Fallow Season
You have astonished me with your kindness. Your patience. Your loyalty. And above all the gentle advice so many of you have dropped into my inbox. Advice I have been mulling over, turning this way and that and threading into the tapestry of my tomorrows. How lucky I am to have so much wisdom at my disposal.
One of the images on my cream vision board says “Surround yourself with strong women“: a reminder I don’t really need because for so long you have all been with me, rooting for me and travelling through my ups and downs with your fingers firmly crossed on my behalf, ready and willing to all stand together and hold me up when it finally looked as if I wasn’t quite managing it alone, and for that I thank-you from the bottom of my heart.
This then is to be my very own fallow season: a time not to throw myself back into days I had been over-sowing, but instead to step back and survey the landscape of my life, to plough and harrow my slightly battered soul, but not yet to sow the seeds of new ideas, nor to keep on farming that which has been exhausted.
You have said, get help. Get a virtual assistant. Allow yourself time to recover. Give yourself the grace of self-care. Tell only the truth it feels right to share. Do nothing at all for a while. Re-create what already exists. (You have already created so much.) Be with your family. Sleep. Sit with your feelings. Take all the time you need to heal. We will still be here.
And I have read it all. And taken long tepid baths in lavender magnesium. and cried in front of the madcap, lovely doctor who told me I wasn’t coping, not because my strength had deserted me, but because yet again my thyroid has crashed and that the menopause I thought had just begun, is in fact almost over. That I have been ignoring what my body had started to scream at me, muddling through the fog of hormones gone utterly berserk, that now rest was my only option if I want to heal. And that there was something else that she wanted me to consider might be true. Something that might just explain it all.
I have tried to sit still. To read entire afternoons away and eat ready meals instead of home cooked fare. I have sat with pen and paper and jotted down dreams and fashioned a future from a doodled muddle, and watched box-sets and got up and wandered the house at three o’clock in the morning when sleep wasn’t my friend. I have resisted the lure of social media (and highly recommend it!). I have sat for hours in the
The house hasn’t fallen down. Ste has thrown himself into work and Finley has survived the first round of mock GCSE’s. Nothing has happened at all while I have been in repose. A fact that both astonishes me and confounds me: for what then is it all for, if the world doesn’t drop out of the sky when we stop believing it is us alone keeping it suspended?
All this then to say, I hear you. I am still here. Just being gentle with myself as so many of you have advised me to do. I have studied and considered the results of the poll in my last post and I am spending afternoons with huge pieces of paper spread out across the dining room table, jiggling the jigsaw of fifteen years of
In the meantime, thank you for your patience. for understanding. For being the strong women I so very much need to be surrounded with right now.
Talk soon.
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Ahhh, lovey, we do love you, you know.
Here any time you want me, bounce ideas off, ask questions, anything that might be of the slightest help, m’deario… about my own extraordinary autistic life, or anything else xx
Bless you. Rest, return, and we’ll still be here.
Even when you are far from well and firing on all cylinders Alison you write with such passion and depth. Why would we desert you, for I’m sure I don’t speak only for myself when I say I very much need you and your work in my life. Take the time to heal yourself,all will be well.xx
I dont know you…and yet I do…through your transparency here on the web. Thank you for sharing your struggle. I pray right now for you to have sweet repose and for clarity.
It is so good to hear from you! I am so glad you are taking time for yourself and taking care of you. I’m glad you have found a doctor who is listening and trying to help you help yourself. Be kind and gentle with yourself. I don’t know the whole of your issues with your thyroid, but while I was pregnant, my midwife suggested kelp supplements to raise my iodine levels. They really helped me out. I wish you the best and like so many others will be here when all is set right again. Hugs and positive vibes sent your way.
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Take all the time you need. I’ll still be here. (((hugs)))
Summer is the best fallow season!