Dear Reader,
Trying to stay true to myself along this adventure, I’ll share my recent internal struggle.
I’ve taken a brief sabbatical from my blog because the past two and a half weeks have been a lot less adventure and a lot more stress. The stress feels like mud - once you’ve stepped in it, it spreads onto other clothes, the floor or walls, and it makes everything feel sticky and dirty. Sometimes I feel like my kids in the mud; they end up with it up their nose, in their hair, still cascading from their bodies in sheets after their first wash off. I need to stop picking up my stress and clothing myself in it.
I’ve used my new self care practices; they are effective, but not nearly as great as I had hoped. It’s like when you start working out and you get a thrill seeing that first big muscle. A few months later, you see more muscles in your arm and realize that they all work together. I need to keep putting in the work to build all the muscles to cope better.
The stress comes from this hard choice to settle down and the inevitable craziness of buying a new home and managing two inter-state moves during a pandemic. There is a large part of my heart that is sad to be ending our current adventures. I no longer need the stability of hearth and home, and feel most at peace discovering natural beauty in places I’ve yet to discover. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t yet see a time when I’d want to settle down again though I’m sure it would come inevitably. After all, even Elsa came back to run a kingdom for awhile.
“Dear younger me
Where do I start
If I could tell you everything
that I have learned so far
Then you could be
One step ahead
Of all the painful memories
still running thru my head
I wonder how much different things would be
Dear younger me,
Dear younger me
I cannot decide
Do I give some speech about how to get the most out of your life
Or do I go deep
And try to change
The choices that you'll make cuz they're choices that made me
Even though I love this crazy life
Sometimes I wish it was a smoother ride”
(Mercy Me, Dear Younger Me)
This is the song that articulates the words of my heart about my past. I would not trade the pain or mistakes because they brought me to this present with my nuclear family, but boy do I wish it was a smoother ride.
My one main “regret” in life is not spending every precious moment with my father while he still walked this earth. I’d love to say it was because I was in a rigorous graduate program and barely had time for self care, but there was also that part of me that just broke each time we were together and he wasn’t himself.
“I've been thinking 'bout time
and where does it go
How can I stop my life from passing me by,
I don't know
I've been thinking 'bout family
and how it's going so fast
Will I wake up one morning
just wishing that I could go back?”
(Jeremy Camp, Keep Me in the Moment)
Life is a game of constantly balancing our needs and desires. Living a life with no regrets means going after your dreams ... and also knowing when you will miss out on important moments that will never come your way again.
We will be settling soon to provide a place of love and stability for my mother. We’ve deviated from our original plan of traveling for a year, then selling the travel trailer in lieu of a home that stands strong and still; however, I’m pleased to say we will now be keeping the Hogwarts Express for us to continue to feed our wanderlust. Dennis will continue to grace our lives, hopefully providing more stable rides and less amusing stories. We will continue to take small trips for now, and when our family needs again look different, we will take off again down the road less travelled.
Thank you, dear reader, for your patience. As an aside, writing to my readers makes me feel like I’m in the middle of an Elephant and Piggie book. BANANA!
Now, back to our scheduled programming, catching you up on the peaceful bliss of Maine
. . .