How I desperately try & fail to fit in a box
Can I create my own box please?
The lemon tree in my backyard in Portugal is in full bloom, gigantic juicy bright yellow lemons are making the twigs bend from their weight. I just woke up, put on the kettle and make my way into the garden in my morning robe, my dog Navy in tow. I select the juiciest lemon I can reach, slice it in half and slowly squeeze it into my cup with hot water. I breathe deeply, smile at the sight of the sun making its way through my garden, and try my best to ignore the darkening clouds threatening the perfection of this soft and slow moment.
I am fiercely trying to make my world smaller, to live a quiet and a simple life. Thinking it needs to be that way in order for me to become more soft. There are moments when I deeply desire to grow a family, keep a beautiful clean home, and immerse myself fully in support of my partner's career. Me, finally becoming the soft and feminine partner I imagine I can be.
Sensual, always smiling, devoted to her loved ones. Baking frosted cakes topped with fresh blueberries on Sundays and a garden vegetable quiche on Fridays.
Feeding off the adventures and stories of others, while fully contempt in the well-kept garden of my own house (and mind), no longer needing to be and do so much in order to feel alive. Simply revelling in the simplicity of my life without expectations for grandness, bigger and better.
And then those other thoughts, those I’ve known since young adulthood, emerge again during one of my many afternoon mountain strolls with Navy.
Big ideas, even bigger dreams. Me effortlessly managing my business empire, sitting on Oprah’s couch, a regular at Tedx.
On this particular walk, the disturbing article on the Portuguese housing crisis that I had read last week kept popping into my head. Young portuguese students forced to leave their studies to work full time just to pay rent. 30-something professionals still living with their parents while us foreigners move into mansions. With so many empty properties and vacant land there had to be a solution to create affordable housing projects for young Portuguese people and especially young single moms…
I get jerked back to reality as my phone rings. A women I don’t know starts speaking in Portuguese. I make out that she is on her way to my house to deliver an Amazon package. I hear her son babbling away on the passenger seat. It’s past 7pm. She arrives in her beaten up truck as I walk to the gate. I ask the little boy if he’s his moms delivery assistant. He shyly nods. She finds my Amazon package after a few minutes of rummaging through the pile. I forgot what I ordered..
I think back to my idea of providing affordable housing for single moms in Portugal and have to stop myself from running inside and grabbing my notebook. The housing project clearly needs childcare past 5pm. Duh! Why hadn’t I thought of that?
She hands me my package. Oh yeh, bamboo silk pillow covers and one of those fly curtains. I thank her in my best Portuguese, wave to the yawning boy, and get lost in thoughts of business plans.
Damn it!! Why can’t I just accept my Amazon package like a normal person and go install the fly curtain and ravel in the softness of my new pillow cases?!
Less than a year ago I still fitted in the workaholic box. Addicted to work, achievement, perfection. I ended up hating that box. Since then I’ve been trying to fit in the soft & slow box. Is that an official box? Anyway, that box isn’t reeeeeally working either so far, is it?
Maybe none of the boxes out there really work for me. Maybe I don’t actually want a cute loving family and quiches on Fridays (or was it Thursdays?). Maybe I simply crave the quiet of my home office in which I can freely create on my own terms. I see lightness, bigness, effortless creation and daily inspiration. An abundance of real energy, 9 hours of sleep every night.
How to bring softness to the big dream version of me? How to run my (future) empire without burning myself out, again? Accept that my garden will be wild and overgrown at times. Maybe have kids, or maybe don’t.
I admire people in the soft & slow box. I am convinced a lot of what’s in that box should be in everyone’s box. Yet I also love my manifesting-generator personality1. But it’s time to infuse it with a lot more lightness and a lot less control. It’s time to enjoy my ideas and dreams and creations, and not let them cost me my health or my relationships. Manage my energy, not my time.
Simply said, it is time for me to create my own polka-dot-fluorescent-bright freaking box!! My own version of a soft(er) & slow(er) life, one that is full of bigness too, one that can contain the largeness of my dreams. One hell of a box.
Let me ask you, what would your unique box look like if you could create one? Love, Valerie
This Substack is a personal thought experiment shaped by my experience as a privileged white woman that grew up in Germany and Belgium, and now lives between the mountains and the sea in Portugal. Read more here. I acknowledge there are many others perspectives on living a soft(er) life, and I hope to invite diverse voices into this space as it grows.
ps. In the last Substack edition, I asked you to vote. Seems that you’d like additional shorter #soft&strong life updates. So from now on, there will be 1 essay-style piece at the start of each month (like today), and a much shorter piece (I’ll try 🙃) mid-month.
This is my energy type based on Human Design. Find out more here. Manifesting Generator types tend to be ‘go-go-go’ people that respond to inequities in the world and access their energy by doing things that light them up. Generators tend to have one area of expertise, where Manifesting Generators like to have a wide, jack-of-all-trades style of being.