I really didn’t. I don’t feel like I have ever gotten to truly calm down and heal from all the shit that has happened to me. I have been running at full steam ahead for decades. Almost four decades. That’s not hyperbole, that’s reality.

All the moves. Trauma. Schools. Jobs that I worked 50-70 hours/week. Pregnancies that sapped the nutrients from my bones. Traveling. 24/7 care of my kids.

I could really use a break.

Noah is scared of us trying to live on a low quantity of money. He doesn’t feel the relief I feel. Having money and knowing you can spend money changes the entire focus of your life and the pressure on you. Knowing that you don’t have the money to do things…

Well, I’ve been there before. If your basics are covered and you do not feel stress over losing your home or food… it’s pretty chill. I like that feeling. Our house is paid off. We will definitely be able to afford food. But we may not be able to travel much for a long time. Right this second that sounds awesome. We won’t be eating out much; we will probably save up and eat out every other month. That’ll be a massive lifestyle change for us. I think it will be healthy.

I wonder how much my current illness is related to just collapsing under the weight of everything I have been doing. I want to slow down so much. I am not doing much today. Probably not tomorrow either. I am so dizzy that walking around our tiny apartment requires breaks to sit down. It is literally unsafe for me to try to go walk around Bangkok like that where I cannot communicate and I have three children to keep safe. I also wonder how much this feeling of illness is related to the truly deep tissue Thai massage I had the other day. That lady broke up super deep adhesions and ground out knots that have been there for six months and more. My body was literally flooded with all the stuff that has been stored up in my muscles. That can totally make you sick. (Yes my pee is totally a massively dark brown despite me drinking twice the amount of water I usually drink.) It was a much harder massage than I have gotten almost ever before in my life. Next time I will say “gentle”. Notice in that article where it says that EDS might make this problem worse? Yeah. I have that. I think I should stop requesting deep tissue work.

Putting my oxygen mask on means knowing that today I have harsh limits. I felt like death the day after the massage. I can’t do that any more.

There are so many things I want to help with in this life. I need to heal first though. Or I am not going to be able to live up to the obligations to my children that I already signed on for. That’s just a fact. It is hard being realistic about that.

I am not entirely sure what healing means at this point. Having real energy? Not feeling tapped out and exhausted before I open my eyes?

Even though I feel sad about not seeing Pam this December I feel very excited for having a family winter time in our new home. I don’t know what I want to do. I keep talking about it with my family. We are not Christians and Christmas is not much of a secular holiday in Scotland. They care about NYE (Hogmanay). But we don’t have attachment to Hogmanay at this point. Maybe it’ll grow for us in our spirits, but right now it still feels like almost appropriation?

I wonder about Winter Solstice. We are all pagan-adjacent in our spirituality. I wonder if shifting focus will help us build a different future around who we want to grow into being?