A Sense of Self

"Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment."

-- Chögyam Trungpa

My dear friends thank you so much for your outpouring of love and uplifting words. I am truly blessed to have you all in my life.

These last two weeks have been hard as a new obstacle has been present to add to my day-to-day challenges. My leg has been surging with pain that makes it hard to sleep and stand for long periods of time. The only thing that seems to help is my husband’s Reiki.

I’ve been to the Doctor and tests are underway. I’ll keep you posted. Right now I’m doing the best I can to keep doing the things I love.

One of those things is experiencing joy through my son’s eyes. He loves nature and wanted to raise butterflies since he aced raising the moths earlier this year. So we had 10 hungry caterpillars that made 10 beautiful chrysalises and transformed into 10 beautiful painted lady butterflies.

The joy on his face when he watched them fly into the wild was priceless. Now he wants a turtle. I’m going to see how he takes on a little more responsibility in the cat’s daily lives before taking on a new family member. I need to read up on raising a turtle first too. But I think it is good to care for creatures. I just don’t want to be the one doing all the caring. DH has put his foot down on me taking on anything new.

And I totally agree with him. I’m spent…mentally and physically. Only my spirit is still as inquisitive as a child and as free as an ocean breeze. I will fight to keep it that way.

My new goal is not to lose myself while taking care of others and fighting the pain. I realized as I caught up this weekend on RSS feeds and people’s lives, how much I missed the virtual world. I saw very clearly how very important your blogs and mine are to my whole being. Your e-mails and posts brought tears to my eyes and I want you to know how each and every one of you wonderful virtual friends are to me.

For a while there I felt the “me” that I loved was fading. And truth be told, it scared me. Someone who didn’t know me would never notice. I was going to work doing my job, I was there for my family and spent extra time playing with my son, I took care of Mom and Dad and their needs, the house was as clean as it ever is, clothes were washed and put away but there was something missing…I can’t even really explain it or make sense of it…but DH and those who know me really well apparently were waiting for me to realize that I was giving up entirely too much of myself to take care of others.

That was when the pain started in my leg…forcing me to cut back on everything. How many times have I said to clients, “When the spirit is ignored the cause manifests in the physical realm in a new way to get noticed.”

I get it. I notice. I spent the long weekend thinking about what is actually important to me. And where most people think a blog is too much work…I’ve realized that it is a lifeline that I don’t think I want to live without.

This realization doesn’t give me more time to write nor will I be like those organized witty posters who keep us inspired day after day. I’m not even promising projects will get finished because we know I’m bad at the whole “finishing thing”.

What I can promise is I will take five minutes to back away when it all gets too much. I will do one small thing a day to nurture my soul and feed my hungry spirit. But most of all I won’t lose my eclectic and diverse sense of self again.

Bright blessings and happy crafting,
Ruinwen
:)