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Dear Future Self – Day 21

| Sheree

Dear Future Self

I hope you are well. Or as well as you can be, as I know you have a tendency to fall out of love with yourself. Waste time on not looking after yourself and beat yourself up for it too.

I just hope you’re learning because, at the moment, I think you’re doing remarkably well. You’re still here aren’t you? You’re still smiling? So you must be doing something good.

And even if you’re not, just remember that you are good. Good enough just the way you are. For reals.

And I know you have your current worries and concerns. No doubt worrying about where your next pay check is coming from and do you have to compromise your integrity to get it.

But listen, I know you and I know you always find a way. Because you are a fighter. You’re resourceful and determined and you love life far too much to just give up on it. To just give up on yourself.

I just love how you’re living your life on your own terms not being worried about what others think about you or what they might say.

I just love how you’re striving for what makes you happy to hell with everyone else. This is inspiring. This is you.

This year has seen you really lean into a morning routine to set you up for the rest of the day. And it’s been rewarding to see how this has helped you to move forward.

I say continue on this path of making sure your needs and wants are met each and every day first as this puts you in the best position to then help and support others.

Simple small things like enjoying that first cup of coffee. Listening to Love Devotion on repeat in Insight Timer. Small things that might seem insignificant but actually remind you that you are loved, loving and loveable by yourself, first and foremost.

And then look for that love from others as it is there. The love. It’s always there. Love.

Keep following those sparks that reveal joy. Which make you light up from the inside out. Solitude and quiet, just as much as company and music. Getting out in nature and moving that wonderful body of yours.

Someone said to you recently that life is long, instead of thinking of life being short, too short, so seize the moment now. And that still holds true but to think of life being long is to not only savour it now and to be grateful for it, it also means that we never really leave or die. We just transform and transcend into someone or something else in time. Over time. Through time.

This opens up whole new portals and possibilities and is exciting. Therefore, no need to panic or rush or run around like a chicken with no head. You’re okay resting, taking that afternoon nap, without fear of missing out.

Everything goes into the mix to make up this weird and wonderful life. You’ve just got to remain open, baby. You’ve just got to keep that beautiful heart of your open and welcome whatever comes your way. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Everything of this beautiful terrible life is welcome here because it is yours. Your terrifyingly beautiful life.

So go live it now hun. Go {BE}.

Love you

Sheree

Doing the chores when I could be doing a whole heap of other things – Day 20

| Sheree

If you were to ask me to stop cleaning the bathroom and come and sit by you, I would.

I would gladly throw down this cloth, take off these rubber gloves and come cuddle up on the couch with you.

The sink can wait to be rinsed. The toilet can wait to smell piney. The bath can wait to gleam clean.

I’d forego to all, even the tiled floor, to come be by your side and let you whisper into my ear, caress my neck, stroke my forearm.

Tell me how lovely I am, and how you can’t get enough of me. That the stars have no contest when I smile. That your life was barren until I came along.

He’ll, I’d even leave the smudges in the mirror, to have you put your arm around my waist and pull me into a sweet slow kiss.

All you gonna do is ask.

Find the Good – Day 18

| Sheree

I’ve been thinking of moving to the Highlands, buying a small cottage by a loch and swim every morning.

There’s a river too, that haunts the glen, between my cottage and the mountains. I feel it, breathing within the shadow of mountains.

I know this is not just a pipe dream. I know someone who’s done it, made the move across the border, living a blessed life.

I’ve been thinking of an open fire where I’d bake bread with the sun rise and when ready sit sit out on the porch with thick slices, warm and buttered. Dripping butter and the air smelling like home.

My home.

I’m thinking there’s one village store miles away. I walk every other day for exercise. On the way, I bird spot. Blackbird, moorhen, blue tit, eagle.

Small talk with the store owner might be difficult after long moments of silence in my cottage by the loch. In the silence I can hear myself better.

Being a water woman and a mountain woman, I will welcome the solitude and the haunting rolling out before me as nothing would hold me back.

This Year – Day 17

| Sheree

‘This year is gonna be about me. Never will I ever have a reason to doubt me.’ – Emily King

This year is gonna be about me, I’m gonna turn the tables, feeling all the feelings. Or maybe numb it out?

