This little light of mine

Hello. Welcome back old friend …and lovely to meet you if you’re new to my ramblings.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted and frankly in many ways I feel like a completely different person. In March 2020, Ken and I flew from California to London. We were relocating, planning our third act, buying a house in Oxford where we would run courses, write books, and maybe even slow down a little. Within a few days of arriving at the rental apartment, the UK went into lockdown. Nothing had prepared us for what lay ahead, and nothing had prepared me for losing the love of my life, my partner of forty-four years, and my anchor. Here is a little extract from the afterword in my new book ‘Let it Shine’ that will give you some context.

After Ken died, the apartment fell silent. Our possessions were still in containers, the Oxford house- a lost dream. I craved my piano, books, desk, fire, garden, kitchen — all the comforts of home. I longed to sort through our memorabilia and photographs, to make sense of a lifetime of love and connection, to lose myself in memories. I ached for the freedom to travel, for the companionship of friends. In the absence of it all, I walked…and I walked. The apartment overlooked the river, and I was grateful for the empty towpath and the uncanny silence of a world that, like mine, had stopped turning.

One morning when the tide was far out, I spotted a heron perched on a rock, pulled out my phone, and took a snap. What I captured surprised me. The photograph had a stillness about it, an ethereal quality and a sense of composition. That evening, I printed it off and tacked it to a wall. Over the next few weeks, I set out on the walks with a new sense of purpose, phone in hand. I saw the ordinary with a new intensity; the texture of fallen bark, the water weeds, the algae, the riverbed. Snatching these images connected me to something outside of myself and to something deep within. Over those months, I took hundreds of pictures, playing around with them on apps, turning them into collage. I learned that even in the midst of intense pain, it was still possible to find beauty, to be absorbed and in flow.

I started to write Let it Shine around the time of the first anniversary, soon after I had taken an art therapy course in Ibiza. It’s not my story, although it is my path. I hope you’ll enjoy it. It’s not all about grief by the way …it’s actually quite a happy book …I’ve lost a lot but thankfully not my sense of humour…you can take the woman out of Ireland…but …

Here’s to happier times for us all and to keeping it light.