Plitviče Lakes in Croatia.

EARTHLYSPIRIT 2.0

I have returned to the tumblrverse

I will admit, it has been a while - and my life and my self has changed so much in the time that I’ve been gone.

You may remember me as ‘earthlyspirit’ and we may have connected in the past (if we did, please reach out and reconnect because my interactions with this very diverse range of people online has really shaped who I have become today and I’d love to revisit where we left off).

But where have I been? Why am I back? Who am I now? I’ll start with the admission that I’ve felt a strong feeling of dissatisfaction, which probably has been accumulating for the past three years or so, but has really come to a head sort of recently; and I realised that it was because I’ve had been suppressing what I really want, the things I really love, and not pursuing the things that truly bring me joy. I had become so weighed down and drowning in the mundane of every day life, and desperately trying to serve the needs and desires of other people - that I left myself behind completely. I look back on myself 5 years ago... I had fulfilling passions, deep interests, interesting opinions and a very healthy, strong identity. I was rooted deeply in who I was, and built a strong foundation for my life and I was satisfied. That feeling had been fleeting over the past few years, and I didn’t know why, but it was destroying me inside.

I had met a man (a very good, and beautiful man may I add), who is the polar opposite of myself - he is direct, abrupt, hard-working, forward-focused and very masculine. Our lives have developed over the past 3 years and we have built a beautiful relationship together, but a hole in my heart seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and I was getting increasingly emptier.

I now know what that was.

I had left myself and my identity behind to cater to this man (which is never what he wanted or has forced me to do) but just naturally happened within me. I found myself abandoning my passions and changing myself in order to fit what subconsciously I believed he wanted me to be (and I know this is true for SO many people in relationships). I became an unrecognisable person, an unauthentic reflection of myself, and the effects of that were starting to catch up on me.

But thankfully, that strong core that I had once built, that girl that I had abandoned, is still inside of me - it is who I am, and I was able to completely self-analyse and realise that now is the time to pull myself out of despair - no one else is capable of doing that for me.

Which brings me to today - I am back. I am back to write and to share the inner-workings of my mind, as an older, more mature and more refined version of earthlyspirit. I have tapped back into the passions I once had, and I can proudly say, that I am well on the way to fulfilment again.

To catch you up, I have been doing a lot of study, keeping my head in a bunch of psychological studies, coaching courses, NLP, relationship dynamic studies and personal development, and I would love to document all that I am learning, and how it is changing my inner (and outer) worlds with you.

Please reach out and connect, and if you relate with anything that pours out of my unfiltered mind - let me know.

Bare with me, because I’ll need to ease myself back into this whole ‘writing’ thing (which once came so easily to me, however now - not so much) but it feels so cathartic to be stream-of-consciousness typing again, and I just want to hurl myself back into this world and really develop myself into the most prime version of Ashleigh that I could possibly be.

Let’s grow ourselves together.

Finished off this beauty this afternoon and I’m in love!

My newest macrame projects from the week. I have completely fallen back in love with the art and can’t wait to hit the market scene again next weekend!

Instagram: Instagram.com/casavistacollective