grief

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Island Blog – Actually Tuesday

In deference to the olding of me, I get the flapdoodle assailment. I suspect it was always here but when I was dealing with immediate disasters, such as fire in the hold or a child dangling from a rope that fell three floors and yelling Mum in a screech beyond the beyond of sludgy sleep, his slippage a definite concern, my inner Dante could barely whisper. Ditto when there was disaster at lambing, or the horse was sinking in a freezing bog, or a guest was stuck in the bath in a locked bathroom requiring a deal of laddering and a lot of looking away. Nowadays with all of that a chuckle in my mind, when most survived, I have the silence of olding and widowing. I love a lot of it. It even funnies me at times, usually when someone I am talking to bursts into giggles. Life is ridiculous after all. No matter how we plan, how prudish, how strait-laced, how desperately we hang onto rules and restrictions for ourselves, our children, our husband, wife, partner, there comes a time when Life flips us like pankcakes without a safe landing. It always has and it always will. As we hold too tight, there is always slippage. The key is to teach that to our children, even as nobody does, holding on to the right of the times, the limitations, the fences and boundaries. I hope we learn one day. I really do. By the way the dangling son landed safe, the wee shite, after a deal of leaning over bannisters, proffering smoothing okays, being there to catch him.

Talking to my children, adults now, they tell me thank you for the crazy life, the wildness of it, the way they learned to accept life/death/life at an early age; the way you did this mum, sorted that, the way dad made us safe. We never doubted that. Pretty good, eh? I have all of this and so very much more, the convoluted vortex of it, not pulling us all down, but containing us in a swirling collective. The olding years show just me centre stage, and I have to confess, despite my siblings sniggering at my ballet moves, I feel proud. I make mistakes. Today, for example, I got all ready to go to the Library Coffee meet. It’s Tuesday here half way along the sea-loch, but not there in the village hall, I discovered. It’s Monday there, the hall’s wooden mouth clamped shut. I laughed at myself and drove home. I walked up into the woods just to say hallo and tripped over a willow root, apologised and rose again. I lit the woodburner and went to close the doors, the door closing handle breaking right off. I walked into the beyond of marvellous at 3 and met the hind and her calf, about 5 feet away from me. She looked up. Hallo Lady, I said, gentle and low. She looked a minute more, then ducked right back down to graze.

The clouds are umber grey just now, a bit shouty, pushing at each other’s backs, against a dying blue. Their tips are burnt umber, gold, rose madder, the hills below a silhouette. The day is leaving. I’m hoping tomorrow is actually Tuesday.

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Island Blog – Maybe an Acceptance

I know that, when I am feeling tired, things arise that don’t bother doing so when I am not. I have learned this over many decades, not to fix on any choices, opinions, nor decisions when feeling tired, angry or hurt. It’s as if a mind, so clear and engaged with daily life falls into super-tired and then goes deeply weird. Sometimes, most times, the whatever that finds a way into the within of an already compromised state takes on the efficiency and the focus of a drone, with no empathy, no emotive colour nor depth, no ability to connect beyond its own directive. I was going to write that it feels like finding myself in a small space with a whole nest of angry wasps, but, although there is something of that, it isn’t quite the truth. It’s more as if the whole terrain changes, one I trusted, was sure of, my footing securely supported, all my thoughts lining up like good wee scouts, my inner team.

With all of that gone, the troublemakers come in like missiles, like drones, laden with regrets and recriminations. The trigger can be something someone says that swipes a person right back to childhood; could be a moment in time, long long past; could be a choice made in a different time that still troubles up in a bad dream. For me, it’s listening to an audio book today, feeling tired. Although the book is fun and engaging and brilliantly written and spoken, one of the characters has a husband with dementia. She knows it, we who listen know it, even the husband knows it, but he floats in an out of reality. Because the writer has obviously experienced this situation, even distantly, the theatre is accurate enough to take me back to so much of the real situation.

