This week has seen lockdown introduced. At this time last week I was only just beginning to feel the effects of coronavirus on my life - appointments cancelled, trouble buying cat food, questioning if my reason for leaving the house was valid enough - and now it feels like I'm living in some kind of weird Truman Show style reality, I mean this can't really be happening, can it?

When I look out of my window every thing looks exactly the same. My husband is still going to work, I'm still working for myself, my days look very much the same but I know that beyond what I can see from my window, everything is different.

At times I feel unsettled and have moments where I feel quite upset, but for the most part it just feels very unreal.

Putting the current situation to one side, I'm going to share one happy thing that happened this week.



I know I told you about our Remembrance Tree - pictured above are the first blossoms we had in 2018 - but I don't know if I told you that in June last year, despite having a fence around it, deer stripped the bark off the lower half of the tree and chewed off four of the lower branches.

Every one I spoke to, and everything I read, told me that the tree wouldn't survive, that the bark was too damaged. But there were new shoots at the bottom of the tree, where the bark was still intact, so we just hoped that the shoots would continue to grow and we wouldn't lose our tree entirely.

I kept an eye on the shoots, and they were doing really well until they were nibbled off a few weeks ago by something that had managed to wriggle in under the chicken wire we'd added to the fence.



But yesterday I noticed buds. Lots of healthy looking buds. So maybe, just maybe, it will survive after all? The thought of this made me really happy. I'm looking forward to the buds bursting open to reveal the first blooms.

What's made you smile this week?

Six months. Six months have passed since my ectopic pregnancy ruptured and we lost our baby at almost 12 weeks.

I felt weirdly disconnected from my emotions for a long time after it happened. It's like my brain shut off all emotional responses. In the weeks that followed my operation I felt so normal. It felt wrong to feel so normal, to be able to carry on as if nothing had happened, to laugh, to work. But that's what I did.

But it didn't last. And I'm glad it didn't because it was just putting off the inevitable. Grief finds you, one way or another, sooner or later.

In those first weeks I read a lot about grief. I was relieved and comforted to discover that feeling removed from it was normal. I was most likely in shock, it was after all the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to me.

Depression is the 4th stage. 'I think I've skipped that stage' I thought to myself. But I just hadn't got there. And then I felt it - feeling low, tired, unenthusiastic. I have a creative job, and this suffered as a result, not only did I find it hard to summon up the enthusiasm to sit at my desk, I also found it hard to be creative, I hated everything I did, often deleting files in anger to start all over again.

It wasn't until I realised that the depression part of grief had arrived, that I allowed myself some time. I didn't put myself under any pressure, and slowly, I begun to feel better.

Remember how I didn't bother to take any photos for my Winter Capsule Round-up? It's so glaringly obvious to me now that that was part of the depression. The enjoyment I found in so many different everyday things had left me.

I was left feeling low, confused, tearful, and alone. I felt so alone.

A few months had passed since my operation by this time, and everyone had stopped asking if I was OK. It was old news, I should be moving on by now. But I wasn't. And that was something I read when I was Googling 'The Seven Stages of Grief' on a daily basis.

Just when your friends may think you should be getting on with your life, a long period of sad reflection will likely overtake you. Source

Well meaning friends told me to 'look to the future', to 'look at the positives'. But what I needed was to be allowed to not be OK for a while. Not being OK was part of the process, a shitty part, but a necessary one.

I didn't want to be told to 'try not to think about it', I wanted to explore it. I needed to explore it in order to move on, to heal.

The best piece of advice I received was to "stare your grief right in the face and stare that fucker down. Name your feelings, recognise and own them and you will start to feel in control of them a little". I remembered these words months later, when I was feeling at my lowest, and they helped so much. Everyone wanted me to feel better, to be happy, and that's absolutely understandable but it's not what I needed.

I wanted someone to say 'it's OK not to be OK'.

The kindest words I received were from a friend's Mum, she said "life is never quite the same again after something like that happens". And with that I knew she understood. I knew she wouldn't try to make me feel better, we just stood in silence, no words were necessary.

I think about the baby I lost everyday. Some days I linger with those thoughts for a while before moving on, sometimes it's a fleeting thought, gone in seconds. Some days the thoughts don't make me sad, and that's how I know I'm healing.

I used to go to see our Remembrance Tree almost everyday, I waited as the buds grew fatter and eventually burst open and bloomed. It looked beautiful. The blossoms coincided with a turning point, nothing I can put my finger on, but a general acceptance that I was feeling lighter, less scared and more positive.

I'm left with memories, hopes, and a feeling that I'll never be quite the same again. But it's OK, life makes us who we are. And what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.

This weekend we went out and bought a tree. We took our time choosing it, picking the best specimen when we'd selected the variety. We came home with a flowering cherry that will come alive with double purple-pink flowers year after year.

We haven't planted it yet. We're figuring out the best place to put it, it'll be near the pond, we know that, but the exact spot has yet to be decided.

It's important that we pick the best spot, taking into account the changes we plan to make in our garden over the coming years, but the spot has to be just right because this is our Remembrance Tree.

There may not have been a first breath, but there was a heartbeat, with a heartbeat there was life, and when the heart stopped beating, death. But there can be no funeral when a life is not legally recognised.

Planting this tree will be our time to say a proper goodbye. And as it grows it'll be the only proof of existence, save for the scars on my body that will fade, and the feelings we hold in our hearts that never will.