For weeks before and weeks after, I lived with dread, held heavy and persistent in my gut. You’d message me about how scared and frustrated you were, and I’d do my best to hold space for you, without letting my own fears bleed into our conversation. We always said, one day at a time. And, my beautiful friend, I’ve been living one day at a time ever since.

Today is your birthday, and while it is not a happy day, it’s a day I’ll spend being so incredibly grateful for the memories we made together, for the love you gave me, for the friendship that felt like a sisterhood, like a soul tie.

Have a heavenly birthday, Krista.

I see this woman in the mirror and she’s terrified. Frozen to the spot, unable to move for fear of the unknown, of getting things wrong. Perhaps she finds safety in the place she stands right now, but all I see is the world moving on around her. All I see is missed opportunity, and a woman too scared to speak her mind.

I see fear, but I also see strength in getting this far. I see what she has built already, everything she deems a failure, and I am in awe.

Girl, look around. You had a voice and then the world flipped on its head and you lost it, you lost yourself a bit. That’s ok, it happens to us all.

It’s time to get up now.

You don’t have to scream or shout, just use your words. Say something that feels true. Start with baby steps, you don’t need to run a marathon. You’re not building Rome, you’re building your own beautiful little life. One brick at a time. One hour, one chapter, one essay at a time. You’ve got good people in your corner, hold on to them as you go.

You don’t need to worry about what everyone else is doing, they’ve all got their own problems. They just don’t show them. Their lives might seem bigger and better, they might look like they know what they’re doing, and maybe they do.

Just remember, you don’t need to know their story, you need to write your own.

It’s time to start, again.

As I sit here drinking tea I think of the last time we did so together. Opening our hearts to one another, tucked comfortably on your sofa. Gatsby cuddled close at your side. That dog misses you so much, you know? He keeps looking for you. All we can do is kiss his soft head and apologise, and tell him we miss you too.

I haven’t read the letter you wrote to me yet. Doing so feels too significant, and maybe too final. Those will be the last new words I receive from you, words I know will help me patch together my aching heart. Words to guide and comfort me, because that’s what you always did.

I’ll admit, I’m a little lost right now. Too raw and tender, too vulnerable for the world outside. I spend a lot of time reading, as you did in the last few months before your final prognosis. Escaping into stories of devils and dragons and gods, stories that would make your eyes widen, stories to make you chuckle.

Tomorrow we say goodbye, and I can’t bear it. We never did say goodbye in person, I guess it felt too hard for us both. I want to tell you how much I love you just one more time. Perhaps I’ll do that tomorrow, perhaps you’ll be there to listen.

Tomorrow will be a beautiful day, just as you planned. We’ll hold on to O and each other, we’ll speak your words and celebrate your life. We’ll raise a toast to everything you did and every ounce of love you poured into the world. We’ll reminisce and laugh and cry. We’ll wish it were all different, we’ll be grateful for the time you had and bitter for all the time you didn’t.

And after tomorrow, I’ll keep writing to you. Just in case my words find you on your next adventure.

Love you, friend.

Trees huddle together, rising impossibly high all around me. The wood is dense and varied, and I’m grateful for the evergreens holding on to their leaves despite the cold. The skies above us are grey and bright like polished steel, hanging low and close.

I’m in my favourite part of the woods now, where for a minute I can pretend I am lost to nature, swallowed by the forest never to return again to normal life. How I wish I could be a witch, or at least someone with the ability (and money) to live in a cabin, surviving only the land. Unbothered by my internet connection and my broken coffee machine.

There are branches covered in green pine needles scattered along the path, and like a door creaking open in the shadows of my mind, a memory slips through. Me and you, and our bright ideas for homemade festive decorations, collecting these same branches off the ground regardless of whatever animal may have peed on it beforehand. The boys looking back at us, rolling their eyes and saying ‘Why?’ and we share our laughter in response. In this moment we are mere Christmas witches, gathering nature’s decorations to adorn our homes in winter.

Two weeks later and we sheepishly agreed it was perhaps a bad idea, given all the dead needles littering our respective homes. The boys look smug but we ignore them, call them Scrooges (not true) and sip our wine. We carry on with our dinner conversation, about plans and dreams and the latest drama, and the air in the room feels warm (despite the cold seeping in through the cracks of those damn single glazed windows).

Now I blink, and I’m stood in a woodland while my dog rolls excitedly in a wet pile of fox shit, and I realise I’m crying. Not because of the dog, but because you died and I’ll never again be in these woods with you, picking up branches off the ground with our matching conspiratorial grins. I’ll never sit across from you at the dinner table while we share our stories, our worries and our dreams, and offer each other love and reassurance.

I close my eyes and wait. Patience has never been my strength but I gather as much of it as I can in this moment because I need to find it, that sign from you that reminds me some small part of you never really left this world. After a few moments I feel it, a gentle breeze along my cheek like the palm you held to my face the day before you died, when you told me for the last time that you loved me.

I breath in deep and feel my chest warm, my tears slowly drying, and that’s all I need to feel a bit better. You always said you’d turn into a wisp or something, and here you are. A whisper of wind through the trees we used to walk past.

I start walking again, mustering up the energy to scold my dog for the necklace of fox shit she is now wearing with pride. I don’t in the end, knowing you would be cackling if you saw her in this state. I miss your wicked laugh.

As I leave the woods, I say to myself: I’ll see you again here soon, my friend.

It’s 4.30pm on a Friday and the ice cream van just pulled up outside.

Your legs are moving, fast, racing down the stairs to grab your wallet or your phone. Cash or card these days? Who knows, just go.

They’re quick, these vans. You don’t have time to think, no time to deliberate or mull things over. Fuck the calories, and fuck the time. Forget about your lactose intolerance and your pride, forget that you’re wearing pyjama shorts. Just go.

You deserve an ice cream, this week has been long. It’s been boring and trying and long. Your head is sore with all the items on your checklist, the bathroom needs cleaning, the dog needs feeding, bills to be paid and plans to be made.

But an ice cream doesn’t take long to eat. Not a Mr Whippy, which let’s be honest, is the only reason you’re stepping out of your home in pyjama shorts, hair scraped back, face damp from the heat. That soft whip on a cheap cone with even cheaper strawberry sauce is the shining star in your day, the pick me up you didn’t know you’d need.

Your legs move so quick you don’t realise you’re jogging, until you realise, with horror, you’re accidentally in a race with a very small child. Slow down, don’t panic. You deserve this fucking ice cream. Let the kid go first, you’re not a psycho. And then order your double Whippy with two flakes and extra sauce with your head held high, the highest you can.

This moment is joy and abandon, and yours. Fuck the calories, and fuck this whole being-an-adult-with-responsibilities-and-bills thing. You deserve this ice cream, it doesn’t matter that it just cost you £3.50 when it used to be 99p, but things have changed, they always do.

Sit back down at your desk, Mr Whippy in hand. Feel smug and joyful, you just made the right call. I hope you enjoy this ice cream, you deserve it.

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A few years ago I saw a woman fast asleep on the tube. It was late, 11pm or so, a Saturday night in South West London. She was dressed for the occasion, for a night out in the city. Black velvet and sequins, red lipstick and winged eyeliner, both a little smudged.

Her head lolled from side to side as the carriage rocked us all to the next stop. People watched her with uncomfortable curiosity. Every so often she would startle, mumbling something to herself, eyes bleary and bloodshot, before returning to her unsettled slumber.

It didn’t take long for my gut to twist. I’d been her, a few times before. Drunk on the way home from too many drinks and bad decisions, vulnerable to my surroundings but lucky, so lucky.

Especially when I could no longer stand, vomiting red wine across the floor of a tube station while panicked strangers called to each other to call for an ambulance. Especially when I had to be carried from a club in Shanghai by people I’d known only a week, because the alcohol was too much for my 21 year old body to handle.

I watched this woman sleeping on the tube, watched the people around her do nothing. Two familiar voices resurfaced in my mind and then, the conflict began. I never want to overstep, never want to feel embarrassed because I misjudged the situation. I always want to help and usually don’t know how, too worried I’ll get it wrong.

Minutes later I crouched down in front of her, speaking words she could not seem to hear. I placed my hand on her arm as gently as possible, terrified she would startle, terrified others would think I was doing the wrong thing. When her eyes opened and found me, confusion etched in every single line on her young forehead, I spoke quickly.

Are you ok? What stop are you getting off at? Do you need any help getting home?

And while I waited for her response I felt like I was drowning. Everyone around us was watching, I could feel their eyes staring holes into flesh on my back.

Her face softened, and then she was smiling.

