“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

~ Lao Tzu

Every Monday I pull an oracle card. I never know whether it will make sense immediately or whether it will quietly follow me around until something happens that makes me look at it differently. This week’s card was The Distraction of Shiny Things, and I laughed when I turned it over because it felt almost embarrassingly accurate.

The sitting room is almost finished. The new wood flooring is down and every time I walk into the room I get that little spark of satisfaction because it already feels warmer, calmer and more like the room I’d imagined. But only almost. The skirting boards are still just resting against the wall waiting to be reattached. There are bits of paint to touch up around the edges and a handful of those little finishing jobs that never seem to make it onto anyone’s Instagram.

The problem is that my mind has already left the room.

Instead of thinking about skirting boards, I’ve been measuring walls for built-in bookshelves. I’ve been looking at photographs online, deciding how deep the shelves should be and imagining them filled with books, plants and photo frames. In my head they’re practically built already.

The skirting boards, meanwhile, are still waiting.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. In fact, if I’m honest, it’s probably how I’ve approached most things in my life.

Over the last couple of years I’ve begun to realise that I probably have ADHD. I haven’t felt the need to pursue a diagnosis, but the more I’ve read about how ADHD presents in women, the more pieces have quietly fallen into place. Not the stereotype of someone bouncing off the walls, but someone whose brain is constantly drawn towards whatever feels new, interesting or full of possibility.

I’ve always loved beginnings.

I love the planning stage. I love researching ideas, making lists, buying supplies and imagining what something could become. That first coat of paint is my favourite part because suddenly the transformation begins. My brain comes alive.

Then something changes.

As soon as the exciting part is over and all that’s left are the repetitive jobs, my attention quietly slips away. The project isn’t abandoned because I don’t care about it. It’s abandoned because my brain has already wandered towards the next thing that promises the same spark.

For years I thought this was simply a flaw in my character.

My dad used to joke about my ‘latest thing’. My ex-partner would tell me I had no patience. I believed them because, on the surface, it looked true. I was always the one with another idea, another hobby, another project. Cupboards full of craft supplies. Notebooks full of plans. Half-finished courses. Furniture waiting for one last coat of paint.

Every unfinished project became another piece of evidence that there was something wrong with me.

There is a particular kind of shame that comes with always being the person who starts things.

People begin to expect you won’t finish.

Eventually, so do you.

It wasn’t until I started learning about dopamine and ADHD that I began to look at myself with a little more compassion. ADHD brains are constantly searching for stimulation because novelty gives us the dopamine we’re often lacking. That’s why starting something new can feel almost irresistible. It’s not laziness that makes the final stages difficult; it’s that the exciting part has passed and the brain has to work much harder to stay engaged.

Understanding that hasn’t magically made me finish every project.

The dining table I painted a couple of weeks ago is still waiting for its protective varnish. The scaffolding board shelves in the sitting room went straight onto the wall after I stained them because I wanted to see them in place. The tin of hard wax oil I bought to protect them is still sitting in the utility room.

Apparently I’m very good at getting things to ninety-five percent.

It’s that last five percent that seems to take the greatest effort.

But I also wonder how much of this belongs to me, and how much belongs to the world we live in.

The summer holidays are only halfway through and the supermarket shelves are already filling with lunchboxes and school uniforms. I walked past Halloween decorations the other day sitting beside beach towels and bottles of sunscreen, as if we’re expected to be in October before we’ve even finished August.

We’re constantly being encouraged to move on.

Next season.

Next purchase.

Next project.

Next version of ourselves.

I don’t think we’re given much encouragement to stay where we are.

As I kept thinking about the oracle card, I realised we’re in late summer. In Traditional Chinese Medicine there are five seasons, with late summer sitting quietly between the growth of summer and the beginning of autumn. It isn’t really a season of beginnings at all. It’s a pause. A chance to tend what we’ve already planted before we start thinking about the harvest or what comes next.

Perhaps that’s why this card arrived now.

Spring is full of possibility. Summer carries us along with momentum. But late summer asks something different of us. It asks us to slow down long enough to finish what we’ve already started.

I find that surprisingly difficult.

Maybe because my brain genuinely craves novelty. Maybe because modern life rewards it. Probably a little of both.

What I do know is that I don’t want to keep seeing this part of myself as something that needs fixing. The curiosity that sends me dreaming about bookshelves before I’ve finished the skirting boards is the same curiosity that led me to writing, to gardening, to DIY, to homeschooling and to so many of the things that have brought joy into my life.

I don’t want to lose that.

But I do want to become better at staying.

At picking up the paintbrush one more time.

At opening the tin of varnish instead of browsing for the next project.

At trusting that there is satisfaction to be found not just in the beginning, but in the finishing too.

The bookshelves will still be there next month.

Autumn will arrive whether I rush towards it or not.

For now, perhaps late summer is inviting me to stay in the room I’m already standing in. To nail the skirting boards back into place. To varnish the table. To oil the shelves. To discover that there is a quieter kind of joy waiting on the other side of completion.

Maybe that’s what the oracle card was trying to tell me all along.

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“Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin”

~ Irish proverb

The other day I suggested replacing the chair in our kitchen with a small sofa.

It seemed like the obvious thing to do. A sofa would help to soften the room, give the dogs somewhere comfortable to sleep and probably make the space look more finished. We’ve been slowly making the kitchen/dining area feel more like us, and a couch felt like the next step.

It wasn’t until I imagined not sitting there in the morning that I realised what I would be losing. Not just a piece of furniture. My place.

If you’ve ever sat in an IKEA Poäng chair, you’ll know they have a way of inviting you to curl your feet underneath you. They bounce ever so slightly when you lean back. Mine sits beside an old side table that, until recently, doubled as our dining table. Every morning I sit there with a mug of tea, change the wooden perpetual calendar to the new day and glance at the half-dead plant I rescued from B&Q. It’s thriving now, reaching towards the window as the seagulls balance clumsily on the wall outside.

Sometimes I read. Sometimes I scroll aimlessly through my phone. Sometimes I simply sit.

It isn’t about what I do there. It’s about how I feel. Nothing particularly important happens in that chair. And yet it has become the place where I seem to return to myself.

For years I’ve assumed I wasn’t very good at interiors. I would look at beautiful homes in magazines or on Pinterest and think that other people simply had an eye for these things that I didn’t. They knew how to put colours together, how to style shelves, how to make a room feel effortlessly beautiful.

Most of our homes have been filled with second-hand furniture, inherited pieces and things that were bought because they were practical rather than perfect. I always imagined I was making do.

And yet, every now and then, someone would say something that caught me by surprise.

“You always make everywhere feel like home.”

I’d smile, thank them and move on, assuming they were just being polite. Now I’m beginning to think they might have been seeing something that I couldn’t.

Looking back, every home I’ve lived in seems to have started in exactly the same way. Before I’d unpacked every box, before the pictures were on the walls or I’d decided where the furniture should go, I would instinctively create one small corner for myself.

I did it in the shared dormitory at boarding school. Privacy was almost impossible to find, but somehow my little space became somewhere I could retreat to at the end of the day.

I did it again in the dingy bedsits I rented in my early twenties. While friends spent their spare money on the latest fashion, I spent mine on second-hand bookshelves, houseplants and lamps that made the room feel softer. At the time I thought I was simply trying to make the place look nicer, but now I wonder if I was doing something much deeper than that.

When my eldest daughter was born, the instinct stayed with me. We didn’t have much money, but I wanted our home to feel cosy. I wanted it to be the kind of place where she felt safe, where ordinary days felt comforting even if the flooring was old or the furniture didn’t match.

Years later, our garden patio became my favourite place in the house. We squeezed fruit trees into pots, strung lights overhead, hung a hammock and filled every spare corner with plants. Most mornings I’d sit out there in my hanging chair , wrapped in a blanket with a cup of tea, watching the birds arrive at the feeder. I don’t think I loved that little patio because it was beautiful. I loved it because of how I felt when I was there.

The same thing happened when we moved back to my parents’ house.

After spending three years sleeping on my youngest daughter’s bedroom floor because anxiety made nights so difficult for her, having my own bedroom again felt like a luxury. It wasn’t a large room or an especially beautiful one, but it was mine. I could arrange my books without someone moving them. I could make my bed nicely, light a candle, build a small altar for future intentions and know that everything would still be there when I came back.

Then, while we waited for this house to be ready, life changed again.

We unexpectedly found ourselves sleeping on the floor in my mum’s apartment.

Even there, I found myself doing exactly the same thing.

A filing cabinet became my bedside table. On it sat my journal, my oracle cards, a lamp and a bunch of daffodils my mum had picked up from the village. Somehow this made the inflatable mattress in my mum’s art studio seem more like home.

It was only after moving into this house that I noticed the pattern.

Psychologists often talk about nesting as something that happens before a baby arrives, but the instinct seems to stay with us throughout our lives. During periods of uncertainty, we naturally begin creating order around us. We arrange, tidy, decorate and return to familiar rituals, not because we’re trying to impress anyone, but because our surroundings help our nervous systems feel safe again.

I think that’s what I’ve been doing all along. Not decorating. Not trying to create beautiful rooms. Simply creating somewhere to just breathe.

Perhaps you’ve done it too.

Maybe there was a chair that became yours after a difficult season of life. A windowsill filled with plants. A favourite mug that somehow made difficult mornings feel a little easier. A bedside table that held everything you needed at the end of the day. We rarely set out to create these little sanctuaries. They seem to evolve quietly over time until one day we realise we’ve been returning to the same place for months or even years.

I’ve also realised that the spaces we create nourish the people who live in them.

When my eldest daughter was going through burnout and extreme anxiety, we made a rule that no difficult conversations happened in her bedroom. Nobody entered without her permission. It became the one place where she didn’t have to be on guard, where she knew she could close the door and simply be.

My youngest’s room has become her own little world. It’s where the makeup lives alongside half-finished craft projects, where music plays while she disappears into whatever she’s creating that day. We make sure to knock before entering so that she doesn’t have to feel constantly on guard.

Thinking about all this has made me realise that perhaps the atmosphere of a home matters far more than the things inside it.

When friends came over, I was never the sort of hostess who fussed over everyone. I’d point them towards the kitchen, tell them where the mugs were and encourage them to help themselves. Our home wasn’t precious. The children from neighbouring houses wandered in and out as if they lived there too, often making a beeline for the biscuit tin before I’d even realised they’d arrived! At the time I thought I was simply being laid back, but perhaps what I was really saying was, you don’t have to perform here.

