Begin

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For a New Beginning

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
 
For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
 
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.
 
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.
 
Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.
 
Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

​                                                       - John O'Donohue 
​

New beginnings are a recurring theme in most of our lives. I’d had my last blog since 2009, beginning it as a way to catch hold of the things that were held in my memory with the most fragile of threads following a neurological illness. It had pieced me back together and become a treasured repository of words, emotions and pictures. When my lovely webmaster contacted me to say that it had been accidently lost, I mourned for every whispering filament cut swiftly  from its moorings and left to drift, but I have a soul-deep thankfulness for all that site gave me, the lessons I learned, the contacts I made and the wonderful inspirations, encouragements and care I received from so many.

This isn’t a starting over. Starting over implies attempting to erase the past or part of it. I wouldn’t be a happier, healthier, more healed person if that lost blog had not happened. I wouldn’t be a happier, healthier, more healed person without the stumbling mistakes I made along the way. My illness taught me so many wonderful things – and continues to do so – and so many of those lessons came through that blog. It did much of the work of fighting for and finding my recovery.  It is only when we  own all the parts of our story; the errors, the heartbreaks, the struggles  and the joys  that we become the growing, the always healing, best version of ourselves.  I honour the fact that that blog came into being and the contribution it made to who I am today, and I relinquish it with grace and joy.

This is simply the next step; the beginning of the new journey.

Just as a toddler begins to walk, stumbles and gets up again, putting one foot in front of the other and choosing the next best step, each of those tiny expeditions  making his legs grow stronger and his confidence grow, I’m making my next step; a new  blog that isn’t re-setting the start button, but that is beginning right now in the place I find myself today.

I expect it will still have a mix of the art, the theatre and the books that are intrinsically woven into the fibre of my being, but where else this fresh, still dewy, adventure is going to lead me is a joy yet to be discovered.
​

The birds, they sang
At the break of day
Start again, I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be.
​
​- Leonard Cohen.