A bit of a personal update as it’s been quite a while since I’ve done one. I finished counselling last week. It was my decision, I just felt like I had nothing else to say. I don’t feel like dredging the past up anymore and I’m finding ways to cope with the present. The future can look after itself.
When I think back to this time last year I was dealing with panic attacks, I was depressed, life was hard and I couldn’t see a way to feel better. I went bouncing from one thing to another to try to fix myself. I would read self help books, listen to advice, go to mindfulness classes – where I had a panic attack! You name it I tried it.
I’ve realised the answers I needed were within me. I had to find the things that worked for me. It wasn’t the walking, the mindfulness or the books although I do understand how they work for some people. It’s really not a matter of one answer for everyone. We are all different so the things that help us will be different too.
I’m still learning, I’m really not great with crowds of people and that’s OK. I’ll stand back and mind myself, or I just won’t go to things. The biggest things that helped me were the blog – just the fact that I poured my heart out on these pages and I realised that I wasn’t alone. My family and some good friends who listened to me, keeping a notebook and writing all kinds of drivel just to keep me sane. Most recently it’s art that I turn to, it helps me relax – well about as much as I can relax. Relaxing is still a work in progress.
I must be doing OK because over the last couple of weeks I’ve had so many people telling me I’m looking well. Although I think the Domestos has quite a lot to do with that….if you missed it I put Domestos bleach on my hair a few months ago – it turned green but now with the sun it’s gone a blonde/ginger kind of colour. I feel like a lion with this mad mane going on….it’s about time I got fierce 🙂
By the way I don’t recommend Domestos on your hair!
Magnumlady Blog 
Reads good Val. Surprisingly, I have lived a life of fearing crowds. Still today, if I go to Dublin, Galway, etc., I want out … get back home. I loathe weddings, anniversaries etc., even if it is my own.
Yet here I am lived and living a life of performer and events co-ordinator and I never get stage fright, and I think events are me arranging times with people I know I can mingle with to break up my hermit time. There may be a bit of control freak in that, but I hope not.
Your art is a wonderful medium for your journaling, maybe more than your blog, I love it, but a blog circulates better.
Glad you have found your seed of peace. I used to find it seems to end up being a simple thing, but somehow, for awhile, mistrust it’s simplicity. When we settle with it .. its a wonderful life. Here’s to your wonderful nourished life.