Next writing project - letters to myself through the decades

Feeling very drawn to be creative right now.  There is a large box of art materials sitting in the corner and I have also just ordered material to sew some upholstery which has been a project I have been meaning to start for ages.  However, the main thing I am drawn to at this very moment is to write.

Writing is very cathartic for me, almost as much therapy as being with my horses and today I am going to brain dump some ideas on here as a positive step towards creating some writing I can immerse myself in.   This year is a time of huge change for me and our family, the end of an era today as our youngest child has his last day of school. Ever.  He is now on study leave, sitting final exams and then onto Uni in September.   So very exciting and bittersweet at the same time, I am so happy for him to be moving onto a new adventure in his life and I am feeling sad for myself as I realise that I no longer need to get school uniforms ready on Sunday night, reply to letters from the school, go to parent teacher nights, attend concerts, fight battles over which subjects are taken, find cash in my purse every morning for school lunches and most of all watch the clock every morning to make sure no one misses the school bus but perhaps most heartbreaking of all is that now in the afternoon when me and the dogs hear the bus driving past our cottage there will be no one flinging open the front door, dumping their bags at the door, dropping coats on the chair in the kitchen and putting the kettle on before shouting 'Mum, I'm home' then getting to share a cup of tea and hear all about their day.   Life will have a very different rhythm to it from now on.

It is true that parenting changes as your children age, the sheer physical exhaustion that comes from having 3 small children and getting them organised, fed, clothed (we never did get the hang of matching socks!) is then transferred into mental and emotional exhaustion from dealing with teenagers.  In a way the teenage years are definitely more challenging, not so easy to make people happy by getting out their favourite toy, game or dvd.  Teenagers just need you to be there, to be able to talk to if they need it, to give you a hug and then just to be able to disappear to their rooms, only to be shouted down for dinner or to collect their laundry.

However what occurs for me today is that I didn't know that my life would be this full of love and life when I was a child.  If only I had known then what I have learned throughout my 52 years, perhaps there would have been less fear about everything.  What would I say to myself at ages 6, 16, 26 and so on?   If only I hadn't taken what my family thought of me as the truth?  What if I had ignored the family that assumed I wasn't very smart because I was a dreamer, what if I hadn't let my terrifying fear of being 'given away' (I am adopted) make me try to be a very good girl, actually stifling my own true self, until as a teenager after coping with a tragic bereavement I then completely flipped and rebelled, not really discovering my true self until after a very short lived unhappy marriage, finally 'waking' up to who Alison was, what she needed and how she was going to reclaim her life aged 25!

I actively craved the type of family and life that I have now, but I would have never thought it was possible.  I still have to pinch myself that I actually have horses, I really do own horses and have done for the last 25 years, that pony horse daft kid who never missed an episode of Black Beauty or Follyfoot and still can't listen to the theme from White Horses without crying would never have imagined in a million years that fast forward 40 years that I have a life with horses.    I had never been near a real horse until a family holiday to Jersey when I was 16, the family we were staying with had a daughter who rode and I begged to be allowed to go riding!  My parents gave in to me and I had my first ever sit on a horse using a borrowed hat and wearing open toes sandals.  A change of job and career meant I could finally start riding lessons aged 23, it was heaven and my dream come true, I didn't know that within 3 years I would have actually bought my first horse.  Now we have cottage in the country with dogs, cats, chickens, three glorious kids and a husband whom I love and adore and who just 'gets' me, so much so that we bought this house, our home for 16 years without even seeing it just because it had enough bedrooms and a huge garden and 4 acres of paddocks!

Anyway I digress, I am going to write to myself.  And I am going to tell the young me, that it will all be okay, that life is going to throw great sadness and tragedy at me, there will be lows but also there will be huge highs and that life generally is the most wonderful adventure.  There are inspirational people to meet and become friends with, there is the biggest love ever that comes through children and owning animals and that I will learn to relax and enjoy love, it will not all be taken away from me.  My track record for coping with the sad, bad times is ok, I am still here, still learning how to roll with whatever challenges life throws my way.

I'm still learning, still being inspired by books that I read, places I visit, people I meet and the dreams of what is next.  To quote Trainspotting, I choose Life, and I still do.

To be continued.......