Tag: physical health

Magic carpet time

“…and I’ve been wanting a word with you, too, Arthur,” said Mr Crouch, his sharp eyes falling upon Mr Weasley. “Ali Bashir’s on the warpath. He wants a word with you about your embargo on flying carpets.”

Mr Weasley heaved a deep sigh. “I sent him an owl about that just last week. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a hundred times: carpets are defined as a Muggle Artefact by the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects, but will he listen?”

“I doubt it,” said Mr Crouch, accepting a cup from Percy.

“He’s desperate to export here.”

“Well, they’ll never replace brooms in Britain, will they?” said Bagman.

“Ali thinks there’s a niche in the market for a family vehicle,” said Mr Crouch. “I remember my grandfather had an Axminster that could seat twelve – but that was before carpets were banned, of course.”

(From “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J K Rowling)

The long-awaited day has arrived. My carpets are being fitted in my flat today. I’ve been here 1 year 9 months and it has taken til now to have the resources – financially and mentally – to get this done. Right now I’m feeling very anxious and tired. It has been a big job getting all my furniture moved, cleaning and painting (the skirting boards for example, where I don’t want to get paint on the carpets). I’ve done the last bits this morning; my legs are shaking now and the pain’s really bad but I’m so pleased I’ve done it. The fitters will be here any time now. It will be so much cosier with carpets, as well as being easier to clean and probably reducing my heating bills too. I think the colour will work well and be quite calming.

There are some amusing moments to come, I’m sure! For example, I’ve moved most of the furniture to the kitchen, which is not being carpeted. I can’t fit any more in there now. So where could I put everything that I then had to empty from the hall and bedroom cupboards and wardrobe?

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Yup, in the bath, of course! 🙂

I’ll post some before and after shots later.

Have you got anything exciting happening in your week?

Ginny xxx

Exercise without returning to extremes

WARNING – this post discusses weight loss and eating disorders

I saw the nurse today as I had to have an ECG. I’ve had a lot of chest pain lately which is thought to be costocondritis but the GP wanted to check my ECG again. I’ve also been potentially diagnosed with another condition but that’s a story for another time.

Whilst I was there, the nurse took my weight and height and we decided I’m going to try the exercise referral scheme again (to a different gym this time), to have support to try very gentle swimming or at least exercises in the water.

It is time for me to do something about the fact that I am really upset at how much weight I have gained in the last 2 years, through poor diet and through my medications and being very sedentary as I often can’t walk more than a very little way unaided. The weight is increasing my hate of myself and my body. Not succeeding in losing it by my familiar means over the last few months has increased this hate even more. I know this isn’t a healthy thought pattern and I know many of my “familiar means” are eating disorder behaviors. At the same time, I am now slightly overweight according to BMI recommendations, so I need to lose weight for my physical health; also I need to care for my body’s needs by eating healthful meals rather than oscillating between starving and junk food, as has become my habit through lack of money and depression. I need to try to do some kind of exercise to improve my physical strength to manage the pain from my chronic conditions better.

So I have to figure out how can I manage my situation now and the changes I need to make without plunging deeper into eating disorder thoughts? How do I start an exercise programme without using it to punish my body? How can I keep track of my weight and control my diet without returning to my totally addicted state and the ever-present revulsion at my body tipping back over into self-harm and purging?

Does anyone have any thoughts about how to lose weight and change your eating to get back to a healthy weight range, when you have a history of binge-eating and bulimia? Are there any particular resources on this topic? I know that somehow I need to address the pervasive disgust I feel towards my body and ideally I’d do that first, but it has been present most of my life and I can’t allow my weight to grow to an even more unhealthy level. Most of my life since age 3 when my abuser started to use weighing me and controlling my food as one way of punishing and shaming me, I’ve been overweight, severely underweight or plummeting or ballooning between the two. I have lost all concept of normal food intake and normal appetite.

Ginny xxx

Total emotion

I want to write but I can’t. Everything I feel is so much right now. I’m very lonely and I really wish someone would be here and keep me safe. I’m lonely despite all the good I have and I feel so stupid for it. I’m hurting a lot for someone else. My emotions are still hitting me out of nowhere. They well up inside and I keep crying. Sadness. Fear. It feels like I can’t breathe and a weight is pressing me down. In prayer I scream silently and God is good and for a few moments some kind of peace warms me. That grounds me and I cling to it.

