How Synchronistic Life Experiences Link to your Calling: the intuitive breadcrumb trail
My son was born at seven minutes past three one sunny afternoon in London. Seven minutes earlier that same day at 3pm my cherished Uncle Harry, had been laid to rest in his local cemetery in the heart of the Northern Irish countryside. One out, one in. Joy and sadness. Life and loss. Beginnings and endings.
It’s similar to the stories I hear in my meditation sessions with others. People will often mention overlaps in timings, dates or experiences in their lives that are playing on their minds, and on their emotions. Synchronicities. It helps me understand what, or who, they need to spend time with in the meditative state, in order to process emotional blocks. In doing so they access the messages and learnings that are held there for them, sometimes deep within their subconscious. It is in this process they can find meaning, and from meaning we establish freedom and peace.
It took some time for the overlap between my uncle and my son to sink in. I knew there was a higher message in there, something my attention was being drawn to. He did not have a son, and I initially though about this and what a good role model he was for me now. However I was also feeling immense guilt and regret that I’d not kept in contact much and let my busy London life take centre stage to my wider family. He had demonstrated to me a love of life and the importance of letting your loved ones feel loved.
Not surprisingly he had died doing what he loved - mountain biking on a motor bike in his mid 70’s! Where he unfortunately had a heart attack and died. We had spent my childhood summers together, with his daughter, my cousin of the same age as me. He was the fun uncle & dad who drove us round the fields of his home on vintage motor bikes, up and down crazy slopes - we’d be screaming with joy. My cousin always balanced on the front with me clinging on the back. It was definitely a sight straight out of the 80’s, before health & safety rules got their hands on good old fashioned fun, freedom and confidence building!
Harry was the perfect dad in my mind. There seemed to be nothing he couldn’t do. An all-rounder. Even looking back today with adult eyes, I really hope I can be that parent to my little one.
When my cousin and I reached teenage years, I’m sure Harry knew that meant only one thing as boys were starting to feature quite heavily in the conversation. So one summer in the early 90’s, instead of spending it like we normally did, he surprised my cousin and I by booking the two of us, the two girls, onto a Christian Aid mission….to Belarus, to spend time with the children of Chernobyl. Not exactly a regular summer. As teenagers, we didn’t understand the significance or enormity of this. Grabbed our sleeping bags and backpacks, and happily headed off into the unknown.
Off we went on a coach trip across Europe, barely stopping until reaching Minsk, I only recall one youth hostel in Poland! We did however stop to see Auschwitz, and the magnitude of that has never left me. I doubt I would have such a deep understanding of the scale and significance of the Holocaust had Harry not booked me onto that trip. I would also not have gained the gift of perspective, especially a higher perspective on society, that has been with me since spending time in Belarus with the survivors and victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
It is this perspective that has kept me grounded during my life, especially the years I worked in luxury fashion magazines; in an industry like that it’s easy to loose perspective of what’s actually important in life. Perspective has also kept me going during the toughest and most emotionally challenging times of my life; I had witnessed a side of life for people in Belarus that was so sad and cruel. Perspective and gratitude in our own lives are wonderful tools for balance and healing. When we heal we are in a stronger position to help others.
It is within all of this that I have also realised the importance of spending time with the synchronicities in life, and there was deeper meaning for me in this one with Harry. I had to go inwards and bring the gift of this meaning into the world. The details of the trip to Belarus I’d long forgotten as a whole. The overall feeling of groundedness and lessons in perspective had however landed early on and stayed with me. Harry’s passing made me go back to that time, and back to the details to learn what needed to be brought out into the light.
Back then, all those years ago in the early 90’s, when we arrived at our ‘summer camp’ accommodation; as we saw it, it was some sort of camp experience. I was confronted with a concrete block that felt like a victorian prison. To set the scene - the loos were a hole in the ground and the beds were also moulded from concrete. We were merged together with a set of teenagers who had been displaced after the Chernobyl disaster. Each day we swam in a river and hung out. There wasn’t much to do. They didn’t speak English, we didn’t speak Russian. It was years before mobile phones. We bonded over the names of American movies.
Looking back now this whole thing was likely not a good idea given the level of radioactivity. It was only a few years after the Chernobyl disaster. We’d each been given a geiger counter to check anything and everything, but they never worked, instead making beeping, crackling and whizzing noises that made zero sense. So we just ignored the small matter of radioactivity!
Word got out that one of the grown ups at ‘the camp’ was a KGB spy - so exciting for us, a real life spy! We found out later she was there to monitor the goings on and our interactions. Not surprisingly she stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the elderly ladies doing the dinners. She wasn’t a very good spy as she didn’t blend in at all. Her lovely clothes and hair, a tall slim attractive lady who never spoke. Belarus was extremely poor, the people there were in contrast to this lady.
