Tag: life

Authentic

~ Maggie ~ 14 Comments

That’s my word for 2025. Authentic. As in “being my authentic self”.

As usual, I wasn’t too keen on accepting my word. It usually turns out to be just the thing that I struggle with most in that year. Last year it was “healing” and the year before “heal” (there is a difference between the two, though only in nuance and feel). Well… let’s just say those weren’t years of good health, neither mental nor physical.

So this year, it’s authentic. And yes, I do struggle with that.
I’ve been adjusting to other people’s expectations all my life. Failed at it, mostly, but I tried. I don’t want to do that anymore.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to change drastically. Maybe I’ll stop avoiding some topics (see below), but I don’t think I need to turn my life upside down to be authentic. I do believe I am who I am and I’m not going off on a goose chase to find a new me.

For me, being authentic is about the way I’ve been processing things and most of that is in my mind.

The worry I feel when I try to tell my truth, the fear of rejection when I’ve let things slip and have been fully me for a little while, the uneasiness of embracing my interests and talents (I really want to put quotes around that last word, to mock the idea of me having talents – and that’s a very good example of what I mean). And eventually the doubt about who I really am.

I’m ready to change that.

A little explanation before the last part of this post: this is one of those topics I never really talk about out of fear of rejection. I don’t want to offend anyone (I know a lot of my readers are Christans), but my interest in things like this is part of who I really am and I would love to be able to talk about it more freely, both on the blog and in real life. You know… being authentic. So here it goes.

Yesterday I decided to pull a tarot card to signify the theme of the year and I got the Empress.
I don’t know if you can read it on the photo, it says: “Be happy with the results of your actions.”” Keywords are fertilty, beauty, happiness, nature, pleasure, development and succes.
I’m still very much a beginner (hence the cards with explanations) and also still exploring if and how I really want to use tarot, but it seems fitting. Being happy with the results of ones actions is being authentic, I think.

Well… I’m going to hit publish before I decide to not be authentic and delete this post.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2025!

The beauty I could find

~ Maggie ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot. I know, I know… I say that every time when I’m not blogging at all.

But it’s true. I have been thinking about it a lot.

I never stop blogging because I don’t want to blog anymore. I stop blogging when every attempt at writing a blogpost results in something that I don’t want to put out into the world. And as time passes, my inner critic grows stronger and stronger, until I don’t even attempt to come up with a post anymore.

I do miss it. I always do. And I want to get back to it so badly.

Today I told myself to pick up my poor neglected camera, take three pictures and post them. No words needed. Just look around and find some beauty to document and share.
That’s always a good way to start, isn’t it? Because no matter how I feel, there is always beauty to be found. I just need to look for it.

So, I did just that. Picked up my camera. Took some pictures. Sat down at my computer and… Well… Four hours later I’m still struggling with the words of this post. The words I wasn’t going to write.

I almost gave up, but I don’t want to. So this will have to do.

Here’s some of the beauty I could find.

Ten things

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

Ten things that make me happy today:

:: my ear being so much better

:: realizing that I needed these weeks of rest so, so much. I am getting a bit bored (my balance is off due to the ear infections, so I really can’t do much), but I feel I’m healing, both physically and mentally.

:: rain (perfectly timed yesterday around noon, when my husband needed to fill up the pool after cleaning it)

:: the explosion of green caused by all this rain

:: (almost) finishing a knitting project, especially after a knitting hiatus

:: phone calls with my girls (had a two hour call with the bride-to-be this Saturday)

:: a good night’s sleep after a night not being able to fall asleep (well, good sleep in general makes me a happier person, of course, but sleepless nights remind me not to take it for granted)

:: these cats and their siblings (we have these two brothers, a sister (you can see pictures of her here) and an older half brother – their mother sadly died)

:: yesterday’s Sunday bbq with T.

:: clean sheet day (well, I had to find a number ten, but don’t clean sheets feel -and smell- wonderful?)

What is making you happy today?

Wishing you all a great start to your week.

A Friday post (or: can’t think of a good title for this one)

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

I’m afraid this will be a bit of a non-post. I’m just not feeling it this week, but I really, really want to keep blogging. I so admire people who can just post a few times a week, every single week, on a schedule. I wish I was that steady, but I’m not.. I am trying though, so a Friday post must be written.