However, I have read acres of books on dementia. They do sadden me, but only at a distance. I was there and for many years. The grief for a strong and heretofore upright, impossible, infuriating, figure of importance and value as they lose their grip, their hold on reality, their control of self, begins way before death. Way, way before. We know it, all the family knows it, all friends know it, neighbours, shopkeepers, anyone and everyone. However, and here’s the bit that got me in this audio book, the man, the gentle, bright, strong and loving man who caught this awful disease, also knows it and chooses to talk to his wife about his feelings of fear, of sadness, of loss.

I never had that. That’s not a poor me thing, nor written with blame in my keyboard tapping, but I can feel, like a punch in my heart, how wonderful it could have been to cry together, to talk, to hold, to share. Perhaps, and I would say this to another who told me just this, it was just the way it was for you and him. There’s hurt in there, an unintended rejection, and maybe an acceptance.

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Island Blog – Feelings Left Behind

We can lose years of feelings, yet remember moments burgeoning with them. When someone died, or was born, we know the date, but have quite forgot the feelings around that event. We get a glimpse of joy, of sorrow, of relief, of anger, of being there, as a person, remembering, perhaps, what we wore and who was there. Feelings flitter away. The sense of presence, of engagement, of inclusion, seem, to me, to float into the already past of such events. It thinks me.

How many of us can accurately come up with a date, when asked, one which includes lockdowns? Not me for sure. I start off answering a question, one that requires a datal fix, and I founder. It was four years. No, that cannot be. ok, 6 years. No again. And. I trawl, literally trawl as through a whole expanse of ocean, sky, time. I can feel my arms reaching back, lifting as I try to gather in an answer, wanting so much to gain a hold on ‘that time’, but I cannot. Then, when some semblance of datal knowledge (did I just invent a word there) arrives between you and me, I find myself alien to the facts, because I cannot find the feelings. This happened. I know it did. You just told me it did. But i am not there without feelings, so, basically, I am not there at all, although I was. I did get a glimpse (stupid word btw) of a sudden rush of something, but it was gone in a second, and I couldn’t hold it back.

There are so many memories I want to haul in like a fisherman, to pull ( with my own strength) into the boat I am now captain of, and to spend time bobbing in the salt, the wind, the sun, the storm, picking through those times, feeling them in my fingers, remembering them as I was then, as everyone was then. A memory bank, like other ocean banks where living is visceral and immediate, and time is but an illusion.

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Island Blog – Thing is…..

We all have to deal with today, the to and day of it, and it can stretch out like a frickin slimy mud walk through slicktastic brown sink. Or it can be a dance over a chalk-easy dance floor. Mostly not that in my experience, but I have danced that way, and that dance needs remembering. It is so easy in a life to forget the times when we did dance over easy, only remembering the sludge trudge.

At a certain age, I have noticed in this brown sink/dance easy life, that I am watching my agers fold into a complicit fold of flesh and obeisance. It confuddles me. I also get it. Thing is, choices in life have an a habit of (apparently) removing themselves. It can seem, and this is not just about olding, that individual authenticity puffs into the sky, losing gravitas and voice. Who am I in this time? Who was I ever?

I know those questions. I have rolled and sparred and fought with them for years. This is what I think, mostly for my peace of mind, I confess. There are those who rise above the concrete of their lives and keep shouting. There are those who don’t mind the concrete. There are those who do, but feel they don’t have the strength, voice, power, to push through, and, let’s be honest, concrete is a big opponent.

I watch my children. Strong and feisty questioning Fivers. I know their lives are not easy, not plain sailing. The tought times, I remember. A child is born and there’s a load of shenanigans at the pub and mucho celebrations, and then reality kicks in. And it goes on, and on and on, and then some.

As a septuagenarian……jeez, the length of that…….I have finally learned to greet every day with thankfulness. I say thank you to my bed as I rise. I salute my cafetière for my strong black coffee. I say thank you that I have purpose for the day. Thankfulness for every single thing seems to lift me. It encourages me to grab any opportunity.

