Hang on in

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I found this fern on one of my perambulations around the grounds. Many people walk past this spot, but I imagine few notice it. I did.

Not for this fern, the forest bower, sun-dappled, fragrant with the scent of woodland flowers, soothed by the music of babbling brook and gentle buzz of insect. This fern is growing out of the dirt lodged between a drainpipe and the sooty bricks of this old Gothic pile
But it is clinging on, and trying to grow towards the sunlight.  It is striving to be the best fern it can be in the circumstances, the environment in which it finds itself.

And I thought - Isn't that what we are all doing: clinging on, to our own little patch of dirt. Doing the best we can to grow toward the light. Striving to be the best human-being we can, given our own particular environment. And of course, I don’t just meant physical environment: I mean the genetic; the parenting; the life-experiences environment - unique to each one of us.

Someone said, “To understand all is to forgive all.” I’d go along with that. It is so difficult sometimes - but let's practice by forgiving ourselves.

Well, Anna, I'm staking everything on one final throw of the dice in the Last Chance saloon. I have been therapised enough. I have been medicated up to the gunwales. Now it is 'shit or bust' time. (please excuse the vulgarism but I can't think of any other way of putting it.)

What I am talking about is a paradigm shift.

I will tell you about it when I see you on Friday