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A little something for myself

>> Tuesday, August 25, 2009 –  ,

I spoke previously about decluttering the house, it's still a work in progress that we hope to have finished by the end of September. It's amazing what sort of things can just accumulate in drawers and cupboard, on shelves and under beds. I think that half of this stuff we brought with us when we moved from Texas, packing was last minute and hectic with a baby in the house and we just didn't get the chance to really purge a lot of the things that we do not need.

Purging the mind is a more difficult task than the house. I can see the things in the house, I can pick them up and actively throw them out. It does help my mind somewhat to get rid of all of this clutter and that's really why I started. But the other things in my life, how do I weed out the unnecessary?

"Muddy water, let stand - becomes clear"
- Lao Tzu

I find it very difficult to stop and be still for a moment. Obviously most of the day I am running around after a toddler. But times like right now, he's asleep and what am I doing? I'm not being still. I've cleaned the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher, tidied toys, picked up clutter and now I'm sitting and writing this. Of course there are times when these things absolutely have to be done, in their own way they also help me to clear my mind a little as I can focus on the task at hand instead of over-thinking. But still it's hardly relaxing is it?

I don't like to stop, I don't like to be still. That's when my mind starts to go into overdrive and sometimes that alone can be too much to bear. So as a result I don't ever make time to be still, I am rarely focused, often stressed out and tired.

I have begun purging some things. The house, needy people, stressful friendships (both online and in the real world) unnecessary obligations (or at least certainly ones that I do not enjoy anymore). I need to learn how to control my thoughts.

This is something I'm going to really be working on, both in my ongoing therapy sessions and at home.

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
- Lao Tzu

>>  Posted by satakieli at 1:48 PM |   |  send email  | 

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I am a 24 year old British stay at home mother to a two year old boy. Married to a U.S. soldier and currently living in Germany.

I have seen the Vatican from the very top of St Peter's Basilica, the mud in the World War I trenches outside Ypres. I have walked through Montmartre side streets bustling with people in the evening, gotten lost in the streets of Greenwich Village NYC, run through cornfields on the Welsh border and sat outside with a cup of tea watching fireflies in the fields of the outer Chicago suburbs.

I have held the hands of others through addiction, fear, suicide, despair and come out the other side. I have left everything behind to begin anew.
I have fought mental illness and walked through snow in the mountains of the lake district, England. I have explored the morgue in the bowels of an abandoned hospital on a summer evening, climbed to the top of scaffolding on the outside of a five floor warehouse to look at the city lights of Nottingham at night and I have watched the sun setting on the Texas horizon.

I have held my son's tiny hand through the plastic window on an isolette in the NICU ward. Walked, speaking only in whispers, through the catacombs beneath the ground on the outskirts of Rome and seen the fireworks over Heidelberg castle.

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