Mudpies and My Future

[tuesday_morning]

How I miss the childhood wonder that I once used to possess. Today, I was listening to a sample of an audiobook where the author details how she was able to remember a simple memory from when she was two years old. It was a memory if the author looking up past the leaves of a tree in her grandmother's front yard and watching the sunlight stream down through the gaps in the leaves. From there, she went on to describe other things, such as always being in the sunlight during the summer and doing things such as making mud-pies and mud-cookies as she played during her childhood.

These are simple memories that many of us are certain to relate to in one form or another. When I think of making mudpies in my childhood, I also remember trying to make "potions" with leaves, sticks, mud, and water. Even though I know it was all just a game of pretend, I still have fond memories of such things and try to include them in my adulthood activities to this day. Perhaps I am not making mudpies, but I am making things like food, which takes the same kind of effort and thoughtfulness. I am also thinking about how, in that simple childhood way of interacting with the world through sunlight and getting our hands dirty, we were engaging in a sort of nature-esque therapy. There's this thing I've heard of called Forest Bathing, and I think that, in our childish ways, we were possibly engaging in that. No wonder we may have been able to feel so at peace when being away from home.

Now, as an adult, I find myself leaving my home only to shelter myself within closed buildings. Even the library doesn't feel so magical because of the lack of windows I seem to be sitting near on any given visit, not to mention the lack of fresh air that you can only get from being directly outdoors or having a window open. Something is sorely lacking in my world, and I think it's my interaction with nature in its rawest form.

As my origin story era begins to come to a close (I turn 30 in three years), I realize that I would like to use this time to contribute to my own growth so that the rest of my life might feel a bit more whimsical in comparison to the many years I have spent cooped up indoors. I want to spend time outside, visit friends, make good use of my time. I'd also like to do activities that increase my level of responsibility and confidence. I'm going to be a social worker soon, and I'll need some additional confidence if I'm going to make it out here. My thing is that I've never once allowed myself to have faith in myself because of traumatic circumstances at age thirteen that left me always second-guessing myself. But It's been fourteen years since then. I have to move on somehow.

I guess this post is one way of me telling myself that I should keep trying to find joy and peace in my everyday life. It's not an easy feat, especially because I come from a traumatic background, but it is still achievable. I just need to keep discovering ways that I'd like to live in this "New Normal" of a life that I have been living for the past twenty-seven years.