It really helps.

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Island Blog – A Puckered Life

We all live one of those, times when the material beneath our feet is straight, taught as Oliver before Fagan. Others when the ripples and concrete risers trip us up until, despite our best intentions, we fall, smack, face down, bruised and bloody. Some pretend they didn’t fall, tending towards a fluff of tissue, many dabs, a flappy hand, I’m fine. I don’t buy into that flappy thing, the ‘fine’ thing, not when the fall is mahousive, even as I do get it when the fall is a nothing much. In which case, why bother mentioning it at all?……hallo old age. Back to the point.

I witnessed last week a tsunami of grief, was there, stood beside it, kept close. This is a real fall. Standing witness to such a mahousive time-blast was like standing in a storm on a cliff with no clothes on, the tilt-wind pushing overness into a done thing. I could feel the fall, smell it, touch it, even hear the music of it, the angst singing through every moment. I am glad I was there. (I’m currently looking for an alternative to the word ‘glad’. It’s so slamdunk, so, well, concrete.)

There was a big crowd, There were singers, solo and choir, readers, vicars with spice and pink hair. There was line after pew line of those who valued this woman’s life. In short, there was a tribute which blew me away. Today, at a very happy meet of friends around a table, all of us crafting something or other over coffee and cake, we talked of what we might like to be said at our own funeral. We spoke of where and how we might be buried. We laughed, obviously (gallows humour) about what we might want to wear once our spirit had left us like a butterfly. We also shared times in our long lives which had tried to trip us up, and failed.

Life is beautiful, and I just took it for granted. Oh, I’ve met the puckers a lot, and often, but I had the feet to run, the body to lift over any ruts, the strong arms to gather up my children, the mind to accommodate, and the resilience to, not just survive, but to make magic in the present for those I love. One big life is gone. What do I owe her?

To live on. To bring magic, as she did. To welcome everyone, to lift when I can, any stumbler over this puckered life.

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Island Blog – The Sad

Today I wake with Sad. I do sometimes. It just happens. Sad comes in like a burglar, and nobody really wants such a bedmate, nor a daymate. Sad doesn’t take up half, or more, of the bed, nor does it bring me tea, plump my pillows, sit to tell me what fun we will have today. It is a mournful beast, so big that it fills the room, clouds me around and is unshakeable off. I can shower, whistle a merry tuneless tune, turn up the volume on Radio 2, light a candle, because. it waaaaay before dawn, all those things. But Sad stays true, true as an old friend, one I have totally gone off, and some time ago; one that takes no hint, obeys no command, one that can, if I am not very vigilant with my thinks, subsume me for the long hours of a whole day. I can swear at it, threaten appalling punishments, sing LA LA LA very loudly, but it won’t go and I know it, and there is only one way to bear its presence, and that is to turn, smile, and welcome it in. Okay, you are here again, bringing me bearings, not of gold, frankincense and myrrh (well, maybe myrrh) but of husband gone, children gone, Poppy gone, breast like a war zone.  You want me to wallow, I know your tactics. You want me to search about for a reason, the reason you are here and to dive into the muddy cold depths of that pain. It could be my parenting failures = millions; could be my bad choices=billions; might be poor decisions, awful choices, myriad regrets, endless falls from Grace, whoever she is, the snooty madam. 

But I won’t go there, so if that is the conversation you plan, then try another tactic, because I will not go there. My lips, thin now, old, a skinny bow below my nose, will not allow any responses to escape. They are sealed. 

Sad is silent now, so I continue. 

