It’s a gorgeous summer morning, clear and sunny, quiet and still, baby goats and lambs running and leaping about like adorable but demented marionettes before the sun comes up and they make a beeline for the shade. The cuckoo clock is ticking steadily and the fan is whirring gently as I make my first cuppa of the day. I love these peaceful moments before it’s time to feed animals and start the to-do list.

The drought continues here, but, thanks to Bear’s foresight in putting in a bore and extra rainwater tanks, we are OK.

I put extra drip hoses in my gardens this year, and they’ve been amazing, keeping things alive when there’s not a lick of rain for weeks on end. Even in drought we have fat leeks, abundant tomatillos, and beetroots the size of softballs. Rainbow silverbeet, tomatoes, and fresh dill add colour and deliciousness to our scrambled eggs in the mornings, and mounds of pineapple sage, lemon balm, and spearmint make the most refreshing and nourishing iced teas. These things cheer my soul as we watch the grass shrivel and dry.

I’ve been harvesting a lot of seeds from the garden this week: dill and Romaine lettuce, sweet white onions and sweet peas. I’m steadily filling glass jars with our own seeds to use for cooking and planting and preserving, adding them to kitchen shelves already lined with home cured olives, pickled cherries, and innumerable jars of chili sauce. It never fails to give me a thrill to see something I made or grew all by myself. I feel like a little kid waving a hand-drawn picture as I proudly show Bear a jar of this or bottle of that.

I spent most of the holidays in self-care mode. I was exhausted, burnt out, run down, all the descriptors of “please don’t make me move” that you can think of. It was a dickens of a year with so many of those moments that felt like, “This, this will be the one that does me in.” To my utter astonishment, they didn’t. I got to Christmas bedraggled and battered but very much alive, with a glow in my soul that comes from battles fought and battles miraculously won.

Self-care was the thing that got me through that whole ghastly year. Five minutes here, an hour there, they made all the difference in getting me from one day, one moment to the next. As Christmas loomed ahead of me, I knew I just needed to get there, I just needed to finish, and all would be well.

And I did. And it was.

I slept. I napped. I sat like a zombie. I went to my healer and talked with Bear and read good books and wrote and painted and drew and made smudge sticks, then slept, napped, and zombied some more. And slowly my body relaxed, my mind calmed, and that long-dampened spark inside started flickering, stronger and stronger until it was glowing like the sun.

I started work again yesterday with such incredible joy and excitement because I did something I didn’t realize I was allowed to do: I asked for help. I don’t know where I got such a fool notion that I had to do it all by myself, but it nearly did me in.

Not anymore. Now I have help.

I have 3 sub-contractors who are smart as whips and jolly and kind to boot. I have an accountant who dazzles me with her skills and has taken my financial fumblings and made them sleek and manageable. I found a lawyer who is amazing at drafting the documentation, terms and conditions, and contracts I need to run an excellent business, and a business coach who is helping me build the processes, emotional intelligence, and support systems I need to run a business peacefully, happily, and successfully.

Help. It makes me teary every time I think  of it.

There are moments I wish I could’ve learned this 20 years ago, but then I forgive myself, again, for not knowing what I didn’t know.

I know it now, and I’m flourishing in the knowing. xo