Finally Realizing and Accepting Who I Am

While getting ready this morning, I realized I’ve changed with every house I’ve ever lived in. It’s weird. Things I loved or was into shifted with every house, even with this place where I live today.

I think about all the things I was into during my life: writing, poetry, massage therapy, studying different beliefs, playing Native American flute, to name a few. When I lived in the family home in Kensington, I started getting into writing and poetry. I went to massage school. I joined a woman’s support group and led brown-bag lunches and Artist’s Way classes. I got into Tai Chi and eventually became certified to teach.

When we moved to Hampton, I wrote a lot of poetry and left a job I’d worked at for almost 30 years. During the Hampton years and after I moved to Barrington, there were Native American drumming circles, meditation and other types of spiritual searches such as investigating Wiccan, Buddhism, and other. I also got into playing Native American flute.

In Bradford, I continued doing some massage, taught tai chi, and got more into gardening. I continued to write. But I started recognizing things I enjoyed in the past no longer held my interest. Here, I started working as freelance writer then editor of the InterTown Record. I also got into charcoal landscape drawing and became more of a gardener.

Then, when my mum passed, my entire world fell apart. A part of me was ripped away. She’d been my rock, and I became a severed rope end flopping haphazardly in the wind with no connection. In downsizing to move to Hillsborough, a lot of things got thrown away – part of me got thrown away shattering my heart even farther… but it needed to be done.

Hillsborough was about pulling myself together and trying to figure out who I was now. Past passions no longer held me. I gave up massage, tai chi, and flute playing. Charcoal drawing turned into pastel painting (which I love). After a couple of trips, I stopped traveling, then stopped going places at all except to do errands or an interview for the paper or to bring paintings to a show (although the latter is now waning due to expenses.)

Why and/or how has this happened? Have others experienced similar? It’s almost like I become another person with each house/town. Or has it just been leading me to accepting the person I am and have always been on the inside?

So, this morning, while brushing my hair and seeing the flutes in their stand on a cabinet, I was filled with guilt. I haven’t picked one up in over a year or more. And those flutes were not cheap to purchase, and I have many. What does this mean?

Perhaps each house experience was kind of a rite of passage. It seems I’ve always been experimenting to find out what works best for me. (I’m still trying to put these thoughts together, i.e., trying to make sense of it all.) It’s like each situation has helped me further recognize who I am and have always been even when I didn’t realize it.

It’s all about learning to accept who I am and be OK with who I am. Yes, there is always room to grow and learn. I have become stronger in my beliefs. I recognize who I am and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I stand strong in stating, “I am not a sheep. I AM the odd duck.”