It’s dark and still this afternoon as rain falls gently, making our farm feel like a secluded island, cozy and safe.

The rain has brought life back to our land. Every morning I wake up and look out at the lush, green grass, thick and verdant, that now carpets the farmyard, paddocks, and rolling hills in the distance.

I finally braved a trip out to our orchards, worried that I would find only dead trees after such a long and harsh drought. And there were some dead ones. Our cherry, a peach, the avocados, and a few apples are gone, but so many more survived.

The pomegranates are covered with bright red flowers, the plums, which I had to severely prune after hail damage, have delicate white flowers along the bare branches, and the oranges, limes, and lemons are absolutely covered with blossoms.

I’ve never seen so many blossoms as we have on our citrus trees this year. I just buried my face in the branches and inhaled the exquisite scent that, to me, is Spring. Hopefully we’ll have good rain through the Summer, and no hail, please, and by Winter will have abundant crops of blood oranges, Valencia oranges, Tahitian limes, and bush lemons to zest and juice for beautiful desserts and liqueurs through the cold months.

Even more exciting was discovering tiny quinces growing. I planted it as a cutting from my friend Oma’s tree several years ago. It survived 3 hail storms, drought, blistering heat, and the unwanted attentions of goats, and this year it is bearing fruit for the first time. I’m thrilled to pieces, and cannot wait for Autumn when I get to turn these wonky, velvety fruits into luxurious quince paste to go with our beloved Camembert cheese.

Most of our apple trees survived the Great Goat Invasion of 2018, and, while not looking their best after a necessary pruning after all the chewing, they too have the prettiest little blossoms and bright green leaves. We may not get a big apple harvest this year, but hopefully it will be a tasty one.

Bear and I are still recovering from a dreadful virus that has hung on for over a month now. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and I hope to never do so again. My voice started coming back yesterday, though it likes to dash off now and then just to keep things interesting, but my hearing is still bad and the fever keeps returning like a bad penny. Hopefully we’ll feel like our old selves soon.

One good thing that has come out of this illness is that it has forced me to slow down, and sometimes stop dead in my tracks. As a recovering workaholic, every day is a new chance for me to manage my own time, making sure I include rest and play and looking after myself in body, soul, and spirit.

With the fever, severe pain, etc, I could do little else for a while but lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, spotting shapes and figures in the knots and swirls of the pine boards, and thinking. So much thinking.

Sometimes too much thinking is counter-productive and distracts from actually living, but other times it is vital work that imparts life and light.

As I lay there, with no distractions, my thoughts calmed and settled, making room for needful things to bob up to the surface and be faced. One by one I was able to work through fears, anxieties, self-sabotaging habits and the roots they sprang from. I grieved through broken relationships and celebrated the restoration and discovery of others.

I also stripped away layers of wonky beliefs and thought patterns until I got down to the cherished nuggets of truth that are most precious to me. It is a lovely, freeing thing to be able to say, “I believe this” and know that I actually do with all my heart.

Belief. Faith. Trust. These have been incredibly difficult terms for me. They’re so closely tied to lies and abuse that the words themselves became anathema. This was sad to me, because I think they are meant to be beautiful words, freeing ones, lovely, comforting, affirming words.

So, a few months ago, I stopped pushing them away. I acknowledged how they made me feel, what memories and experiences they evoked, and I started making them part of my inner conversation. I wrote them on paper, added them to my art, worked them into journal entries and doodles and spoke them aloud and sat quietly with them.

It gave me the heebie-jeebies every time. I could feel myself physically recoil, my shoulders hunching as if to protect myself from whatever damage they could inflict. So I kept sitting with them, through the anger and frustration and grief and pain. I was so afraid that if I let those words back into my life, I would find myself back in the place of bondage and abuse that I had escaped from. So afraid, until I remembered two things: I’m not the same person and I’m not alone.

I’ve got my back now. Always. And I won’t let myself go back to that darkness. If Belief, Faith, and Trust are going to be part of my vocabulary now, they will have completely different definitions. They’ll be marked by kindness, love, gentleness, freedom, and they will bring life to my Self, not death.

I have others who’ve got my back too. Lovely, lovely souls who See Me and faithfully remind me of all that is good and real and true. They won’t let me go back to that darkness either, because they’ll keep reminding me who I am.

One of the most treasured things about this journey I’m on now, is knowing that these words are mine to define and live out. If I want to share what I’m learning, I can, but if I want to keep those lessons safe and close in my heart for only me to be privy to, that’s OK too.

I know that’s probably obvious to most people, but I grew up in a world where we weren’t allowed to have secrets. Especially women. Every sin must be confessed, every choice justified, every situation exposed to be weighed and judged by people who decided they had the God-given right to rule over me. It is like Christmas morning getting to have a private world all my own where I can think my own thoughts, cultivate my own beliefs, map out my own choices, and only share what I choose to share. I love it.

Belief, Faith, Trust. I’m still working through how I feel about them, but they no longer have the power to harm that they once did. Sometimes they’re actually a bit beautiful. xo