Saturday, February 11, 2012

Self Discovery

As ridiculous as it is for a 42-year-old woman to be trying to find herself, here I am…lost.  I’m fairly confident this isn’t a mid-life crisis.  Instead, it’s the crisis I should have had in my late 20’s or, at the very latest, in my early 30’s.  It’s the crisis of suddenly realizing that I never took time to get to know who I really am—I was always too busy being a recovering alcoholic, wife, mom, housekeeper, pseudo-Christian, employee to actually discover who God created me to be.  Not who I think I need to be or who society tells me I need to be or even what the people who love me think I should be—but the inner person God created me to be.

I came across this amazing, life-changing quote on this simple living blog, rowdykittens.com :

“Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his true self and not from the self he thinks he should be.”  ~Barbara Ueland

I am ready to tell the truth.  I am ready to speak from my true self.  There’s only one problem:  my true self has become so overlaid with who I think I should be and who I think people expect me to be that I just don’t know my true self at all.  I wouldn’t recognize her if she walked up to me at WalMart and slapped me upside the head.  So this is a journey of discovering the true me and it begins with a list of things that I know I love.  Not because someone tells me I should or because it's the “thing” to do or because it presents an image I want people to see, but things I love just because I love them.

1.      Butterflies
2.      Watching the birds at my feeders
3.      Violin music
4.      Gardening—when I have the time to do it right
5.      Anything sandalwood—especially men’s cologne
6.      Cooking from scratch—when I have the time to do it right
7.      Being tan
8.      The depth of certain words
9.      Big, beefy, goofy Boxer dogs
10.  Alaskan malamutes—but not huskies
11.  Slow, soft kisses
12.  Steamed broccoli
13.  The sound of rain on a metal roof
14.  The warm smell of horses
15.  Making healthy recipes taste good
16.  Elegant stationery and quality pens
17.  Citrusy fragrances
18.  Haunting Scottish ballads

This is an ongoing list that I will add to whenever I hear that little voice in my head saying, “This, I love!”

I hope from this journey to come to honestly know myself…and to be more focused in my life choices so that the majority of my time and energy is spent contributing to the world by doing the things I truly love and enjoy.

~Sheila

2 comments:

  1. Like your list but number ten haunts me. I have been white all my life and have tried everything to get a tan. Even mixed iodine and oil and rubbed it on me as a teen. lol Good luck in finding you and I think you will like you when you find you.

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  2. Paula...one good legacy from my dad--just enough Cherokee to keep a tan. Thanks for the feedback and I think you might be right!

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