I don’t need to define nor explain you, not any more. You’ve been around for most of my life and I engaged with you at my peril, because you took me down down down into complete darkness with no proffered candle, no guiding light, and you won’t take me there again, I promise you that. My mistake, I continue, as Sad is just sitting there saying nothing, was first, to banish you, I get that. You will visit so many people, so many homes, and banishment means nothing to you. You just dissipate and reappear again and again. Do you have a To-Do calendar, names written down, days to visit? Do you discover times of loss and grief and leap into action? I suspect you do, but I am moving on now, not up, but on. I know I cannot prevent you in my morning, the way you stay all day long, and I will be polite but I will not allow the seep of you to infiltrate my new self, my lonely self, the self who, despite the cold of sadness and loss and grief, is bloody determined to smile, to give out, to laugh and to dance.

And btw, you won’t be here tomorrow when I wake. I just know it.

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Island Blog – Eyebrows, Grief, Cuckoo and a Butterfly

This morning I went for an eyebrow tint, always a risky business as the new ‘look’ is a startlement at first, a gasp, a good heavens because a part of me that sat quietly on my face, barely visible, suddenly becomes a loud statement. I practise eyebrow athletics in the mirror and laugh out loud. I can speak volumes without a single word jumping out my mouth. As the grey comes in, dammit, those ridiculous invading curlicues that appear without permission, without welcome, each one a cuckoo in the nest, I wince. As silently as they come, they stick out like, well, sticks. Husbands have them in spades and not just on their eyebrows but they don’t seem to mind at all. Close inspection is alarming. It’s like having breakfast with someone from another planet.

Whilst I was there I met other women there for nails or waxing or wotwot and, as always happens, we meet and greet before we seat and even after that if twinkle meets twinkle, we chat. I made a new connection with one beautiful woman, a bit younger than me who flies to the UK at the weekend on a month long visit to one of her daughters, the other one being today’s beautician. I watched the affection between mother and daughter and smiled. We will meet for lunch when she returns to Africa and I look forward to learning more about her. Tomorrow I meet with another twinkler, one I met over a delicious dinner with friends of my son and his wife in the wildlife estate. I am sociable, it seems, although I always knew that until the darkness fell around my shoulders and all I wanted to do was hide in the broom cupboard. The phone went unanswered and I even ducked under the kitchen table if someone came to the door. I didn’t know myself then, didn’t want to. If this is to continue, I said sternly to myself, I no longer want you as a friend.

Grieving is a wild thing, shapeless yet living and breathing and unlike cuckoo eyebrow hairs, won’t respond to tweezers and a magnifying mirror. It wakes when you wake, disallows restful sleep, hampers intelligent thinking and reduces a body to a mere stumble. It won’t be explained, nor justified. It refuses to present logically, there is no up nor down, nothing to understand, no map, no guide book, no list of steps that might encourage the griever to hope and to keep on keeping on. Amoebic, erratic and with no care of time, it floats around within, ever restless, ever demanding attention. What do you want of me?? I yelled, and often. You have turned me inside out and upside down and I don’t even feel sad. Who are you Grief? There is never an answer. Friends encourage, fix, suggest and invite. It’s all cold porridge. I didn’t want to do anything, go anywhere, see anyone. What do you want, they asked me and I Don’t Know was all I could muster.

Those days are gone now and I still cannot explain the ‘process’ I have survived. I no longer hide from door knockers, nor do I long for the broom cupboard. I am here, present, ready for adventure and curious about what comes next. The change from then to now feels like a birthing because I am new, not back. I am not the same woman I was and never will be again. I am that butterfly emerging with sopping wings from the black interior of a cocoon and the pain I lived through is the same as it is for that butterfly. The sunshine of new encounters dries my wings as I cling to a stalk, fearful at times but determined to be as beautiful and as dynamic as I can possibly be. I know not what is around the next corner, or at the door, but I will not hide any more. I have something to give this beautiful broken world and something to claim for myself and I won’t miss a moment of it, grey hairs notwithstanding and they are, notwithstanding any more thanks to a good beautician and a startling tint.

