After years and years of buying courses and books that I hoped would give me answers, I finally found a mentor who speaks my language.

And it’s me.

Not me right here and now - this version of me is still a wide-eyed novice when it comes to this ‘third act’ stuff - but Wild Old Woman me.

As is often the case during the course of a year, I’ve fallen out of the practice of journaling. When I write, I write in the early morning before the loudness of daily living demands my attention. Lately my mornings have been mostly about fending off migraine pain, or just giving in to it, and I’ve missed putting pen to paper. So, how to tempt myself back to the page? I decided to write to myself, but my 80 year old self. I know assumptions are being made there but I’m good with it.

Who is she? What’s she doing with her time? What has she learned and what does she currently believe? Is there anything she can confidently say she knows? What advice can she give me on where to go next? What should I be sure to do?

But it’s deeper than that. I think there are infinite versions of 2043 me and I’d like to be more proactive in which one I get to embody. If possible, I’ll avoid the one who lives under a bridge; the one who falls at 79, breaks a hip and can’t get up, ultimately only just making 80 before I’m a goner, and the one who hides in her home, too scared to venture out.

My WOW self is canny. She doesn’t suffer fools but she has an open heart. She’s learned the songs of the More Than Human. She is deeply entwined with the cycle of the land where she lives. She loves; really loves. She knows life is both ugly and beautiful and understands the package deal. She is devoted to the Earth.

I believe that if I can find her (I’m hoping her address is still the same as mine), this WOW version of me who has profoundly deepened her relationship with the rest of the natural world, can guide me in to her fireside, landmark by landmark. I’m asking for directions, and it isn’t some untested daydream, “fingers crossed” kind of deal. I’ve done this before, in reverse.

1985 was a rubbish year. In late ‘84 my aunt and I left our work in Germany to come home and support her parents/my grandparents through what we hoped would be an effective period of medical and surgical treatment for one of them. We lost my grandfather in the first days of ‘85. My grandmother made it to the last days of the same year. Around the six month mark, other family members finally stepped up and took over responsibility, leaving us to stagger off, glassy of eye and broken of heart, to rediscover our lives. In effect, they no longer existed; we each needed to build from the ground up.

So it was that I found myself living in a small room with a shared kitchen and bathroom, at 6 Cleveland Place in Bath. If you’re local, it was just down from The Curfew, by the traffic lights at the top of London Road, by Cleveland Bridge. I got a job waitressing at a little restaurant overlooking the weir and Pulteney Bridge (oh, I just found this guy who was the son of my landlord - I lived above their family home and he was just a kid at the time. He came to work at the same restaurant, and then another where I was Asst Manager…memories…).

Where was I? Bath. Waitressing. Bedsit. Somewhat numb. Then I fell in love and kicked off five years of absolute emotional misery. Happy days! Moving swiftly on, at the end of those five years I was at yet another restaurant, this time as Manager.

One evening, my boss informed me he’d hired a temporary barman. A guy who was well known in the city’s catering circles, having managed our main rival, but was leaving the trade to work for an airline. He had a few weeks to fill so he was helping us out. I decided right away this loser was just going to mansplain my job to me and I wasn’t having any of it. When he walked in, I buried my head in an order book and ignored him. After a few minutes of saying hello to everyone else, he walked behind the bar where I was sitting, stood opposite me and said,”Hi, I’m Charlie.” I looked up, straight into his eyes, and heard in my head, “Oh there you are”. Closely followed by, ”Oh shit.”

Dear reader, I married him. But not until 35 years later (after 23 together). But our time was not then. We were briefly friends with insane chemistry; I was besotted but both emotionally wiped out and accepting of circumstances, and we went our separate ways for 12 years.

I’ve often wondered where that “Oh there you are” came from. I’m agnostic when it comes to reincarnation so sort of ruled that out. Sort of. I really had no solid explanation.

Until recently.

