Falling

We have a new Kirby pup. I’m sure you’ve seen her floating through our Instagram feeds, as well as about a billion other delights to keep my perspective in check.

  

I think perspective plays a big role in life. A wise woman once told me that you can decide whether you are going to drive the car, be a passenger or ride in the backseat . If you drive, you choose your perspective. If you ride, your perspective is controlled by outside forces, like the gloomy bits in life. I like to drive. But, I’m riddled with passenger moments, and I’ll be the first to admit sometimes I’m hanging on underneath the car, while it is moving.

I spent much of the fall in a dark place, I definitely wasn’t driving my car, but the gloomy parts of life were feeling pretty powerful and heavy making it hard to take control of the wheel. The fall, it turns out, is a tricky time of year to stay in the driver’s seat. I’ve learned a lot about myself this past year. I’m learning to listen to myself, like really listen. I’m learning to carry my Valor essential oil in my pocket. I’ve started a weekly yoga routine, I run, I ski, I breathe in the beauty that is the world I get to be a part of. I am present for my kids when they need me, which is surprisingly just as often as when they were littler. I’m learning to set a lot of boundaries, I’ve always been terrible about boundaries.

My summers and falls, for the past 10 years, have been spent ordering toys, fulfilling dreams, making holiday “magic”, but things were much different this year. I don’t miss the stress of owning a small retail business, but it turns out there is quite a bit I do miss. I guess what it boils down to, is I have been mourning the loss of a toy store baby. I’m often trying to come to terms with how it all went down. I’m re-finding the confidence within myself. I know that it took confidence to admit my business wasn’t going anywhere. I was losing sleep, having heart palpitations, hell I even had an EKG. I was spreading myself thin. Where am I now? I’m in space with too many things. That is my downfall, pinning it down. What is my thing? What is my strength? What am I really good at? What is my calling? Will I know? Someday?

Be. I will find my calling, maybe I’m smack dab in the middle of it. I’ll keep driving my car, or try my damnedest to. I’ll lean on my support system when my car breaks down.

A fresh year, a fresh start.

Here’s hoping that you’re driving your car, and if you aren’t find someone that can help you. Anxiety is real, it is powerful, it can be dangerous. There are so many people in our world to help you through it. This is when I encourage you to reach out to a friend, a family member, a stranger, maybe that someone can even be me. I promise I’ll respond if you think it is me. Promise.

I really like This American Life. It makes the monotonous duty of laundry folding more bearable. I recently heard a podcast about internet trolls, maybe you did too? There were parts of it that resonated with me. We live in a world with so much social media that unfortunately can remove the human from situations where we should be embracing the human. If you aren’t sure what I’m referring to just read the comment section on an online news article, you’ll find a troll, unless it is a patrolled comment section. One of the reporters featured on this podcast is daily obliterated with negative comments. Daily. I can’t imagine enduring that beating.

We ate at a local restaurant recently and when our food arrived, there was a receipt tucked alongside our sandwich. In script it read… “pretentious couple”. I’m still surprised by how much it got to me. I cried. I questioned myself for a while. I wondered if that was really how people perceived me/us.

This is just a reminder to all of us that we aren’t bots, we have feelings, we fall and we need picking up. We need help. We need encouragement. Let’s all make a concerted effort to bring each other up, not judge, not assume we know what people are going through. This is a good reminder for me.

Let’s be careful with one another.  We are all just human. Happy New Year!

Anti-anxiety oils I love: Valor, Peace & Calming, Valor II, Peace & Calming II, Lavender, Stress Away, Lemon, Orange (any citrus oil is very uplifting), Roman Chamomile, White Angelica, Ylang Ylang, and many many more. My first recommendations are always Valor and P&C.

If you want samples of any of these oils, I will mail them to you for free. Leave me your address and a 1 ml bottle will arrive in your mailbox.