I got some amazing news today. Throw your hat in the air and shout kind of news, run around the house squealing, tell everyone in sight kind of news.

(No, I am not pregnant.)

It was amazing news. I poked Nathan until he woke up – lazy bones was napping on the couch – and told him. I rang my parents, and spoke to my father and told him the great news. Mum wasn’t home.

I was so over the moon that I caught myself for a split second starting to dial the number for my grandmother.

And then I burst into tears because she is dead and I can’t ring and tell her. Suddenly I wasn’t so excited, I was just bone crushingly sad.

Death is hard. Death hits you at the strangest of times, when things are going well. You’ll be travelling along, and things will be just fucking perfect and then your brain will collapse in on itself and you’ll be left sobbing. Death is so final and I think that is the hardest part to live with.

I cried for an hour and then I rang my mother and we celebrated and cried together, because that is what you do.

Knowing that Nan would be excited and proud isn’t the same as ringing and speaking to her. Knowing that she would be cheering me on from the sidelines is nothing like sitting down and telling her about it. It’s just not the same.

Things are going well for me. They’re going really really well. I got another couple of businesses to sign on to Showcase Tasmania, I’ve got a few more interested and in the process of confirming and deciding and (the biggest thing I suspect) it’s finally Not Winter anymore.

I am happy. I am truly truly happy. And in the same breath, I am so terribly sad, because I am getting married in a month, my blog is doing well, things are happening for me and my grandmother is still too dead to share this with.

And that is the problem right now.

***

Ghosts and the possibility thereof aside, death is death. It’s final and I can’t change that.

I should hopefully be able to share my news with you in the next week or so. I am really excited about this, but you know, pass the tissues. I’ll cry and dance at the same time.

My last few years have been … eventful. Starting with a pregnancy that didn’t look like it was going to end well, cancer, death, family fuckwits, autism x 2, early intervention, Ehlers Danlos, a falling down house, debt and depression. It hasn’t exactly been the time frame that I would hold up to the light and dissect, more the time frame that you force to the bottom of your closet, stomping on it as you go, so that you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

I signed up to participate in RUOK Day and then promptly decided that I would be better off stabbing myself in the eyes.

I am not okay. I am so far from okay, that okay is the distant shore that I left some years ago, before doctors told me that things were “all in my head” and tossed around words like anorexia and problems at home to explain why I was sick and exhausted, why I threw up every day and why my joints hurt so badly.

You tell me, how are you meant to trust the medical professionals to help out with mental issues, when mental issues are what they thought your major, genetic, connective tissue disorder was? I don’t trust them to help anymore.

I watched my grandmother die. I dealt with the fallout that rewriting a eulogy caused. I read long winded rants about myself on the Internet, written by a family member. I dealt with the trolls. I helped clean out her house, knowing that it was never going to be okay that she was dead and we were parcelling up her belongings.

I went to a doctor to discuss anxiety medication, only to be told that it would be better to sort out WHY I was anxious, rather than just medicating. You can’t cure grief by wanting it to hurt less, any more than you can make a broken bone heal faster than it does. I left with medication, that didn’t work anyway.

My son was diagnosed with autism and while it wasn’t the worst thing to happen, it was the straw that broke the camels back. Really universe? Autism and Aspergers ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE? REALLY?

Fuck you.

I would like to be okay, in the same way that I would like my joints to stop dislocating and to stop vomiting all of the time. To stop having to deal with meltdowns and the assumption that I am okay, because I tell everyone I am. I would like people to notice, without having to be told, just how far from okay this whole mess is and to stop assuming that they know how they would handle it.

I would LIKE for the Pain Olympics on the Internet to stop and for people to stop negating what I am dealing with, because it could be so much worse. Sure it could be worse, but stop trying to fucking jinx me. Last time I thought that nothing else could go wrong, everything else went wrong.

And you know what? I DON’T want to talk about this. I don’t want to cry anymore, or have to talk about this, or try to explain. Writing it is hard enough. The last psych I talked to about my anxiety and grief, seemed to think that it was nothing to worry about. Obviously I downplay things, really well.

RUOK?

No. No I am not.

Now excuse me, while I get off the Internet, before I am tempted to swear anymore.

It’s easy to fall out of the habit of blogging and harder to get back into it.

When I first started blogging, I would write every day. I read back through my early archives and cringe; the writing is terrible and did anyone really want a play by play of how Amy wouldn’t sleep through the night? I wouldn’t think so, but apparently they did and eventually, readers and subscribers came.

