I had no energy for many things. I worried that I had lost my edge—lost my drive to write or finish projects.
But looking back now, it’s obvious why.
Last year, 2025, was a shit year.
My 91-year-old mother ended up in the hospital and then moved into a palliative bed at the care home in January. My sister and I had to clear out her apartment and deal with all of her things. Mom died at the end of March, and then there was the estate. And grief. A lot of grief.
Then my aunt died in June. And in July I discovered that the biological father I had been tracking down for the last three years had actually died five years earlier.
Autumn brought more personal and relational stress and… well. It was a shit year.
But now the storm seems to be over, mostly.
I can poke my head up again and things are calmer. I have breathing space, finally. And I can start assessing the damage.
When you're just keeping your nose above water, a lot of things fall by the wayside. Tasks get pushed aside and postponed until things calm down. In the grand scheme of things, they simply weren’t important.
I didn’t have the time, nor the energy, to deal with many things.
But now… finally… I feel like I’m coming back online.
I’m no longer in survival mode, no longer just trying to get through each day. I can start planning again. I’m picking up tasks and projects that sat on the shelf for months. I have energy again. I’m interested in things again.
I’m building buffers in other areas—like social media posts for our Airbnb and blog posts for some of the other blogs I manage.
I am, for lack of a better phrase, getting my shit together.
But looking back now, it’s obvious.When you're in survival mode, of course the mojo disappears. All of that energy goes somewhere else—to grief, to paperwork, to estate work, to simply getting through the day.
It’s a nice feeling to realize that I’m once again firing on all cylinders.
I’m picking up the pieces of life and looking at the state of my to-do list. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but I’m chipping away at things. Moving projects forward a little at a time. Getting quotes to replace a window where the seal has gone. Picking up small projects around the house. Looking ahead to the garden season.
I like this feeling.
But at the same time… I don’t entirely trust it.
After the last ten years—a decade with more upheaval than I would have preferred—I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. What’s the next thing that will hit out of the blue? What else could go wrong?
I’m a bit twitchy.
I don’t fully trust the calm.
And maybe that’s just how life works.
Storms come. Then there are stretches of calm. We rarely know when the storms will arrive, or how long they will last.
All we can really do is weather them when they come…
…and appreciate the calm when it finally returns.