I wonder if that’s why I’ve always been drawn to creating these little corners.

Not because they look beautiful, but because they ask nothing of me.

They don’t expect me to tidy them before I sit down or justify why I need ten quiet minutes with a cup of coffee. They simply wait for me at the beginning of each day, reminding me that before I can take care of everyone else, I need somewhere that allows me to regulate.

Our home is still a work in progress. There are rooms without the furniture I’d eventually like, walls waiting for artwork and plenty of things that are only here because they’ll do for now. A few years ago I would have apologised for that.

Now I don’t.

Because when I think back over every place I’ve lived, I don’t remember whether the rooms were perfectly decorated. I remember how they felt.

For years I thought making a home was about finding the right furniture or having enough money to create the rooms I’d imagined. Now I think it begins somewhere much smaller than that. It begins with finding one place where you can finally let your shoulders drop.

And perhaps that’s what home has always been.

Not perfection, not expensive interiors, not rooms worthy of a Pinterest board, but the quiet reassurance that somewhere, however small, there is a corner of the world where you can simply be yourself.

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“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

~ Cesare Pavese

A writing group I have been dipping my toes back into recently gave us the prompt of visibility this week. But instead of thinking about being seen, I keep coming back to disappearing.

Not disappearing forever. Just disappearing for a while.

I wonder if my generation might be the last to really know what that felt like.

When I was growing up on the west coast of Ireland, disappearing was easy. I would leave the house after breakfast and walk down the narrow country road where we lived. It was a dead end, right at the very edge of the west coast. If tourists accidentally found themselves there, someone would usually laugh and tell them, “Next stop America!!”

There were only a handful of houses along that two-mile stretch and everyone knew everyone else. We could go days without seeing a car. The people who lived there looked out for each other, and there was an unspoken understanding that children would eventually appear home again.

My parents rarely knew exactly where I was. They didn’t need to. I wasn’t lost. I was just somewhere.

I remember the sound of gulls screeching overhead, tractors rumbling in the distance, the wind coming in from the Atlantic. On some days I would lick the salt from the sea off my upper lip without even thinking about it.

My parents knew I would come home when I got hungry.

Looking back now, that feels almost impossible. Not because it was unusual then, but because it would be unusual now.

Maybe your version wasn’t a country road at the edge of Ireland. Maybe it was cycling around the estate until the streetlights came on, building dens in the woods, walking to a friend’s house without arranging it first, or spending an afternoon somewhere without anyone knowing exactly where you were.

Whatever it looked like, I think many of us remember what it felt like to be unreachable. Not because our phone battery had died. Not because the signal was bad. Simply because nobody could contact us.

Now our children are growing up in a very different world.

There are good things about being connected. We can find each other quickly. We can share moments with people who live far away. We can call for help if we need it. But alongside that has come a quiet expectation that we are always available.

Our phones stay beside us “just in case”. We check them without thinking. We feel uncomfortable leaving the house without them. We apologise for not replying quickly enough, even when we were doing something completely ordinary.

Somewhere along the way, being unavailable started to feel wrong.

And it isn’t only our phones. Our lives leave traces everywhere now. Our searches, purchases, journeys and conversations create a digital trail behind us. Cameras watch us in streets and shops. Doorbells record people passing by. We carry devices that know where we are, what we look at, what we buy and what interests us.

I recently started rewatching Person of Interest. When it first aired, the idea that our lives could be pieced together from tiny fragments of information felt like science fiction. Now it feels much closer to reality.

We are constantly leaving traces behind. But there is a difference between being recorded and being remembered. Between information about a person and knowing a person.

Which is perhaps why I find the idea of visibility so complicated, because at the same time as the world has made it almost impossible to disappear, I have also spent the last decade choosing to make parts of myself more visible.

I built a business online before Covid. Then I started writing and sharing my words. I have pressed publish on thoughts that once would have stayed hidden in notebooks. I have shared parts of my home, my creativity and my life with people I have never met.

And I enjoy most of it.

There is something incredibly special about a stranger saying, “I feel this too.” To know that something you wondered about quietly in your own life has helped someone else feel understood is a beautiful kind of visibility.

But at the same time, I somehow became less visible in other ways. I saw friends less. I became quieter. Life became about getting through the day, managing what needed to be managed, and trying to keep everything moving.

After leaving my relationship, I found myself reaching out to people I hadn’t seen in years. Friends who knew me before life became complicated. Before I became so careful about who I was and how I was perceived.

I think part of me was trying to reconnect with a version of myself I had misplaced.

The person who wandered down that road without needing anyone to know where she was.

Which makes me wonder if there is only so much visibility we can hold.

Maybe being seen takes energy.

Every morning on my walk to the beach, I pass a huge buddleia. At this time of year the blooms are enormous. They are so heavy that they bend the branches towards the ground, and the butterflies seem to find it from miles away.

It is impossible not to notice.

But underneath it are quieter things. Ferns tucked into the edges. Moss growing over stones. Small wildflowers that don’t seem to mind whether anyone stops to admire them.

They are still growing. They are still part of the landscape.

Maybe people are the same.

There are seasons when we are ready to bloom outward. When we want to create, share, connect and be seen. And there are seasons when we need to turn inward. When things are happening beneath the surface that nobody else can see yet.

The garden does not disappear in winter. It is simply doing something different.

I think about this when I look at photographs too.

There is a familiar joke that mothers are the historians of the family but rarely appear in the photographs. We are usually the ones holding the camera. Capturing the birthday parties, the beach walks, the first days of school, the ordinary moments that become precious later.

Then one day we look back and realise there are hundreds of photographs of everyone else and only a handful of us.

I understand why.

When I see myself in a photograph, I often notice the things I wish were different. The weight I have gained. The tiredness around my eyes. The fact that I no longer look like the younger version of myself that still exists in my mind. But then I think about my daughters looking back one day.

Will they see those things?

Or will they simply see me?

The person who was there.

Maybe this is one of the strange gifts of midlife. We begin to realise that one day we will become memories for other people. Not in a spectacular way. Most of us will not leave behind monuments or famous achievements.

We will leave smaller things.

The recipes we made. The gardens we planted. The books with our notes in the margins. The photographs where we finally allowed ourselves to be present. The words we shared.

I think that is why visibility feels so complicated.

Part of me still dreams of a house at the end of a long lane. Somewhere without passing traffic, where nobody knocks on the door unexpectedly, where I could walk outside and not wonder who I might meet.

But another part of me wants to leave traces.

I want to be in the photographs my daughters look through one day. I want my words to exist somewhere beyond me. I want future generations to know that I was here.

Maybe that is the balance. Not being visible all the time. Not disappearing completely. Just having the freedom to choose. To step forward when we have something to share, and to quietly return to ourselves when we need to. And perhaps the traces we leave behind are not proof that we were important.

They are simply proof that we were here.

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“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

~ Havelock Ellis

I once read that every item in your home is a representation of who you dream of becoming. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think about it often these days, usually while standing in the middle of a room surrounded by boxes and laundry.

At the moment, our house feels like it is made entirely of cardboard boxes. Not the neat, Instagram version where everything is labelled and unpacked in a weekend, but the kind that slowly multiply in corners until you stop seeing them as temporary and start accepting them as part of the furniture!

There is a box of art I really want to hang that is currently buried at the very bottom of a stack of Christmas decorations. Every so often I think I’ll get it out, but the idea of dismantling the entire pile feels too big, so I leave it for another day.

A cardboard box filled with books is being used as a TV stand. The cushion from the outdoor hanging chair has become an indoor dog bed because, for now, it is simply in the right place and no one has argued otherwise.

In one corner there are boxes of memorabilia I haven’t properly looked through in years. And through one clear plastic box I can see my daughter’s grey graduation hoodie and her blue Girl Guides sash folded neatly together, like they belong to a life that is already slightly behind us.

As I write this, three mattresses are stacked in the kitchen while carpet is being laid upstairs. A dressmaker’s mannequin is standing beside a pile of photo frames waiting to become a gallery wall. It sounds chaotic when I write it down, but living in it feels strangely normal. You step over things. You adapt. You make tea around it.

We’ve been waiting for carpets for three weeks. Waiting for furniture to be built. Waiting for flooring to be laid downstairs, still sitting in a pile by the wall. Waiting for the attic to be finished so the boxes can finally move up there. Waiting, waiting, waiting. It starts to feel like the house is permanently paused mid-sentence.

Everywhere I look there is another project. Panelling under the stairs to create storage. Wallpaper for the bathroom to turn a grey box into something that feels more like a tropical spa. A dining table we still don’t have because the corner where it should go is full of boxes that are themselves waiting for a loft ladder that doesn’t exist yet. It loops like that, endlessly.

And yet most of these boxes are full of things I once really wanted. A home for all of us. Space for the girls. An office where I could write. A dining table where we could sit together instead of balancing plates on laps. There is something strange about being so close to all the things you love yet not actually being able to use or see them.

Money is tight too, which makes everything feel slightly harder. Piano lessons and car insurance for my eldest. Pony camp for the youngest. Every decision feels like it has another decision sitting behind it. I find myself thinking constantly about what we can and can’t do, what we should and shouldn’t spend. It all gets folded into the same mental pile as the physical boxes.

We’ve also just come through family mediation and reached an agreement that feels right for our daughter. That, more than anything, has given me a sense of exhale I didn’t realise I was holding. The connection will always be there because of her, but the version of the past that kept pulling at everything has finally loosened its grip.

I thought that might make the future seem clearly somehow. Instead it has just created space to notice everything else.

What I want my life to look like now. How I want to spend my days. Whether writing still fits in the way I hoped it would, or whether I’ve let it drift into something that no longer has shape.

I’ve never been especially good at sticking to one thing long term. My brain likes novelty, short projects, quick bursts of energy. I admire people who can build something slowly and consistently, especially those home accounts where everything looks perfectly styled and intentional. I look at them and then look at my house, where everything is happening at a snail’s pace, and I can’t quite see how it would ever translate.

There’s also this quiet voice that says I’m not qualified enough to be useful at anything in particular. So I stay in the middle ground, thinking and starting and stopping and starting again.

I used to think moving here would make everything feel simpler, like we would close the door on the old life and step into something more settled. But life doesn’t really work like that. It just keeps unfolding in different rooms. The same challenges arrive, just in new packaging. The girls are still processing everything that has happened over the last couple of years. Money still goes out faster than it comes in. The house is still unfinished. I am still trying to figure out what I am doing.

