In struggle I look for the path of beauty

Standing for change

Hi,

I know I get things right in life when I feel joy, at other times, more strangely, (but in a way that makes me happy) I feel my grandparents home which was an anchor of warmth and love in my childhood.

Some years ago I realised I wasn’t happy in my marriage and so my husband and I separated. In the many cautionary and inspirational tales of life this is one with depths of hopefulness and courage as well as sadness and difficulty.

A few years on I have people (most months) calling me asking how Ed and I manage to co parent so well and still be such good friends. I stand absolutely 100% firm and committed to looking for a path of goodness out of heart ache and sadness. I told Ed that in the early days of our/his anger and sadness and he took that upon himself too and we both worked hard and I am eternally grateful.

When a wrench is thrown at my heart I know I have to re-centre myself and fight for the way forwards that has goodness and beauty at its core. This is what I stand for. And this post is about standing firm to the things that I/you/we stand for especially when the going gets tough.

Sending you love and warmth into the glowing embers of December fires and long moonlit nights. Where I live the bees in my garden are busy with sunflowers and there is sun and wind and star lit nights.

Lucy

I know the things I stand for and I have set a compass by them -

Possibility

Beauty

Love

Nature

I know what I stand for but I will not drown out others to be heard. The shouting has dimmed my own light many times before.

I know what I stand for but I will not make others wrong to be right. Their truth might also be true. And if it’s not true my wronging them will bring no peace.

I have dreamt of the things I stand for in various forms since I was a child. I think you have too? But don’t get fixated on the things of your dreams for they will shape shift.

My dreams have become my song, my chant and I rise up and pull them from my mind turning ideas slowly like rocks tumbling into reshaped rocks and maybe sometimes gems. I meet fear and resistance always - my own and others - as I try to find the essence of the shape shifting dancing dreams and express them at last.

Quietly, in the countryside, I sing my song and the flowers bloom, the children come to make fairy houses and eat sugar cane, the monkeys howl from branches, and the ancestors nod in silent acknowledgement that my footsteps are good to this earth in Nicaragua.

It sounds gentle, this writing. It is not. Holding firm to convictions and seeing them through is less like a walk through a wildflower meadow than I imagined. I thought the path to living a life as I dreamt would be uphill but lined with beautiful vistas. I did not reckon on the instability of dreams, the uncertainty, the challenges, the doubting, the sadnesses or the confusion.

I spiral around goodness eventually landing at the centre and finding my ground.

When things get tough I retreat. I sit under the home tree above my house and I let my mind and body drink in the essence of the tree and its branches and the sky above and the jungle around until I see that my own problems are not all consuming.

When things get tough I write, I paint, I sing. I find expression and let the hard stuff flow.

Years ago I went to Australia and found a garden made by a women who poured her grief into the land and made so much beauty.

I look for the stories of hope and find there are many.