In the past few weeks I’ve been going through my blog archives, adding in pictures that got lost in the many starts and stops. Only a few are lost for ever, the rest is back. Phew! Next I would like to work on my categories, but that will have to wait a little bit longer. It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster reading through so many years (my blog turns 17 in September) of my life – and being triggered to remember the things I didn’t write about. I feel like I have a bit of processing to do. But I think that’s actually a good thing. Some things were not processed when I should have done it.

(imagine a lot of very private things been written and then deleted here – at least five times)… Anyway…

Wishing you all a great weekend!

Back at it (hopefully)

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

Oh hi! Sorry for disappearing on you. I was very determined to keep posting three times a week, but when I realized that all my posts would end up with just me whining about feeling sick, I decided to not do that.

Yes, I was sick again. Or maybe, still sick (I’ve been on and off since September), I don’t know. I had a fever this time, though I’m not sure how high it actually was. I did temp myself and it was quite high for about 10 days, but then I bought a new thermometer (the old one was falling apart and the battery was dying) and that one displayed completely different (lower) temperatures. So weird, but T. had a technological explanation for it, so I now believe the new one. And just like that, I’m fever free. But still very, very tired. I did some garden work over the weekend, but today I just can’t get my body into action and that is so frustrating. The fever was a good reason to rest, but now I feel like I’m just being lazy.

Anyway, this is exactly what I didn’t want to do. I’m going to try to get back on the bandwagon and post garden pictures and things like that (knitting? yeah, that would be fun – I seem to have lost my mojo though), but if I don’t… well, you now know why that would be.

Wishing you all a great week!

Right now

~ Maggie ~ 3 Comments

Right now I am…

:: listening to the “top 4000” on our favorite radio station. This is a yearly compromise in our house. I’d love to be full on Christmas music right now, but I don’t think T. would be able to tolerate that. Also, I love hearing all those great songs (most people voting have more or less the same taste as we do) and we will have Christmas music when it’s actually Christmas.

:: not sure what to think of the weather these days. When we arrived in The Netherlands last week, it was extremely cold for the time of year. We do have periods of -10 degrees C (14 F), but usually not until the end of january. Christmas is often warmer then Easter (really, not joking), so the whole country was actually getting excited about skating and real winter stuff. Well, it’s raining now and it will be +10 C (50F) tomorrow and the rest of the year. Oh well… For us it’s still cold anyway.

:: looking forward to seeing R. (not disclosing his full name, sorry) again tomorrow. He’s so beautiful and cute and I’m so grateful that we were able to visit him when he was only one day old and will be able to see him a few more times during these first weeks of his life.

:: still struggling with jetlag, or maybe just with my “normal” fatigue and insomnia (I got sick the month before we left and never fully healed). It’s frustrating, but I’m trying to fully enjoy the short time we have with our family. If that means I have to live on chamomile (at night) and coffee (during the day), it’s okay for now. I’ll deal with the aftermath when we’re back home.

:: promising myself to fully focus on my health when we’re back home.

:: hearing the rain on the roof

:: feeling grateful to have that roof over our heads. It’s not home, but it is ours and that takes away a lot of stress. When we were renting, I was always a bit OCD about other people’s germs, but also very scared to damage something. Also, it’s so great to just know where everything is, both in the cabin and in the village.

:: thinking about Christmas Eve. We’ll probably go to the new parents’ home, but I promised I’ll prepare and cook diner, and we’ll all chip in to get things cleaned up afterwards. I’m not going to make it complicated, just simple food we all love. Thinking about doing veggies and potatoes in the oven, but I need to ask if they have sheet pans. Or just buy them. Add some nice meat (the new mother is very excited to be able to eat red meat again) and find ourselves a gluten/dairy/soy/nut free dessert (ha! that’s impossible, but luckily I’m the only one that has all those allergies, not to mention overreacting to sugar – I usually skip dessert).
No matter what, it will be great to have Christmas dinner together again for the first time since 2019 (I hope I didn’t jinx it by writing this) and that’s what’s most important.

:: wondering if I’m finally learning not to stress about things like that, or if I’m just too tired to worry.

:: wishing you all a great start to your week!

Cycles

~ Maggie ~ 9 Comments

I am reading a book. Well, I am reading many books. Most of them just simple novels that I fly through in a few days (I love “paranormal cozy detectives” and luckily my ereader subsciption has a big supply of those). But this book, I’m just reading slowly, one chapter at a time. I’m not going to tell you what book it is, because that would kind of force me to write a whole lot of words about what I think of it and frankly, I’m not sure at all if I like it or not.