Even something as simple as colour feels loaded. Part of me wants warm, cosy rooms that feel like a hug. Another part of me wants to keep the airy warm white walls we inherited with the house because they feel like space, like breath, like possibility. My browser history is filled with bedding options, unable to decide if I want the bedroom to feel calm or fun, or both. I can’t decide which version of me I am decorating for.

Maybe that’s what all these boxes really are. Not just storage or clutter or inconvenience, but a kind of in-between state. Evidence of things we have chosen and not yet fully become. Evidence of lives we are still building into.

I keep thinking I will reach a point where everything is unpacked and in its place and I will finally feel settled. But I am starting to suspect that isn’t really how it works. There will always be another box, another project, another corner that isn’t quite finished yet.

So for now I am trying to live with them. Not as a problem to solve as quickly as possible, but as part of the life that is actually happening right now. Even if that life currently includes mattresses in the kitchen, a TV on a cardboard box, and a dog who has quietly claimed the only cushion available.

It isn’t finished. But then again, neither am I.

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“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.”

~ Robert Brault

This weekend marks the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

Somehow it always catches me by surprise. One minute it’s spring and I’m buying tiny plants for the patio, hoping they’ll survive my inconsistent watering schedule. The next, flowers are blooming, tomatoes are appearing on our lone tomato plant and the garden that spent most of winter resembling a quagmire has transformed into a lawn.

The funny thing about growth is that it rarely happens in a way we can see. Nobody stands and watches a tomato ripen. We simply look up one day and realise something has changed.

It made me think about where we were six months ago.

At Christmas, we were still sleeping on my mother’s floor. We had no moving date for our new home and no certainty about when that would change. We’d occasionally drive past the building site, slowing down as we approached and trying to imagine ourselves living there. Looking back, it feels like a lifetime ago and no time at all.

At the time, I thought what I was waiting for was obvious. The keys. The move. The house itself.

What I’ve learned since is that receiving the keys wasn’t the end of the story. It was simply the beginning of another one.

Since then, we’ve moved countless vanloads of belongings, sorting through years of accumulated possessions and deciding what deserved a place in this next chapter and what could be left behind. There is something surprisingly emotional about that process. Every item carries a memory, a version of yourself, a reminder of who you once were or who you wished to be. Letting go is rarely about the object itself.

We’ve welcomed friends and family through the front door. We’ve hosted movie nights, danced around the kitchen island and learned how to cook proper meals using only an air fryer and a hob while we waited for the kitchen to be fully functional. This week we baked our first goodies in the new oven.

We’ve discovered that by not owning a dishwasher, we mostly prefer washing dishes by hand.

We’ve learned that white carpet on stairs would be a terrible idea, a fact proven repeatedly by the coffee stains currently decorating the temporary stair coverings! We’ve learned the names of our new neighbours and what it feels like to live in a house that actually stays warm. We’ve explored our new village street by street and are still trying to find the ideal walking route for our socially awkward dog.

The house itself remains a work in progress. A bed that took over a month to arrive is still waiting in boxes because the carpet isn’t being fitted until next week. Flat-pack wardrobes lean against the hallway walls. There are unfinished rooms, unopened boxes and projects waiting patiently for both time and money.

In other words, life looks much as it always does: beautifully incomplete.

The solstice is often described as a celebration of abundance, but I suspect many of us struggle to recognise abundance in our own lives. We are too busy noticing what’s left to do.

The room that still needs painting.

The money that hasn’t stretched quite far enough.

The project that remains unfinished.

The phone call we keep meaning to make.

The decision we haven’t quite reached.

The thing we’re convinced will finally make us feel settled once it happens.

Yet when I take a midsummer inventory, what stands out isn’t what remains undone but what has quietly taken root.

A daughter with a job and a college place for September.

Another back in the saddle doing something she loves.

Relationships that have deepened.

Headaches that no longer require medication.

A garden that is growing.

A house that, despite the boxes and bare floors, has become a home.

Perhaps that’s the thing about growth. It doesn’t arrive all at once with a fanfare. It accumulates in small, ordinary moments until one day you look around and realise you’re already living in the life you were waiting for.

Of course, an inventory is only ever a snapshot.

Six months from now, Christmas will be approaching again. The carpets will have been fitted. The wardrobes assembled. The bed will no longer be a collection of boxes in the hallway. The tomato plant will have finished producing and the flowers on the patio will be fading back into the soil.

My daughters will be six months older, six months wiser, and perhaps six months closer to the lives they are building for themselves. The house will look different. The garden will look different. I will look different too.

Some of the things I am currently worrying about will have resolved themselves. New worries will undoubtedly take their place.

That is the nature of life.

The summer solstice reminds us that nothing stays the same for long. Even as we celebrate the longest day, we know that tomorrow there will be one minute less daylight. The season is already turning.

And yet there is comfort in that.

Six months ago I could not have imagined exactly what this chapter would look like. If I’m honest, I can’t fully imagine the next six months either. But perhaps that’s the point. We don’t get to see the finished picture all at once.

We simply keep planting, tending, building and showing up. Then one day we look around and discover that something has grown.

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“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

~ T.S. Eliot

The older I get, the younger thirteen seems.

My youngest daughter is thirteen now and when I look at her I see a child. A capable child, certainly. She is funny and thoughtful and far more self-aware than I was at her age. But she is still unmistakably a child.

When I was ten, we moved house. Until then, my world had been small and familiar. The sort of childhood where every road, field and face felt familiar. I didn’t realise it at the time, but there was a comfort in that. A sense of belonging that we can only appreciate once it’s gone.

Three years later, I moved again. By the age of thirteen I was already learning how to start over. How to arrive somewhere new and work out where I fitted in. How to make friends, adapt to unfamiliar routines and build a life from scratch.

Then, just as I had begun to find my footing, I moved again.

Looking back, it strikes me how much adapting I did before I was old enough to vote, drive a car or legally buy a drink. When I imagine my thirteen-year-old daughter doing the same, I simply can’t. Not because she isn’t capable. Because she seems so young.

Perhaps that’s why the older I get, the younger thirteen seems.

The same thing happens when I look at my eldest daughter, who is nearly twenty. At her age, I was already living in a city, sharing houses with strangers and working in cafés and shops. I bought my own car with my own money. I’d had my first serious heartbreak. Most weekends revolved around pubs, clubs and the certainty that whatever I was looking for might finally reveal itself in the next relationship, the next adventure, or the next round of drinks.

From the outside, I looked independent. I certainly thought I was.

My daughter has only recently started working. She still lives at home. In many ways she feels no closer to moving out than her younger sister. In fact, there are days when I suspect the youngest might leave before she does!

Adults often look at teenagers and young adults and despair. They’re too attached to their parents. Too attached to their phones. They don’t know how to cook. They don’t know how to budget. They don’t seem ready for the real world.

But I wonder if we’ve simply forgotten. Forgotten what it felt like to be standing at the beginning of your life with no map and very little certainty. Forgotten how much of being a young adult is really just making it up as you go along.

At nineteen, I seemed grown up. But I was also changing jobs every six months. Changing houses. Changing boyfriends.

Always searching.

I broke up with boys because they were “too nice”. I convinced myself that the next job would be better than the last one. The next house. The next town. I was constantly reaching for something just beyond the horizon. At the time, I recognised the restlessness but not the reason for it.

Now I think I understand.

I wasn’t searching for excitement. I was searching for somewhere to belong. When you’ve spent your formative years leaving and starting over, roots can become difficult things to grow. You become very good at adapting. Very good at arriving. Very good at making a life in unfamiliar places.

What you don’t always learn is how to stay.

For years I thought the defining feature of my late teens and early twenties was independence. Now I think it was restlessness. I mistook movement for progress. Change for growth. Freedom for knowing what I was doing.

The truth is that I was every bit as confused as most teenagers are. I was just confused in a shared house instead of my childhood bedroom.

I made plenty of adult decisions, but not always wise ones. The credit card debt I accumulated buying clothes I couldn’t afford would take another fifteen years to pay off. It would take another twenty years before I began to understand who I was and what I actually wanted from life, rather than what I thought I was supposed to want.

And it would take nearly twenty-five years before I found somewhere I wanted to stay.

Perhaps that’s why this season of life feels so significant. The last eighteen months have hardly been a picture of stability. We’ve moved three times. We’ve lived in temporary places. For six months we slept on mattresses on my mother’s floor while we waited for the next chapter to begin. We’ve navigated endings none of us expected and spent more time than I’d like living in the space between what was and what comes next.

Life, it turns out, remains wonderfully and frustratingly unpredictable. And yet, despite all that, I’m finally putting down roots.

For the past six months I’ve written about paint colours, furniture, flooring, gardens and all the countless decisions involved in decorating a new home. On the surface it must seem terribly ordinary.

And maybe it is.

But sometimes, as I paint another wall or debate the merits of one shade of green over another, I wonder if what I’m really doing is answering a question that thirteen-year-old me has been asking for decades.

What does it feel like to stay?

June always feels like a month of transition. School years ending. Summer stretching ahead. Teenagers waiting for exam results and wondering what comes next. The world seems full of people preparing to leave. And here I am, in my forties, investing in a bed frame that cost more than any sensible person should spend on a piece of furniture and planting shrubs that won’t reach their full size for years.

For most of my life I was preparing for the next chapter. Now, for the first time, I think I might be building one I’d like to stay in.

My daughters may be reaching the ages where I once thought I had everything figured out, but watching them has taught me something unexpected. When I look at them, I don’t see a generation that is less capable than mine. I see young people with time. Time to grow. Time to change their minds. Time to figure out who they are. And perhaps that is what we forget when we criticise teenagers for being immature, indecisive or dependent.

The truth is that most of us were those things too. Some of us were just doing it while paying rent. Maybe the reason thirteen seems so young now isn’t because children have changed.

It’s because I finally understand just how young I was.

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Until next time,

You may also enjoy:

I’ve also been working on a short, five-part essay series that I’ll be launching in June. It’s called Why We Live Like This, and it’s an exploration of homes - but not in the usual interiors sense. More the psychology of them. The small decisions we make without realising. The styles we’re drawn to. The memories we build into rooms. The way a space can feel like comfort, or performance, or even escape.

