Wow, it’s been such a long time since I’ve felt the urge to write. Not just ‘ought’ to write, but ‘wanting’ to scrawl down the most inner workings of my normally jumbled up mind. I have been on the edge of ‘wanting’ for a very long time, but the time wasn’t quite right. So I’ve waited and hoped, hoped and waited and wondered if the drivers that fire my synapses up would reappear.

Something has distinctly changed, it’s almost like I am beginning to knit together, or maybe stitch together – you may be the judge. Not perfectly, not completely, but enough that I can turn around and recognise myself again, I can think, ‘There you are, I remember you.’

It will be the fourth Christmas and three Christmas trees without hubby, and even though I feel like I am starting to mend I still misstep and find tears starting to tumble mid fairy light sorting. But as they say, grief has its own timetable. Mine has been slower than some peoples and much deeper than I expected. I’ve watched other woman bounce back within a year, finding someone new and start living brightly again. But honestly? That was never going to be me, I needed time and peace and apparently a lot of it.

And if I’m being honest, I think the diet has played a part in the delay of finding my contented self. When you’re watching ever calorie, every gram of fat and every morsel is rigorously analysed as to how it best fits into my plan. Whether that be wild nights on a Friday and manipulating the overall calorie count to work or which particular carb and protein will best fit into my plan that day to give satiety and flavour whilst still giving me an overall 500 calorie deficit. It narrows your world, gone are the days where I would be roasting, baking cakes, jam tarts and mince pies with gay abandon, simply because I fancied making them. Much as the dogs might adore me, it’s only (generally) me to eat them all up. Occasionally I’ll whip up a batch of fairy cakes with a handful of fruit in them for good measure and freeze them, so as I may take one out on a cold and windy Sunday evening and enjoy with a hot cup of tea. Facebook memories pop up with images of flour dusted worktops and loaves cooling on racks and I admire just how much we all managed to enjoy. I have quite recently purchased myself a bread machine which is wonderful so that I am able once a week to make myself a small loaf without too much strain and then enjoy it very slowly – although I’m not really sure if this is what was meant by slow food!

But this is where I want to be. Weight loss has given me so many pleasures, being able to move more easily for one, but there have been costs of which I have paid willingly. I will probably always be that woman who looks at a slice of cake in the way that a new mother looks at her first born child. Full of love and longing. But that’s the price I pay at this moment in time and I accept it and I choose it.

I can feel myself shifting in a good way. A sense of peace and of coming back to myself. Not the same woman who baked and kneaded and lived very busily in the moment – but a leaner, wiser, calmer woman who is ageing well and is joyful in her moment.

Maybe that is all this post is, a marker in time to say that this is the beginning of my return, a gentle stretch after a long sleep. Where I begin to make peace with who I have become and to find myself and my creativity again with writing, small adventures and the kind of everyday noticing that used to bring me such joy.

I’m not fully whole yet, but I’m on my way and I can feel the sparks of curiosity for oh so many projects – you know what I’m like, a new project and I’m a happy girl. And that, that is enough to start writing again.