Stumbling, Strolling, and Staying the Course

Gratitude, change, and looking ahead

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Firstly, I want to say thank you so much for sticking with me and reading my words in 2024. I have been finding my way with my Substack, then losing it, then going in a different direction, then changing that again! As the year closes, I feel like where I’m at now with it is a good place. Personal essays, mindful living and writing ideas, and guest posts from other folk who have the same ethos about craft and way of being in the world. As well as occasional little stories I write. Along with the monthly Mindful Writing Marathons, where we can come together and write from the heart to discover what it is we really need to say. But I have learned that everything changes, so I’m sure that as time goes by, what I do here will change too.

It has been a strange year for me personally. Another one. I feel I need to stop expecting it not to be strange. For the first time since 2021, my husband and I have been in one place for longer than six months. The stillness has been much needed and appreciated but we can’t stay here. There simply isn’t enough room. We both work at home, both need to go on Zoom a lot, and we have one room where we live, eat and work, with a mezzanine bedroom above it, so there is nowhere we can be where we can’t hear each other. We’ve been feeling for a while that we need to move on but have been distracted from sorting it out by my sister-in-law’s illness. Which, I am pleased to say, she is now recovering from and she was discharged from hospital earlier this month after being there for four months. She still has many physical and mental health issues to manage but she is in a much better way than she was.

So when we heard that she was going home and then the same day received a message from a woman in Scotland we house sat for last Christmas asking us if we could come back in January and stay until April, with a two week break in the middle, we said yes. We both love Scotland and want to live there. Plus my husband is just about to do the assessments for the next level of his qigong instructor qualifications and the house (which has lots of separate rooms for us to do things in!) is a 45 minute drive from his teacher. It felt like a sign. A way for us to get back up there and use the first few months of the year trying to find a way to stay. Wish us luck. There’s a housing crisis in the UK and finding affordable places to live is hard. But we’re keeping a positive outlook and believing that if it’s meant to be, it will be.

Keeping positive is something I work at all the time. I am doing a qualification in Positive Psychology, which is not about pretending that some things aren’t rubbish but instead focusing on building on the things that are good in your life. But Christmas is the hardest time for me to remain positive. It always gets me. It’s a time for family to come together and my husband and I always spend it with just the two of us. I have no contact with my family anymore, a decision I made for my own wellbeing, but this holiday always makes me think of the family life I wished I’d had and highlights how alone I am in the world apart from my husband and his family. His parents are both dead and he has three sisters, who all have their own lives and families and Christmas plans. We are seeing them all next weekend but we’ll be back here on the 23rd for our usual Christmas for two.

I feel like sharing my sadness with you about the holidays, and acknowledging that I always feel like this, means I am more mindful of it than I have been previously and that maybe it won’t be so bad this year. I used to just pretend that everything was fine and try and force myself to be jolly, which usually ended in tears! I also feel like I turned another corner this year in my thinking about my family estrangement when my mother tried to force her way back into my life. Nothing there has changed. But I have.

So it seems as if this festive season, rather than feeling the lack of something that never even existed in the first place, I can feel happy for all the good things. I can put my positive psychology training into action! There are so many good things to be thankful for. Tomorrow my husband and I will have been married for 24 years and our marriage gets stronger every year. Next weekend we are spending time with family and friends in our home town. We are off to our favourite place in the world in January. I have made many new friends here on Substack and do work I love with writers from all around the world. I am healthy and I am here!

So, as we head into the holiday season writing this has made me realise I don’t feel as much lack as I usually do. I’m looking forward to a rest, to the fairy lights (I love fairy lights at any time of year!), to the delicious food we’ll eat and the lie ins I’ll have.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

What about you? Is this the most wonderful time of the year for you? It’s OK if it’s not! And OK if it is!

I’m looking forward to writing more here next year and keeping on finding my way along the path. As I said to a friend,

Don Boivin

in a comment on one of his recent posts, sometimes I’ll be strolling, sometimes I’ll be stumbling, but I’ll keep walking the mindful path.

I hope you have a lovely festive season whatever it means to you and whatever you do.

With love,

Come write with me in 2025

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