I’ve found myself increasingly interested in why we decorate the way we do, and what our homes say about us when we’re not trying to say anything at all. This series is my way of following that curiosity properly.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get the full set of essays as they’re released. And if you’re not, I’ll share more details as we get closer to launch.

More soon - I’m looking forward to sharing it with you 💜

Each week I take one archived essay out from behind the paywall for you to enjoy for free 💜

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”

~ John Lennon

We’ve been decorating again!

It feels as though every conversation in our house eventually circles back to paint colours, flooring samples or whether a particular lamp is worth the money. (It definitely is!!). Somewhere between choosing curtains and debating shades of green, I came across a design rule called 60:30:10.

The idea is that sixty percent of a room should be your dominant colour, thirty percent a secondary colour and ten percent an accent. The accent colour is the one that catches your eye. The mustard cushion. The colourful artwork. The thing visitors notice first when they walk into a room.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.

Not just because of decorating, but also because I missed my essay last week.

Every few days I opened a blank page, stared at it for a while and then closed it again. I couldn’t think of anything to write about. Nothing had happened.

At least, that’s what I told myself, but my calendar would suggest otherwise!

The last few weeks have been full. Appointments, meetings, forms to fill in, phone calls to make, homeschooling, driving my daughter to and from work. The sort of tasks that seem to multiply quietly in the background of adulthood.

In amongst all that, we spent a day at the beach with friends. There was paddle boarding and watermelon eaten straight from the container, sand in shoes and towels wrapped around sun-kissed bodies. On one particularly warm night, when the house felt impossibly stuffy, we dragged blankets onto the trampoline and slept under the stars.

Every day contained plenty of activity, yet none of it felt particularly noteworthy. There was no obvious story hiding inside a dentist appointment or sitting in traffic on the way to the beach. No grand lesson. No tidy metaphor waiting to be discovered.

It all felt like life in maintenance mode; keeping plates spinning, showing up where I was needed and moving on to the next thing.

When I sat down to write, I dismissed these moments almost immediately. They didn’t feel worthy of sharing. They certainly didn’t feel worthy of an essay.

There were no freshly painted rooms to write about. No old letters discovered in forgotten boxes. No small household victories. No stories clamouring to be told.

Just a normal week.

But as I’ve sat here this afternoon watching my eldest daughter work her shift in a café, I’ve started to wonder whether I was looking for the wrong things.

A few years ago she would have been sitting beside me asking for a hot chocolate and a slice of cake. Today she’s behind the counter serving coffees to strangers and earning her own money.

Every so often she glances over and catches my eye.

I hadn’t expected how much I would enjoy that.

Not because I’m keeping watch exactly. She doesn’t need me to. She’s perfectly capable. But there is something reassuring about knowing she’s nearby. Close enough that our worlds still overlap for an hour or two.

The other day she offered to buy something big herself. It was such an ordinary moment but I felt a strange tug somewhere in my chest. Not because I wanted to pay for it. Quite the opposite. I felt proud of her. Proud that she is becoming independent and capable and confident enough to stand on her own two feet.

But it also felt like one of those invisible threads that tie parents and children together had loosened ever so slightly.

Nobody talks much about that part of parenting.

We prepare ourselves for first days of school and driving tests and eventually leaving home. The big milestones announce themselves long before they arrive.

The smaller changes sneak up on you.

A solo trip into town.

A first payslip.

A daughter who no longer needs you to buy her lunch.

Meanwhile my youngest has started spending some weekends with her dad. The arrangement is good for everyone, and she’s enjoying having that time with him. But the house feels different when she’s gone.

Quieter, obviously.

But not just quieter.

Larger somehow.

As though the rooms themselves aren’t quite sure what to do with the extra space.

Part of me feels I should be making better use of the time. There is a voice in my head that insists I ought to be embracing this unexpected freedom. Painting the office. Reconnecting with a hobby. Becoming one of those chic women who always has someone to meet for coffee.

Instead I mostly potter.

I make tea.

I start one job and drift into another.

I look at the dog and find myself talking to him about our day.

For so long, life has revolved around other people’s needs. Then one day, almost without noticing, I find myself with an afternoon to fill and realise I’ve forgotten how.

The funny thing is that if you’d asked me last week what had happened, I would probably have said “not much.”

Yet one daughter has started earning her own money and learning new skills. Another is beginning to divide her time between two homes and two parents. The house is slowly changing shape around us all. And so, I suspect, am I.

None of these things feel significant enough to mark on a calendar. Nobody celebrates them. They don’t divide life neatly into a before and an after.

But perhaps that’s because they belong to the sixty percent.

The background.

The part we barely notice while we’re living it.

The decorating rule works because the accent colour only makes up ten percent of the room. It’s the thing that catches your eye, but it isn’t the thing that holds everything together.

Life is much the same.

We remember the dramatic moments. The moves, the breakups, the new beginnings, the days that become stories. We assume those are the things that shape us.

But most of our lives are made elsewhere.

In ordinary afternoons in cafés.

In unexpectedly quiet weekends.

In daughters growing up one tiny step at a time.

Last week I thought I had nothing to write about.

It turns out life was happening exactly where it always does.

In the sixty percent.

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Until next time,

You may also enjoy:

I’ve also been working on a short, five-part essay series that I’ll be launching in June. It’s called Why We Live Like This, and it’s an exploration of homes - but not in the usual interiors sense. More the psychology of them. The small decisions we make without realising. The styles we’re drawn to. The memories we build into rooms. The way a space can feel like comfort, or performance, or even escape.

I’ve found myself increasingly interested in why we decorate the way we do, and what our homes say about us when we’re not trying to say anything at all. This series is my way of following that curiosity properly.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get the full set of essays as they’re released. And if you’re not, I’ll share more details as we get closer to launch.

More soon - I’m looking forward to sharing it with you 💜

Each week I take one archived essay out from behind the paywall for you to enjoy for free 💜

“Home is not a place… it’s a feeling.”

~ Cecilia Ahern

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we decorate our homes.

Not in the practical sense. Obviously we need furniture and somewhere to put the mugs and a lamp to stop us sitting in darkness every evening. I mean the extra layer beyond that. The paint colours agonised over for weeks. The framed prints. The cushions nobody strictly needs. The endless internal debates over whether a room feels calm or cold, cosy or cluttered.

At what point did humans stop simply sheltering in spaces and start trying to make them beautiful?

For most of history, homes were functional first. Survival first. A roof that kept out rain. A fire. A place to sleep without being eaten by something in the night. Even fairly recently, ordinary people didn’t have the luxury of designing homes around personal taste. Houses were often dark, crowded, inherited, practical. Furniture was expensive and built to last generations. Rooms served multiple purposes because they had to.

And yet people still decorated.

Archaeologists have found painted walls in ancient homes, carved symbols on doorways, carefully woven textiles, decorative pottery. The Romans filled houses with mosaics and frescoes. In the Middle Ages, even poorer homes often had embroidered cloths or bunches of dried flowers hung inside. Not because they were necessary, but because humans seem to have an instinct to soften the edges of survival. To leave evidence of ourselves in the places we live.

There’s something comforting in that to me. The idea that even when life was hard, people still cared about beauty.

Though beauty probably isn’t quite the right word. I think what people were often trying to create was reassurance.

Psychologists talk about something called “place identity” - the idea that our surroundings become tangled up with our sense of self. That we partly understand who we are through the spaces we inhabit. It makes sense when you think about it. Our homes are where we carry out the least performative parts of being human. Where we sleep, grieve, get dressed, vegetate on the sofa, argue, recover, eat toast standing up at the counter.

A home starts shaping us almost as much as we shape it.

And we do this socially too. We attach personality to place constantly. The “city slicker”. The “country bumpkin”. Tell someone a postcode and people immediately begin building a version of the person who lives there in their head. We assume things about taste, income, politics, education, even temperament based on where somebody belongs geographically. Whether they live in a tiny rural cottage or a glass apartment in the middle of a city becomes shorthand for the kind of person we imagine them to be. Homes and places become extensions of identity long before we consciously decorate them ourselves.

And maybe that relationship with space begins earlier than we realise.

I grew up first in a tiny cottage where space was practical rather than aesthetic. Rooms had purposes, not personalities. Then later we moved into a huge old schoolhouse that had been completely gutted. When we first moved in there were no internal walls. Just this enormous open shell of a building with endless potential and absolutely no softness to it yet.

Then there were the years of shared housing, where every room felt temporary and negotiated. Kitchens that belonged to everyone and no one. Bedrooms you never fully settled into because some part of you knew you would eventually leave. And then finally my own bedsit, which in hindsight was probably the first time I experienced the quiet joy of arranging a space purely around myself.

At the time I didn’t think of it in design terms. But looking back, I wonder how much our early environments shape what feels comforting to us later on. Some people love vast open-plan spaces flooded with light. Other people want smaller rooms, corners, doors that close properly. Some people feel calm around minimalism while others experience it as cold or exposed.

I know now that I sit somewhere in the middle of all of it.

I have no desire to live in one of those enormous white modern houses where everything echoes and there’s a beige boucle chair positioned beside a vase containing three branches. They always make me feel slightly uneasy, like nobody is actually allowed to relax there. But equally I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a tiny cluttered cottage filled with visual noise and shelves of mismatched trinkets either. I like warmth, but I also like space to think.

And apparently that says something about personality too.

There’s a lot of research showing that our nervous systems respond differently to environments. Clutter can genuinely increase stress levels for some people because the brain continues processing visual stimuli even when we think we’re ignoring it. On the other hand, spaces that are too sparse can feel emotionally empty or even unsettling. Humans generally prefer environments with a balance of order and softness. Enough structure to feel safe, enough variation to feel alive.

Which explains why so many homes now end up looking oddly similar. Everyone is trying to hit that same psychological sweet spot. Warm woods. Soft lighting. Neutral walls. Texture. Curves. Cosy-but-not-messy. Lived-in-but-not-too-lived-in.

And of course the internet has poured petrol all over this.

Sometimes I wonder how much of modern decorating is genuine self-expression and how much is collective performance. Homes used to be mostly seen by the people who lived in them and whoever happened to visit. Now they are photographed constantly. Shared. Consumed. Ranked silently against each other.

You can almost watch trends forming in real time. Suddenly everyone wants limewash walls. Then everyone wants colour drenching. Then dark wood is out. Then it’s back. Entire personalities built around the correct shade of olive green.

