Getting your Feet Wet

I was born and raised in a very diverse city.  It's a very open minded city with a strong sense of community that cares about the environment.  There are many resources available and one of them is a large recycling center.  Once I moved away from this beloved city I did what came natural.  I called our trash center and asked where I could find the recycling center and where I could take recycling or if they picked up recycling.  I was pretty much in shock when I was told it has been disbanded years before I moved to the area because the city couldn't afford to pay to have the recycling hauled off. WOW!  I thought every city had recycling??? I decided for whatever  reasons to let it slide.  I live in a VERY remote area.  The nearest city that we call "civilization" is about an hour away.  We have slowly adapted to this.  Over the years I have dabbled in organics, tried to recycle, used cloth diapers, organic clothing, organic products,no chemicals, and more.  Yet for some reason I just couldn't put it together all at one time.  The lifestyle I could see myself living and the lifestyle I was living just never seemed to merge together.  I felt like there was somehow some "magic" formula for making it all work.  I felt like I just didn't have the formula and really doubted I was going to find it.  I started living "normally" and eventually the unrest began to slip away, a little. 

The feeling of a lack of connection with the cycle that is life never went away though.  I have struggled for more years than I can count with wanting to live away from the city and create our own mini eco cycle.  To garden, incorporate animals, reduce our consumerism, and help others out of the rut that I was in myself.  We are all interconnected to each other and nature and when you realize this, you desire change.  I didn't want others to feel the stress and strain that I felt about my own lifestyle.  I searched for this elusive place in the country and even blogged about it. Until at last I felt so completely tired and drained and exhausted I literally just gave up.  I felt like a bellows that had exhausted my last full breath.  I have always been a firm believer that things happen for a reason and for whatever reason it isn't meant to happen right now.  Admittedly, I still felt a little defeated.

Little did I know I wasn't defeated, I was just tired.  When I am tired I may not be actively pursuing something, but my mind is working, I am reading, watching, and learning.  Subconsciously the desire to be more eco friendly never went away and it finally came to me one day.  Much of what I do, I do full on.  I jump in with both feet and swim.  Maybe I had it right all along.  I have been doing small things my whole life, bits here and there that aligned with my end goal but failed to recognize the efforts in my own self!  Packaging on our products bothers me and has always bothered  me.  Purchasing things I can make at home bother me.  Purchasing produce from miles away has always bothered me, and the list goes on.  I took steps to avoid that which bothered me, I sew what I need as much as possible, I shop at our local farmers markets whenever possible in season, I look at the packaging when shopping and buy the best alternative as much as possible, and shop in bulk as often as I can.  Yes, there are many, many more things I can do, but one step at a time I am making the effort to do what I can where I can, while learning and reading and discovering other small changes that I can incorporate into our lives.  Slowly but surely we are becoming that family that I would like us to be.  A family aware of our environment, our world around us, and our planet.  Each of us doing our part for the greater good of us all.  Teaching our children, and helping our neighbors.  All along I carried the secret formula inside, I just had to discover it for myself.