Who are you really and how do you show up?

In memory of my Nan “Penny”​ October 200

Whilst I have been building my new programme “The personal transformation quest”, one of the things I have always done is to immerse myself into the programme to ensure my clients will gain the best experience and best results.

To share one snippet of the programme, we will look at our timeline and the people who have had the most impact on your life and for what reason.

One of those people for me was my “Nan”, known as “Penny” although her real name was Beatrice. The penny dropped (“aha moment”) whilst writing about her. For anyone who didn’t get the pleasure of meeting her. I will share a few moments, her personality and the characteristics about her.

My Nan passed away just before my Daughters 1st birthday in October 2008. She was poorly for quite some time before this, but she managed to get to see her great granddaughter of which I am so grateful for. I have so many magical photos of them together.

So from a very young age every summer I went to stay at my Nan and Grandad’s house (Walter – or Wally as he was known) in Weston Super Mare, it was the most amazing places to be. It was a big manor home converted into massive luxury apartments overlooking the coast. (yes I know WSM isn’t the most beautiful of our coastlines, but as a child I loved it)

My Nan always made my cousin and me feel so welcome when we were there, the LOVE that they shared with us whilst we were there was incredible. We lived everyday in the PRESENT moment enjoying and making the most of every minute.

In my Nan’s kitchen, she had one of those old fashioned twin tubs for washing clothes that you could sit on top of and it would literally move around the room whilst it was on the highest spin. Oh the giggles we had.

My Nan also let us join in with making her most fabulous cakes, they really were the best, and we always had a tea party. Nan had one of those tea trolleys, she had a knitted jumper on the teapot (yes they have a name but I cannot remember what it was called), then the different cakes and drinks were all assembled on the trolley that we took in turns to push through into the lounge.

My Grandad would be sat in his favourite chair with his newspaper, and his backy tin… blimey that was another thing I loved to do (now I definitely don’t condone smoking) but I loved making his rollies in this magical tin that he had.. He would say, blimey “Lorraine, I think there is a bit too much backy in this one”

My Nan would first thing in the morning, load up her wheelie trolley with all the things needed for a day at the beach, and we would set off down the hill, singing all the way down. Never did we moan about the walk back up later in the day.

We would spend the day at the marina, building sandcastles, playing in the sea, eating sandy sandwiches and having so much fun. Nan would always have those additional flags that we could add to the top of our castles. (so it felt even more grand!)

When we returned back to Nan’s place she would go into the kitchen to prepare our dinner, Grandad who had returned from the allotment, then entertained us. His humour was so infectious. The amount of times he would say “shh, Don’t tell Nan”. We had so much fun, and we all know that LAUGHTER is one of the best medicines.

At night time, we would go into the bathroom that was literally the size of my house I have now and have fun in the bathtub for what seemed like hours, loads of bubbles and the good old rubber ducks, and our Barbie dolls… and yes splashing was allowed too.

Then Nan would allow me to watch her put her hair in rollers, with the net and pins, before she went to bed most nights.

My Nan’s bedroom was like a palace, everything in its place and so shiny. She had the most magnificent grand furniture, and can you remember those mirrors with a handle, and the brushes to match, Sat so neatly on top of the lace doolies.

Now what was really magical, were the days the rest of our family joined us and we would sometimes go down to the Old Pier, walking right to the end, and down onto the rocks. Here we would sit and watch the sea lapping up against the rocks, we would do some rock pooling, but sometimes I just sat next to my Nan and Grandad, had the biggest cuddles and listened to them talk about when they were little. (The good old – back in my day….)

Now this is going back 40 years ago, we didn’t have mobile phones, flash TV’s, flash cars, digital gaming – But we had so much more richness in those days, quality time together as a family.

Life seemed slower, Life seemed calmer, Life seemed so different.

Now don’t get me wrong I absolutely LOVE my life now. But I don’t love how the digital world has taken over a bit too much for my liking.

Now I have mentioned the word magical already, so what word can I use now to describe the Christmas’s that we had together.

“Unforgettable, Touching, Memorable, Presenceful, Enlightening, Tremendous… I don’t think there is a word.

See the thing is my Mum and Dad split when I was two years old, but the most incredible thing was that as a family we all went to Nan and Grandad’s for Christmas. There must have been 30 of us all sat around anything that resembled a table, with the biggest most beautiful Christmas Tree by the huge window, overlooking the coast.

We all ate so much food, pulled crackers, told the cheesy jokes and wore the lovely paper hats… and yes you guessed, we chatted and laughed all day long.

Oh yeah Dad also used to buy the biggest cracker too from the wholesalers, that had the bigger gifts in, and we were expecting it to really bang as we pulled it, but it wasn’t much louder than the normal ones…

Now there is so much to tell, but what I wanted to point out was that my Nan was my rock as a child (an anchor some might say), she was the loveliest, kindest, humble person you could ever meet.

She would do anything for anyone, nothing was ever too much trouble for her, she even worked well into her seventies.

So by doing this activity myself I realised that a lot of my Nan’s personality and characteristics – Kindness, Love, Care, Sharing, Helpful, Humble, Genuine, Happy, Fun and Inspirational, is MY WHY I aim to be who I am.

Through life’s challenges, ups and downs, titles and status’s we adopt we do start to lose the real version of ourselves and start to find that life feels unbalanced and unaligned.

When you start to strip back all the labels and identities that we put on ourselves, or others put on us, We find our true authentic self.

So I am the true genuine “Lorraine” again just like my Nan was….

Now that was one powerful activity if I do say so myself…

Who had the most impact on you growing up and why?

I would love to hear your stories… if you feel uncomfortable sharing so openly on here, do drop me a message.

Oh and by the way if you got this far, THANKYOU. My grammar or spelling didn’t put you off…..