Hello you,
How is your heart today?
My joy spark this morning has been painting a wedding card for a beautiful couple who are getting married next week. (I did this instead of tidying up the kitchen which I think is a big artist’s win!)
To use a cliché, do you ever look back at ‘how far you’ve come’?
This week, sitting by the window, I let the beauty of the dawn chorus land on me and found a place of stillness. How grateful and lucky I felt to experience this.
I then harked back to a time when that sort of inner stillness was completely out of reach.
One morning, aged 22, I forced myself to rouse really early. At 7.30am, I carried my tired bones to a walk-in medical centre in Leeds city centre. I was clinging onto this. Surely, please, they’d be able to help me.
I wasn’t ‘ill’ per se. I was hollowed out.
My on paper ‘dream job’, which I’d worked hard to secure, was draining me.
I’d unconsciously given this company far too much of myself. I believed that was part of the deal. We were all doing it. Striving, racing and scratching for some mythical future success.
I didn’t have the language for the struggles I was experiencing physically and mentally. I was just desperate. Desperate to escape this sad, exhausted numbness.
“There is nothing we can do for you here today. Sorry,” said the medic.
I found a bench on the main road. Rush-hour traffic queued up beside me and buses splurged out fumes. I sat there, phoned my Mum and crumbled. I cracked open, sobbing. I shared a garbled version of what had happened and pleaded for her help.
“Come home, Janelle. Call in sick for work. Do not go in today.”
She didn’t get it. She just did not get it. I HAD to go into work. That was my belief. Time away only made the guilt and the piles of work intensify.
I wiped my face, took some deep breaths, said goodbye and went back to my car. I was at my desk pre 9am and no one was any the wiser. I pushed it all down and got on with my working day.
If only I could put my arms around her and tell her it wouldn’t always be like that. That with a lot of love, support, opportunities and people showing her other ways, everything would change. She would get closer to her true self.
In my looking back, a memory stirred of an advert. I found it on Youtube and, despite the fact it’s an advert (gah) it is a beautiful piece of artwork, a moving short story.
It depicts someone rowing a wooden boat in tumultuous stormy waters. The ocean waves are throwing her up high and crashing her down. Water is pouring into the boat. Her efforts to move are fruitless. She is alone in the storm.
Then, the sky begins to clear and her boat rises up into the calm dawn sky. She is being carried by ghostly birds. Then she is rowing once more, but now on flat calm waters, gently moving towards the shore.
She steps her bare foot out into clear waters and her toes touch the sand. Someone is there to greet her. She is okay. The person on the shore opens her arms and invites her in for an embrace. The two figures become one.
The person on the shore is herself.
As I sat there listening to the birds this week, I felt so utterly ‘me’. Nothing like that sobbing young woman on the bench, adrift.
What also made me a little bit emotional was seeing the date this advert aired. 2011. How old was I in 2011? 22.
It obviously spoke to me. I saw myself in those stormy climes.
I think I really wanted to be the person on the shore. I wanted to get back to me but I had no idea how to.
There was no single ‘a ha’ moment that changed things. (Leaving that job certainly helped hugely!) But looking back more than a decade, it feels like I have been very gradually, very slowly getting closer to myself.
I am so incredibly grateful for this. I am grateful to myself for the care I’ve shown over these years.
But I have not done this by chance or alone. I’ve had many many birds which have scooped me up and lifted me towards calmer waters. I’ve been surrounded by lots of people who showed me love, care and belonging. I’ve had mentors from afar (such as my fellow creators here on Substack) and abundant opportunities available to me out of circumstance, unearned advantage and luck. Education, healthcare, safety, money, freedom to name a few.
I hope and dream of a world where we can all have these.
I’ve returned to this letter many times today to tinker with it. As I attempt to wrap it up and accept its imperfections, the birds are still making themselves known, chivvying me along. The sparrows, the tits and even a distant honking peacock!
Perhaps they’re saying “keep going. Keep seeking the stillness in the chaos. Keep trusting and hoping. Keep loving.”
Do you ever look back?
Is there anything that your younger self needed to hear? Can you say it now?
If you feel like sharing something in the comments, please do. Connecting here really makes my day.
Take care,
Janelle x
This was lovely, Janelle. Thank you for sharing ❤️ Hindsight is always 20/20, but I’m sure those challenges played a part in getting you to where you are today
I can't believe some of the stuff I've managed to get through in one piece! Glad you're here and feeling good ❤️