But in one of the very first chapters, the writer mentioned that we live our lives in cycles. Not just our hormonal cycles, but in many, many ways, far beyond that. She then proceeds to compare those cycles to the moon cycles and the seasons. I can relate to moon cycles, but I really don’t like that most books with nature based philosophies assume everyone lives in a region with real, distinctive seasons – I never did and a lot of of us don’t. But I digress.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. You know, I have this image in my mind of how (or who?) I’d like to be. And sometimes I am that woman. But other times, I’m not. I always blamed myself for not being consistent, for “falling off the bandwagon”. But life is not static. We move in circles. Or ideally in an upward spiral, evolving and growing each time we go around, but I guess it takes a lifetime to really see that growth.

But the point is, it’s not wrong to have ups and downs, it’s part of the cycle. Like dark moons and full moons, like ebb and flow, and – okay – like winter and summer.

So now I’m trying to accept that, and I’m striving to understand my cycles. In all aspects of life.

Energy levels for instance. That’s a big one for me. I have very active days, but they are always followed by days of exhaustion. People tell me all the time that I should spread my activity, but that just doesn’t work. Or they just think I’m exaggerating my being tired, because the other day I was fully capable of doing so much.
And then I feel frustrated being so “weak”. But since I’m trying to incoorporated this idea of cycles in my life, I am slowly learning to accept that I have these tired days (sometimes weeks). Because now I have hope. The active days will come again.

Herbs are a big part of my life, but sometimes I’m almost obsessed with studying and using them, and other times I’m just drinking my chamomile tea and leave it at that. And it’s the same with my other interests and hobbies; knitting, sewing, writing, reading, gardening, photography… I always feel like I should stick with one thing and immerse myself in it every single day. But my interests come and go, and come again. I’m not inconsistent, I’m just moving in cycles.

This way of thinking actually helps me to understand myself better. And more importantly: to finally accept myself for who I am.

And that’s why I’m sharing this. Because maybe you need to hear it too. It’s normal to have lesser days. You can’t always be a full moon, high water, or a summer. Sometimes you need to take a step back. And that’s okay. Time will turn and good days will come again.

Getting there

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

Thanks for all the well-wishes on my last post. I’m getting there. Still not feeling completely up to writing comprehensive sentences (and probably overthinking my posts way too much because I’m a bit off emotionally) , but defintely better than last week.
I’m sorry for posting a non-post again, but don’t worry, I am working on real posts for the rest of the week, so I hope to be back with something a bit more interesting on Wednesday.

Hope you’re having a good start of the week!

Hi there

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

Oh, oops! I really wanted to post something today, but the day just slipped away (it’s 4:30 PM already). They all seem to do that, lately. We’ve been in full lockdown for over a month now and it’s wearing us out. But the numbers are going down fast, so it is working and we hope life will be a bit more normal soon. Not that we would have been going anywhere these past few weeks. I’ve been sick a lot, moving from ear infections to headaches and back to ear infections again, and ending with just plain exhaustion. Though that last part (right now) may be a side effect of the vaccine I got last week. 

In happier news: we decided to book a trip to the Netherlands. A few weeks ago, I told T. that all I wanted for my 50th birthday (in a few weeks) was to visit the children and yesterday he decided it was time to do just that. We leave next Tuesday (!), so I have one week to get my act together. You know, clean the whole house, loose that weight, get the garden done, finish work, get my body into shape, …

Ha, just kidding… Sort of. I know I can’t do all of that, but I do want to get my act together. Leave the house at least semi-clean and have a plan for the rest when we return. We’re only staying there for a week, so it’s not a big deal to leave things undone, but I hope it will be a bit of a reset. We’re staying in a hotel, so all I have to do that week is sleep, eat and visit people I love. It would be nice to come home and not pick up my stress and depression where I left it.

I just got off a phone call with my dad. He didn’t see the text message I sent him yesterday, so he was delighted when I told him we were coming. We have a big trip planned for September, when one of the girls is getting married, but I often worry that he won’t make it to that date. It feels good to know we’ll see him next week. And maybe I’ll stop worrying if I can see with my own eyes how he’s doing.

Anyway… I guess I have to make a list of things to do and – more importantly – a list of things to let go off.

Wishing you all a great week!