When I was in my mid-twenties my two kids were born. For a total of three years at the beginning of the new millennium I completely immersed myself in motherhood while being fulltime at home with them. And while I loved many parts of these years I also look back at this period of my life as being extremely challenging. I remember someone asking me at the end of my maternity leave: “What is your favorite color?”. My answer at that time was I don’t know.

This has always stuck with me and in the years that followed I sometimes referred back to it. Look at how much I had lost connection with myself: I couldn’t even say which color I liked most?! I will never ever let this happen to me again in my life, I thought.

Life went on, I started working again, travelled the world, discovered new things about myself and living life, moved abroad with my family, kids growing up… and then the whole world changed. I got covid which turned into Long Covid and boom – here I am today with three extremely challenging years of my life having passed again. I can tell you that my favorite color is pink (as you can see here on this blog as well as many of my clothes, phone case, Kindle cover, pens, notepads and believe it or not: my newly-renovated bathroom). But here are the questions I’m unable to answer today:

Nanda, with two adult children who will soon move out of the house…

… what are YOUR dreams?
… how do YOU want to live YOUR life?

It feels difficult to write, but it’s my truth, that my answer to both of the above questions right now is I don’t know.

So either this is me smack in the middle of a mid-life crisis or this is me having lived in extreme survival-mode for three years and in that hurricane completely lost track of myself, my joys and dreams. I honestly don’t know which it is, but perhaps it doesn’t really matter? Because I feel the way I feel these days. Like slowly emerging after having lived under a rock for a long time. With a lot of ups and downs, pretty much all the time.

I asked myself what it is I need right now and the answer is TIME. Lots of time to be. To re-discover what it is that brings me joy. What my dreams are. How I want to live my life moving forward.

The following saying comes to mind:

You cannot shout at a flower to start blooming.

This resonates deeply with me. It seems to me that many of us, me included, are in the habit of shouting at ourselves on a pretty regular basis. I want to stop doing that. Instead I want time to say I don’t know, over and over again. I want time to be still and observe. Until one day perhaps I will have connected to a dream or something else that feels right, who knows.

This summer I want to travel somewhere on my own. No husband, no kids – just me, my Kindle and my laptop. I’m curious to see what will happen then. Do you have any tips where I could go? Let me know!

Thank you for reading ♥

Photo: Shreejan Shrestha – unsplash.com