Southfields, she said. The same stop as mine. She reassured me she was fine, although clearly she was drunk, because all of her words tumbled together, her eyes glassy and hooded. I sat back down and felt relief. The same stop as me.

When she woke the next day, she probably didn’t remember how she got home, or our conversation. She didn’t know that as she slowly made her way up the stairs and out of the station, a little off kilter, I followed very carefully behind her. She wouldn’t have seen me keep ten steps behind her until, with overwhelming relief, I saw her reach the front door of a ground floor flat, keys in her hand, speaking aloud to herself, words tumbling together. She might not have seen me walk by, making my own way home, grateful.

Recently I heard someone say that, in life, there will be times when we need others to walk us home. Mostly, it’s the people who love and care about us who will show up to hold our hands and make sure we get back to our safe place. Sometimes it might also, literally, be strangers, people we don’t know but who know what it means to be human.

It’s been one year since my partner’s mother, Lorraine, died. One year since our friends and family held our hands with warmth and love and slowly, steadfastly, walked us back home, back to our safe place, back to a rhythm we could exist within.

My partner’s pain is not gone and our rhythm is still, sometimes, a little off kilter, but we are still surrounded by people who show us love and care and kindness, friends and family who show up in the smallest of ways: a voice note, a borrowed book, an afternoon in the garden, warm hugs, movie nights and memes. So many memes.

We each share our pain for our loved ones to carry, holding out our hands for them to hold. We keep each other going, one step at a time. We pick each other up when something shit has knocked us over, make each other laugh, and listen. We hold on, steadfast, and walk each other home.

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The house is cold again, running its brisk fingers along the skin of her cheek. The sun slips beyond the horizon leaving strokes of pink fire across the sky in its wake, painting a dreamscape along the walls of the bathroom. She is staring out the window and waiting for soft pillows of steam to cloud her eyes, letting the world drift out of focus.

Shivers snake along her spine, dancing across the goose pimpled flesh of her arms. She is desperate to feel warm and clean, and desperate to disappear underneath her thick soft cottoned duvet, wrapped around her like a home.

Hot water spills from the shower head but her limbs are rigid. She thinks of the water bill, and the tap outside that never stops dripping, knowing she can’t stand here forever while her money runs through the pipes of this rented house. Let’s get this over with, she wills.

Undressing doesn’t always feel this wrong, but today is particularly bad. Her skin feels too tight wrapped around her flesh, like an old pair of jeans pulled from the back of the wardrobe without consideration for the years of change its owner has endured.

Something rumbles beneath her ribcage, a swell of panic. The voice behind her eyes begins to scream as she removes her clothes, because it feels like removing her last line of defense. She is peeling away layers of armour that have so far kept her safe from the onslaught she knows is about to rupture, spilling itself across her skin, burning through her security like acid.

Cold air seeps through the crack in the window, raking along her back and the curve of her hips, making every single inch of herself come alive, making her feel every part of her body all at once. She could close her eyes and paint a map of herself but she knows it would be too big, the expanse too great, taking up too much space.

She steps into the hot flow of water and the relief is immediate. For a few sweet moments she is distracted, able to focus only on the way the water warms her bones. She scrubs quickly, running soap over her skin like she’s cleaning someone else’s blood from the floor. She holds her breath and counts down the seconds until she can wrap this foreign body in a towel and forget it exists, if only for the hours she sleeps. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Somewhere deep down in her messed up mental brain she knows this is not how any living body should be treated by the person it is trying to sustain. She knows, of course she knows. She knew at nineteen every night she tried to quiet the hunger in her belly with pre-prepared bowls of zero calorie saccharine jelly. She knew at twenty two doing frantic burpees in her mother’s living room only to stand in the kitchen and eat food she deemed healthy until her stomach ached for her to stop, distended and full. She knew at twenty four, she knew at twenty six, she knows now. Thirty something and still reckoning with this shit.

Her body is alive, magnificent, with a heart that beats non-stop regardless. She knows that’s as close to real life magic as she’ll ever get, but she cannot bear to look at herself in the mirror, or feel the way her body holds her.

Days like today when the sirens of the world ring loud in her ears, she just wants to shed her skin and disappear into the forest, resisting the call to be smaller, fitter, better. She hasn’t helped herself, digesting too many messages from a culture riddled with insecurity, gorging on silver platters laced with lead and laden with neatly packaged points of view. Harmless, charming, different versions of the same thing, different paths leading to the same small miserable metal cage.

She is perched on the end of her bed now, shrouded in an extra large fluffy dressing gown, distancing herself from her skin. She is trying to remember who she is underneath all these rotten layers, trying to muster up the courage to peel back each one until she finds something familiar. She wants to start fresh with new cells untouched by the poison seeping out from the palms of her hands.

She wants to wake up tomorrow without the immovable knot in her stomach, freeing herself from the expectations of others, slipping from their iron hold around her throat. She wants to wash herself clean of the brush strokes other people painted across her skin, start over. Her own mural.

She falls asleep to her own voice on repeat: maybe tomorrow will be better.

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Beside my bed sits an off kilter stack of books and at the very bottom is my journal. I keep it next to the bed and on display as a reminder. Journal, you daft cow. You know it’s good for you.

Most of the time my reminder goes unchecked, my journal remains untouched, thoughts undocumented and free to melt back into the flesh beneath my skull. I choose instead to read or scroll sheepishly, guiltily, through Instagram or Substack, absorbing the thoughts of others before the lights go out and I have to once again find sleep.

I have a memory from many years ago, me trying to journal and not knowing what to write. I start by documenting what I did that day, that week, a surface level recap of mundane things just to figure out how to make them meaningful.

At some point in my twenties, as my anxiety ramped up and my brain began to re-wire in that way brains do under severe stress, my journal became a place to vomit out the thoughts that threatened to devour me from the inside out.

Aching fingers scribbled frantically across pages, a flood of questions and feelings and inarticulate thoughts that I knew would never again be revisited. The mere act of writing them all down was the release I craved. The ease in my shoulders was immediate, my mind clear and quiet. With the knot in my brain combed through, I could finally sleep.

Thirty one years old and I’m discovering new versions of myself every now and then, meeting myself again and again through the words I scribble on the pages of my journal. Every time I put pen to paper something at my core unlatches, little fragments falling out, caught between ink and paper.

I write freely, writing to mirror the noise in my head, to see it all laid out in words. At a certain point I see what I’ve written and who I have become and how I have changed. I see a person reflected back at me, telling me new stories about myself, providing a map to uncharted waters.

It’s easy to forget who we are if we don’t know how to talk to ourselves. The world is brimming with beliefs and trends and pathways, guidebooks to being human, how-to videos on finding meaning and community, finding where we fit, and making the most of the time we get. Plugging in to the noise is fine if we know how to disconnect and come back to ourselves, how to separate what we see and read from the person we are and want to be.

We change continuously, shape-shifting like water. We are tidal, we ebb and flow, our current influenced by shifts in the world around us, and the shifts happening deep at our core. Our energy, libido, motivations, desires, goals, none of these remain static, all are easily influenced, impacted by the demands of our daily grind and the people we meet and those little moments in which we find joy.

We change with the seasons, with the years, but assume we’ll stay the same until the day we cease to exist. There have been moments in my life I’ve realised I’ve lost a friend, moments I’ve realised I was no longer in love with the person in my bed. Every time this happened I combed through memories, desperately trying to pinpoint the exact moment something changed, to find the root cause. I needed to know why and when and how, so I could avoid the same free-fall that happens when we discover we’ve changed in big ways. I needed to know how to avoid the unknown, how to keep hold of the reigns. Change is hard.

It’s easy to assume we are in control, that we can witness everything happening to us and around us, if only we look. But humans can’t see the world turn when we stare at the sky, and it turns anyway. So we keep looking up every now and then for evidence that change is happening.

Without realising, we are evolving. Slowly, little piece by little piece, a jigsaw reshuffling into an illustration that looks a little different. We are becoming a person that has learned from their mistakes, found their joy, someone who knows pain and values everything good a little more because of it. Someone hardened by the world, and softened by the people in their lives who mean something, people who love them. Someone who might need different things from life, things that align with the values they now hold. Someone who is perhaps still trying to figure out which path fits best.

Have you talked to yourself recently? Not younger you, not for a coffee. This version of you right now. Do you know them? How are they doing? What do they need from life? What do they want, and are they getting it?

I found myself again recently, in the pages of my journal. She’s curious, comfortable, in need of quiet spaces. She’s working up the courage, readying herself for new things, hoping to be ok if they fail. Mostly, she’s doing just fine, and I like her. I like this version of me.

