Tag Archives: understanding

Life…Shows You The Way PT II

01 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by in Belief, Dream, Learning and Evolving, LIfe, Making our own way, mental health, New Paths, Reflections, Spirituality, The continuing adventure

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Picking up from my last post in this series it was January 2019, and we had lived in France nearly four years. That January was hard, RD had not been paid for a job he had done and we were down to our last bones, literally, on my birthday we had five euros to our name. But we had learned that what you need will come if you just believe and on that evening my tablet pinged informing me that I had made an Etsy sale of over one hundred euro, we were solvent again until our pensions went into our account. Our belief had not failed us, it was another of the lessons we had learned ‘what you need will come.’

The next morning as we sat drinking our tea I felt a surge of anger and drive and I looked at RD and said “Fuck it’ you aren’t working via someone else anymore you’re advertising and working for yourself. Add to that your not cutting corners when you are asked to save them money, if they don’t want a good job done they can get someone else to do it. We are not going to be like other people out here, we’re having an ethos and that ethos will be ‘if a jobs worth doing it’s worth doing well.’”

I had seen so many times how people would undercut others to get the work instead, but then do a very bad job. It would have been so easy to be like them but that was the crux, that was the test: no matter how hard don’t get sucked into the same mindset as the others, rise above it, have faith that keeping your integrity and principles will get you what you need. God did we learn that lesson well!

So that very day I redesigned our Facebook page, and I advertised RD as available for work on the local sites. Within an hour he had a job to start, with a person who came to be our friend. She had been let down and ripped off before by other people in the area, but once RD had spent three days with her the trust had been built and she gave him a fabulous review which I could then use to further promote our service. Life had spurred me on to do what I had the skill to do.

In the next two day I set up a website with our ethos ‘If A Jobs Worth Doing It’s Worth Doing Well’ and I advertised us on the local sites twice a week.

Now it was common for other English in the area to then comment negatively on other people’s posts, and believe me I had my fair share of that. But I was not prepared to be bullied by others, as I was back in ‘work mode’. If they were rude I would answer them brusquely and professionally, they could never respond because more often they were lying or just being negative. On one post a lady put that ‘it would be good if you answered your emails.’ Now I was in charge of all admin, and trust me when I say I am always on top of it. I went back through any contact confirming that no email had been received, so I told her so, in firm professional and businesslike way, also advising her that she was being rude in her tone. It was clear she was lying, but at that point other people took interest and answered her, appreciating the fact that I had put a stop to the nastiness. From there RD got a job with a lovely couple, who were respected in the area. We stood by our principles and they gave him another fabulous review, and work took off from there.

But France is tough, for every euro you earn you have to pay a minimum of 25% in social security, irrespective of any costs that are not taken into account, and before any tax is deducted. This meant that very often RD was working for less than a euro an hour. We survived that year, stuck to our principles and even refused work when people wanted us to cut corners. RD did some fabulous work and we built a client base and even had work in the winter (so hard in France).

But still it was difficult and still the discussion around whether to stay went on. One sunny day in March we walked down our road, looking out across the valleys and agreed that ‘Life would show us the way.’

It was in the Spring that year that I bought ‘The Book Of Awakening’ by Mark Nepo, and RD would read a passage most mornings as we drank our early morning tea. We found that each passage seemed to resonate with our thoughts at that time, and more and more we questioned what we were doing. But still we stayed.

As work came in we took it that the message from Life was to stay in France. But I think Life is more subtle than that at times, so over time we realised how we were still struggling, it wasn’t as hard, but it was still a struggle. We loved our French neighbours, and French friends, we loved our home and it’s location, and there were times we were confused as to the message life was sending. Now I know that Life was showing us, as it so often does, that even with fairly regular work in France it was still an existence. More than anything it was challenging us to still be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves did we want to ‘just exist?’

Over the course of the year we met people who would say how difficult it was to live in the old stone houses, and how they had sold up because of the problems. They look lovely but they are hard work. Then I cleaned a lady’s house who was returning to the UK, after living in France for ten years. When I asked her why she was leaving she explained that she felt life went in ten year cycles, and that we should always consider change as the cycle grows old. It resonated with me and I knew that Life meeting her was one of Life’s messages.

In the summer we read March the 7th passage from ‘The Book Of Awakening’ entitled ‘Let Go Of The Rice’. It is one of the things that changed the way I look at life, or should I say ‘us’. It said it all, how monkeys are caught in traps because they do not believe that what they need will come, because they live in fear, and consequently lose their lives when all they had to do was ‘let go of the rice.’ And that was it, we understood and we started to look at houses in Ireland.

