Wednesday 11 June 2014

Steam and Lavender and Grace




The amazing, hot steam, sulphur and geyser landscape of Waiangu Volcanic Park in Rotorua,  NewZealand -  our first taste of North Island.



























And bee hummed lavender....



in the garden of Moonlight Cottage, Cromwell, Central Otago where we stayed for 5 hot and glorious nights in February. 

When I come back this afternoon after three hours at the allotment- yanking up deep rooted weeds, planting purple sprouting broccoli and helping our gardner tie up the rambling blackberry -  I'm stiff and sunburnt. I rushed off after lunch leaving my husband to clear the plates, forgetting to take a hat or suncream. 

I know I have about an hour before my husband gets home after his walk with a dear friend in Holden Woods. Usually I'd reply to emails, start making supper, get the washing off the line, make phone calls....but I do something different instead.

I run a very hot bath and stir in several handfuls of Epsom Salts and some shakes of lavender oil. And  make myself stay in the fragrant steam for twenty minutes at least.

I'm practising a new idea which came out of my Family Constellation counselling session this morning. The one about taking care of myself - first. Listening to my inner voice, the one that knows that I need to have better sleep, that I need to give up comforting myself with sugar, that I need to let go of thinking I'm never enough.

 And let in the idea that, with Grace, I could live into a future, however unclear, of possibility and lightness. Instead of the one of darkness and decline which I'm living into at the moment. 

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