Where did I go?

Well, hello. It’s been a while. In fact, it’s been over two years.

Two years since the start of COVID. Two years since I’ve been able to get back home to the UK. Two years of not writing a word on this blog.

Why? I don’t know.

Actually, that’s a lie. I do know. It’s because I had nothing to say. Or rather, nothing to say that felt worth sharing. I mean, this blog has been all about moving counties – not particularly relevant during a global pandemic when no-one could travel anywhere. And, frankly, writing about making where you’re living feel like home got a bit old after spending every freaking day in the same house, unable to go anywhere, for months on end.

Days have merged into weeks and months of sameness. Time feels like it has stretched and contracted on itself…I can no longer remember if things happened last year or the year before, or the year before that.

It’s been a period of loss and adjustment. Most people I know have lost someone they loved during these past two years. But we’ve also lost opportunities – time spent with family, seeing friends. I haven’t met my godson and he’s just turned two; I’ll never get those newborn cuddles. During these two years that have felt like a standstill my kids have changed and grown at warp speed and I know my family feel like they’ve missed a chunk of their childhood.

And I write this knowing it is the same for so many of you.

This forced separation from people we love is a heart loss. The need to see my family feels like it has physically drained me; I need to recharge myself through actual contact with them and not on a screen )although THANK GOD for screens and video chats).

But I also need to seek the positive changes.

I have taken this time to think about what’s important to me and to put my energies into that. I’ve realised that I need a creative outlet every day otherwise I don’t function well…but that ‘creative’ can cover many things. For me it’s doing something that makes me feel joy or connectedness or, best of all, that feeling of flow where you’re so in the zone that everything else slips away. And I get that when I play tennis, so now I play more (and I feel I have to add that being in the flow doesn’t equate to excelling at something, but at least now I have stopped closing my eyes when I try to hit the ball hard!)

So maybe we have to see that with loss, however painful, there is always some kind of gain. That the small stuff is important, and even more so when the big stuff threatens to overwhelm.

And I didn’t go anywhere. I’m still here, and grateful for that. And if you’re here, reading this, well I’m grateful to you for listening to what I finally got round to saying.

Thank you