home

Behind the four walls that make up your house, there are so many stories. Tragic, beautiful, happy, incredible, life changing stories. The stories that make you who you are… the building blocks that created you. Moments that turned you into the person you are and set you on your path to be the one you will become.

It’s strange to think that every house you drive by holds so many stories, so many family dinners, so many arguments, so many hugs and kisses. Each house is a home to those who occupy it, when they move on those stories are carried on in their memories. When you move on and leave your home, leaving that chapter. It becomes someone else’s chapter. It becomes someone else’s future. The world keeps turning.

The house that I spent 14 years calling home, is becoming someone else’s next chapter. It’s opening it’s doors for new love, a new family and new memories together. They won’t know my families memories, the holidays spent around the table laughing… the Sanctuary from a broken heart… the people who entered the house as friends and left as family… even those they have since passed on. Those thoughts now only exist in my mind and on my levels I am sad that I won’t be able to open that door and see those memories in front of my eyes.

Although my parents haven’t lived there for a few years, it still smelt like home, up until the last night I locked the door. I will miss that smell. There was a comfort in the house, entering it felt like I was being held by my parents. I miss them.

I know home is where you make it, where you feel it within your heart. Home is where you can be yourself and feel loved, safe and comfortable. I am determined that my home will be that for many friends, even ones who don’t know they need it.

My original home in the US is gone. But those memories are not. I have to focus on that.

Paint by numbers

Growing up I loved paint by numbers… I was terrible at them, couldn’t paint a straight line so I would always end up mixing over to another section. I don’t think I ever completed one. But there was something fun about them, the control, the rules. Knowing that if I followed the steps, it would look how it was supposed to look.

In some ways wouldn’t it be great if our lives were a paint by number, where we knew what we needed to do at what step to turn our life into the preprinted, designed masterpiece it was destined to be… But sadly life isn’t like that, 2020 has taught us that no matter how controlled or organized you plan out, something can come along and run your paint into the wrong section.

Every life is a piece of art that is open to interpretation, the downside to any paint by number is that it doesn’t give you freedom… life gives us that freedom, to mess up, to make mistakes and the freedom to own them and create our own vision.

In life we never know what color comes next, what hurdle we have to jump… or what hurdle will take us down. The point is, we have to stand back up, we have to keep painting, through the pain, through the tears, through the losses, the wins and the smiles. Your masterpiece is never complete until you stop painting… sometimes you find out that you only have a few weeks to finish your painting, sometimes you don’t get that warning.

Would that change how fast you paint, would you rush through all the steps to complete your painting faster? Or would you savor east brush stroke… appreciate the colors, their vividness, their ability to blend and create depth in your art.

No matter how much time you have left, you should savor each stroke, each swish of the bristles on the canvas that is your life because you don’t know how long you have, but even an incomplete painting that was created with care and love is still a masterpiece. Life is not a paint by number, life is a Bob Ross painting where happy little accidents can change you for the better. Love every moment, love every brush stroke… because when your painting is done, the masterpiece is all you leave behind. Make it beautiful.

Into the unknown…

So it’s quarantine day… who knows? is it Tuesday? Maybe?

That is the world we are currently living in, where we don’t know the date, we don’t know the day of the week… all we know is that we have to stay home… for how long we don’t know? The rest is unknown.

It’s a scary place to be… we are really living the same day in and out… it takes it toll on your mental health, physical health and your relationships. My dog for example is fed up of us being home… she’s ready for her 6 hour daily naps. But even human relationships can struggle at this time. To be honest my main issue has been more the mental struggle.

Recently I have found myself lacking the motivation to even get up out of bed and keep moving every day, I want to be productive but lack the energy… I found myself initially saying “I don’t have time”… but I have nothing but time right now. That was when I really had to sit down and think about what was going on… not COVID-19 related, not money related or work related but internally.

What I figured out is that the “unknown” makes me unsettled because I can’t control it… as for someone who is longing to travel everywhere and see everything the world has to offer, there will be so many unknowns in that… how can being told “stay at home” cause me to develop this new struggle. But really if you think back to your childhood, there was always someone who had the answer, a teacher, parent, friend… then as you grow up you still have those guiding lights, those people who will point you where you want to go… but right now, at this time we are all in the same boat…. facing the same direction… without a map, no control… drifting.

The unknown is scary and a in itself is a challenge to face. The nice thing is we are all facing this unknown together… yes with our own individual issues and concerns but over all… we all have this joint feeling of not knowing. There should be comfort in that right? We shouldn’t be spending this time putting others down, comparing whose life is worse off. We should be holding each other up and saying “we can steer this ship together” by focusing on what IS in our control, what really matters… and that has never changed… LOVE.

With more time on our hands, we seem to get bogged down with filling it with stress and worry and comparison… but we need to see the love in the world…

There are kids at home celebrating spending time with both their parents… they aren’t going to remember why, they will remember love. Significant others who have spent maybe a week on vacation together are now spending a month seeing each other every day… getting to love on each other. Our loyal pets that spend so much time alone, are experiencing true companionship and love because we are home… and exercising more.

