Today my daughter leaves lockdown, after nearly 5.5 months.

I am so grateful for the time we have had together, a real bonus for our family in this difficult time, and we have been able to support one another during remote working / studying etc.

It feels like the boarding school days again, both son and daughter away, adjusting to life where we live, so isolated from so much.

I thank God once more for the internet and all the comms we now have.

When we arrived at our current home in 2009, it was to have been for a short time, as we desperately needed somewhere to rest our wings without being made to move yet again. We had had three years of moving from place to place, always into other people’s living arrangements, in both Australia and the UK.

In 2006 I broke. The prospect of all the uncertainty that lay ahead, on top of years of hard work and pressure, could not be maintained by my spirit any longer and I fell apart … but not completely … I still did what I absolutely had to as a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend … but every bit cost me and every word was hard.

Fast forward 14 years and we have a robust story of more challenge, of triumph, of more breakage, of wins in ways that most would not, and I recognise that the path is as of the eagles’ journey.

It is not the ones who stay rooted to the spot and within comfort zones that feel the high winds nor do they have to contend with the most rugged storms.

When we arrived at our current address, whose name carries some old meaning connected to ‘settling’, I had no idea that that would be the beginning of a deeper level of isolation, nor that I would face storms that squeezed my heart so hard that I thought it would pop. But I have … and those storms have been violently real … and I have passed through them to this point.

I never was interested in hanging out with chickens, so perhaps I brought all of the struggle on myself … perhaps not. It is irrelevant.

What matters now is what one does with the lessons, the life experience, the skills learnt, the tools acquired, the heart that still bumps, the blood that is still red, the brain that has been flexed.

🤍

Mindfully,

Holly x

PS. Your story is real too. Your story matters. I came across a little book recently, which teaches how to use story in business. Watch this video on YouTube to find out more: https://youtu.be/ip9DKFCYt8g