It’s strange how easily aesthetics become morality. Minimalism becomes discipline and sophistication. Clutter becomes failure. Certain interiors get coded as intelligent, calm, tasteful. Others as chaotic or dated. We absorb these messages without even noticing.

And I think that’s partly why decorating has felt unexpectedly emotional for me lately.

Because making decisions about a home requires a certain amount of trust in your own instincts. You have to believe your preferences are worth following.

For a long time I stopped trusting myself in small ways. I became very reliant on other people’s opinions, other people’s certainty. Even aesthetically. Especially aesthetically. It felt safer somehow to defer than decide.

So now I walk around this house feeling two things at once.

Excitement at the thought of slowly making it ours. Painting walls. Finding pieces we genuinely love. Letting rooms evolve over time instead of arriving fully formed from a Pinterest board.

And also this persistent voice asking: what’s the point?

Is any of this actually important? Or have we just been convinced it is by beautiful Instagram accounts and carefully curated algorithms selling us a lifestyle disguised as authenticity?

I don’t fully know the answer.

But I do think there is something deeply human about wanting our surroundings to reflect not just status or trend, but inner life. Maybe decorating is less about impressing other people than about trying to create an atmosphere we can safely exist inside.

A way of telling ourselves: you can rest here now.

And perhaps that is what homes have always been, underneath all the trends and aesthetics and shopping links. Not a performance of perfection, but an attempt to make being alive feel a little softer.

I’d love to know — do you think your taste is truly yours, or do you think it was shaped long before you ever chose a paint colour?

Subscribe now

Until next time,

You may also enjoy:

I’ve also been working on a short, five-part essay series that I’ll be launching in June. It’s called Why We Live Like This, and it’s an exploration of homes - but not in the usual interiors sense. More the psychology of them. The small decisions we make without realising. The styles we’re drawn to. The memories we build into rooms. The way a space can feel like comfort, or performance, or even escape.

I’ve found myself increasingly interested in why we decorate the way we do, and what our homes say about us when we’re not trying to say anything at all. This series is my way of following that curiosity properly.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get the full set of essays as they’re released. And if you’re not, I’ll share more details as we get closer to launch.

More soon - I’m looking forward to sharing it with you 💜

Each week I take one archived essay out from behind the paywall for you to enjoy for free 💜

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

~ Jane Austen

Three weeks into living here, we painted our first room.

The sitting room faces north west, and for most of the day it sits in shadow. At first I was worried about this. I worried it would feel gloomy or cold, a room we ignored in favour of brighter, lighter spaces. But in the evenings, right around the time we naturally drift towards the living room, it transforms. The setting sun streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the whole room glows. The light arrives low and warm and generous, as if it has been saving itself all day just for this room.

We knew early on that we wanted this space to feel cosy. Not styled or impressive or minimalist in the way the internet likes living rooms to be. We wanted a room that would pull us towards it at the end of the day. A room for blankets and movies and cups of tea gone cold beside us. A room that felt safe.

The couch is already hidden beneath fluffy throws, and soft lamps mean we rarely turn on the overhead light. To lean fully into that feeling, we painted the walls, and the ceiling, a rich dark brown. Alongside the dark brown sofa, it has created something surprisingly cave-like. But not in a bleak way. In the way caves must once have felt to people thousands of years ago: sheltered, warm, protected from whatever was happening outside.

Around the deep window frame we painted gold. In the evening sunlight it almost disappears into the glow, as though the sun itself has turned the brown into gold for a few fleeting minutes before dusk settles in.

I think this room has become a reflection of what this house means to us.

Not perfection. Not performance. Just safety. Warmth. Freedom.

A place where we can decorate however we like without worrying whether it is fashionable enough or sensible enough or approved by somebody else. A place where we can make choices simply because they make us feel good.

I still catch myself wanting permission.

Permission to choose the paint colour. Permission to spend the small budget we have on a lamp or a shelf or cushions. Permission to trust my instincts. Sometimes I still assume that somebody else must know better than me, that somebody else would make smarter choices, more sensible decisions, fewer mistakes.

There is still a small part of me waiting to be laughed at for choosing the wrong thing.

But alongside that, something gentler is emerging too. Patience, maybe. Both with myself and for myself.

I am slowly learning that I do not need to make every decision immediately. I do not need to have the whole house figured out within weeks. I do not need to know today how we’ll organise the coats beneath the stairs or what the dining nook will eventually look like or where every plant will live in the garden.

Mistakes are not proof that I’ve failed. Usually they are just proof that I tried.

And often, waiting quietly for the right idea feels better than rushing towards the first one out of fear.

Outside, spring is now fully unfolding. Trees are greening almost overnight and bushes that looked lifeless only weeks ago are bursting back into bloom. Birds are tucked away in nests waiting for eggs to hatch. In the fields nearby, lambs and calves stand on impossible legs, all wobble and uncertainty.

Everything at this time of year seems to understand instinctively that growth cannot be rushed.

Even the dog understands it better than I do.

On warm afternoons he lies stretched out on the back patio, nose lifted slightly towards the ocean air drifting over the road. He doesn’t worry about whether rain will come tomorrow. He doesn’t question whether he should be doing something more productive with his afternoon. He simply lies there, warm and content, fully inside the moment he is already in.

I think that is what I am trying to learn too.

To stop living constantly in the next decision, the next problem, the next improvement. To stop treating rest as something earned only once everything is complete.

Because maybe this is enough already.

Maybe it is enough that three weeks ago this house felt unfamiliar and echoing, and now it smells faintly of paint and dinner and dog hair and home.

Maybe it is enough to sit in our new little cave in the evenings while the windows turn gold and feel proud of how far we’ve already come.

Subscribe now

Until next time,

You may also enjoy:

If you enjoyed this essay, you might like to download my free ebook Seasonal Wellness, available for all paid subscribers. It’s full of seasonal reflections, practical tips, and delicious recipes.

Each week I take one archived essay out from behind the paywall for you to enjoy for free 💜

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

~ Pema Chödrön

There are boxes you open for practical reasons, and then there are boxes that open something in you.

This week, I found the latter.

Tucked away in a filing cabinet I hadn’t touched in over twenty years were the hundreds of notes from friends I kept from boarding school. Folded scraps of paper, softened at the creases, ink slightly faded but still legible, little time capsules from a chapter of my life I had almost forgotten.

We used to write them during classes and the long evening study sessions, passing them quietly from desk to desk, a chain of small rebellions. Quick observations, complaints about teachers, plans for the weekend, and, of course, declarations of teenage love. Once read, they were hidden away in pencil cases and pockets, avoiding the embarrassment of having it read out by an eagle-eyed teacher!

And somehow, even then, I must have known they mattered. I kept every single one.

They followed me through moves and upheaval, through relationships and motherhood, through becoming someone entirely different, or so I thought. When I left my parents’ house in a hurry to discover the world all those years ago, they stayed behind, waiting patiently for me to return to them.

Opening them now felt like finding a thread, tenuous and almost impossible, leading me back to the girl I used to be.

Lately, I’ve felt a little untethered. The past couple of years have reshaped so much of my life that I’ve found myself wondering who I am. I think it happens quietly in long-term relationships, we soften into each other, blend tastes and habits, adapt to fit the version of ourselves we see in someone else’s eyes. And in doing so, we can lose sight of where one person ends and the other begins.

Reading those notes, I could see myself more clearly again.

Many of them were from him, the boy I first loved, back when everything felt both certain and impossible. The same boy I have, somehow, found my way back to after all this time. In my mind, he has always existed as that younger version: full of plans, full of certainty, full of us. And with a full head of hair!

And in some ways, he still is.

But we are both changed now. Life has a way of jostling us about and leaving small bruises behind. We are a little more careful, a little more aware of how things can change. The plans we make are quieter now, held more lightly, as if we’ve learned not to grip too tightly in case they slip through.

Still, reading those notes, I could feel something in me stirring.

My younger self - hopeful, uncertain, searching - began to unfurl again.

I noticed it, too, in my old journals. I’ve always written, without ever really knowing why, and now I’m so grateful that I did. Memory has a way of reshaping things, softening the harder edges, filling in gaps with what we wish had been true. But those pages don’t lie.

They hold the truth of how things felt at the time.

And what struck me most was how familiar that feeling was, the quiet sense that I should have known more than I did. That I should have had a clearer idea of where I was going, of who I was becoming.

I can still feel that now.

All these years later, I am still uncertain about what I want my future to look like. The details remain hazy, the path not entirely clear. Instead of parents and career guidance counsellors, the pressure now comes from society and peers.

But I’m beginning to trust that this isn’t something to fix. It’s something to allow.

Outside, the garden is beginning to shift into its next season. The soil is being turned, seeds are being sown, plans are being made without any real guarantee of what will come. We don’t know what kind of summer we’ll have, how much rain will fall, or which plants will thrive where they’ve been placed.

And still, we plant.

There is a quiet faith in that. A willingness to begin without certainty. A trust that growth will happen, even if it doesn’t look exactly as we imagined.

Maybe that’s all I’m being asked to do right now.

To gather the fragments of who I have been - the girl with the folded notes, the woman who kept them, the many versions in between - and to let them sit alongside who I am becoming.

Not to rush it. Not to force it into shape. Just to stay open.

And to trust that, like everything else, the path will reveal itself in time.

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Until next time,

You may also enjoy:

If you enjoyed this essay, you might like to download my free ebook Seasonal Wellness, available for all paid subscribers. It’s full of seasonal reflections, practical tips, and delicious recipes.

Each week I take one archived essay out from behind the paywall for you to enjoy for free 💜

“It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

This week, with the help of some good friends, we brought another van load, along with two carloads of belongings, from the old house.

Not the house we have been living in these past six months, but the one we left in a rush before that. The house we walked away from carrying more weight than boxes. The house that held an unhealthy relationship and an unhealthy atmosphere for longer than it should have.

Going back felt strange.

It was familiar in the way old places always are. My feet knew where to step before my mind caught up. Memories rose uninvited as I moved from room to room, appearing like dust in sunlight. And yet it did not feel like ours. Though it had once been my family home, I no longer felt I belonged there. Perhaps sometimes we outgrow places long before we physically leave them.

At the other end of the day, we came home and began opening boxes.

There was a quiet joy in being reunited with ordinary things. A full wardrobe instead of the handful of Winter clothes we had been rotating through. Shelves of our favourite books. Framed art. The familiar mugs, the good blankets, the small objects that carry no great value and yet somehow contain the feeling of a life. Piece by piece, the house became more recognisable to us.

