So Here I Am… here, in the stillness.

A bird sings and I stir lazily in my bed. The tall window stands wide open to the early dawn and my eyes slowly begin to acclimatise. 

The room is bare, everything freshened with magnolia, and I like it. This is the one room in the house I haven’t adorned with paintings, books and objects—unpacked and dusted off—and there is something freeing about the plainness. I think to keep it this way.

I potter between pouring tea from my old pot amidst the chatter of an early-morning kitchen, and retreating to work at a desk in the corner of my plain bedroom. As a family we reconvene at lunch around my childhood table. It feels grand to have a table again that isn’t tucked into a corner, our knees all knocking—a quaint but sometimes annoying aspect of caravan life.

Now life feels decadent with all its space, and the comfort found in well-loved books on the bookshelf, and plentiful plates in the cupboard.

For now I am relishing these joys, absorbing what it feels like to float in steady silence from room to room. To have space physically, and in mind. 

But despite this sense of ease, an inner battle has recently fired up again. After several months away, I wasn’t sure I wanted to return here—online—to share again, and yet here I am. Called to crawl back out, shielding my eyes and ears a little from the noise; the overwhelm. Staking my claim once again to a slice of space where I can express the goodness of this…this retreating, (re)connecting, of carving out a life on the perimeter of a world that often feels too loud and too demanding.

Where oh where is the silence in these days of demand?

How to carve out a space where we are not drowning in the noise, but instead discovering other quiet corners of peace. And how to feel worthy of sharing something from our own heart, when all the world seems awash with quick-fix templates and clones of all-the-things-creation-is.

No, it’s safer here in the stillness, I think. So I falter, charging back and forth in my thoughts.

Photo of our fermette (with local wildflowers) by Isabella Ann of The Painted Caravan

But goodness wins out, as it always does, because there is more a need for truth in this world than ever before; a need for honest connection. 

And so I am back in the online world—but is it the world afterall? Because it has sure felt like my world of May to June, to July—between the UK and France, helping family through illness, watching my daughter galavant with friends, pulling up weeds in the garden and cleaning the dust from this farmhouse that now sings of new memories—has been LIFE in all its abundance.

And it has sure felt in the rise and fall of my breath and the curve of my smile with friends and loved ones sitting around my table, that this offline world is indeed rich and full. 

And my mind is clearer, too, as it always is when I’ve stepped away from the online for a while. 

For otherwise, when do we have time to truly stop and deeply consider before something pings, or prods us from the ether? 

So many beautiful opportunities, and yet perhaps something is lost if we don’t occasionally press pause and remove ourselves.

To sit. Yes, just sit. 

To absorb the life at our toes, at our fingertips; the life that hums through our very core, weaving its way into our veins. 

The life that becomes a mirror from where to meet our deepest, truest self.

I can breathe easier now.

So, here I am.

💛🙏🏻🌼

Are you still here, too?

I’d love to (re)connect in the comments!