In the August of that year I was ill, I have written how we had no health insurance and how it frightened me. It was life asking me to consider what we would do, whether France was really the right place for us. It’s bad enough being ill, add the complications of language and it is multiplied a thousand times. To reinforce its message Life sent us work with people whose husbands had suffered strokes, or sadly deteriorated from Dementia, and all of them were having horrendous problems in the French system. I found myself questioning how we would survive (there’s that word again!) as we got older. When chopping our own wood no-longer became an option, when RD could no-longer work. I couldn’t find work in France, no matter how I tried, not enough to support us. I questioned whether I wanted to grow old in France, and after I was ill in the August those doubts began to build, but still we persevered, until in the end, as she so often does Life started to hit us round the head to make us listen……

More to come…

Rosie

Gaelic..I Think I’ve Always Been More Irish Than English

20 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in coming home, Irish Adventures, Irish Heritage, Learning and Evolving, LIfe, New Paths, poignancy, Reflections, The continuing adventure, The Iris Adventure

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In Donegal where we are putting down roots the Gaelic language is still the main language, although all those we have met have kindly spoken English to us. Most signs in our area are in Gaelic, and I plan to learn some as the years go on.

I believe it’s important to embrace the culture of where you live, even more so when it’s your heritage. It should help that I learned quite a bit of French because I notice how a lot of Gaelic words are very close to some French words. Although the French are mainly considered Gauls, many people in Brittany consider themselves Celts, and so the link continues.

I am lost on the pronunciation however, although I am getting my head around some of it involving dropping the syllables, for example Donegal … Dún na nGall, when you say it quickly it sounds the same but has a gutteral intonation.

My actual name is Moira, I use Rosie as a pseudonym because of my book, but at times it pisses me off that I lose my own identity due to that. Given that Moira is an Irish Gaelic name, derived from Celtic, I think it’s important now I live in Ireland to own it and embrace the Gaelic language.

Moira comes from the name Máire which means bitter, beloved, drop of the sea. How apt then that I have chosen to live in a place surrounded by the sea. It’s good to see that my name is right up there with Boudicca, it explains my strength, being able to fight my own corner and my hate of injustice since as long as I can remember.

I have always felt closer to my Irish roots than my English. I am proud of England for many things, mainly their stoic approach to the second world war; for whilst I am not someone who condones war I understand that from all wars that war was probably the one most necessary. Britain was up against it where that war was concerned, and they stood their ground, eventually convincing others of its need; but I think it’s important to also remember that WWI was a pre-cursor to it’s cause.

I don’t buy into the crap of ‘let’s make Britain great again’, or watching the 1966 World Cup Final over and over again. It was 55 years ago, lets move on FFS!

I have never felt a sense of English pride, not when I look back through our history and listened to my dad’s experience where Ireland was concerned. Sadly, including my time in France, there have been many times when I have been ashamed of my English heritage, including that sense of entitlement and grabbiness that I have found on my travels, perhaps that comes from all those times in our history that we have just ‘taken’ other’s countries! Then there is football hooliganism: Jack Charlton was so ashamed he gave up the Irish Football Managers job because of it. Or when I holidayed in Turkey and the other English guests ran down to put their Union Jack towels on their sun-beds, there was no other person from any other country (mostly from Germany) who did. Where did that myth about the germans putting their towels on the sunbeds come from? I know some people will read this and say ‘well other nations do that too!’ But I am half English, I’m not speaking for ‘other nations’.

Let us not forget all the times my relatives would call my dad the ‘thick Paddy’, when he was the cleverest of them all. So clever he never felt the need to put them straight, he knew he had the last laugh when he left them to drown in their own ignorance and ego.

Perhaps my Irish ancestry is coming through. I know that’s why I have been thinking about my dad more than ever and finally understanding him, more than ever. We learn and evolve, if we want to.

Where Gaelic is concerned some of the words are familiar to me and I understand them, it may be that my Irish DNA is coming through and my ancestors memories are finally starting to show themselves.

I do feel as if I am finally home.

Deireadh seachtaine maith a bheith agat

Moira

‘Life’ Shows The Way PT I

14 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Learning and Evolving, LIfe, mental health, Spirituality, The continuing adventure, Us

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I’ve had this post in my mind ever since we moved because it’s about how we look at life and ultimately how we came to go on another adventure. It’s not a post for those who want to ‘stay safe’ and thereby close their minds and talk themselves out of opportunity; it’s a post for those who are feeling restless, feel a strong urge to make change, or to just change the way they view things.

There are so many things that happened that got us to where we are today I will break them down into a series of posts. I hope they get some of you thinking. So here goes..

The biggest change to RD and I since embarking on our adventures has been the way we think. I have said for many years that ‘life will show us the way’, but our adventure in France made us see that it really did, if we listened.

