselves time poor, are just making excuses and in my view, being extremely arrogant. WE ALL HAVE 24 HOURS IN A DAY. WE ALL CHOOSE HOW TO SPEND THOSE HOURS.

There is no-one whose time is more important than the next person's. Saying you don't have time for something is bullshit. What you are really saying is that you don't value that activity or yourself, enough to make time.

Too busy to exercise? Get up earlier.
Too busy to eat properly? Buy some fucking carrots in your lunch hour.
Too busy to spend time with your family? Stop working so much.

Ok, I'm kind of ranting now but what I mean is, life is about choices. The world is our oyster. We can do anything we want. Be anything we want. There is no set model or formula that we have to live buy. You are only limited by your own imagination. So dream a little and let your imagination soar.

Anyway, I guess I should get more specific and actually tell you what has changed for me. Sara did tell us that there might be drastic changes after doing Reiki I and I wasn't sure if anything would happen to me, and whilst my changes haven't been drastic (eg. getting married to a guy I've known for 24 hours in a Vegas chapel), they have been big lifestyle changes.

1) I suddenly decided that I want to get up earlier and truly become a morning person. I was already getting up early for boot camp on Mondays and Wednesdays (5.30am) and Saturdays (6.30am) but I decided that what was really killing me wasn't the occasional early start, it was the fact that when I didn't have to get up early, I was playing snooze roulette with my alarm. And it was causing me to be late for work on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, not to mention feeling like utter shit on those days! To the point were I was having to increase my caffeine intake to cope.

So after googling 'how to get up early', I read one blog post from this guy who reckons that the key to getting up early is not going to bed at the same time each night. The key is getting up at the same time each morning. Even if your tired. And NOT PRESSING SNOOZE.

He recommended practising getting up in the morning during the day. Literally drawing the curtains, getting into bed, hearing the alarm going off, then turning it off and getting out of bed in one fluid motion. In your pyjamas. With your favourite teddy bar. And clean teeth.

So I thought this was kinda extreme. I didn't fancy this daytime trickery. I knew I was tough enough to do the real thing. So I decided my new getup time would be 5.15am. Every morning. Regardless of what I was doing that day. Even on Sundays.

And surprisingly, for the most part it's worked. I've refined the process after a bit of trial and error. I decided that getting up at 5.15am on the mornings that I didn't have to was a bit ridiculous, after I got up last Saturday at 5.15am, got into my workout gear, ate an apple, starting writing my novel and then became so drowsy, that I went back to sleep for 30 mins till my best friend picked me up for boot camp at 6.45am!

So now I get up at 5.15am during the week if I have boot camp or yoga and 6.30am on the other days...which brings me onto change number 2.

2) Yoga. I have signed up to do Kozen Yoga. It's amazing. Yoga is bloody hard. I'm so grateful that I already have a reasonably strong core because it is such a strenuous workout. But a peaceful one at that. I'm used to grunting and groaning and laughing hysterically at boot camp, to get through the pain but at yoga, everyone is calm and apart from the odd audible exhalation of air (from people's mouths, don't be foul!), the class is pretty much silent.

So now I am doing yoga 3 times a week which compliments boot camp because it allows me to really stretch my aching muscles. Well at the moment its making them even sorer but hopefully that will pass once my strength increases!

I have also signed up for a 28 day detox program at the yoga studio. I will do an intensive 2 hour session every Saturday in May for 5 weeks and also be given nutritional advice and smoothie recipes. I will also need to practice yoga 6 days a week...with the chance to win a 12 month membership if I do this! Bring it on baby! I love a challenge!

3) Writing almost every day. I have started carrying my laptop to and from work, writing my novel on the bus, tram and at lunchtimes when its quiet enough to take a break (which is not that often actually!) I'm only writing 2-3 pages a day but it is an amazing achievement in my mind because I am starting to conquer my negative critic, that little germ of self-doubt and sabotage, that loves to fuel my procrastinating.

I've nipped that bastard in the bud now because when I get on the bus, I play on my phone for a bit (ok, so I still procrastinate somewhat) and then I open my laptop, read myself back into the scene and start writing. I am lucky enough that my characters write the story themselves (a bit similar to the reiki energy, us writers can't afford to let our egos get in the way of creating art), so I don't really suffer from writer's block. The only block I have is when I allow myself to procrastinate.

And I have been the queen of it up until now. Actually no, the queen would be my Mum. (But I aint no princess, so let's not give me a title!) Here are some things I used to do instead of writing, which kind of takes me into point 4...

4) Reclaiming my balance in how I spend my time. Before reiki, I was aware of my lack of balance and competing priorities but I felt trapped in a cycle of commitment and lifestyle envy. I felt there was all these things I HAD TO DO FOR OTHERS and that due to my lifestyle (single, childless), I was obligated to spend my free time helping my family. And that would then reinforce my own emptiness because I didn't have my own family unit like they did.

So here's the stuff I've given up. A tiny part of me still wonders if I'm a selfish bitch, but for the most part I know I'm not. I now feel more empowered to do what I love to do, knowing that I am spreading positive energy and FOCUSING MY TIME SPENT WITH OTHERS ON QUALITY RATHER THAN QUANTITY.

ARE THE CAPLOCKS GETTING ANNOYING YET? Sorry. I'm not shouting really, I promise.

Stuff I've given up (some of which I started giving up a while ago)

- Spending most of my weekend helping my sister with her twin girls
- Visiting my Mum most weeknights after work and also on weekends
- Lots of overtime at work
- Planning lots of socialising on the weekends so I was never home
- Drinking
- Hangovers resulting from said drinking
- Smoking
- Staying up to crazy o'clock on the weekends talking to my UK friends on Skype
- Eating unhealthy food to fill an emotional void or because it was a certain day of the week
- Commercial television and Foxtel
- Watching the news

Stuff I've embraced (recently and over the last few years)

- Quality time with my Mum on the weekends
- Shorter visits with my sister and her beautiful girls
- Meditation
- Boot camp
- Yoga
- Reiki
- My creativity
- Spending time and sharing information with other writers (in person and online)
- Downloading and then watching quality TV shows and movies when I want
- Reading widely: fiction, non-fiction, blogs, literary magazines, newspapers
- Travel
- Literary events, courses, tutorials
- Donating plasma once a month

I hope this blog post hasn't been too preachy. I guess I'm just feeling excited and passionate about life. I'm starting to feel normal again. Well balanced even. I might even try coming off my anti-depressants in the next few months. I'm feeling less like a failure. When I look in the mirror, I'm not seeing a victim anymore. I'm seeing a survivor. A winner. A writer.

That's what reiki gave me...