Substack asked me to ask you...
This is the last thing you need, there's only so much you can take
A warm welcome to my new subscribers. I hope that you find comfort and reassurance in my words and ways of loving loss. I hope they encourage you to love yourself, as you are navigating traumatic changes in your life. Every time I receive news of a new subscriber my heart feels less chilly, less alone. Year five and there are more good days than bad. I feel my heart is defrosting, warming and ready to take in some sort of normal life. Writers and readers are like blankets for one another. Here we are, the first of the month, and possibly daunted with the month ahead. I find it so hard to still the mind; to finish reading just one sentence is an achievement. The weather here in Cornwall today is disgusting. Wild and Wet and Windy. Being a gardener I have given up on the day so here I am - the rain is thick on the windows, and I get to write. What a luxury that my life enables me to do so. I have space, quiet, a table, a chair, a warm room, and the necessary equipment. (It’s actually not quiet as my Dad is having a break from the care home and he’s watching Snooker - very loud - with my dog beside a lit fire. I’ve made him a sandwich and he looks so content. I could have given the whole day to myself but I can’t help thinking of him.)
Does December overwhelm you? It has come too quick. I am focusing on the season rather than the commercial demands. I am smelling the air, eating clementines, walnuts, mince pies, drinking my spiced Christmas Tea, enjoying the lights around the town. I have not seen my collection of baubles for five years. Not done a tree since losing James. I might go out and find a branch, hang it from the ceiling and dress with with my old decorations. I mentioned to Simon about getting the box of baubles down from the loft. His face said it all. He’s not quite with me on this yet. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. We’ll see.
There is only so much you can take in. When life is too full I feel like giving up competing, throwing my phone in the river. Surely life shouldn’t feel like a competition, a never-ending chore. A switch off day, once a week is essential. I need this one day, no talking, no trying, no achieving. For a few days after I feel brand new. By Wednesday I’m itching to leave my body again.
I like to imagine what it was like all those years ago, for example, being out for the day, no phone, sitting with friends in a coffee shop. On Saturday night I watched the Great Riviera Rail Trip with Sandi Toksvig - Sandi follows in the footsteps of great writers who hung out in the cafes on the French riviera. Never been. I fear, if I go - I’ll never be seen again. As the camera panned around people were enjoying food, wine and sun. And their phones. Smiling Sandi chatted to a local historian about Aldous Huxley’s days of exile in Sanary-sur-Mer where, in 1931 he wrote Brave New World. I was captivated by her sheer joy of being there, but also by how it must have felt back then, the distance from EVERYTHING, the slowness, an entirely different pace - not being fully connected and plugged into the whole world. The must have had a beautiful quality of simply unfolding, one thing leisurely leading to another. I think the key to this bliss is - a sense of adventure and less planning and less expectation. Our brains just are not meant to deal with this amount information all at once. I’ve got to stop spending money on supplements for brain fog, and just have these switch off days - stumbling across a good tv show by accident.
This is whole paragraph above has been prompted by my reluctance to pass on the following:
“Today I’m announcing a brand new addition to my Substack publication: Loving Loss and forget-me-nots subscriber chat. This is a conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.” (Instructions below)
Does that sound like me?
You can probably tell I didn’t write that blurb. Substack sent me the template. Never one for being told, I loathe to encourage the demands of more chat. I feel guilty asking you to spend more time here, head down, disconnected from your beating heart - thumping you from the inside, yelling, look up, notice the sky, breathe, feel your feet on the ground... So Really, do we have time for this? We’ve got to get off our phones. This is the last thing you need - another app!
Humans are lost: I have also been thinking what a strange world we live in, where we sit at screens trying to connect with other people sitting at screens. And here on Substack, we write to strangers all over the world, to feel less alone, searching for a sense of belonging, to build an online presence, get likes and loves. It’s like there’s a bubble we want to be inside of, we want to be included. And we do this when there are people living next door to us, around the corner, people on our streets that we don’t bother to connect with. If you live in a village you’re probably reading this and disagreeing with me. (I tried living in a village on a tiny island for a year. I felt like I was suffocating.) There are probably lots of ways I can feel apart of my home town.
Conclusion: What I should do is print out my writing and give it to people, leave it in the library, on the table in the pub, set up a grief group in my local town hall - COMMUNICATE. I could also actually go to community events but the thought of all the talking… The idea of it meets resistance in my chest. Perhaps next year, my sixth year of child loss things will start to change. Maybe it takes 6 years to reinvent your life. Either way, it’s possibly madness that I write to the world and not to my neighbour. It’s definitely bravery issue. It’s easy to be brave here in the early dark of a winter morning. But out in the streets, in the town, in the light of day - not so easy. I struggle to talk about my writing to anyone. It feels frivolous.
I’d have to be much braver to be an actual voice in the community. Much less shy and introverted. I’d have to find energy to be physically present. I’d have to think on my feet with no editing. But that is what I should do - start with my immediate surroundings.
Meanwhile, still hiding indoors with laptop, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your feelings, Loving Loss can be a space for you to share them. I might be shit at responding and apologies in advance. But it’s not so much about the response. Chat is good, of course it is. But for me, the writing itself, the act of posting it off into cyber space, off and away - that’s the cathartic bit. Feelings are like vital ingredients that need to be part of a complete meal. The chopping and the stirring, the simmering, the passion and nurturing - all of this turns them into something nourishing. I write to other Substack writers often. Sometimes I get a response. Other times not. It’s nice when it happens. But it’s keeping words on the move that matters. E-motion - energy in motion.
The hardest of times are tightly bound up with the best of times. When we are in survival mode, we feel properly alive. It’s not easy. Life feels hard for a long while. But it shows you what you’re made of. I am always keen to hear from people on how they are navigating loss. And that means loss of anything, person, place or thing, a sense of yourself you’ve left behind in another life… writing triggers a process, a sense of something evolving, something growing. Below are some boring instructions and some pictures of James and his art. Thank you for reading.
Here’s the boring bit: How to get started
Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
