Paula Light has suggested we post one thing we love every day during the month of February. I love the idea of serendipity.
There is no other way I can describe how I met my first and last loves except that it was serendipity. I met my former husband when walking across a crosswalk. He made a comment and I noted his Canadian accent. He was thrilled when I did and we started talking. We married eleven years later, had two children, divorced ten years after marriage and remain on good terms.
I do believe I have met the last love I will have, in the most circuitous way. I drove past him, stopped to say hello to someone he was with and several months later, ignited something that has continued for several months despite the tyranny of distance.
To find something that one searches for in the most unexpected way is a feeling like no other, like finding heart shaped rocks and stones, which I do regularly when beach combing or bush walking.
Paula Light has suggested we post one thing we love every day during the month of February. I love the idea of this and it generates all kinds of good feelings in me.
I recently went through a ruthless culling process in my garage. One of the hardest decisions I had to make was to discard this old suitcase, one I have had since 1978. It has no wheels. How on earth did I lug it around airports is a mystery.
One of my enduring loves has been travel. I yearned to travel from a very young age, and have done so, and awoke to childhood dreams. The excitement remains to this day for me.
I no longer travel overseas, not because of the pandemic, but because I am discovering my own backyard. There’s value in this. I’ve learned to look closer to home, because that’s where my heart is happiest.
Paula Light has suggested we post one thing we love every day during the month of February. I’m not sure if I will be able to do this every day but it is a ‘feel good’ reflection I’m looking forward to participating in.
One of the things I love when I travel to the outback is finding the unexpected. I found this charm on a rock in the Murchison region of Western Australia. I left it where I found it and brought home just the memory.
There was no other quotation other than from Shakespeare that seemed to fit my reflections this morning because my life felt like a Shakespearean tragedy just a short time ago.
I walked around my garden this morning and found what I was seeking for in the eye of the young dove. Peace, stillness, connection, understanding, clarity.
What I am about to share goes back some two months. No. Further back. I have been busy caring for other people and living life with no sense of accountability to self. I have a paid a price for this.
If I were to pinpoint a time frame it is at least two or three years ago when I first started feeling pain. I put it down to computer work, fatigue, frequent travel (means different beds and pillows) and with each year I feel I discover a new bone in my body. So I ignored the pain and got on with life.
December was devastating. My healthy brother in law passed away suddenly and as his children had to return from overseas and quarantine, the funeral took place a month later. I was unable to attend his funeral in the Eastern States, due to travel restrictions.
The stress of this while supporting family caught me off guard. I woke one morning with one hand so swollen, it resembled a boxing glove. The pain was horrendous. Unable to dress I waited a few days before seeing my doctor. He barely looked at my hand, dismissed it as part of aging and told me to take anti inflammatory medication (which don’t agree with me). Refusing that option, he felt he could not offer me anything else and told me to use warmth in some form to soothe the pain. Two weeks later I went to another doctor (female) who sent me for a blood test which confirmed an auto immune disorder. I went into a tailspin as I know the medications that will be prescribed are not what I want in my body.
I read up on the condition as much as I could, stress is a major contributor. So I set about changing my schedule and my thinking. My accountant, bless his cotton socks, is a wannabe natural health healer. While talking to him he told me about a product he sells, a magnetic wrist band. Not wanting to take pain medication and non functional without them, I was willing to give it a try. Within 24 hours the swelling had become hardly noticeable. Two days in, I was not taking any analgesics or topical pain relief. A week on, I can close my hand into a fist. Yesterday I lifted a glass because power in my thumb had returned. I can dress. I can lift shopping bags. I can type. I am nearly 100% functional again.
It made me think this morning … why do we wait for a crisis before putting self-care as a priority? This is true for all genders. We give others the best of our qualities. Why don’t we share those qualities with self?
So it is my mission this year to ask the question: what have you done to improve the quality of your life, today?
It is in the moment of falling, losing grip of that fluid ground his peripheral vision sharp as he gazes briefly on those around still waiting for that wave he caught lying around, waiting, while he falls while he falls, he know he caught the wave boldly the one they waited for so he rises again, firm, steady, boldly determined on fluid ground once more.
by dawnbird
I love watching and photographing surfers. When I see them in the ocean, they teach me about hope, anticipation, courage, patience and most of all, determination.
So I start my first post of the year wishing that you have the courage to ride that wave because it is only in the falling, that you will know you have done so.
As always
a dawnbird
PS The poem came to me today from a place where I was two months ago which I will write about in the next post.
A Shared Space 
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