I’m trying to sit with the emotions. acknowledge them and feel them and let them be. Somehow, I’m not cutting or overdosing. Somehow, I’m not thinking of ending my life at the moment.

I am doing things. It’s not that I sit paralysed by the emotions all the day. I have done quite a lot in terms of cleaning and clearing my flat, shocked at the state I’d left it to and how I’d been living, making changes that I wonder why I did not do months ago. I do things, push myself to physical pain and exhaustion til I’m shaking and can’t stand anymore (I’m quickly exhausted with the fibromyalgia). Sometimes I’m driven to get things done; sometimes I’m trying to deal with the emotion; sometimes trying not to shut down totally.

The emotion is total. I feel it everywhere in my body. I feel so guilty for feeling this and thinking so much of myself, all the more when the emotions are to do with anger towards my family.

Ginny xxx

Constant anticipation of the next error – and consequential disaster: Part #1

I try hard to look for good things to appreciate. I’m trying to counteract my anxiety and overwhelming emotions by looking for the positive, hopeful things that can come from a situation. (It’s something of a DBT technique which I’ll elaborate on in another post.) I’m told I’m not yet very good at finding positive things about myself. I think gradually I’m getting better at seeing positive things in the outside world.

However in some areas it’s hard not to not only feel overwhelmed by both emotions and external negative events and also to expect them.

Benefits is a case in point right now and it has been for years, every single time I’ve needed to claim a Benefit when I haven’t been able to work / haven’t been able to work full time, because of my health.

Today, I received a letter from the Tax Credit Office about an error made in my tax credits earlier this year, when I was working at the department store. I was aware of that mistake. They had incorrectly recorded the income figures I had given them and given me only partial information about eligibility. Consequently they paid me tax credits I wasn’t entitled to. The letter I received today was rather confusing but essentially confirmed that. So far, that wasn’t too bad – I will have to pay back the overpaid money when they ask for it but I already knew that.

Next, I opened two letters from the Housing Benefit Department. The first contained two award notices both almost the same but with completely confusing dates, entitlement and income figures. What’s that about, I wondered. One of them was marked “change in personal circumstances”. What change in circumstances? I haven’t had a change recently. I opened the second letter from Housing Benefits, with a certain sense of foreboding!

Yup, disaster again. The letter told me that the Housing Benefit Department had been informed by the tax office that I am in receipt of working tax credit, therefore I am working and my housing benefit has been suspended until I give them details of my new job and current income.

Oh my days. I assume they have received a copy of the letter I got from Tax Credits. If they took time to actually read the letter, they would have seen it was saying that I am not entitled to tax credits. If they had looked at the dates in the letter (not to mention previous documentation I’ve supplied them and previous discussions I’ve had with them about my receipt of tax credits) they would have seen that it referred to a period earlier this year, not to now. They also know that I am not working – I have given them proof that I am currently in receipt of Employment Support Allowance because I am not working because of my health.

So, my housing benefit has been stopped. I will have to contact my landlord on Monday to explain why the benefits payments have stopped. I will have to contact Housing Benefits and try to prove to them that I am not working. This will probably involve chasing around the tax office and the other oxus involved in my employment support allowance. I have to make a written statement and gather together copy documents from my employment support allowance claim and tax credits. Quite probably I will have to take this in to the housing office, queue for a long time to see someone, which physically I cannot cope with at the moment as I can walk so little. My anxiety has skyrocketed because of the financial problems this suspension in my housing benefit will cause. Worse, from my past experience, once one benefit gets stopped, all the other benefits get stopped too. I am anticipating that I’ll be contacted by the employment support allowance office next week saying they’ve received information I’m working so my benefit has been stopped. Then I’ll have nothing coming in.

This may sound like an exaggeration but it has happened to me and to friends of mine before. And it could all so, so easily have been avoided. How easily the housing benefit office could have seen that the correspondence referred to months ago. How easily they could have checked with the tax office to see if I was working. How easily they could have made a quick phonecall to me or my support worker, if something wasn’t clear or they needed a particular piece of evidence. Wouldn’t this have cost them less, as well as me? The situation would have been resolved in minutes. Instead they have sent out a letter, required a statement, someone has to take copies of this, take copies of documentation, probably see me for an appointment, restart everything, set up payments to my landlord again (God willing!). Even without counting the cost and distress and anxiety caused to me, it is a hive waste of resources and confusion for nothing.

