What A Difference...

...a day makes.  On Tuesday morning I was feeling completely overwhelmed by everything that Life is currently throwing my way and by Wednesday afternoon I was feeling much, much lighter.  Nothing had changed but I got a break from thinking about it all for a while.

On Tuesday I was an emotional mess and cried off an on for an hour before making my way to school to help teach a reiki class.  It took me a while to compose myself even after I got there but luckily, the friend whom I was helping pulled me aside and did a couple of quick attunements, which felt really nice and I was able to focus on the class afterwards.  By the time I'd finished attuning the students, I was feeling better and after giving a full reiki session to a student (and friend of mine, who has some serious health issues), I was much more centred and grounded.

While that was all beneficial, yesterday was really the day that helped the most.  I got a little 6-hour vacation in the form of "chaperoning" a full-day field trip with my son and the rest of the 6th graders.  We started at a Spanish-immersion school where we helped 3rd graders make yarn dolls.  Then we headed over to Mexican Town where we checked out a mural, visited a bakery (churros!), poked around in a gift shop (my son bought a sombrero and I found some nice earrings and an awesome chunk of amethyst) and finally had an "authentic" mexican lunch (which really wasn't all that great).  Then we were whisked off to the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts) where we had about 30 minutes to see whatever we could.  We managed to see some suits of armour and swords, a few paintings and a huge mural by Diego Rivera before we had to get back to the bus to return to school.  The whole day was interesting and I got to discover new places and see new things -- without having to plan any of it.  The worst part was trying to keep track of our group of 11 boys all day (even with the help of 2 other parents, we were all constantly counting kids) and keep them a safe distance from the artwork.  Best of all (and I'm sure my therapist would agree with me) is that I got to be social.  All in all, it was a pretty fantastic day.

Which is just what I needed.