Skip to main content

The Grey

My tiny home feels hollow today.   Devoid of the warmly lit tree so recently in residence, the flat chocolate milk corner is invisible.  Barren of garland and stockings, the timer of the washing machine echoes up the stairwell.  Things are in their place; rooms remarkable due only to the absence of color--- beige and brown and black and Grey ---inside and out. Children are driven back to their alternate homes---school---with their mother.  The stairs are silent.  My heart feels hollow today. 

This is when you have to be very careful.  Spring waits to be born, while the Grey winter growls and shrieks and demonstrates its power; promising frigid temperatures, more snow and freezing rain on the heels of so much ice storm devastation.

Caution.  On a day such as this, governed by the Grey; muted by snow; the temptation to allow it to blanket your mind with so much numbness is a reality not to be trifled with.  This month, bills arrive from well intentioned holiday purchases and whether it is the scale or the waistband, indulgences of eat and drink call up thoughts none too kind.

How do you bring buoyancy into a time when all you want to do is hibernate; to give in to the Grey?

While I will miss my son, gone back to school, but I look forward to hearing about his new classes.  I look to his reading week when he will come home again and allow me to fill him full of good food and his brother will tackle him with well intentioned hugs and bury him in requests to play video games. 

I have a vacation coming.  A luxury holiday. One not planned by me. A reward due to excellence at work by the Spouse.  This is my challenge from the Universe.  Accept a gift.  Recognize you deserve good things.  Leave your youngest for the first time ever (at 9 years old...) and spend time reconnecting with the Spouse at a place you could never afford.  Leave your comfort zone.  Fly on a plane.  Put on a bathing suit with your new, rounder shape.  Make friends.  Meditate and reconnect with yourself so you can avoid your health problems that appear when anxiety is present.  Be healthy. Enjoy.  Deny the Grey.

I have work coming.  This alone is enough for me to wish for the Grey blanket would descend on my head. Yet, I can almost see work for what it is:  a way to earn $ to do all the things that are my true purpose.  I can continue to explore all things with this job and have security and health benefits and a roof over my head.  It also allows me to look for other work.  I will fight the Grey on this one. 

My birthday looms.  Forty seven.  That number seems incredibly large and I often feel I am coming to my purpose too late in life.  But this is not true.  I have been on this path since my early 20's when I discovered a naturopath and how interconnected the body, mind and soul are.  I have lost my way several times, but I always end up back here looking, learning, growing.

Who do I want to be in 2014?

I want to be me.  I want to be authentic and real and present and aware.  If I can be these things---and it is a pretty heady list, the rest will fall into place.

As always, I am a Work in Progress.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It's All About the Here and Now

Today is a good day.   I have positioned my laptop on the dining room table in a way so that I can see the bird feeders.  Even through the closed doors I can hear the unique  warble of the yellow finches that have recently begun to frequent my yard.   This morning, cardinals-- the male brilliant in his scarlet coat and black mask -- returned, and as I watched, the male flew back and forth from the sunflower seeds to feed his mate .    Watching the birds gives me great joy and so I am trying to take the time to do this each day.  Were it not for this blog and how it makes me sit down and think, I can't say I would sit still long enough to do this. Taking time for myself is still a foreign concept. It is ironic that I have tried to attract birds to our pet free, quiet yard for years and the first year we have two dogs (one a squirrel/bird chasing terrier who launches hers...

Keeping Afloat in Darkness - When Robin Williams is Gone

A few weeks ago Robin Williams was everywhere you looked. People were desperate for details; to find the one thing that assured them that his situation was so different from theirs that they are safe; that it could never be them. But if you suffer from depression, the suicide of such a brilliant, successful, individual; part of our lives for so many years and responsible for so many laughs; looks like a leak in your boat. A friend asked me, "Ok but no one knows what the future holds.  Could he not see that?" For someone drowning in the dark spiral of depression, there is no future. There is only now. There is only nothing.  The boat is gone.  You are under. It is not about your spouse or your friends or your kids or career or fans or dogs or anything.  When the darkness squeezes it is all about now.  And now is nothing.  It is bleak and empty and so dark, you cannot see a bottom, or edges or surface ---just darkness. "Some...

Emotional Echos - Moments in Time

here are moments in time that define you. They are etched in your memory in a way that if you close your eyes you can see them again; feel them again. They are an emotional echo ---so strong, they leave an imprint on your soul. When I was eleven, my favorite "uncle" died suddenly, in my house, while I was off at the grandparents. He and my "aunt" came to town for a week long visit after moving away one year earlier and my parents decided to throw a grand party and invite all their old friends. My sister and I were sent to the grandparents for the weekend, and I was promised the week after we could come home and I could have "Uncle Bill" all to myself! I learned much later that early Sunday morning, my "aunt" woke up when my uncle accused her of stealing the covers. They both rolled back over and went back to sleep. Between then and 10 AM when she work up again, he had experienced a cardiac event (not his first I am sad to say) i...