I am so excited about this weekend! My aunt and uncle, Janet and Clint, are coming to visit from Canada and we have grand plans for delicious meals and girlie days and movies and popcorn and long walks and much visiting. 🙂
It’s been a doozy of a week. Pain has been my close companion. I have severe endometriosis and it’s been giving me grief this week so I canceled everything and have been resting, resting, resting. Thankfully the pain is easing up now and my world is getting brighter again. 🙂
It’s actually been kind of lovely to step away from life for a bit, to huddle under a quilt, read books, write, or just look out the window and think. While this week may have wreaked havoc on my body, it’s done wondrous things in my soul.
As I’ve been working through the aftermath of my youth spent in a religious cult, I noticed that I have kept a lot of stuff from those years. Books, music, movies, mementos, things that I used to create spots of beauty in that dark place, or allowed me to escape, if only for a brief moment, the traumatic situation I found myself in. Some things I kept as “proof” of what happened, feeling I needed them to validate myself or my past. Others were trinkets I had kept from my abusers, oddly enough. I was so starved for their approval and affection, that I clung to any little scrap they tossed me. I have them all.
But this week I realized that I don’t “need” them anymore. I don’t need to keep evidences of false love, reminders of darkness, or even my feeble attempts to make a bit of heaven in the midst of hell. I don’t need them because I have real love in my life now, I have healing and friendship and peace. I don’t want those things cluttering up my physical or emotional life.
So last night, when my pain miraculously ebbed for a few hours (yay!!), I became a One Woman Clearing Machine!! I went through boxes and bookshelves and bins and sorted my little heart out. I filled box after box with books and movies, decorations and clothes, linens and, mercy, who knows what all! The “bad” stuff I tossed immediately – shuffling outside in the dark, in my slippers and pjs to the apartment dumpster because I didn’t want them in my house one moment longer. 🙂 All the good things I’m going to take to a Woman’s Shelter. I hope that they will bring comfort and solace to another hurting heart, and perhaps give her light in a dark place like they once did for me.
Afterward I eased myself down onto the couch, surveyed the stacks of boxes by my front door and had a little weep. Understanding, awareness, change, they’re all good things, but they hurt like blazes along the way. Then I sighed and smiled and felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And golly, is my office ever clean! 🙂
So dear ones, in the spirit of new beginnings and fresh starts, I thought I’d share some peaceful and oh-so-green pictures of the area around the Italian villa my friends and I stayed in last spring. I hope they delight your hearts as much as they do mine. 🙂
Happy Weekend, dear ones!