Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Finally, the story starts to unfold....


I have been truly blessed. I have two vibrant, happy and healthy children who came into the earthly world as nature intended, completely naturally.

In the summer of 2007 when I found out I was pregnant I had mixed feelings of joy - as no matter how much I tried i couldn't ignore the overwhelming urge in me to create - and uncertainty - as my partner, Neil, had always expressed he didn't want children.

However as we slowly got used to the idea and I positively bloomed in pregnancy, we started to arrange our lives in a way that we believed would be more suitable for raising children in the very volatile 21st century. Our wish to live naturally and as sustainably as possible started to unfold.

Again, being very blessed, we were in the process of selling the house of Neil's grandmother, Gwendoline, who had passed away at the end of 2001 and the timing was perfect. We'd decided to take a trip to East Clare a particularly beautiful corner of the 'Emerald Isle', also known as the Republic of Ireland. Within a few days we'd found a tiny, stone cottage in need of some love and a lot of work! We were in a very unique position of being able to buy the building which stood on a 1 acre strip of land with a mature fruit orchard surrounded by nothing but green. Heaven to the eyes of a geordie girl, being raised in the small, coal mining town of South Shields.