Yesterday I graduated from the University of Derby with an MA with Distinction in Writing for Performance, wearing a glorious pair of red patent leather DMs. Doing the MA was the first big decision I made after Tim died, and it was paid for with money from selling his business.

I started it still in a raw stage of grief, less than 18 months after he died. I studied through the pandemic. My studies took me so far out of my comfort zone and I nearly gave up. I also found that it thrilled my heart and soul, and brought me joy at a time when I didn't think joy existed any more.

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It's left me thinking about how far I have come in the nearly four years since Tim's death. In a lot of ways, I am just the same person. Grief hasn't taken away who I am. However, in a lot of ways I am a completely different person. Grief has changed me. I have a different kind of confidence, honed out of grief and hard work and psychotherapy. I have more of an understanding of myself. I have more patience with people who hurt, but I have less patience for fools. I have a new partner, Dee, and am getting married, hopefully next year. But I still carry Tim in my heart and have his picture on my wall.
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I am still grieving. I will always grieve. But I am still here. And while I don't use the phrasing 'moving on', because I feel that implies leaving him behind, I will continue to move forward.

I have had a monologue, The Night Witch, accepted for the forthcoming The Queens of Cups November New Moon Monologues: Something Wicked This Way Comes on Sunday 14 November. It's at The Space, at the bottom of the Isle of Dogs, a short bus ride from Canary Wharf and just across the river from Greenwich.

I've created a new blog called The Widow's Handbook - it's going to be short blogs for widows and for the people around them, designed to help people through an awful time.

Here's the first post: Things not to say to a widow

Three and a half years ago, and four months after Tim died, I wrote this in a blog:

"I'm left in the limbo of Life v3.0. I don't want to be here. I liked Life v2.1. I don't know whether there's ever going to be a Life v3.1. But I've decided that if I could be brave before I'm going to be brave again."

And it's not the 'Oh, you are so brave, I don't know how I would cope without [insert name here]'. It's a brave with the stitches showing and the glue not quite set. It's a broken and mended brave. It's a Kintsugi bowl repaired with gold brave, a brave that sees the beauty in the flaws. And while it's a kind of brave that doesn't always withstand a puff of wind, I'm hoping it might be the kind that will stand up to a storm."

Last night I made a Kintsugi bowl, to celebrate where I am now. I have a Life v3.1, and she is planning on moving to Tideswell, to be with me. And that's just wonderful. And I know that I am now (and always have been) more than who I live with. I have completed an MA in Writing for Performance. I will have a performance staged next year. My freelance writing career continues apace. I still have the bees. This isn't the life I chose. But it's the life I'm going to celebrate

"It's a brave with the stitches showing and the glue not quite set. It's a broken and mended brave. It's a Kintsugi bowl repaired with gold brave, a brave that sees the beauty in the flaws."

I got caught up in a Facebook argument the other day (I know, so unlike me) on the topic of violence against women, and got comments from men along the lines of #NotAllMen and ‘I’m not violent so it’s nothing to do with me’. But it is up to all men to do something.

Listen to your partners, daughters, friends, mothers, sisters and take them seriously when they talk about what they have experienced. Ask them how they feel about what is going on. Find out how often they have been flashed at, touched, rubbed up against, shouted at, wolf-whistled at, followed, and how old they were when it first happened (early teens for me). Hear their stories about how they plan ahead getting back to their car, how they map out longer routes in their heads because they don’t feel safe on the shorter routes, how they don’t speak out because they feel afraid or intimidated, or how they walk in the middle of the road with their keys in their hands when they think someone might be following them.

Educate your sons and grandsons in what is and isn’t acceptable and why. Help them see that women are their equals. Give them the tools that will allow them to make a difference.

Call out your colleagues, friends or family members when they make sexist jokes, talk over women, put women down, cat call women, or keep chatting someone up when it’s clear she’s not interested.
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Don’t say ‘oh, it’s PC gone mad’. Don’t say ‘you can’t do or say anything these days’. If what you say or do upsets women or makes them uncomfortable, just don’t say it or do it. And don’t say #NotAllMen. Or respond that men get harassed too. I know they do. And I do care – I can multitask on caring. I’m just talking about women at the moment.

Tim was a... I don't know what. He would have described himself as collector, but was he a hoarder? When he died, the house was full of books and magazines. Airfix kits. Projects he was going to do. Newspapers he was going to read. Vintage things with sentimental connections. The first pandemic lockdown hit me really hard. My work dried up and I was more alone that I had ever been, in a house that I had fallen out of love with and was full of things that weren't mine. I fell close to the lowest I think I have ever been. It felt like a full stop. One morning, I made the decision to start sorting things. To move rooms around. To reclaim. And I started with the bedroom, the room where Tim had died. I cleared things out. Moved things around. Filled bags for the charity shop and for the bin. Painted the walls and the ceiling. Moved out spare furniture. And then I started to move around the house. Boxed up kits and cars for sale. Sold a room full of magazines on eBay, which took three van trips to clear. Painted and sorted and cleared. Until the house became mine. And as the rooms cleared, my head cleared, and I took the time to grieve. To take the first faltering steps forwards. So. It wasn't a full stop after all. It was a semicolon. Because after all, a semicolon is used when an author could've ended a sentence, their sentence, but chose not to. 

I've had enough. I've never been strong enough before, but meeting you has helped me so much. All those years when he said he was sorry, that I'd made him do it, that it was only to teach me. That I should be glad I have him, as I wouldn't be able to manage on my own. That I needed him to help me make decisions. These were all the same things that my father said to my mother. But this ends today. I'm leaving him, and coming to you. I know I'm not clever. I don't always know what is the right thing to do. You’ve helped me reach the decision. But I know that you will help me, look after me. You will tell me what I need to do. I will be safe with you. You won't have to be sorry. I won't make you do anything, and I know that there will be things you need to teach me. I will be glad to have you. Because I really can't manage on my own. You know, you look just like my father.

​It was such a brilliant idea. A monologue a day. For 28 days. Only nine lines. What could be easier? A 9 am email, with an exciting new prompt. An idea that could become anything I want it to. New imaginary friends, new words and phrases, none of which existed before. But real life hit. Monologues had to be squeezed out between work, exercise, meetings, calls. Written in bed first thing. Pounded out at my desk in the evening with the deadline looming. Some felt like a joyful creative spark lighting up a day. Some were written in grief and pain. Some went well beyond the nine lines and have potential to become their own thing. Some were forced out, word by word, pleading with the line count to increase. It's been a tough ride, sometimes. Now it's just one day more. And I am going to miss it so much. So. What's next?

She still looks distant sometimes. They said that, as a child of war, it may never completely go away. The things that happened to her when she was tiny – that you might think she was too young to remember– still haunt her. My wife was a war correspondent and was in Kosovo when the baby was found. No-one knew who the child was. We fought to bring her home. We called her Leonita, which means brave, and as we didn't even know how old she was, we gave her the birthday of her country – 17 February. We have tried to keep her in touch with her culture, and have spent so many years trying to find her family, but nothing. Until, that is, in our last trip to the country, on her 21st birthday and just before the pandemic, we found someone who may have known her grand-parents. It's been hard under lockdown, but we are getting closer. Perhaps this might help her find what she seeks when she looks so distant.