When we arrived in France, in the first year we were there our Jeep broke down numerous times. No matter how many times we had it repaired something else went wrong with it. But still we persisted because we had paid over the odds for it, we liked it and we didn’t want to acknowledge that we had been ‘had’ and it was a heap of shit. Life was telling us to let it go, and each time something went wrong it was a problem that was worse than the one before. It took us two years and the wheel falling off it as RD was driving (luckily slowly at that moment in time) for us to realise that life was telling us to let it go! But that was not the end of the lessons.

Before we moved RD bought a flatbed truck, it was only six years old, but within the first eighteen months the engine blew up!

When we first moved into our house we turned the water on and it poured through the ceiling from the shower, we also discovered as winter drew in that the heating didn’t work. In the first year I wrote often of the cold, but we persevered because we had made our decision and we HAD to make it work. I did write a Post about our adventures a year in, reading it now made me smile because we had so much more to learn.

Our Old Green Door

In the March of 2016, after only seven months of living in our house, the roof blew off our kitchen. It was at that point, as RD stood at our old knackered door, where the water seeped through when the rain lashed down, that he looked out and his subconscious said out loud ‘Here we are, living the dream!’

By 2016 I had also started to read the book ‘Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life’ the book of Tao, and it helped me to keep going because I understood that where there is bad there is good, and it enabled us to keep going, because there was good, in the shape of our beautiful old house, and our surroundings; add to that our love for each other and son and our animals.

I remember now talking RD round, out of this mindset, but when looking back I can see that it was ‘life’ trying to get us to question what we had done. I even painted and tried to renovate our old door, it looked fab, but it still leaked and we still weren’t getting it!

In my old post I wrote with hope that we were just waiting for the insurance company to pay for the replacement, which of course they never did. It was one of our lessons about France don’t trust the insurance companies . Over the years we would come to add the un-regulated, at times corrupt banking system to a long list of what wasn’t right for us. No wonder French people protest!

We had tarpaulins on our roof for nearly three years. When it rained, and trust me when it rained it blew across the open countryside and hammered our lovely house on the hill, we had bowls all over the kitchen catching the water. But still we carried on.

We learned from it all, we learned patience, and that sometimes things we think are catastrophic are not, you survive.

Work was difficult, we were starting to realise that the English people that we had to interact with were pretty awful (I’m being polite) in fact that was a continuous lesson right up to the day we left France.

In the September of 2016 a tornado ripped through our garden demolishing everything in its path. But we persevered, we held on to what I thought was ‘hope’ when in fact it was the fear of letting go of what was not a dream, in fact ‘life’ was telling us it wasn’t the right path for us.

But we didn’t listen to the messages life was sending us, and so they got worse and in 2017 our well ran dry. We had no water, nada, none, and again RD’s subconscious tried to get him to listen and he went down. Our wonderful French friends came to the rescue again and we had water connected via Marc’s supply until we could find the funds to have water connected. At nearly three thousand euros that was no mean feat, and we lived like that for eighteen months. But again we survived, the adventure in France taught us a lesson about ourselves, and how resilient we are, as we showered each other using a watering can.

It was in 2018 that we started to read ‘The Book of Awakening’ by Mark Nepo, we would read it together and consider each lesson. We are still reading it today, and it taught us one of the biggest lessons: Let Go.

We had a fabulous summer of 2018, I remember laying on a lilo on our pool in the baking sun and thinking ‘I am in my garden’. I understand now that summer happened to enable us to love what we had, before things started to change and we became enlightened in that it was time to consider change. We thought at that time that things were getting better, but in fact all our plans fell through and by the December I was starting to understand that life really was trying to tell us something.

By January of 2019 we found ourselves with no work and no funds, chopping up falling logs in the garden to try and heat the house after RD wasn’t paid for a job he had done (a common thing in that area of France sadly where English clients were concerned). Our new roof had leaked, and one night just as we went to bed I asked RD if he thought staying in France was the right thing to do and he answered honestly ‘I don’t know.’ Then he promptly started to snore as I lay awake in the darkness contemplating our life and our future. I was afraid, but I also realised that what I was actually afraid of was letting go, and so we finally started to listen….

More to come

Rosie

Diary Of A Move: The Boat’s Booked

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by in Change is a coming, For the live of dogs, Friends, Goodbyes, Learning and Evolving, new adventures, New Paths, poignancy, Saying Goodbye, sunrises and sunsets, The continuing adventure

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November Sunrise over the French Vallees

Yesterday I booked our boat to Ireland. It’s no mean feat when your booking two Welsh terriers into heated dog lodges, arranging for two cats to remain safely and warmly in the van, and booking a cabin for yourselves for the eighteen and a half hour crossing!

