How would you describe yourself to someone?
Catsmum, empath, crazier than I appear.
I often find that when people meet me they see a person I don’t recognise. Straight, which is true. A friend told me the other day I’d make a lousy politician because I don’t have a deceitful bone in my body. But they see boring/straight.
People see me as noisy because I can talk for Britain, that’s more because I’m unsettled around people. Always have been. I know why now, I can read emotion like a book. So when I’m with people I can fend their energy off by chatting. That’s the empathy, I know what you’re feeling even if you don’t.
I can find the nicest people absolutely exhausting. And parties! Hid in the corner since I was a kid.
I didn’t know until I was in my 50s that I was a voice healer, I hadn’t even heard of such a thing. Where there is stress and upset a voice healer will be drawn to talk. I try to control the talking because I find it uncomfortable, but it’s not always easy.
To heal is a natural impetus. Which is why I talk whilst telling myself to shut up.
It works with animals too.
This gorgeous boy has always been a nipper, doesn’t break the skin but does catch your hand in his mouth for a second if you transgress. Unfortunately he went through a period of attacking at the vets, out of the blue. Took four of us out in seconds.
I was sitting there watching him when we got home and asked Amos for help. He said relax your throat and voice as if you’re going to lead a meditation, then keep repeating this:
“Oh you are a beautiful boy, you are my beautiful boy.”
He sat and looked at me, edged a little closer, edged a little more, had a head scritch. Purred. I kept doing that as instructed, not only problem solved, after 10 years he became a lap cat. Still is.
The crazy
I have a wicked sense of humour but I’m very deadpan. Six months after they first met me two much younger a hipper friends realised that the ‘boring (older) straight one’ had been going over their heads since the day we met.
I love to laugh. I also come from the politically incorrect generation where you don’t have to measure your words in case you upset someone.
Half of what made Billy Connolly and others famous would get them shot now.
I had one date with a guy I didn’t like much. The next time I saw him at a pub he pointed out that the label on the back of his jeans said ‘Big Boy’, I replied “that’s funny, the label on the back of my jeans says ‘Next’”. Then my friend took me home.
The Brits are a nation of teasers, but now we’re multi-national we can’t be.
My dad had a black friend and they were hilarious together. Dad would land up in trouble now; he wouldn’t.
I find it ridiculous, but I’m respectful so if people say they are upset then I will be careful. After all, I don’t have their life experience. I just believe that to laugh together is to bond, and my humour is never cruel and cutting. Ever. But people are so much more sensitive now.
That’s what being nasty to each other does. It creates a culture of fear and mind numbingly careful conversations.
So the catsmum is well documented. The empath not so much. The crazy severely controlled.
I’m also a medium which freaks the heck out of some people, you can ‘see’ some mentally adding piles of dry wood around a stake. As an empath I know you’re calling me either a liar or deluded in your mind, even if you are smiling at me.
Only recently I went to see a cat at a rescue centre that I’d seen the day before and couldn’t get out of my mind. A cat that wasn’t there. Try explaining that to the lady who showed me round on both occasions and saw me talking to the light coloured kitten in a cage full of black ones.
So yes what I am isn’t that obvious, and I’m much misunderstood, and often underestimated. But never, ever, untruthful about myself. I’m not perfect and that’s okay because I am kind.
Superb Sunday
Pay yourself a compliment today – see your good
Deb xx
Deb Hawken - Amorah 