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I’ve seen a lot on Substack recently about writers deleting Instagram and TikTok and Facebook, an exodus from platforms that can suck the life from us. Time is a big reason, much of it lost to dissociative scrolling, but I can bet comparison is another major factor. There are so many people with lives on display, lives deemed successful and rich and worthy. It’s easy to scroll through the highlights of someone else’s life only to find yours wanting.

I know this. I know this I know this I know this. Everyone knows this! Instagram is not reality. Comparing your life, your wins and fails and wants, to the show reels online will hurt you. It’ll warp your own sense of reality, your opinion of yourself. It’ll throw your perspective off kilter and leave you crying into a bowl of perfectly good ramen on a random Tuesday evening. It’ll make you feel like you’re at the back of the race while the people you know, and those you don’t, cross the finish line. It’ll feel like school Sports Day all over again.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about my life in comparison to others, and I came out the loser. Less money, less followers, less success. Feeling like a failure is exhausting, overbearing, but it doesn’t have to last long.

After three years trying to pursue a path on which I am very much still at the beginning, I have become good at picking myself out of the misery pit, where feelings of failure run rampant. I’ve learned that, most of the time, it doesn’t take much to feel better, even if the fail feels big and awful, the space between me and someone else’s achievements impossible to cross. All I have to do is keep going. Failure can feel definitive but regardless, I remind myself: feeling like you’ve failed doesn’t mean you are a failure.

This thing doesn’t need to define you. Figure out what you learned, if anything. Sometimes we learn nothing, we just remember what our priorities are, and what makes us happy.

This misery pit can just be another reminder to keep chipping away in our own lane at our dreams. As I climb out I remind myself to write and write until I have something that looks like a story that might actually mean something to other people one day. That’s the goal, that’s the summit of this climb.

I know it’s rarely as simple as just doing the thing we want to do. Creatives will know this deep in their bones. Getting to where we want to be depends on how much time we have outside of a 9-5 and a social life and an exercise routine, outside of our efforts to nurture the relationships we care about. Our success depends on time we can wrangle from the rest of our lives that is ours and ours alone. Time to write and create and chase a dream that is often without clear cut lines or a map to navigate.

Writing and publishing a novel while we earn enough money to live warm, safe lives with tiny pleasures and nice things is a top-tier Rubix cube conundrum, a multi-coloured, multi-dimensional head fuck. Some people make it look easy. Gain a following, gain a book deal, gain success. When actually, the reality is very different, the reality is never seen.

Sometimes success can only mean publishing another newsletter to our small corner of the internet, or the odd positive comment from a stranger as proof that other people can read and resonate with our words. Success can mean reading back over the words we published when we were different versions of ourselves, seeing how we’ve changed and not hating that we couldn’t get it right the first time, seeing our value then and now.

Success as a part-time volunteer multi-passionate creative (!) has to be malleable, otherwise everything can easily feel like a fail, especially if we’re watching the lives of our friends and colleagues and random people online progress and flourish.

Sometimes the only way to keep our heads on our shoulders is to ignore the world’s KPIs and figure out which bits of this whole fucking acid trip makes us feel good, because every single one can be taken as a win. Every time the words fall with ease on to the page, every time the characters in our heads become a little clearer. Every little win is a reminder to keep going, when we suddenly feel like we’ve chosen the wrong path.

We need to remember that it takes guts to share little pieces of ourselves with the world, this kind of vulnerability is terrifying. Sometimes we can’t get to where we want to be without it, we succeed every time we press publish, every time we open ourselves up a tiny bit more.

But we are also humans and if we are lucky, we feel things deeply. When others we know do things we can’t because we’re too busy trying to chase our own little dream, the only way to keep going is to know how to talk to ourselves, to take care of ourselves. This can be hard to figure out in a world that is desperate to sell us creams and serums and laser hair removal treatment to fix our insecurities. A world selling £15 self-help books promoting innovative new techniques like having friends and getting fresh air to help us feel normal.

Most of the time we know what we need to feel better, and most of the time it doesn’t take much.

We may only need someone to listen when we talk at them in that high pitched sobbing kind of way, or an emotional dump voice note to a friend who we know will reply with: be kinder to yourself, bitch.

Maybe dinner in the city with an old friend to talk about absolutely everything except the dream we are chasing, because life is actually so much bigger, remember? We are not only the person we want to be, we are ourselves right now, we are worthy. And maybe on our way back home we might only need to read over words we used to think were good, just to remind ourselves: they’re still good.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much. Sometimes there is not a lot to fix, not a lot to learn, and not a lot to do except keep going. Sometimes it’s not complicated, sometimes it’s all in our head and we just need to give ourselves the time and space to untangle our thoughts and move forward.

Creatives will know this. I hope you do, too.

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I woke up this morning to the sound of birds in conversation with one another. It is one of my most favourite things to hear.

An all consuming peacefulness crept over me. A gentle, intentional caress. The relief was immediate.

Better days ahead, the birds said. Peel back the duvet and start your day, there are good things on their way to you. Sunshine and warmth and energy that begins at your core and spreads to your limbs and makes you feel alive. Really, truly alive.

There’ll be creativity and willing, some get-up-and-go. And on and on they sang as I lay in bed, smiling and hopeful.

Spring has always felt this way for me. I really do love winter but I forget about the hibernation, the effects of a constant greyscape hanging like heavy curtains just beyond the windows. When Spring pokes a tentative toe around the corner, I begin to feel more awake. My senses twitch and wriggle, testing the waters, coming alive once more.

Suddenly I want to spend more time in my body and in the world around me, standing outside in the fresh morning air with a mug of tea in hand, while sunlight kisses my face, or laying in my warm, soft bed, listening to the birds sing.

Spring is for existing, for paying attention to the world as it wakes, for really feeling what it is to be alive, to feel the changes in our bodies and minds as we come out of hibernation together.

This is my Spring of existence. Standing in the kitchen and baking Miso Pecan Chocolate Chip cookies while the room catches that golden early evening sun. Waking up after the sun has risen, curling up on the sofa without my phone and instead with a coffee and my dog for half an hour before starting work, listening to the bustle of the school run on the street outside.

Sipping wine and playing chess at the dining room table while the skies outside darken, realising we got a little bit more of the day today. Going on long ambling walks in woodlands and fields where things are starting to bloom, or along coastlines awash with sunshine.

Every year I tell myself winter will be productive, there’s nothing much to do except stay inside and write. Every year I expect the same and every year and I fail, because I forget about my season of rest, my annual and automatic tendency to become insular, to turn my dwindling energy inward. I spend a lot of time thinking, every thought is rinsed and repeated. By the time Spring rolls around I am a tangled mess of thoughts, in need of a reawakening.

Trusting that I have absorbed what I needed from my winter of rest, when Spring arrives I do my best to step out of my mind and into a world that is opening up once more. The birds and the buds and the softening breeze, I want to feel it all so keenly. I want to absorb mother nature’s wakefulness, her determination to rise once more despite it all. I want to do the same.

And I believe we can, we can get up and keep going despite the horrors unfolding minute by minute across the world. We can feel a sense of hope, if only during the moments we look through our windows to see the season turning, to see nature doing her magical resilient thing. The world may feel like it’s on fire and closer than ever to some kind of end, but sometimes we can find evidence to the contrary, if only in the conversations being had by the birds outside our windows, as we lay in our warm, soft beds.

Happy Spring, happy St David’s Day, happy daffodil season. Happy reawakening to you, lovely human.

listen, to feel alive

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Life lately feels relentless. My head is brimming, my muscles ache. I have stumbled inelegantly into the dawn of another cold month, January’s jagged teeth marks freshly splayed across my back.

The overwhelm is real.

Sundays keep finding me in bed, unwilling, dreading the week ahead. My nine to five is not overly demanding, but every job has its challenges, and as my health condition kicks up a fuss and my capacity to juggle life diminishes, so too does my resilience.

Suddenly the thought of planning meals, doing laundry, walking the dog, recording podcasts, even making plans to see friends, all feels too much. A game of Tetris I cannot play.

I’ve been thinking about how we muddle through times like these. Most of us have been here, stuck in the mud but still spinning plates that are full and overflowing, cursing ourselves any time something rolls off.

“What can we take off your plate?” Luke asks, while we sit in the car after a walk in the woods. “I don’t know,” I reply. My ability to problem solve whittled to nothing.

When life feels too much, at first I panic, and then I cry, and then I try to remind myself of the things I can control. Plans can be changed, deadlines moved, meals bought already cooked and frozen.

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The expectations I set for myself, like the amount I need to exercise, or the number of words I write on a page, become flexible. I reach for the bar I’ve bolted to my life, and use all my strength and compassion to pull it down to where I am, not where I think I should be.