Since I first had to claim Benefits in something like January 2015, I reckon I have been paid the correct amount I was entitled to for a maximum of one month at a time, before the next error or mess-up has occurred and at least one of my Benefits has been cut, stopped or refused incorrectly – and completely avoidably. Last year when I rented as a lodger in a private landlord’s family home, this array of errors left me so very close to being on the street; if it were not for an extremely generous friend who paid my rent one month, I would have been out with nowhere to go. It is hugely fortunate that I now live in a housing association flat where I will not be thrown out immediately if there is a problem with my housing benefit. It is hugely fortunate I have the expertise of my support worker who will help me get this resolved as fast as possible and stop me going to pieces in the meantime. Most people don’t have those two blessings.

I don’t want to complain and whinge and expect money for nothing. I don’t think I deserve other people’s constant support. I could very well have nothing. I need to try to become independent and able to support myself. Support doesn’t come for nothing and I should expect to take responsibility, not have everything handed to me.

I think one thing that makes it so hard is when you have been through every process as well as you can, given all the information asked of you, taken all the steps you can, and despite this everything still crumbles. My experiences over the years tell me as soon as there’s any stability, it gets taken away again through error or miscommunication, despite all your best efforts. And the error seems to have an effect like tumbling dominoes on all the other areas of your life there is any stability. Losing stability has immediate big consequences when you have very little to live on. It also drains all your energy, time and emotional resources, which go into trying to correct the error before disaster point (losing your home, no money for food, etc) rather than leaving you any strength to recover, contribute something to your community in your day to day life, benefit from opportunities that might make your situation better (and even maybe less dependent on social and state support, not that needing it is a bad thing). When you are constantly using all your resources fighting the next mistake and next disaster, trying to ensure that you have the basics you need to get by, in a state of anticipation of the next disaster so you can try to minimise or allow for its impact; when you feel as if you’re being knocked back, kept vulnerable, denied any security, despite your hardest work to set things right; then there is no way you can do more than just get by, in a constant state of strain.

So, I’m wondering what I can change. It seems I cannot change the fact that mistakes constantly occur, despite me trying my hardest to do the best I can for my part and to take steps to pre-empt the problems. I don’t want to feel so spent, trapped, angry, vulnerable and at risk as I do at the moment as a result of the repeated cycle of mistakes.

So, what can I change?

[Part 2 to follow, not that I have any answers yet! Thoughts are most greatly welcome, as ever.]

Ginny xxx

 

I’m sorry – I haven’t forgotten you

I’m sorry I haven’t posted here or visited your blogs in quite a while. I haven’t forgotten you. I know it’s not obligatory but I feel guilty being inconsistent ams not being there for others.

It’s been a few weeks of pretty big changes in my home life, family, friendships, work (or temporary absence of!), finances, therapy – not all the changes are negative however they are all demanding and not necessarily unsettling but all taking energy to work through. Physical pain is still having a big impact on me at the moment and I’ve needed to take things much more slowly than I’d choose. It used to be something I could deal with but now I’m not coping well. I feel as if I’m constantly saying this. It’s not am excuse but it is a big part of my life right now.

There is another event I’ve been struggling with, which has held me back from blogging. I had a really upsetting experience in an internet based support group and blog, in which I had previously trusted, thinking I was finding a reliable source of information, understanding and solidarity with other members as well as being able to offer support to others. I don’t think it is the right time to go into detail here about what happened although I will explain a little more in a future post. Please don’t worry – I’m okay and safe; I was never in any physical danger and I have ceased contact that was proving damaging. Fortunately, I had never divulged personal information like my full name or contact details. Also, just to be clear, this experience was absolutely nothing to do with this blog or any of the lovely people who visit it. It happened somewhere completely different.

The experience has had a big impact on me. I was very distressed. I felt a huge loss although also a huge betrayal. I got very scared of writing anything online, including in my own blog and in messages to anyone, although that is not necessarily rational. My obsessional thoughts were very triggered and the voices got loud. A whole range of feelings and thoughts spiralled out of control about how I trust other people, how I feel about getting support or not and being believed or not; perhaps most scarily, whether I’m harmful to other people without knowing…

On the positive side, the events have brought up lots of issues I need to discuss in therapy. They’ve led me to think about how therapy is changing the way I think. They’ve shown me ways I’ve started to react differently (for example, I did not follow through the compulsion to self-harm).

