Birthday Blessings

(Nimue)

Birthdays are a good time for taking stock, and today is mine. I wrote this post a little in advance because today I’m on holiday. Holidays have not featured much in the last fifteen years, nor has time off, so this is a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Last year was the loveliest birthday I’d ever had – a very gentle day spent with Keith and James, involving a Roman museum and a lot of ice-cream. So many good things have happened since then. This last year has brought dramatic improvements to my physical and mental health. This has improved my quality of life dramatically. That’s largely due to being less stressed and being able to sleep well.

Good sleep is a tremendous blessing. It’s easier for being calm and relaxed. I spend a lot of my time feeling quietly happy – another huge blessing. My life has opened up to include a great many things that bring me joy – more music, more adventures, more inspiration. The incredible, everyday blessing that comes from feeling deeply loved and cared for. Up until this year I hadn’t experienced anything like it.

That has all brought other blessings. I feel comfortable in my own skin in a way that I never have before. I’m not anxious all the time, no longer afraid of getting everything wrong. I don’t have to be hypervigilant, don’t have to second guess everything.  I’m living with someone who finds me good in many ways, and who expresses that all the time in ways that are helping me heal my battered confidence and damaged sense of self. I’m learning new ways of thinking and being.

Having spent a lot of years in overwhelming distress and mostly wishing to die, I now actively want to live. That’s a huge, incredible, transformation and a life changing level of blessing. I want to live. I wake up feeling hopeful and looking forward to the day. I do not dread the future, I am not smothered by the past.

There were things in my past that felt like utter failure. I gave everything I had, tried my hardest all the time, and never felt good enough or happy. I now have a life that isn’t full of struggle or extreme effort, and where just showing up as myself and being relaxed and happy gets a lot done. There have been rounds of having to push hard to keep things going – but that was around dealing with the challenges of cancer treatment. That gave me a lot of perspective.

A relationship should be a source of joy, and  should be a blessing. Being able to give that without running myself ragged is wonderful. Being able to experience that, results in feelings that I have a hard time wrapping words round. Profound gratitude is very much part of it, as is a continuing sense of wonder at discovering just how sweet and good life can be.