I kept writing, every day, even when I was tired, fighting the guilt when I would miss a day. I managed NaBloPoMo in my first November of blogging and after 30 straight days (of drivel, no doubt) I was in the habit and I continued to write something, every day.

Someone even convinced me to sign up for Blog365 and there I was, committed to blogging every single day for a year. I knew I was insane and this was proved by my incredibly crappy writing early on in the piece and my increasing panic, as we completely failed at trying to get pregnant, bought a house and moved into it.

But you see, the thing with moving house is that you end up with no Internet for a while and there I was, three months into Blog365 and 5 months into my blogging every single day adventure (idiocy) and suddenly left without Internet for 10 days.

After the first three days of freaking out and chewing my fingernails, I realised that I was probably every so slightly addicted. Which, maybe, isn’t a bad thing, when you think of all the other things I could be addicted to instead. I spent the next week unpacking, laying in the beanbag, reading and playing with Amy, who was a toddler terror.

Of course, the world didn’t implode and I started blogging again, as often as I wanted to and about whatever I liked. My stats rose, my subscribers slowly came up and I gave myself permission to not blog as often.

Time passed, as it does. We managed to conceive Isaac and a hellish pregnancy later, we had a healthy baby. Considering I had been certain my pregnancy was going to end in disaster, it took a little while to come to terms with the nature of Isaac being entirely healthy (barring EDS – which we didn’t know we had at that point, and autism).

As that time passed though, I dialled back on what I would and wouldn’t blog about. Constantly reassessing my privacy, as my blog became more well known within my circle of friends. Nan was dying of cancer at that point and I didn’t blog the first day after the diagnosis, instead posting a video of REM “Bad Day”. It was too raw and I didn’t want to be forced to share the raw with anyone.

Between a newborn baby and traipsing backwards and forwards to the hospital, blogging dropped off my list of top priorities. I couldn’t give up this space, but I also wasn’t giving it the time I had in the early days.

I guess that’s one of the good parts of blogging in the early days, everything is so full of fire and excitement that it’s easy to keep up.

Between then and now, I guess I fell out of the habit of writing as much as I used to. Which was great, for my sanity and also, terrible for my sanity. A double edged sword.

I look around at how blogging has changed in the last 2 years particularly and I know that I’m not keeping up. I also know that I don’t have to be keeping up to be happy with what I’m doing and I can’t deny I am entirely happy doing what I’m doing.

I just feel like sometimes, this whole thing, this writing gig, is getting lost amongst the noise. With the PR pitches and stuff, I’m wondering what happened to networking, to community, to friendship building and my habit of writing every day.

Change is not a bad thing. There are things coming out of the last two years of change that have been particularly spectacular for me and I’ll hopefully get to announce them publicly this week.

I’m just wondering when I changed. When I stopped writing a post because I was worried about traffic, or stats, or how it would be received. When all of my posts ended up going to drafts for weeks before publishing, rather than a quick edit and sending it out into the world.

Of course, some posts should not be written raw and some people should not be allowed to read my blog. These are things I know now.

I also know that I need to write more, even if it doesn’t end up here.

If I don’t, I run the very real risk of going mad.

And that’s probably not a good thing.

It’s dark and cold when Isaac comes stumbling into my room, bleary eyed. He’s too asleep to say anything yet, so I throw back the doona and welcome him into the warmest part of the bed. Sighing contentedly, he snuggles in and I watch his eyes close, praying that we’ll both get more sleep.

Two minutes later, he is poking me in the eyes.

“Hi Mummy.”

“Hiiiiiiiiii Mummy!”

“HIIIIIIIIIIIIIII MUMMY!”

I struggle to get my eyes open long enough to look at him, before tucking the blankets in tighter around him and asking him to please, fortheloveofeverything, sleep.

It’s not long after this that Amy joins us and jumps into bed as well. Her morning breath threatens to knock me dead and I make her roll away from me and breathe somewhere else, on pain of being kicked out of bed. The room is icy, despite the underfloor heating and I suspect the world is frozen.

Eventually, the sun rises and I am forced to be awake. No one says anything about getting up, however, so I stay in bed with a book for a little longer, while everything defrosts. The children come and go, alternately snuggling me, or tucking their cold feet under my legs.

Good morning.

