week 18: when the clouds come
this week on the little dream farm
Is it cool with you if we go a little deeper today and talk about life stuff? I’ve had something on my heart I wanted to share with you.
Maybe it was the overdoing it before I left for my recent trip in order to be ready to be away for a few days; or perhaps it was the crazy work schedule and having to be “on” the entire time I was away; or that there was so much to catch up on once I got home… but the funk set in last Friday after I got back from my trip and it overstayed its welcome this week. The rainy, gloomy, chilly weather the entire week didn’t help, but this was past week was a string of days for me where I really needed to take a pause.
I’ve shared openly before via Instagram that I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression almost all of my life. When I was a kid, it felt like a cloud hanging over me. In the past decade there were points that were really difficult, is one way to put it.
These days, I happen to struggle less, primarily because I have better tools, and even more importantly, that I’m honing how to use them so that even when those cloudy skies appear, it doesn’t trend that way for long.
But this week felt like one of those weeks…the funk…is my way of describing it. Years ago I’d feel bad and then beat myself up for feeling badly. Now, I’m better at sitting with it…whatever it is…and just allowing it, and allowing myself to just feel how I feel and allow that to be ok. It’s easy to type that. It has been heaps of work to actually practice it. Always a work in progress.
So how does this relate to the goings on of the farm? Well for one thing…the chores don’t stop just because you’re having a few off days, and oddly enough, the daily repetitive routine is really helpful and grounding, too. Chris and I always tag in for one another when we really need it, but when I’m feeling off I try to go through the chores a little more slowly—take a few more minutes to hang around the hens and let myself laugh; spend some extra moments loving on the donkeys and allowing their sweet nature to help let the worries fall away.
I think it’s really important that it’s not just all the highlights, the successes, the pretty, picture-worthy stuff that we share in these spaces with you, but that there’s room for everything else, too. It’s not that I think social media can’t be authentic, but it just is impossible for it ever to be truly accurate. We all know by now that we’ve all shown up to this online space where we mostly all just share the good stuff…even though we all know that’s just not how life really is all the time for any one of us.
I tend to be a quieter on social when I’m feeling like I did this week…maybe you’d even noticed it. Some time away from social and from my phone always helps. Aside from that, I always try to get more sleep, get in some good movement or take a break from it entirely (this past week was a nice break from the gym and not going walking out in the rain) and trying to eat really well, too. I tackled the stuff that had to get done this week and let all the rest of it go.
Call it a character defect, but I’ve always wrestled with the balance of being the type of person who hates sitting still and having nothing to do and then being overwhelmed by the amount of stuff on my plate…the amount of stuff that I put on my plate, to be exact. This used to eat me up so much years ago…and I think now I just realize that my nature is that I prefer to go a thousand miles an hour and sometimes I need a hard stop before jumping back in.
Once this Friday came around Chris and I had very low-key work days and two big projects to get done in the Cut Flower Patch—laying out the landscape fabric that we prepped earlier in the week by cutting and burning the planting holes into—and then also running a fence around the Patch to keep critters out of the planting area once we get all the little seedlings into the ground.
We stopped by one of our favorite local farms to pick up a bunch of local goodies to make ourselves an easy dinner and by the time we were cleaning that up, finishing up chores and winding down from the day, I was feeling back to myself again. Finally after a week of catching up on rest and not trying to beat myself back into action, the clouds parted…just as they did outside…and the funk lifted.
Maybe you can relate? I’m curious to hear about the tools you use, the things you practice, and how you weather the funk if or when you feel it? If you’ve made it this far, thanks for letting me take the space to talk about it and share a little bit of the not related (but absolutely still 100 percent related) farm stuff.
As far as this weekend goes, Chris and I are tackling more of our ongoing projects list and we made some incredible headway on Saturday! We’re calling it “the nicest day of the year” thus far and we had the windows open for all the kitties, the hens were happy in the sunshine in their enclosure and the donkeys spent the day in the sunshine in their pasture. We all got a mood boost from the sunshine, that’s for certain!
We finished up some mulching, got some of the yard mowed, picked up the dahlias from my friend’s house where they were being stored for the winter, and did a few small tasks in the Big Garden to get it ready for planting (likely this coming week!). We reseeded some grass in the donkey’s winter area, made ourselves a great lunch and paused to sit down and enjoy it together, and then ran over to a new nursery we haven’t been to yet to pick up the plants for the patio planters. It was such a great day!
We’re spending our Sunday with our neighbors in the morning finishing up the rest of the corral fencing project and then I have dahlia tubers to separate and get planted out into the Cut Flower Patch. All good things on our agenda that we’ve been eager to knock out and that feel so good to accomplish, check off the list, and then sit back and take in the progress around the farm—it’s looking amazing and the budding and blossoming farm has me so excited about the warmer months ahead.
If you’d like to share your heart this week I hope you feel as though this is a safe space to do just that. And if you’d like to leave some advice or share things that work best for you when you’re feeling the funk then by all means go right ahead—you never know who might really need to hear exactly that thing you have to say that’s helped you, too.
As for me, I try to remind myself, as I did this past week, that all of our emotions—the bad ones and the good ones too—are like the clouds. They come and they go and they pass as freely as the very ones above our heads. Sometimes the dark ones hang around a little while longer than we’d maybe like…but they do pass. It helps to go outside and watch them a while for the reminder when we’re feeling down. That visualization—thinking of the passing clouds—has always brought me comfort. Hoping it does the same for you, my friend.
Thank you for having the courage to share your cloudy days with us because we all experience them at some point or other in our lives, some more than others. I have had to step back from social media many times as I struggle with being a long-distance grandmother. It is so hard to see all the happy posts from family and friends sharing the wonderful moments and special occasions they get to share with their grandchildren when my reality is that those moments are only possible in person a few times each year. I go to the dirt to work through those darker days when possible, there is something so cathartic and peaceful about digging in my gardens. I also turn to my fur family (our dogs and our cat) for some much needed cuddles or a long walk. I can feel my serotonin and dopamine levels elevating to help calm and relax me as I stroke Sophie and Mia’s soft fur or hear the steady purring of Mance, our cat. The serenity prayer is my constant companion and I have said it so many times throughout the years and truly believe that prayers are answered. Life with your cousin, Whitney, has taught me that many times the answer I get isn’t the answer I wanted but the answer I needed. Hugs and love across the miles and keep using all the tools in your basket to help those clouds part and let the sun shine through.
Yes! A dark cloud. A heavy coat. A funk. It certainly slides in sometimes and thankfully doesn’t always stay too long. For me, I try to take the time to be quiet so I can hear God. In music. In devotionals. In snuggling my sweet kitties. Many times, busy can just be covering up things that need to be processed. I recently was out for a fun day and a wave of anxiety/panic hit. And I was so thankful for all the tools I have now. I was able to breathe. Do positive self-talk. Run my wrists under cold water. And then enjoy the rest of my day. Because these things are part of my life, but they no longer define me. Praying for sunshine this week!