I had an epiphany just now.  It’s worth sharing.

I was up at 3.30 am this morning.  There’s a lot going on in life at present (for you too, no doubt) and sometimes it’s the time I have to think about it.  I got up and made tea, trying to persuade the cats it wasn’t breakfast time yet.  I lit a candle and pondered a while.

It took me some time to get back to sleep but I think I managed about another hour.

Once I was up I had to get straight on with report work.  My muggle job is as a specialist assessor.  I assess children and adults for specific learning difficulties.  And write the reports.  So.  One left from last week to finish, before this week’s assessments kick off tomorrow. I worked on this for an hour finishing around 8.30 am.

Then straight into some chores, we were expecting a visitor for an official meeting and I still like to make sure the place looks passably tidy.

The visitor arrived and we had a meeting with my eldest son.  He has an autistic spectrum condition.  We needed to discuss his options. I was proud of him when he explained to the man who came that while he accepted he had a disability he didn’t see himself as disabled and he felt the new benefits on offer were for people in greater need than him.  He is opting to seek work.

Once the visitor left we got straight onto the government website to make an application and upload his CV.  Then I had some emails to deal with.  I rang my mum too.  She was feeling blue.  She has a whole heap of challenges to do with her health and with my dad out working today was feeling lonely.  I went over with some lunch and then we came back here for a coffee and some chats with my son. After I dropped her back at home and helped with a few small jobs I headed home again, the sun blazing through the dark clouds and burnishing the already golden leaves.

Now this is where the lesson comes.

I am taking a basic counseling skills course.  It’s proving hugely helpful in several areas of my work.  The class is three hours on a Tuesday evening.  So I was supposed to get ready and go out again.  Only I noticed something.

I noticed that I was struggling to coordinate my body.  That I felt nauseous and my head was tight.  That it was more difficult than it should be to see straight.

I have learned, over the past eighteen months, that these are signs that I’ve hit the red warning marker on my personal energy gas tank.  In the past I would have ignored this.  I would have drunk a jug of coffee, eaten some cake and gone anyway.  That’s how I got ill last year.

Today it was a different story.

I sent my apologies.

Then I went to look for some crystals.

I chose rose quartz for self-care, bloodstone for healing, clear quartz to clean my energy and obsidian for grounding.  I placed them all in a gauze pouch.  Then I ran a bath with olive oil and Epsom salts.  I added the pouch and some dried lavender from the garden.

Once soaked and feeling a little more stable I put on my super-cosy extra large Ravenclaw sweatshirt and made a fruit smoothie for a snack.

Bazinga!  Self-care baby.  I was so incredibly amazed at the change in my behaviour.  And so thankful.  I might not manage this everyday but today I did.

I am learning.  Slowly.