Seasonal Challenges: Grief, Weather, and Finding Balance

I hadn’t intended to have a short break from our wonderful blogging community, but life suddenly became a bit overwhelming. Partly it is the season; a particularly tough one for grievers even more than 2 years later. There are almost daily triggers and so you find yourself going into protect mode.

However it has also been a busy couple of weeks and I just lost track of time. This week I decided I had to do something so over the past 48 hours I have been trying to get on top of ‘life admin’ to help make things less overwhelming. I have also been making sure I include time every day for either gardening or walking. You will recall from my walking squares how much getting outside helps me. I must admit though the win in my compensation battle with British Airways may have had the biggest impact on my mood! The recent gorgeous sunrises have helped enormously too.

Not every day has begun so wonderfully though. Challenging weather has been the norm for the past few weeks, and is also not looking great for the weekend. Another named storm is on its way – Storm Darragh. Just hope the forecasters are right and it doesn’t bring as much rain as Storm Bert the weekend before last. Look what that Bert did to my beautiful town.

I was fine I am half way up a very large hill, but the bottom of my hill was a very different story. The video below was taken mid morning on the 25th, hours before the river levels peaked. So goodness knows what the current looked like later.

It was one of the worst floods since the 1960s, and caught many unawares. The town was cut in half for a day, and one of our bridges is still out of action. For others businesses it was their second flood this year, and your heart goes out to them. There are no flood defences, it is up to individuals to do the best they can and what they can afford. It is just isn’t right, and our town council are seeking answers and action from those responsible for flood defences. Hopefully things will improve in the long term, but in the short term I guess we can only cross our fingers.