You may (or may not!) have noticed the lack of blogs lately.
It has been quite a strange time for me, my beautiful dog, Brae, that I adore has been diagnosed with cancer for the third time. I have once again had the lump from her leg removed but my heart and head have not been where they should be when it comes to writing anything on here.
I have also had to face up to some quite hard realisations with my personal life and had to let a wonderful woman go. I was simply unable to feel what I should feel and realised that perhaps the best thing for me at the moment is to spend my time as a single woman and concentrate on my wee dog and my garden!
I have been speaking to women of my own age (50 and above!) and they all seem to understand my need for my own space at the moment, it is a very strange thing … and not like me at all, but something very important to me and something that I simply need to do.
In all honesty it is like I am on a voyage.. it feels as if I am rediscovering me all over again. I seem a very different person to the emotionally led, heart on sleeve type of person I was a decade ago.
The decades that have gone past have left a path that I can look back on with many a smile and the occassional wee tear but they have formed me into who I am now. I am actually very comfortable with me, I do not feel the pressure of having anything to prove to anyone, apart from me, and that’s a very important thing.
It took me a long, long time to realise that the only person who can make me happy is me. I have loved and I have lost, I have held on too long to something I truly wanted to work only to realise that the reason it wouldn’t was because I wasn’t loved back and I had to walk away. You need two people to make things work otherwise one of you is just “hanging on”.
Sometimes you have to take these things on the chin and face reality, and I know I have become real ..
I have posted this before, but it now seems more appropriate than ever
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
(quote from The Velveteen Rabbit)
Brae. A gay woman's tale! 
Mar 30, 2011 @ 18:00:50
The Velveteen Rabbit quote is beautiful and so very true.
Being comfortable with ones self is a precious gift to love and cherish.
You have this gift and you and brae are sharing a special moment in your life together.
Enjoy now and excitedly anticipate the next stage of your journey x
Apr 03, 2011 @ 13:33:53
Life is a journey, the older we get, the more lessons we learn; the more heartache and love we are exposed to all contribute to the awakening of the inner self. I think by the time people arrive at mid-life (50’s) they have a great awareness of the need and value to loving themselves before loving others, to listening to their bodies and to being true to personal values and beliefs.
I love the time I spend on my own, I like the space I have created in my life and I love the fact that no one person impacts on my time significantly, I have control and I am not willing to hand this over to anyone. Each day I learn a little more about myself and am much richer for it and a far better person than I have ever been. It would be fantastic to find someone who feels the same way, someone who wouldn’t want to swamp me, suffocate me or have expectations of me. A woman who can love from a distance and close up, someone who can feel a closeness even though we may be miles apart or only see each other on an ad-hoc basis, whether she is out there for me I don’t know. What I do know is that I am happy doing what I am doing – looking out for me first and then others, so life is good, sorted and settled regardless of whether I am single or spoken for.
Life is a journey and as long as we remember to look all around us as we walk our path, instead of just looking straight ahead, we will notice all the beauty that there is and meet lots of interesting people, who can ask for more!