Our daughter has a job in Bath and each Sunday we take her to, and pick her up from, the premises on Walcot Street. To get there we drive past my old room. Waiting at the traffic lights, I can see my 1985 window. Just as a joke, I started calling out to 22 year old me, lying in that room wondering how it had all gone so wrong. “Hang in there,” I said. “You’re a late bloomer and things get way better. You’re going to meet him in about five years but the rest will take a while. His name is Charlie Moores. Keep your eyes open!” Over the months, variations of this became a habit. It took me way longer than it should have to realise…that’s why the “Oh there you are”. I’d got the bloody message.

There’s further evidence that 2001 me got through to 1997 me on the same topic but that’s another story and I’ve bent your ear (eye?) for long enough.

Now here I am, writing to 80 year old me. Instead of just receiving, and hoping I remember in 17 years time that I need to reach out, I’m attempting to instigate that conversation. I reckon that if I keep trying, eventually she’ll reply. I don’t want to risk not being her. This late bloomer is ready to become the wild flower she’s meant to be.

I’d love to hear if you’ve ever had something like this happen. A message from another you, somewhere in time. If you haven’t ever done it, I recommend giving it a go. I don’t think geographical proximity is necessary, just intention. Which you would you “call”? What would you tell them? What have you been told?

Remember to listen.

Superconductor: a material that allows electrical current to flow with zero electrical resistance and expels magnetic fields when cooled below a specific critical temperature. Because they lack resistance, they do not generate heat or lose energy, allowing an induced electrical current to flow indefinitely.

I think I may be a postmenopausal superconductor.

Seriously. My theory: postmeno women are potentially extraordinary Earth energy channels.

“Earth energy”? Yeah, the energy that keeps this planet (of which/whom we’re all a part, just like mountains and beetles and puddles and weather) alive. The creative, expansive, regenerative energy that’s kept Earth evolving for the last 4.5 billion years, give or take. That.

We’re each of us a unique expression of the planet, rising to the surface for a nano-moment, like the foam on the tip of a wave before it folds back into the ocean. The life energy is always coursing through us, at all stages, but I think the postmeno woman is a superconductor.

As babies and children, that energy was all about growth and becoming. Then as adults, we’re coded for creation, be that of more babies, or community, or art, or whatever security our culture requires (in ours, that might be financial). We have a certain task in our DNA, yes? Birth something new and keep it alive. Focus on others.

Then, for women (also orcas, some whales, and an outlier of a chimp population in Uganda), comes menopause. The drive towards, and dedication to that task starts to smoulder, then burns away - we feel it burn - and clears the channels. Removes the resistance to anything else.

In the eyes of our dominant, patriarchal culture this renders us obsolete unless we’re content to be grandmothers. It’s a noble task, but not for every woman. For many of us, the experience we have of creating something/someone; tending life-supporting environments; building loving relationships with partners, friends and colleagues, and contributing to the survival of our species in whatever way we do best…well, that was school. We graduated. Once the fire goes out (drops below a “specific critical temperature”) and the fresh growth appears, we’re primed and ready for a new role.

Superconductor.

Expressing that life energy that flows from the planet and now, unresisted, through us. Each in our unique way. No expression too quiet or too loud; too big or too small.

That’s my theory and I’m drawn to explore it. Find ways to feel that energy, move it and live it.

Here’s another thing…

For twenty years I’ve dreamt of building something online. A hundred times I’ve got close, and a hundred times life events have taken priority, or I fell out of love with the internet, or - and this is the most common reason - I’ve chickened out.

So.

Much.

Chickening.

So this exploration - with no map - of our wild, postmeno nature rising, is me giving myself one last chance, because it feels really important. If this doesn’t get me dialled in, then nothing will. Either I do it, or I get off the internet and stop wasting your time and mine. That’s a promise to both of us.

But if this has lit little candles in your heart, stick around. I think you’re a superconductor and I’m gathering a sisterhood (maybe with honorary brothers and others).

All the things I’ve dabbled in and set aside over the years are starting to look less like a scattered life and more like a curriculum. I’ve learnt some stuff and it’s time for me to put it to use at last.

