Starting to breathe

I know I have been neglecting this blog. I have been busy, busy though nurturing myself. This has been a long, slow process in which I have been making small but deliberate steps to transform both myself and my life. For years and years I have felt stuck in a quagmire (??)...and when i say years I mean maybe 20 ...yes, that long... since my teens. I feel i have been in a place that felt removed from me...a place where I was existing but suffocating...a place where something deep deep down inside knew that something was not right, did not fit. For sure, to the outside world i had few reasons to be unhappy - a lovely, kind husband, comfortable home, my small family, a few friends and an alleged great career. But something was amiss and I did not know what, and often I did not think it should be there, beating myself with negative self talk, like "what have you got to worry about... don't be so selfish... be grateful for what you have... just get on with it". I truly think that our souls talk to us though - however distant and infrequent these rumblings are, however alien they feel, however much you doubt their truth, they are there, even when you are removed from your Self. Deliberate and persistant I think our true Self will not let us be, not until we can really be as and who we are. Agitation, anxiety, distress, remoteness, frustration, apathy...all potential signs i think, all messages from our Self to ourself. I think these are telling us something. What that is can be hard to discover. It takes awareness and time, a tenderness, an optimism. Maybe support and help and talking it through. Journaling too has helped me...so much...both writing a journal and art journaling has helped me get to know my Self better. It has allowed me the time to sit with my Self and my thoughts and feelings and focus. Little, little steps are truly all that is needed to start our journeys. I am inpatient. I wanted to get to my destination, my arrival to Self, thinking it's a Utopia where I will be complete. Now, I think little steps are often all we can take...and I also think that the journey never ends...it has no destination...it is like travelling the world on foot...no matter how many peaks and troughs, how many achievements and wonders, there are always infinite more things to discover. And, maybe, it is because of this that the journey is worth taking in the first place...the possibilites are endless, our potential for growth is endless, and so knowing the true Self also becomes an endless but wondrous journey.