Most of all, it made me all the more thankful for the genuine and compassionate support everyone who visits this blog has shown me. It’s a rare and precious thing. THANK YOU.

I’m trying to get back into writing, gradually.

Ginny xxx

Feeling very useless again

I am feeling bad because I’ve not managed to post on several things I hoped to and a couple of them I’d promised to. I should just stop saying I’ll post on x at a certain time because too often I fail to! I should be able to stick to these things. It’s not just about posting; there are so many daily tasks that are taking me much longer than usual and things I want to get done that I haven’t done. It hasn’t been a great few days. I keep saying that. I’m trying not to think of them as bad days because that dismisses the good things that can still happen and the fact that the Lord is always bringing good from every situation.

I haven’t been feeling stable. I’ve had a lot of forms to fill in for out of work / disability Benefits. I’ve had to try to explain my conditions and go to assessments. My support worker is helping me a lot and the hospital I go to for therapy is providing supporting letters that have to go along with the forms I submit. Things are not going badly and without my support worker’s help I wouldn’t be getting through it as I am. It’s still difficult and raises a lot of obsessional thoughts. Whenever I talk to people about my health conditions in this kind of context, or ask for help, afterwards the voices go mad and shout at me that I’ve lied and I’m a fake and everything becomes terrible and hollow and full of dread and guilt. I feel so stupid because this means even when things go well and get sorted out, instead of pure relief, I feel stressed and I’m having to overcome what the voices and hallucinations tell me: that I don’t deserve the help, that I’m a fake.

Physically I am really struggling and getting scared by how little I can walk at the moment. I’m needing to sleep a lot. The pain means I’m needing to lie down often and I’m trying not to give into it as I know doing nothing isn’t good for me either. I’ve tried to keep at least stepping outside into my little garden and enjoy so many things I do have which are good, like talking to a friend on the phone, trying to create something pretty with my meditative colouring books, even an interesting TV programme or passage in a book.

I don’t want to keep on complaining and being negative so I won’t keep writing but I just wanted to try to explain how things have been.

Ginny xxx

Really bad day

Well I probably shouldn’t say really bad. Nothing that bad has happened at all. It’s just how I’m feeling and it’s hard to stay with this.

I had my first 1:1 therapy yesterday for about a month because the PD Service took a 2 week break in therapy sessions for the summer and also I had missed one session shortly before the break. It’ll be the first group therapy since the break this Friday. It was a hard session. I was dealing with lots of strong uncomfortable feelings and a situation that’s very scary for me. I know we’re going to have to come back to it in group on Friday. I realised times when I experience the same thoughts and states as I did when I was being abused as a child and they come back at bizarre uncontrollable times.

Perhaps these feelings and what we went through yesterday have something to do with how today has been. Definitely… but I only just now made that link. Also yesterday afternoon I saw my support worker and we got through a lot  (finishing filing out a huge form for my assessment for a Benefit). Though this was great I was exhausted and in a weird state afterwards – cold and exhausted and sad and I don’t remember the rest of yesterday apart from that.

The pain has been awful too because I really overdid it physically over the weekend to travel to my friend’s and back, though I don’t regret for a minute going and the time with her and her family was precious. Today it took me until 11 to be able to stand more than a couple of minutes.

Then I went out for an appointment which was supposed to be for a referral scheme for physical therapy. About everything possible went wrong and I won’t bore you with it now but it was upsetting at discriminatory, turned out to be nothing like what I’d been led to expect and cost me a lot in terms of time, pain and anxiety for nothing.

I’m scared how I reacted and how I felt after. I hate feeling angry and trapped and out of control. I hate feeling used, dismissed, laughed at, tricked, punished… I hate these thoughts and feelings even occurring. Not because of what they feel like in themselves but what they mean about me and the flashbacks and reexperiencing that comes with it. I hate how all the feelings and actions that stayed inside and stayed locked away into my… I don’t know how to name them because I don’t talk about them. My others, my “imaginary” people that are anything but imaginary, my others, that’s all I can say… they stayed safely in the worlds I made for them – the worlds I could escape to – but now they don’t. Now they’re here all the time. In every day.