June truly did bring Summer for us and many others, didn’t it? For me, the highlight was the almighty storm we had about a week ago. I stood in our front garden and listened to it roll in from the south west, no break in the rumbling, and then it was here. Gale-strength wind, sideways rain, thunder and lightning. The way the heat and humidity broke - albeit temporarily - was wonderful, as was the perspective brought by the audio-visual sense of huge elemental movement happening over our relatively tiny heads.

“The Weather” was definitely the theme for this month in our corner of the west of England, and we even took to watching the Met Office channel. Of course, even those educated people can’t always be accurate with their forecasts because nothing says “uncertain” quite like British weather.

That there, at the end of the paragraph, is a slick segue into what I thought I’d write about this month…uncertainty.

Bertrand Russell once wrote: “The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.”

He went on to add: “To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues.”

I’m finding that expanding my own capacity for uncertainty is one of the best things I’ve done for myself in a long time.

Most of us cling to the idea that there is always a right answer or a right way, and should we work/think/meditate/exist well enough or hard enough, we’ll find it. Then we can be certain. Sure. Secure. Safe. We will have arrived at the destination and we can stop worrying.

So, certainty can become a goal, and our brains - the on-board computers programmed to hold us in the predictable, the repeatable, and the reliable - support that goal, setting up sirens and flashing lights and jump-scares if we wander too close to (shudder) The Unknown.

Luckily for me, I’m just usually right. Being the eldest of five will do that to you; it’s in the job description. Unluckily for me, the reality is, I simply had a deep-rooted attachment to knowing All The Things For Sure. Note the past tense.

I’ve told these stories many times before but, for context, the first five years of the 2020s went like this for me:

Xmas 2019: my young dog dies suddenly (euthanasia), at midnight, due to an undiagnosed brain tumour.

March 2020: the first UK covid lockdown, and all that the following months entailed for the world.

October 2020: I find my elderly father in a state of collapse. He will need care, luckily at his home, for the rest of his life.

January 2021: he has an aortic valve replacement and develops delirium.

March 2021: on his 86th birthday, in a crappy care home for “rehab”, where we can’t visit, he develops covid. Being him, he shows no symptoms but gets pushed from home to hospital to home until he finally gets back to his own, near me, in June. We find, after many false starts, a live-in carer who, with my daily help, keeps him comfortable and cared for. The delirium has fast-tracked his vascular dementia; Parkinsonism is fast taking his ability to walk, and he is in late stage heart failure. His health degenerates and he has no idea where he is or who he’s with, until finally…

October 2022:...he passes away, aged 87.

Nov/Dec/Jan 2022/3: we clear out his large house (he was a neurodivergent hoarder of everything he ever owned) and attempt to sell it as the market crashes. I am diagnosed with spinal arthritis.

March 2023: my 16 year old dog has to have treatment on his eye which involves drops three times a day and horrible “scrapes”. It gets worse. Ultimately, we have to remove the eye. It turns out it had been his “good one” and he is now blind. And he must have been lip-reading because he can’t hear me either. He is plunged into isolation and both our hearts break.

Also March 2023: I develop severe stomach ache and can’t lift my right leg. Over three weeks, three GPs tell me it’s wind; it’s my hormones; it’s a mystery. I demand a referral to the hospital where they scan me and see that my appendix perforated three weeks ago and only my body’s ability to create an infected ulcer over the hole has saved me. I’m admitted to hospital for three days on IV antibiotics and daily scans because it’s so messy in there that they daren’t operate. I’m sent home with my appendix still on board, and a wheelbarrow full of antibiotics. We will have to “wait and see”.

April and May 2023: more scans and a failed colonoscopy (don’t ask, my body is unusual okay?).

June 2023: my dog can’t take anymore and I can’t put him through anymore. We say goodbye in his favourite sunny spot in our back garden. The sun goes in.

Summer 2023: my partner (now husband), Charlie loses hearing in one ear and is diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma (a tumour on the auditory nerve). Meanwhile I’m in ongoing tests and waiting and seeing and feeling like a timebomb until…

September 2023: my appendix has fixed itself and I am astounded at our bodies.

