All posts tagged: home

Why am I leaving this!

Published by Amanda Cooke

Dear Hearts, while I wait for a departure date to drop into my lap, I’ve been musing about some last lingering doubts and about Nature, my harshest and wisest teacher. ‘Why am I leaving this!” I’ve been asking myself this question nearly every morning for weeks now as I sit, often uncomfortably, in the uncertainty of not knowing where to from here. A trigger for all of the lingering doubts about our decision to leave to come back and torment me. It’s winter here in Australia, and along with Autumn, it’s my favourite time of year. Full of cold nights with the fire on, blue sky days and lovely walks safe in the knowledge that all of the the creatures that can kill me are sleeping! There’s a gentleness to the wilderness now that allows me to exhale after the intensity of summer. To fully relax into myself and into nature.

These are the good old days

Published by Amanda Cooke

After a month in The Netherlands reconnecting with family and old friends, tonight I’m leaving on a jet plane for home. I’ve said many goodbyes over the past 25 years but this time I’m feeling particularly melancholic. To have a life in more than one place is a gift for which I am very grateful but at times like this, I feel torn. Being here always takes me on a journey through past lives and a rollercoaster of emotions. Amsterdam in particular is where my heart feels most at home. It’s the city where I fell in love, truly felt comfortable in my own skin and learned to be a mother. Maybe it’s a symptom of growing older and understanding the impermanence of life that I’m struggling more and more with letting go and with the feeling that I still have unfinished business. Often the heart just knows what the mind struggles to understand.

My life with spiders

Published by Amanda Cooke

Lately I’ve felt that familiar anxious feeling, the one that comes each year with the onset of spring. To hurry up and get on top of things before summer hits and you’re under siege again. The cicadas are back, baby ants are hatching and spiders are busy making their webs with increased vigour. The natural world is stirring from its winter hibernation. My home, like the forests and river valley that surround me, has its own tiny ecosystem with its own seasonal ebbs and flows. I’ve come to realise that the arrival of these little creatures is a reminder to surrender to the things I can’t control. To accept that by choosing to live within nature I must adapt to my surroundings and not the other way around. I am the introduced species here after all. I’m resisting the urge to fight this invasion because like most things in life, its about balance, finding that elusive sweet spot. 

Leap of Faith

Published by Amanda Cooke

No better time than the first day of spring to write my first blog post right?  Solar eclipse in Virgo, YES!  Couldn’t be a more auspicious time to begin anew and trust the wisdom of the universe. But, I’ve spent all day procrastinating, fiddling with my wordpress theme and other acts of self sabotage, driven entirely by my fear of jumping into the great unknown of the blogosphere. I’ve moved countries and changed jobs, I moved HERE with much less angst but I’m finding this leap of faith particularly difficult.  I’ve come to realise some of the most difficult hurdles are the ones we need to overcome in our own minds.

Welcome to my perch

Published by Amanda Cooke

Welcome to my hillside perch. In 2012, our family of three made a run for it and escaped the rush of city life in search of a slower and more nourishing life on the land. I was born in the bush, came of age in the city but always felt the pull of the country. To be back in the wild, a place where our daughter could experience the freedoms that I knew as child. So here we are by a river in a lush little valley on the East Coast of NSW. And after finally coming up for air, I’ve decided to write about our unique tree change journey and what I’ve learned about myself along the way.