***

So, I’ve had this problem. I’ve been caring too much about what you think and not enough about what I want. Not changing themes, not redesigning, writing on a schedule, not posting because I only posted yesterday, or this morning. And honestly, I think doing it for someone else is doing it wrong.

Somewhere in there, I stopped telling stories and started just talking about stuff and maybe there isn’t a difference, but caring so much is killing me.

I’ve been more caught up in branding and social media and working the system, that I lost the bit I loved, which was sharing stories and snippets. I’m not saying there are changes afoot, but there are changes afoot. Sort of. I’m going to write what I like, when I like, regardless of when I posted last.

And if I start to worry about cluttering up people’s readers and writing too much, or not writing enough, well then. We’ll all just deal with that then.

***

When I was 5 years and 7 months old, my baby brother was born. I remember my father picking me up from school one day, so that we could go and see Mum and David in the hospital. Some details are fuzzy, but I remember being absolutely positive that I needed to wear my white shoes to the hospital and spending long enough trying to find them that that my father was frustrated with me.

In the mess under my bed, I eventually found my shoes and squeezed into them, before discovering that they were too small anyway. I didn’t care, I was five and I wanted to wear white shoes to the hospital to see my mother.

That was 17 years ago now.

Today my brother turns 17 and he’s had a rough time the last two years. We buried our grandmother on this day two years ago and so it’s bittersweet. Life and death, all tied up together. The timing could have been better, but birth waits for no one and neither do funeral directors.

I would really appreciate if you could send him birthday wishes here, if you’d like.

Happy Birthday David! I do love you, even if you’re annoying sometimes.

I stepped back and took stock of everything. It’s nearly June and the dread of the month is probably far worse than the actuality of it. I remember not writing about a lot of things, for fear of upsetting Nan and now, I look back and wish I had a record of each day as it passed, of the emails sent and received, of doctors visits and prognosis and finally, inevitably, the downhill slide to death and grief.

I wish I had every word, every memory, saved for posterity, rather than relying on the memories of a stressed and sleep deprived mind.

Someone said to me once, about life with children: The days are long, but the years are short. That fact slapped me in the face as I realised that it’s been nearly two years.

I’m not sure where that time went, except it’s gone now and wishing it back again isn’t going to change a thing. Would that it could.

Two years ago my son was small and placid, content to lie on the floor by himself. He was smiley and he attended every appointment with us, while I wondered how much time she had left and whether she would see my children grow up.

Life is hard. When you’re the one having to move through life after death, when it feels like the world should just stop and allow you time to process your grief and learn to live again, that’s hard.

***

Stop. Move around and remember to breathe. In and out, out and in. Don’t think, don’t remember, just get through the day.

Make it through until bedtime, then go to bed. Sleep, dream and wake, to do it all again, over and over.

If you haven’t torn your hair out by now, what’s stopping you?

We get caught up in the drudgery of the days and fail to see the years passing by, faster and faster. Like a river, speeding up as you head towards the waterfall (a hurtling death), you can’t seem to slow it down.

One day, you’ll turn around and look at the river of years behind you.

***

The years are short, but the days are long and I need to just keep moving.

Everything will be okay.

Subtitled: I took my daughter into a commercial food preparation area and no one cried.

In aid of the Breast Cancer Network Australia, Bakers Delight is icing finger buns with pink icing, selling them and donating the proceeds to the BNCA.

It’s a pretty cool idea and something I was happy to support, especially as cancer has been a bit of a theme in our family. My great grandmother beat breast cancer years ago, but sadly lost her sister to the disease. Her sister’s ring will be my wedding ring in a few months and while I never met her, I like the family connection through my Nan.

Because the BCNA was asking bloggers to raise awareness, somehow I managed to get myself an invite to the closest Bakers Delight store, to see what they’re doing first hand and ice some buns myself.

Of course, being a “mummyblogger” I took Amy with me. What better way to ice finger buns, than to take a 4yo into a bakery?

We had fun, icing buns and chatting to the staff. Amy loved it and was so well behaved. I couldn’t be more proud of her behaviour.

Bakers Delight is aiming to raise $1m to give to the BCNA, which helps support women with breast cancer.

And, if you live in the area, I can highly recommend Tim and his team at Bakers Delight in Claremont Village. Their finger buns are delicious.

***

Disclosure: I was not paid for this post and I didn’t request to be. Amy and I did get to bring home the finger buns that we iced, plus a loaf of bread and some rolls – but that was because the owner/baker Tim was generous, not because he had to.

