taking space for self - I stayed in bed for 3 days
I stayed in bed for three days. Lying there, dozing and drifting. My family came to the door, asked if I would be getting up for dinner.
On the second day Sam came and lay beside me, he held me and asked if I was having a mental breakdown. Tears flowed from my eyes, while his looked deeply into them, and to my soul. He held me. We talked, we opened and shared.
They did not demand. They came to see me. Visited me in my quiet bed space.
On the fourth day I got up. Felt a burst inside me, and simply slipped out of bed.
There’s been a sort of melancholy in me lately, and I know to let it envelop me. I know to give it space. But I also know the importance of not wallowing in it. There’s a balance, the shimmery line where you can slip into one side too easily, but must hold loosing to the possibility of the other side.
I started seeing a psychologist last year and she has helped me immensely to move through, to understand, to better see and feel things.
There are always ups and downs in our lives. And it can be hard to push through, to keep getting up. I know I have the privilege to spend those quiet times in bed, to leave my jobs a day longer. Though of course, there is no-one to pick up those jobs if I leave them for too long. Times I think I might want to quit my job. To call my boss and say thank you for the years of allowing me to be here, to grow, to experience, to enjoy, to connect.
Of course I won’t, I wouldn’t. Because those years will continue in a new and different way. As my business grows, as I grow. Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t be able to go and work for someone else (aside from my dear clients and my wonderful students and my community groups).
As a full and open hearted creatives it’s important to take time, to give yourself that generous loving space to sit with the emotions. This massiveness we’re in in our world right now is too big to hold and contain on our own. To keep looking out means we must spend time also looking in. Remember this.
Some gentle ideas, if you don’t have space for lying in bed for three days and ignoring the things you have to do:
take time each day to sit quietly with yourself. Sometimes the only time I have to breathe gently in and out is when I put my nightly face oil on. I remind myself to sit, to take the time and nourish my face, my body, my soul with that one small simple act.
eat more healthily. I have been eating a larger mid-day meal at the moment and having fruit for dinner. This means that my stomach isn’t full when I go to bed, which (usually) helps for a better night sleeps. I do mostly eat quite healthily, though find myself eating a little too much at dinner time, hence making myself not have access to the meals my family makes - I love food and we are all very good cooks in my home. We plan and talk about food often. We even ask what my kids had for dinner and breakfast when they have sleep overs; do you do this?
hug - ask for hugs, give hugs. Settle into the hug. Sink into being held or holding someone. Small moments during the day, when the children get home, when they leave in the morning or to go for school pick up.
sip tea - make a lovely pot of it, and use a delicious special cup. Having my own tea cup makes such a difference for me when I’m enjoying tea. It’s does make it more of a ritual. There are so so SO many amazing ceramicists you can support - online, at your local craft markets, at boutique stores - and enjoy their handcrafted wares. Second-hand or antique shops are good places to look if you’re more aligned with porcelain tea sets.
have flowers in your home - buy them, grow them, pick them from the roadside verges. Say yes when the children ask at the farmers market. A $15-$25 bunch of blooms will bring you joy. Just make sure you’re not always the only way to clean them up afterwards (poem below… my experience).
do the washing up daily - as hard as I sometimes find it to have the energy in the evenings it makes me feel so much happier and my head-clear when I wake to a clean kitchen. (We don’t have a dishwasher and doing the dishes becomes a fraught argument in our house; so I am trying to get better at simply doing it myself. The other day I came to the chore with a sort of gentle ease that made me feel better about doing it).
know that this will pass. Seasons of our lives means that things come and go. Allow the quiet Winter of now to give space for the Spring of next week.
ask for help - don’t do this on your own. Speak to professionals or friends. I always felt like speaking to a psychologist meant I have someone ‘failed’, especially seeing as how I coach and mentor people in their own simple, slow, intentional lives. But my psychologist also has her own professional to talk to. Sometimes allowing medication helps; though it’s been hard in our family journey to walk through this path. Letting go (again) of pre-conceived notions of my ideals.
“While I was cleaning the bench I picked up the jar (not even a sweet lovely old jam jar but an old tomato paste jar) of dead and shrivelled white bougainvillea.
That one giant stalk that I stole / snipped from the back alley in town. That curled in on itself in the heat. Then bloomed again in the water.
The brown dried leaves, the greeny-white flower things – I know they’re not officially flowers, but can’t remember what they’re called. Bracts maybe? They clung, held steady to the branch. The twig, a stick really.
As soon as I touched the jar everything fell apart. Every leaf and flower, every extra twig bit.
Scattered over the bench, tumbled to the floor.
I thought. This is me. Right here now. If no one touches me or asks me things – I can hold together.
It’s fragile but I can do it.
But if someone flaps or wants me to move or blows a breeze on me I will crumble.
More like when someone says ‘how are you’, I tight lip smile ‘I am fine’. Because if I say more, give more, move from the vase on the shelf. I will crumble apart. I will shatter and fall.
And be scooped up with the dirty bench cloth and thrown in the compost.”
~ Ellie 2022