The rest of the day again I can’t remember apart from that I picked up milk and a couple of things on the way home. I didn’t really even remember that til I saw the shopping bag on the floor. I’m terrified about this dissociating… the time that just disappears after I get the overwhelming emotions…sometimes before too… Then I’ve just been lying down too drained and tired to do anything, trying to do little things to ground me but I can’t concentrate. Everything hurts. Inside my head hurts too.

If this is feeling without self-harm, without overdosing, without starving and purging, it’s scary. It’s a scary place. I’m scared of what I am. Scared of how I’m acting. How I’m feeling. What I’m remembering – my feelings, as much as what was done to me. What I’ll do to people now. That my actions now are based on the trauma and abuse and who this means I am.

I’m scared, crying for no reason. Feels like I’m exhausted and in shock but there’s no good reason now. Can you feel shock years after an event?

Ginny xxx

 

My latest creative projects

This week has been demanding with two medical appointments, an assessment for a disability benefit I am hoping to claim, meeting with my support worker, taking documents about my changes of circumstances (now signed off from work) into the housing office, catching up on filing a massive stack of paperwork which keeps pouring in thick and fast at the moment as I am sorting out different Benefits claims, and a difficult situation in relation to my therapy group, which I’ll post more on shortly.

I’ve been really needing some calming time amid all this. Colouring is still my go-to calming activity at the moment. Also, I’m continuing making greetings cards and have got together some photos to use to make some for a friend who has requested some. It’s lovely to do them with a particular person in mind and I’m happy they are good enough that someone would actually request them.

Here is a picture I’ve just begun colouring, from a book called “Secret Garden” drawn by the amazingly talented Johanna Basford.

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My step-brother graduated last week, so I made him this little card with stars on the front, putting to good use some of the materials my friend kindly gave me for my birthday the other week:

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This week I need to tidy and organise my card materials, as everything is thrown in a box together and I am sure there is quite a bit I’m not making good use of!

I’m thankful that I have these hobbies which I can still do fairly much unaffected even when my physical health isn’t great.

Do you have a favourite hobby that helps you relax?

Ginny xxx

For the first time in forever

“There’ll be actual real live people, it’ll be totally strange

But, boy am I so ready for this change!”

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Yesterday was another little but notable step for me. It was my birthday recently and to celebrate, a small number of close friends came over for a bring-and-share lunch. This was the first time in a very long time I have done anything like this. The few close relationships I have are a very precious blessing to me. I never usually mark my birthday in any way and find it too embarrassing and uncomfortable. I am not used to having a home that I can invite other people to. Thankful as I am to be here, it has taken me a long time to get the courage to invite people over and this is the first time I have invited more than one person at a time. Actually, it is the first time for years I have been in a group of people in this kind of social situation, where I’m interacting with everyone for a substantial period of time. Also, it was my first attempt at a gathering where I’d be hosting and caring for everyone.

Building up to the day, I was excited and very touched that my friends cared enough to give the time to come and were spending such an effort to celebrate with me. In particular my dear friend L. was coming from over two hours away with her little girl to be here. I was also very anxious and feeling overwhelmed by worrying that I’d do everything okay, be able to make it nice for everyone, help everyone get along well (not everyone knew each other) and be able to do well enough with everything practically needed since I can’t stand or walk much right now. With everything that has happened in the last couple of weeks with work and my health, I was repeatedly tempted to cancel, but not wanting to let people down or hurt them, stopped me, and so the day came.

I was so grateful L. was there. Her presence gave me confidence and her beautiful little girl, overflowing with interest and happiness, made me feel better. L. helped me finish setting things out and without her being there I don’t think there’s any way I’d have had the confidence to go through with it.

It was a beautiful day of blessings. The food seemed to be well received and appreciated and everyone brought something to add to the meal (actually, leading to plenty more inspiration for my future Ten Dishes posts!). A lot of the simple practical things I had worried about, like whether everyone would be comfortable in my small flat where decoration and furnishing are still something of a work in progress, were actually okay. I’m very fortunate to have friends who are understanding of the time it takes to bring a home together. Everyone chatted easily together and it was possible to find common ground and interests surprisingly quickly given that not everyone had met each other before. The two beautiful children (one 9 months, the other nearly 3 years old) were adored and delighted in.