I find myself having multiple anxiety attacks on the daily. When it gets to the stage where I can’t drive, or really function properly, I start taking an SSRI which stops them. Immediately. Reading up on health anxiety, I see it described as a reaction to uncertainty and instantly know that’s exactly right, for me. However…

Jan 2024: my GP decides that I definitely have breast cancer and sends me home with a fast track referral and a bunch of leaflets that I put in the bin. I know what it is and it isn’t cancer. But we do the tests and, oh look, wait and see. Spoiler: it’s fine.

We’re still waiting to hear about what happens with the pesky ear tumour and Charlie develops chest pain. The same GPs that missed my appendicitis tell him it’s acid reflux.

April 2024: The last of my beloved three dogs goes to the big sleep. She was so very tired. We are so very sad.

Charlie flies to South Korea to spend time with his brother and SIL. He has a horrible time due to the fact he keeps collapsing with acid reflux. I pick him up from Heathrow and he’s literally grey and sweating. This is angina, I say.

May 2024: we get married, after 23 years. It’s a lovely day. A week later, acid reflux makes me call an ambulance. The paramedics tell him it’s stress and I ask them to take him to the hospital. It’s unstable angina and he has a stent fitted two days later.

We spend the summer with Charlie rehabbing and the three of us just being immensely grateful. I am not coming off those SSRIs any time soon. All is sort of well (please bear in mind that I am not revealing anything that relates to our daughter except to say that her mental health was pretty much shredded by this period, during which she took and passed six GCSEs, was diagnosed with ADHD, and achieved a High Merit in an extended Level 3 Diploma at college).

September 2024: Charlie has gamma ray treatment on the ear tumour. This involves having a frame screwed to your skull so that you can’t move during treatment. If it works, the thing shrivels. If it doesn’t, high risk surgery is the only option. Guess what…we wait and see. Spoiler: we hear a year later that it shrivelled.

December 2024, four days before Christmas: Charlie comes back early from a walk and says he feels unwell. I drive him straight to the hospital where they tell him he’s about to have a heart attack and he can’t go home. He’s freaking out because he HATES hospitals. The next day they say he needs a double bypass and will have to stay in hospital for a month where they can keep him safe while he climbs the walls and the waiting list.

Christmas Day: Daughter and I have flu and are bedridden.

December 30, 2024: Charlie has a major angina attack and they blue-light him to Bristol where he has a triple bypass. Three days in ICU (he had to be re-opened again after they wired his chest shut, and it all got a bit iffy), five days of wait and see on the cardiac ward and they send him home to me. I, you may remember, am not a nurse. He is not in the best of shapes and requires total bedrest for some time.

To wrap up, 2025 saw Charlie knock rehab out of the park. It will never be as if it didn’t happen, and we never forget or take anything for granted. I get more arthritis diagnoses - hands, feet and neck - but by September last year, I’m finding moments to learn from all this. I start to taper off the SSRIs and by January this year, I’m off. As anyone who has done this will tell you, the first few weeks without additional serotonin availability is a trip, but I’d done it before and I’m cool.

April 2026: my migraine (average number of attacks/flares a month: 4-6) starts to escalate. By mid-April I’m at 20 days a month and not really functional. I also develop issues of a gynaecological nature. Here comes another fast track referral - this time for ovarian/uterine cancer, biopsy, and wait and see. Spoiler again: it’s fine. I am actually one of the luckiest people I know. GPs are not good at root cause, but they are good at sticking a band aid and a referral on individual symptoms so I don’t complain too much and instead take matters into my own hands. I’m down to about 10-12 days a month of migraine (which honestly feels like freedom), with no other symptoms bar the arthritis, and a plan to improve it further.

Can you see why I had such a dysfunctional relationship to uncertainty? And please, I know this diary of doom is not special or even unusual. When they say everyone is fighting their own private battle, they are speaking truth. I see you, I do. I am not writing this for sympathy - I know you’re all lovely people and we all support each other with the ol’ long distance vibes - I just wanted to tell the story of a personal descent into profound uncertainty. Because if I can come to terms with that, learn from it, and ultimately embrace it, then almost anyone can, I promise. I also appreciate that so many of our health issues have so far had very positive outcomes. We are beyond lucky and we know it. How much easier is it to embrace uncertainty in those circumstances?

