After a personally rough 9 months or so, I want to focus on being kinder to myself. I have been thinking of ways I can achieve this. I have been reading so many beautiful and wonderfully inspiring quotes on pinterest that I have been saving to a secret board so that I can go and read them back to keep me motivated. The other evening, I came up with a little list of things that I want to start doing, carry on doing or make sure I do to help me look after myself.
1. Go on more adventures in the evenings. We go on a lot of day adventures and sometimes we go on adventures to the forest with friends after school but I want to make sure that we do many more evening adventures before the Autumn comes along and it will be dark very early. Adventures to the forest, driving around the countryside, wild meadow adventures and flower field adventures.
2. Taking care of my body. I feel that I have recovered enough now to start concentrating on being healthy. Nourishing my body, going for runs, having pampering evenings, long baths, maybe go on a spa day, taking some time in the evenings to do my yoga and researching and making healthy meals and smoothies.
3. Writing. Writing is a big part of me. I love to create fairytales and short creative pieces. I love to write inspiring quotes and stories to go along my photography. For Mother's day, Gilles got me an old, antique writing bureau which I have really loved sitting at and thinking of new stories and characters. I want to create a whole series of stories and I have so many wonderful ideas floating around in my head. I want to take some time in the summer holidays to create these stories and share them with you all!
4. Music. I love music. A simple melody can have me in tears because of it's beauty. I love discovering new artists and songs to listen to over and over to keep me inspired. I love to listen to music when I go for long dog walks along the river and I can be inspired to create or write just by someones beautiful voice.
5. Creating. Every day, I love to create something. Even if it is something quick to help me stay calm and to inspire myself. I love to play around to petals and flowers, create wall features, bake, make something, press flowers, make flower crowns. The list goes on. I just love being creative, putting on some calming music and throwing myself into making myself happy and creating just for the sake of it. Whether I go with my basket to gather flowers to make a crown or to press in my flower press or whether I dance around my kitchen whilst making a fruit pie, it has the biggest calming effect on me.
6. Invest in therapy or counselling. I have found that regular sessions help me keep my mind healthy. People go to the gym or exercise to keep their body healthy but mental health is just as important!
I would love to hear what you do or want to do to be kinder to yourself. To take time out for you!
(this is a collaborative post)
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ReplyDeleteAnother beautiful essay from you. So many thoughts...
ReplyDeletePlease, if you write stories, will you illustrate them with your photos and publish them into print, as tiny children's books?
You are so right about adventures, and have made me see that we have lost our adventuring spirit here. I will try to regain it before summer slips away... Late night light is a gift and a joy...thank you for making me see that. Just this morning, in celebration of light, I was looking up the differences between civil, nautical, and astronomical twilights...forget civil, that sounds too common. :-) But to be out in nautical twilight sounds romantic...
Your writing bureau is so charming! It must inspire you. When you open the lid, ideas must just flow out to you. It looks to be the type of place where they would gather and hide.
Do you *play* music? One of my kind-to-me moments this year is to take a half hour or hour when I first wake up, sit in bed with my little Casio keyboard, and pick out the melodies to sweet ancient hymns or children's folk songs...I never play them for anyone else and never plan to...this is just for my own pleasure. Each tune has its own personality. When I learn a new one, I write it in a journal I found at the used book store, and all the thoughts I have about its mood, personality, creator, and how I think it fits with the lyrics to which it has been set. I haven't been trained in music: I still pick out the notes one-by-one by muttering "every-good-boy-does-fine" to myself! :-) Each melody is like a wrapped gift, when you have no idea what is inside, or like a secret love/joy message from its creator, that was written a century ago in code, waiting to be found much later by a kindred spirit.
I take "Christmas moments" all through the year. Often it is just putting on an instrumental Christmas cd...such warmth there! Sometimes it is designing our Christmas cards for the year...I just finished the ones for Christmas 2018 and am now designing inserts (a piece of ancient sheet music and a holy card). Sometimes it is a cold mug of homemade eggnog and a ginger star, quite out of season! All these things bring love and comfort to my heart, a refilling.
Blessings...
Fiordelisa
I laugh...I just realized that I had Winter Solstice V playing in another tab as I was writing my comment. :-) And old hymn tune names are a delight just by themselves: Hurstmonceaux (have you been there? see the lovely online photos), Forest Green, Glebe Field. And then the children's folk songs: The Squirrels' Tea, Winds of Evening, Bells in the Steeple, The New Moon, Wild Geese.... Once I have learned the tune, I sing the song, and find that I am singing some of them all through the day.
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