Why I Live This Way
As we begin to get older, we start to examine our way of life. We ask ourselves are we happy? Do we want more from life? We also think our spirituality and ponder about ways to connect to nature perhaps, our inner selves and we start to wonder about what’s behind it all. Also, some of us think about nature and the planet and how the governments of the last hundred years or so have allowed such harm to happen to everything we should hold dear. That’s exactly what happened to me, anyway.
I think this mostly applies to women for lots of reasons but I suppose there are men out there who feel the same. I noticed that lots of my friends were getting into yoga, learning about chakras and other wellbeing traditions from other parts of the world. But, being an historian, having lived in Suffolk all my life and having my ancestors living here for generations too, and more than anything perhaps – living in a 400 year old cottage, I wondered whether I could get the same things out of life from traditions a little closer to home. Those ancient traditions from the other side of the world were passed down from the generations for thousands of years but we had nothing, so it seemed. Was it all lost to science and religion?
Having had a fascination with all things Victorian, I turned the clock back a few hundred years and found what I was looking for. Everything I needed was right on my doorstep, I only needed to look.
Back then, a couple of hundred years or more, in every village was a midwife, a herbalist or a wisewoman or man. These were the people who were looking to nature for answers. They found their medicine foraging for plants, they found their spirituality in the night sky, nature, and the spirits which they believed were all around. They lived their lives according to the seasons and they knew things which we have long forgotten. These were our Pagan ancestors with beliefs and traditions from all around Europe.
With all this in mind, I have been studying the old ways. I am fascinated by how the people who lived in my home before me would have lived and by living closer to nature I feel that I am experiencing a little of it. I haven’t given up my mod-cons, by the way, I couldn’t possibly live without my fridge, TV, computer, phone, wi-fi, toilet, bath, etc., etc. As much as I can, I’m giving up plastics, prepacked food, throw-away furniture, clothes, decor items. I’m exchanging harmful chemicals for traditional eco-friendly options and where we can we’re cooking from scratch.
I completely and absolutely believe that love is the way to cure everything, and if we live our lives with love in our hearts all will be well.
A week today, it will be my 59th birthday, my goals for the coming year are to be less anxious and more spiritual. I’m hoping that by my 60th birthday, the cottage decoration will be complete, we will be harvesting the majority of our fruit, herbs and vegetables from our garden and we’ll be healthier and happier for it all. And all with a little bit of magic, of course.
