Almost an entire year ago now I hurt my back pretty bad...I'm sure it had been a long time coming from that initial accident that has put me on the mend since September, growing up raising farm animals and wrestling sheep doesn't exactly save your body from the occasional ache and pain or wear and tear. Raising animals can be very physically taxing on a body, cowboys and cowgirls are tough folks! I raised sheep and pigs and goats for years, I raked and shoveled pens, lifted bails of hay and straw into the back of our car and then hauled them into our barn, Loaded and unloaded bags of grain, dragged sheep up roads for their "evening walks" (sheep weight rough 100+ lbs sometimes 150lbs) and flipped them on their backs to sheer their bellies (which often times required me physically lifting them off their hooves when they wouldn't cooperate) top that with 15 years of being in Ballet and forcing my body into unnatural poses and bends that put strain on my skeleton and then I carried two very long rather hefty babies in my belly, i've got a few very weak links in my chain making me more susceptible to un-alignment and back/knee pain. I've always been physically active my whole life, we would spend all the time we could outdoors. I love to hike, bike. fish, swim, explore, run and play with my kids outside too.
Last night I felt pretty great, my back is finally feeling good again and I've been trying to get back into yoga. I read where handstands are good for lower back pain and releasing the pressure that we carry in our back so I decided to try one (outside of course in my backyard) and wouldn't you know I would injure myself....not in the way I was imaging that I might as I flipped my legs over my head and found my balance but when I came back down from successfully hardstanding, I landed my right knee very hard on top of my curious Dog's head! She had come over unbeknownst to myself to see what I was doing and sniff me and I came down pretty hard and fast.....She yelped and ran to her bed and my husband ran and got me some frozen grapes to lay on the injured spot. Needless to say we both left hurting and my poor dog was worried about me while I was laying in the grass with a grape ice pack on my leg. My knee is still swollen today and I have a gnarly bruise, I can't even touch the lump that is swollen but I don't think anything is broken....just another injury to add the the many on my list of growing up and doing physical things.
I try to live a simple life....I try to quiet things down as much as I can, I try to let life flow how it's going to flow and not fight it. A knee injury that has me down for a few days means a few days of much needed rest and I try not to stress myself out with over doing the "To Do" list. I homeschool my kids which sets us up for a pretty relaxed day at home, we don't rush through our mornings to make it on time for a bell but rather wake up, enjoy breakfast together at our leisure and head into our first part of schooling for the day. I've found that things go better when I let them lead which means sometimes we start out reading and other times they're more focused and want to get down to math or science first thing, other times they just woke up with too much good energy that has to get out so we play in the backyard for a bit before we get started..... Living simply shouldn't be complicated and I try to keep out what makes it complicated to me, when the pressure builds up too much in my simple life and I am feeling stressed by too many things, I take a step back, reevaluate/reprioritize and get back to the basics. Sometimes that includes separating myself from social media or being a bit of a recluse, not for too long but long enough to just feel the quiet in my life and let go of some of that pressure that has built up in the burdens of the outside world and the noise that I feel comes from society and the world around us. No one said you couldn't reshape your life to how you like it or that you can't start over however many times you need to make it feel right to you and that's what I do. I do it whenever I need to.
This week i've spent more time outside, the mornings and evenings have been cooler and I was actually able to get my seeds into pods and started for a winter garden. My husband cleaned our backyard up a lot this weekend, moved boards that were blocking the area of the existing garden and chicken coop where the grape vine is growing, he put down some weed control mesh that kills off weeds and makes weeding virtually unneeded (love that!) and every night we have enjoyed some time spent watching our hens (big and little) enjoy life in the coop. The babies are still exploring a lot and it's funny to see them fly on top of the hutch or get a little lost in the corn and sunflowers that are growing in the coop.
This special time in the evening has become just what I need to slow things down and enjoy time more and be present in the moment happening right then. My kids are playing in the background, my chickens are being cute and funny, my dog loyally sitting by my side and my husband puttering around the yard and coop, figuring how to improve things or moving stuff around or even pausing and enjoying everything for himself.....it really is one of my favorite things right now to just sit there in that moment and enjoy what is simple, what is happy and beautiful in our own backyard.
No comments:
Post a Comment