I take my mother’s advice to do only one thing at a time. Feed the dog, make a coffee, start work. Make lunch, go for a walk, get back to work. Close the laptop, feed the dog, and then ask: what do you need? Movement or stillness, or a cuddle? I try to pay attention, tune into my senses, give myself space and a long leash to figure it out.

Recently, one Sunday, I felt like a weathered old trunk freshly battered by Storm Eowyn. I let myself cry, I went for a swim, and then I bought myself a candlestick. I ran a hot bath and soaked my aching body, watching the candle’s light flicker and dance across the bubbles on the surface of the water.

For almost an hour I just let myself exist, exactly as I was, alive and breathing. My nervous system settled, my body found a new, slower rhythm. Now I think my candlestick is kind of magic, and that every person deserves one, and an hour to themselves now and then to just be.

It’s surprising what little things edge us along despite the drudgery. Things that are small but hopeful, things that are nice and vital.

Things we all deserve.

a collection of lovely little things

eat, for pleasure

Good quality salted butter spread thickly across fresh sourdough. A steaming bowl of porridge with a drizzle of really good honey. And if there is energy left at the end of the day, a double batch of Meera Sodha’s drunken noodles will leave our future selves thankful and satiated, and content.

<3

Leftover Christmas chocolates or perhaps the shortbread biscuits that were destined for the neighbours, but somehow found themselves dipped gently into a fat mug of tea, while our limbs rest gently underneath a crocheted blanket on the sofa.

drink, for pleasure

a glass of French red, from a bottle gifted by a good friend, consumed heartily in the bath while bathed in magic candlelight and pretending to be Jane Austen, minus the audiobook ringing softly through the air.

a bottle of juicy Italian red, poured into three big bottomed wine glasses, shared with good friends sat around the kitchen counter eating pizza and sharing stories of Christmas, and new cars, and new goals for the year.

<3

a steaming mug of hot chocolate made using proper dark chocolate and a glug of Amarula, topped with whipped cream, stolen for a few slurps by a loved one.

watch, without distraction

Your Fat Friend, a documentary now on BBC iPlayer about Aubrey Gordon and anti-fatness, by Jeanie Finlay. If I ever one day meet Aubrey I will sob wholeheartedly until my eyes fall out.

read, for hope

Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers, 150 pages (4 hours) of joy, adventure, curiosity and hope. It is a love letter to the wild, to what might be possible in a world that doesn’t prioritise capitalism. A world where devices are designed to last, and robots are sentient and gentle, and humans exist in peace. Here is a world where being non-binary is a non-issue, something that just is, and where questions can be asked with open hearts and curious minds.

<3

Jeanette Winterson’s newsletter, because Jeanette Winterson is a comfort, so seeing her words in real time, even her reflections on a broken world, feels like hope. Her words feel like a generous hug, like stepping into a warm and well lit house after a cold, dark walk.

Jeanette Winterson: Mind Over Matter

I GUESS IT'S TIME TO COME BACK

I had thought I was done with Substack - not because it isn’t a great platform. It is…

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2 years ago · 1361 likes · 120 comments · jeanette winterson

Jeanette says:

“If we can’t keep our imagination alive we will die. Imagination sees past the hard boundary and into a different place. Imagination says why not? Imagination doesn’t destroy. Imagination creates.”

move, to feel good

Carrying my tender bones down the stairs after work on a Monday, wearily rolling out a mat on the living room floor, curtains closed and coated in the soft glow of the floor lamp. Yoga with Adrienne immediately settles my restless, tired mind. Yoga for lymphatic flow, she says, and my bones move gently, muscles stretching, tension easing. I lie on the floor for a long time afterwards, grateful, wishing for the weekend already.

listen, to feel alive

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I have never been a competitive person. As a kid I joined a swimming club and cried the first time I had to compete. Maybe it was the thought of losing in front of others that felt too daunting for little me, or maybe the race just seemed too stressful. Not as fun as just swimming.

Life feels a lot like that now, like I’m on the sidelines of a swim race, listening to eager parents and coaches shout and cheer the swimmers on, wandering whether anyone in the race is having fun. I sit on the sidelines with my book and my coffee and think, I’m happy right here.

I spent most of my twenties feeling like I was in a race that I was losing, and this time last year as I approached thirty I spent a lot of time feeling like a non-starter. Nineteen chapters of a novel in the bin, a fresh job rejection email in my inbox, and tears all over my face as I wandered aimlessly around my rented flat. Friends were buying houses and getting engaged and having babies, and all I wanted was to be a fully fledged writer.

I was so desperate to have more.

More money, more success, more acknowledgment for all the hours I’d spent in my free time craned over my laptop spilling words on a page. More direction, more answers. How do I get there? How do I become a published author? A paid writer?

I couldn’t see past the miles of distance that hung between me and my perceived finish line. The failure felt suffocating.

Months later we moved to a house in Surrey at the same time that my partner’s mum Lorraine lay unconscious in a hospital bed in Cambridge. Memories of that time are splintered and fused incoherently, like a broken bone that hasn’t set properly.

I remember long snaking hospital corridors and a symphony of machine noise at Lorraine’s bedside. I remember the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, and kind eyed nurses in green scrubs. I remember sitting on the floor of the flat we were leaving, surrounded by belongings yet to be packed, defeated.

On the last day of the move, I picked up my partner from the train station in the evening. Everything we owned was in the house we’d just moved to. I’d spent the past hour making our bed and rearranging furniture and trying to make what I could look like home. I was desperate to offer him comfort and some small sense of reassurance. We’d spent so long talking about and planning to leave London before finding a place we loved. This day was supposed to be the beginning of something new and wonderful.

But the man I love had spent his day with his brother and father discussing organ donation with doctors. Signing forms and nodding along when they itemised his mother’s body into a harrowing list of giveaways. She was 59.

He got into the car in the dark. We drove to our new home in silence. I showed him around eagerly, wanting so much just to take his pain away, if only for a minute. Look my love, our new home.

His smile was heavy.

In that moment I remembered what he’d told me a few nights before, the same night he realised his mother may never wake up.

No amount of money or success or likes on social media would have taken his pain away in that moment. Even if the house we now lived in was one we owned, his mother would still be in hospital, and the doctors would still be asking him to sign forms to donate her organs (which he did because organ donation is incredible).

Now I realise this was the beginning of something different for me, an underlying shift in the way I calculate my life and all its failures and successes. The finish line dissolved, the goal posts moved, and I realised I already had everything I needed.

Like the kind of love that keeps you safe and warm and grounded, a love that listens and learns and reaffirms. Love that is complicated and honest and quietly resolute.

And friends that hold me up and bring me joy and make me laugh until my ribs hurt. Friends that understand we must always try to meet each other exactly where we are.

And a mother who makes me rusks. And a father who says he’s proud. And aunts who live thousands of miles away but still like to check in and cheer me on and make me smile.

Regardless of the fact we can’t afford to buy a house, we have enough money not to worry about how we’ll pay the bills. We have slow and easy routines centred on working from home. We live with a dog we adore. We walk freely in the countryside and watch her chase squirrels and roll in shit with glee, and regardless we think, this is good. This is really fucking good.

We recline ourselves into the sofa on Saturday mornings while sunshine falls through the window, letting our nervous systems hum gently. We tamp down freshly ground coffee beans and breathe in the rich aroma, staring out the kitchen window at the evergreen that towers over us.

As I write this, my body is aching and my bank balance is low but I’m okay, I don’t feel desperate for more. I feel like everything I need is here, in between soft sheets and half chewed dog toys, or else just a phone call away.

And I keep thinking, maybe life doesn’t need to be more than this for now, or for a long while. Despite what the world screams at me daily, buying more and doing more and reaching for more - all I need is this. To love and be loved, and be content.

Just my partner and my dog and a hot chocolate, and phone calls with my parents, and some dinner with friends. Sporadic WhatsApp messages from people I love who live in other places. Good TV on weekday evenings and swim dates on Sunday mornings. Games nights and the odd glass of good wine. Podcast chats, Substack posts, and a really good book.

I suppose all I’m trying to say is that I’m grateful for this tiny little life of mine, and everyone who exists within it. I’m grateful to be alive and writing these words, and grateful for the people who choose to read them.

Big hugs and love

Jess

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Be warned: this post includes spoilers for The Traitors UK and a few sneaky swears.

January in the UK is long and hazy. Our minds slowly defrost after the Christmas shutdown, and time stretches unapologetically. The sky hangs pale and soft at the edges, a sheet of grey that makes the world feel small and lifeless.

