I’ve been faltering a bit lately.  Well, I say lately, actually since my late teens, which isn’t that recent!  I’m an avid reader of self-help books, I love motivational and inspirational speakers, and stories of self and life transformation.  I dream of the day I wake up and I have transformed into this good, life-affirming, patient, hippy type person who channels creativity to the extent that it pays for a lovely life where I can travel extensively with my family and where I look like some bohemian babe with feather and beads in her hair and henna tattoos.  The problem is, since my late teens, lie has rather got in the way of that.  I met someone who I thought would be a perfect fit in that kind of lifestyle, hippy, traveller type who loved life and risk taking, but he turned out to also be controlling and manipulative and I left the relationship feeling very damaged, broken, and dark.  I met another man, the complete opposite, who I married and have had three lovely children with.  I love him and he is a good man and a good husband and father, but we are not soul mates.  His soul does not speak to mine, and I know he struggles to really understand me.  Our visions and values are very different, which leads to interesting living day to day!

I feel like my real personality stayed in my childhood, that upon entering the grown up world of expectation and relationships, I smothered her and left her behind, and that has affected my life negatively.  I feel alone all the time.  I felt I would be happy once I let her back in, allowed her to shine through.  So I sat down with a pen and paper and wrote down what I could remember about what I loved when I was a child.  This is my list:

• reading and watching Peter Pan, the idea of never growing up, having adventures and magic
• playing outside a lot, building dens and playing a lot of make believe adventure games with my friends
• drawing, writing stories and reading ALL the time ( I hardly ever watched tv)
• family celebrations like birthdays where my Mum handmade my costumes and birthday cake and my Dad would dress up as a magician to show my friends magic tricks
• seasonal celebrations and the traditions that went along with them, especially Christmas
• summer holidays – my Mum and Dad worked hard so they could take us abroad in the caravan, we’d spend the time exploring local places, on the beach building special sandcastles, having bbqs, playing board games and sitting up late with my Dad looking at the stars and chatting about everything
• playing Sylvanian Families, watching Disney films, collecting badges, loud music, listening to Dad play the guitar and to him reading me stories, my Mum baking fairy cakes and making Christmas pudding, trying desperately to teach me how to knit and crochet, and my obsession with new stationary, especially new coloured pencils and clean pretty new notebooks.

I thought there would be a lot on my list that I would look at and think “Oh, all that isn’t in my life any more, and missing it is stopping me from being the real me, and bringing it back in some form will fix everything.”  Actually, I look at my list, and realise that most of it is in my life, even evolved or changed slightly.   I run a small cupcake business cause I love baking, I bake and decorate my children’s birthday cakes and throw traditional birthday parties at home.  I am more enthusiastic at Christmas than my children I think, and it drives my husband up the wall.  I still read fantasy novels and it is my ultimate dream to be a published fantasy writer.  i went travelling as a student, and hope to take the children when they are a bit older and money is more abundant!  I’m still happy to watch Disney films, and love the opportunity to sing along to loud music in the car when I’m driving alone, and I have a serious notebook addiction!

My inner child gets to do quite a lot of what she loves, and I have realised that it is not anything on this list that was missing from her.  It is the stuff I never noticed, and it took looking at her as an actual child to realise what it was.  A parent.  Having grown up and left home, I left my parents behind.  I see them fairly often, and although they are great for help and advice, it is obviously a much more grown up relationship than it was.  My little inner child needs a parent to care for her, and I have not been that.  Instead, I have pushed her to carry on when she is exhausted. I have not bothered to make sure she eats healthily and not stopped her eating endless amounts of sugar.  I not have let her stop and rest when she is poorly, or let her get enough sleep day to day.   I have let her sit in front of screens mindlessly looking through social media sites because she is bored, rather than telling her to get off and find something constructive to do, to use her imagination and play and create instead of sitting in front of the tv for hours on end at night.  I haven’t told her to go play outside when it is such a lovely day.  I haven’t reminded her to say please and thank you when she is talking to my children, or to be kind and thoughtful, to think of others instead of herself all the time.  Instead of encouraging her, I have told her repeatedly that she will never succeed, so why try.  instead of comforting her, I have told her she deserves everything she gets and she needs to try harder.  Instead of telling her I am proud of her, that I love her, that she is enough just as she is, I have constantly criticised her and put her down. I have spent so long worried about parenting my children that I hadn’t realised I needed to parent her as well.  This was the difference between the confident, kind, fun loving, creative little girl I was and the miserable, scared, lazy woman I grew into.

So I am going to find that little girl and tell her I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for neglecting her, for not taking care of her and being there for her, and that I’m here now and she doesn’t have to be afraid or alone any more.

Have you talked to your inner child recently?  Are you treating her the way you would treat your own children?  Are you letting her play, giving her treats, encouragement and love?  Are you taking care of her physical needs, or are you neglecting her like I have been?

Mindfulness.  I don’t know about you, but the idea of mindfulness always conjures for me the image of a svelte young woman with perfect skin, sitting in the lotus position under a tree.  She’ll be dressed in yoga pants and top because, of course, the sun is shining, and she’s listening to the birds sing, being present in the moment, meditating on the meaing of bliss….mmmmm.

The idea makes me laugh.  Mindfulness is one thing I am definitely trying these days, but the idea of a curvy cupcake baker wearing yoga outfits, trying to sit cross legged, never mind in some kind of pose that looks like sheer agony is laughable!  Plus, I’d never hear the birds over the racket my three smallish children would be making in the background.

I’m still trying though, and what I have found is that mindfulness isn’t about achieving that state of peaceful bliss.  it really is about being present in the moment, whatever that moment is, whether it’s in an office, a coffee shop, or in my case, hearing my children scream at each other (my daughter is doing her Terrible Twos in style!).  Any moment can be mindful, and it really can just be a moment.  I’m trying to spend a few seconds throughout the day being mindful, in theory, during each new “scene”.  As a busy mum, I don’t tend to sit down during the day, unless its working at my laptop, and even then, that’s mainly done in the evenings.  Everyone is busy these days; time is gifted to the young, and like everything, you don’t realise how much free time you have until you have less of it!  it’s really hard to squeeze in time to be mindful, meditate, savour the moment.  but it really can be just a moment, anywhere, no matter what you’re doing.  Try it.  A few seconds.  In the shower, over breakfast, in the car on your way to work, on your lunch break, on the school run.  Notice the details of your life, however unimportant they seem. Notice what you have in your life that may seem like nothing.

Lying in bed this morning, I tried it for a few seconds.  I could hear the two boys arguing over who got to choose what to watch on tv while they had breakfast, my little girl heard them and started shouting to be let out of her cot, and my husband continued to snore loudly beside me.  Yes, sometimes mindfulness can lead you to an overwhelming ability to smother certain people with a pillow.  But I realised in those few seconds that I could be like so many other women, waking up alone, with no fighting children and no snoring husband that they crave, that I had craved for so long.  I could see the sunshine round the edge of the curtains that gave me hope for some blues skies which we have been lacking this grey wintertime in the UK, I could feel that lovely warm cocoon-like feeling of the duvet and my husband’s arms round me, and despite the yelling and arguing and snoring, I could even hear the birds outside with no need for any kind of position other than snuggled up.

Where can you find your moments?