Author: Mies

Posted on

A life less ordinary

This year started off for me with a bundle of gratitude, a ray of hope and a magnitude of plans. I set off to conquer myself and explore all that I could offer. It took a lot of falling down and getting right back-uppers, but slowly things started settling right into place. I rounded off my first year of the pharmaceutical course, passed my exams, but decided that a life behind the counter was not my cup of tea. It took quite some weeks of actual work experience to help me see the light. But when it hit me, I radically decided to change direction.

If anything I’ve learnt that I’m a ‘people person’, that I care about what else is out there and that I need to find a way to combine what matters most. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.
Life has thrown me chances that I have happily grabbed and which I’m trying my best at.
I’m no super person though, there’s still so much to learn, to evolve and to achieve. I still need to practise what I preach sometimes, but I know I’m on the right track!
As life unfolds its unexpected opportunities, and helps me see how lucky I truly am, I feel my gratitude rising, and my spirit filling up with a warm glow of hope and love.

I’ve grown, I’ve prospered, I’ve taken brand new roads. I’ve found that it’s never too late to learn, always possible to change and that when you find true love it can quietly sit around in the corners of your heart faithfully believing that its destiny will one day be fulfilled, no matter what.
In everything you learn to trust that what comes your way is meant to be, and that what doesn’t probably is not. The least that you can do is take a chance and life will grant you with an outcome fit to mould you into just the person that your spirit longs to be.

I’m so thankful for the turns my life has taken, for the friends and family I share it with, for the ones that were once part of it, even if they are now nowhere to be found. I’m even thankful for the solitude that heartache brought me, as it’s made me realise who I am and where my heart lies. Life is like that, it gives and it takes away, but what is left is most essential, a bundle of experiences, clinging on to one another until some get untangled or resolved.

If anything I’m just a little wiser, just a little stronger and just a bit more determined to follow my dreams and aspirations. I look forward to another year of all of this and more! I can only hope that it will bring as many crucial eye-openers to myself as well as others.
May so many hearts stop aching, so much anger disappear, may we find each other in the darkness and celebrate without any fear. May we be forgiven for the things we once did wrong, and now show kindness in return. May the fears that are deep within us find the courage to evolve, into warm acts of friendliness towards anyone in need. And may all that you wish come true …

Merry Christmas and a loving New Year to you!

Posted on

Shitty Happiness

Nothing lasts forever and even true love tends to fade. At times it gets slaughtered so much and tested so often that it just dissolves and perishes, when you thought it never would. Nothing left. Just gone, as suddenly as it once appeared it disappears.

Did I ever think it possible? No! Absolutely not. But it’s become crystal clear that it’s just the way it goes in life, it can happen to anyone, at any given time. Is it painful? Yes! Utterly, excruciatingly sometimes. Does it mean you stop living? Does it mean life ends? No! It’s a miracle really, surviving such heartache and loss. But we survive and as we do, life has a way of softening the blow, of healing the pain and putting things back into perspective. And one day if we’re ready and willing, love may invade again without warning.

Just recently I had a friend visiting and I heard myself spontaneously telling her how happy I am nowadays, everything is going well, the kids are settled, I’m enjoying my translation work, my writing is thriving and life is good and merry. I told her things couldn’t be better!

She smiled, a knowing smile. The kind that says ‘been there, done that’ and then after quietly having listened to my ‘happy talk’, she said she understood completely. She too had experienced that exact same feeling yet now that she was back in a relationship, her feelings were all over the place again. She told me, that in life, it’s easy to survive alone, you get to do what you want when you want, however you want, with whomever you want. Easy. However, once you meet someone again, the challenge really starts, compromise, sharing, and making room for someone else in your life is not so easy! If we spend too many years living alone, it’s pretty tough to adapt and accept this new ‘intruder’ into what has comfortably become our own peaceful atmosphere.

But it brings a new perspective, a new challenge and a wider scope on life. This is when you really get tested, have you actually changed? Like you said you had… Are you really more settled and happy? Or did the problems disappear just because there was no one there to argue with. No one around to hit any sensitive strings that may cause irritation or rub you the wrong way? It’s at this point that it will become clear to you whether all you thought had changed, grown and was learnt, really has changed, grown and been learnt!

You see, her point was: sometimes things are easier said than done. Sometimes we think we’ve solved our shit, but when we are confronted with the cause again, we may realise that nothing is really solved, nothing has really changed.

I thought about that, for a long time after she left.

And I realised, that the only way to find out, if what I say and think I feel about being in a good place right now is true, is by challenging myself again with that which scares me most. Having said that, I needed to define what that was. It then dawned upon me that my biggest fear is actually letting someone back in. I fear the havoc and sweet surrender of love sending shivers down my spine. I fear losing the (false) sense of comfort that I now reside in, I dread the invasion of love, because I now know, that sometimes it doesn’t last forever, sometimes it leads nowhere, sometimes it hurts and most times it still scares the shit out of me. Which brings the circle right back round to why it’s so easy to be happy right now, there’s just no pile of shit I have to deal with! Simple as that.

No worries though…manure has a way of fertilising the soil so that crops will prosper…someday! For now…I’m happy enough!

Posted on

Woman of the World

About two weeks ago, something absolutely amazing and totally unexpected fell right in my lap!

I had spontaneously sent an e-mail after reading an appeal for Dutch women writers worldwide initiated by a well known women’s magazine in Holland. (LINDA.) I thought, ‘nothing to lose, right’, so I sent my short introductory e-mail with a link to my blog. A little over an hour passed and suddenly my in-box lit up and to my biggest surprise, I had received a reply!

I was out having lunch with my parents at that exact moment and I found myself reading the e-mail out loud, stuttering out the words as I read along. OMG!!! Apparently I fit the profile, and they would soon send me more information. I read and re-read the e-mail several times and still could not believe it! My spontaneous letter had hit a chord and I was in!

From that moment on, my life changed completely. As a matter of fact, my entire world literally opened up! I was thrown into a pool of extremely interesting Dutch women residing worldwide.

All of a sudden, everything fell into place. Having been an expat kid all of my childhood life, I had seen so much of the world, and tasted so many different cultures. And now after 20 years of living in Belgium, luck threw me back out into the world and gave me a chance to voice myself. Not only that, but I get to nostalgically relive many wonderful memories abroad.

I had instantly become a ‘woman of the world’ and quickly met many other interesting women. Just like that, passionate, delightful and thriving women entered my small world, or did we enter each others world? Fact is, our worlds blended and with that, all country boundaries disappeared! We are one amazing group of women, each with our own talents, skills and dedications. Yet we are all the same, as we thrive to share with the world, that which is important to us, as women, mothers, humans.

You see, no matter how far apart we are, one thing joins us together and that is the eagerness to connect, whether we connect to a large group, a family, a partner or to ourselves, it’s that power within ourselves that makes it happen. That which makes any dream come true. And that which is realised when others dream that dream too. Alone we stand but together we move the world!