Supporting people through cancer is something I feel strongly about and therefore, so is this cause. If you can buy a bun in the next week and photograph yourself (or your child) with it, then send it to me, I’ll add your photo and blog link here.

Sometimes, I write things here and it all goes along swimmingly. Sure, you don’t get the whole story of the ups and downs, but that’s because no one wants to read 3000 words on how my feelings are feeling and how my kids are acting up. Not to mention I don’t want to write 3000 words about my feelings.

Other times, I go to sit down and write and come up blank and I end up walking away from the computer, rather than writing things out. When I’m feeling like my blog isn’t my safe place anymore, there is usually someone tromping all over it with their muddy boots, making smart arse comments designed to make me feel bad.

And let me be clear, I’m not anonymous in this space. I’ve never been anonymous. People find me here and then meet me IRL, or the opposite happens and I have no issue with this. In fact, if you know me IRL and you’re reading here and I don’t know you are, I’d love to hear from you. Even if you’re my next door neighbour, or one of the school mums.

This space stops being a place to talk, when I’m seeing snarky comments written about me. When there are judgements being passed, when they have no idea. When people don’t believe that what I’m doing is beneficial for anyone and so they set out to make me feel bad, by snarky, passive aggressive shit posted online.

That is when I retreat.

I’m not sure if I stop writing to save my own sanity, or because I get angry enough that I want to throw rocks at people, but either way, I sit on my emotions and stew and nothing gets written.

Then I get PMS and I cry on the phone to my mother because it’s a week til payday and I’ve run out of bread and milk and while there is enough money to buy more bread and milk and not have a cent left, this shit sucks.

When it’s not about the money really. It’s about feeling powerless, and angry. About being bitter and not having anywhere to talk about it. About being hurt and upset, because seriously, what adult goes out of their way to make someone else feel bad? Are you five?

My last major retreat from being able to blog was shortly after my grandmother died, when shit happened and I was so broken emotionally that I couldn’t connect enough to write what I was really feeling. Sure, I wrote surface stuff, but writing about how breathing hurt, or how I just wanted to sit in the sunshine and cry, that wasn’t happening.

I still miss my grandmother and the emotional shell I drew around myself 2 years ago has shattered and I’m feeling things, crying and being miserable. Grief is a process and you don’t always move forwards.

Amy’s Kinder Aide was speaking to me yesterday morning about Amy and some issues we’ve had in the classroom regarding friends. She looked at me and said ‘Amy is such a lovely child. I look at her and know her grandmother would have been proud. I think about Lyn a lot, and know she would have been so proud.’

I had to leave, because I was going to cry.

It is lovely to know that my grandmother made such an impact on people.

And then I cry, because lung cancer in a non-smoker is not how life is meant to happen.

Life has been getting on top of me and that’s okay. It’s okay to be sad and emotional and not want to write about it.

What isn’t okay is feeling like I can’t write, because of the judgements being made.

That’s when I get upset.

This is MY space. Not anyone elses. And if you feel like I’m not contributing to society enough, or that autism isn’t real, or that my joints don’t really dislocate, you can get stuffed.

And that’s that.

My grandmother died 16 months ago. Some of you know this, some of the newer followers may not.

A few months after her death, I stopped blogging about it here. I’m not sure why, a feeling of not wanting to make you uncomfortable with my grief. A grief that while it colours every day of mine, isn’t really appropriate for polite conversation.

Saying my grandmother died doesn’t really encompass everything that her death meant to me. She was a mainstay of my life, being as close to me as my mother. In some ways, they co-parented me, sometimes Nan more, depending on how full of teenage angst I was on any given weekend. When I was fourteen, I moved into her spare bedroom and lived with her until I met Nathan and moved out ‘properly’.

When Nan died and we stood around her bed and watched her last breaths, it was hard. However the shock of it coming so suddenly, a fast decline when her cancer got the better of her, it cushioned me for a while. Yes she was dead, but the deadness hadn’t sunk in yet and I couldn’t feel the enormity of it yet.

People told me that it would get better, that it would hurt less.

And, no.

It hasn’t and it doesn’t and I don’t expect the huge waves of missing that I feel to abate. Some things need sharing with my grandmother and unfortunately, no one else will do, as much as I would like them to. Some things were her realm alone and not having her here rids me of a lot of my support system.

