I have moments where I feel grateful for who I’ve become. I am grateful for my love of adventure and my joy of chatting with others. I am grateful for how easily I get lost in the flow of writing. I am grateful for how free I feel as I run into the cold sea. I am grateful for music and for being able to move my body to it. I can’t believe there were times in my life I neglected these things that make my heart sing.

This evening I pulled out an old case filled with stuff from my childhood and teenage years. I got emotional as I realised, I am who I’ve always been. I discovered mismatched earrings, hair rollers, colouring books, CDS, DVDS and a camera. Sea shells were scattered across the case; my heart smiled anytime I’d spot another. There were stacks of handwritten ‘thank you’, ‘goodbye’, ‘congratulations’, and ‘happy birthday’ cards. There were albums of printed out photographs filled with so many moments. So many people and places, some who now feel like a distant memory but during that time they felt like everything. Some who I haven’t seen in a while but just know our paths will cross again. There were plane tickets, train tickets, postcards, letters, notes and diary entries.

Maybe we are born as we are and maybe we go through periods of getting lost and distracted along the way. Maybe this journey of ‘self-discovery’ is really all about unlearning anything that doesn’t feel like me. Maybe when I step away from the busyness and the distractions, I come back to my truth that lies within. And maybe the reason that being our authentic selves can feel so scary is because we’ve spent so much time lost in the busyness, protecting ourselves in this shell we’ve created.

Recently I’ve been thinking about how life feels like periods of making a mess, then tidying it up. I finish folding my clothes and I let out a sigh of relief, until I am rushing to pack for a spontaneous trip and toss a load of hangers and jumpers on the floor before running out the door. Constantly tidying and fixing is exhausting. Always living in the messy is unsettling and overwhelming. I’m not convinced I’ll ever get a perfect balance of both, because I’ve learnt that life isn’t all within our control and it’s okay to sometimes let go of control. The more we put our energy into trying to control every single thing, the more we are wasting energy that could be focused on good things like noticing. Looking about as you walk around instead of rushing to the next thing or trying our best to fix things.

So, what is it that feels more like ‘you’? What are the things as a kid that you loved to do? What do you want to put more of your energy into?