How to feel a little calmer while life has some challenges.

Do we have a time limit on suffering, a socially acceptable period such as a year?  After my mother and aunt died a few years ago, I gave myself exactly twelve months to grieve and eased back a little on myself.  In practical terms, this meant that I didn't take on extra projects at work for a few months and let the ironing build up more than normal.  Emotionally, I just about managed to accept feeling more ragged, sore and a little messy behind closed doors.  After the year was up, I thought I better stop mentioning bereavement.  By then, everyone had stopped asking anyway.  Who wants to hear and listen to these complicated, messy, painful emotions after a while?  I wanted to show how "well" I was doing with some lighter topics of conversation. Now we have passed the year into the pandemic, I wonder if this same time limit is being applied?  For much of the first year, our conversations have often been more caring, more thoughtful, checking in on each other.  Fourteen mo

Last week, we actually left our local area and packed up the car for a trip away.  Something that I would never have registered as being a big deal until living through a pandemic.  I booked a few nights away in a cosy cottage, tucked in the rolling hills outside Bath where we could enjoy being somewhere different.  It was a wonderful tonic to see a familiar landscape, still unchanged by the ups and downs of these difficult months.  Familiar ancient trees welcomed us with their enormous open arms and I felt myself relax and rest a little more than usual. On the sunniest day, we decided to complete a circular walk, through a valley towards a pretty village and back in a giant loop. All was well until we arrived at a field with about thirty lively black cows who greeted us at the muddy gate with unbridled enthusiasm, calling their fellow mates to run and meet us.  Wonderful as they were, we decided to not enter their field in case they decided to nibble us or our packed lunch with the sa