Some days I wake up with a blog in my mind. There have been nights I go to sleep with one rolling around, half written, waiting to emerge the next morning. Other days you wake up, sit down, and stare at the screen with no words coming.

.

Today feels more like that.

.

The desire and need to sit with my thoughts and words is there, it feels strong, the idea hasn’t percolated.

.

I’m camping right now, sitting in my camper, drinking coffee from a French press, listening to the sounds of the campground. People are slow to wake after a full Saturday of activities. I can hear cars and trucks crunching the gravel loop as they make their exit. Perhaps they are on their way to the bathhouse, or a hiking trail, or even going to the river. I haven’t heard much from the hoard of children who own this camp circle for this brief moment in time. It is a lazy Sunday morning. I am grateful for it.

.

This new season of my life has created new spaces and rythmns. You never turn your Mom Switch off but my time with my kids looks different now. There are only two days a month I don’t see my boys at all. They happen on the weekends they go to their dad’s apartment. Those Saturdays turn into my zero contact days with them. We text or message sometimes, not all the time, when they are away. I feel comfortable giving them the freedom to choose if they need me or not. In the beginning it was hard. Really hard. The days or nights I was away from them were killer. I felt anxious and worried the entire time. In the last few months I have been able to shift my thinking a little. Now I am grateful for those Saturdays, those evenings they go to their dad’s, these brief small moments I have to be alone.

.

Alone. Something I used to crave more of than I think I should have. Alone was the thing I was running towards. I would run away from my life in my mind or sometimes with my body to hide and be alone. I could never quite get enough of it. Now, I rarely have it and I’m happier. It makes me think I wasn’t truly needing alone. I was searching for the peace I could tap into when alone but alone was not what my soul needed the most of.

.

In the moments I have to be alone I find myself filling the space with friends instead. In the beginning it might have been to run away from what might happen when I was alone, the thoughts that could creep in, the evil cynical nagging voice that lives in my mind as an Enneagram One. Now I find I choose to fill my time in different ways. I work on myself, I dig in my mind, I weed things out in therapy, there is no easy pass I give myself. Being with friends seems to be a part of that healing. Being with family as well. They have a unique way of pointing out truth you can’t always see when blinded by lies.

.

Camping helps. Getting away from the normal while creating a new normal. Cultivating new rythmns I’ve longed for for a very long time. Allowing space for my dreams to become reality and grow larger. Giving my mind the larger space of nature to think and process and be. Expanding my mind by sitting still under canopies of blackness dotted with diamonds. Having long talks about God and who he/she is and how they touch and care for our lives.

.

I am learning I needed less alone and more quality to my being.