Dusting off the cobwebs

Hi friends. Thank you for taking some time to visit this space and read these words. My last blog post was published just over a year ago, and I shared how I was feeling the pull to write more. I ignored that pull for a while, then a conversation with the wonderful Joy Prouty shifted things. She asked me how I was making time to write, and at that point in the year, I really wasn't making time. I had a seven month old baby and so was at the stage of babyhood where setting my alarm to get up any earlier than I already did after a broken night of sleep didn't feel very desirable. But, I followed Joy's advice and started to make time by writing Morning Pages and working my way through the book, The Artist's Way. I wrote many, many words, pen to paper, and it was wonderful. Then in December, an unexpected opportunity came up for me to start working as a Montessori teacher. Writing once again took a back seat while our whole family settled into a new rhythm of me going out to work for the first time in six years.

Now we are here. The beginning of April and the whole world has sort of shut down. I am no longer working because all schools and childcare settings have closed while we weather this viral storm, and I have both a little more time on my hands, and a lot more words that aren't getting the opportunity to be voiced aloud to friends, because I can't see them. So I thought I would try blogging again. Will I find any words worth sharing? I am not sure, but I have always felt the pull to document life, and this season of life when the world has been swept by a pandemic is an exceptional one. I want to write. Why? I am not entirely sure, other than that I have always loved writing. For years, I felt like my words were not worth sharing, and perhaps they aren't? Do I need to share them here so publicly? No. But here I am, sharing anyway. Perhaps the undercurrent of hope that I hold is one I can share, gather the eyes and hearts of others here in this space and tenderly say, 'look! there is still beauty. Even in all of this unknown and uncertainty. Under your feet, in your heart, in the sky, all around, there is beauty to be found. In pain and surrender, in fear and restlessness, coming back to beauty that is outside of me and my control makes a difference to me.

Our days have completely changed and yet in many ways they also look so incredibly normal. Calm, even. In other ways, everything is so different to life as we knew it. We cannot pop to the shops, the park, gymastics, or to see our friends. I have one boot at the shoe menders, waiting indefinitely for a new zip. Not exactly significant, but it's still a marker of how life is looking at the moment. One foot proverbially out of the door and beyond my control. I have open heartedly treasured these first hours and days filled with hunkering down with my children, slowing the pace of everything right down.

Movie soundtracks have become regular features in our lives (my three year old son identifies the tracks by their numerical place on the album: 'this is number five. Oh, this one is number three'). My daughter is painting rainbows to adorn windows like there is nothing else worth painting right now. Symbols of hope, hope and more hope. Audiobooks and children's story podcasts have become a daily feature, and we have read for hours on end together. Our days are obviously so much more nuanced than these few activities, but these are the ones that are springing to mind as being lovely highlights in our quarantined days.