Navigating Difficult Times

Finding a little peace

Navigating difficult times. Finding a way through.

I really wanted to write something cheerful. There is so much preying on my mind that I can’t write about, I wanted to distract myself and write something uplifting. But the truth is, I can’t divert my mind to something more trivial or at least if I did, it would just be words on a page. It wouldn’t contain part of me which is after all, one of the reasons I’m here on Substack. To write from my heart and soul.

What do you do. . . ?

So instead I am exploring what do you do when you have real difficulties in your life, what do you do to ease your mind? What can you do to help keep a balance so that you don’t fall into a pit of despair?

How do you cope with the guilt? Shouldn’t this never ending situation remain front and centre in your brain? Shouldn’t you devote all your time and attention to the issue in the hope of ….. what??….. Finding a solution? But there isn’t one because the situation is beyond your control. You can only stand by and watch it unfold. You know you’re doing what you can. You question yourself time and time again. Anguish over it. The reality is you’re living with it day in and day out.

Relief by distraction

There has to be some relief. Even just for a while. Distraction in some form or other, a rest for the mind.

If there is one thing I have learnt over my 58 years, fretting over something really never helps. It doesn’t solve anything. Dissecting problems can cause fixations and that can only be unhealthy. Any sense of balance lost. Spiralling thoughts can become never ending, insistent, demanding. Ill making.

Sometimes you have no choice but to let something play out. The interventions you’ve tried over the past months haven’t resolved anything and perhaps in someway it’s had the opposite effect and extended the trauma, however unwittingly. Enabling in a bid to try and save someone never works. At least not in my experience.

I am resigned to knowing I’m doing what I can. I’m here. I’m providing support and I’ll listen if only there could be an opening up. I wish there could be a chink of light, a realisation, a desire to get better. But right now there isn’t and I can’t magic it so.

So for me, to be any use, requires me to hold onto my life of normality. To keep my sanity. Loosing myself in this mire isn’t going to help anyone.

The view from our caravan. The Cumbrian mountains in the distance.

Becoming insignificant

I’ve come away to our caravan. It’s in such a peaceful spot overlooking the estuary. The panorama stretches all the way to the Cumbrian mountains and I am an insignificant dot in the landscape.

To be so insignificant in the face of all this nature is a joy. It fills my depleted soul. It gives and I so gratefully receive. I breathe deeply and my eyes soak up all that open space and beauty and it filters down into my soul. It refreshes and fills me up again. It heals.

When all is said and done that estuary will continue to ebb and flow. The mountains will always be. The birds will continue to fly in and out , to feed in the tidal pools. The rooks will continue to build their nests in the tops of the trees. The sun will shine and the heavens still open. The wind will blow the cobwebs away. There is something so comforting in this.

The Estuary, tide leaving

The wonder of nature

Nature is our healer.

And so I get outside. Go for a walk. Sketch. Appreciate every little bit of what I see before me. I soak up that peace and energy and conserve it to help me navigate these very difficult times.

Sketching outside is a wonderful distraction.

Do you have any words of wisdom? My mother-in-law tells me nothing lasts forever, I try to keep this in my mind