shapeshifting

Just a little reminder that I've moved blogging house to barefootwoman.co.uk. I hope you come on over.

x

When I stopped using Typepad for blogging and moved over here I thought I was just being thrifty and that home is where the dashboard is but no, it's more than that, it's ended. The Shapeshifting part of my blogging is over. It's been one of my favourites so far and has certainly been with me through a hugely important time in my life but it's done.

I've written a lot lately about the change in our circumstances and sometimes it feels as though all I ever do is write about how I'm making lemonade from lemons and trying to be all wise n'shit about it. Enough already.

I was never one for the minimalist movement or getting rid of all but five possessions not counting your underwear. Fine; good idea sometimes, but not for me. We've never lived a 'Rich' lifestyle but we've been able to pay bills and have some money to play with. Not international holidays money but certainly an Amazon habit and a decent camera and some small change for thrifting money. Not anymore. At least for the foreseeable future what we have is, er, what we have. It breaks, it doesn't get replaced. It gets a hole in it, I mend it.

Some days I get tired and incredibly anxious but increasingly I'm okay with it. Increasingly, I'm able to see just how much we've gained. What we have that can't be lost that easily and the riches we can still have if we just reach out for them. And we're still financially better off than the vast majority of the world's people and my negativity is in danger of becoming a habit so I should just shut up and move on.

I'm serious about my aim to head into Life Part 2  happy, mindful, healthy, contributing, strong, creative and able to find moments of true serenity. I'm proud that I've already travelled some distance and that this path wasn't so far away after all, it was just a little overgrown. This path is what I want to write about now. Write it, photograph it, draw it, sew it, dance it, heal it, live it. I want less of a journal/confession booth and more of an ongoing chronicle of this exploration.

As any one who has known me for any length of time will know, I like a fresh start. Shapeshifting has been my online home for a while now and it's been wonderful but I need to cut loose, pack it up in a special box and store it away somewhere safe. It'll stay online here for a while but I'll be posting at www.barefootwoman.co.uk, a name some of you may recognise from an old Gmail address of mine that I've always loved. It seems to sum up where I am now.

Thanks for reading Shapeshifting and for talking with me in comments and emails - you are amazing. You are also most welcome to join me at the new place.

P.S. There's nothing there yet but feel free to add it to your reader.

Dear Universe,

Thank you.
Thank you for the chance to be present for the wedding of Sas and Ash - all that weddings should be and infinitely more. Love.
Thank you for Evie being an angel throughout the wedding and on both the drive there and the drive home. Love.
Thank you for the amazing women in my life. I am honoured to call them friends. Love.
Thank you for a handsome man in a suit and remembering that given the chance, I so enjoy his company. Love.
Thank you for a sunny, hot day and nothing that had to be done. Love.
Thank you for a lost dog, her happy owner and an invitation to a great party. Love.
Thank you for Nellie Bean and Jackson. Never lost. Love.
Thank you for Nature's abundance found in fields. Love.
Thank you for a lonely chicken, a new feathered family and less worry for an already over-burdened unfeathered family. Love.
Yes, thank you for Bee. Queen Bee. Love.
Love, Me.

x

Eggs. Three brown eggs a day. But no blue MeiMei eggs.

This afternoon I was in the garden and lifted a straggling vine to fix it to the wall. Beneath it is an old half-barrel with the remains of last year's compost in it, unplanted this summer because the hens just dig up new plants. And in the barrel...seven slightly mucky-looking blue eggs.

That's abundance.

Money is usually the main thing for us now and although I can't lie and say that I sail through the stress in a zenlike state - some days my jaw stays clenched and my adrenalin levels high from dawn 'til dark - I am trying to see an up side.

Evie gets frustrated and sad because there are so many things that she can't have but those things are usually plastic, nasty and would hold her attention for about 20 minutes. The things she does have are priceless. When we moved here two years ago she wouldn't go in the fields because "they're full of poo" and now she runs out into them laughing and twirling. She loves to go fossil-hunting in the ploughed earth (rich pickings) and paddling in the streams. She says,"I'm so glad we live here...we're lucky."

We are. She is. And maybe she'll go a few more years able to put the lack of plastic into perspective. I hope so.

Similarly, I am learning to truly value what we have. At the moment I see the potential loss of our home, hence the jaw/adrenalin combo, but I am trying to see past the anxiety because there is something past it. Because it may not happen. If we give up just about everything else, we can stay here and right now I believe that to be the best option for us all. It's not just the landcape and the freedom, it's the local school and the local grandparents. Local cousins and local fossils.

Yesterday I had to pull out of a gathering with dear friends for a special occasion. I just couldn't do it financially and despite the offered kindness of angels, something told me I had to stay and feel this. Stay here. Face the loss, hold the space and feel what was happening with me.