It was weird because I felt very excited about going to Ireland, as did RD . But last night as we sat in our dismantled living room we both agreed that whilst excited we still felt a little sad. It’s part of the process folks, I have learned that now: part of the process of letting things go is to allow yourselves to feel the poignancy as one chapter of your life closes and another opens. We don’t always have to put our chins up and pretend that we’re not sad, or ignore our feelings and just look to the future (which we are incredibly excited about). I believe that we should allow that feeling of poignancy wash over us, and then keep going. Too many people try and have a ‘stiff upper lip’, when, really, they don’t need to. It’s just what it is.

Yesterday one of my best friends (thirty three years and counting) put a beautiful comment on my last post asking me to hug our house for her, because it had healed her at a time she needed it, just as it has healed us enough to go back into the ‘throng’. I have evolved from living here, so much so that I am ready to go back out there, albeit a different Rosie sometimes.

Making Our Home December 2015

Last night we took down my big decorative mirror that was one of the first things we hung above the fireplace. As RD carried it out he stopped and we both just looked at each other, remembering when we hung it in December 2015.

Moving on December 2020

As always life has shown me the way, you know how it does: like little pieces of jigsaw being placed like a path showing you where to go. (I have really learned to listen now.) We are juggling money, with each week mapped out as to what I have to pay. But when I spoke to the lovely lady at the cattery she doesn’t want the deposit until we arrive with the cats; and when I tried to pay for our accommodation in Ireland the money doesn’t come out until the 28th, freeing up enough money this week to book our boat. Moving from country to country is a complicated and expensive business. We were going to sail to Ireland on the 3rd of January 2021, but I couldn’t get the dogs booked into their dog lodges for that date, however I could get everything I needed for the 30th. Life clearly thought we should be starting the new year in a new country. So we will be as I write this we have twenty nine days left in France…….

Rosie

November Sunset From My French Home

I Got To Thinking: Is Learning To Let Go What Life’s All About?

22 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Belief, Change is a coming, Goodbyes, mental health, New Paths, Reflections, The continuing adventure

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I am currently sitting in bed, it’s 11.45 in the morning and we have allowed ourselves a morning lie in. It’s a busy time.

We have a very atmospheric sky today, and the pictures above are what I can see from my vantage point as I write this.

I am surrounded by sleeping Welshies and RD snoring away, and after our scare last weekend I have again been reminded to only ever live in the here and now.

This will be our second move in six years. In fact in our twenty- two, almost twenty- three years of being together we have moved four times, this will be our fifth move.

Over the week as well as frantically taking as many photos of the fabulous sunsets we are blessed with, I have been packing up our belongings and I was making decisions about what to keep and what to let go. As part of this I was boxing up the shoes that we had, supposedly, decided we were taking with us, after letting so many pairs go; and as I did so I found myself putting additional pairs in the clothing bag for charity. In fact it was as if I was having an epiphany: you HAVE to let go of the old to make room for the new.

The shoes weren’t the only things that led to this. I have my son’s cot in the barn, he is thirty-one years old, why the hell did I ship it to France? I know why, we were moving to another country and for the first time I would not have my son near to me, that first Christmas without him being there was a hard lesson. But now it’s what it is, he has his life, and I want him to live it, and I have learned to let go of the idea that we always have to be together.

Then there is a blue top that belonged to my mum, it was her favourite top, she wore it often. After she died I kept it, and dutifully moved it three times. I thought when we came here I had let it go, but no, when I sorted our cupboard at the top of the stairs there it was again, buried in amongst all the clothes we have never worn in five years. I let it go this time, with all the other clothes. Only this time was different: this time I held it up and said to RD ‘This is not my mum, this is a top. My mum is in my memories.’

After that I was then on a roll: the fridge magnets we bought in Disney twenty- seven years ago (when I was married to my first husband ffs!) off they went to the great dechetterie (dump in French) in the sky. Sentimental mugs, faux flowers, old earrings, and watches and bracelets, tarnished, were in the bin before they knew it.

All of this got me thinking is life really just one big on-going lesson about learning to let go? Is life really just a lesson in learning about why we hold on to things which then enables us to let them go?

I understand why I bought so many things from our old house with me. I loved that house, I found it hard leave it, and so I bought the things I could from it, because it was too hard to let it all go at once. But as the years passed here I realised I didn’t want to re-create my past, that I need to make something new. My old house had gone, and I was then ready to let the things associated with it go too. There are some things I love that I will take with me because I love the item itself, or the memory it conjures up.

As I packed away my thoughts developed further and I found myself asking does that apply to everything in life? Including the loved ones we have lost? Someone once said to me ‘every time you cry about your mum, you pull her back, and you never let her spirit free.’ I found it difficult to understand at first, but after reading and learning and listening and reflecting it becomes clearer every day.

