I opened my phone, and an email I didn’t want to read.

I opened my social media, saw a status update I didn’t want to see.

Started the day in any way other than the way I wished to begin it.

My own fault. Lazy Sunday morning tempted me with her sleepy state whispering autumn promises in my ear, the girls playing peacefully in the tent they’d made, fresh coffee on the table.

And so I slipped towards the phone

Started my day in the way I tell everyone else never to

And fell into the abyss of emotional turbulence swallowing me whole.

Why, I wondered, why can’t everything just be the way it once was? The way it was supposed to be?

Melancholia dancing around my edges. A dream I’d had the night before still attached to my soul, refusing to release. Over thinking. And I couldn’t shake any of it.

And then the girls made chocolate lava cake. We swam in the pool as a family and laughed on inflatable snails and rings. Laughed at how bad I am at hitting a ball with a bat.

Wrote some more pages of my book. Received a message from a ray of light of a friend which made me belly laugh and began to dislodge the discomfort from where it sat.

And then Rob ran me a jacuzzi and I sat amongst the clouds reading my favourite blogs, drinking wine and feeling fine.

So the edginess lifted. But it had taken a lot. And was so attached I wondered if it would ever go – maybe it’s been looming all week.

You’d think this was a post about choosing your morning routine carefully. About protecting your heart and mind from things that cause chaos, turmoil, destruction.

But actually

It’s far simpler.

It’s simply about choosing so much pleasure that the darkness, once you’ve felt it, simply has no space left to exist.

We over process now. We are encouraged now to sit and feel the darkness, to cherish every experience, to know that happiness is a temporary goal and one that we were never meant to reside permanently in anyway.

It’s better than denial for sure, so that the damage doesn’t creep out in more destructive ways that shred your self esteem and leave your guts and instincts and joy like destroyed entrails all over the floor.

But there is always the truth that you can sit and stare at the darkness all you like

To feel it to experience it to process it

But that at some point – you’ll need to to choose to change how you feel about what it is that you’re experiencing.

It’s going to take your soul sisters
It’s going to take wine or whatever drink you love (doesn’t have to be alcoholic)!
It’s going to take bubbles and the sky and swims and innocent laughter and fort building and words of encouragement and social media strip downs

It’s going to take you choosing to be firm in what you allow in to your life.

Choose space only for the blogs, the groups, the follows, the friends that enrich you and that in turn YOU can enrich (because nothing makes you feel better faster than being there for somebody else).

Choose space for feelings to roam and then-

Choose so much pleasure that joy is the only thing that can remain.

It’s this that will drive you forward-

This; and the odd dose of lava cake.

Love xx