Sometimes writing just flows.
The last newsletter might have seemed like a lot. However, once I had space to finally get it out, it took me less than four hours to write. An emotional unblocking of everything that’s been weighing heavy on my mind for the last three or more years.
It’s often harder. More time is required to construct sentences that accurately represent a place or its people. That’s where I’m at with Part 3. I feel a responsibility to represent the community correctly. To convey the beauty, as well as the challenges.
Add a heavy workload, three neurotic cats and a bored 12-year old boy into the mix, and my environment has not been conducive to the quiet, spacious days needed to really write. I am trying to have patience with myself.
Being temporarily back in Bristol next weekend might be the push needed to get it finished. I would like to get back to the food. I have several well overdue drafts waiting patiently to see the light of day.
In the meantime, a huge thank you to everyone who’s been in touch. Welcome to our new subscribers. Your messages mean everything. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to publish something so personal. To say the things that most won’t ever say. It has felt both liberating and essential.
My ability to finally get that piece over the line, was in-part inspired by my sit down with personal development coach and facilitator, Miffy Hoad. Last summer, Miffy kindly let me gatecrash her wedding, as the guest of my childhood friend and author, Letty Butler. So, it was a joy to be invited into her space, to talk more about breakdown, loss and why building back doesn’t look like you might think.
She’s been extremely kind to let me republish here, so do head over to Spotify to give her a subscribe and check-out the other episodes.
My big news since recording this is that I do now have a house!
We leave Winterthür on Sunday to go pick-up the keys to a tiny mountain house that landed unexpectedly in my lap, for a very reasonable price. Situated right on the Italian border, I’ll be close to Lugano, thirty minutes from Lake Como and a short hop to Milan for work.
Switzerland has been beautiful. I have found much joy in daily river dips, home cooking and time to reconnect with my boy. The flipside (there’s always a flipside!) is that August is looong, meeting people here is hard, the boy got food poisoning last weekend, and watching Shambala shenanigans / Massive Attack on the Downs, while I stayed home and cleaned-up sick, felt particularly lonesome.
My feet are itchy for September. I’m ready for crisp Autumn days, cold mountain air, and that new term feeling of a fresh start. I’m happy to have found somewhere to settle, excited to go see what it looks like, and a little anxious to get on with the real work of completely starting over at forty.
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