So we hunker down. We scramble to find our moments of joy, to counter the sub zero temperatures that linger outside wet, single glazed windows. Once we find those joys, we hold on to them fiercely.

After a full week back at work, I can confirm that everyone is watching the Traitors. Except my mother, who keeps sending me vomit emojis whenever I mention the show. It’s a joy like no other - riddled with big and complicated feelings.

It’s a show that has become something of a January tradition. In between the contestant’s scream crying and Claudia’s iconic fringe, we see snippets of the Scottish highlands’ exceptional summer beauty. We are reminded that there is hope. Summer will come! We won’t always have to spend a tenner each day just to keep the house habitable!

My partner is always the first one to recommend that we watch it, because he remembers the hilarity of the seasons before, but he forgets his stonking morals. So he’s always the first one to lose his rag when the liars start to lie.

“Imagine being that good at lying!” he says, exasperated, gesticulating wildly in the kitchen. Yes my love, I nod emphatically, and I am grateful this man exists.

Not because he is the perfect man who never skews the truth, but because he’s usually incredibly bad at it (as am I with him). After seven long and lovely (and complex and Covid-riddled) years together, we read each other easily. We don’t place the other on a pedestal, we leave space for imperfection and friction. We talk about things, everything. We know the truth might sometimes feel uncomfortable, and we share it anyway, with words of love and affirmation.

This relationship we’ve built has become a home: warm, welcoming and familiar (and yes, sometimes a mess). A place of comfort and contentment, where I can shelter from all the insufferable negging losers in the world, and where my intuition remains concrete.

You see? Big feelings.

The Traitors fucks with intuition. That twist of a gut when something feels off - our sixth sense for survival. Intuition helps us navigate our relationships with others, giving us the power to spot red flags when we come across them. It’s up to us to then decide what to do with that inkling, that uncomfortable itch deep down in our bones.

Our dear season three Faithfuls don’t know their arse from their elbow, they cannot see the red flags because their intuition is muddied. They are surrounded by people declaring they are honest, knowing full well some among them are not.

This is just one of many reasons this show we love is so toxic, not least because these people are all chasing a pot of a cash that may be the only reason they can afford to own a home. You could even argue that making players attend their own funeral, be buried alive or rank which among them is the most forgettable are all pretty dastardly entertainment tactics.

But messing with a person’s intuition, their innate ability to sense that something isn’t right, might leave them with some lasting trust issues. Who could forget season two’s Molly, who fell into the hands of boy-next-door Harry, right up until the very last moment, wearing her whole heart on her sleeve just so Harry could squash it with his cheeky grin intact, scurrying away with the money.

I remember feeling so upset on Molly’s behalf, because I’ve been the girl whose intuition got lost along the way. I’ve met men like Harry, I’ve known what it is to feel humiliated and heartbroken all at the very same time. Feeling trapped with feelings for someone who, as it turns out, never really had my back.

So this show reminds us that sometimes the bad ones win. Urgh. Why do we watch it?

At its very twisted core, The Traitors sends Faithfuls into a destructive (and let’s be honest, funny as fuck) spiral over what can only be described as bog standard human behaviour.

If you can’t tie a rope properly while under intense pressure, or maintain the exact inflection in your voice for the entirety of the game, then according to the Faithfuls, you’re probably a Traitor. Perhaps you’re a nice guy, or worse, a doctor, and then you’re definitely a lying sunnofabish who would be really good at murdering people.

And when everyone’s sat at the round table, declaring their votes, they’ll tell you it’s just because you’ve got a shit personality, but it’s nothing personal. It’s only because all the evidence (of which is there is none) points to you and your weird lying face. But we love you!

This show is truly bananas, but it makes us laugh. It speaks to the part of us that wants good to triumph over evil, and good god, I hope the Faithfuls win this year. Despite Charlotte’s crap Welsh accent. Linda surely cannot be that useless the whole time and still be allowed to win.

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Despite promising myself that nothing had to change in this new month of this new year, that resolutions were too much, that rocking the boat was off limits, I find myself seeking change. Little shifts in my routine to bolster my energy levels, so January can feel good, not just long.

For a while, I’ve wanted to spend less time scrolling mindlessly. I never feel better for it, only tired, inferior or overwhelmed with useless information. I love seeing updates from friends, or being sent memes that speak to the ridiculousness of life as an adult. But it’s hard to pick and choose. Jumping onto Instagram to engage meaningfully with friends can easily turn into 30 minutes of rot.

Lately I’ve been swapping the time I would usually spend scrolling, with time on Substack reading essays by fellow writers. Long form content has long been shunned in favour of short snippets of this and that, but it makes me feel like I’m drowning, unable to focus on one thing or remember anything at all.

Reading one article in the morning while I drink my coffee gives my brain one thing to chew on, draw inspiration from, disagree with or share with others, until I start work, open my emails and face the inevitable onslaught of multitasking. I’m hoping that, by giving my brain less things to digest before the day even begins, I can preserve even the thinnest tendrils of energy, allowing myself a chance to get to the end of the day without feeling exhausted or overwhelmed.

As someone with Fibromyalgia, I am incredibly susceptible to being perpetually tired and forgetful. If this small change to my daily routine can help just a little bit, that will feel like a win. And achieving a win in January, the month most susceptible to misery? That will feel like an even bigger win.

One of the articles that has stuck with me the most so far is How to Take Your Nights Back by Andrew Perlot, who writes about opening a void in the evenings:

“No T.V., computers, or most other electronic devices. Phones are off or in airplane mode. No podcasts. No screens except monochrome E-ink reading devices without internet connections.”

Yikes. Reading about this approach made my stomach wobble. In January especially, in a country like the UK, where night begins not long after 4pm and everyone seems to be waiting for the sunshine to return in the spring, to remove the things we hold on to for joy and sanity five nights a week, really feels like poking the bear. The bear, in this case, being depression.

After my initial disgust, I began to ponder. Instead of TV or phones, Andrew recommends reading books or cooking dinner or exercise. Journaling, cleaning or high-quality (in person) socialising. Drawing, painting, or meditating. The void is supposed to be boring and uncomfortable at first, so that we are forced to figure out how to fill that time consciously.

I both love and hate this. For those of us who suffer with depression or seasonal affective disorder, or coping with grief or any of the other multitude of human afflictions, sometimes the only things we can hold on to are those we get from our phones.

Whether it’s podcasts, audiobooks, or comedy, or WhatsApp messages from friends about nothing in particular, because just knowing someone is on the other end of the phone for you is a comfort.

But as I look for ways to cultivate energy and creativity, to feel less overwhelmed on a regular basis, opening a void in the evenings now and then might be exactly what I need. Doing a physical activity, like building LEGO or reading a cookbook or, as I have begun, collating recipes from magazines into a binder, might allow me to feel much more present, without just staring down the barrel of those raw, unfiltered feelings that inevitably creep out when there are no distractions.

Even without sticking to the rules of the void as suggested by Andrew, creating more spaces to do something other than stare half-arsed at reams of useless information on our phones, while the TV plays something we are only kind of watching, should surely be a good thing?

Dipping a toe into the void might be consciously focusing on just one thing, whether listening to an audiobook while soaking in the bath, or giving a film or TV show your full focus. Perhaps then we can migrate to evenings listening to the radio while we paint or crochet or journal, or an hour wrapped up warm on the sofa reading a really good book.

And when summer rolls in with her warm hugs and long evenings, with her birdsong and bountiful offerings of vitamin D, maybe then we can switch off our electronics and sit outside after work, watching food cook on the barbecue, chatting to family or friends or the dog, or reading a really good book.

Happy January, dear friends. I hope yours treats you well.

Jess

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Star is having none of it. As stubborn as she is adorable, it quickly becomes clear that today will not be one of those days where my patient cajoling gets her going. Today will not be an exercise in building this rescue dog’s confidence. Today will be a day where we walk back to the car, go home and rest.

I’ve never been a very patient person. I hate being late, I hate waiting around, I hate wasting time. I want to tick things off my list and get to where I need to be in good time. I want to finish the day feeling productive and useful.

Resting never feels productive. Very rarely am I able to actively rest, to calm my mind while I calm my body. I’m usually left fidgety, reaching for my phone to order groceries or answer messages or at the very least, scroll.

Resting seems to be one of the most challenging skills to master as an adult. Hustle culture tells us to optimise our time so we can get more things done in a day. We’re all so goddamn busy all the time. Nothing is slow, and weekends whizz by so quickly, it’s a wonder we ever remember what happened along the way (I usually do not).

As this year draws to an end, I like many others are musing on goals and resolutions, and things I hope for next year. But honestly, setting goals or making plans for the year ahead scares me, because they’re all based on the assumption that we won’t be dealt an absolute clanger.

