Rainbows

Four years ago I made the craziest decision of my life and also one of the best. My youngest was headed towards her first birthday and I had been considering my options for returning to work. We’d moved a few months before she was born and the time I had had off since then was the longest stretch I had been unemployed for since I was fourteen and nine months old. I missed working, I missed having a workplace to go to, I missed being just me for a day or two a week.When it became apparent that it wasn’t going to be possible for me to get a job I was relieved. Not just ok with it, but deeply relieved. Relieved that the childcare center was full and couldn’t take casual bookings, relieved that my husband was in his first admin role and not able to be home straight after school for me to rush to a late shift. I had no options to ‘go back to work’ the way I had always done it and I was so relieved.It was a confusing feeling at the time. I knew my husband and I were both burnt out to some extent after a challenging few years with our middle child and his health. We were still carrying on the best we could, running on close to empty. I also knew that work would be something that would fill me up rather than empty me further. I knew I needed something and yet I was being directed away from the ‘something’ that made sense to just go back to.I didn’t know or understand at the time how much trauma and trapped emotion was lying underneath the physical exhaustion and burn out. I wasn’t able to link the way I felt about ‘going back’ to the millions of micro traumas I had experienced as a graduate and during the years I had worked full time in an environment that sent my sensitive nervous system into a chronic state of stress and hyperarousal. Nor the three disempowering birth experiences I had been through and the countless experiences of being a mother who was not heard or supported by the system while my child and whole family suffered. I hadn’t worked through any of those things at that time but something divine, intelligent and magical knew. I would not be ok if I went back to working in that space long term.I made the decision to study while I couldn’t work. I studied all of the things that I had been missing during those times. I studied intuition, spirit, holism and nature. I studied all of the things that I had had to venture outside of the box to find for myself, to help my child. I studied the science behind those things and the lack of science behind them. I studied the ways that information can be communicated and received and the ways it can be blocked from being received. I studied how we can change behaviours and why we often don’t. I studied so many pieces of the health and healing puzzle that fall outside the boundaries of the conventional medicine I had known and experienced. It gave me what I needed, I drank it in, everything I could get my hands on, following every thread that was given to me. It gave me my work and as I learned, I also healed. I lit up with inspiration and hope. I created my work here as a way of sharing my journey and passing on what I was learning.The whole way along I hoped and dreamed that one day I would be able to bring it all together, simply bring this additional knowledge and experience into the career I had started as a bright eyed teenager wanting to help and support people with their health. I hoped and at the same time felt like I was dreaming. It was my pipe dream as I eventually did get another job within the hospital system. As I worked and studied and tried to build something new here. On the days it all felt pointless and ridiculous, that pipe dream was still there glittering away in the background, reminding me of what I was working for, why I had started all of this.The past twelve months have been challenging, as they have been for many people around the world. My challenge has been a wrestle with my identity. It has been in finishing my studies and being thrust into ‘now what are you going to do with it?’. It has been in ‘can you go back now, into thirty years of working, when so many things about the job don’t align with who you have become?’. So many questions, so many unknowns, so much thinking through, sitting with, deciding one way and then the other. So much uncertainty around the future and yet- every fork in the road, every final moment of thought and first step in a new direction has been crystal clear.I’m meant to be right here right now. I was meant to renew my registration even though I felt so sure that I cannot ever go back to working in hospitals and forgoing my health for the sake of the job. I was meant to stumble upon a job advertisement a couple of weeks ago that seemed like a long shot and convince myself that I would not apply. I was meant to sit down the night before applications closed and pour my heart into the selection criteria. I was meant to just show up for the interviews exactly as I am, flaws, gaps in my resume, open heart and endless passion. I was meant to drive home the other day alongside a big bright rainbow after being offered the job. My pipe dream has appeared in real life, in the real world. In a center that I’m excited and proud to be a part of, in a role that allows me to bring all of my skills, knowledge and experience, in a part-time capacity that means I can work here and also work there.I couldn’t have dreamed up this job and yet maybe I did.My work has and always will be about empowering and supporting women in their health and wellness. In Little Wildflowers I do that by sharing the way that we found and continue to work on our health and wellness as a family. How my child’s challenges are mine too and how healing him allowed me to heal too. It’s food, it’s environment, it’s tools and modalities, it’s community.In Sensitive & Aware I take it further by sharing how I create this life that works for us every day. How finding my flow and learning how to create space for what’s important to me has changed everything. It’s energy, it’s self-awareness, it’s light and shade, triggers and glimmers.Now I have the opportunity to empower and support women in my community in various settings by educating them about their bodies, their health and their choices as well. This is what I asked for four years ago, amid the confusion of nothing being as I thought it should be, I asked for this. A way to work to help and support people with their health while also honouring who I am and what I need in order to be well. I asked for it and none of it was clear, I didn’t know what it would look like but for four years I took each step, made the tough decisions, I trusted and I grew my awareness of my inner world. I fostered a close connection to my inner voice and then I followed it. All of those things put me on the path to being right here right now.Here and now where every piece of my work is about creating spaces for women to be heard. Where they are heard, supported and empowered to hear their own voices again and to start to follow those voices towards the lives they are here to live.