ONCE UPON A DREAM; Placement Finished!

It has been a very busy and studious few days.  On Friday I did my last day on placement at Cruse Bereavement Care and I am now taking a break from volunteering for the summer months. So my Placement is now over, but I have not been idle, because I have had to finish writing my placement report essay.

This was a long, tedious piece of work.  The criteria to be met was very repetitive and boring.  There are certain words in the English language that I now loath and despise and if I get asked to evaluate or reflect on one more thing I think I'll scream.

The whole essay came in at around 15,000 words, so not as much as I had thought it would be, but still three times as much as our fly by night tutor told us it was!  Remember that this is 15,000 academic words - so it is by no means fun to write.  I'd rather write a book.  I have scanned in all the paperwork and now the entire unit is uploaded via the online portal and is awaiting the examiners to start marking finals.  I can do no more than I have done. It is now out of my hands.

I feel tired, drained and relieved to have it in and to be free of the stress of it for a while.  Because whatever happens, it means that today, I actually finished my training!  There might be a tweak of the essay and a quick re-sub to do, but all the hard slog is over with now and after five years of it, I am ready for the break. 

It has been stressful. There have been sleepless nights where I have been checking paperwork at 4am to make sure it has all been signed off correctly.  There have been bad dreams that I have lost all my work and need to begin again at level 1. Nightmare! There have been stress induced migraines and nose-bleeds.  It's just not been fun.

The work itself hasn't been intellectually difficult - if anything, the subject has been rudimentary, bombastic and boring. It's just tedious hoop-jumping and academic work is designed to induce stress in students. So much box ticking, just for the sake of it. So much paperwork to be signed off and checked and double checked.  I'm glad that it is over now.

There is also a sense of the surreal. It is hard to believe that it's finally finished and complete. I am now at liberty to free my creativity once more. Tomorrow is my first day of freedom from counselling in five years. 

I plan to sleep for England. 

BOOK NOOK; Anne Boleyn; A King's Obsession by Alison Weir

"It is quite permissible for gentlemen, even married ones, to pay their addresses to you," she said. "They may express their devotion and even their passion. It is for you to have mastery over them, and in that sense the title of mistress is an honourable one. But it is never permissible for you to allow any man to go beyond the bounds of propriety.  And you must keep your suitor guessing, and at arm's length, for men do not value what is easily obtained. Even the lightest kiss is a great favour, you understand. The greatest jewel you possess is your honour..." 

(Margaret of Austria)

from Anne Boleyn; A King's Obsession

Anne Boleyn; A King's Obsession is the latest novel in Alison Weir's Six Tudor Queens series.  It begins when Anne is a little girl of eleven years old, and follows her journey right through to her execution.  The novel is nicely written, with lots of historical content that seems to have been well researched. Weir is after all, a historian first and foremost and she has written many non-fiction books on the Tudor age. 

Unlike other books about Anne Boleyn, this novel does not present her as a romantic heroine. Here she is an ambitious young woman who craves power, and she uses the king to get it.  She plays a long game, reeling him in and then spinning him back out again - the age old practice of courtly love, as described above in the excerpt from the book.   She is ruthless in her ambitions too, having no hesitation in persuading the king to have her enemies named as traitors and put to death.

As everyone knows, Anne Boleyn achieved her dream of becoming queen of England and sitting on the throne beside Henry VIII, but as this novel recounts, her victory is short lived.  Unable to bear a living, thriving son, the fickle heart of the king soon turns away from her and seeks out the love of Jane Seymour instead.

Anne's cleverness in stringing Henry along and ultimately gaining everything she wished for also proved to be her downfall, for she unwittingly sowed the seeds for other ambitious young women to follow suit, and whereas once Henry turned away from his first wife Katherine to her, soon he turns from Anne to seek out another potential new queen.  Anne learns that her power is only as strong and as lasting as the king's love for her, and as his love wanes, so too does her power and more importantly, her safety. 

