Here I am.

Inhaling. A quiet house, the wind whistling round the gables. I breathe. Deep into my belly. And apart from the whir of the fan on my laptop there is silence.

And me.

Here I am!

These weeks and months have been full of sickness and books and no-space-to-breathe-let-alone-think-or-write. Everything was obligation. My days filled end to end. Marinating in children and noise. My brain packed full of "what ifs" and "mustn't forgets" for the book.

There were dear women I hadn't seen for months, some for almost a year. Friends I don't have the time to call. Whilst I'm helping women unknown and unseen. It felt wrong. But it was also a passing phase. The Rainbow Way has been a big baby to birth. A true journey of the soul. It has, and will be, the making of me. But I feel, as I approach the date when I hand it over to the publisher, I am coming out from its spell. And life is opening up again before me.

Space. For me. To try things, to experiment, to play, to do some exciting commissions. To breathe.

The concept of wanting to turn up to the page here or in my journal, or for creative assignments in the courses I am signed up to, was foreign. What would I say? What would I draw? I had not a drop of juice left, let alone a word, to fall onto the page like a teardrop.

Full.

And it was good full. Great-ful. I am grateful. I cannot tell you the journey it has been this past few months. what transformations and shifts have been happening. But I found that my life was so public in my books and blogs, that all this shifting needed to go on quietly in the dark, unseen. Shifting. Good shifting. Great shifting.

I feel like Dorothy. I look down at my feet in my little ruby slippers, the storm winds dissipating, and I think, "I'm not in Kansas any more... (And look what lovely shoes I have!)"

The words, the words, they are my constant friends, my constant challengers, always there, wherever I am. And now I am here. Here I am!