And I don’t want to get it wrong again. This time last year we were hopeful and determined, readying ourselves for positive change. In the end, we got grief and chaos and rage. We were dealt a series of events that demanded all of our energy, leaving nothing leftover.

So as I tentatively look ahead to 2025, I am keeping my fingers crossed for a year filled to the brim with peace and joy and proper rest. I really want this next year to be gentle, a year to slow down instead of pushing myself, a year to take stock of every single wonderful thing (and person and dog) in my life.

I feel like I need a year to just revel in it, to absorb the loveliness of the home and the friends and the memories we’ve made, the hobbies we’ve cultivated, the life we have been gifted. Because despite all of the very bad stuff that happened in 2024, there were also so many moments of joy. And it’s precisely because of the joy and the grief, that Luke and I are entering 2025 with quiet little steps, knowing only that we want to see more of the people we love, spend time with our dog, and make space for the things that make us happy.

For Luke, it’s triathlons (and PlayStation and Pokémon). For me, it’s writing and reading and creating fun things. For both of us, it’s long woodland walks, games nights with friends and spending more time with our families.

So my goals are not really goals, more like a list of requests that I’m sending out into the universe. I want to make space for creativity, curiosity and joy. I want to allow time for new things, and very familiar things. I want to show up for myself and my friends, and be able to allow myself what I need, as much as possible.

I want to slow down, breathe deep, and watch the birds fuck around outside the window. I want to stare at the sky while it’s beauty shapeshifts. I want to take my time stretching stiff muscles in the gym, or pouring frothy milk into my coffee, or walking down the middle aisle in Lidl.

I want to mooch and wander, and stop rushing everywhere. I want to no longer be a person with a London (read: insanely fast) walk. I want to make time to buy croissants for breakfast on my way into the office. I want to amble around, without a plan, and see where I end up.

As I said in a recent newsletter, I am not typically a goal-oriented person, and I feel this very keenly now. I don’t want to give myself deadlines or added pressure, what’s the point? I’ll write my book eventually, when I have the energy and the time. Perhaps that will be this year, I’ll certainly try. In the meantime, I’ll read books and drink wine and walk my lovely, skittish dog (at least, I’ll try).

See you soon, 2025.

Jess

Every year, without a doubt, I will have a moment or two where I become panicked. Am I having enough fun? Am I making the most of Christmas? Should we do more? I will always reach a point where I feel totally, completely overwhelmed, and I’ll forget every single one of the things I had wanted and planned to do.

Earlier this week as I lay in bed feeling exhausted, I thought about the moments so far this month where I have felt the most relaxed, the most Christmassy. I was listening to one of my favourite audiobooks (mentioned below) and thinking, blimey, it’s not fucking rocket science, is it?

So I wrote myself a note. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, perhaps there is some space in the day where nothing is happening, no plans have been made, and you want to fill it with something worthy. Perhaps you’re worried about the enjoyment of others, or whether you’re making the most of this precious time on leave.

If this is the case, here are some lovely little things I’ve enjoyed and held on to during the yuletide season. Perhaps you can slot one or some of them into your days (totally depending on who is in your house and how much of your attention they want).

If you enjoy listening to audiobooks

For the past few years, around this time, I’ve listened to Jeanette Winterson’s Christmas Days, a collection of 12 short festive stories, some ghostly, some fun, all thought provoking and lovely.

Intertwined among the stories are Jeanette’s personal anecdotes and a series of holiday recipes. One of my favourites is her (not really a) recipe for smoked salmon and champagne on Christmas eve. With this, Jeanette reminds us that having our own rituals - especially at Christmas, and especially those that allow us to take a small chunk of time to ourselves - is so very, very important.

So maybe run yourself a hot bath, light a few candles, pour a glass of wine. Let Jeanette’s lovely northern accent soothe you. Don’t. Fall. Asleep.

If you enjoy listening to podcasts

I’m grateful for many things in life, and being a part of the Femme On podcast collective is a big chunky one. I genuinely think all episodes are worth a listen, depending on what makes you tick. Alyson chats about specific scenes from film, Tonya about activism, Ada about poetry.

For something festive, producer Ria and I have been chatting about Christmas films for Femme on Film, Ria’s series that kicked off the collective. So far we’ve discussed Hot Frosty (with weird snowman nipples and an excellent cast) and The Merry Gentlemen (with Chad Michael Murray, topless). Both on Netflix, both fun and flawed and easy.

My most encouraged and selfish recommendation however, is for the first two episodes of the new era of Literature for Life - my own little podcast on the collective. After the summer from hell and suffering a complete lack of energy, I considered closing my corner of the collective. And then my good friend Brigitte sent me a recommendation for a book (mentioned below) - “in case you need some escapism,” she said.

After devouring the (audio) book, I realised all I wanted to do was chat about books I love with friends I love, and have a laugh. So Brigitte, Ria and I have been howling with laughter while we discuss fantasy favourites. So far we’ve discussed Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas. In January we’ll release an episode about Iron Flame (Fourth Wing’s sequel) before the release of Onyx Storm, the third in the series.

And after that? More fantasy, more fun. And better sound quality from me, I promise.

If you fancy watching something on the telly

For many years now, my mother and I have watched The Santa Clause together, usually on Christmas Eve just after we have finished wrapping our presents and placing them artfully underneath the Christmas tree. We sink into the sofa, drink in hand, sweet wrappers in our pockets. Despite Tim Allen being, well, Tim Allen, this movie always manages to wrap me up in a soft, warm nostalgic hug.

If this isn’t for you, please watch Klaus (Netflix). It’s so very, very lovely. Or Last Holiday with Queen Latifah, need I say more?

Christmas TV specials also always get me going. The Vicar of Dibley sits at the top of my list, mostly because Dawn French is wonderful and I am a sucker for a little village in the countryside. Luke loves Only Fools and Horses. And of course, Gavin and Stacey.

If you fancy a drink

I love making and drinking cocktails. I love the glassware and the colours and the fancifulness of it all. Instagram knows this and floods my feed with reel after reel of beautifully crafted, totally enticing cocktail recipes, all in gorgeous glassware.

If you are anything like me (easily overwhelmed) please ignore the gram and the urge to make them all. Pick one cocktail you know you’ll like. Something that doesn’t ask you to infuse anything, and doesn’t require a trip to the shops to buy glassware you cannot store properly after the holidays.

Our Christmas cocktail is the Disaronno Sour. Five ingredients plus a glacé cherry if we’re feeling really charmed. If you shake it first without the ice, and then with the ice, you’ll get a nice pillowy foamy top that will make you feel like Marilyn Monroe.

If you have the energy

My mother was an especially wonderful mother at Christmas when I was young. Every year we made a gingerbread house, and I would take the house to primary school and parade it around other classes like a Queen with her new corgi. My classmates and I would then break it apart and devour it quickly, welcoming the sugar rush with glee.

When I see pictures of gingerbread houses on Pinterest, they all look so classy. Elegantly piped icing, delicately dusted sugar on perfectly structured rooftops. And then I sit down to decorate the gingerbread biscuits I’ve baked as a fully fledged adult, and total childlike chaos ensues.

Concave roofs, wonky walls and no biscuit untouched by an adorning sweet thing. Every single bit of the house is covered with sweets. There are soft pillowy ones and long stringy ones and round chocolate ones. There are buttons and smarties and skittles. There is joy and fun and mess. So much mess. It’s well worth it, in my opinion.

If you need something totally unrelated to Christmas

The holidays are hard for a lot of us. Sometimes you need to switch off from the festivities and remind yourself of the worlds that can exist outside of the tinsel and the twinkly music.

As you’ll have guessed, fantasy books are my thing at the moment. Fourth Wing is at the top, mostly for the raunchy bits and the twists and turns. One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig is also enjoyable, with magic cards and an insidious mind monster and a handsome, crooked nosed MMC (main male character). Also The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent is supposed to be great, according to friends in the know.

If fantasy isn’t your thing, read The Book Thief by Markus Zusack (for a soul cleansing cry) or Still Life by Sarah Winman (for sunshine and Italian joy).

If you’re a Jane Austen fan, read Welcome to Mansfield, a modern retelling of Mansfield Park from the talented A.R. Farina. Fellow Femme On host Ada McCartney offers the perfect voice(s) for the audio book version.

If you need to get out of the house

If you’re able, walk. Or drive. Somewhere a little quiet, like a forest or a quiet neighbourhood with enough Christmas lights strung up on the houses to make you smile. Breathe in fresh air, take a moment for yourself. Remember, this time is yours too.

