New Year begins on the 10th of January

"Don't get it right, get it written"

There is no reason why this should surprise me. Ever since contracting M.E. Christmas has been a mountain with a descent as fierce as the climb. Throw in a crop of bereavement anniversaries, and the impracticality of cold, damp weather and I should not be surprised that my New Year is rarely as dynamic as I hope.

This post will be short - I am still not up to a great deal of writing, but I am so twisted by my own silence I have grasped the “don’t get it right get it written” attitude. At the end of last year you may remember I realised the degree self censorship suffocates my work - I filter before I even get it onto the page. I’ve had a strange disconnect from my thoughts and feelings over the last few weeks. This may be a kind of self-protection or it may be a more M.E. related thing - perhaps a mix of the two. Whatever the reason it is unsettling. I reached the point of sitting outside for a while yesterday just so I could feel something.

And it seems to have worked. I’m working with prompts from Wendy Pratt’s “What to look for in winter” course and finally, finally I have written something. It’s not going to set the world on fire but my pen and hand, head and heart have reconnected. I am healing, yet again. I am reading, I am writing, I am feeling I am breathing. Deeply.