Tag: love

happiness, inspiration, life, motivation, Personal

Happiness – how I try and catch it

Clementine Fraser
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Biggest son when he was smaller, in a moment of joy.

 

Happiness is something we are all supposed to be striving for and when we don’t feel it we wonder how we can catch it, pin it down, keep it.

 

I think it is useful to differentiate between happiness and joy. Sometimes we can be quiet happy when other times it’s bubbles of joy floating through us.  When I was looking up images for happiness on Shutterstock it seemed to be mostly photos of people with arms wide open, faces to the sky. Happiness as an open feeling is something I can connect to. It can be a giant feeling. But sometimes happiness is a quiet secret moment, a gentle glow. And happiness looks and feels different to different people.

 

Something I hear a lot is: ‘you’re such a positive person! how do you stay so happy all the time!”. The big secret is that I don’t. No-one can really maintain a high level of positivity constantly (if you can – get in touch and tell me how!). Like motivation, positivity and happiness need fuel – you have to put stuff in to get stuff out.  I’m not always good at it either, but when I actively chase the happiness, usually I can catch it. Continue reading “Happiness – how I try and catch it” →

life, Personal, self care

Tragedy, Heartbreak, and Healing

Clementine Fraser

Love is easy to write about. It’s easy to read. We all want it, in some form or another at least. But what happens when your heart breaks? When it seems like it will never be able to love again? When you start wondering if you even believe in love anymore?

Romance stories always include a bit of tragedy, a bit of tension and conflict and misunderstandings to keep the readers or viewers desperate to find out how the happy ending is reached. But there’s usually no doubt that there is a happy ending to be had. We can watch the arguments and hurt without any real worry that this is it; the end of love.

Real life doesn’t quite work like that. Loss of love, especially love you thought was pretty solid, or love you assumed you’d work out and everything would be okay, is a wound to the soul. It turns your world around. Things you took for granted are no longer there, and with their disappearance goes a lot of your trust of the world working out okay. Continue reading “Tragedy, Heartbreak, and Healing” →

Musings on Fiction and Tropes

The Romantic Hero – Has He Really Changed That Much?

Clementine Fraser

 

Think about the romantic heroes you love. The ones from your childhood, the ones who formed your idea about what romance looks like. Now think about what you like today – how far have they changed?  Shows and films and books and tropes get tweaked, but I believe that, at heart, what we look for in romantic heroes has remained much the same.

 

The first romances in Western literature were those that stemmed from the chivalric adventure tradition, but began to focus on courtly love and devotion from the 14th Century. Familiar characters might include Sir Lancelot, whose love for Guinevere is legendary, and the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde.  From the late 18th century the romance had moved from the gothic adventure to a story with a female protagonist focusing on the development of a courtship.  The proliferation of the novel and the lending library and serialisation is likely to have had a big impact on the shifting nature of the romance. The heroes of these works exemplified the traits valued by the age they were in, but the fact that they still resonate with us says much. Continue reading “The Romantic Hero – Has He Really Changed That Much?” →

Musings on Fiction and Tropes

The Biter Bit – the real curse of the Vampire, and why we love them.

Clementine Fraser

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Vampires have always seemed very tragic to me.

 

I was thinking about how people become the way they are – how, for instance, a happy friendly child turns into a stone-hearted and cruel sadist. When we talk about such a person, we always knowledgeably point out how a formative event in someone’s life influenced the way they later became. I admit that sometimes I wonder if they were always a little pre-programmed that way.

 

It’s the same for vampires.

 

We’ve all seen or read vampire origin stories. The ‘birth’ of a vampire is always depicted as violent. Traumatic. Sometimes it’s a matter of choice to escape an apparently worse situation, others its out of a simple desire to keep living.  Sometimes it is forced on the person. Whatever the trigger for the transition to vampire, it isn’t just a change of outfit and some make up – it always seems to involve massive physical stress. The psychological pain and confusion must be pretty intense also. Out of this trauma we can see a path of tragedy unfolding. Continue reading “The Biter Bit – the real curse of the Vampire, and why we love them.” →

life, Musings on Fiction and Tropes, Personal

Friendship – in life and in fiction it keeps me going

Clementine Fraser

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One of the most precious things to me has been the friendship of those who come into my life. Marriage breakup, work stress, self esteem issues – all have been made easier by the love of my friends. Our friends reflect us to ourselves. Often we have friends who serve different needs in us. We have the crazy friend, the sweet friend, the super awkward friend, the friend who loves super cheesy music and doesn’t care what anyone thinks (I think that last one might be me..)

 

We also have the friend who listens to us for hours when our hearts bleed out through tear tracks on our face.

 

The friends who laugh with us and comfort us are precious. The treasure that they are can be overshadowed by a focus on romantic relationships, despite the fact that romantic relationships can often end in heart-ache and true friendships tend to last forever. I’m sure we’ve all had that wonderful joy of seeing a friend after many years and feeling as if no time had passed at all. Friends love you even when they discover that you were the one who left the passive aggressive reminder note that they’re telling someone else about, and when you’re brave enough to tell them it was you they laugh for 10 minutes straight and then hug you. Continue reading “Friendship – in life and in fiction it keeps me going” →