Easy like Sunday afternoon 😉 – what's nourished me, this week

Not much has gone to plan... but that's the lesson, right there...

Ah, the goldenness of best intentions. All glossy & glowing… unsullied & hopeful… until real life rolls around and we realise what we visualised will bear little resemblance to the day ahead.

I’ve been a mum for almost 15 years and I think that this is the greatest lesson delivered to me by Motherhood. Of course, with or without kids, life doesn’t always go to plan. We know that… yet, we all love to plan away, make lists, set intentions, create vision-boards, repeat affirmations… and the ‘manifestation’ industry continues to make a lot of money for a lot of people who, ostensibly, have all of the answers.

I’ve said this many times before – it’s a repeating narrative in my life – but until I learned to not only adapt and respond to the truth of the moment – rather than the idealised vision of that moment – I felt trapped in a cycle of golden intention + sullied disappointment.

My vision of myself as a good mother – equanimous, patient, joyful, easygoing, accepting
My vision of myself as a successful person – abundant, debt-free, creatively fulfilled, purposeful
My vision of myself as a well woman – rested, radiant, nourished, generous, trusting, peaceful

When in truth, at times, I can be a scattered, guilty, exhausted, angry, impatient & erratic mother.
A scarcity-fearing, in-debt, creatively unfulfilled and directionless person.
A bone-tired, lacklustre, depleted, selfish, fearful and adrenalised woman.

I’m all of those things, and many, many more. We all are (multitudes).

There’s one lesson that underpins all of those intentions and their disparity with reality: SURRENDER.

A word that used to rile me. Why should I be the one to surrender? Haven’t women surrendered enough? Why am I expected to bend and bow and genuflect? Sublimate my own needs + deepest dreams, for the sake of someone else’s?

Well, simply: because rigidity is unhelpful.

Nothing in nature is rigid. Everything allows for movement… a different way around an obstacle.

Think of a tree root, hindered by a structure, that learns to re-route itself.

A flower, crushed underfoot, takes the times it needs to re-gather its strength and then springs back to life.

I remember learning about daisies – Latin name Bellis perennis – which means perennial or lasting beauty. How unassuming they are… we’re so used to seeing them all over, and their ubiquity does them a disservice – we assume they’re ‘common’ and unimportant. I’ve lived beside neighbours whose obsession with perfect green lawns – free of all ‘weeds’, such as daisies and dandelions – felt like madness to me… but noticed with a hint of glee, that the more they mowed and weeded their lawns, the more daisies sprung up in their wake.

A daisy’s stubbornness feels a lot to me like hope… and there are many gardeners who will tell you that the more you mow, the more daisies you end up with! (Fittingly, we’re now in No Mow May – a nationalised incentive to reinvigorate our wildflower meadows, by encouraging those with gardens to let their grass grow all month, and longer between mows; better yet, stop mowing completely, or dedicate wider swathes of your garden as no mow, to allow wildflowers to re-root & proliferate).

Learning to surrender, then, involves that same thread of stubbornness. Just as a daisy seems to dance with the blades of a lawnmower (I seem to recall herbalist, Nathaniel Hughes, writing about a daisy’s poetic ability to bow, slip & slide through those rotating blades, in his book Weeds in the Heart) and come up unscathed, I wish to commit myself ever more dedicatedly to dancing with life’s unknowns.

And there have been quite a few of those this week! From nights with next-to-no-sleep, to days when my liver has let me know, in no uncertain terms, that it requires more of my support… here then, are the choices I’ve made – rooted in both resilience and surrender – to nourish myself a little better.

They include:

• A herbal tonic for liver support

• The best natural antihistamine the kids & I have tried (and we’ve tried LOTS)

• Going with the collective flow + gently surrendering the self

• The colour I’m craving more than any other this month

• The tastiest bit of a veggie that’s commonly chucked away

May they provide food for thought + nourishment for your week ahead.

Until next time,

In nourishment always,

Emine