This month is significant for me as I can no longer be advertised as having all original parts.
I have a new hip. I’m recovering from surgery and really looking forward to being back to fitness and strength.
My hip replacement operation has inspired this month’s newsletter and I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for all the prayers, well-wishes and advice. Progress is slower than I had expected but it’s still progress!
Until November
Sinead
Roald Dahl was born on 13th September 1916 in Wales. His parents were Norwegian. His early life experiences laid the foundation for many of the events and characters we encounter in his books. When Roald was less than 10 years old, his father as well as one of his sisters passed away. Roald spent many years feeling homesick at a boarding school which he didn’t enjoy. Roald worked as a fighter plane pilot during WW2.
Roald was involved in a plane crash in 1940 which resulted in injuries to his head, spine and hips. Throughout his lifetime, Roald had a number of surgeries to deal with these injuries.
Roald wrote his first book ‘The Gremlins’ in 1943. This did not prove to be successful for him. He followed that with books directed at an adult audience. His success soared during the 1960s when Roald turned his attention to writing children’s books. His books were comical and dark but had elements including children getting revenge on cruel adults which appealed to young audiences.
Roald did his writing in a hut at the end of his garden in Great Missenden, in Buckinghamshire, England. He kept a number of unusual and specific items on his desk and these are now available to see at the Roald Dahl museum in Great Missenden where the contents of his writing hut are displayed. Among the items is a part of Roald’s femur bone which he was allowed to keep after hip replacement surgery.
Sadly, such souvenirs are now considered bio-waste so there is no such interesting item on my desk!
Some elements of Roald Dahl’s life and views have stirred up controversy but he did leave the world with a genre of books that children the world over enjoy. He also invented close to 300 new words, however I doubt many of them are used in our day to day lives. That said, I have heard scrumdiddlyumptious more than once, although never in the context of my own cooking!
To Before I had my surgery, I read “Kindfulness” by Padraig O’Morain. This book is about being your own best friend. It’s not a guide to self-improvement so that you might love yourself when you are “improved”. It’s about accepting and loving yourself as you are now.
This book was easy to read and relatable and Padraig offers simple but effective steps to consider on the self-compassion journey. There’s a wealth of advice in the book, so these are just some of the points that resonated with me.
Self-compassion and acceptance go hand-in-hand but that doesn’t mean we need to be accepting of a situation that is not beneficial or is suboptimal for us. It does mean that when we don’t constantly criticise or berate ourselves, we have more energy for making things better. Also, if we accept that nothing works out perfectly every time, we are more willing to take a risk and try. Those who are unwilling to accept anything less than perfection become frozen in inaction and negative self-talk.
Recognising that whatever we are experiencing is also being felt by others is what Padraig describes as common humanity. Generally, speaking we would not criticise or speak harshly to others in difficulty. Padraig draws on the work of Dr Kristen Neff who suggests that maybe we are extra tough on ourselves because the harshness is taking place in our heads and not being said out loud. We can notice that, just as we have forgotten to buy milk at the shop, so have many others. We wouldn’t belittle and attack them verbally for such a minor mistake, so Padraig advises we should take a gentle tone of voice with ourselves too.
The third and final element I’ll mention from Padraig is our Bombu nature. I hadn’t heard of this before but it comes from a Buddhist concept which essentially encapsulates the fact that despite our best intentions, we can’t get everything to 100% perfection all the time. We get in our own way because we have conflicting aspirations, we want to eat healthily and have good sleep habits but we also want to go to a celebration and enjoy the party food and stay up late. I think “bombu” translates as “ordinary person”, so I think this is a great way of saying we’re human and humans aren’t perfect. Padraig suggests instead of calling yourself an idiot when you make a mistake, just say “that’s our bombu nature” and use “our” as its all of us, not just an individual.
“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” Roald Dahl from The Twits
“We are imperfect beings who need not demand perfection from ourselves – such a demand is bound to fail! When you stumble, when you forget, when you say something silly – it’s bombu nature and it’s okay to be that imperfect being.” Padraig O’Morain
“Friendship with oneself is all important because without out it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.” Eleanor Roosevelt
Sinead Huskisson 