When my mum was dying she promised she would come back for each and every one of us, so when my beloved Westie dog died I thought I would feel my mum’s presence, and my heartbreak was even more compounded when I didn’t.

I understand now that it was never going to be, because we are all spirits learning what we need to learn in each lifetime, and we then move on to the next stage of our enlightenment. Perhaps those who love us stay near for a time, but eventually they have to let us go, to enable us to grow.

Then there are the friendships that come and go, and sometimes come back again after we have all learned and evolved. I believe the right people migrate back to you, as I have written about often. But more importantly how often does life show us that we need to let the relationships go? Show us, as we evolve, that they weren’t what we thought they were at all? That the people were not what we thought? Or, thinking even more deeply, perhaps they were, and it is us who have changed.

I think that is one of the hardest lessons of all, we don’t want to see negatives in those we have spent so much of our life with. But if we are able to objectively, it can enable us to decide whether to still have the person in our life or not, without rancour or pain. It’s just what it is.

Letting go of pain, letting go of hurt, just letting go without bitterness, is probably one of the hardest things to do. When RD left me I learned from writing my journal that if I allowed myself to be consumed in bitterness I would be destroyed. That was nearly fourteen years ago, now I use what I learned to help some others who find themselves where I was, but now I also know it applies to so many things in life. But I can only help ‘some’ because the others do not want to ‘let go.’ And so they continue to suffer in pain. That experience has taught me to let go of the hope that I could help everyone. I can’t, people can only ever help themselves.

I have learned over the past five years that we cannot have the sunny side of life all the time. The Tao has taught me that where there is good there is bad, where there is love there is heartache, where there is life there is death. I had to remind myself of that last week when Harley was ill, I had to say it as a mantra, and despite the pain I felt, it gave me comfort and strength and it has made me live every day this week cherishing every small moment.

It’s amazing isn’t it, what you learn as you unpack and pack your life up again? And the time will come, in the near future, when we let this house go, and this adventure go, and we ‘let go,of the rice.’ (Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening

Have a good Sunday folks.

Rosie

What Have We Learned: You can only ever make decisions based on the Here and Now .

20 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by in Change is a coming, Learning and Evolving, mental health, new adventures, New Paths, Reflections, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The background story, The continuing adventure, Us

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Larchamp 2013

Seven years ago I took this photograph of the pretty sundial we used as a table at a beautiful gite we were vacating in. I still love this picture today, one of tranquillity and stillness.

At the time I took it I was just about to move from an incredibly stressful job to what I didn’t know at the time would be the job from hell. I didn’t realise just how stressed I actually was at that time, so when I then became ill with stress the following year, to us the obvious place to live in France was the region where this picture had been taken. We made our decisions based on how we felt at that time.

Now, after living in this place for five years the people who ran the gite have moved back to England, in fact many people who we have met along the way have moved back to England.

Over the years we have come to realise that is part of an adventure like this: change, not for ‘change sake’, but because we evolve, and part of evolving means that we move forward to pastures new. At the time we make our decisions they are the right ones at that moment in time, based on how we feel at that moment in time. Just as we did after our fabulous holidays in this region.

When RD and I moved here we were both burnt out, literally. My brain had been addled dealing with high levels of human emotion every day. I needed peace, I needed to step out, I needed tranquility and this place offered us all that; and it healed me. But moving on I am better, despite only realising and accepting recently that I will never go back to the person I once was; and as I write that I wonder why I thought I would, because you can never go back, you can only ever go forward.

So now we are healed we have also learned that we are not ready to retire, and we are not ready to slow down quite this much. Going back to work, and interacting with some of the fabulous people I have met has also shown me that. RD has realised that he misses the interaction with other colleagues, he misses working as part of a team. We miss nightlife, and having the opportunity to interact fully in our community.

Language is a barrier, never believe that it isn’t. Language dictates, to a certain degree, the people who you have to interact with, as opposed to those you want to. I cannot emphasise enough the huge impact not knowing a language will have when you undertake an adventure like this. There is an upside also though: you can (I won’t say will because some never try) learn the fabulous art of improvisation, and the other fabulous art of mime! And the best people we have met during this time have been French people.

So seven years ago, when the picture in this post was taken I was a very different person (not least that I can speak a little French now). I was fighting against my feelings of fear and entrapment. Going on this journey has stopped all of that, I have learned who I was, and who I am, and I know there is a ‘who I am going to be’ somewhere in the future.

More to come.

Rosie

My home in the evening sun

Triggers and Positives.

