Thoughts on Not Feeling So Griefy This Winter
And this week's hard pass, happy yes, and a book recommendation request.
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Happy Yes to impromptu anniversary celebrations.
March 18th marked eighteen years since my husband Em and I went on our first date after connecting a couple of weeks previously at a charity games night hosted by his cousin. Each of us had planned to chill at home and do nothing but wound up going with our respective pals after much encouragement. I remember seeing him and wondering, Who’s the cute guy in the Freddy Krueger-type jumper? After chatting briefly at the end, he later asked our mutual friend for my number, and here we are nearly two decades later.
We rarely do anything for anniversaries, but a few days afterward, I realised I wanted us to toast ourselves. So, after suggesting it on Saturday, we popped into central London and had dinner, deep chats and giggles. With everything we’ve been navigating this year with our daughter’s anxiety and her being out of school, it was exactly what we needed, anniversary or not. Like just over eighteen years ago, we could easily both have stayed home on Saturday and not done much, but going out opened us up to surprise, connection and joy.
Hard Pass to tying myself up in procrastination knots with a project.
How many times will an idea, message, something niggle at you before you decide to listen and action it? After committing to a creative project that had nudged me for over a year, it then kept going on the long finger. Everything else always seemed to take priority, so it wasn’t materialising, which then triggered frustration and a sense of stuckness. Then I sat with myself and asked, What is this procrastination about? Am I hiding from something?
I thought about a different project I’d busied myself with and also acknowledged good ole pesky fear of failure lurking behind perfectionism and overthinking. Then I let it simmer. After those same realisations niggling a few more times over the next week, I stopped the other project and cleared the decks to focus on ‘birthing’ the idea. The difference two weeks have made! It’s also been interesting to observe how fear shows up, but I’ve shown myself compassion and also kept going and also noticed where I’m overcomplicating something or not giving myself enough time and margin, and now I’m almost there. Yay!
Recommendations wanted: Have you read a book, listened to a podcast, or availed of a resource/training that really transformed your relationship with money? If so, please let me know in the comments or hit reply on this email.
For most of this year, I’ve been thinking, Dare I say it, but this is the first winter since dad died where I haven’t felt a fog of grief descend on me. I haven’t felt low and insular. And then I haven’t said it, because I didn’t want to jinx it. What if I declared this and then, suddenly, the grief popped up and knocked me sideways? So I opted to see how it went while already knowing that, year on year, I was already in a very different grief place.
Something I’ve talked about quite a bit in my work over the years is habit trains of thought. It’s the recognition that we’ve learned to think (and feel and act) in response to certain cues and triggers that are now habit. As in, they happen by default or almost automatically.
The example I often use is that if you go through a breakup and then every day, for a while, you brood and ruminate about your ex, it becomes a habit. Next thing, you’ve inadvertently paired making your morning cuppa with wondering how they could be such a ratbag. Or maybe it’s that each time you’re stressed or are avoiding a feeling, you think of your ex or trawl through their Insta.
Well, after a while, those thoughts show up automatically in those contexts.
The thought train pulls into the proverbial station and, if we’re not mindful, we hop on board by feeding that thought with our usual thoughts, feelings, and action responses. Each time the train pulls in, we might ride it all the way to, for example, station #25, Meltdown City. But if we notice our habitual responses when that thought shows up and/or become more aware of the cues (subtle signals) and triggers (more overt events) that set off the habit, we can change course by getting off the train at an earlier point.
Maybe next time we get off at station #24, then station #20 and so forth. Perhaps we have a particularly off day or we take a while to twig that we’ve gone down a certain track again, so we’re back at Meltdown City. But previous instances of realising we don’t need to go that far and that we can intervene mean that we learn from it and choose differently next time, gradually breaking the habit.
So, back to me and this grief malarkey. Typically, as soon as I enter the new year, I become enveloped by a heavy cloud and I think about dad a lot. I become acutely aware that his anniversary is less than three months away and also that I’ve felt a bit rubbish in the run up to all the previous ones. It felt like I tried to dodge the grief fog bullets at some point each winter and yet, I didn’t.
It was easy to blame feeling low and, okay, let’s be real, sad, on something.
2018 First anniversary, so, of course, I felt shite. I’d turned forty a few months after his death, gone through an existential crisis, felt lost and knackered, paused The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast, and went into hibernation. And then I trained from scratch for and ran a marathon in the space of four months that winter, and burnt out. Also, had horrendous tinnitus.
