My Need For Quiet

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

So, Lovelies, I am sure some of you will relate to what I am about to share.

I’m a Highly Sensitive Soul. I am sure you may be one too.

Because of my sensitivity, my intuitive and psychic abilities, I am able to connect deeply with people.

My empathy is high. I feel your pain. I hear your emotions. I hold space for your sorrows, as well as your hopes and dreams.

Beyond that?

I feel everything so very deeply. I feel it, and I can never turn that off.

I feel the weight of this pandemic. Not just the lives of people who have contracted COVID, or lost part of themselves, or a loved one to that illness. I also feel the burden of those in lockdown, of those cut off from the normal routines and comforts of life. Of those whose livelihoods have been decimated. I feel the distress of the overburdened health care workers. I feel the rage and despair of those who believe COVID is some kind of conspiracy or an act of control over the people. I feel the loss and grief we all feel over the way life has ceased to exist with the freedoms we enjoyed before all of this happened.

I feel the weight of our recent droughts, bushfires, floods, catastrophic weather events – here at home and around the globe.

I feel the weight of the climate crisis. Of deforestation, and plastics in the oceans, and extinctions of species.

I hold within me the suffering of so many of my community, as well as their secrets, their shames, their hopes, their pains.

I feel the beauty of the world.

I feel the uncertainty.

It can be overwhelming.

One of the blessings that inflammation of my heart brought me was the need for me to stop. To step away from the endless flow of information on social media, and in my inboxes.

Instead of noise, I embraced quiet.

It is in this place of quiet that I have found my healing.

I’m still not done. I was so burned out. So soul weary. But I had become used to pushing on, pushing through, that I did not see how ground down I had become.

What is restoring me is silence.

What is restoring me is quiet.

What is restoring me is rest.

What is restoring me is birdsong, and the sound of the waves, or the wind in the trees.

Cups of tea in the garden.

Sunshine.

Clean sheets, afternoon naps, and the occasional audio book.

Gentle walks and stretching.

Sitting in the company of loved ones.

I know that quiet restores me. I know it might help you too.

Little bits of quiet, consumed often. Large chunks of quiet, taken as needed.

If you’re in lockdown or stuck in some kind of isolation, you may feel that quiet is the last thing you need. But are you really allowing quiet? Or are you stuck in the noise of your own thoughts, your own expectations, your own story? Long before lockdowns became fashionable, my illness relegated me to periods of extreme isolation. Once I stopped fighting my distress at being stuck in that situation, I found that quiet time gifted me so much, and my intuition, spiritual journey, creativity and self -awareness have been made bright and strong in those times of solitude.

Wherever you find yourself right now, know that you are in my daily thoughts, prayers and meditations, and I’m sending you so much love, and my wish for you that you can find your own place of peace.

Nicole xx