2018, finally a new year! And, I think I am not alone in gratefully receiving the symbolic freshness of a new beginning that any new year offers.
For me, along with so many of my friends and clients, 2017 felt like one of those years that demanded something of me that was intense, exhilarating, frustrating and, at times, downright terrifying. [Read more…]
Friday morning, I wake, put on the kettle, and feel my ever increasing To-do list banging at my temples. Recently relocated, I feel I will never get on top of all that needs to be done to have even a modicum of stability in this new life I have led my daughters and self into.
The head might have won; it so often does, always the louder, older brother deafening out the gentler tones of a wisdom with nothing to prove. But I recently made a promise – to myself and a roomful of students: Find my No’s and remember that it doesn’t all need to happen now. And, so I nervously turn my back on the To-do List’s shouts, head to my car not my laptop, and drive off feeling like a kid playing hooky.
Last night there was an hour when I thought I would need to take my eldest daughter into Accident and Emergency. And, beyond the panic of this temporary health emergency, now abated, I met a truth inside of me that I have long fought to deny.
I realise that my life mantra is based on self-sufficiency. I’ve single-mothered for 7 years, since my daughters were two and four. I’ve learnt to do every piece of life alone, taken pride in my resilience. I developed methods of carrying both girls, heavy with sleep, in from the car after long days out. I learned to erect Ikea furniture, mend washing machines, mow the lawn. I found ways to do long distance flights with two small children in tow. I made peace with broken nights of sleep; and found that even though nothing feels so lonely as returning to an empty bed after clearing up one’s child’s vomit in the early hours of the morning, even that I could do. And, all the while, I thought I was building up an inner strength that would mean I could do it all for my girls.
What scares me now…
Peaceful after two weeks on retreat, I sit in a familiar coffee shop, and feel a stirring of fear in my belly at the prospect of flying back to London. Returning to a place and life that so often hi-jacks my serenity with its tyranny of to-do lists and goals not yet accomplished.
Will I forever sit in this unanswered question of how to sustain my retreat-self tranquillity and do it all with joy and ease? I fear those tight layers of restriction that shackle themselves so subtly onto me when my face is turned against them. I fear that once again I will lose myself so deeply in the doing I will not wake again until my next Californian summer.