By getting a handle on burning bacon, LOL!
Burning bacon!
My mum loved cooking bacon till it was really crispy. All well and good unless she forgot it was under the grill! Very crispy bacon rapidly became burnt bacon. Cue lots of smoke, which filled the kitchen, drifted into the living room and set off the fire alarm.
The Fire Brigade came and, thankfully, found nothing worse than cremated rashers. Mum was OK.
After the 10pm call-out (yes, Mum was cooking at weird times of day), I lay awake going over and over, how I could stop this from happening again, whilst knowing that asking Mum to stop cooking bacon like this would get me nowhere.
Meditation trains you in letting go
Can you recall a time when you’ve had a fixed thought in your head, circling around and around? UGH! I get really irritated with myself when my brain doesn’t want to stop. But being irritated doesn’t help, it just makes it worse.
Time to turn my best friend Meditation. He’s a magician (that’s how I think of him, a bit like Merlin coaching and mentoring King Arthur). Meditation takes you through a 4-step process breaking into the cycling cycle of recurring thoughts:
- Focusing (on the subject of your meditation)
- Noticing when your focus has wandered.
- Bringing your mind back to your meditation.
- Then letting go of what distracted you.
Rinse and repeat as necessary. I found I need around 10-15 minutes for it to work. When I’ve succeeded in calming my mind its like closing the door on the thoughts wanting to creep back in – very satisfying 😊
Over the next few months there were more burning bacon incidents and fire brigade visits as the evidence built up that Mum was developing dementia. The next challenge was getting her to accept care worker support, but that’s another story…
If you’ve got any questions about mindfulness meditation, I love to hear from you! email me and I’ll answer as soon as I can. xx Annya