I’m currently reading Sarah Wilson’s latest book, I Eat The Stars, and bending ears about it every day. She subtitles it, “how to live fully and beautifully in a collapsing world” and she could have written it for me. It’s exactly what I needed to read, written in exactly the way I needed to read it. I cannot recommend it enough.

In a chapter titled, ooh look, “Uncertainty”, she writes:

“Neuroscientists have now found that allostasis, or psychological stability through change, as opposed to homeostasis, is our healthiest baseline. Homeostasis says healthy systems should return to the same starting point following a change: X to Y to X. With allostasis, healthy systems also crave stability after a change, but the baseline of that stability can be somewhere new. So you can have: X to Y to Z. Their studies show that the brain is at its best when it is constantly rewiring itself and making new connections - dealing in exciting new directions. You know, dancing with life as it’s happening?”

I do know that any kind of inner process like this will exist in a state of flux. Good days and bad days. Good years and bad years. And personal loss will always throw us off our feet regardless of how safe we feel. It’s taken me many decades to get here, and the lessons were tough, but I think I’m ready to dance.

And not for nothing…anyone else thinking that ADHD might be on to something?

Until next month,

Jo
x

How do you start a newsletter that very much wants to be a personal email?

“Dear Reader”?

“Hi”?

“How’s it going?”?

Today, on Tell Me You”re Awkward Without Telling Me You’re Awkward, I’m going to go with:

Oh, there you are. How’s things? (Seriously. Tell me.)

Last time I wrote, I was about to head off to Wales for a solo, birthday, overnighter. It was blissful, as ever, and I was also glad to come home to my family a little more relaxed, a lot sandier, and with hair that had me happily looking - at least one of my grandparents would have told me - “like the wreck of the Hespurus”.

Side note: it was decades after I first heard and fell in love with this phrase that I discovered the Hespurus was a schooner, in a Longfellow poem, and nothing to do with the wild, Catweazley person it conjured in my mind. My aunt has stated that she has no need of costly DNA tests because she knows herself to be “100% Baldrick”. I claim at least 25% Catweazle. On my father’s side, obvs. My maternal grandfather referred to us collectively - then in our early 20s - as Hinge & Bracket.

That was a month ago and A Whole Load Of Things have since occurred, caused some mental and physical disturbance, and eventually disappeared in a celebratory puff of smoke. So, fresh from a few weeks of doomlooping, I’m back in the land of the cognitively functional.

No really.

Despite this typically rambling, tangent-ridden introduction, I’m feeling very calm and contemplative. The recent heatwave here has meant our little house benefitting from open windows and doors (shoutout to Cat-G8), and my little arthritic joints benefitting from not hurting. Look, I’m putting a positive spin on the alarming weather; humour me.

Outdoors, the plants that haven’t turned crispy are flourishing, and our garden, front and back, looks wonderfully unkempt. Normally I’d be trying to rein in Mother Nature a little more but this heat means grass is not cut, “weeds'“ are not pulled, and everything just gets to do its best.

This morning, in the back garden with the cat while Charlie was off checking his moth trap down the lane, I felt like I’d stumbled across some abandoned old cottage with a garden overgrown into a teeny meadow. Rather than beating myself up about not getting my arse into gear to spend days working on flower beds and lawns, I just allowed myself to sit in the deep beauty of it. Full of life, including mine.

This, I acknowledged, is what it is to relinquish attempted control. Life and beauty flourish. I’ve always found that a garden goes heavy on parables if you’re ready to listen, and I am. I am ready to listen and let go.

Letting it go

I’ve recently had bit of a Threads problem that was all about T***p-watching and getting my daily hourly fix of outrage. I was determined to keep up the effort so I didn’t fall for the flooding of the zone. I wasn’t in any way prepared for quite how much flooding there would be. The corruption, the bullying, the deaths, the lies, the abuse, the psychopathy, the sheer grift… I surrendered. I quit. All I’d achieved was setting my nervous system on fire multiple times a day. It’s been a very long time since I could hear that voice or look at that face without feeling actual nausea, and if my real responsibilities lie with my soft animal body, my soul, my life, my loved ones and the planet we live on, then it was way past time for me to opt out of watching a person who will literally kill for attention.

