Why Sometimes Being Boring Is OK

Because burnout is much less fun.

When you want to escape for a few hours and place yourself in gentle hands and be still - Bamford Day Spa on the Brompton Road even smells like calm. I’ve gone there a few times since my mum died last year. I’ve cried there, shared my woes, and felt safe to be vulnerable about my grief. All this time I’ve been desperately searching for a release from the physical and mental strain of grief. The bad luck of it. The heaviness of it - but no matter what I tried it wouldn’t it come.

The day before my littlest one’s fourth birthday and two days before the first anniversary of my mum’s death I booked in for a spa day. I knew it would be a challenging week but Bamford isn’t cheap and I like to keep an eye on the promotions page. The current offer was for a mother and daughter facial, massage and lunch. I emailed and explained my situation and asked if I could pay half-price and come on my own, they said yes. Lucky me.

So there I was in the fancy therapy room laid out on the massage table with a rose quartz crystal eye mask that retails at £90 expertly placed on my face that no matter how still I was kept slipping off. The kind therapist kept putting it back on until it flung itself onto the floor and smashed. We both couldn’t explain how it had happened. Thank god they didn’t charge me for it.

I’ve been very drawn to rose quartz crystals lately, but I hadn’t indulged or researched why. Over lunch I googled ‘What does it mean when your rose quartz cracks?’ When I returned to Bamford for my afternoon facial, I discovered so had the therapist.

Rose quartz is said to have healing qualities that promotes love and compassion and is known to help break through barriers of communication and meditation. This powerful crystal is also known to clear away negative energy and help you connect with your subconscious mind. People believe that when a Rose Quartz breaks, it releases all of the built-up energy it holds, clearing the way for new energy.

Wow, I was ready, the universe was saying go on - let it go! As a Gemini gal this was music to my ears, I thought finally, yes, finally, I’ll be released. That was March. That was a month I had big plans, lots to do and lots to share and yet it’s taken me two and a half months to write even this below par post, and I’ve struggled to type these words.

I thought releasing would be like slipping into a warm bath, but my subconscious mind must have a masochistic streak. It’s been week upon week of the breakdown of my body, boring illnesses and tedious mishaps, and unkind words chipping away at me until it got serious. I’m currently four weeks into recovering from pneumonia.

The doctors told me I was so rundown I couldn’t fight off the fourth cough my older daughter has brought home from school since January. Suddenly I couldn’t do anything, for a week I couldn’t even get out of bed to make a cup of tea. For a freelance writer and mum of two children, one of whom isn’t in school yet and is at home all the time, being out of action has never been an option. I do not recognise myself; who is this woman who gets this ill from catching a cough, who have I become?

I even did some editing during early labour and the baby was back to back. I breastfed a newborn on Zoom calls taking in notes whilst also homeschooling during a global pandemic. I wrote my first book during maternity leave. Where did she go? Why did no one change my batteries, and I realise, it’s because I don’t have a mum anymore. She’s not there to step in, or tell me it’s OK to stop. So I don’t stop, I never stop, because that’s what good mums’ do…or is it?

As I lie here like an Edwardian Lady Writer in my bed in a white nightgown with a cough, tired and exhausted I have been forced to surrender to the need to rest. To do nothing for hours on end. Just breathe and be grateful to be alive, to have a warm bed and a safe place to sleep propped up on four pillows and a yoga bolster, and people who love me to take care of me, and access to doctors and medicine and clean water. I want to write more but I can’t. I want to write something better than this but I can’t. I had a few days when I had to focus very hard just to formulate sentences in my head and then find the breath to speak the words.

It’s going to take time to rebuild me, and I’ll be changed again. Now after weeks and weeks of achieving nothing I think I might be coming towards accepting that. That I’ve been grieving not just the loss of my mum but of myself. Perhaps, the biggest release of all is letting go of the notion that I had any control over any of it. That I couldn’t schedule and plan and study my way out of it, but I can acknowledge what I want from my life that is within my scope. Not what I ought to want or Instagram posts trick me into wanting.

When I was alone in the hospital crying in the CT Scan, I knew with such crystal-clear clarity that I wanted my imperfect, slightly broken life more than anything. I wanted my husband, my children, our too small untidy basement flat, and the freedom to write what I wanted. And today I still have that, so everything else can wait. I’ll find my way back to my voice, it’s just a little quiet and boring right now.

If you’d like to read any of my published books then please consider buying from my online bookshop. The New Arrival, Our Country Nurse and Happy Baby, Happy Family. To find out more about my life as Head of Storytelling visit Wordsby Communications.