Thoughts on Resilience & Overwhelm

When Even the Jam Doesn't Get Made.

There was a moment this week that caught me completely off guard.

Not a major disaster. Not bad news. Not a dramatic event.

Just a bowl of blackcurrant pulp.

I'd made cordial earlier in the week and had every intention of turning the leftover pulp into something useful. Normally I'd have enjoyed the challenge - fruit leather? Pastilles? Nothing wasted. Another recipe to try. Another small step towards the slower, more resilient way of living that we're trying to build here at Chaos Cottage.

Instead, I opened the container to find little fruit flies, mould and a job that had quietly become a failure.

It wasn't really about the blackcurrants.

It rarely is.

When Life Arrives All At Once

Sometimes life has a habit of stacking itself up.

There's the business to run, listings to photograph and write, a website that's still refusing to cooperate, tax deadlines that seem to breed overnight and exciting opportunities like Country Living that somehow also arrive carrying another list of things that need doing.

Then there is everything else.

This week marks a year since we lost Turnip and Potato, our funny, cheeky, naughty, brown cocker spaniels. Grief has a funny way of returning. It doesn't ask permission. It simply turns up and sits beside you while you're making tea or walking through the garden. My heart remains broken and I've had a week of emotional turmoil. I realise that for those who have lost people, or simply aren't "animal people" my grief might seem misplaced or unimaginable. But grief and sadness are grief and sadness regardless of what has been lost and what has caused you pain.

Turnip was 'daft as a brush' as they say in Yorkshire and Potato, her cousin, was her opposite - serious and cautious, except when she was in the vicinity of a fast moving river, the sea or even a muddy puddle! Turnip developed dementia. It might surprise you to know that it manifests in the same was as it does in humans. Forgetfulness that eventually becomes fear as places and faces (ours and the rest of the pack) become unfamiliar. We were just coming to the realisation that it was time to let Turnip go when Potato became ill and declined rapidly. They died as they had lived, together. We took them in their coordinating blankets up to the field and buried them next to Jelly, the Springer spaniel we lost a couple of years ago. Most of the time we joke when we're up there that the two 'naughties' are still annoying Jelly but today, I just miss them terribly.

All families have challenges and ours is no different. After the death earlier this year of my father-in-law, his wife (hubby's stepmum) is about to move to Florida to be with her daughter. It feels like another chapter quietly closing, so there's grief there too. Our mums are both becoming increasingly frail and forgetful requiring more attention and care which also becomes emotionally draining more than it is physically tiring.

None of those things fit neatly into a diary.

They're carried in your head all day long.

Even the Good Things Become Heavy

The strange thing about overwhelm is that it doesn't just make the difficult things harder.

It steals the pleasure from the things that normally refill your cup.

Making jam becomes another task to tick off.

Harvesting vegetables feels like another job waiting to be done before they spoil.

Even walking around the garden becomes a mental inventory of weeds, watering, picking, pruning and jobs you've forgotten.

The very life you've worked so hard to create starts feeling like another list rather than the joy it really is.

That's when I know I need to take a moment, so I'm writing this with some lighthearted rubbish on the telly in the background, a cup of Yorkshire Tea and a slice of rather lovely blackcurrant jam on toast.

The Weight We All Carry

And of course the overwhelm isn't just a result of our own lives.

Every time you turn on the news there is another war, another political argument, another report about drought, floods or failing harvests somewhere in the world.

Here in the UK we have fires burning in every country that makes up the British Isles - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Our brains were never designed to hold the worries of the entire planet while also remembering to order next year's bulbs, arrange couriers and answer emails.

Sometimes it feels as though we're expected to care about everything, all at once.

No wonder so many of us are exhausted.

A Different Kind of Resilience

People often think resilient living means being endlessly capable.

Growing all your own food.

Making your own jam.

Keeping on top of every job.

Always being prepared.

I'm not convinced that's what resilience really is.

Perhaps resilience is recognising when life has become too much and allowing some things to wait.

Accepting that the blackcurrant pulp can go on the compost heap.

Buying a jar of jam, rather than making it, if you need to.

Leaving the weeds for another day - they are just plants in the wrong place after all.

Choosing rest before productivity. AND accepting that rest is an activity in itself. It is not time wasted with inaction, but purposeful, impactful, important, recuperation. It is a time to let your mind reset and your body to restore.

Nature doesn't expect perfection. Every year fruit falls from the trees uneaten. Flowers turn to seed before they're picked. Compost heaps are built from things that didn't quite go to plan.

Nothing is truly wasted if it feeds something else.

This Weekend at Chaos Cottage

So I'm going to be a little kinder to myself.

The blackcurrant pulp has gone to the compost heap where, in time, it will become something useful again.

The garden is still beautiful.

The vegetables will still need picking tomorrow.

The dogs still need walking.

Life carries on, quietly and steadily.

Perhaps that's enough for now.

If you've been feeling overwhelmed recently too, maybe this is your reminder that you don't have to carry everything perfectly.

Sometimes the most resilient thing we can do is simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that the seasons, and ourselves, will eventually find our rhythm again.