Image by Simon Godfrey
Hello you, happy Sunday!
I don't think I'm alone in thinking that these last few years have been... well, quite frankly, a bit weird. We've endured a global pandemic that continues to simmer away in the background whilst many of us have (mostly) got a slight grasp on the last remaining shreds of normality. But we all know that we'll never really go back to how things were; and maybe we don't want to. Maybe, that's ok.
Our families escaped relatively unscathed, although not untouched, and for that I'm thankful.
I started -waking up- towards the end of 2021. My partner, Tom was away on deployment, and although it wasn't our first rodeo, this one hit differently. I enjoyed the first month or so doing all the things I wanted to without feeling tethered. Being on my own time without having to worry about someone else's schedule and whether or not I was dedicating enough time to our shared life together. I know that makes me sound incredibly selfish but I've always been independent and sometimes I really relish time to just be by myself. I'm very lucky that Tom is so understanding and respectful of my passions. I spend a lot of time with my pony, Skye. She is my sanctuary, but ponies are time vacuums, and I often feel the guilt of spending yet another weekend being in and out of the house around 'Skye time' and not properly attending to my share of the housework.
Now, I don't know if it was the fact that since the pandemic I've been working solely from home, and without the distraction of the daily commute and trying to cram all your life-admin around a 40-hour week, I had a lot of time to think about things.. or maybe it was the fact that the world had changed so much, and we had changed with it. We became less social, far less tolerant, and more comfortable sticking within our own little home bubbles. It soon became apparent that I was just painfully lonely.
Nothing really changed for me day-to-day other than no longer having to commute to the office and I loved the fact that I now had all this time. Looking after Skye became easier and I was still heading out twice a day to tend to her needs. I was still seeing people every day, having good conversations, both online and offline but I was so desperately lonely. It's almost hard to admit that to myself now, and slowly but surely I was heading in a very different direction to what I'd planned.
When it came down to it, I wasn't happy. I didn't really know what I wanted but I knew it wasn't this. I went through two lockdown job changes, with companies who were now solely remote. It was bizarre going through two separate onboarding's without ever having actually met your new teammates in person. And day by day I started to spiral further and further into my loneliness.
Throughout this period, I was also making sure I was taking good care of myself. My diet became more plant-based, I was working out 4-5 times a week, as well as making sure I was riding and getting enough fresh air, and doing all the things that normally feed my soul and it was baffling that none of these things were working to help lift me out of my mental fog of sadness. I reached my lowest point, and I really didn't like it there. I reached out for help and found a wonderful therapist and the last month or so of Tom's deployment was much better. But something had changed and I was no longer satisfied with where my life was going, although I didn't really know where I wanted it to go.
And then I found Reiki. I was aware of its power before, having organised a couple of sessions for Skye when nothing else seemed to be working. My eyes, and my soul were opened during my Level One training, and I wanted to know and understand everything I could about my own spirituality. But I struggle to feel grounded and as one healer recently stated, 'It feels like you don't really want to be in your own body. You'd much rather be somewhere else'. It was odd to me, that for someone who focused so much on taking care of herself, that statement never felt so true and to-the-point. I always knew something didn't feel right, but I could never quite put my finger on what it was, until it was pointed out.
So... I'd like to use this space to document my journey to getting back to me. And for those of you who, deep down, know that something doesn't quite gel, I hope this will support and inspire you into getting back to you, too.