Life around the corner

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”               from Kindness, poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Life around the corner (that corner that I got to after I got out of the mud and went a little way down the path and found a bend in the road and I took it) is sunny and warm; with blue skies, green grass and kind friendly people having fun.

This has surprised me because they are the same people who were there before, when I was stuck in the mud, yet for some reason I failed to see their kindness, I did not notice their friendliness and I most certainly had no time to join in their fun.

OR …

Is it that I am acting more with kindness and friendliness to those people and they are responding to my warmth and opening their hearts. We are laughing, having fun together.

It wasn’t that I didn’t chat before, or I that I was unkind, or unfriendly; it was just that when I was in the mud I had to keep going or I would get stuck. I had to keep going and going and had no time for idle chit-chat. I could not extend a hand to help others because that may have pulled me under and make me sink. I had to protect myself from the storm clouds above, from the driving wind blowing in my face, and the mud below and ahead of me.  I was so busy protecting myself and looking down at the mud that I did not notice the people and their situations and their faces. Those people are people – just like me. Sometimes they have been in mud of their own, and sometimes not.

Now the road is clear and I am looking up at their faces.

I can hear their stories – of the young gentleman at the firm where I had my car serviced who did not like the atmosphere at his previous job; of the lady from whom I bought my new kitchen pots who has a husband who is unwell; and the twice-divorced receptionist at my lawyers with a 30 year old son whom she adores, yet is lonely living on her own.

I can see their friendliness – the doctor’s receptionist embracing yet joking about their new computer program; my hair-dresser encouraging me in a new style for my hair; the sales-lady in the department store offering colour suggestions for my clothes.

I can feel their kindness – of that same sales-lady taking me around the store to find some matching accessories; of the manager of the department store allowing me to take my time with my purchases and then escorting me down the lift (elevator) as it was a bit spooky being the only one left in a huge department store 45 minutes after closing time!

These are interactions I am having with people in my everyday life as I now have an everyday life. I am now doing everyday things – an annual doctor’s check (six months overdue), hair-cut (four months overdue), car service (two years overdue, so low was its priority), buying new pots instead of putting up with old ones with no handles, luxuriating in buying new clothes rather than wearing the same clothes day in and day out for four years; and attending to my own legal affairs after years and years of attending to joint affairs.

In life around the corner, I have time for everyday life and within that everyday life I have found kindness and friendliness. It is all around me, everywhere I look, flowing from the crucibles of human life stories, pouring forth for me to drink and quench my thirst.

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Image.courtesy[digitalart]/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

spring into summer

After over three and a half years of looking towards spring with hope and optimism while still trudging through the mud of a cold bleak winter, I feel that winter is finally over. Spring is here. Summer is on its way. More importantly, the trudging is finally over. There is now a spring in my step. This is a warm bright place to be and I am singing.

I have therefore changed the name of my blog from ‘Almost Spring’  to ‘Spring into Summer’. I am no longer looking towards spring, I am in spring and I am bouncing.

I have altered the tagline from ‘transforming my life from we to me’  to ‘finding my voice and speaking my truth’. I have also revised the information in the pages and sidebar. I feel that these changes more correctly reflect where I am in my life.

Spring is a season, not only for new beginnings, but also for shaking off the winter blues and getting ready for the warm summers ahead. I see this time in my life as one in which to spring-clean or tidy up my old world, letting go of anything that does not serve me well; as well as planting seeds ready for their bloom in the summer to come. I see it as an exciting time of trying out new things, as well as planning and readying myself for the vision I have for a wonderful future, a vision of living true to my own beliefs.

The planning stage for that vision is finding my voice and speaking my truth.

My journey continues. I hope that you will join me on the path ahead.

 

 

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Image courtesy of [africa] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Back to normal

It has been ten months now since I first had the sad news about my mother’s illness and for the next eight months I had been flying back and forth to care for her, alternating each two weeks with my sister. Since her death, I have been playing catch-up with people I had not seen for a while, and spending more time with my children. This week, I have finally come down to earth and am at home, and will be home now for a while.

Over the ten month period, when I wasn’t caring for my mother in the world over there, I was still dealing with a lot in my world over here, so much that the ground actually moved. The business was sold, the marital property settlement contract was signed and, over the last three months, the processes of that settlement have finally taken place. All those big grey clouds weighing me down – it seems to me as if they lifted together. So there have been huge changes in my life and now I can finally breathe again. As I sit here in reflection alone at my desk I realize that I am now in a totally different space since I last took breath.

I began to think back how it was before that frantic ten months began and I realized of course that life was not ‘normal’ for me then, although I was clinging on to a sense of normality by bravely following a structured routine. I have done that quite a lot over the last three and a half years since my husband left me, propping myself up with routine to instill a sense of normality.

So I need to go back further, much further, before I was in a normal space.

By “normal”, I mean having those aspects of life that are dear to you (family, friends, work, career, hobbies, community) and you devote a certain amount of time to each whether as part of your daily, weekly or monthly routine. Then there is the annual cycle of either school or work year, interspersed with festive occasions such as Christmas and taking an annual holiday. That to me is normal.

I thought back to before my husband left me, and yes there was a kind-of stability and a sort-of annual routine but the marital split came on the back of a previously unsettling three -year period in the business … and before that my husband getting sued for standing up for Tasmania’s forests (described previously) … and before that my son’s cancer diagnosis … and before that the four year ‘save-the-forests’ campaign … and before that the older children moving out of home … and before that renovating properties … and before that …

In fact when I thought carefully, I realized that it has been sixteen years since I have had real normal, a steady routine, without some crisis or catastrophe or issue to deal with on the side of my life, without something beyond normal life requiring my attention.

It has been sixteen years since I have had that luxury of sitting down and doing a jigsaw puzzle. I used to do one every year. I have not done one for years. I think that is a sign for my return to real normal. That I now consider that there truly is nothing pressing for me to do, and I have the time to sit down and do a jigsaw puzzle.

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Image courtesy of [SalvatoreVuono] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net