Caring for Oneself

Self-care always sounded selfish to me when I was younger. I was raised to believe that you worked hard and took care of those you loved (even when you didn't realize until much later that they never really did the same for you.) I had no time for such a ridiculous practice; I had responsibilities. Even my dream -- writing -- was something I did in what little spare time I had, and the people around me thought it was ridiculous. Eventually I proved them wrong.

Here's a little wisdom from someone who has been used and abused by others because of her success: if you're extremely good at making money while working your dream job, don't let anyone know.

When I first drafted this post I wrote a lot about the recent upsetting incidents, and those people who didn't believe in or support me. It's good to get those feelings out. However, one of my lifelong goals is to avoid being vindictive, which for me is toxic behavior. Instead I try to find joy in myself and what I'm able to do. I've been mostly successful, but I still have to constantly work at it.

After a lifetime of caring and financially providing for others I'm drawing close to my finish line. I can't go back and fix all the mistakes I made over the last 64 years, but I can spend the last part of my life taking care of the one person I haven't loved but instead ignored all my life. Someone who has done whatever I've asked of her and not complained. Someone who has had just as miserable a life as me, and truly deserves to be happy for the rest of her life. That's who I'm focused on now.

If you can't guess who that is, then maybe you should contemplate the title of this post. :)

I'll be writing more about self-care in the months ahead: what works, what doesn't, and the best ways I find to practice it.

Image credit: Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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