When I unwrapped my grandmother’s delicate jewellery box, I found myself wondering what she would make of all this.

She left her family in England to begin again in Canada, arriving with few possessions and no certainty of what would come next. Still, she and my grandfather built a good life there. It was not always easy, but they built it.

My other grandmother was expelled from her country by war, forced to leave with only what she could carry and no clear sense of where life would take her next. She, too, carried on.

These women were strong, though I doubt they always felt strong at the time.

We often mistake strength for confidence, when in truth it is more often persistence. It is continuing while uncertain. It is carrying fear in one hand and hope in the other.

Leaving a relationship may seem mild beside war or migration, and yet many of the feelings are strangely similar. The rupture. The doubt. The practical chaos. The wondering if you have made the right decision. The voices, internal and external, asking whether it was really that bad, whether you should have stayed, whether starting again is worth the cost.

Then there are the quieter fears that visit at night, when the house is dark and everyone else is asleep. What if this does not work? What if I cannot make a better life from here? What if I have chosen uncertainty over security?

But life has a way of working out.

Not always neatly. Not always quickly. And rarely in the exact shape we imagined.

Around us, new neighbours are moving into finished homes. We hear carpets being fitted, drills buzzing as built-in wardrobes are installed, the sounds of lives slotting efficiently into place. A small part of me envies the apparent smoothness of it all.

But a larger part of me is glad our journey is slower.

I like getting to know this house gradually. Learning which corner is best for curling up with a book. Which window catches the first blush of sunrise. How footsteps echo differently in the hallway than in the kitchen. The click of the heating coming on. The way the evening light creeps around to the front of the house.

Even the mucky, clay-heavy garden offered us something this week.

After many days of rain, the ground finally dried enough for exploring, and my youngest found a collection of fossils in the churned-up soil, likely disturbed when the rock was broken during the building works.

Tiny treasures hidden in the mess.

It felt like a seasonal lesson of its own. Mid-spring is not polished or perfected. It is muddy ground, sudden growth, unexpected colour, bulbs pushing through dark soil. It is life returning in ways that look untidy before they look beautiful.

Perhaps that is where we are too.

Not finished. Not settled. Not yet what we will become.

But full of promise, and finding treasures as we go.

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Until next time,

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“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”

~ Meister Eckhart

Last Wednesday, we got the keys to our new home.

Even though I had driven past the house many times over the last few months, turning into the driveway for the first time made my stomach flip. Some moments are felt in the body before the mind has time to catch up. This was one of them.

When I stepped inside, it felt like one long exhale. The kind of breath you don’t realise you’ve been holding until it leaves you. This was it. We were finally home.

The house is a blank canvas. No floors. No colour on the walls. No proper furniture. No appliances. Empty rooms and hallways that echo when you walk through them.

And yet, it already feels like it has a personality of its own.

There is something calm about it. Something quiet and steady. The huge windows make it feel a little like a dolls house, as if one whole wall has been lifted away and the sky invited in. Outside, the garden looks like a potter’s scrap heap - clay, broken blocks, rough ground, more chaos than beauty right now.

But none of that matters.

We are here.

We are safe.

We are in a place that belongs to us, and maybe most importantly, a place where we get to decide how to live.

After leaving a controlling and manipulative relationship, freedom can feel unfamiliar. Choice can feel heavier than you expect. Even deciding where a sofa should go or what colour to paint a wall can bring up doubt. Can I trust myself? What if I get it wrong?

So I keep reminding myself: walls can be painted again. Furniture can be moved. Shelves can be built later. Very little is permanent. Most mistakes are not disasters, just lessons.

This house is not only somewhere to live. It is somewhere to practise trusting myself again.

The first few days after getting the keys were strange. Nothing felt real. My mind, usually full of thoughts and lists and worries, went completely quiet. I could barely think at all.

Then the tiredness hit.

Not just the physical tiredness of moving boxes and cleaning floors, but the deeper exhaustion that comes when your body finally realises the hard part might be over. When your nervous system starts to unclench.

Now that we are here, I am learning the sounds of this house.

The downpipe outside drips beside the wall vent, the sound bouncing strangely around the sitting room. The heating system kicks in and out with little sighs and clicks. Voices drift past outside that I do not yet recognise. Doors sound different here. Footsteps carry differently. I truly believe that very home has its own language, and we are only beginning to learn this one.

I thought I would arrive full of urgency. I imagined I would be impatient to paint walls, buy furniture, build shelves, make plans for every corner. I thought the moment we got the keys I would need everything finished immediately.

Instead, I feel calm.

More content than I expected.

There is no panic to make this place impressive. No rush to prove anything. No need to transform it overnight. Right now, we have what we need most.

Safety.

Comfort.

Room to breathe.

I know the day will come when my mind begins to reboot properly and ideas start flooding in. Colours for walls. Lamps for corners. Hooks, shelves, rugs, tables. I know there will be spreadsheets and mood boards and many, many trips to hardware shops. There will be decisions and changes and plenty of debate around the dinner table.

But for now, I am enjoying this point in the journey.

The pause before the next wave of energy.

The simple privilege of having a home we can call our own.

A place where my girls can curl up on the old brown sofa we got for free to watch a movie and not have to inflate airbeds to sleep on. A place where I can come downstairs in the morning and feel no urge to scroll my phone or brace myself for the day. Instead, I watch the seagulls circling over the nearby sea and wait for the little grey wagtail who visits the back door each morning as if checking in on us.

There are piles of belongings everywhere. Cardboard boxes doing the job of a shoe rack. Mattresses on concrete floors. A cooler bag outside doing the work of a fridge. Gaps in the kitchen where appliances will one day go.

But none of that matters.

There are seasons in life for striving, fixing, proving and surviving.

And then there are seasons for arriving.

Not polished arrivals. Not perfect ones. Not the kind where everything is finished and beautiful.

Just the real kind.

The kind where peace moves in before the furniture does.

To have finally reached this point is an amazing feeling, and as much as I look forward to the convenience of wardrobes and dining chairs, for now I am more than happy to just enjoy this first page in our exciting new chapter of life.

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“The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”

~ Molière

There’s a restlessness in me this week, a tug between wanting something new and not having the energy to start.

Maybe it’s the spring stirring, or maybe it’s just this in-between, the space that exists after one chapter ends and before the next fully begins. I started making a crochet cardigan before Christmas, yet here I am, choosing Netflix over yarn, unable to focus.

I’ve nearly finished sorting all our family photos, a project which was years overdue, but I can’t bring myself to finish the last box. My mind is stuck in waiting-on-our-new-house mode. I know I can’t control when the call will come, but every day I catch myself thinking, maybe today, only to be quietly disappointed when it’s not.

This is the final stretch of the in-between, and so far it’s the hardest. I know I’ve grown over the past months; I’m a happier, steadier version of myself than I was six months ago. But there are still small niggles to iron out. I can’t help feeling that the universe is holding the house until I’ve finished the work I need to do first.

And yet, my brain rebels. It doesn’t want more discomfort or limbo; it wants something fresh, a new focus, a new chapter.

Even here, on this platform where I write weekly, I feel resistance. I know I should be present, keeping up with the rhythm I’ve built. But something stops me, fear, maybe. Fear of being seen in the messy middle, or of judgment for showing the parts of myself that are still figuring things out. My identity has shifted, and perhaps my writing has too. Will it still resonate? Will anyone still care for these ramblings?

Amid all this, I watch my youngest. She is also struggling with the waiting, the uncertainty, the stretch of days that feel suspended. And yet, I am constantly amazed by how well she and her sister have coped.

Autism often demands routine and consistency, a calm, safe space to come home to. Yet I have given them none of that recently. Their bedroom is also the sitting room, joined with the kitchen; they share a bathroom; there is no truly alone space apart from an occasional nap in the car. And still, they make it work.

If they can navigate this chaos, I remind myself, then so can I.

There is a twinge of guilt in that thought too. I have a space to sleep and retreat to in another room, a small sanctuary that helps me stay regulated and steady for them. I need it to function, to show up for them fully, but I also feel the tension of having what they cannot. And maybe that is part of the lesson in this in-between: learning to hold both things at once - gratitude and guilt, patience and restlessness, hope and anxiety.

This week, I’ve also noticed how spring has affected them. They want to be outside, to go on road trips, to help tidy my mother’s garden, to wash the car.

Recognising this as the natural pull of the season, a human response to the changing light and warmth, feels like a blessing. It makes life easier when we realise they’re not just being fidgety or restless, they are reacting to spring just as the plants and animals do.

When winter comes, we all want to snuggle down at home, and we accept that due to the weather. But in spring, we must allow ourselves the same consideration: to stretch, to move, to be pulled outdoors by life’s subtle urgings.

Even the small things feel more urgent now, the scent of the first blossoms, the light lingering longer into the evening, the first shoots of green in the garden. Life is pressing forward, insisting that we move with it.

And yet, I can’t help noticing how the in-between resists rushing. It stretches time, asks for reflection, asks us to hold space for growth that is invisible to the eye. Perhaps that’s what makes this part so hard: the work is quiet, internal, invisible, and yet it shapes everything to come.

Still, I notice the quiet persistence of progress all around me. The children adapting, the projects inching forward, the growth I can see in myself. Perhaps the in-between isn’t a limbo to endure, but a practice in noticing small victories, a time to sit with uncertainty, and to tend to ourselves and our family with gentleness.

Maybe the restless waiting is exactly what the spring is for: a time to plant the seeds of the next chapter, even if we cannot yet see them bloom.

And in that planting, I realize something vital: patience doesn’t mean inaction, and stillness doesn’t mean stagnation. The in-between is work, too, the work of waiting, observing, reflecting, and learning from those around us who handle the chaos with grace. If my children can do it, so can I. And maybe that is enough for now.

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“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Guilt has a way of following us, quiet but persistent, shaping our choices long after the moments have passed.

It can creep into the decisions we make for our children, the ways we move through relationships, even the way we show up in the world. Sometimes it’s obvious, a sharp pang of regret. Other times it’s softer, a shadow we hardly notice, guiding us to act from fear rather than clarity, to put other people’s needs above our own.

This week, I became aware of just how much guilt I had been carrying, and what it might feel like to finally set it down.