Meanwhile, I’d been despairing about how frustrating it is to have an ADHD operating system. Honestly, I’ve spent quite a while in deep ennui recently because if there’s one thing I know about me after 63 years of experience, it’s that once I’m past the Big Idea stage it’s unlikely I’ll actually get started on the doing, and inevitable that I’ll fail on the completion. So what’s the point? Why bother trying? Another kind of surrender, another kind of quitting, I guess. I’d seriously just thrown in the towel because fuck this. I couldn’t take anymore mental and emotional self-flagellation.

In a last ditch attempt to “fix” myself, I spent time trying to work out what factors needed to be in place for me to stick with something. Like I said in my last post, I’ve never really had a “thing” that I fixated upon or was always able to prioritise, so this was all about “if I could do anything, what would make me keep going?”.

The answer was: nothing. Nothing will. My brain doesn’t do that in this context. In the mug/ spoon/ bed linen/ comfort watching/ coffee bean/ parking space/ shitty selftalk context it’s reliably obsessive, but in the keep-going-and-find-fulfilment-and-maybe-pay-some-bills context it’s a clown show.

The reframe who loved me

What if it’s not about “what keeps me going”, but more about “what keeps me coming back?”. What if long pauses between bouts of attention don’t really matter, as long as I keep coming back? What do I always come back to?

• Firstly, my family, my home (the house, the garden, the land, the More Than Human inhabitants), and making a safe space where we can find peace, acceptance, respect, comfort and love.

  My freedom to simply turn away to choose myself and my life is a privilege and I’m going to use it to create a small sanctuary where beauty, truth, love and the tending of those things are what matters. I believe that’s what I was made for. I believe that many of us were.

  That’s my thing.

• Secondly, damn good stories. Words, pictures, sounds. I’ll always be the first to sit cross-legged on the mat curl up under a blanket ready to disappear into a story world, whether it’s fact or fiction.

  My imagination is my superpower and portal to other worlds.

• Thirdly - and this was a joke until it quickly wasn’t - the internet. I’ve been online since 1998 (chapeau to Alistair, my first editor, who enabled me with a loan to buy an iMac so we could be WFH pioneers by day and, in my case, founding members of online communities by night). I’m horrified by how it’s been weaponised and used as a method of destruction by some, but still in awe of what it can be in the right hands. There is no doubt an argument that in my dopamine-challenged world, I’m just addicted to the quick fix, but I know it’s not that. Yes I get sucked in sometimes, but not for long. And sure enough I always come back. The internet reunited me with Charlie 25 years ago. It told me I could adopt my daughter from China, and long years later, sent us her name and face in a jpg that took FOREVER to download (hands up if you can hear the modem). It linked us to her twin sister on the other side of the planet. It found me all the animals that have been part of my family since 2000. It enabled me to gain learning and qualifications. It told me thousands and thousands of brilliant stories.

  I am not giving it up. The tech bros cannot have my internet.

All this to say, as May closes, I am returning, I return, I will return, to sanctuary for loved ones. To stories. To sharing them here and maybe here. I let the rest go.

And breathe…

Before I sign off, how about some things that are bringing me peace? Hmmm…

• A low histamine diet is saving my life

• Meet Me at the Convenience Store by the Sea by Sonoka Machida

• Lo-fi YouTube in the background as the best bodydoubler. One of my favourites.

• This morning in our garden

• Colombian coffee. Black, ceramic, Pour Over pot.

• Our Unwritten Seoul - my entire Netflix algo is Korean now and I don’t care

• muslin bed linen, especially the set I got from The Middle of Lidl for like fifteen quid in a sale

• being home with my person and my daughter and my cat and a summer breeze.

Let me know what’s working for you. Or not working, if that helps.

