Personal and professional quips from my life story ...

This title is obvious for this blog – but when I wrote it, it also has other significances for me too.

1. I love CSI, and American crime programme about a team of crime fighters who work in the labs, and who regularly solve crimes through their criminology investigations in the lab and their experience.  The song at the beginning of CSI with Gil is The Who’s “Who are you?” (...Who Who? Who Who?...I really wanna know!)

My favourites are Gil Grissom and Horatio Caine, both of whom I like for a few reasons and even the type of man who might interest me perhaps!    (Brains, enquiring mind, learning, calm, quiet, thoughtful; tough, honest and working with integrity, cool and in control although with red hair – but not my first red headed interest!)

1. Another factor for this is what my business aims to achieve for my clients – learning who they are, what they can do and want, and what their best is and how to achieve it.

1. It also relates to history for me – family trees and life stories – yours and mine or our relatives and friends, older people and the war years to mention a few.    I love life story work!  I have delved into my family tree years ago and still hold the interest now, but not enough time lately.   I worked on the care home/dementia life story projects in Oldham/ national initiative, and like the idea of sharing and understanding through life stories of how people behave and why.

1. 4.    As a person-centred  practitioner - because I like people and believe everyone has something to offer (but may not yet have discovered it), and that there is always the option to learn, grow and progress in life.

One of the options I provide now, and have tried before but time limitations prevented it’s development for me, is life story work.   I do work with people with dementia at the moment, which is interesting to say the least!  But for me there is a wider use than just care home residents suffering memory and identity loss, or change.   

We all have a life story, no matter our age.   Even a six month old or a day old baby, a 16 year old or 90 year old.    We have all lived, experienced and learned although some people don’t realise what they have learned (including babies & children, of course) or missed opportunities to learn (adults especially).

It is an exercise you can do yourself, which is an excellent insight into your future as well as your present and past. 

The workshops I am offering from October 2011 are two hours of preparing your own life story – or someone else’s, perhaps as a gift or an opportunity to share with them.    I have made various books recently for ‘big birthdays’ for family members – for my 21 year old, due to start my 17 year olds for next year soon; my sister’s 70^th coming up and an 80^th as well as two 50^th ‘s, a 60^th and a 40^th.   Talk about timing!  

Because these were all needed this last year or so, I couldn’t do them all as in depth as my daughters last year (which took me three years in the learning to scrapbook, collating, developing ideas and her constant personal and professional development!)  So I learned new, some quicker ways to do them too, as scrapbooking projects (like card making but books!).   The other way is to type them, with pictures scanned in and printed.

Or a storyboard – not a project I have tried but have seen the outcome from a lady at the National Lifestory project conference in 2010, completed by her daughter and how proud she was of both her life and her daughter, and the family represented in the board which she talked me through!

Life stories can be completed, as I say, for you or someone else, as a gift for a birthday or because they may not be around (physically or mentally) to regale us with stories and memories.   An austistic child perhaps, an older family member to look through from memories they shared with you over the years, a celebration of who and what you are and have experienced, good and bad or you family tree.  Whatever and whoever you choose, you are sure to learn something!

And for me, as a counsellor and life coach, the benefits include:

• Seeing your real self v your ideal self  - and how to get there if you choose to!
• Acknowledging yourself  and being OK with it, before moving on if you want to
• Identifying patterns in your life and behaviour – “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you always got” and “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting a different outcome”
• Making the changes you choose to – step by step, piece by piece and creating the life and the you that you want and need!
• Therapeutically, seeing events and people from a new perspective – with distance, with experience and with a view to making change happen

So for me, the fun and the benefits of ‘your life story’ are immense, and something that can start a life long project in learning about yourself and other people, making changes and knowing how to do it, and also about accepting who you are now and liking yourself, and choosing if you want to stay the same ...or not.

Workshops on this and other topics are 2 hours for just £5 a session, monthly or fortnightly.  Sharing ideas and options, discussion and learning about each other’s works. 

Providing your own resources like pictures, scrap books, paper and ink or buying items through the workshop as required e.g. printing service, materials.

Maximum of 6 people per session, with projects over 4-8 weeks including work outside the workshops.  

First one 9^th November 2011.