Fragile

When I had Charlotte my daily life changed quite dramatically, each day taken up with the new little life that has joined our family, helpless, and needy, instincts kick in to nurture care and protect. To be there for her. It can be a challenge, especially when you are a little bit older and I found achievement in the smallest of things, I have also found it helpful to to meet up with other mums and babies at group, for the first two years and moved on with some of those mums and babies to dance and movement class, meeting other new mums toddlers along the way, sharing good times and bad, discussing the agonies of sleepless nights and life in general.

On Sat 4th, one of the Mums was on route to a children's party with her little one when she was involved in an accident. Every day I have thought about her hoping to hear the words, stable, progress, recovering, on the mend, but they never came and she passed away.

On the very day when tokens of love are exchanged and we show our appreciation

for the ones we love,  her life was ending.

It could have been any one of us, going about our usual Saturday morning,

 a quick trip here or there ....

I feel sad that her little ones will not have their lovely mum in their lives, to be there, to show them love and care for, cuddle and play with them. My heart goes out to her husband and family, who will have to deal with so many emotions and find ways to explain why she can't be there any more. 

My memory of her will always be of her playing with her little girl enjoying a giggle and a cuddle.

It's a happy memory, which will live on past the sadness I feel right now,

a sadness for how fragile life really is and how things can change so abruptly,

without warning

without explanation,

 there are no guarantee's

A Change in direction and Letting Go

I had a plan, that when I got past the 2 O'clock feeds stage with Charlotte that I would get back into my little studio and start creating, get my little business up and running, design new collections of jewellery and sell them in my Etsy and Folksy shops. The 2 O'clock feeds took a lot longer to drop than I anticipated, in fact she never slept through the night until she was into her second year. Many months of sleep deprivation is something that took me a long time to accept and deal with. I was lucky with my first 3 children all were sleeping through the night by 14 weeks even the 3rd who was breast fed, I now realise that I was a very lucky mummy back then.

I don't know whether it has anything to do with the age difference in me,  I totally love her, but at times it has been such hard work. My energy levels and my expectations of myself in being a good mum don't always match up. I try to be the best I can be and expect more of myself than is physically possible some days.

I know there are lots of Mums out there who do it, stay at home and be with their children, try to build a business up slowly as they go along, blog about it, sell online, sell at fairs and through shops etc and it works well for them and I totally admire them, but after months of trying, making, hoping, listing, waiting and talking things over with Kevin, I've finally admitted to myself that this isn't for me. It's not working, I'm not getting anything out of it.
So I'm letting go..... It seems that if you are not willing to give 90% of your day over to constant self-promotion online through facebook, twitter etc then your work is just not going to get noticed and I'm not willing to use my precious time in this way.
In my heart I'm an artist and that is what I'm going to concentrate on. I need to spend the time that I do have for me exploring, drawing, painting, experimenting with stitch, fabrics and thread. When you start making things specifically to sell something gets lost, forgotten, unused and I miss that ..... I want it back!

My first journal page, I can now understand how therapeutic creating a journal page can be!

So I'm going to do just that, ....get it back!...... forget about making to sell, spend more time exploring, being creative and enjoying the time that I get to spend in my little studio.

It's a new beginning in a way and I'm excited about it! It would be nice if you, my little list of 41 followers will stay with me for the creative journey.