I have had several days of rest. I have been focusing my energy on present time, taking care of the daily things, rising to potter in the house and garden, make my first priority getting out into the fresh air to exercise, (just a short 20 minute walk with Jasper) before we head to the local dog park to socialise. Dropping Jasper home, going to my favourite place for coffee and lunch with my book, doing what I need to do or get for a few hours so I can arrive home and spend the afternoon pottering again, resting, reading, spending quiet togetherness time at home with my dog, with my thoughts, with my feelings, with myself.
I am beginning to see I have feared alone time, after many years of isolating, feeling it may be a way of disconnecting. However, when chosen often alone time is about connecting with myself and realising, when I am out and about when my soul is calling me home to withdraw for a while to a quiet inward place where I can reconnect with my self and my inner life. I see now it is a precarious balancing act this inward and outward dance, one in which my soul is calling to me and asking for my attention in every moment.
When I am in the moment I am filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Today it was seeing the shape of the oak leaves on the trees we walked past on our walk. It was feeling the touch of the breeze on my cheek. In that moment of presence and connection I am humbled with the realisation that I am alive, and often a deep, deep grief will bubble up as I have realisations of other moments of connection or when connection was taken away, when others left due to illness, death or wanting to go far from me. I understand more now why. I accept it more now. I see how it wasn’t always personal but I did personalise it at times. Often life was just living itself, it wasn’t out to hurt me, but it may have hurt me just in living itself.
This afternoon I have to break the pattern of the past few days in which I drew close to home for the afternoons. I have my two therapy appointments at 3 pm on Tuesday and Thursday. Part of me is telling me I now need to be done with therapy. That I can cope alone. I know I can, but part of me would miss the therapy space. Its just a voice in my head at the moment. I will discuss it this afternoon with my therapist.
I wanted to share the following meditation with you today, which really echoed how I have been feeling about ‘home’ lately. As I have begun to feel more ‘at home’ in myself and seeing how others distract and run and try to keep too busy this reading by Tian Dayton has resonated with me more. In sharing these wise words here in the hope they may touch someone else.
Home and Freedom
My home is a place of freedom and creativity. It is a place where I can be fully myself, where I can relax and let my hair down. My home holds within it a kind of comfort and safety that allows more of me to come forward. I can relax here, move about at my own pace, think my own thoughts pursue my own quiet and pleasant routines. The world will not intrude upon this sacred space today – I will guard it with love, understanding its value to me. I have every right to protect my home from harm. This is my own cosy little world and I will take care of it. I will not underestimate what it has to offer me.
I will love at home
Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead, decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man (or woman) can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the only tame place in a world of adventure, it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.
C.K. Chesterton.
Emerging From The Dark Night 