I like this novel because it illustrates perfectly what happens in a relationship when a man no longer has to chase the attentions of the woman he claims to love - in short, when she stops being his girlfriend who he would travel miles to spend a few hours with, and instead becomes his wife who is always on hand, waiting for him at home.  She goes from being a mysterious creature he can't wait to be with, to a familiar convenience and from there, inevitably at some point, she becomes inconvenient and a nuisance he wants to shake off. 

This is an uncomfortable truth of marriage, or cohabiting, that is rarely addressed in women's fiction.   It is one of the reason's I will never live with a man again!  Courtly love, remaining somewhat unavailable, rather than being at his beckon call, is the only way to keep a man's interest high and his affection strong.

When Anne is being pursued by the king, she is the flower of the Court. She is surrounded by handsome young courtiers, who pay her flattering attentions, write love poetry and songs for her, while Henry sends her billet-doux by the score.  She is given little gifts and tokens of affection, and all this is acceptable, because she lives a chaste and virtuous life. Yet still her enemies call her a whore and a harlot. 

In truth, I think Anne Boleyn was an exceptionally clever and strategic woman, who got everything she wanted from the most powerful man in the country.  She used her sharp tongue and clever wit to ensnare the king and feed his infatuation with her, but once enthroned, she challenged him too much and made the mistake of outshining the master.  If only Henry could have foreseen what a queen Elizabeth was going to be, he might have cherished Anne for the rest of his days.  Alas, her star had to fall as quickly as it had risen and so the novel ends at the scaffold.  

I have enjoyed reading this book and I am looking forward to the release of the next novel in the series, which is published in May. I have to say though, that Anne Boleyn is my favourite of all Henry's queens and one of my heroines, so I love reading new books about her.   Having said that, I am interested to read Alison Weir's take on Jane Seymour next month. If you are a fan of Tudor fiction, you will probably like the Six Tudor Queens series, which promises to be every bit as enthralling as Phillipa Gregory's Tudor series. Enjoy!

MUSICAL DOLL; When You're Gone; Speak To Me

We are one breath apart...

xxx

ONCE UPON A DREAM; Clinical Practice Achieved!

Writing my Placement Report - the missive to end all missives!

After 15 months of working entirely for free at Cruse Bereavement Care, this week I have finally completed the 100 clinical practice hours required for qualification. Hurrah! Its been a long year or so of supplying seemingly endless cups of tea and sympathy, but placement has been the most enjoyable aspect of the whole five years of training.  It has taught me that yes, I am a good counsellor and I can do this job. It has been very rewarding to see my clients recover from their state of shock, process their grief and start living life again.  

As part of the placement aspect of the diploma there is rather a lot of paperwork to complete - forms that have to be filled in for supervision to verify that I have indeed completed  over 100 hours in one-to-one practice and I've not just invented the numbers; contracts that had to be created by me and approved by the college and the placement organisation; reports on my professionalism from the placement managers and my clinical supervisor.  All in all there are about 50 pages of red tape that I need to scan into my computer and upload to the examining body.  And it all has to be meticulously organised and uploaded in date order.  Thank goodness I have a scanner, or I'd be cuing in the college library to use theirs. Now that academia has gone digital, the days of the hard-copy portfolio are over. 

In addition there is the final piece of writing to do, which is my Placement Report essay.  This is a long tedious piece of academic work that I imagine will be around 20,000 words in length when it is finished. It really is "the missive to end all missives"!  I've only just started it this week and so far it is going quite well. While I hate academic writing, I do try to have some fun with it by seeing how 'clinical' I can make myself sound!  It isn't the kind of writing I enjoy most, but it is always nice to get things right and feel super smart.  I expect to have this done and the whole unit uploaded by the end of this month. 

So now that all the boxes are ticked, in terms of the paperwork that depends on other people, and I have a stack of red tape waiting to be processed in due course, I am beginning to see the light at the end of a long, five year training, tunnel.   Now it is just down to me to write this report, which puts me firmly back in control - a place I like to be! I hated waiting for other people to fill out forms for me! Even though they did it in a timely manner, it still gave me anxiety because it is the only aspect of the training that does not depend on me.  It was outside of my control, and that really doesn't sit well with me. I like to be in control of my life.

