The time has come for me to reach out to you, my readers around the world, and ask for you for some assistance.
It’s been over a year now since I created abeautifulmindonline, and in that time I have tweaked and played around with layouts, colours and fonts etc, and I would like to say that I am happy with the results so far. But, I am not really the person that matters… you are!
I am always very grateful and thankful for everyone who reads and/or likes & comments on any of my posts and I also appreciate your time.
So my dear readers, I am asking if you would be willing to spend a few more moments of your time, just to add a comment or two about your visit to my site? I am looking in particular to find out:
If the fonts, colours and layout work for you
If it’s easy on the eye
If it’s easy to find your way around
If any links etc. don’t work
Better tagging ideas
And any recommendations/suggestions for changes or improvements
I do hope that you can spare the time to participate with this request, as it will help me to get things right.
Many thanks in advance, and I’ll look forward to seeing your comments. Sx ❤️
“I was blessed with this gift, and it has never let me down, if I’ve made a bad choice it’s usually because I have ignored my gut instinct, when I should have known better”.
I have believed for a long time that not everything is worth fighting for, and I have spilt enough blood and wasted too much time already battling unwinnable or futile causes.
I say this is a gift, because I have the uncanny ability to be able to see through other people’s problems, and guide them on what the real issues are. I am able to explore different angles and perspectives, and untangle the real mysteries behind their problems. I have people who lean on me for this, but it isn’t something I am always thanked for, as not everyone has a stomach for my brutal candor, but it’s what they come for. They come to me for truth, and that’s exactly what I give them, and somehow, I seem to manage to get right down to the roots of the problem and at least open their minds to reason or a different level of understanding.
I never speak ‘off the top of my head’, and I am always able to back up what I say with good reason. It’s as though I go deep into the recesses of my mind and can draw on an experience from somewhere in my past, that is relevant.
Maybe that’s why I seldom confide in others, because somewhere I know the answer already exists in me, I just have to think it through. I firmly believe that in my life, no matter what the situation is, I have already dealt with far worse and come through it.
This way of thinking has kept me positive, and made me feel so much stronger. This is why writing is so important to me, this is my way of sorting through the muddle in my mind, and seeing it in black and white print. Writing gives me clarity, like solving a mathematical equation. It allows me to explore my thoughts, and to be picked up and carried away with them, so I can deal with my demons and dilemmas. From an early age it was a skill that gave me some form of comfort and expression, and it is one I cannot do without.
Intuition has protected me, prepared me and given me such an understanding of who I really am, and who others are too. But there have been times, I have mistakenly given others the benefit of the doubt, and have got burnt fingers for the privilege.
At least I now know to never ignore it again!
Sharon Carter-Wray
(31st December 2016)
Update:
I can think of so many occasions when my intuition has served me so well in the last few years. My ability to read between the lines and see behinds the scenes, has saved me from much unnecessary angst and misery. I have learned to walk away from people and situations that no longer serve me, or have no sense of feel-good about them.
I have steadfastly stuck by this, and in turn my state of mind and life have improved, my self-confidence and belief in my talents have blossomed and I actually feel quite happy.
I want and need for nothing that money can buy, and in my eyes, it’s a wonderful place to be. Sx ❤️
Just a quick note to say sorry I’ve been away for a while, but just having a few crappy/crazy weeks, with the icing on the cake being my computer being hacked a week ago!
So thanks to all that have kept visiting in my absence, I’ll be back up and running again as soon as I can. Sx 🙂
After the realisation of how little my employers cared for me hit home, it made me look at my career to date. I was always after self-betterment and I had wanted a ladder to climb, to achieve things. But, I now know that all my employers had seen that trait in me, knew my ambition and had wanted to make the most of me, while they had me.
I spent 10 years of my life travelling the length and breadth of this country, doing store openings or refits for major retailers. Each time, staying away from home for months at a time, until a job was completed. After that I would finally return home or go onto the next job. It was not an easy job by any means, it was 12 hours a day or night, seven days a week, for up to 3 months at a time; living in some hotel or B&B.
