Tina Bettison: Inspiration for Hungry Souls

A strange thing happened when I met Paul, my fiancé, something I was really not expecting. Having spent 13 years living alone and being Miss Very Independent Woman, I relished the thought of having someone to share life with. I also relished the thought of having the financial burden of keeping the roof over my head lifted for a while and looked forward to the opportunity to take stock of what I wanted to do with my life.  Paul gave me the freedom and the space to be me and to express myself in any way I wanted to.

For the first time in my life I stopped trying to be who and what I thought I should be, and took a pause to see who I really was.  But far from feeling liberated, I actually then lost my voice. By this I mean I lost all sense of direction and purpose. If I was no longer Miss Very Independent Woman, then who was I? I could choose to do anything in the world, but nothing really felt like it ‘fitted’ me. I found it almost impossible to write because I really didn’t feel I had anything to say. I didn’t even feel like I had much to write in my journal. Having taken the pause to see who I really was, I couldn’t see anything at all.  I felt like I had jumped into an abyss of silence.

Now in many ways this does not make sense.  Here is a wonderful man, giving me a gift of a freedom many women would kill for, but all I could do was take to the garden of our new home to do a lot of weeding and clear out years of neglected undergrowth (the irony of the metaphor is not lost on me now!).

I was lucky for a while to be involved in our local community radio station, presenting two shows every weekend for 2 ½ years. By hosting and co-hosting these talk shows, I could at least take a step back from trying to find my voice by giving the opportunity to my guests to voice theirs. I loved it and I found an element of my own voice through it. In the mix of things that makes up me and my expression of me is the ability to help others tell their stories and a love of doing so.  When the station went bust, it was like being silenced. I mourned the loss of my mouthpiece, disappeared into the greenhouse and tended the tomatoes.

When I reflect on this – and reflecting and pondering is something I do a lot of – I can draw parallels with those months of clearing out the garden and the underlying process of clearing out myself. All the time I was desperately trying to find who I was, and what I wanted to do with my life, I was actually clearing away all that I didn’t want; all that no longer worked and was no longer a way in which I wanted to express myself. The years of striving to make a living and make a difference had also been casually growing some unchecked weeds and rampant vegetation.

I love gardening both as an activity and a metaphor. The physical labour of pulling weeds, chopping back and pruning, digging over the newly cleared earth ready for planting new ideas grown from seeds or from cuttings collected from friends and family, is a great way of keeping the body occupied while the mind has a chance to do its own clearing, weeding and pruning.

maisie admires the newly cleared veggie patch and the gently pruned apple espalier

And so by pulling out and letting go of the weeds growing in my soul, and by pruning back those activities which no longer fed my soul, I created a new and fertile ground in which I could plant new ideas about who and what I wanted to be. This wasn’t, and isn’t, always an easy process – some weeds are decidedly keen to stay put and take a lot of sweat and tears to dig out. But there is something intensely satisfying about finally seeing a large patch of bare earth in which you can create an entirely new expression of yourself.

So through the summer I planted as I cleared and tamed the unruly wild veggie patch, and as autumn came I enjoyed the fruits of my labours – plentiful courgettes and squashes, wonderful apples, flavoursome tomatoes and outdoor cucumbers. As autumn turned to winter and the garden started to die back and hibernate, I also noticed how important that part of the natural process is. Pruning and clearing the dying vegetation brought to mind how we all need to die back a little from time to time, we need to hibernate in order to build up the reserves for another spring.

I came to realise that my time of apparent hibernation, this time of wondering who I was and what on earth did I have to say, was actually a necessary part of letting go of the old so that the new had not just space, but also renewed energy to grow. It wasn’t that I had lost my identity or my voice – though it surely seemed that way – it was still there,  it just that I was changing the way I expressed myself, and that change required a process of death and hibernation, pruning and clearing as well as finding new and interesting ideas to grow.

I also started to realise that when I embraced my inner fears of loss and failure and the thought that I had nothing else to offer the world except a clean house and a lot of tomatoes, a new voice could be heard speaking with quiet authority over the din of fear. I say a new voice, actually it was a very familiar voice but one that I had not heard for quite a while, rather like a forgotten and re-discovered flower that emerges when you clear away the undergrowth. I’d not heard her because she doesn’t compete for airtime. She just waited until I was ready to hear her voice above the others.

Her voice is actually my true voice. It is what I know for sure. It’s my philosophising and pondering. It’s my taking a spark of an idea and making connections and reflections that other’s wouldn’t think of. It’s my curiosity and how I think.

In fact I am going to share with you a thought from The Universe, which I received a while ago.

‘Tina, it’s the way you think. That’s your purpose. It’s never been about the work you choose, what gifts you develop, or what niche you fill – let these be for your pleasure. Think as only you can think, which will lead to feelings only you can feel, from which connections will be made, lives will be changed and worlds will come tumbling into existence’.

Ok, I know everyone who is signed up to that particular email list got that same message on the same day, however, this one really resonated for me. And it told me it was time, time to let my voice be heard and time to help others find and share their voice too. Time to share my reflections and pondering on life through my articles, blogs and books, and time to share the stories of others through broadcasting my own radio show from my website.

Through all the weeding and pruning, you discover there are key plants in the garden that provide the backbone to your planting scheme. Through all the weeding and pruning of your ‘self’, you discover there are key talents, experiences and skills that are the backbone of what you have to offer the world. And there in the pruning of the apple trees, I discovered what I had to say and found my voice again.