December is my favourite month. Despite the cold and rain, there are fairy lights and joyful festive tunes and mince pies. Lebkuchen! Stupid jumpers! The Holiday and Jude Law’s lovely face! It always feels magical and uplifting. It always feels like home.

This year, Christmas was going to be the first time Luke’s mum met my mum. We had it planned since last year, when Sammy the dog was too old to travel, and Pembrokeshire was too far away for anyone else to visit. This year was going to be the year.

When Lorraine was in the hospital and we knew she wouldn’t wake up, I thought about our plans for Christmas. My heart felt battered, for Lorraine and for Luke. So I tucked it away, and now Christmas is here.

When anyone asks me about our plans for Christmas, I tell them we are doing as much as we can to make space for rest. I spoke with a good friend who lost her mum in 2023, and her advice for the first Christmas without the person we love: keep things simple. One meat, one starch, lots of rest. So that’s what we’re planning for - an easy, and incredibly not easy day. A day where emotions are welcomed, the pressure is off, the food is good. Perhaps the TV is always on, something comforting and familiar. The house is warm, the hugs are generous, and Star is demanding belly rubs.

In between the planning and present wrapping, I can’t help but consider the plans I was making for 2024 this time last year. This was the year for change - a move closer to the countryside for more space, and a dog. This was going to be the year that I made waves with my writing, possibly even finished my novel. I wanted to end this year feeling closer to the dream that’s settled down and taken root in my mind, the dream that drives me forward and keeps me up at night. The dream of being an author.

As it stands now, I’ll be finishing the year with nineteen chapters of a story I’ll probably never revisit again, a couple of unfinished scenes for something new, a handful of newsletters and a fully formed idea locked up tightly in my mind, itching to get out.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently feeling very deflated about this. I keep writing newsletters or scenes for the new story and then grading them bad, unworthy of publication (despite the very small nature of this newsletter as it currently stands). I’ve felt utterly directionless and unable to recognise or find my voice on the page.

It’s fascinating and frustrating that, instead of recognising the incredibly hard year we’ve had - losing a childhood pet, watching the person I love lose his mother, plus some other fucked up stuff - my brain still thinks, hey - you’ve not hit your goal this year.

I’ve never been a goal-oriented person, perhaps this is why. I don’t allow myself much grace when things go awry. Failure feels so uncomfortable, so scary, so whenever I feel like I’m failing, it’s hard to keep going, to keep showing up for the thing I want to do. I don’t want to embarrass myself by trying again and again for something that may never happen.

I know achieving what we want in life often takes a butt tonne of graft. We constantly see people online who have crossed the finish line, they’ve made it. How easy! We don’t see the tears and tantrums along the way. We don’t see the rejection letters, the unfinished drafts. We don’t see the failures.

And while I know I must keep showing up for this thing I love, I also believe that we only get one life. 4,000 weeks of being alive and feeling the sunshine or rain or icy wind on our face. 4,000 weeks to try our best, survive, and find joy. 4,000 weeks to love and be loved.

So there is a balance to it all, isn’t there? We must show up and try, and we must know when to pause, rest and reflect. We must know when to have fun and make space for joy, because it’s the joy and the love and the laughs that will pull us through some of the worst times of our lives.

Next year I hope to spend more time writing about joy for this little, lovely newsletter. I started Bang Average because I wanted to remind myself and others that success is not everything. That despite what social media and self-help books and the whole fucking world tells us, the speed at which we reach the top, or even reaching the top in the first place, does not matter.

We don’t need to have some massive tidal impact on the world in order to be worthy. We don’t need to keep trying to prove to others that we are getting life right. We don’t even need to have a purpose, as writer Kate Forster so eloquently put it. We just need to be alive, and not a dick, and as content as we possibly can be. Anything else is surely a bonus.

So here’s hoping for a restful Christmas full of love. I hope yours is too.

Jess

“You’re more of an old soul than me.” Luke says to me as we sit in a hot tub overlooking the deep, green valley running straight out in front of us. The hills are shrouded in thick fog that tickles my face. There are a few cottages dotted around, one or two farms, some sheep nibbling at the grass. There is silence, except for the odd bird calling out to its pal. 

I had just announced that, actually, I really think I could live in a place like this. A place far away from anything except grazing livestock and rolling hills and the shiver of trees in the wind. A place with fresh air in abundance and a total lack of phone signal. 

Maybe it sounds mad to those who know me. Maybe it sounds mad to those who don’t. Maybe it’s because I am, like most of us, chronically overwhelmed and overstimulated by modern life - the constant urge to scroll, to buy, to look a certain way. The urge to do more and be better and live well, whatever that means. Maybe if I lived here and only owned a landline I’d feel better? That kind of feels like a dream to me right now. 

It’s a wonder then, that later that same evening I spent a small chunk of time during our little getaway scrolling through random things on Instagram, while Luke did the same. Despite our earlier conversation, despite knowing how crappy it can leave us feeling. There are many good things on social media, I am not here to debate its pros and cons. I just want to be able to watch the TV without feeling like I need to scroll, without that need for distraction. 

Those few days tucked away in the Welsh valleys and mountains were the reset I knew I needed. When all I want to do is sit on the sofa and scroll, it is usually a sign for me that things are feeling hard. Not for any specific reason, just life. You know. 

Two nights at the foot of Yr Wyddfa (Mount Snowdon) drinking wine by a wood burning stove, one day hiking the mountain in the energising autumn sunshine. Two long drives through outstanding autumnal scenery, all mountains and hills and forests and lakes and streams and Wales. I bloody love this country. 

Moments of joy, of Luke saying “Nice trip?” when I miss a step coming down the mountain. Me doing the same to him. Easy silence. Delicious food. And one very handsome Bengal cat looking for a cuddle and a stretch by the fire. 

The only problem? Phone signal. Every moment since getting to Llanberis, even on the summit of the mountain 1,085 metres into the sky, we had signal. Crystal clear and itching to be used. We promised to unplug because we thought we would have to. We couldn’t unplug because we didn’t need to; a sick and very accessible joke, I suppose. 

On the third day, we’re in a dolled up shepherds hut in Llanbad-something-something, and I’m wondering how to convince Luke to upsticks to the glorious butt end of absolutely nowhere, preferably tucked between mountains smack bang in the middle of Wales. To escape from my own bad habits, the constant pull of social media, and the endless break in concentration, replying to messages and scanning the internet for things I can buy with money I don’t have. 

And it’s the messages I can never seem to get right. I’m actually outraged that in modern day society I am expected to maintain a multitude of online, ongoing conversations all at the same time. When I finally do get around to responding to a friend, if they then respond immediately, my sense of achievement shrivels to nothing. The cycle begins again. Message, wait, reply. And on and on until I die? Blimey. 

I love my friends, I really really do. They keep me grounded and standing, they make my life wonderful. And thankfully my friends all know I’m crap at responding to their Facebook messages and Whatsapps. Hopefully they know too, that if they were to ring or ask me for help, I would show up (virtually) in a heartbeat (later in person).

But I am also a person who really wants to be a good friend, whatever that means. I don’t want to be crap at replying, but I am. All the time. So if I move to the mountains, chuck my iPhone in a river and live in a cottage with a landline, I won’t feel guilty all the time for all the unread messages. I won’t feel like a crap friend. 

I’ll just do what my Grandma did, write letters to friends on beautifully decorated paper, something that shows effort and allows for a much longer response rate. I’ll sit in my cottage by my wood burning stove (both bought with my magical pretend money that I have magically saved up), sipping tea and writing letters and relishing the realness of it all.

Yes, that sounds excellent. I’ll do that. 

Star is a collie retriever cross, we think. It’s hard to know, because she was rescued from Spain by Luke’s wonderful mum, Lorraine. And then Lorraine died suddenly in June, which is one of the very big things I don’t quite know how to write about yet. 

When Luke asked me if we could bring Star home with us, my answer was instant. I had been waiting, as patiently as I could manage, to find a dog to love as part of my adult life, and we had just moved into a detached, three bedroom house with a big, grassy garden. So I guess I was primed and ready to love Star as much as she needed, given her favourite human in the whole world had just died. 

Star is long haired, the colour of milky froth on a perfectly made cappuccino. The hair under her ears falls in tiny ringlets, the hair around her face and chubby neck is softer than cashmere. Her tail is a big, bushy feather duster, and her smile is toothy and dopamine-inducing. According to her passport, she’s around six years old. And when we took her to the vets, and he told us she had wonderful teeth, I stupidly felt proud.

