Monday, August 13, 2007

At Last! A day to myself!

Today is the first full day that I will have at home alone in the house in the last 10 months! I am so looking forward to it. One part of me wants to just sit down in the sun in the quiet and do nothing at all. Another part of me wants to get stuck into all the work that needs to be here to sort out the mess we are living in. Another part of me would like to have a good cry.

I am the type of person who needs time alone. I realised many years ago that for me to have any semblance of inner peace I needed to spend time in silence with myself. For most of my parenting life the early hours before dawn were mine. No noise but the sounds of the birds waking, time to meditate, reflect, draw, breathe. My time.

Since mum came to live with us that time is gone. She too is an early riser. Once she hears me up she is up out of bed. Some days she is out before me, sitting in her armchair in the dark. I miss My Time terribly! Somehow I have to get is back in a different way or I fear I will just be overwhelmed by all this. So today is the first day I have to myself. I can't wait to get them all out of the house!

It is time for me to accept that I have to do things differently. Find new ways to care for myself. How do other carers do it? I would love to hear how you manage to take time out.

3 comments:

Mr Mans Wife said...

So glad you were able to have a day to yourself. Was it all you expected it to be? Where did your mum go?

I suppose time out at home has been much easier for me,it's getting out that I have struggled with. At home I get time to myself when Mr Man is in his studio, and in the past when he slept a lot due to his medication. There was a time when he needed a lot of reasurance and wanted me to be at his side for a lot of the time (even in the day when he was sleeping he would drag me to bed for a cuddle), but I would manage to sneak out of bed at some point to have some time to myself.

So, tell me more about this "Carer blog carnival" idea that you have :)

elanor said...

Hi mmw,
I had a great day to myself! I will write it up as a post. I savoured every minute.

when mum first came to live here I think she needed reassurance,she would just come and stand close to me, she followed me around like a lost puppy, at least she doesn't do that anymore.

I have been reading some personal finance blogs and they have these weekly 'carnivals'. One blogger is the host and other bloggers submit one of their best posts in the last 2 weeks to the host.

Then the host blogger writes an introduction to the carnival and organises the submitted entries into some order, posting the links to the other bloggers posts.

Some of the ways of organising the posts are very interesting and it is a good way of discovering other bloggers.

I will find a couple of good ones later and post the links here for you to have a look at.

Maybe we could have one by inviting other carers to submit and having a topic to start with, just because there doesn't seem to many of us. we could start with monthly.

then we could send those carnival links to some carer websites to let them know we are out here and maybe encourage some other carers to blog.

It would be great to have more of us online.. let me know what you think.

Mr Mans Wife said...

It sounds... exhausting!

No, I'm kidding. It sounds like a great idea. Selecting a topic each month would be great for those who struggle to know what to write about sometimes (like me) and it would be interesting to read each bloggers perspective on the chosen topic.

Who do you nominate as the host? (or are you volunteering?) and how would the host decide on a topic? Maybe bloggers could submit suggestions for the next months topic?