Our hearts kept it simple.

I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. I don’t really know when it exactly happened, but somewhere in between our intense eye contact and wiping my tears away as my walls came down that I spent years crafting, I crashed into you fully and never looked back.

My heart was unguarded, and I gave you all of me. We didn’t just hang out. We played. Our souls were alive – we were like two little kids again seeing the world for the first time – being with you multiplied all the good in life and changed me forever.

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” - Roald Dahl -

When I look back on 2015, the more I read, listen, learn, watch and experience, the more I’m immeasurably grateful for the trip and fall that I took this year, the fall down, the staying down, that made me take stock. Take stock of me - who I’d created - and who I really was. As Brene Brown says in Daring Greatly ‘What we know matters but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen’. In the absence of any other coping skills I started to allow myself to be seen, mostly by myself.

A while ago we lost one of our horses. Not in the careless 'where did she go' loss but in the sense that she went to the big paddock in the sky type of loss.

I felt big, sad, heavy pangs of regret when I found out (because it's all about me of course!) for many reasons not least of which was because my Mum, in all her wisdom, had asked me for months to record her well-being on camera for her US-based owners. But of course the photos weren't forthcoming for varying reasons not least of which was because I didn't make the time. A plethora of excuses fell forward in an endless conversation about forgetting, being too busy and the light not being right.

The fact was that I didn't make the time because I thought she'd be here longer and there would be more time and at the weekend the light would be better and and and. But the weekend didn't come and the light certainly wasn't better. She was there and then she wasn't and I deeply regret not making the time.

This evening, over supper and soft light my soul friend, ultimate mirror and true guide caught up. We’ve been missing things - each other mostly - and it was time. Time to find our way back.

But in truth I never wanted to go back, I wanted to find another path and that was probably where we missed each other. I had to find that - or am finding that - all on my own. It’s been the strangest thing and truthfully I never thought, of all the people in my life, the one person who really sees me, would be the one casualty of this experience.

I don’t know what made me lose my way. No that’s not the truth I know exactly what happened, bit by bit everything about me was chipped away until the last pebble dropped the brick wall I had built and nothing, nothing, was left. I took it for granted. The wall I mean. I thought it was a wishing well of sorts, a place I went to pull another defensive brick from in order to throw it at the blows life kept dealing me - you know that ‘attack is the best form of defence' mentality. Keep throwing those bricks and surely the attacks will be defected?