Every morning when I say hello to Star, she immediately rolls on her back, closes her eyes, and smiles her big toothy smile while I rub her belly. It’s the best part of my day. She keeps me company while I work, barking when the post arrives, running away from our neighbour’s cat when it visits our garden. When it’s time for a walk, she runs circles around my legs until I manage to hook her lead on, and off we go. 

The joy she brings us is so incredibly, heartbreakingly bittersweet. Her endless affection feels like a balm; a balm we need but never wanted. We love her. We wish Lorraine was alive to love her too. 

One day last week, with Star snoozing at my feet, I decided to bake. I hadn’t done so since the Spring, since before Lorraine died. Baking has always been a pleasure for me, time to myself to create something joyful and delicious from scratch. So I whipped out my bowls and utensils and flour. There was jam and an unopened packet of hazelnuts to use, no need to check the use by date I told myself. There were lemons and oats and sugar, and a loose recipe in my head. 

I proceeded to make the worst jammy squares I’ve ever made. Too much sugar in the base, but not enough to hide the weird bitterness from the (presumably out of date) bag of nuts. Not enough butter in the crumble topping, which disintegrated into dusty nothing with each disappointing bite. A good effort, according to Luke, who used to eat bread straight out of the freezer. 

I realised I wasn’t quite ready to bake properly, to spend my time looking for recipes, buying the right ingredients and baking the goods in a precise and proper way. I realised I felt like this because I also felt I don’t have enough time to do anything at all lately. Life is speeding by, time is moving quickly, and we are still just trying to keep our heads above water. 

This was the same for us before, because being an adult these days is some sort of sick joke. But everything feels a little more overwhelming now, like we’re starting with less energy, less capacity for problem solving, less motivation than we had before. We’re no longer in fight or flight mode, but we also don’t really know how to transition into a new rhythm that can keep up with the pace of life around us. 

There is always laundry to do, work to finish, exercise to squeeze in, messages to catch up on, bills to pay and plans to make. There is always something we feel we should be doing better. There is always grief.

So baking is on the backburner for now, while I continue to figure out what this new normal of ours looks like. Lately, thankfully, there have been a lot of nice days and evenings with people we love, lots of sofa cuddles with Star and a game of Jenga now and then. We’re doing our best, and isn’t that just the same for us all? 

Take care, lovely people. 

Jess  

A few days ago I drove back to London from my mother’s house in Wales. For most of the five hour journey I listened to Taylor Swift ricocheting through my tiny car while I sang along, loudly and out of tune. Every now and then my words got stuck, tears threatening to fall, as I thought about my very old dog. 

I had just spent almost three weeks in Pembrokeshire, a sleepy little county tucked away in south west Wales, where I first arrived as a baffled six year old whose world had just changed. The next twelve years would be some of the happiest, and some of the worst, and right in the middle of it all, Sammy arrived. 

Sammy was a mutt and a catfish. My mother and I arrived at a farm in search of a Welsh border collie puppy, and left with Sammy. All white and bearded, with one black ear and a tail that curled up and around, he was not a border collie. The farmer, a gruff and mean old man, had pulled Sammy out from behind some old machinery by his tail before dropping him into my 12 year old arms, and that was that. 

Neither me or Mum could understand how Sammy ended up in a litter of what looked to be pure breeds, and we didn’t have much time to dwell on it. Almost as soon as he made himself at home, Sammy quickly got to work destroying everything in sight. 

An incomplete list of things Sammy (the puppy) ate and/or destroyed

• my bicycle seat (still attached to the bicycle)

• our carpets (in the house we rented)

• the wires for my straighteners

• the internet cable

• a CD disk

• the mesh fence running around the perimeter of our garden (he then spent the day running around the village we lived in at the time, causing our 90 year old neighbours to go searching for him on foot)

• parts of our Christmas tree

• our garden lawn

It was a particularly stressful time for 12 year old me. Sammy was running riot while Mum was grieving the recent loss of her mother, my Ouma, who had lived with us until she died suddenly after her first round of chemotherapy. We had also lost our dog Max a few months later, which prompted us to get Sammy, in a desperate bid to counter the awfulness of it all. 

We laugh about it now, all those times we almost lost our minds because Sammy was being a complete terror. I was once woken up by my mother yelling my name at 2 o’clock in the morning, because Sammy wouldn’t get back inside the house. He had spotted a bat that was flying around our garden, and decided 2am was as good a time as any to give chase. 

On a separate occasion, I watched my mother drag a mangled mess of plastic wires and metal spokes towards the house from our back garden. About fifteen minutes before this, that mangled mess had been a fairly expensive rotary washing line. Like something out of Satan’s handbook, Sammy tore it apart quickly and effectively, spoke by spoke. In case you’re wondering, Sammy never grew any bigger than a border collie, and would have been smaller as the puppy destroying our washing line. 

Regardless of her many threats, my mother never had the heart to get rid of him. Despite being utterly bonkers, each time he squished his soft body next to me on the sofa in a bid to be as close as possible, my little heart melted. Sammy would curl up at the foot of Mum’s bed, staring at her with his big dopey eyes until she forgot about the thing he had just destroyed. 

Every time I came home from school to a house where my Ouma used to live, that beautiful buoyant dog would wiggle and bounce around the garden until I gave him a cuddle. For a teenager coming to terms with the loss of a family member, navigating the dynamics of parental separation and all the very big feelings that come with growing up, seeing Sammy’s unconditional love like this felt like a balm. He helped both Mum and I forget, if only for short moments, that our world had shifted irreversibly. 

Eventually the day arrived for me to leave home for university. For six years, life had mostly been just the three of us living happily in a small bungalow in a sleepy village close to the sea. Knowing Sammy would be there to keep Mum company made leaving feel less treacherous, less like I was abandoning the person who had sacrificed so much to make sure I was safe and loved. In this way, I needed Sammy just as much as Mum needed him. 

For the past twelve years, ever since that day, Sammy has been Mum’s sidekick. As he grew older, Mum gave more energy, care and money to make him comfortable and happy. When our cat died, Sammy spent his time alone barking constantly until Mum returned home. This was one of the reasons she decided to move from the quiet village she loved, managing to buy her first home by herself, somewhere new where Sammy could feel settled. 

When Sammy started struggling to jump onto her bed, Mum bought a shorter bed frame. When Sammy started slipping down the wooden stairs, Mum paid someone to come and carpet them. When Sammy started dragging his back paws on walks, she bought him shoes to protect his little paws. When his legs weakened, causing him to slip on the lino floor, unable to get back up, Mum covered the floor in non-slip mats and stopped leaving him alone in the house for too long. 

My mother shaped her life around a dog that stayed by her side for almost 18 years. Each time he had an accident in the house, she patiently cleaned it up, rubbing his head, telling him it was okay. Each time he fell down, she picked him up. She took him to the vet every few weeks, spending hundreds of pounds to make sure his life was free from pain. 

One morning a few weeks ago I received a tearful call from Mum. Sammy, my beautiful buoyant little pup was now almost 18 years old and his legs were giving up. A few days later I arrived at her house and we spent the next two weeks watching him closely, cleaning up his accidents and taking him for walks. 

When bank holiday Monday rolled around, ablaze with spring sunshine, I offered to take Sammy for a walk while Mum snoozed. Her sleep had been slowly decimated by Sammy’s growing inability to control his bowels. She’d spent much of the night before downstairs, letting him in and out of the house. 

Sammy and I took a slow, peaceful walk through some nearby woodland, under a thick canopy of trees, listening to the birds sing excitedly to one another. Sunshine dappled the ground while he stuck his nose into every cluster of flowers and shrubbery that lined the pathway. Knowing dogs live their lives through their nose, it warmed my little heart to watch him living his, despite his ailments. 

He led the way, and I thought about the many walks we’d taken together over the years. There aren’t many corners of Pembrokeshire that Sammy hasn’t seen. He has explored sprawling meadows and cliffside paths and almost every beach in the county. Even as he got older and slower and less energetic on his walks, his contentment was always palpable, always contagious. 

Towards the end of those two weeks, Sammy spent more time on the ground unable to get back up. He spent more time seemingly unaware of his surroundings or who we were. He had more accidents and spent more time sleeping. And then one day, the decision became clear. This was not the life our beautiful boy deserved. We could keep him alive and watch him get worse, or we could end his life knowing all of it had been wonderful. Because despite all of his problems, our old dog still seemed comfortable and happy.

Sammy died on Monday 13 May 2024. I miss his little face and hearing his impatient bark each time we began our walk. I miss scratching his belly and kissing his soft head. I miss finding his hair all over my clothes. I miss slipping his lead around his fluffy neck and watching his face light up. My teenage emotional support puppy, my mothers destructive little sidekick. There’ll never be another mutt like him.