My Inner Child Wanted a Cigarette

The night was bright, and crunchy snow was on the ground as I trundled around my yard last night, tucked in snug with gloves, hat, and scarf. I had on a sweater, buttoned up, and my jacket was zipped—and my ears were covered with a thick muff.

I had gone to these lengths because I didn't want cold to be the factor that took me back inside when I went out and meandered around my snowy yard in the moonlight, putting aside for a moment the daunting weekly task of sending my newspaper to press. I was taking a break, a break asked for by my inner child, who out of the blue was craving a cigarette.

If you've followed my story at all, some of that might make sense to you. I'll back up a bit.

More than a bit, back to March 2020, when coronavirus, lockdown, quarantine, and working from home suddenly became a thing. I had been gleefully working on a book about life after PTSD or some such when suddenly PTSD jumped up and slapped me hard to the floor, taking me totally by surprise.

I fell into months of depression and a bunch of other not-so-functional stuff.

Where I had set myself a goal of participating in a triathlon in 2020, I abruptly stopped working out, and instead started smoking like a chimney again. I realized it was an old coping mechanism and didn't beat myself up, although the irony and stupidity of being in lockdown over a respiratory disease while smoking cigarettes is not lost on me. I found myself swimming in a PTSD Time Soup, but I realized it and let myself be. I also knew that had to stop.

I made a plan, to start a garden so I'd get outside, and my daughter gave me some chickens—outside chores, yay! Hacking weeds in my yard and working on the garden became my workout. Meanwhile I smoked lustily.

Ever so slowly, I worked on becoming more and more intentional, more and more present, especially when I'm outside. I'm cultivating not only plants, but also my connection to the Earth, my witchy inner knowledge of How Things Are.

So a couple of weeks ago, I quit cigarettes cold turkey, and haven't had so much as a puff or whiff of second-hand smoke since. Drawing on the power of plants, I used essential oils to help me leave my addiction to nicotine behind. I've also used other tools at my disposal, like meditation, tapping, and trying to really pay attention to what's coming up in those moments when I was having a nic fit, and craving a smoke.

Last night, around 10 hours in to a 12- or 13-hour workday as I put the newspaper to press, I had the feeling. I wanted to smoke a cigarette. Tried to crush it—you know, I had a lot of work to do and a deadline looming near. I had the feeling a second time. That time, I did myself a kindness and tuned in, asking myself, “Okay, what do you need right now? How old are you? What is it that you want me to to do right now?” I don't know if I was expecting a response, because I was a little surprised that there was instantly an answer: “I want to go outside! It's snowy and bright out there! I want to go play!” This was a young Leota, maybe around 7 or 8 years old.

So, I bundled myself up, just like my mom would when I was little, making sure that I'd be nice and warm when I went out to play. I wandered all over the yard, hid out under a tree and peeked out, bypassed the door bunch of times because I wasn't ready to go back in yet, thought about waking up my chickens but didn't, look

ed at chicken tracks in the snow, which was sparkling with blues, violets, reds, and every color you can imagine in the moonlight, marveled at the brightness of the stars, smelled the trees, poked at my compost pile with a stick, and thought long and hard about making a snow angel, deciding against it in the end, because what was under the snow was either gravel or mud, and neither was appealing. Then I came inside and made a pot of hot tea, and settled back down to work.

Of course I made the newspaper deadline, I've never missed it. Know what else I didn't miss, or give another thought to? The cigarettes I didn't smoke.