Do I thank the grieving process for those two or so years of broom cupboard-ness? Not really, although I accept it was necessary. Hardship hardens a ship, toughens sinews, brightens a brain if it doesn’t kill or maim. I am thankful in many other ways, for my mum’s get-on-with-it attitude, for my children’s gentle support and care, for friends who kept knocking and for my belief in hope even when hope was but a pinprick of distant light. Now, when I meet another who is thwack in the midst of grief, I know not to fix, not to encourage, not to tell of my experience inside the dark, but simply to listen, to walk beside them and to know, even if I would only ever say this with my eyebrows, that this will pass. One light bright day. This will pass.

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Island Blog – Dancer

This lovely day I am aswirl with thinks and memories and some very deep hurt. Bereavement, however much of a relief it might be, does not adhere to a timeline. Recently I have gone through the however many stages of grief backwards, flip side up, out of order or all before lunch. I make the mistake of berating myself for this chaos but only until I literally wash my hands of any control. This chaos is not birthed from me. This chaos just snuck in and is currently picking away at wounds and digging the black hole even deeper than seems possible. I had no idea there was so much space inside for black hole-ness, one I cannot navigate nor have a conversation with because any questions I send its way just echo back to my ears in triplicate minus an answer. All I can do it seems is to trudge through the hours of light and the longer hours of dark until this chaos gets tired of chaoting and moves on to bother someone else. If, I tell myself, this process actually looked like one I could understand, I might be then able to formulate an algorithm, one that would guide me step by step up and away from the turmoil. But I can grasp a hold of nothing. All is smoke, mist, cloud wisp and yet so heavy and solid around me. I cannot run from it, nor hide. I change my thoughts but my mind is colluding with the chaos so quickly does it shift back to the black. I get the Amy Winehouse song now because I feel it, just like she did. It takes huge and determined focus to remain in the positive when I am not having to pretend to the Out There, a role I can play with ease. A song, a phrase, a catch of light, a lift of birds, among my beloved trees, all can shunt me back to a memory that cuts like the sharpest of knives. I remember, I remember, I remember. I remember that song, that disco tune, Chain Reaction, the one you always played for me when the dance floor was empty and it was up to me to bring the kids off the walls. You grinned and watched me taking over the whole floor, spinning, moving, electric, fiery, wild. Many years ago, yes, but it comes back so clear, that smile from the stage and my smile back.

I suspect this dark time is a good thing and I don’t fight it. I sit with it, walk with it, let it flow through me, no fight, no fight. It is exhausting, upsetting, deeply painful and my mascara is invariably decorating my chin, but when I remember saying to my counsellor about 4 years ago whilst in the thick of caring for a man who still looked like my husband (sort of) but who was not that man, that all I wanted was to cry real tears, so taught and fraught and caught up was I in controlling my whole self, I realise I have achieved my goal. And there is a feral beauty in that for it has been a deep longing for many decades.

I smile as I realise how drawn I am these days to running water, a waterfall, a trickle, rain, a slow tidal dance as if my eyes are glued; it takes something loud to snatch my attention away. Walking this sunshine afternoon, I found my favourite tree. Looks about 100 foot tall, its topknot fingering the clouds, a softwood, strong and with the girth of half a country. I remember it holds water after rain until the water pools in a holdcup where two great limbs conjoin. Then, all of a sudden, the level raised to meniscus as it hits the air, it begins a spill and a walker by is soaked. I stood beneath the massive giant and looked up. Drops from way up there landed on my mouth, nose, eyes, head and shoulders. Ha!! I chuckled. You minx! I moved back a little only to be pelted once again from another branch. Game on! I said and for a few moments, a few playful moments, I and the giant made each other laugh out loud as he stood still and I danced, just me, alone on the floor moving to the song of the singer and the rhythm of the rain.