In my previous relationship, guilt and blame were woven into the fabric of everyday life. It was always there, quietly tallying things up. Who was guilty for breaking the cup? Who had used all the hot water? It sounds small when you say it out loud. Almost trivial. But it builds. A way of living that revolved around avoiding wrongdoing at all costs, not because the mistakes themselves mattered that much, but to avoid the anger and shame.

Without even noticing, that way of thinking leaked into other parts of my life.

Guilt doesn’t just make you reflect, it reshapes you. It nudges you to put other people’s needs ahead of your own, not from love but from fear. It convinces you that if you can just accommodate enough, soften enough, ignore enough, you might somehow balance the scales. That maybe you will be forgiven. That maybe you will be liked. That maybe you will finally feel at peace.

But living from guilt isn’t accountability. It’s self-abandonment.

I could see it clearly this week, the ways I had been making decisions not because they were right for me or for my daughters, but because they were driven by a quiet need to undo the past. And the truth is, no decision made from guilt is ever going to create the kind of life I actually want for us.

Letting go of it didn’t come with a dramatic moment. There was no declaration, no sudden rush of release. It was more subtle than that. More like a loosening. Like setting something down that I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying for far too long.

My daughter noticed before I fully did. She said I seemed happier, and she was right. I can feel it physically, like something has shifted inside me, like joy is finding space again in places that had been occupied by guilt.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change things if I could. I would take a time machine in a heartbeat and make different choices in the moments where I now know better. But since I can’t, the least I can do is learn from them and move forward in a way that honours that learning, rather than punishes it.

Guilt has a way of making you feel like you are being watched. Judged. As though other people are measuring you against your worst decisions. In reality, most of us are far too wrapped up in our own thoughts and worries to pay much attention to anyone else’s perceived mistakes. But when we are unhappy with our own choices, we assume others must see us the same way, and we begin to overcompensate. We people please. We hide parts of ourselves. We try to outrun a version of us that no longer even exists.

And I think some of that ties into something else I’ve quietly carried for years, the feeling of never quite being adult enough.

There seems to be this unspoken expectation that by a certain point in life, you should have everything arranged. A home that looks a certain way. Finances that feel secure. A clear plan stretching neatly into the future. Even a way of dressing, of speaking, of being that signals you have it all together.

As though adulthood is something you eventually arrive at, fully formed and unquestionable.

And if you haven’t, if parts of your life still feel in progress, still a little improvised, then you must have done something wrong.

But the more I look around, the more I realise those ‘rules’ are largely imagined. A kind of collective story we tell ourselves. A voice in our heads insisting that everyone else is more put together, more certain, more grown-up than we are.

In reality, some people are just better at presenting it. Better at holding the image. Better at pretending.

And when we compare our insides to their outsides, it creates another layer of guilt. A quieter one, but just as heavy. Guilt for not being more mature. For not having the perfect plan. For not dressing the right way, earning enough, saving enough, knowing enough.

For still, somehow, feeling like we are figuring it out as we go.

Today, I was running around a playground with my twelve-year-old, not watching from the sidelines but properly joining in. For a moment, I became aware of other parents looking over, and I felt that familiar flicker - what do they think of me? But it didn’t land in the usual way. Without the weight of guilt, there was nothing for it to attach to.

And then I noticed something else. They were smiling. Not judging, not criticising, just watching with a kind of warmth. Maybe even a hint of admiration. Maybe even wishing they could leave the bench and join in too.

And maybe that’s the beauty of middle age, it isn’t the peak at all. It’s a clearing on a long journey, a place to pause, let go, and lighten our load before continuing on. Not to erase the past, but to carry it differently. To step forward as someone lighter, someone who can hold their experiences without being defined by them, someone who can make choices from clarity instead of guilt, someone who no longer feels the need to prove they are ‘adult enough’ to belong in their own life.

The work of this stage isn’t achieving perfection or meeting invisible standards, but simply putting down what was never ours to carry and moving forward with less weight and more freedom.

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“It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

This week I turned 43.

Birthdays have always felt to me less like a mourning of time passing by and more like a celebration of having lived another year. The day itself changes as we change: twenty years ago, I was six months pregnant with my first child, feeling life shift in a way that would redefine everything. Ten years ago, it meant a night out with friends in a pub, waking up the next morning with a sore head and a collection of fleeting memories.

This year was entirely different.

Breakfast in bed, party hats made by my youngest, a walk around a local garden, a chocolate brownie in a quiet café. Gifts were gentle, generous, and guided by my simple request: let them be something for our new house. A terracotta pot filled with potpourri from Santa Maria Novella, a book on green cleaning by Nancy Birtwhistle, a handcrafted vase from a local potter and friend. And four chocolate creme eggs just for fun!

I think back over all my birthdays and, despite always being fortunate, I remember surprisingly few gifts. How many do I still have? How many were discarded? In a world that measures value by price tags, I’ve come to treasure the gifts that cost little in money but everything in thought. Years ago, my eldest gave me a little ‘happiness bag’: a carefully chosen crystal, a handwritten poem, a sprig of lavender. Small, inexpensive, but it still brings me immense joy.

Even as a child, I remember gifts that mattered less for their cost and more for the care behind them. A white box arrived from my grandparents in Canada, layered in tissue paper, filled with Barbie accessories not available in Ireland at the time - tiny handbags, bright heels, delicate ball gowns. The thrill wasn’t in the price but in the thought, the effort, the love woven into each choice.

Having my birthday in March, the very beginning of spring, I have always felt it marks the true start of my yearly cycle. The turning of the season mirrors the turning of my life: new growth pushing through the soil, the quiet promise of longer days, the subtle warmth returning to the sun. Looking ahead to this year, I feel both excitement and trepidation.

A new home awaits us, full of possibility, but the thought of kitting it out and decorating on a small budget is daunting. A new relationship brings hope, but as anyone who has passed the honeymoon phase knows, it is when the first few months settle that the true grit of a partnership is revealed!

And then there are my daughters - one heading off to college in September, the other stepping into her teenage years in May. It feels like a year of levelling up, of stepping into new challenges and, hopefully, embracing new opportunities.

To finish this birthday, we drove past our future home and walked the streets that will soon be ours, grounding ourselves in the footpaths, the trees, the spaces we will come to know intimately. The winter chill lingered in the air, but the first shoots of spring were visible: daffodils pushing through damp earth, the faint scent of early blossoms, the song of birds returning to familiar branches. Each small detail felt like a quiet welcome, a reminder that growth comes in gentle, measured increments.

This birthday feels like the precipice of a new chapter - the second half of my life story. Nights of drinking and staying out until the early hours are mostly behind me. The relationship that carried me through many birthdays is over. Ahead lies a calmer, gentler, happier chapter.

The greatest joy of being in my forties is caring far less about what others think. Yes, I’m in bed by nine most nights. Yes, I prefer a garden centre to a nightclub. Yes, I choose comfort over fashion. And that’s perfectly fine. I admire those who can still party until dawn, those who step outdoors as if they have come straight off a plane from Paris. But I am happy simply to be me.

Birthdays are bookmarks. They mark a year lived, a chapter closed, and a quiet turning toward what comes next. They are a season in miniature: reflection, preparation, and a gentle nudge towards growth. And in that turning, I find contentment, gratitude, and the quiet thrill of another year fully, completely lived.

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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

~ Anaïs Nin

After seven years, I finally went to the dentist last week.

I hadn’t felt the urgency, even when after Christmas I’d lost a filling, but without pain, hadn’t thought it necessary to rush. And honestly, I dreaded the thought of going. My eldest, eager to have her own teeth checked, finally nudged me into action.

Lying back in that chair, the dentist counting fillings and gaps, my body trembled. Not fear of the dentist exactly, but the invasive nature of dental work triggered panic. My legs felt heavy, my chest tight, my hands gripping the armrests. I was hyper-aware of every beep, every scrape, every breath.

When I was told I’d need to return twice more for cleaning and fillings, it barely registered, my mind had already left the building.

Then came my first HIIT class this week. My eldest had joined in January initially expecting Pilates but discovering it was, in fact, strength and conditioning with Pilates infused…in other words, an hour of lunges, squats, cardio and other unflattering poses! Despite that she had persevered and now had convinced me that it would benefit me also.

Walking in to the studio for the first time, I felt completely out of place with these other women who obviously knew each other and how to move about the class. The only workouts I had done before was with a personal trainer or in the comfort of my own sitting room so to be surrounded by other, much fitter people, was intimidating to say the least.

My relationship with exercise has always been tenuous at best. I have never felt that rush of adrenaline after a workout, or had the discipline to stick with a routine for longer than it took to build up a wardrobe of new workout gear.

To say I enjoyed the hour would be an exaggeration but I did feel a sense of accomplishment by the end. Enough to agree in payment to coming back three times a week for the next month. By the end of the week I was exhausted, every muscle in my body was screaming, and I was wondering why I was subjecting myself to this expensive form of torture.

A comment from my daughter made me stop and think. “These are all forms of self-care.” Initially I wanted to argue. Self-care is bubble baths and early nights, I thought. Comfort, indulgence, ease. But she was right. Self-care is also showing up for your body, in all its forms, even when it trembles with fear or protests with every muscle.

We can convince ourselves that fitness classes, new workout gear, or investing in ourselves financially are luxuries we cannot afford. There are bills to pay, groceries to buy, school uniforms, birthday presents, home repairs, so many things that appear more important, more urgent.

And yet, the simple act of choosing ourselves, of prioritising our health, our well-being, even with money, is a radical form of self-care. Purchasing a class, a pair of trainers, a yoga mat, is not indulgence, it is a vote for your own body, your own vitality, your own future. It is an act that says: I matter. I deserve attention, investment, and care.

Last summer, my body was crying out for help. Hair falling out in clumps, chronic migraines, weight climbing despite my efforts. Stress had driven my cortisol levels dangerously high and even the doctor had warned me that I needed to make some changes. Walking away from a stressful relationship was only the first step. Now comes the work of helping my body recover, to strengthen it, to restore its ability to carry me through the world.

I think of nature and the ways it reminds us of care in forms we don’t always recognise. Trees don’t sit idle waiting for warmth to soothe them. They grow roots through compacted soil, split rocks, bend in storms. Rivers don’t wait for perfect conditions to carve valleys, they push, erode, and find new paths, gradually reshaping the landscape.

Even the moon reminds us of cycles, waxing and waning, pulling tides, marking time. It teaches that movement, intensity, and sometimes discomfort, are part of growth.