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in a sense of community, Change is a coming, Friends, Learning and Evolving, mental health, People, The continuing adventure

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It’s been a difficult few weeks, mainly because I was triggered after returning to work, and I didn’t even realise I now have things that will trigger me.

This is my first job since I was ill six years ago. I was told then by my counsellor that I am what is known as a ‘doer’. It means I will always get things done, and do them well. The downside of that is that I will often be asked to do things because I can be relied upon, over and over again, piling the pressure on. This time I was told that I was being given a job because I was good at something that others struggle with, it was meant to be seen as a compliment, but I saw it as flannel. I am too old for that. But the most frightening thing was that my brain went into high alert, silently screaming ‘Oh no! It’s happening again, I cannot do this any more!’ It literally went into flight mode and I had no control over it. That is a frightening place to be.

Within a week I was in a depression, I could feel myself falling and I couldn’t stop. RD was so afraid because by the SaturdaymI had stopped answering my texts and communicating other than with my work face on.

But then work sent a co-worker to assist me and she was a breath of fresh air. She listened, that simple, she listened; and she made me laugh. In fact I started to see that the women who came to assist me in that second week were all brilliant in their own way. But more than anything they were kind, so kind.

So rather than dwell on negatives I will focus on the positives from this difficult time. I have changed their names in anagram form as much as possible here goes…

To Tan, who brought me new socks to wear because I had sent all my socks home, on the hope that the normal ferries would be working. I had to go home on Boaty McBoatface again, at 5am in the morning, so they were a Godsend. Also a big thanks for your support and making me laugh.

To Elvis, she will know who she is. Her ways brought me back, gave me something to smile about. What you saw was what you got, straight talking, but kind. Supportive in every way. She finished my last week off by buying fresh Jersey Royal potatoes and bringing them to me to bring home to RD. Then she came to see me with a freshly baked lemon drizzle cake that she made at midnight the night before, for RD. It’s the best lemon drizzle cake I have ever eaten.

Then there is Rhoma, who brought me two books, and we set up a chick lit book club. A lovely lady, who helped me understand it wasn’t me.

There is the lovely member of staff, who when I got upset cried with me, and hugged me. That small thing meant so much.

It all made me realise that I work with a wonderful group of people, who don’t have the recognition they deserve.

I am home now, sitting in my garden, treasuring this view. This will be our last summer here. The house is going on the market next week. Busy times.

Rosie

Learning from an Adventure: Making our Minds Up

08 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in Change is a coming, Learning and Evolving, new adventures, New Paths, sunrises and sunsets, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure

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Sunset over our garden, setting on our adventure in France

I have been meaning to write some blogs for all of last week. It is likely that I will be going back to work soon and I want a series that will post if the internet is not available to me. But life took over (as it always does). But here goes……

As I said in my previous post Recouping….and making plans we are still decided to leave France. Change, especially a change so great is still not easy, despite having the courage to do it once before. But one of the main things we have learned from this adventure is that ‘life does show you the way.’

Lao Tzu | Water reflection quotes, Lao tzu quotes, Water quotes

Since living here I/we have read the Tao, and now understand some of the anomaly of life. This adventure has given us the space and the necessity to look at life in a different way, which enabled us to understand the teachings of the Tao in that life is like water: You cannot hold on to it and control it no matter how much you think you can. But if you go with the flow of what life shows you then you can become strong, then you can achieve anything, providing it is what you need, not what you think you need.

So with that in mind we were talking about moving to Ireland. The UK is not for us, with it’s politics, anger and lack of equality. It’s funny how now I can feel that underlying greed in some places I go. So it’s not an option. As we talked I asked RD if he really wanted to give up this house, our views and the tranquility it provided. If he really wanted to leave France. The little demon of doubt kicked in and he said he didn’t know. It showed me that for me the way was now clear, but for RD that fear of change was still there.

The next day I sat us in the morning sunshine with a cup of tea and two pads and pens. On each pad I had made two columns which I had headed ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’.

Now I know that hate is a strong word to use, but that is how I feel about some of this adventure now, not so much the actual thing itself, but impact from the actual thing; and I knew that RD felt the same. So I asked him to write, without thinking, what immediately came into his head for each column and I would do the same, and we would then compare the columns. I also knew that it would help to clear the mind, from writing my journal all these years I know that writing it down takes doubts voice, the little chatty one in your brain, away.

The objective was to then compare what we had written to enable us to see if we were on the same page, and to also enable us to compare what we did and didn’t want to take forward in our new life.

We both wrote that we ‘hate’ the bureaucracy, that we both hate the fact that we cannot simply speak the language (trust me I have tried but it drives you nuts sometimes). Interestingly (or not) we both put the ex-pats in this area as top of the list. We both put that we disliked the intensely hot weather, which has got hotter in the five years since we lived here due to global warming. We added the banks, and the corruption that goes hand in hand with them, that everything just shuts down, nothing stays open into the evening, or Sundays, or bank holidays.

