Me? No.

I started this blog in March 2013 as a place of decompression. I was at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya in Mumbai in what was not only an advanced study of mind-boggling proportions but an immersive life-experience. There were the physical challenges one might expect as a foreigner adapting to a new country - but my biggest challenge was what I dubbed 'menopolyxinaemia'. 

I had been plagued with symptoms for already about ten years, starting with a couple of years of migrainous headaches (never having had headaches before - or since, except in fever). Then there was the weight gain, very sudden and not to be explained from the diet as that had not changed and if anything had improved. There was a couple of years of very deep, dark moods. Then a year of getting so very, very angry about everything. For one renowned for her stable personality, these changes were a bit shocking, not least to myself. In my late forties, the onset of those 'senior' moments began to take root. Initially, it was just the occasional butter in the oven and the iron in the fridge sort of stuff. Then appointments were getting forgotten and insomnia crept up on me. I felt separate from all that was going on around me and that I had become stagnant. I likened myself to moss on a path, existing, but downtrodden. Even over that time, the one thing that kept me sane was my participation in classes and social functions with the Chinmaya Mission. When I was invited to join the Vedanta course, there was no hesitation on my part. It was much about what my life had been drawing me towards.

It was also my life raft. Within the first few months in Mumbai, my mind really started to betray me. Studying Vedanta was fine - but memorising for Sanskrit was defeating me terribly. I started to have entire moments of emptiness. Had I not been in that enclosed environment with so much Love and support around me... had I been still trying to function in Sydney in my health practice and care work... you would probably never have heard of me. I truly think I would have found a way to have left life. The meditation, the chanting, the sattvika lifestyle I am certain all helped to keep me in balance and moving forward. Then I found blogging.

It was an outlet for letting off of steam about this chasm that seemed to have opened beneath me. The use of the first four letters of the medical condition became my trademark for headings. The very first post explained much of what would follow. (Many of those early posts make me cringe now, for their writing style - and yet they are a clear indicator of the state of mind at the time.)

Although I am mostly through all the menosoupal nonsense, I keep the titling convention as a personal badge of honour. That, and the fact that there is a legacy. I never managed to lose the weight gained. I still get verbal and typing dyslexia. I lose words like there was an actual sieve between the brain and the tongue (or fingers) and sentences can still prove rather incoherent. I can have a single point in my head to be made but ramble on about anything other than that never managing to get back to it. Blanks. There are lots of blanks. 

...And what was the point of this post? Just to say thanks for being my readers. For putting up with some really rather awful dross in among a few gems. That despite the challenges of adapting to a new interface (this post took me nearly two hours cuz I couldn't make the image and text wrap work cuz they changed things AGAIN... yeah, okay, maybe the anger thing is still around too), I love blogging and the connections it has brought me. 

Hooroo the noo.