Change of Direction

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Wow! So much has happened in the last 8 weeks. In my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined the direction my life is now going. On the 19 of May 2022 I had a freak accident that prevented me from working as a casual relief teacher. For over a year now I have been saying to my husband Imants, "I want to work from home and I feel I shouldn't be teaching"! But I simply didn't know what else I could do! I had made a promise, years ago, to my 20 year older husband that I would be his superannuation. I took that promise on, above my own happiness and fulfilment. I have had other health issues and pushed through all the symptoms and chronic fatigue that went with them, to uphold my promise. Imants retired this year, taking on only some small odd jobs. I watched him get slowly depressed and me more fatigued and irritable. Neither of us were happy or fulfilled until my freak accident!

I was walking on flat level carpet when my left ankle gave way from underneath me and I fell. My ankle quickly swelled up to the size of a golf ball. I held an ice pack on it that Imants bought up to me from downstairs and after a while, got Imants to bandage it up. I couldn't walk on it at all but was so convienced that all I had done was sprained it. Imants happened to have a small job the next day that I insisted he do, while he cancelled my work commitment for the day. I asked my youngest son Beau and his girlfriend Kat to collect me and take me to the doctors. Our bedroom is on the upper floor, so I had to bum shuffle to the stairwell and continue bum shuffling all the way downstairs. Once at the bottom Beau had got me the office chair from upstairs and then wheeled me out to his car. Once we got to the doctors Kat went inside and borrowed me a wheelchair. The doctor ordered an x-ray and I was then informed that my tibia on the inside of the bone (apparently a VERY unusal place) was fractured. I was sent to the hospital.

The hospital x-rayed me again more thoroughly and said that I had also fractured the tibia underneath my knee. To say I was shocked was an understatement. I was still expecting my treatment to be a moon boot for a sprained ankle. But they hadn't finished giving me the news yet! They wanted me to stay over night ready for surgery the following day! They inserted 2 screws near my ankle and some kind of rubberband thing that acts like a ligament, keeping the 2 bones connected. Three days after the freak accident, I was back home.

Imants had moved our entire bedroom down to the ground level, minus the waterbed. After a week of pain, shock and utter denial, I had after all only sprained my ankle, I set to work on planning a house and finding products to put in Beau and Kat's new house. At the end of this second week I asked myself what I could do with my time. The only answer was to write. Our Music room is upstairs so I couldn't record anything, so then it became clearer that I needed to write a book. Mmmmm what could I write about? I am a Steiner trained teacher and have been teaching across many different schools and settings and am a sucessful mother to four delightful, thoughtful, helpful, loving and successful (I could go on for hours) children. That's it! I will write a book on positive parenting/positive teaching with a spiritual aspect. I was inspired! I did a big brainstorm and wrote down all my ideas. I got online to research my first idea until I exhausted it and then wrote the start of my book. I then got out a heap of my old parenting books and chose 'The Incarnating Child' by Joan Salter. I was only a part way through rereading her book when I read an idea of hers. I slept on it and when I woke up in the morning this story flowed from me through the pen and onto the paper. It was done in 2 days. It took 2 weeks of editing it. Who knew that a children's picture book would take so much time to edit? Before I knew it, I had commissioned a New Zealander illustrator to illustrate my spiritual vision. No easy feat but so far she has done a remarkle job!

It has just been over two weeks working on this website and as I patiently and excitedly wait for all the illustrations I was thinking I need something to sell alongside my children's picture book and that very day I stumbled upon baby and maternity clothes and the deeper I got the more I found. Everything has moved so fast and grown so big in such a short space of time. I feel so inspired and excited and working from dawn until dusk on making it all come to fruition. I am obsessed. In this time Imants suddenly got big renovation jobs being asked of him and his music gigs are rolling in. He too is excited, inspired and jumping out of bed each morning. Not only has he come out of retirement to work full time but also cooking both our breakfasts and dinners, doing the dishes and the washing and waiting on me hand and foot! Usually I am the Bec and call girl ha ha ha. Everyday I am watching everything come together. The next big job to do is to add all the products I want to sell from my website into the Point of Sale (POS) program before anyone will be able to purchase anything from this website.

During this time I have spent my time in bed with my left leg elevated and protected and supported in a Moon Boot and getting around in a wheelchair. Yesterday I was re x-rayed and the doctor is very happy with the results and had me practice walking on crutches while putting weight on my left foot both with the Moon Boot and without it. The thing that feels the most strange is I feel so tall. Everything has been seen from sitting level for the past 8 weeks. I must say that I have never felt so tall! I am very excited for the completion of this website and for it to be up and running and I am also very excited for the publication of my children's picture book, 'A Place Above the Stars: The Incarnating Soul", in August 2022.

Like I said, "Wow! So much has happened in the last 8 weeks"!

Becci Valentine

Steiner Trained Teacher

Masters of Education

Bachelor of Arts (Performance & Multimedia)

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Performance

15.07.2022

My son Joshua's birthday