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Island Blog – It’s okay that it’s not okay

I could have said that better, my English tutor would have told me, her huge bosom leaning over me so that the whole room went momentarily dark. I can still smell the tweedy smell of her fitted (very well fitted) jacket and hear the scritch-scratch of her thickly nylon-ed thighs as she travelled the distance to my desk, then home again jigetty-jig to the safety of her chalk blown upfront tutor desk. And she is right, was right then. I am very thankful for my English tutors down the ages, who challenged my brain to dig deep for words, old words, old ways of saying, poetically, what turned into street talk. Not that I mind street talk at all, for it has rhythm and beat to it and I am ever the dancer. But when writing it is important for me to stretch my brain, to find a way of saying an ordinary thing in an extraordinary way.

Forward to the point. I honestly believed I had got away with it, the grieving thing, this widowhood thing. At first, I felt only relief. 10 years of caring for a big man who was slowly falling away, was horrible, even though he himself was always positive no matter the declination. His peaceful and accepting dying brought relief to him, to all of us. I thought, maybe this lovely gentle leaving after all those years of angst and battle (on my part) would rub out the horrible, like my old India rubber did for my spelling mistakes. A foolish thinking. Here I am two months off the anniversary of his death and everything hurts. A bird caught in a fence (thankfully freed and flown), a child crying, the hearing of someone else’s pain, the fact that the stairlift has stopped working, the leaks in my ceiling, the stubbing of a toe en route to the wood pile. Sharp as needles, these ‘small’ things that were okay are not any more. I tell myself I am doing okay, that this is normal, that it will pass and myself rolls her eyes and goes “ya-di-ya”. What did we say before ‘ya-di-ya’ I wonder?

I know of others. Those who, since the Covid lockdown and the fear and fallacy this past year and more has brought to us, are scared of going out, unsure if they actually want to do the going out thing at all. I know I can be confounded at the gate of my gypsy home, in the so called middle of nowhere, if I see walkers moving up the tiny track on their way to Tapselteerie and her wild delights, her vision, her stretch right out into the Atlantic Ocean. And I pull back, hide, wait. This happening-to-us thing is what is happening to us. And, although it feels thoroughly not okay, it has to be okay. Our clenched teeth, our fears, our resulting flip into nowhere, well, owe have to find a landing. I haven’t yet, even here, even in this free, gentle land, and if I haven’t then how the heck is it for those who have survived in cities? I have no answer for that. Only respect.

And then there is the grief. Not mine, not just mine but the everyman, everywoman grief because it is loud in my ears and a strong part of the music that sentient composers will play into our future days, in our remembering days. As will poets and novel writers with their prose. They are working on it now, this omg (sorry) in our lives and they will come up bright, intelligent and colourful, I just know it.

Till then, I, and hopefully you, have family, siblings, kids, grandkids who lift us into ourselves, the ones we knew so well a year and then some ago. They are still with us as we are with them. This connection is rooted and unbreakable. Friends too, formed way back or even more recent. Roots grow quick and they need to.

I am thankful. I am broken. I am me. And, I am okay that I’m not okay.

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Island Blog – Mythbusters

First I listened to Brene Brown on Vulnerability and Shame on audio whilst I sewed a baby play mat in colours of unicorn, fairies, stars and, bizarrely, dinosaurs in peplum frocks. Next, a recommendation from my little sister, It’s Ok that You’re not Ok by Megan Devine. Another mythbuster, refreshing, raw, a real approach to grief and loss. They both speak my truth, one I can now know for myself instead of all the other ‘truths’ that have no idea. Actually, it isn’t that they have no idea. Not that. It is more that they had no way of connecting with anyone who spoke out their shame, their vulnerability, their grief or loss. Some truth talker throwing their pain into the air confounded me and I did what most of us do. I searched my brain for fixatives. Time will tell. Things will get better. He/she is safe now, home with God, in the Elysium fields. Or, No! you are not weak, not guilty, have no need for shame, self blame, fear. Now, all I feel in the blast of these good intentions, is irritation, anger even. I want to run, to yell at them but I don’t and I won’t because now I get it. Our culture has no coping mechanisms for such a meet. We don’t want it. We hate it. We wish we had never met this messy person and we long to make it better. So, wait, what can I say? I know……Time will heal, things will get better, are you busy, are you eating, sleeping, exercising, enjoying nature? Maybe you should look for another man, way of living, place to live, job, passion? All upturned as querulous questions and there’s me behind them hoping I just said the perfect thing.

