Toward Wholeness

I would never like to think of myself as lazy.

I work hard keeping a clean and tidy home. I spend my days cooking nutritious meals, caring for my kids, doing a million and one tasks that help keep our life smoothly running along, like the shopping and the washing and folding of clothes, picking up all the discarded objects lying around the house, making lunches, ironing uniforms,


mopping and wiping, vacuming the floor, depositing cheques, sending off letters, driving kids to and from school, hockey, pottery classes, giving massages and reflexology to little bodies, administering herbs and homeopathics and making herbal
remedies like clay poultices and oat milk baths for hives, running baths and helping get kids dressed, mending clothes and sewing dress-ups, giving reiki and listening to the days events, helping at school, emptying the compost bucket, taking out the trash, caring for the garden, feeding guinea pigs that squeal with hunger each time I go out the back door, building shelves and coat racks and fixing broken toys,


researching the internet for worrying symptoms that the kids display in the middle of the night, cooking for friends and baking treats, going to the library for a truck-load of books and DVDs, spending long moments in supermarket isles, reading ingredient lists so as to choose the healthier products, worrying about kids and school and teachers and extended family and when it's all done I usually crash into bed, too tired to read more than a few pages of the book I'm struggling to get through.

Doesn't sound like the life of a lazy person, but I am. Until recently I have been absolutely lazy about two things.

One is making myself and my self care a priority. Two is working toward improving my relationship with myself and with others.

I don't know what has made me realise this the most, the effects of the trip, taking me away from the routine of my daily life, or the overwhelming sense that the trip didn't 'fix' my unhappiness with the routine of my life, once we returned to life as usual.

You can imagine that this realisation has altered my sense of priorities. It doesn't mean that we now live in a dump because I've abandoned my duties and spend my days hanging out in some haven-like place, or that no one gets fed any more. It does mean that I am dedicated to doing something good for myself on a daily basis, no matter how small and that I'm looking at changing the way I give other's needs priority over my own.