After a couple of years I was no longer doing the groundwork, I was a team coordinator, organising and managing a team of up to 35 people. I was responsible for making sure that the job was done well and done right on which ever shift I was working on. My colleague and I, who covered the other shift, were accountable if things went wrong, after all time is always equivalent to money.
After that, I began to run the jobs, organising my teams, sorting transport and accommodation, interviewing and recruiting new staff, dealing direct with the clients, and still travelling to do site visits, which was always rife with some complaint or other, which I had to deal with. When I was not in the office, which was the majority of the time, I would be in my car and it became a very lonely job.
With a team of core people, plus locally employed general assistants, we worked hard and played hard. I used to say:
“that it took a strange breed of fish to do the job, either people were running away from something; or they were trying to find something”.
I am still not sure which category I fell into, but eventually the need arose for me to find a permanent place, where I could finally hang my hat, and empty my suitcase.
This coincided with the death of my brother, who had been very ill for years. It was at that point, that I knew that I had to move on. I had always said to myself, that by the age of 30, I wanted to own my first home, and have real independence, and a few days short of my 30th birthday I finally managed to achieve just that.
Sharon Carter-Wray
(9thSeptember 2011)
Note: It is only now when I look back, I realise that buying my first home on my own back then, really was a big achievement. But for me, it was something that came naturally and I just took it in my stride. Sx 🙂
I remember it all so clearly. That morning when I went to work, I could feel the tension and anxiety building up in me, as I walked down that long corridor to the office where I worked. I was physically unstable, I was short of breath and I knew my blood pressure was rising, I knew something was wrong.
By the time I sat at my desk, I felt exhausted, I couldn’t think straight, and at that point I knew I had to see my doctor. So, I told to my team leader, that I wasn’t feeling too good and needed to go to the doctors. I got an appointment for an hour later. However, as soon as I put the phone down, the panic attack kicked in. I found myself gasping for air, burning up, with shooting pains in my chest. I was terrified of what was happening to me. But my team leader, didn’t get me an first aider, didn’t take me to my doctors, or call an ambulance, she drove me home! It was then down to my husband to take me to the doctors.
Only someone who’s felt real pain could have written this!
As soon as we arrived, I was wired up, attached to a machine, which thankfully confirmed that I wasn’t suffering from a heart attack, but it did show that my blood pressure was a dangerous level.
After about an hour, I finally calmed down enough to see my doctor, who diagnosed depression, gave me some strong tranquilisers and signed me off for 2 weeks. During that time, I got to know my sofa very well, I hardly spoke or did anything else for that matter. I never did get back to work.
That one day changed the rest of my life, and even now when I think about it, it still hurts. It was a very scary and painful event, but I also have to admit that it was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. As it made me slow right down and take a good long hard look at my life. I was no longer that strong, confident, straight talking person, I had instead become a delicate and fragile being.
After a few weeks of being off, the local authority that I worked for referred me to Occupational Health and also appointed a Counsellor for me to see. Now, I have completed a Counselling course, and I know the rules about the client/Counsellor relationship. My God, that woman they sent me to see broke every single one of them. She didn’t listen to me, but instead talked too much, she was opinionated and tried to offer advice. She opened up a whole can of worms and had no idea how to deal with the contents. I was so glad when the six weeks were finally up and that I didn’t fully open up with her.
I think we’ve all been here at some point…
It took me a couple of years before I before I really started to talk again, I had become so quiet and withdrawn, I hardly recognised myself. I gave into the idea that if no one actually listened to me, then I had nothing to say. And the so called do-gooders, who always thought they knew the answer to my illness, was one by one struck off the list of people I cared for or cared for me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but later learned that depression makes you lose your confidence, and restricts the ability to do simple things like food shopping, driving a car, getting on a train, being with lots of people just to name a few things. It can also last for years, can affect anyone young or old, and is caused by a variety of issues. But most importantly it takes away the desire to do, and the pleasure away from anything you might normally enjoy. It is like walking around with your own personal black cloud constantly over your head, everything loses its colour and just turns grey.
