I start back to work on Monday. The summer has flown by as usual, and eventhough, I didn’t do anything extraordinary by other people’s standards, I feel great about my summer.
I have much greater peace of mind now that I’ve cleared away a ton of clutter, and brought beauty and organization back into my personal spaces.
Finally, I was able to give up some of my mother’s things that I realized I would never or rarely use.
I set up an art table for my daughter using an antique desk that had been my mother’s when she was a young woman. The desk had been in my bedroom just taking up space. I was using it as a repository for unfiled papers and junk mail, piling them up on top. Finally, I went through all this paper, and set up files for important information and other less important information that was still worth keeping. I shredded the rest. It took me about 2 weeks to do this. The shredder barely survived.
I gave away boxes of my mother-in-law’s Avon collectibles. Someone had given me the idea that they had value and I should try to sell them. I finally accepted the fact that I would never do this.
I still have some work to do, but I feel like I’ve moved mountains, and I’m taking a break. My most important areas have been cleared and beauty has moved in.
My husband’s work space is another story, and a future project for me. However, I will let it be for now.
I’ve neglected my running tree of thoughts here, which has been very important for my mental health, and helped me to work through an emotional and sensory bombardment that I was exposed to. But, the time had come to move from the thoughts and words in my head and more into the physical reality around me.
This movement has done wonders for me. Words without action eventually become meaningless in a living reality.
I now harbor an energy that I had forgotten was within me. I now realize that to keep this energy going, my actions need to feed it. My mental stamina is now aligned with the physical tasks ahead of me.
I am my daughter’s legal guardian, and my actions need to be able to keep pace with my responsibilities.
And, I will define my success by my own standards.
movingforwardslowly 