We fell in love with France for the tranquility and laid back way of life. We still love that, but only in small doses, not for all of our life.

So I suppose you could say that we have learned a lot about what we actually want from life from doing this adventure!

Moving on to the ‘Love’ list without a doubt we both love the view.

The view of the rolling hills of the valley. It’s what we see every day from our window

We also love the weather. weirdly enough, when it is not too hot. We love the definition of the seasons, and of course we love our wonderful French friends and neighbours.

We love the peace and tranquility. But we have learned as our life has carved out it’s way for us that for us that is not enough.

We want to be able to work, preferably in the same country and coming home each night! We want to be able to walk into a shop and just talk to someone, or pick up the phone and resolve a problem. If you saw the mountain of paperwork I am about to work through over the next two days you would understand.

It was an eye-opening exercise, especially for RD, as he could then clearly see what he did and did not want from the future. In fact he listened to my list and started to say ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ All the time adding some of what I had written to his list.

But most of all it enabled us to see that all of the important things to us from the ‘Love’ list are available to us in Ireland: as are most of the things on the hate list overcome if we move to Ireland. Views, tranquility, peace, easy going people, being able to speak the language, not having to deal with ex-pats. It wouldn’t get too hot in the summer either (although an ex-pat who has never been to Ireland did tell me how it rains ALL the time! Who am I ,whose father was Irish and has visited many times, to argue?!)

Yes some things will be more expensive, but where there is good there is always bad, as the Tao says: There has to be.

RD’s column, and mine can be seen in their entirety below. You never know it may help some people clear their minds. Trust me it works.

Rosie’s List
RD’s list

So last week we had three estate agents come round to value the house. More of that and our decision making in the next post…….

Rosie

Early sunrise from my terrace. A new beginning.

What Have We Learned? Reflecting.

08 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in Belief, Learning and Evolving, My family and other furry creatures, new adventures, New Paths, poignancy, Reflections, sunrises and sunsets, The continuing adventure, Us

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Nearly five years ago I started this blog. We had lived in France for just three months. I was full of enthusiasm about taking a chance, in fact I started this blog to encourage others. And although I am now going to put things into place to leave France, I still feel that life is an adventure; and for me, or should I say us, staying still and doing the same ‘ol, same ‘ol is not the way forward.

I have often written about my Tree of Tao the huge old fir tree in our garden that has always relaxed and inspired me as it gently swayed in the wind. Recently as we sat under it I found myself looking up through her majestic branches as they went with the flow of the breeze, and felt a little poignancy that we will be leaving this place.

As we tend to do we got chatting about changing direction, and I asked RD if he had ever regretted the move. His resounding answer was no, as was mine; and we both said the same: ‘Because we have learned so much.’

If someone had told my five years ago that it didn’t matter if your roof had blown off, because at some point you would be able to fix it, that you just had to trust that what you needed would come your way at the right time, I would have laughed at them, or thought them mad. We would have got into debt and got the roof fixed. But during our time here we have read and embraced many philosophies of the Tao Te Ching, and not having debt is one of them.

We did not get into debt, we lived with a leaking roof for over three years, and we are still alive, and it got fixed.

In the same vein when our well ran dry two years after arriving we lived without water for eleven days, and again for four days in the winter until we were able to have mains water connected to our house. Yet here we are, still alive, with memories of showering each other with a watering can (not easy when your husband is over six feet and you have to stand on a ladder!) and laughing as we did it. As a result of all of this we don’t waste water, and we don’t fear things going wrong, it doesn’t kill you, but it does make you stronger.

We say to each now, there is no point in stressing over it, what will be will be.

As we sat under that old tree, talking about all the things we have learnt, lessons we can take with us, we laughed about all the things that had happened, because we are stronger because of them. We realised that we are more patient than we ever were before, we don’t have to have everything now, and often say to ourselves ‘Do I really need that?’

The answer is invariably ‘No’.

But more than anything RD and I have learned that we are not ‘doing the driving.’ And we have learned acceptance, even though we often have to remind ourselves of that.

We know that ultimately what is meant to happen will happen and there is no point fighting it. In fact our ‘Faith’ often brings tears to our eyes, because we know that is the biggest gift that has been given to us, and I don’t mean any religion, just ‘faith.’

We have learned that where there is good there is bad, and where there is bad there is good. That life is a balance, you cannot have one without the other. I do believe that attitude of mind can bring you good or bad depending on your mindset.

