appreciation

Spinning Out

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One of the things I tried while trying to escape myself was spin class.

Last winter, my yoga studio shut down once again because of covid. I didn’t know what to do with myself. This time, I was working, so I had less time to develop a home practice. This time, I was already struggling with my mental health, and yoga had been what was keeping me afloat.

For awhile I just floundered. Then my sisters urged me to try spin.

After the initial shock to my muscles, I found I liked it. It helped give me a focus, helped get me out of my head.

It wasn’t healing like yoga, though, so when a yoga teacher I knew starting offering classes, I was quick to sign up. Then my studio eventually reopened, so I started going there, too.

For several months, I attended classes at both yoga studios and spin every week. I thought I had it all figured out: just do it all and it would all help.

I was wrong.

Trying to get out of my head was making my head spin.

First I dropped spin. Sure, it had made me feel strong and confident, but it didn’t feel like me. I tried continuing with both yoga studios, out of loyalty and a feeling of obligation I’d created in my head. But when the new one stopped offering classes at convenient times, I let that go too.

Attending classes all over the place meant my attention was all over the place, too. With the return to a single studio, I was able to focus on a single path. I rediscovered the healing of yoga, and reconnected to my yoga community. One place, one headspace was all I needed.

I hope you, too, have a practice that feels like love, and a place to go that feels like home.

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The Space of an Hour

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Lately the stress has been creeping back in.

It’s an expensive time of year, with the holidays ahead and the cost of heating through the winter. Gas and groceries keep rising. Snow removal. Grad year expenses for my daughter. There is never enough.

It also seems to be the time of year for appointments. Doctor, dentist, optometrist, therapist. We are running nonstop.

At my teaching job, the kids are getting antsy and the marking is piling up. We are all tired after three pandemic years and the attempt to find some sort of normal again. My patience is thin.

There never seems to be enough hours in the day or dollars in the week.

That old tightness has crept back, the tension hard to shake. I can feel it in my shoulders and my chest, my head still spinning each morning when I wake.

But no matter how buys it gets, I get myself to yoga. It might only be once in a busy week, but I need it like I need water and food and sleep. That one hour sustains me for days, that hour of just breathing, just moving, just being.

That hour reminds me that when everything around me feels out of control, I just need to be in this moment. To just be.

I hope you have something that sustains you, that helps you reset. I hope you have the space of an hour.

Time for Tea

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I’ve recently stopped drinking coffee. It’s an experiment to see if that is what has been making my stomach unhappy.

But this is no happy experiment.

This summer I replaced my afternoon cup with green tea. I had been eating chocolate every day with my coffee and my pants were getting snug, so it was time. To curb the chocolate cravings, I stopped the coffee at the same time, hoping to delete the association. It worked. I even started to look forward to my daily cup of green tea.

But then my stomach started acting up. I tried eliminating other items from my diet, but nothing helped. Then it occurred to me that it could be coffee.

I love my morning coffee. I look forward to it every day, savour every drop. The thought of eliminating coffee from my morning ritual was disappointing, to say the least. But I thought if I replaced it with tea, I just might be able to do it.

I expected some adjustment, knew I’d get headaches, knew I’d miss that smell in the morning, that first sip that starts my day.

I did not expect the brain fog.

Lack of coffee made me clumsy and forgetful, sluggish and unproductive.

But slowly, slowly I am adjusting to a cup of tea each morning. My energy is beginning to return; my head is clearing up. Im even starting to enjoy it, a little.

It’s not coffee, but it’s a steaming cup of comfort nonetheless.

I hope you find comfort in your rituals, calm in your mornings, and clarity in change.

Today I am grateful for beautiful fall weather, getting stuff done, and caffeine in tea form.

Currently reading: Indelible, by Amelia Saunders.

Thanksgiving

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This Thanksgiving, I am grateful…

For a drive through the mountains of northern NB, covered with trees green and gold.

For heavy rain on a misty lake.

For a potluck turkey dinner with family crowded into a camp.

For a walk in the woods, breathing in the earthy scent of fall.