2019 Broke up with ex literary agent who said, “I don’t know what it is with you, you’re just not wanted here in the UK”, promptly releasing all the abandonment and rejection hounds I didn’t know were waiting in the wings.
2020 I was back to feeling lost about work yet again, and then my paternal grandfather died two weeks before we went into lockdown.
2021 Covid, lockdowns, daughter deeply affected and struggling with anxiety.
2022 Burnt out from writing book, anxiety about the publishing process, delayed anger about dad finally surfaced.
2023 Broke up with my mother, finished The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast, hormones all over the place, felt a bit low from all the malarkey that went on with the publishing process, decided to take time out and figure out ‘What’s next?’
You might know from previous instalments of this newsletter that we’ve not had an easy start to the year as our daughter’s been going through a tough time mental health wise and not been in school. And, honestly, it’s not like I’ve been without angst, anxieties or things/people coming along to get on my last nerve. Basically, all the factors that I could say contributed to my feeling low in the previous years aside from the obvious one of my dad dying still exist in other forms, including tinnitus albeit okay levels, but I’ve had a different experience this year.
I don’t share this winter’s grief experience to claim I have a magic bullet for it. If anything, I share it because it’s a message of hope and progress.
Things change. You grow and evolve. It can seem, sometimes, like you’re going around in circles, but they’re smaller ones. Like a spiral. Also, when you look back, you see how times were very tough emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, maybe even financially, and you also came out the other side of it.
I think we can be very hard on ourselves, especially when we grew up in environments and had experiences that taught us that being self-critical, exacting and demanding of ourselves is just how we have to be in order to be decent, worthy people in the world.
Next thing, we’re mad at ourselves because sometimes old things bother us. Or new things bother us more than we would like and we think we’re supposed to be above this kind of struggling. Why aren’t I more resilient? It’s as if we expect our growth and happiness to occur only in the most optimal conditions.
We often see what can sometimes be our inner turmoil, quiet, persistent sadness about something or someone, or our ruminating, as a sign of what’s wrong with us.
We might even hide these parts of ourselves, these feelings, because we imagine others will judge us. Shouldn’t you be over this by now? Aren’t you better than this? Where’s your resilience? And, in the darkest place, Why are you so affected by a father who wasn’t around as much as he should have been, who abandoned you?
Of course, sometimes we’re projecting our self-judgment onto others. And, okay, sometimes there are certain people in our lives where looking to them for empathy and compassion is like putting our buckets down an empty well and wondering why they come up dry.
Last year, I quietly resolved with myself that I wasn’t going to go through another winter feeling low and stuck in grief. The whole thing was messing with my head and it felt like I was anticipating a rough ride. I know I’m not in control of all the things, clearly, but I wanted to be very intentional in spite of what life might throw my way during the winter period.
The habit train of grief thought pulled into the station, more than a few times, but I didn’t ride it to its usual stops. I’ve really tried to be present to myself, and that’s included discerning whether I was feeling something new and fresh, or whether it was habit. It’s meant not going down old tracks by feeding old stories. I don’t always have to be angry or hurting about dad, because I’m not. There’s more to me, to our relationship, than that.
My grief hasn't gone; it’s just taken a different shape in this season of my life. I always say there’s growth in grief. Some of my darkest moments in these last several years have also been where I’ve found deep joy and myself.
So here I am, three days out from the seventh anniversary of his death, and I think it’s safe to say I’ve made it through this winter.
Revisiting this today on a grief-related anniversary - thanks as always for sharing your thoughtful reflections.
Not sure if these fit the bill on your money book recommendations request, but -
- Money: A User's Guide by Laura Whateley - I got this when it first came out and it was very much like why is this not on the curriculum at school ?! May be slightly out of date now, but very practically helpful.
- We Need to Talk About Money by Otegha Uwagba - read this last year and it encouraged a reflection on how my approach to money is still very influenced by my upbringing, and also how I want my relationship with money (and what I can /deserve to spend it on) to look like moving forward.
Another post which resonated, coming out the 5 year anniversay day of my brother's death. So much has changed for me, I can see it has for you too - the remaking of a family dynamic and the rethinking of my relationship with my self. This year, I was surprised at how far away from the blackest feelings I had moved, although my body joined in this year, as it usually does with some sort of ongoing Covid related issue, which has lasted 4 months. It always gets you somehow! Maybe next year, I won't be surprised by it ...