journey of the soul or journey of the mind?

When my "escape" journey started I had a different idea for my project. Initially the journey I had in mind was exclusively a journey of the soul and my aim was to collect some stories and experiences to highlight the huge difference between life in the city and life in the country. It was a concept that I was trying to develop inside my head and it was fascinating to me simply because as a city girl and mother of three I knew that life in the city had become extremely stressful and very intense. It can literally drive you insane at times! And having experienced moments of depression and "insanity" myself I knew how difficult it is to bounce back and regain control of your life. The pressure women like me are under every single day is the same pressure that dictates us how to act and where to go - basically tells us how to run our lives. Unfortunately in "our world" we are not allowed to stop and take a deep breath, because we constantly need to perform at the highest level in all occasions and in all aspects of life. The strength we need to achieve that impossible dream is beyond ourselves and the price we pay for it is extremely high. On the other end the country sounded like a better choice to me and even though I had absolutely no idea what life was really like in the country areas, the idea of a more relaxed and healthier environment really appealed to me. At the end of the day, mine was just a great desire to slow down my rhythm and bring some much needed relief to my life. So while I tormented myself with the thought of how wonderful it would be to start a new life in the country I also started to ask myself if perhaps what I needed more than anything else was to get in touch with my inner self and really try and understand what I wanted to achieve and where I wanted to go. So that is how the other "escape" project came about and how my mind started to then follow a different path and a new direction. Perhaps my change of direction was due to the fact that I now felt stronger and I was slowly regaining control of my dreams.

My "escape" journey was now becoming a journey of the mind. I was back! But I realised then that, that is what us women and mothers do, we put ourselves on the sideline for the sake of our partners and our kids, we work hard to make everyone happy and comfortable all the time but somewhere along the way we loose sight of our dreams until the day we realise that not all is lost and that after all we are still in charge of our own lives.

For me it was perhaps my old dream of being a writer that started the whole process again, and being inspirational to people is probably one of the other reasons! The word inspirational itself though brings all sorts of great and scary things to mind! Oh well, it was never going to be easy- and that is one thing I am pretty sure of!