New Year

I trust everyone had an excellent holiday season. As we move into a new year…we embrace January.

I love January….a time of planning and reflection. A clean slate…and empty and shiny new planners….

As I begin this new year my goals are many…but they aren’t exactly brand new goals…just expanding on the paths I’ve already formed.

This year finds me wanting to retreat….recover….and to just kind of rest.

Right now I am finding myself backing into the shadows, out of the spotlight…clowning has taken a huge step backwards….and I feel for right now that is ok.

This month all my appointments start back up again…all the bloodwork, all the tests….and if I’m being honest….I am terrified. I can’t think about a mammogram right now without crying….I have stuffed my feelings all year….and now….here they come….and I am forced to deal with it.

My Instagram feed is now gardening…some fashion…but mostly flowers and sourdough bread and homemade soap. I’m embracing embroidery and just ordered a new Kindle for myself…

I feel my shoulders relax when I scroll through pictures of beauty…nature…quiet…all of the things that make us go back to simple.

My parents always gardened. I remember winter nights they would go through catalogs and order fruit trees and decide what they were going to plant. We had a compost pile and my mother canned…and I guess that just feels so familiar I have to continue it somehow.

I love plants and flowers and baking sourdough bread…I love making cold processed soap …it gives me joy to decorate my home…it makes me smile when laundry is going and bread is baking and birds come to eat from my bird feeders.

In the chaos and tears….in the puddles of awful messes…I find that the only way I can pull myself out…is to go back to the simple…

Our bodies are fighting….the stresses of my job and life are beating me down….and in order to not go under…there must be a distraction…my hands must get in the mix of soil…I must feel the dirt…I must see things grow…

I must retreat….and for now that feels weird…I am not on a stage of any kind right now…it feels strangely quiet….I feel like I should be going someplace but there’s no place to go.

For the first time in 21 years I find myself with time to read, plan and be present in the lives of my family….and that for the first time ever feels like I am cheating…like I am being lazy….bit I think this year would be best described as Recovery…

I trust this year you love yourself enough to heal the hurt to heal the sickness, the trauma, and to realize that before we can help anyone else…we first must be sure to help ourselves.