Author: Nadège

The little things – 28.07.16

I have this terrible habit of starting my writing and not finishing it. I would say I have a knack for seeing things through to completion; projects, journeys, relationships. But with writing I seem to stammer my way through pages of procrastination. How ironic is it that the thing I love the most, is the thing that I resist the most? And how funny is it that my first thought in the morning, is the last thing I do at night? Someone very special to me once told me that we deprive ourselves of powerful endings. And that is what I do every time I put my dreams on the back burner. Imagine what my life would look like if I had finished my novel, and my poetry collection, and launched all of these ideas that turn on spindles in my mind? I want more than anything to write and create and adventure and love and make love. I’ve just got to see this through. I am creating a life for myself where all of this is possible, and I would like to take you on this journey with me. That being said, the post you are about to read, I started about two weeks ago lol, and finished tonight.
Enjoy…
#ANote2Self is magical. It gives me space to see where i’m at and to see who I am. It makes sacred the struggle. I have decided that I am going to enjoy my life. Whatever the circumstance.Recently, I have been struggling with the journal question ‘what will you enjoy today?’ I am working pretty much all day everyday. And the answer ‘work’ is starting to taste bland. On weekends I work in the residential home of adults with learning disabilities. I support them with their day to day care. This is where I am now. Having a breather in the conservatory. Meditation journal in hand. One of the residents has just come up to the glass door and squashed his whole face against it and I laugh because I find his silliness funny, and he knows that so he does it again, and I laugh even more. I am such a child. But in that moment it hits me.
The little things.
I will enjoy the little things, like exfoliating my skin in the bath. The places i’ve lived over the past 8 years have never had baths in and I’ve worked so hard to be be able to have one now. I will enjoy it. I will enjoy washing up. It can be so calming and relaxing when I allow it to be. I will enjoy the silly little things the people I support do to make me laugh because happiness just comes so easily to them.
I recently did a personal development course which focusses on cultivating more of the thing you authentically love in life. Ironically, my thing was love.  This is the course that produced my book Letters of Love. One of the tasks that we had to do was to pour love into every single thing that we do for a whole week. Every act we took, and every breath we uttered would be guided by love. The funny thing is, that week was not different from any other week. Nothing remarkable or out of the blue happened to me. But it was one of the best weeks of my life. Waking up in an unpenetrable state of love? Bliss.
I have learned that love is a practice. We can create magic in any moment when we choose to pour love into it. And If we do this as best we can for the rest of our lives people will feel home when they are with us. And they will know paradise for having left us. Sometimes happiness isn’t lightyears away but here now, and sometimes the little things are the biggest things.

When you wish upon a star – 13.07.16

Last night I watched Cinderella. It was stunning. I mean, I’m biased. I love Disney the way Michael Jackson loved Disney (and I also love Michael Jackson the way Michael Jackson loved Disney). It was the 2015 Kenneth Branagh version. There were musky English country houses and mahogany tables, grand pianos and acres of trees in centuries of forest. The humour dry like wine (British, of course), and most importantly, cheesy but gorgeous truth-filled one-liners. In the end, love found her, and loved her for every little thing she was. It was so enchanting, and that is all I really care for in a film, or perhaps in anything. The film ended with the song ‘A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes’ and I fell into sleep to Michael Jacksons beautiful cover of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’. I felt so good. The song, the film, in that moment, everything. There is something very special about going to sleep in love, you wake up in ecstasy.

 

It is about 6pm. The only word I can use to describe today is ‘heavy’. I am a freelance one-to-one tutor for a creative independent school that works with children who for whatever reason are marginalised from mainstream education. This means that i’m always on the go and things like eating and using the loo can be a little awkward sometimes because i’m running up and down south-east London all day, appointment to appointment. And just to make matters worse, mother nature came and checked me this afternoon. When I finished work this evening I got on the wrong bus, and didn’t realise till I was in Crystal Palace (I live the other side of the river) really, Nadège? This added another 40 minutes or so to my commute home. Although I was nodding off (and nearly got off at the wrong stop, again) I smiled through it. I am so excited. When I woke up this morning, the greatest opportunity that I didn’t know I needed presented itself to me. Just as I wished on I star last night, ain’t that funny? Now I’ve just gotta do the work. I am so excited.

 

Dear Self, 

Look at you. You are doing so well. Keep dreaming. Keep wishing on stars. Keep believing in magic. You dreams are around the corner. Watch how they unravel. 

 

Love, 

Nadège. 

08.07.16

#Anote2self

I am laying in my loving room looking at the sky. It’s been another long day and short night. I am thinking about my 13 hour shift tomorrow. I am thinking about how I will find the money to get to work for the next twelve days and how it feels like I am working sunrise to sunrise. Nights like these. Where sighs roll sweetly into the morning and I wish I could just throw myself into my mothers arms.

I promised myself I would never be here again, yet here I am.
This year I have been pulled from every corner and in consequence, I am being reintroduced to the unhealed parts of myself. It feels so icky, but i’m working on me. I am exhausted. But I know that I would much rather feel the pain of what I am going through than complain about what I’m going through. In complaining I lose the moment, and if I lose the moment I lose my power. Besides, pain is as beautiful as we allow it to be.

My journey of self-employment began this year, and I really have no idea what i’m doing. Still, I know I am scratching the surface of something, and I know that has to mean something. I am being beckoned by my dreams, i’m moving, but the journey is labyrinthine.

I have a gorgeous meditation journal titled #ANote2Self created by an author named Alex Elle and it has been a space for me to reflect on the details of my daily life with light and self-compassion. One of my entries reads as follows:

Dear Self,
Maybe you are exactly where you should be. You kept praying for God to use your life for loves purposes and it has landed you here. Why are you resisting it? Trust the process. There is nothing outside of you that can take your power. Nothing. What must you do to be in command of everything in your life? Do it. What does it feel like to be at peace? Feel it. What does it look like to be in love? Be it.

Love,

Nadège.
It it 22.38 in London and I need rest.
Sweet dreams
Nadège x

Promises

01.07.16

This year has been an awful one. A tear-soaked-pillows one. A work-my-ass-off-but-still-penniless-one. And at worst, an empty one. At the beginning of the year I had no work. It was my decision. I had been interning for a lovely academic publishing company, I didn’t apply for a permanent position because my heart would wander through the corridors and out the backdoors of the office every chance it got. My role ended in December and so did my money. Yet, I don’t regret this decision even slightly.
The challenges have had comebacks round every corner this year.
Wait. That’s every year.
Still, I feel as though I have spent the last few months trying to keep my head above water, while pouring myself into everyone and everything, tearing promises from my chest like ribbons that I had made to myself when all I saw was dark lines. I am self-employed now and I work three jobs (and counting), all of which specialise in teaching, guiding and caring for other people. I love it and at the same time I am confused by how much it is taking from me. I have been reaching for splinters of myself, glistening in the things, people and places I love the most.
Breathe, Nadège. Breathe.
I have not been my best this year and I have done wrong. I am learning not to terrorise myself for it. You fall so hard when you climb so high, and sometimes to offer humility is to offer the world. I am learning that too.
I would like to make another promise to myself. As soon as I get the money, I am going to book a plane ticket. I don’t know where too, yet. But I know that all I have wished for since I was a little girl was to travel the world and I must keep my promise to that little girl.