For making memories with my parents, my sisters, my son and my daughter, and my niece and my nephews.

For a Hunter’s Moon, humongous in the early evening sky.

I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with love and laughter, good food and great company.

Happy Thanksgiving! 🍁 🇨🇦

Paradox

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Now that I’m feeling like myself again, it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

So many hobbies, so little time.

I want to read and knit and write and learn. I want to organize my desk and decorate for fall. I want to photograph and craft.

I’m better when I’m busy, but it’s easier being busy when I’m better.

When I was low, the hours felt long and empty. I was lonely, unsatisfied with my own company. I fell into the social media trap of comparing my life with the digital versions of others’ lives.

I tried to get busy, but nothing held my attention long enough or well enough to fill the emptiness.

But I persisted, and slowly, through yoga and meditation and many long walks on the beach, I began to heal. Through words spoken, written, and read, I found my way back to myself.

I once heard that you can’t sit around waiting for motivation to strike, you have to just begin and the motivation will come.

So I got busy, and I found my motivation to get busy again.

Currently reading: Supernatural by Dr Joe Dispenza (almost done!).

Today I’m grateful for crisp fall mornings, the changing colours, and fuzzy warm pjs.

The Write Time

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I never meant to stop writing. It just sort of happened.

The last post I wrote in 2018 was mere days after I’d separated from my husband. For awhile, I suppose I tried to pretend nothing had changed, but I could not have been more wrong. My whole life was about to take a turn; it was the beginning of a series of struggles.

At first, I just kept putting off publishing anything on my blog. What could I possibly say? There was some relief at having ended a relationship that had had its fair share of problems. But no matter how I looked at it, the effects were devastating.

The silver lining? It was the beginning of rediscovering my independence, my power, and myself.

Join me as I share some of my stories about finding healing in new beginnings, and about finding magic in moments otherwise missed or mundane.

I hope that you, too, have been able to find light in dark times.

Into the Light

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I lost myself for awhile.

It’s been four years since I last posted. Four years since I felt like myself.

But here I am, still standing. Standing stronger and lighter and more filled with love and hope than ever.

I didn’t know how much I was in the dark until I climbed back into the light.

I am back.

And I am here to share some of my stories, some of the hard lessons I learned, and how I found myself again.

This is a photography and life blog about finding the magic in the moments, about chasing the light.  

I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

Currently reading: Becoming Supernatural by Dr Joe Dispenza

Three things I am grateful for today: The smell of the rain, the colour of the sky before a storm, and not being in the direct track of Hurricane Fiona.

Mindfulness Challenge Week 2: Gratitude

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morning-view-w

Coming Home

There are so many things I am grateful for:  being surrounded by family and friends; having finally settled into a job that I love; a yoga practice that enriches and strengthens me; books that let me slip away; and little things like coffee and chocolate…  But when I started thinking about what I would photograph to show gratitude this week, what I realized is that right now, I am most grateful for being home again.

This is the early morning sunrise through my back window.

 

Into the Woods

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into the woods

Some days my son disappears into the woods.

Armed with nothing but his imagination and sense of adventure, he heads into the woods behind my parents’ house, often with his cousins and friends.  He’s done this on gorgeous summer days, drizzly evenings, and crisp snowy mornings.

I’m never exactly sure what he does there, nor do I care to go investigate.  I hear the occasional shout and the hard crack of wood against wood, so I know they’re safe.

The woods are the setting for untold stories, and the fallen trees are material for a fort. The darkness is a filter from the rest of the world.  There is just enough distance between this forest hideaway and the watchful eyes of parents to allow him freedom to invent without boundaries, to play without rules.

I can’t see my son when he’s in the woods, but this is what I know:  I know he is developing his independence, his creativity, and his appreciation for our natural environment.

He may come back to the house bug-bitten, scraped, or splintered, but he comes back happy.

Later…

I got to see the efforts of the boys’ hard work.  They proudly led me through the woods to their fort, and I was so impressed I went back for my phone so I could share what they had built: