When life get's a little too overwhelming. When the heaviness of my empathic ways weighs on my soul. When my anxiety tells me things that are not necessarily true...
Where the wild things are, that is where you will find me.
I'm pretty sure that we all have experienced these feelings at some point or another. It's part of the human experience. It something that we share in common. I know when I become overwhelmed I have a place I can go to seek solace, but I didn't always know of this "place", that place being nature.
There was a time when I was afraid of nature. It shocks me now as I type that. I was afraid of everything. I was deathly afraid of bugs, afraid of getting lost, generally afraid of the unknown and the craziest (to me now) of all, afraid of "wasting time". As I look back and reflect on my life, of course, I wonder why. What made me think this way? I've come to many conclusions, but the main one that sticks out to me is that I had lost something along the way in between being a little girl and adulthood. The transition from childhood to adulthood came very fast for me, like many others, I grew up fast and as a result lost my sense of wonder.
Life and responsibilities came on fast and full force. When I finally came to the realization that something was missing, an actual part of me was missing, I began to dive deep into introspection. As I began to seek answers to the "why's" I began to hear an inner calling back to the wild, back to nature.
When my kids were no longer babies I began taking us out into nature more. We started out slowly going on small nature walks in our woods then on to other places. From that point on I knew I had found what was missing within myself. I began to recall wonderful childhood memories of me playing alone in the woods near my home. I began recalling the reasons why I would escape to woods and thinking to myself, this is what I've been searching for. This is where my soul finds comfort and space to breathe. It's how my soul finds its way back home.
It's so easy, especially as a young woman/mother, to lose herself when her life changes to motherhood and becoming a wife. I wish I had had the guidance years ago to reassure me that it was ok to not only focus on your family but to also focus on yourself and your own well being and that you can give of yourself to those you love, but to also leave some for you. It's actually very necessary to care for your own well being and mental health in order to be there 100 percent for those you love.