I find my home through the myth busters. Politely I always did in song lyrics (acceptable) or books parked in genres, equally politely, in book stores. You don’t have to go that way if it isn’t your thing after all. I always did. The ridiculously trapped genre of Self Help covers a million issues and is the most shelf dusty. I noticed that. Fiction, that’s what we want, diversion, distraction, and for the kids, we want pretty pink unicorns, tutu-ed fairies, equally pinked up, and stars, oh stars, all bright and not dying, no way, and then those dinosaurs in peplum. Happiness. Don’t knock it. It is what we are all seeking, after all and yet who has really found it in its entirety? Nobody, that’s who. Those childhood hopes must be dashed, eventually and yet I can see how it would never work to teach them Grimm, as I was taught. Fairy tales in my day were dark but when I read those tales again I just know I would never put a little hopeful face before those words. But what happens when we hit the adult world of super tough? We are not prepared and maybe that is how life works. Our culture is all about fixing. I feel low Doctor. Here are some pills that will help, just for a little while, until you get back on your feet. And, they do, but the core changeth not, the core that is my pain. The caring professions seek to wrench us from our self-destruct and to point us to our own star. Of course they do. Who wants yet another collapso?

And it doesn’t have to be bereavement, this awkward and uncomfortable truth that walks around with a person. It can be any pain at all. There is no competition. Every one of us who knows how it feels to be abandoned, lost, angry, vulnerable, knows this awkward and uncomfortable truth. It is our truth and not something to be flapped away or fixed. We are not fixable. We are in this for as long as it takes and that is that. However, we will put on a good face for that is what we are taught. Responding to someone who benignly and lovingly asks, How Are You with an honest response is not allowed. We just won’t answer honestly because why? Because we are taught to think of others and this Other who stands before might well fall like a tree if I told her my truth. Awful. Can’t sleep. Am never hungry. Don’t care if I don’t wake up. Feel like a yoyo. Anxious, fearful, afraid, lost, crazy at times. I won’t say any of that. I. Am. Fine. That’s what I will say and always say no matter how much that someone asks. And, the truth of it is this. I am. Fine. Because what I want, what someone navigating the void of pain wants is time and space to get on with this. I won’t even say ‘through this’ because I have no idea there is a ‘through’ at all. ‘Through’ suggests an end result.

Today the ice is wild and spectacular. The sea-loch shoreline is capped with rainbows. No unicorns. As the sun hits the smokey ice cover, it flashes back at me, colour shift and then flat grey again, in a nanosecond. I live in those nanoseconds so I get to see. Other walkers might miss it but not me for I am greedy for it all and I am always watching change. A lone woodcock lifts from the bracken and flies right over my head, her wings speckled, spectacular, her flight unmistakeable, her aloneness palpable. Did you see her? I ask two walkers deep in conversation. See what? they smiled. I just smile back. This is my life and yours looks like this. Cosy, designing supper for two, a warm fire, sharing, plans for tomorrow, next week, next birthday. On the track I see dichotomy. On the north side the granite is cold and dark, ice-sheered, silent. On the other side, snowdrops respond to the sun warmth and open like hope. Icicles as long as a spear head and too fat for my fingers to encircle hang northly. Across the track, sun dapples the plane tree bark, warms the new buds, smiles me. I feel at home as I always do when I am alone. One side of me is frozen. One sun warmed and beginning new life.

I am fine. I want solitary. I have no idea half the time how to get through a minute, an hour, a night, a day, but I will not tell you that because you, as I once had, have no idea what to do with such a raw and bloody truth. However, with these brilliant myth busting women and their courage to speak out, I finally, finally, find a path I can walk that is ok with me.