So it’s been hard, this last sixteen months and the previous twelve months before that as we dealt with her cancer diagnosis and the ups and downs that treatment for terminal cancer causes. During that time Isaac was born and I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos.

Unfortunately, Nan’s death wasn’t the culmination of shit hitting the fan, it was merely the mountain in the middle.

Every day when Amy is hard, or Isaac is having issues, I want to pick up the phone and call her. Every. Single. Day.

Grief is hard. Especially when a suitable amount of time has passed and grief is less socially acceptable. I can say I miss my grandmother, but I can’t add that that it feels like a stone stuck in my chest weighing me down, that it physically hurts sometimes and that I miss her with every ounce of my soul.

Isaac is getting quirkier and Amy is getting defiant and angry. It’s been hard, knowing that this is a long road for them and while it’s going to get different, it probably won’t be easier. There is grief there too, grief for normalcy, grief for an easier time I hoped I’d get eventually.

Lots of grief.

For the first 12 months after Nan died, I couldn’t cry. I held myself so tightly contained that nothing got out, aside from panic attacks. It wasn’t the healthiest way of dealing with it I’m sure, but it’s the only way I could.

Lately the tears have been flowing more often, but it still feels unacceptable, that how can I blame the feeling that everything is falling down around my ears on the fact that my grandmother died last June?

It doesn’t feel like I can, so therefore I don’t and then I fall apart in spectacular fashion and hide in the bathroom with tissues and the chocolate topping. Some days, it is that bad.

Parenting Amy is hard and when Nan was alive, she would frequently visit, just enough to take the pressure off me. We don’t have that now, that extra unconditional support. The rest of our family is trying hard to understand what we’re dealing with with Amy, but I’m still finding it hard.

It feels like I’m doing this alone sometimes. When Amy is sensory seeking and bouncing off the walls and I’m the one awake with her, trying to limit the damage to the house and herself. When Isaac is racing around screaming at the top of his lungs (because he’s just learned how to shriek) and my ears are bleeding. When Amy is climbing the cupboards again and I’m trying to keep my shit together. When Nathan doesn’t want to discuss it anymore and Mum is trying hard but it’s going to take more time for her to grasp the entirety of the situation and my mother-in-law is always more than willing to help if I ask. When asking is the problem, because I don’t know what I need to make this easier. I wish I knew what I needed, what I could tell people, what I could ask for to make this easier. On me and on the rest of our families. That’s hard too, not knowing how to make this easier for everyone else to understand and deal with.

And when we add that to grief, I start to find things really hard.

I miss her, so so much.

I miss the person I was before she died.

I’ve not had a major holiday in a long time. Never since I’ve been with Nathan and certainly not since our children came along. In fact, the thought of a holiday, while sending me giddy with excitement, also freaks me out a little bit because wow, have you met my daughter? She’s a bit challenging. So we’ve never had a family holiday, which is a shame. I’m sure we’re missing out on something.

The last holiday I had, I was 13. I saved up for my plane fares and I went to Adelaide with my grandmother for Easter, and she was, obviously, still alive then. We had a brilliant time working out bus routes into the city and shopping and exploring Adelaide. Oh my word, the shopping. That woman was fun to shop with. We ate sushi for the first time (we were hooked) and it was a blast.

But you know, I was 13 and my Nan wasn’t dead, so I may have my rose coloured glasses on a little here.

Anyway, I was named one of Kidspot’s Top 50 Mummy Bloggers, which is kind of a big deal for me. The sponsors love us apparently and want to send one of the top 50 mummy bloggers to stay in tropical paradise for a week. Which is my ideal holiday, imagine how well my joints would do if thrown into warmth? And not Tassie Pseudo Warmth, but actual real warmth? I digress.

On the flip side, I am up there alongside some amazing women, who desperately deserve a holiday of their own. Tiff for instance, my amazing friend, who has spent more time in hospital with Ivy these last few months than anyone should ever have to.

My last 18 months has been a bit of a nightmare. Cancer diagnoses, hospitalisations, Nan dying, anxiety attacks, more hospitalisations, geneticists, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a coeliacs diagnosis, Paed appointment after Paed appointment, broken arms and finally, early intervention and the beginnings of a diagnosis that is looking likely to end up as Aspergers for Amy. Yes, I finally said it out loud here, despite not wanting to jinx myself. We think Amy has Aspergers. There is a lot going on with Amy that I’ve not even been able to bring myself to blog about, because how do you tell the InterWebs that your daughter is amazingly talented, but oh my God, I think something is not entirely right here.

