So it was the week of Christmas, and I had packed 9 beads in a tiny marmalade glass jar and a suitcase full of Christmas gifts and clothes. I took the train down south ready to spend the holiday with family. It was supposed to be two days of writing, then 7 days of time off with Christmas celebrations, long walks on the beach and what not. But…<\/p>\n
Two days prior to departure I got a cold and a slight fever. The day before the train ride was my birthday, and of course I couldn\u2019t help but going all in, refusing to see the harm I did to myself as a result of neglecting my body\u2019s scream for rest. The first morning upon arrival I woke up with the most awful soar throat I\u2019ve ever had. The cold and fever was gone, but I could hardly drink a sip of water let alone swallow my own saliva. I had to eat pain killers in order to at least drink some life supporting water. The situation was unbearable.<\/p>\n
A few weeks earlier I had been signed off as healthy by my doctor, and I had promised myself to treat my body better in the future. So what happened? It was by no means a dimmed picture I needed to analyze, it was more than clear to me what had gone wrong.<\/p>\n
One, I had refused to listen to myself, and two, I had refused to speak up about a few things in life. The non-harmful lymph node lumps on my throat swelled\u00a0to doubled size and my body\u2019s statement was nothing but really obvious. I needed to rest.<\/p>\n
New habits are really hard to reinforce sometimes, aren\u2019t they? It\u2019s one thing to tell yourself you want to change a behavior, another to actually act on them. Now I don\u2019t remember who said it, if it was Guru Singh or Marianne Williamson, but whomever said that we can either learn from joy or from pain, was probably right. And I figured since my first throat debacle was painless, and this one hurt a lot, it was time to learn the lesson once and for all.<\/p>\n
I spent the Christmas days on the couch, hanging out with my family the best possible way – watching movies, having conversations over tea, and reading books. And when the weekend came, I felt a bit better and continued taking care of myself the Christmas spirit way. For what is Christmas really about, if not spending time with your loved ones?<\/p>\n
So what was the lesson of those 9 Christmas beads? The big lesson was that I can only have the life I truly want if I pay better attention to myself. That I need to release all preconceived expectations, because life is not lived neither in the past nor in the future. I decided it was perfectly enough to just be right there and then, in that very moment. To just simply exist. And for the first time in over a decade I was at peace during Christmas. I was not hoping for anything but what was, I wasn\u2019t wishing for things to be different. I was just grateful for all that I have in my life. Because I had all that I needed. I was alive and I have people in my life, near and far that I love. And that is basically just what anyone needs. Pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less.<\/p>\n
Love, Johanna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So it was the week of Christmas, and I had packed 9 beads in a tiny marmalade glass jar and a suitcase full of Christmas gifts and clothes. I took the train down south ready to spend the holiday with family. It was supposed to be two days of writing, then 7 days of time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[218,108,164,18,112,24,220,219],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-johannas-blog","tag-christmas","tag-healthy","tag-illness","tag-johanna-ginstmark","tag-lessons","tag-love","tag-meaning-of-life","tag-spirit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/bild3.png","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thebeadmovement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}