For those that we can’t physically see, we are communicating through other measures, FaceTime, zoom, video calling. We need to keep those connections open when ever this pandemic is over. Sadly I don’t think we will ever return to normal… but we will find a new normal. We are already starting to… but let that new normal be based off of Love… maybe we let love lead us into the unknown… embrace is and control what we can control, what matters. Being a decent loving human being.

Who are you living for?

I am now in my 30s and I have always put the world before myself, it has lead me to become the completely indecisive person I am today. But I am starting to realize, 20 years of sacrificing myself for others is catching up. I don’t have a clear direction in my life. I work hard because that is what I expect of myself, am I in the career that 10 year old me dreamt about-nope. Now I am not blaming the world for where I am, i am not complaining that I have a terrible life, because I don’t. My life is wonderful. Minus some health issues here and there.

If you are someone like me, you will always put others before yourself, whether it’s family, friends or even someone you don’t know. Being a kind and caring individual is a wonderful thing… but it gets to the point that you sacrifice yourself for others, you lose the person you are and become the person the world creates for you… or rather the person you let the world tell you that you are.

My point is, being happy with yourself, with your choices and with your life is what makes you a well rounded individual, being decisive about your career, what you do every day and the direction you want to go will lead to you being happy. Hopefully causing less stress, less high blood pressure and meaning that you can wake up every morning with a smile on your face.

The interesting part about all of this is that it starts with you. No one else. It starts with that voice inside your head… you have to turn down the noise, turn off the overthinking and make a choice. Who are you living for? The answer should be… wait scratch that the answer IS “I am living for me”.

Going home…a two way trip

Late last week i boarded an 8 hour night flight from Orlando to Manchester… it has been 3 years since I had been back to England and a lot of things in my life have changed.

My dad met me at the airport, I haven’t seen my parents in almost 2 years. I was stressing my self out the entire flight… my excitement/anxiety levels were all over the place and I couldn’t settle down enough to sleep. So needless to say when I walked out of the airport at 8:30am… I was exhausted.

Walking into my parents house and getting a hug was like a miracle cure for any illness. The comfort that lies in a simple family embrace is incredible. Now I didn’t grow up in this part of England, I didn’t visit it when I was a child… but it still felt like home. I have spent the week with my parents for every second of the day and it has been wonderful.

I almost cried in sainsburys (a super market) because the price of the food was so cheap and the quality was great… all the food that I grew up taking for granted was sitting there waiting for me to consume. All the chocolate, the fresh pastries, the sandwiches and biscuits and crips. My mum told me she did the same thing when they first arrived back.

I have eaten every stereotypical English food you could imagine… fish and chips, kebab, pasties, sausage rolls, pork pies, a carvery, an Indian and many other random treats. My diet doesn’t count this week because I am basically eating happiness.

I have two days left here with my parents and that makes me sadder than I realized it would. I don’t know when they will be back in the US, or when I will be back in England… my dad and I had a conversation where he asked me if I would move back to England… I told him yes, but it would be an adjustment. I explained how every trip back to England tells me that I am home both here in England and back in Florida. It’s like two different versions of my life…. both places have good things and bad. I finally settled on telling him, I have two homes but don’t feel i belong in either… and that’s not a bad thing.

I cannot wait to get home to my loving partner and my adorable pup. It will be the only thing keeping me sane through the 9 hour flight back. But there are things that I learnt that I missed on this trip that I do want to try and bring into my lifestyle back in the US to maybe feel a bit more “at home”.

There are traditions and things from our childhood that we forget as we grow up… those things we look back at now and smile… those are the parts of ourselves that we need to hold on to. Because home isn’t really a physical place but a feeling inside us… a feeling of being safe and loved. Home can be more than one place. It just means home is sometimes a two way trip.

Home.

That four letter word has so many meanings tied to it. Is it a physical house? A town? A country? Or just that feeling of knowing you are where you are supposed to be… knowing that you are loved and supported for being you.

People often wish to go back home… but what does that really mean? Can you ever really go back? Or are you trying to go back to that feeling of “home”, the memories of “home”.

For me personally home is where I feel loved, safe and valued. My family is spread across the world but home is the word I use to describe where I live but also where my parents live…. I have never actually spent a night in the house with them but because that is where they live that is my home.

I know for some, Home is just a memory… something they can’t touch anymore but those memories still count, that smell of fresh baked bread, your mums perfume or that smell of engine dirt that your dad’s jacket smelt like, no matter how often it was washed. I have had many houses that we lived in that I considered home, but really home shouldn’t be attached to a physical building, it should be something you can carry with you, because what ever your age is, what ever you have been through… you still need that feeling of coming home.

If you can close your eyes and imagine a family dinner, cooking in the kitchen with loved ones or just movie nights with friends on the sofa… that feeling is home.

Home is where you matter, where your voice matters and where you are welcome with a hug. Home doesn’t have to be something tied to blood relatives, home is what you make it. Never forget that.