POSITIVELY PANDEMIC: Fall Down 7 times. Get Up 8. Do the Hokey Pokey …

March 1, 2021 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by The Sibyls

The PANDEMIC has battered, bruised, and derailed all of us. The pain and challenges are not evenly spread yet the core resilience of survivors has some common elements.

This blog too was interrupted by the Pandemic. But it is time to return to the vitality of The Sibylesque ethos.

Midlife can involve many stresses including career demands, difficult teenage children, divorce, lack of time, lack of fitness, parents’ failing health and money worries with no simple solutions in sight. But one of the BIGGEST issues of midlife is accepting that you are not always in control. Unexpected things can happen to you despite the best plans. Like, say, A PANDEMIC!

An article by Tara Parker-Pope in The New York Times (How to Build Resilience in Midlife) gives some pointers that could equally apply at any age and any time.

Life, or so it seems, was simple once. Now it is so complex.
Here are some of the ways to build resilience:

Practise Optimism
Rewrite Your Story
Don’t Personalise It
Remember Your Comebacks
Support Others
Take Stress Breaks
Go Out of Your Comfort Zone

We, the Sibyls, would add:

Seek joy

Joy will not just arrive on your doorstep. You have to seek it. Find out what makes you happy and what makes you laugh. Then do this every day or, at least, when you can.

The Twelfth Raven: A memoir of stroke, love and recovery

June 5, 2019 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into stories.

……………………………Isak Dinesen, Author, Out of Africa quoted in The Twelfth Raven

REVIEW by Kerry Cue

The Twelfth Raven:

A memoir of stroke, love and recovery

Doris Brett

UWA Publishing (2014)

The Twelfth Raven, according to an old English rhyme, brings joy for tomorrow. Sometimes, I wish poets wrote news headlines then, instead of the ‘Syrian Bloodbath’ headline, you might read something like ‘Trickster God’s Toy with Us Again’. The Trickster God’s certainly overthrew all that defines normality in Doris Brett’s life. Firstly, Brett’s husband Martin suffered, at 59, a stroke followed by a superbug, heart valve failure and open-heart surgery. Then Brett needed a radical mastectomy.

Read this book if you want to learn how to defend yourself against the Healthcare system. But Brett is a poet. The language is lyrical. Dreams untangle knots in reality to reveal some profound truths. Read this book, if you want to gain some insight into the inner journey of an insightful writer in a family crisis. Brett is ruthlessly honest and very generous in this regard.

A recommended read.

We, THE SIBYLS, declare Doris Brett an Honorary Sibyl for her ruthless honesty, her unflinching endurance and her ability to provide insights into life’s hardships by weaving her brand of lyrical magic.

Fall Down 7 times. Get Up 8. Do the Hokey Pokey …

July 28, 2017 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by The Sibyls

An article by Tara Parker-Pope in The New York Times this week (How to Build Resilience in Midlife) gives some pointers that could equally apply at any age.

Life, or so it seems, was simple once. Now it is so complex.
Here are some of the ways to build resilience:

Practise Optimism
Rewrite Your Story
Don’t Personalise It
Remember Your Comebacks
Support Others
Take Stress Breaks
Go Out of Your Comfort Zone

We, the Sibyls, would add:

Seek joy

Joy will not just arrive on your doorstep. You have to seek it. Find out what makes you happy and what makes you laugh. Then do this everyday or, at least, when you can.

Madness: A Memoir

October 29, 2014 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

REVIEW by Annette Lowe

Madness: a memoir

Kate Richards

Penguin, 2013

In ‘Madness: a memoir’ ( Penguin, 2013) by Melbourne author Kate Richards relates her experience of psychosis, psychotic depression with the piercing vividness of a natural poet. Kate’s imagery and spare narrative brings the terror and chaos of psychosis into the comfortable sanity of our world. Murderously cruel inner voices drive Kate towards self –harm. Whisky is her painkiller. Small events and shreds of daily reality reveal Kate’s gentle humour – she is a chocaholic.

She passes through psychiatric hospital, ECT, stopping her medication, relapsing. She begins to work with a therapist, and despite resistances and relapses, the psychologist gradually brings her to accept and manage her illness. The sense of profound relief that comes to Kate is not expressed, but conveyed through their small dialogues, all of them turning points in Kate’s inner life. Kate’s memoir is a landmark in our understanding of mental illness, and flags the arrival of a gifted writer in Australian literature. A novel is Kate’s next project, to be published next year. It too will be extraordinary.

Annette is a Jungian analyst who has been in private practice in St Kilda for twenty years. She trained at the Zurich Institute. Annette is a past-President of the Jung Society in Melbourne and last April was made a Life Member of the Society.