I am starting to feel a sense of relief that very soon, it will all be over.  I have done what I can to ensure my success and I believe that academically I am on track to pass, so now that the clinical practice boxes have been ticked too, I shouldn't have to worry too much.  All being well I should Qualify this summer.  I'm not counting my chickens, but honestly, pass or fail, I will just be glad to see the back of it all!  I want to get back to my real writing. 

I leave my placement with Cruse at the end of the month, with plans to possibly return there later this year, just to keep my hand in with the profession I have trained for.  In the meantime I have signed up for another course in Life-Coaching, which will take me over the summer.  This was on my list of goals for 2018 so I'm happy to have that ticked off already.  As a self-help author, life-coaching is something I do anyway, so it makes sense to get a qualification in this area.  It will sit neatly alongside both my writing and counselling work, spanning the two and helping to bridge the gap between them. 

And of course I will be able to concentrate on my published writing once more, now that my training is all but over. So far I have had several psychotherapy features published in magazines and I plan to continue with this line of work, building my platform in this genre and using my previous success as a Wiccan author as a strong foundation.  One of the reasons I am so relieved to have achieved my clinical practice hours is that I will be free to write whatever takes my fancy once again.  My creativity has been stifled by academic responsibilities and essay deadlines for the past five years, so it will be nice to be back where I started as an author, writing anything that interests me - and more importantly, getting paid for it!

Mostly though, I am just starting to feel like I can breathe again. It's a nice feeling. I am almost there. Time for an episode of Scream Queens as a wee reward...

MUSICAL DOLL; Jezebel

Jezebel...

A word which apparently means "Where is the Prince?"

So if someone ever calls you Jezebel in hatred,

They are inadvertently acknowledging your inner Princess -

Off with their heads!

Jezebel...

a fallen angel; a woman of power and dignity; a royal of noble blood; a priestess of the old pagan ways...

Who wouldn't be intimidated by her?

xxx

MUSICAL DOLL; If You Were More Like Me

And I think you're crazy,

For letting him slip through your hands...

You don't make me nervous; from where I stand - 

There's no competition, don't you know who I am?

With me, he's a better man...

I scratched his heart a little deeper

You don't stand a chance

xxx

POET'S CORNER; For My Sisters; The Old Hanging Tree

For all those who died - stripped naked, shaved, shorn.

For all those who screamed in vain to the Great Goddess, only to have their tongues ripped out by the roots.

For those who were pricked, racked, broken on the wheel for the sins of their Inquisitors.

For all those whose beauty stirred their torturers to fury; and for those whose ugliness did the same.

For all those who were neither ugly nor beautiful, but only women who would not submit.

For all those quick fingers, broken in the vice.

For all those soft arms, pulled from their sockets.

For all those budding breasts, ripped with hot pincers.

For all those midwives, killed merely for the sin of delivering man to an imperfect world.

For all those witch-women, my sisters, who breathed freer as the flames took them, knowing as they shed their female bodies, the seared flesh falling like fruit in the flames, that death alone would cleanse them of the sin for which they died - the sin of being born a woman who is more than the sum of her parts.

Anonymous 16th century poem.

Once upon a time, this would have been the fate of a woman like me, back in the days when the Lynch-Mob ruled and any spiteful individual with a pointing finger could end the life of another.

The gift of magic has always, by turns, been feared and prised;  feared by those who are threatened by such power in a woman; prised by those who would recruit it for their own purposes. 

A wise woman is forced to navigate a safe path between these two extremes, defending herself against the superstitious and the fearful, who would hang her from the tallest tree if they thought they could get away with it, just because they feel threatened by her presence; and protecting herself from those who would exploit her gifts for their own ends. 

Fortunately the power of the Lynch-Mob has long since waned.  These days we have laws to protect us against discrimination, prejudice and hate crime. But there will always be certain groups of people who think they can act like a Lynch-Mob and get away with it; who think that they can band together to tear you down just because they have taken a childish dislike to you.  

They can't.

Because Karma is a wonderful thing.

And a wise woman knows how to invoke it. 

Blessed Be - The Old Hanging Tree

MUSICAL DOLL; Out Of My Life

This is what happens when you piss off Snow White...

If you don't love me then don't say you do...

xxx