I hope that my fellow sufferers, who may be reading this, will agree with this description, because the list is extensive and this is just a brief overview.
I have often described it as being at the top of a series of steps.
Depression
Most people will suffer from some sort of depression at some time in their life, and will only fall down the first step or two; so it’s pretty easy to get back up to the top. But when you’re clinically depressed (falling down the rabbit hole), you fall down many, many steps, maybe right down into the abyss. That’s when it’s a real struggle to get back up, yet alone begin the climb back up the steps.
Again, I can really only comment on my experience, but somehow, I believe that others like me are nodding their heads. Chronic depression is a real illness caused by a chemical imbalance, and so it is important to understand, that when you are suffering with it, you cannot get over it on your own. You need to have medical intervention, you need all the help you can get and not be deterred by pill-hating well wishers, who have absolutely no idea of what you are dealing with.
Let me introduce myself to those of you that do not already know me. My name is Sharon, and I have just recently turned 46; I have been married for eight years; I have no children of my own, but I do have 2 cats, 1 dog and a very well loved and cuddled teddy bear, and all have proved to be absolute lifesavers at various times in my life. Sixteen years ago, I lost one of my brothers, and then two years ago, two months apart, I lost my mum and one of my sisters. Since then, life really has not been, and will not be the same again.
I wouldn’t like to state a time and date, when my depression really began, but I do know it was well before it was diagnosed, just over 8 years ago. When I was told what the problem was, I was completely shocked, and no doubt said and thought the same things as many others before me “depressed? I’m not depressed I am just tired and worn out!” I hadn’t realised it at the time, but later when I had a chance to really review my life all the signs were there, they had been for years, I just hadn’t seen them.
I had continued to be hard working, loyal, aspiring and always looked for new challenges. I was Sharon, the one who would roll up her sleeves and just get on with it, without complaint. All the time I was being “Super Woman”, my body and mind were slowly shutting themselves down, bit by bit, completely burnt out, until one day – enough was enough. So the person that everyone knew as being a rock, confident and out-spoken protagonist dissolved in to a pile of sand, broken pieces so small; that a world full of glue could never stick back together again. I could never be fully restored. People close to me had no idea what had hit me, and had no understanding whatsoever. All they could see, was that the person they knew was somehow no longer there.
Where it all began… I believed
To be honest, I was eventually glad, I was thankful for having the opportunity to be released from my life and fall apart. I no longer needed to seek permission to feel and think the way I did. I was being given a rare chance to get to the root of myself and figure out what went wrong and why. But more importantly, I was being given time to re-assess absolutely everything in my life, and this is still on-going. The end result of starting to find some of the keys was that I viewed my family and friends in a very different light, and then I withdrew into my solid, tranquil shell. A place, where no one could find or touch me, unless I wanted them to – the visits were few and short; and I stayed there for quite some time.
For a long period of time, I felt useless, damaged, deflated, dysfunctional, I was a heap, and I knew that I would need every ounce of strength that I could muster, to repair and rebuild. I have learned so much more from my self, about myself. I have learned from other people in the same sized boat, and I know there is still more knowledge and understanding to come. But more importantly I had to learn how to heal myself, and that is where my story begins.
This way of thinking has kept me positive, and made me feel so much stronger. This is why writing is so important to me, this is my way of sorting through the muddle in my mind, and seeing it in black and white print. Writing gives me clarity, like solving a mathematical equation. It allows me to explore my thoughts, and to be picked up and carried away with them, so I can deal with my demons and dilemmas. From an early age it was a skill that gave me some form of comfort and expression, and it is one I cannot do without.
I have steadfastly stuck by this, and in turn my state of mind and life have improved, my self-confidence and belief in my talents have blossomed and I actually feel quite happy.