And now, as Spring arrives outside, it feels mirrored inside me. For months I sat, recovering. I was stuck, still, unsure how to move forward after leaving a life, a home, a relationship behind. My internal world was quiet, introspective, a bit barren.

But now there is a stirring. A forward-thinking energy, subtle but insistent, nudging me toward new possibilities, new directions. The crocuses poke through the soil on the lawn, the tree branches swell with buds, and internally, my thoughts are stretching toward new projects, new ideas, new rhythms.

There is a curious dialogue between inner and outer spring. Outside, the air warms gradually; the sunlight lengthens; the world exhales after winter. Inside, the shift is less predictable, less visible, but equally vital. My body, my mind, my heart, they are pushing, trembling, beginning to flex again.

The self-care that once seemed tedious or terrifying, the dentist appointments, the HIIT workouts, the decision to invest in myself, is part of this internal season. It is the preparation, the soil tilling, the gentle cracking of dormant seeds.

Going to the dentist and stepping into a HIIT class are small, inconsequentional acts, but they are acts of listening to my body, honoring its needs, and giving it the space to heal. Sometimes self-care is soft. Sometimes it is deliberate, uncomfortable, challenging. Both are necessary, both are nurturing.

And just like the moon overhead or the spring unfolding around me, we too are moving in cycles, sometimes full of energy, sometimes quiet, always moving forward.

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“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

~ William Morris

This week we packed the last of the boxes.

Not the practical ones, those went first. Clothes. Cosmetics. Extension leads and charging cables. The boxes that didn’t require too much thought.

These were different.

Seasonal decorations.

The hot chocolate station spoons wrapped in festive tea-towels. The Easter hunt baskets with their frayed handles. Knotted, tangled fairy lights that have followed us from house to house, blinking through garden parties and birthdays and long December evenings.

They were the hardest to sort.

Not because of the quantity, but because of what they held.

Memory is a strange thing to divide. Standing there surrounded by tissue paper and Christmas mugs, I felt the quiet ache of splitting a history in two. These were traditions we built in a home that, from the outside, might have looked festive. Photogenic. Full.

But inside, it was rarely the Hallmark scene it appeared to be, or the one we wished it could be.

There was pressure.
Expectation.
An undercurrent I was always managing.

Holidays became performances. More focus on what was bought, how it looked, whether the budget was balanced between daughters, than how it felt. I spent a lot of those seasons trying to keep everything smooth and magical while carrying something much heavier underneath.

So sorting through those decorations was layered. Grief, yes, for the small children who once woke up breathless with anticipation. For the years that are simply gone because that is what time does.

But not grief for the dynamic itself.

Because that part, I do not miss.

The children are older now. There will be no elaborate Easter egg hunts with carefully crafted clues tucked behind flowerpots. The anticipation of Santa has softened into something gentler, calmer, yet still magical.

And something else has shifted too.

There is more ease in our celebrations now. Less proving. Less posturing. We do not need to spend hundreds of euro to manufacture joy. We do not need curated backdrops or impressive days out.

An 11pm run for ice cream on Saturday night- pyjamas on, blankets wrapped tight in the back of the car - can hold more warmth than a full day at an expensive adventure centre.

Sometimes, it holds more laughter too.

There is something deeply healing about that.

About realising that fun does not have to be bought. That connection does not need to be staged. That memories are not measured in receipts.

Standing in that half-empty room this week, I let go of more than mass produced mugs and novelty signs. I let go of the version of holidays that required performance. The extra garlands that never quite found a place. The décor bought on a whim because it “looked nice” or because it fitted an aesthetic seen on social media.

This past year has changed me.

When we moved to my parents house at the end of 2024, it took countless car runs and several very full van loads to transport our lives. We carried our “just in case”, our “one day”, our “this could be handy.” We carried, too, the weight of trying to prove something.

This time, we may fill one van.

And that feels like freedom.

I read recently that every single item in our home demands something from us. Dusting. Washing. Refilling. Charging. Storing. Moving. Even if the demand is small, it exists. Our belongings require energy - physical, financial, mental.

Spending that energy is not wrong. A well-loved armchair earns its keep. The coffee machine that brightens early mornings earns its keep. The framed photo of loved ones no longer with us earns its keep.

But the pretty ornament picked up because it was a great deal?
The clothes we keep in the hope we’ll fit into them again one day?
The decorations bought to create an image rather than a feeling?

They ask without giving much back.

So often we fall into the trap of “this could be handy” or “it’s too good to leave behind.” But I would rather live without something for a while - notice its absence, save for it, search for the right version - than fill our home with placeholders.

I am not a minimalist. I love warmth. I love books stacked beside beds and throws over armrests and evidence of life being lived.

But I crave ease.

Even with books, I am more selective. I’ll buy a title on Kindle if I suspect it’s a one-time read. If it lingers, if I find myself thinking about it weeks later, then I’ll order a physical copy. Only when I know it has earned its place on the shelf.

I want our home to feel like that.

Chosen.
Intentional.
Grounded in how it feels rather than how it looks.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be told all sorts of tricks for spring cleaning. The urge to declutter at this time of year is real. Light returns and suddenly we can see the dust and the excess.

But unless we change what we are bringing into our homes, and why, we will repeat the same cycle. Clear it out. Feel virtuous. Slowly fill it again. Carry the quiet guilt of never quite achieving the calm we crave.

For me, this season is not just about removing things.

It is about removing performance.

About understanding that joy does not need to be impressive.
That love does not need to be expensive.
That a home does not need to compete.

The fairy lights are still tangled. Some things, apparently, never change.

But the boxes are lighter.

And so am I.

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“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week we packed up the last of our clothes, pulling our lives from hangers and drawers and holding them up for inspection.

Flared jeans and corset tops I had left behind when I moved out in my late teens were finally let go. I remember who I was when I wore them - confident, hopeful, with no idea of where the future might take me. They have been packed and unpacked across decades, carried through moves, kept out of sentiment more than intention. Letting them go felt like closing a small, quiet door on a past version of myself.

Kids hoodies signed on the last day of school, band t-shirts from concerts the girls begged to attend - those we packed away to keep, but not to wear. They hold memories and feelings, even if they no longer fit our bodies or our style.

I started boxing up my books and felt a deeper ache there. Books feel less like belongings and more like companions. Sliding them into cardboard boxes felt like a betrayal, as I reminded myself that this is only temporary. I am already looking forward to the day I lift them out again, run my fingers along their spines, and line them up on shelves that belong to us.

The growing pile of boxes is strange to look at. It is both everything and so little. When we moved into the old house, we had so much more. Over the past year we have donated, binned, and divided what once was shared and permanent. Our lives have been reduced to what we choose to carry forward.

There is relief in that.

Less to dust. Less to organise. Less demanding our time and attention.

And yet there is sadness too - at the money spent, at the energy invested in things we clearly did not love enough to keep. It is humbling to see how much of what we accumulate does not follow us into the next chapter.

The cat has relished it all. He watches us from atop half-filled boxes, eyes bright, tail flicking with interest. The growing maze of cardboard has become his kingdom. He slips between gaps, disappears entirely, then re-emerges triumphant. To him, this is enrichment. Adventure. New terrain.

The dog is less enthused. He follows us from room to room as we pack, quieter than usual. He watches the boxes being sealed with a kind of solemn attention, as if trying to decipher what it means. There’s a look in his eyes that feels almost like worry, as though he suspects change and isn’t sure whether he will be carried along with it.

Watching them, I’m struck by how both responses feel true. The thrill of something new and the fear of what may be lost can live side by side. Perhaps we are not meant to choose between excitement and apprehension, but to hold them both, to recognise that change can feel like adventure and uncertainty all at once.

In the midst of all this, the first eclipse of the year arrived.

Astrologically, eclipses mark turning points, beginnings and endings that ripple forward over six months. They close doors and open others, often before we feel entirely ready. This one feels apt. We are between worlds, between homes, between identities in some ways. The next six months stretch out ahead of me like an unwritten chapter.

Where will we be when the eclipse season closes? What will the house feel like by then? What will I have built, emotionally, practically, creatively?

There is something grounding about thinking in six-month increments. I cannot control the move-in date. I cannot hurry plumbers or speed up landscaping. But I can imagine who I want to be when autumn comes. I can decide what kind of atmosphere I want to cultivate. I can begin, slowly, now.

I’ve started considering a colour palette for the new house, desperate for something tangible and constructive to focus on. I am drawn to warm, rich tones. Terracotta. Olive. Deep cream. A Mediterranean hug after a year of damp and dark. I want warmth that seeps into the bones. I want cosy and comforting and layered.

Outside, the weather has been icy and relentless. Cold rain streaks the windows and the wind howls around the gable walls. We have spent long stretches indoors, the days feeling close and contained. And yet the apartment smells faintly of fresh-cut flowers from Valentine’s Day, soft petals and perfume, somehow at odds with the grey world outside.

Living in a house that felt cold and heavy has left its mark. I crave softness now. Light that feels golden rather than grey.

My daughter gave me a blank recipe book for Christmas, and this week I began filling it in with our favourite meals. The act feels almost ceremonial. Writing down ingredients in careful script. Adding little notes in the margins. I love the thought of one day my grandchildren turning these oil stained pages, tracing the handwriting, cooking something that began in this in-between season.

For now, it allows me to dream of my future kitchen. A space I can organise in my own way. Cupboards arranged how I like them. Spices alphabetised! A window ledge with herbs. The simple sovereignty of choosing where things go.

It strikes me that so much of waiting is this tending to the future in small, invisible ways.

Packing what matters.
Letting go of what doesn’t.
Imagining colours.
Writing recipes.
Marking eclipses.

The house is not yet ours. We do not have a date. We cannot walk through its rooms or measure its walls. And yet, in some quiet way, we are already building it.

Home, I am realising, is not only the structure we step into. It is the attention we give to what we are carrying forward. It is the choices we make in the cold and rain. It is the flowers on the table that insist on softness. It is the reassurance given to a worried dog. It is the cat weaving through boxes as if to say, this too is an adventure.

Six months from now, the eclipse energy will settle. Something will have shifted. We will be further along, perhaps fully moved in, perhaps still adjusting, but not here, not exactly like this.

And maybe that is the quiet gift of this season: to live deliberately in the pause. To build warmth internally before we hang curtains. To practice being at home with ourselves, even before the key turns in the lock.

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Until next time,

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