I hope June is good to you and yours. I will be back at some point in the month, possibly the very last minute as I am with this one because yeah…that.

x

I spent most of last year trying to re-ignite my love for the onlines. I had huge visions and big plans, spreadsheets and goals. What I didn’t have was enthusiasm or focus. Or - most importantly - energy. I’ve told the story of 2024/25 already elsewhere. Autumn-winter 2025/26 brought increasing, chronic pain, and me running on Minimum Viable Effort every day. Being present on the internet was just not even close to being a priority.

When I did go online, I saw how people who were already working extremely hard, were increasingly required to be content creators and social media professionals in order to catch a small amount of attention. With a huge potential audience, posting can look like an audition with millions of others trying out for the role. Similarly, those trying to find IRL professional support for their creative endeavours seemed always to be asked,”What’s your following like? We’ll need big numbers.” All that did for me, working alongside my ADHD proclivity for being all ideas and no action, was paralyse me. I did nothing. Created nothing. Wrote almost nothing. With no services, no products, no nothing to sell, what would even be the point? The damn world’s on fire, genocide is a hashtag, people are dying in the most horrific circumstances, and I’m sitting here telling you what I had for lunch and which K-Drama I’m currently watching? Please. Not only is that not entertaining, I shouldn’t be trying to make it be. Didn’t want to try. My actual life, with my people and my place, deserved what energy I had much more than <gestures vaguely at the internet>.

That’s the bad part. Here’s the good part:

So much fell away. My soul just kept telling me, “Less…less…no, even less. You don’t need this, or this, or that. You can’t do that, or that, or that anymore. Lose more. Can you see it yet? Can you feel it? No? Then you need less...” And on it went, until I gained genuine clarity.

What did it reveal?

• My people and place are my forever priority. They matter to me, nourish me, give my life meaning, make my heart happy.

• I need something that is just mine. Something I treasure and enjoy and nerd out over. A hobby, an interest, a thing.

• I love stories. Listening to them, reading them, watching them and telling them. Words are spells and the weaving of their magic makes me happy.

• I’m fulfilled on a bone-deep level by making something tangible and beautiful. Something I did with my hands. A task with a start and a finish and a moment of “It’s done and I love it.”

• I enjoy being alone or with very, very few people. It’s in those circumstances that my energy moves smoothly and regenerates. Most of my life takes place inside my head and my awareness only really moves outwards in the presence of love, nature or beauty.

• I am brought to tears by the mastery of a craftsperson. The time, patience, repetition, experience and knowledge that combine to - sometimes over many years - turn a skill into a blend of art and utility that just thrills me.

It didn’t take me long to find what I wanted to learn and make my thing. It’s been circling for a long time but perfectionism and impatience meant I wasn’t prepared to be rubbish at it. Those feelings have gone. I’m excited by the story potential of beginning and learning.

I’m learning how to hand carve wood. There’s more, but that will do as a simple introduction. Me, some tools, a piece of wood and a vision. Failures, mistakes, lessons and successes. Little stories of craft, beauty and slow work.

Because I love to write and feel a connection with like-minded people, I decided that I’d keep a place where, maybe once a month (pain issues allowing), I wrote about what I was learning - both through and about the process - and shared other beautiful things and makers that I’ve found. This is what this newsletter will be. Because you kindly signed up to follow my writing at some point in the past, you’re on my mailing list. I appreciate this is a change of direction and topic, so please unsubscribe if you’d like to opt out - I totally understand, and have been very grateful for your company. Thank you.

Finally, the image up at the top of this is not of my work! At this point I can barely hold a sharp knife, but what I really love is a handmade, wooden bowl. It occurred to me that I could learn a lot about wood from the work of others. So I went digging around in second hand shops (another of my favourite past-times) and found these beauties. I want to refurbish them, refinish them and restore them to something even more special, as part of my self-designed apprenticeship. I think it will really help me begin to feel my way around working with wood.

So that’s where I am as we move into spring. In other news, my birthday is soon, and as a gift from my husband who knows me very well after 25 years together, I’m off down to the Gower Peninsula and my favourite beaches for a solo break next week. Maybe I’ll bring home some driftwood.

Sending you all good wishes, peace and inspiration,

Jo