I started writing love letters to life three Januarys ago. I’d moved a couple of years earlier to a north London suburb where I knew no one. My boyfriend was living abroad and all my friends, though close enough by bike, were cold, interminable bus rides away now that I had two small children in tow.
London’s cold, clammy air seemed to stick to my skin no matter how many layers I wore. I was tired all the time, lost in the quagmire of a post-baby identity crisis, and knew I needed to do something to jerk myself out of my malaise. And so I started to look for the small, sensory pleasures that made my days easier: hot baths in the dark, winter sun, the first flowers of spring. I wrote about them as much to convince myself as for a creative exercise.
And then London warmed up, work took over and I was too tired to even have a nice hot bath, let alone write about it. My substack fell by the wayside.
Three Januarys later, I’m a year into a ‘new’ life in southern Europe. The sun shines 300-odd days a year and there’s a beautiful windswept beach on my doorstep. And yet…
Starting over when you are young & lovely and unencumbered by children is one thing, doing so when you’re skint, desk-bound and hurtling towards fifty is another. Languishing with a sun-drenched view is still languishing. And really, in a year of horrific worldwide suffering, Sci-Fi villain politicians and a global ecosystem melting like an ice cream on another unprecedentedly hot afternoon, maybe we all need to stop and smell the roses.
So I’m starting again. Writing to tell myself and anyone who wants to listen about life in a new landscape, redefining yourself after early parenthood and the little sensory pleasures that make it all worthwhile. Happy New Year.
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