Thankfully we had a break in the rain. I mowed grass, pulled weeds from herb gardens, cleaned out the chicken house, mopped floors, folded clothes. I stayed down in my body, not up in my head. I told my mental dervish to sit down, rest and let my body take charge.

Turns out, it was more than up to the task, a fact I'd all but forgotten. I hate to get all convert on you but even after just three classes of yoga and ten days of juicing, I'm remembering how it feels to sink down, ground and connect with real life even just for short spells at a time . Of course, a good 25 years of my life were spent working with this body, building my knowledge of it, learning how it could interpret thoughts and feelings. I'm not starting from scratch. Bodies always remember, good and bad. I think about the bad maybe too much right now, so it feels like such a gift to reconnect with the good.

And it's true, doing this for myself, reconnecting with life, means I stand a better chance of teaching Evie. Teaching her that she can be a Power Ranger and wear old wellies. Works for me.

That lunar eclipse turned my brain into Spaghetti Junction last night. No sleep for the inspired. But no clear thoughts either. If I was to write a long (too long) post about my interwoven thought processes right now it would include these threads:

• Online business coaching is producing multi-levels of clones and if the only business they have is telling other people how to run their business telling people how to run their business, who is actually doing anything? Making anything? Creating anything? I see the need for business coaching and there is some incredibly inspiring, fresh stuff out there but ohmygod sometimes it's like standing in a hall of mirrors. Of course I'm not an entrepreneur and I don't need to read any of it but when it's good, it's good. I like good now. Good's cool. Cloning isn't.

• Some of us may have no urge to take over the world but we still want to be part of it. We still want to have left some small positive imprint. And look, Bindu has been reading my mind.

• Being a catalyst for positive change among your immediate circle is a wonderful thing. The common ground you probably share will mean your interpretation of something is more likely to spark change than would the words of someone living an entirely different life. Why throw a whole lot of seeds on stoney ground when you can watch them thrive in your own back garden? I have been inspired to make real change by a number of close friends recently. Even though I've known for years that what they say is true, it took their voice and perspective to bring it home to me.

• Building an emotional immune system (my kind of parenting).

• Age ain't nothin' but a number. Voicing my trepidation of turning 50 in two years has made me realise that the number is simply a marker of how long I've been here. It in no way defines who I am while I'm here. I could as easily label myself as having arrived at 09.30 GMT. Who cares right? But I do think that in my mind it signifies an age at which I really should have grown up. And that's what I'm aiming for. Maturity. A smidgeon of wisdom from the many lessons I've lived through. Less manic intensity. Waaaay more serenity (no, not that one). Serenity is what I've always hoped I'd find when I grew up; I guess the unnamed project is a way for me to get there.

• I love the flavour. I'd forgotten just how much. Next year, now I know to pick before they flower, I'll be harvesting my own.

• Tasha Beagle has been rehomed bringing my charges down to three. And, with so much less to do now (there were seven dogs when I started, three have been rehomed and one passed away) I'm only going to visit them once a month. I have been given three Tuesdays a month to do something else. That's good.

• Megan Matthieson

• Restless. I'm restless. I'm getting that 'throw everything up in the air and see where it lands' feeling. I do not know if or when I'll act on that feeling. I do not know what I'd like to see in that new arrangement. I just have a feeling that there is space for something else. Something outward-facing and important to me. Something real and gritty and true.

• It may be wrapped in something imagined and shiny but still true.

• Thursday night is yoga night.

• The project...it is unnamed.

• Awesomised conversation and laughter with Susannah at Cafe Lucca. Also, standing at one of the busiest corners in Bath while she pokes her upper arm and shouts,"I mean, what the F*CK is THIS?" much to the amusement of me and many passers-by. @photobird...keeping it real.(N.B. It's perfectly normal triceps, in case you're concerned.)

• Dreaming of teaching people to fly by firing them out of massive cannons. I tried it, it was AWEsome.

 See? Scrambled. Good, but scrambled.

x

I owe my body a huge favour. Several. Many. I owe it. It's taken me to some wonderful places, literally and figuratively, and I'm now asking it to take me on the second half of this adventure.

Now, I want to talk.

Now, I want our relationship back.

Now, after some years of ignoring it in favour of more cerebral pursuits.

I've got some nerve.

Thankfully it hasn't packed a bag and left just yet. We're bonding over yoga and I'm treating it to daily green juice. Between you and me, I think the juice is going to swing it for me.

Here's some juicy goodness for you:

• The amazing Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Life.
• Joe Cross and Phil the Trucker keeping it real.
• You could always Reboot Your Life.
• Pick a vegetable and read what it'll do for you.

That up there is sliced cucumber, all ready for juicing. It makes your drink quite refreshing. Mmmm.