We have each other, we have lived in this fabulous place, we have seen hares and deer and breath-taking sunrises and awe inspiring sunsets. But to have that we have also had a hurricane, and a tornado, and freezing nights.

We have struggled with money and work, and people, but we have always had each other, and we know that is a gift.

We have had the gift of love from our animals, we were given Wiglet, but we lost our lovely Tillybet. We looked after Sophie the feral cat, and the joy of seeing her change was balanced by the tears when she died. We had twenty years with our green eyed cat Molly, balanced by the heartache when she left us at the beginning of the year. Understanding that balance has helped us so many times. We know we cannot have it all.

During our time here as well as the ‘Tao’, we have read The Alchemist’, and we are still reading the fabulous Mark Nepo (The Book of Awakenings.) It never ceases to amaze us when we open that book at a difficult time that the passage we come to read gives us the answer to our problem.

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For me, my most recent learning has been to ‘let go’. Or I thought it was until I realised that I had let go once before, when we sold our beautiful house in the UK and look at what it gave me. This time it was a reminder, let go and you know good things will come.

Rosie

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Consider Every Little Nuance

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Change is a coming, Learning and Evolving, mental health, People, The continuing adventure, The good, the bad and the ugly.

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I posted this on my newsfeed a few days ago. It touched me when I read it because, at times, I have felt overwhelmed; not by the thought of the Pandemic, but the hysteria that has reared it’s uglier head as a result of it.

So before I go any further I want to stress: for those who may choose to see what they want to see in the midst of the hysteria that seems to be gripping the world, this post DID NOT advocate going outside and breaking any lockdowns.

So please if you feel the need to comment about self-isolation then read the post again, and again. See every little nuance.

This is a post about understanding: merely a post asking people to understand that what may not be essential for you, may be crucial for someone else. The items (paint and compost) are items that are sold in most supermarkets across the world, so someone could buy them whilst shopping for food.

RD posted it on various sites and a lot of people thanked him for saying what they were afraid to say. Yes, ‘Afraid’! Because they thought they would be shot down in flames by the very people who had also commented in the fashion of ‘You should not break the self-isolation rules.’ And worse….

It highlighted to me the hysteria that has taken over the world. With self-appointed Facebook police jumping on anyone who dare not share the herd mentality, or question some of the things that are happening. The media who are not (or haven’t been until recently) asking the questions that should be asked.

Like ‘What’s the fucking plan?’

In England we clap for those in the NHS bravely doing such a hard, emotional, heartbreaking job. But we don’t question the fact that the NHS is still woefully without the equipment needed. We are shown arial views of car parks, told they have been set up as testing sites, but they are always empty, with frontline NHS staff refused tests, whilst ministers get tested instead.

I have seen very few people question this, why?

All over we have care homes, full of the most vulnerable in our society, especially where Covid-19 is concerned, left to fend for themselves. In the UK they were not even being counted in the ‘stats’, why? Because they don’t count? It is only now, months into this pandemic that the questions are tentatively being asked, and even they are not enough.

Why is nobody as outraged about any of this as they are outraged if their neighbour decides to buy paint? I would ask why over and over, but I know why, because they are not interested, they are only interested in attacking others, it is so much easier than considering something that is actually quite frightening, if you consider every little nuance.

In France there are people who recently asked why there were camper vans parked in a local car park, they were outraged that people were on holiday. The people in the campervans lived there! But those asking and shouting loudly, didn’t even stop to consider that some people don’t live in houses. Because surely everyone must live in a house!

These are the very people who are so outraged if someone dares to buy something that may well keep them sane, and stop them from killing their family. There is such an irony that these people cannot see their own mental frailties.

Recently I changed my profile picture to this.

I kid you not when I say that someone commented on how we were not social isolating! It was taken in December (my hat is a clue) but they just jumped in, not even an inkling to consider any little nuance, like my hat!

My son answered them before I had a chance to.

Why is the general consensus not considering the depth of damage that will be caused in mental health? The children who are trapped with an abuser, day in, day out, who will take that into their lives in the future. The partners trapped in an emotionally abusive or violently abusive relationship, the people locked in flats with their loved ones who suffer from dementia, mental health problems, drug addiction. Those who will lose all they have worked for, their livelihood, their homes. Who is giving any thought to those who have no food? Has anyone considered the impact of this lockdown, which will, over the years, kill more people than Covid-19 itself?

As someone recently wrote you have to give people a deadline, something to look forward to. Although it may not exactly appear as promised, it still gives people hope.

The lack of emotional intelligence in this whole sorry saga has been highlighted to me time and again. The herd mentality to only see what we want to see, and attack any who don’t want to be part of the herd has been depressing.

I fear that more than Covid-19. I fear what the world will become.

Rosie