Introducing My Soft Animal (…to Myself)
So the conversation went a little something like this…
Me: I’m so tempted to move in with my mum for a week over the summer.
Lovely Friend Lea (LFL): Do that then!
Me: I always feel good after I’ve stayed there for a few days.
LFL: A little r&r with your mum would be a great way to treat yourself a little.
Me: Yeah – she offered before, and I was thinking no, cos I felt like a wimp – I felt like it would be running away from being independent and standing on my own two feet.
LFL: And it’d be the “easy route”, right?
Lea knows me so well. In that one short conversation, she cut straight to the chase and showed me that my summer plans were not precisely in keeping with my new intention of “making it easy“.
Up until that conversation, I had created a whole plan in my head where I was going to spend the 6 weeks that my family is away in Australia becoming a skinny, meditating, yoga ninja who lives off green juice, incense smoke and silence. Honestly, if you know me at all, then you’ll know that this is not ‘me’. In fact, I’ve yet to meet the person who matches this description, but then maybe that’s the circles I tend to move in…
So then Lea asked the question which will shape my whole summer: if you could do what you *really* wanted all summer, what would it be?
To which, my answer was, ‘It would be to meet up with lovely people like you and drink rosé, and read poetry, and write in cafes, and dance until 3am, and visit friends and go for long walks with my camera.’
If I were to add to that list, it would also include doing yoga when I felt like it, writing my novel, buying myself fresh flowers, burning incense in the living room, playing Bon Iver, The Civil Wars and Villagers on repeat, eating beautiful salads, learning to play Chopin & Debussy on the piano, rereading The Time-Traveller’s Wife (I’ll explain why in a future post!), experimenting with recipes from my favourite Skye Gyngell book, writing morning pages, meditating while knitting, pretending to be a tourist, catching matinees at arthouse cinemas, reading magazines in the park, spending the day in my pyjamas… and that’s just for starters.
Suddenly the whole summer opens up. By throwing away the strict, austere, disciplined structure and allowing myself to step into softness, I already feel better about the coming weeks. And along with that, I embrace the realization that I am not an ascetic – I am much further along the spectrum towards hedonism than that!
So what do all my plans for the summer have in common? Pleasure and fun and exercising compassion for myself. They are all about calming down, lightening up, softening my edges, relaxing into who I am, and getting to know the woman I have become.
This is going to be the summer where I let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. Now, doesn’t that sound just delicious?
7 Comments
Lindsay
Oh Yum! It sounds so delicious and I’m doubly delighted we might get to do a wee bit of that together 🙂 Scrumptious wisdom Amy. Thank you x
Joanna Paterson
You had me at poetry and spending time with your mum!
This sounds wonderful. I got shivers when you talked about the piano too. I can so imagine you playing the piano 🙂
Hope I get to drink a bit of rosé with you some time during the summer x
PS thank goodness for LFL!
Emmanuelle
Now I would REALLY love to be on my own this summer to do all of the above 😀
Enjoy your summer, and take care of yourself the way YOU want.
Sophie Nicholls
I love this conversation, Amy. Thank you so much for starting it.
As a writer and a therapist, I spend lots of time on my own. Most of what I do each day is quite solitary. At certan times in my life, I’ve found this hard. But these days, I think I’m embracing it more and more.
I love the opportunity to find my rhythm and savour the silence. I think for me the trick really is not to have too many expectations of myself. So what if I don’t actually start writing until 10am because I’ve been enjoying pottering around my house and making a lovely cup of coffee and watering my plants and turning an idea over in my mind and just, basically, breathing?
I positively relish now the opportunity to enjoy an ordinary day after an ordinary day – days in which I can just enjoy the moment, the words on the page, the roses in the garden and not have to achieve anything Amazing or Outstanding or Special. (Which, of course, is when I realise that I already have the truly amazing and outstanding and special.)
What a lovely opportunity to reconnect with what you love. And, by the way, you’re always so welcome to come and stay with me this summer. 🙂
Glad Doggett
Oh, it sounds delicious!
I will soon be living alone for a year. I’ve been anxious about the idea of it. Now, maybe i’ll rethink my mindset and consider living a full “I love me” year.
I loved reading The Time Traveler’s Wife!!
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