I would love a holiday and you can actually vote for me over there. You can also click through and have a look at my three favourite posts and what I’ve got to say for myself.

By the same token, I am absolutely thrilled to have ended up as a top 50 blogger. I’ve been doing this for a very long time now and it’s nice to have someone say that they enjoy reading here. Every email I get, every new commenter who says ‘I get where you’re coming from’ makes me happy.

And sometimes, being happy with what you’ve got is enough, no matter how long ago the last holiday was.

***

Have you been on holiday with your family recently? Where did you go? Where would your dream destination be if you had unlimited funds? (Unlimited funds would send me straight to England to visit my very favourite bloggers over there, before a quick trip to Kansas and then home again.)

I’m half hoping that this summer, we can go and spend a few days on a beach up at St Helens with the kids because that would be lovely and relaxing. Failing that, a day trip to the beach would be nice. Or anywhere I can keep the kids semi contained while I lay in the sun with a book and my sunscreen. Like the backyard. Maybe here, in the depths of winter, I’m just longing for sunshine and warmth. A very real possibility.

After Nan died, I moved through my world like I was in a fog. I was shattered and a grey fog seemed preferable to anything else. After all, I had small children and things to do, I didn’t have time to be crippled by grief, no matter that I felt shattered inside.

There is something about watching someone you love die in front of you that can leave you a bit broken you know?

And so that is how things continued. I moved through my days, bundled in a fog of I-refuse-to-feel-anything until I got to the point when I forgot how to feel anything. I internalised all of my grief and hello fog, you’re like a warm woolly blanket. Comforting and a little bit hard to get rid of because I might need you.

Nan died almost 10 months ago and while outside, I am coping, inside I am still shattered.

If I think about it, or her, I fall apart.

So I just don’t.

I don’t look at photos of her, any more than merely letting my eyes slide over them.

And I don’t speak about her, unless it’s a little bitterly, with a dose of realistic philosophical thrown in to stop it hurting quite so badly.

There are still things that make me happy though and at this point, I need all the small doses of happiness I can get.

Watching the world from the other side of a camera lens, that makes me happy. There is something about laying almost flat on my stomach and taking photos of toadstools or flowers that makes everything else easier to deal with. From the other side of a camera lens I feel like I can breathe again.

The simple act of taking photos, and coming inside to see how they turned out, it makes everything easier to deal with somehow.

Focusing on the small things leaves the big things to take care of themselves.

I am also the first person to admit that I can get a little obsessive when things make me feel happier or fulfilled.

A long time ago now, I used to work in a kitchen. The fast paced lifestyle left little time for thinking about other things and food, well, food is a huge passion of mine.

So when I discovered that making my own pasta sauces/jams/chutney and then photographing them gave me a small measure of happiness and fulfilment, I did a lot of it. Currently I’ve run out of jars and I’m itching to buy more strawberries because dammit, at least then you can see the results of all my hard work. I have something to show for working hard at it.

Grief isn’t like that apparently. No matter how hard I work at ignoring it, or even trying to deal with it, I’ve got nothing to show for it. It still hurts just as much when I poke the hole, so I leave off the poking and move back to things that make me happy.

Small things.

Gardening makes me happy. The simple acts of picking my own produce, that’s seeing results from hard work.

We planted our six gum trees on Sunday. When we were done, I wished for another ten trees, another twenty even. Something to show for traipsing all over the yard, digging holes and dragging a hose around. I didn’t want to stop planting, because playing in the dirt, it made me feel something again. And I’ve not been feeling very much since Nan died.

I sat in the middle of the yard yesterday and just sat. With a camera in my hand and more toadstool photos on my memory card, I just sat. And I looked at the sky and I looked at my poultry, free ranging fifty metres away. I thought about how hard missing someone is and how much work grief is, for very little result. I thought about all the little things that make me happy and realised that I need all the happiness I can get.

Because even though the little things make me bounce with excitement, the bigs things are going to be there, waiting to be dealt with. Sitting on my shoulder, just waiting for a stray thought or word to bring me undone.

I am not a bouncy bubbly person. I am realistic and a little bit cynical. I am philosophical and I am rather snarky.

And at the end of the day, I will always be the kind of person who wryly tells her dying grandmother ‘Good thing it’s not leprosy, or you would have just pulled your ears off.’

Because that’s how I cope.

Happiness in small things.