I was full to overflowing with thankfulness and the lovely illustration that people wanted to be there and cared enough to come and join in generously. The shame, worry and embarrassment I had felt beforehand was steadily taken away during the afternoon. I was struggling physically after a time and the pain was bad but I was helped and nobody was angry or expressed that they thought I should be doing more or was a bad hostess. I hope they really were happy not just saying nothing out of kindness. Mentally I felt drained and was aware that I could not concentrate as well as I wanted to, because I was “missing” things, not able to take in what people were saying or dissociating very briefly but repeatedly. However, nobody reacted as though they noticed or thought I was being weird. I wonder if they did notice or not. Were they actually being considerate and accepting of what was happening or could they not tell? I wish they could not tell but I don’t know… I’m sure they must have…perhaps I can check this with someone I trust most, like L. Nevertheless, things still seemed to be okay. I hope.

Afterwards, in the evening after everyone had gone, the pain and exhaustion were severe but I my heart was still brimming with the surprised joy of the gathering and the kindness everyone had shown. The gifts of God in friendship mean so much to me right now and help me believe things will be okay.

For now, I have several thank-you cards to write, as well as this very happy memory to think on!

“Because for the first time in forever

There’ll be music, there’ll be light…”

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Ginny xxx

Lyrics from “For the first time in forever”  from Disney’s “Frozen” as sung by Kristen Bell. (How much my little goddaughters would approve!) Images with thanks to wikipedia.org and disney.wikia.com respectively.

 

A Very Hungry Caterpillar finds a home

I found this little guy when I was sweeping my patio. I thought he’d prefer a nice leaf to curl up on, rather than the paving stones.

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I am trying to tidy up my patio garden. It isn’t big at all – I have a patio door that opens onto a very small paved area and then a small flower bed beyond. I haven’t given this little space the attention I should since I moved in, largely as my physical challenges make gardening tiring and painful. Plus I’ve never particularly enjoyed it!

This week I’ve made the promise to start caring for it better. It is a blessing that I have this little outside space. I didn’t expect it at all and living in a flat it’s a privilege to have any garden. It’s a help for everything from being able to hang out washing to getting to sit outside, breathe, pray, ground myself in all the sensations of outdoors, and feel less isolated when I’m not well enough to walk far – I don’t have to stay totally indoors.

So I want to behave more thankfully for my little garden and take care of it and find ways in which, just maybe, I can create something pretty. It can be part of learning to give some time to creating a permanent and stable home, which I’m really not used to having, as until I came to this flat I was living between different kinds of shared and temporary accommodation where most of the time I stayed shut away in my one room, too scared of interacting with other people and too locked into my obsessional thoughts and hallucinations to leave it unless I could fulfil my compulsive behaviors and unless I could be sure I’d see no-one. I’ve had to leave so many places when I lost jobs, couldn’t make the rent, broke down mentally and was so disturbed I’d be asked to leave by the people I was living with.

Some level of security (though I’m not without financial problems) is a new thing for me and it’s hard to build on it. Any home I have, I expect to lose. Actually, for some strange reason i haven’t figured out yet, having a home and taking responsibility for it frequently fills me with panic. I feel like I’m losing control or can’t manage it, I’m out of control with everything I’d want to be in order (paperwork or cleaning etc) or other times I’m not sure what I’m scared of; something to do with I’m not allowed my safety, knowing it’ll be taken away, fears of being attacked or watched by my abuser and flashbacks associated to particular places in my flat. Having said that, I can feel safe in my home and I even have a place within my home where I surround myself with comforting and grounding things that help me stay safe when I’m dissociating, having flashbacks, the emotions are too much, and the like. I thank God for that. It’s so important for me to learn how to build on this otherwise I ignore the goodness of everything I have. Giving myself permission to trust in having security and knowing how to create an ordered home that I care for and give thanks for, is a new thing to me. I’m trying to take some little steps towards it, with my garden and trying gradually to bring more order to each room in my home.

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(Thanks so much to Cathy and her lovely blog at  https://cathylynnbrooks.com/ for reminding me how nice it is hanging out washing in the sunshine 🙂 – and as ever encouraging me so much to appreciate the beauty of the present moment in the little things. )

Ginny xxx