I got to spend almost two weeks back in the UK with my daughter. We were with family for most of the time and it was wonderful. So welcome to be embraced and loved, cared for and supported. I’d deliberately decided not to try and travel around to see lots of people, but instead to focus on some close friends and enjoy the time with family that my cousin’s wedding facilitated.

It was great and sad – wonderful to see my daughter with her cousins, aunts, uncles, granny, great aunts & uncles…and yet also sad when I looked at life there, realizing that I can’t go back and that I’ve lost so much of who I was. It was sobering and encouraging to go through boxes of old letters, mostly from people I’m not in close contact with anymore, and read the things they talked about and said about me. Who is this person who wrote long letters that they responded to? Where is she…can I find some of her life again??! It was hard to leave – my family truly are a rock. And the history that had been remembered was challenging me to bring the things that matter to me into the now.

I’ve recently been looking at the Enneagram model, which has been giving me a lot of insight into who I am and what that means. On their scale, I’m a 9…a reluctant one, but the more I read about it the more I realize that it describes me! This type is the peacemaker…sounds great, but really for me it’s been a lot about ignoring my preferences and adopting those of others…and then getting resentful and frustrated. Much of my journal writing over the past few years has been “who am I?”…what is it I like, what do I want to do…really, what do I WANT, not what do I think others think I should want. There are so many layers and I keep peeling back more and more, and realizing that there is some great treasure in the 9, but also some unhealthy character traits. And at the moment I have the space to explore that and become the best version of myself I can be.

I keep on being drawn back to this – beautifully transformed, wearing my scars!