Firstly thanks to all who have sent me comments, thanks to Melba Lizardi for your constructive comment which I am going to try and answer because it really made me think. To do this I have to tell a story.
About 8 years ago I took on a pet shop with a close friend. We both had a lot of knowledge with animals and our joint skills complimented each other. I had recently lost my husband after a long happy marriage and my kids had moved on and had their own families.
I was back to square one ‘new start,base chakra!!’. The pet shop was run down but we were given a brilliant shop fit by a prominent animal food producer whose colours were red and white. It looked really good so I painted all the other bits the same bright red. The building was an old 3 storey in a terraced block and I lived for 3 years in the flat above the shop. My friend and business partner was not in the best of health anyway and of course business stress puts the blood pressure up. Red is very bad for high blood pressure but we didn’t think of it at the time, we were both so proud of the shop. Over a period of 3 years we both became more ill, I had a major operation and eventually needed another. Of course it can be said that we may well have been ill anyway but one big thing for me was all the anger that took place there, in the shop.It was not a good experience nor was it a happy building. I was never physically harmed but mentally and emotionally I was completely drained. I hate shouting and arguments, I hated it as a child, but had not experienced much of it in my married life. But here I was back in a ‘stage one’ situation and it was much worse almost everyday someone around me was angry (seeing red). If I apply colour therapy to this situation I would say “OK red and white make pink that’s unconditional love,” but I had painted nearly everything red because I love the colour. I hadn’t put much of the complementary around (shades of either green or turquoise). It all ended one night when a brand new water pipe at the top of the building burst and flooded right through to the shop, I couldn’t stop it and had to call the fire brigade for help ( big red fire engine) Nobody could understand why the pipe burst but it did. Water leaks are about unresolved emotions, I will write about that some time.
Having thought about that situation this is my concept on that personal dilemma. I do think that the shop had too much red colour in it because when I went upstairs into the flat, I looked out over a very green park and that was calming, but it couldn’t be seen so well from the shop. Another interesting factor was that the shop was in the area I had grown up in. I had moved away when I married aged 20,partly to put some distance between me and a hot tempered relative. I wonder if there is a part of me that associates that place with anger and unhappy times in childhood. There are perfectly logical reasons why the business failed, but there are not logical reasons as to why so many different people felt the need to vent their anger within and around that shop. The shop was sold, it never did well as a pet shop, and is now a pizza shop painted silver and white. I moved a long way from the area and have slowly recovered. I have some bright red around but in small areas, my little home is in an area that has happy memories and it has brought healing. Thanks again Melba Lizardi you have made me realise why I have enjoyed that book ( Attention, Seekers) so much.
