how to declutter your brain

it's the 'self-care' no-one is talking about

I spent most of Saturday in the garden, making a new bed against the back fence where I’ll grow green beans, cucumber and zucchini. I was digging it out and finding it relatively easy and I knew it wouldn’t have been so straightforward a year ago when I had never, in my life, picked up a dumbbell. Strong arms help you garden and grow things, so it seems.

I know that just being in the garden — snipping sweet peas to make a posey (aren’t they gorgeous?!), plucking scapes from the garlic, digging dirt — lets my brain clear out; my thoughts don’t have to fight so hard to come to the surface, they just appear and then I write with more ease.

Realisations like this have come to me many times throughout this year, in quiet moments of work and reflection. It turns out that writing A Brain That Breathes has changed me, not in a way that anyone else would particularly notice, but in the undeniable and assured understanding I have of myself and what I need.

I know how important it is to declutter my brain and I make decisions accordingly.

My head has felt full for most of my life, because I’m a worrier but also because I take my writing seriously and carry the weight of whatever I’m working on. I’m also a woman in my early forties and a mother of four — the mental load exists and compounds daily, despite the supportive partnership I’m in.

However, a few years ago I decided that I didn’t want every day to feel so claustrophobic. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and I knew I needed to make some change because it didn’t feel nice; the sense of being both stuck and weary was a deeply uninspiring reality and not at all conducive to a creative, grounded, well life.