Making room to find my way

Finding peace and purpose in the chaos

About a week after coming home from the hospital with my husband after his stroke, I was sitting on the sofa, incense burning, candles flickering in the dawn light, journaling, listening to this playlist and I wrote the words, “I want to rip up my life.”

I was struggling, feeling isolated stressed, scared and under pressure. I wanted everything to stop and begin again brand new. There was little support in our hillybilly Spanish mountain village, my husband was learning to walk again, and my eldest son had left to live with a friend the day we returned from the hospital. I was terrified of feeding my husband something that could potentially kill him so we were living on broccoli and kiwi while I searched for delicious ways to serve up beans and veggies.

Not even a year after I wrote those words, my life was ripped apart and my heart crumbled into a thousand pieces when our son took his own life. He was twenty-one.

What followed was an actual living nightmare. It took eight months to escape what became a cruel and painful place to live and come home to lovely Northumberland.

Somehow the world kept turning, there was so much to do to settle back into life here and after nineteen years away it’s a bit of a shock. Seven months down the line we are technically being made homeless as the elderly people who very kindly opened their home to us when we had nowhere else to go, need their space back.

I am still swamped with appointments and form filling, visits to the doctors and the hospital are joined by twice-weekly job centre visits and therapy sessions. Two new items on my list have been speaking to the homeless department of my local council and now phoning estate agents to pounce on the slim pickings of private rental properties as soon as they become available.

Somehow I find room for normal life to take place squeezed in amongst the chaos. I still walk daily, managed a short camping trip, visited a museum and took a trip to our nearest city by train.

“Do you feel like Harry Potter?” I asked my 14-year-old when we boarded the train at our local station. “Err, no,” he said although I could tell he was a little bit impressed given it was his first time on a train. I loved the whole journey and the day in general, meeting with family, seeing the sights, eating pizza, and being a normal family on a normal day out. Even daily chores like ironing my son’s school shirts have provided a little lift. I must add that I haven’t ironed a school shirt since my own in 1993 so it was quite a novelty for me and weirdly soothing in a slow, mindful way.

Back in December, I wrote about a job interview I had and my plans to do all the things. Well, the things got too much.

I have been ‘doing’ since March last year and struggling to keep up with it all. I found myself constantly tired, more emotional than normal and always ticking things off a never-ending list.

I needed to rest so I gave in and allowed myself to let go of what was becoming too much to carry. I stopped putting pressure on myself to keep up with blogging and newsletters, I took a step back from coaching and as I didn’t have to actively look for work for a while, I stepped back from those activities and only focused on the most important tasks as I also tried to focus on myself.

Naps were back on as was reading in the afternoons.

Suddenly space opened up so of course, I wanted to fill it. This time I decided to fill it with lovely things. For much of my life, I’ve been trying to ‘better’ myself now it was time to try and feel better and allow myself to be helped.

I looked into ways to soothe and start to heal. I found Reiki and reflexology, I did volunteer tree planting, joined a woman’s circle and explored conscious connected breathwork. I went to a sound bath and made an effort to walk alone and with new people.

I have to be careful though and try to find some sort of balance because I discovered that there can be too much loveliness, especially when packed into a small space.

After a week of sessions and appointments my husband, who does all the driving around, couldn’t tell if he was coming or going and I was once again exhausted by all the things I’d piled on my plate.

One thing I’m keeping though is the flowers. Have I told you about the flowers? Oh the flowers, how lovely they are.

I often said that as part of ripping up my life to start again, I would do a floristry course.

I was only joking but something niggled at me and I managed to find a beginner hobby course at a local college. And what do you know? I just love it. I am not very good but I don’t think that’s the point. I just love going somewhere new for a couple of hours a week and making pretty things with pretty flowers. I enjoy not having to think about anything except the task at hand. To lose myself in the colour and scent of foliage, stems and petals is the loveliest thing in the world. Last week was especially lovely because we got to walk through the walled garden and pick things!

Not that I know what I am picking mind. After nineteen years away I am terribly clueless and know almost nothing of the flowers, plants and trees of my local area. I downloaded an app and have become a bit of a nerd, snapping away and trying to learn the names of what I see on my walks. Today in the woods, the wild garlic and bluebells were something else! Just a short time ago I would not have been able to tell you what I was seeing.

Lovely flowers

After a flurry of piling things on, I am slowly trimming my list even further and will try and concentrate on just a couple of things. The flowers, of course, will stay and after almost two months of writing not a single word, I am keen to get back into that again. I purposely disconnected and made myself explore other things without the need to document (except for photos) or write about them.

I got to a stage where I was thinking about how I would describe a particular activity, a walk along the river say, and the words I would use. All this thinking while I was on said walk. Of course, I got stressed trying to find the right words and missed the walk entirely.

It’s been nice to remove the pressure and just concentrate on being present which is something I still struggle with.

But a few days ago I sat in bed with my notebook and tea and started scribbling again. Some of what I wrote has found its way here but even if I’d not come up with anything useful it was a joy to return to the page with no particular purpose or outcome in mind. I found that I’d missed it.

I’ve missed the act of writing, of journaling, of sitting with my thoughts, of pouring my heart onto the page or emptying my mind of worries and doubts.

Once again I had put too much pressure on myself to write weekly, to share in everything and overcommit so that writing lost its healing ability and became another thing to do and another thing to beat myself up over when I couldn’t do it.

So where to now? Well, I am still here and still committed to writing but I won’t give myself deadlines or a strict schedule, I’m just not able to do that right now.

So I will keep showing up here but maybe not as often as before which will hopefully mean I don’t need to take such extended periods away. I have made more of my posts free to read and moving forward I will continue to share most of what I write for free. If you love what I do and would still like to support my work through a paid subscription, thank you, it means the world to me.

I know this has been a bit of a long read (it happens when I stay away too long) but I’d love to know what you have let go of (or would like to) which makes your world a little lighter and what you’ve discovered that lights you up.

As always thanks for being here.

With heart

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