Car horns honking through the open window, sirens cutting through the heat haze, YouTube chatting while they play Mario Party, with the aim to lose. The only time when coming last makes you a winner.

I don’t wanna leave but this year is gonna be my year. I’m gonna love the music I love and I’m gonna love the words I love, words that open up worlds, one word at a time, each word moving further away from you and your crippling crap.

This year is gonna be all about me. Never am I gonna waste my time again trying to get your attention. I’m giving me all the attention. Chicken salad and all that stuff. Mayo too. Because nothing is off the agenda, for me, this year.

This year is gonna be me travelling and enjoying the experiences, alone and whoever comes along for the ride. You better have a ticket to ride as we’ll be crossing hostile borders and encountering enemies within. So you better be down for some deep shit, some deep emotional shit.

This year is gonna be all about me and no never again am I gonna doubt me and what I’m capable of. I’m allowing the cool breeze to caress the hairs on my arms and just breathe into the moment, budding into bloom.

This year you’re not gonna be able to handle this honesty, this raw heart of love and pain, again and again.

Weathering to shine through.

This year is gonna be all about me. And never again am I gonna double me. I’ll have no reason to, as I’m gonna shine through.

Sakura – Day 16

| Sheree

At the tail end of winter,

loaded with blousy, pink,

double flowers with frilly edges,

are Japanese blooming cherry

trees. At mere sight,

I become mooncalf,

mooning over their delicate

blooms. Reborn.

For a few weeks at least,

hope trembles through

the boughs.

The present moment

like each pink, soft cluster,

is cherished.

An ars poetica poem* – Day 15

| Sheree

“I write only because

There is a voice within me

That will not be still.” ― Sylvia Plath

Poetry is where we are ourselves – Elizabeth Alexander

i try to connect beauty using words as healers of possibilities from the state within, the voice, a teacher, a sage, where my poetry winters, where I can see the ‘I’ like a clearing through the trees, where imagination lingers inch wide mile deep, conjuring for change and connection. i try language, not to trick or demonstrate my intellect, but to spark simple, stretching blossoms into ‘we’ rather than ‘them and us’. from the state without, i’m a beast, caged and muzzled. swallowed. cornered and supposedly cowered, i come out writing, wading into dangerous waters, owning my imagination to practice potential futures.

*“An ars poetica poem is a poem examining the role of poets themselves as subjects, their relationships to the poem, and the act of writing.” —Poets.org

Tell me what you’re looking for in a relationship in one sentence – Day 14

| Sheree

Ohhh good question.

Laughter and fun, with trust and communication, honesty and commitment but not in a heavy sense but much love and affection and respect and joy, I spent a long time in a relationship that wasn’t joyful and really what’s the point, life’s too short to waste time and energy on people who don’t treat you right or who aren’t happy in themselves, I want to be with someone who makes time for me and us, just like I make time for them and us, hey I get it, people are busy, leading busy lives but I’m of the belief that if you want to be with someone you make time and effort to be/do just that.

Revisions – Day 11

| Sheree
Come Again

Day 9 – Goofing off Revisions/ redrafting

Ten years. Ten long years of changes, I’ve been dreaming on paper.

I had to give myself permission.

To create again. Safely.

I was fearful. Fearful of the word. Images are safer. Images speak to the soul.

Paint. Takes me back to being a child and all I wanted was love and joy.

Tapping into this feeling of being with self, I show up to the page. Each day.

Each day, I have the opportunity to start again.

Each day I have the opportunity to meet the sunrise anew.

[the hour after] – Day 8

| Sheree

Letting my brain catch up with the happening, I allow my heart to stop for an instant. Feeling unmoored to make sense, far too soon.

If only I had saw it coming. If only someone had thought to talk to me before this. Maybe things would be different, maybe the wound wouldn’t cut so deep.

Needing to rewind the clocks, to go back to that ignorant bliss, that season of love and acceptance, is a fool’s wish.

Under the avalanche of words, I move silent into the dark night, to piece myself back together following a different schema, charting an undiscovered course.