I love you, wild girl.

A part 2, of sorts.

What dawns on me now is that I have spent my lifetime thus far on the go. Urging things to happen. (Forcing things to happen?) Some very beautiful things have come of this exuberant energy and way of being. Such as, my whole life as I know it. A friend who has known me for 30 years said to me the other day: You work harder than anyone I know.

My life has kind of been this situation in which I’ve felt I had to get somewhere. Prove something. And recently, at 52 years old, I realized I had indeed arrived somewhere. I had created, among many other things, a career. I had practically raised my children- they are happy healthy teens on the verge of heading out on their own lives. My marriage and home life are solid. I mean…I didn’t even know what I was “trying” to achieve anymore. Or for whom I was trying to achieve it. But, something in me was still pushing. What it looked like on the outside was long hours of work and, as usual, way too many projects and plans on top of parenting my two teens who, it felt, both needed more from me than any toddler ever did.

So it happened, out of nowhere about 6 months ago, I began to experience a very strange sensation. Something I’d never felt before. It began to set in on me like a dark cloud. That cloud, it took months to finally make it close enough to press up against my face, and tell me in the gentlest voice: You’re tired, honey.

This was an echo of the words of my husband and mother who had both suggested recently - that I relax a little bit more and give myself some “self-care.”(To which I had said: I’M FINE! I HAVE TO DO ALL THIS!)

I was a wild girl for a bit longer. Doing too much. Doing all the things. (Isn’t that a stupid saying now?)

Until, one weekend, I crashed.

It’s much more than this… but here’s what I’m willing to share right now: everything hurt. On every level. It felt like I stopped spinning for the first time ever in my life and I was dizzy from standing still. I set up camp in bed whenever I wasn’t working. I nourished myself through soups and green juice and hot baths and acupuncture and bits of time off. I got pedicures. I went to a bodyworker who put her hands on my back and said “What did you do?” I spent time in my garden. I listened to music and cried and mourned past versions of myself. I mourned the old me who could push a mountain with one hand and do dishes with the other. I loved that girl, she was a bad ass mother-fucker. But now, quite frankly, she needed a hot bath. With bath salts. And after that, a heating pad. And no one to bother her or ask her for ANYTHING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. (My actual words to my kids were, don’t bother me unless you’re decapitated.)

The realizations in the following weeks were precious and beautiful and only mine. They were not for show. They were not for sale. That alone was new to me and almost too much to take in. I looked long and hard at why I felt I needed to “be” someone.

If you read my last post, you know this one goes with it. I am turning on a new chapter in my life. And as for this blog of sorts, there’s more to come…much more I have to share. But it will come when it comes. And not by force. That, it seems, is the difference.

XO