Coming Back to Life

Over the last few weeks, I have felt quite lost.  The best way to describe it is as if there is a part of me that I have misplaced and just can't quite remember where I put it down.  In fact, the whole last year seems like a bit of a blur that I am just waking up out of. 

It would be safe to say that I have not been myself, and I am only just realising it. I look around at things and see a lot of unconscious consumption of late: fast food (wince),  plastic tat, new things and envy. I look around and see not what I have, but what I don't. 

In and of itself, that is unusual for me.  I have long lived a life where I sought to live consciously and wholly on my own path.  I have usually strived to be happy above all else and "getting ahead" hasn't ever been in the picture.

I think it was the god-awful pregnancy that made each day so difficult that the easy route won time and time again, when I didn't have the where with all to choose differently. The life I was living slipped further and further from my values.

And its not just "things", there remains this overarching ache for some purpose in my life.  Its something that I lost when I gave up midwifery and haven't really found since.  Before I got pregnant, I was deeply content in living my day to day life with simplicity and meaning.  Without that focus, the old dissatisfaction has returned.

Reading that all back, I make it sound like I am unhappy.  But I am not at all.  In fact, I can confidently say I am probably the happiest I have been in my life.  I seem to have escaped Post Natal Depression this time round.  I have the two most beautiful children, fantastic friends and a wonderful husband. I am taking great pleasure in  my garden and knitting, sewing and cooking. Good, simple things, worth valuing above all else.

But slowly, I am stepping back into the world, recognising that tiredness and newness have a lot to do with my struggles of late.  They are not only forgiveable, but normal.  Our consumerist culture is addictive, that is probably why its so successful. The simple life is not an easy life, or really that simple...

And with re-awakening, comes that stretchy ache throughout my body, a few stumbling, bumbling steps back towards the path I want to be on.

I am better when things are simpler. I thrive on the practical, on doing, on making. I can to dig myself out from under all of this.  Maybe under it all I'll find what ever it is I am looking for.

Oh, and I am going to get my nose re-pierced...because I am not buying a sports car and every life crisis needs something.

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Other Things:

- I am back on Twitter, so you know if you need to see the inner workings of my mind, give me a follow (button in sidebar)

- Try this dairy free homemade "ice cream".  One of my childhood friends turned me onto it and it is AMAZING!