During dinner, which was always inedible, she normally sat in the corner observing, but one night she got stuck in to helping out in her tweed suit, jewellery and perfume. It was corned beef slices for dinner, which to make matters worse were cut super thickly. I decided we could all try to eat them if they were sliced wafer-thin, so she spent the evening opening more tins of corned beef with us, and slicing - ‘thinly’ under my strict instruction! In doing so and by helping, and rolling her silk sleeves up, she transformed from another piece of cold concrete into a warm human being. There is a lesson in this for all of us.
However on the nights they served horse meat steaks I have to say we didn’t try to do anything with those - they were irredeemably! We went without, which is sad looking back because the food we were putting straight in the bin was all the local’s had. The only veg was cabbage, and we now know that was potentially contaminated cabbage. Just how dangerous the food chain was at the time to people there we will never find out.
A day came when we were told we were to visit a children’s hospital. We had been briefed that the children were sick with Thyroid cancer as this was the sickness from the nuclear disaster. Again I was confronted with another brutalist cold concrete building, this time like something out of a horror movie. Silent and dimly lit. Never since have I witnessed such desolation. Inside the cold concrete rooms were children in beds. Alone. We were asked to sit with them and to hold their hands. They largely looked lost and vacant, it landed slowly with me that they were likely dying, and definitely it seemed dying alone. Where were their families? I still don’t know. What we do however know now about the effects of Chernobyl, means that they were likely lost to radiation induced cancer themselves.
As I sat in the corridor, trying to keep it together, I was aware of one of the elders and her son from our group sitting at a bedside. They came out minutes later looking lost themselves to say the little girl in the bed had passed away. They were all she had as she passed over. That was something I blocked at the time, I was not ready for that at 16 ish years of age. However Harry’s death has brought that back to me now to be processed. In doing so it has made me think about how this still happens on a global scale today, how there are displaced children, and people of all ages, on their own in lands torn apart by war, famine, disease, natural disasters.
Another realisation for me more recently has been that the camp was not a summer camp but the teenager’s permanent residence. That they were displaced orphans from the disaster. This was their home and we were their visitors. What on earth we brought them that summer, apart from toiletries and medical supplies, I still don’t know. I can only hope that British teenagers in Levi jeans did something to make a difference. Hope. Goals. The wider world. This was a time well before low-cost airlines and globalisation, so the world was still a very big place that not everyone had access to, especially if you were poor.
I have also since learned that it was the start of a relationship between Belarus and Northern Ireland in the form of an exchange programme. This is something that still goes on involving local families having a ‘child of Chernobyl’ who they consider part of their wider family. Many of whom are much older now, like myself in their 40’s.
When we were there in Belarus, a special time was arranged, specifically without the gaze of the KGB lady, for us to meet one of the first scientists to go into Chernobyl after the disaster. It had been made known that he had thyroid cancer. I don’t remember the stats and the numbers he talked about, and his version of the story. I do however remember feeling his presence, and that has stayed with me. He was going to get the message across if it was the last thing he did, that the size of the problem was so much greater than the world would ever be told. That there was the potential for a lot of it to go unrecorded, under-recorded and un-researched. Fast-forward to 2019 when the world watched the Netflix version of Chernobyl and the disaster made headlines again. Prompting investigative journalists worldwide to get the new and shocking facts out. The dots of the scientist’s story started to join for me. For the first time the world became aware just how much of the fall-out, death toll and effects of the disaster were potentially ‘ignored’.
The UK Chernobyl Children's Project, which funds Belarus and Ukraine orphanages and holidays for affected children, more recently called for a determined effort to learn about the effects of the disaster. "Parents are giving birth to babies with disabilities or genetic disorders … but, as far as we know, no research is being conducted”.
I realise now that the Chernobyl scientist had wanted us to know so that he could put the truth out there. And as teenagers we were being given the insight that society is not always told the truth. My adult eyes have always been very open to this - stats are easily manipulated, lies are told. The power presses from the top down in all societies. How wise of this brave man to educate us. It’s always been important to me to make my own informed decision, sometimes I’ve had to go with my gut, my heart even, and without hard facts. At times I’ve looked at how much I can see society being manipulated in the form of control and fear. You don’t have to live under a dictatorship to live under complete control.
How does all this link to my calling? It’s time to answer the question in the title! Well, I’m still waiting for that part to fully land - and it will. I need to think more about how I can pass on the gift of overseas out-reach work to others. Follow in my uncle’s example perhaps, and in doing so keep his light alive in my heart. Definitely making sure my son has an experience of the world that he might otherwise be sheltered from. In the meantime I’ll continue to do what I set out to through Innerness- help people go higher, so they can raise humanity by raising themselves.
I hope that I can encourage you to seek out the intuitive breadcrumb trail in your own life. By looking deeply into and spending time with your own synchronicities, and the story behind them, you can gain invaluable wisdom on your path. Gain higher perspective, and most importantly - meaning.
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