The year that was 2025

Big beads and small beads

There have been some big colourful beads. I made it alone to Morocco and walked through the Atlas mountains with women from across the world, pausing to eat bread cooked over stones and rest in a Bedouin cave. I travelled with a friend to Paris, gazed open mouthed at the Art Nouveau, domed roof of Galeries Lafayette and ate chips and crepes on a pavement in the Latin Quarter. I’ve been featured with my singers in a beautiful documentary and had my face and words appear in The Guardian newspaper, and I’ve held a big community funeral for my friend.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of less elaborate beads. I have completed my first book, held four writing courses and collaborated on other grief events, sung with my Threshold Choir at local hospices and in private homes, written 25 blogs, accompanied many people into their deaths, supervised students and ministers and been a safe space for those who are grieving.

So far, so what? Many years ago I was participating in a course and I was asked to write my own obituary. After I’d written it I read it back: I had forgotten to include anything at all about my work and achievements– so called markers of success. What I had written about was who I loved, the things that mattered to me, what I stood for.

Enough

There are times when I can feel inadequate, small, that whatever I’m doing isn’t enough. But after all, what does ‘enough’ even mean? There was one woman I remember in the hospice, who opened up to me, built trust and enlarged her life, even as she faced her death. I don’t know and I don’t want to know how much of that was down to our interaction, I only know the relationship, while it lasted, mattered to us both.

When I last looked, 49 thousand people had watched the documentary, Threshold. Can I care about 49K people all at once? Not really, but I am moved by the one who commented, with tears streaming down her face, that she blesses the film and its maker for touching her heart. This is the key for me – one heart at a time being touched. My heart being touched. This matters.

Grief and grieving

I wonder where I am in this long old process of grieving compared to a year ago. Dr Mary O’Connor defines grief as the acute state of longing for the one who has died, and grieving as the process of adjusting to that loss. I cannot imagine ever not longing for my beloveds- I’m not sure I want to live without it- but I would say that his year I have, more than ever, adjusted to life without them. I am familiar with myself as a single woman but, just as I carry within me the ‘muscle memory’ of being the mother of two children, though only one survives, so I carry the awareness of having been met, as a woman, by a man who loved me. It’s a simple enough statement: I have been ‘met’. Three little letters, but letters which carry within them the knowledge that my womanhood has been honoured and fulfilled. To be met changed me forever. I am still living the change, as if my very cells were awoken to possibilities that had lain dormant for decades. In my Christmas card, my daughter wrote, “I’m proud of you for shining so that others see what I’ve always known.” (Bless that young woman!)

Encouragement of light

There is a poem by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, which says:

I set it to music and dedicated it to my husband. At his request, I played the harp and sung it at his funeral. Being loved, being honoured and believed in by him, was the encouragement of light I needed to blossom. What I know now, is that it has not been withdrawn by death. Once given it has not been ‘un-given’ . Now that the period of adjustment seems to be establishing itself, I can say that what I live in the present was set in motion by a relationship which appears from the outside to be in the past, but to me is alive and well inside me. Oh, the grief (the longing) is still there – what wouldn’t I give to hear a certain voice, be held by beloved hands, lean back into the sweetest embrace I have ever know? But all is not lost, far from it. And I like to imagine he is cheering me on from wherever he still is, more, that in some way he comes with me into everything I do that I could not have done without his love.

Dark beads

Some of the beads in my 2025 necklace aren’t so optimistic – they are as dark as the deep ocean where little light penetrates. There have been weeks like that, when life was dreary and I was miserable. Other moments are brilliant and bright as if the sun shines through them illuminating all their colour, like receiving a calendar at Christmas, with each month a collage made (with his mummy’s patient help) by my 3 year old grandson. Some beads are one offs, others more humdrum but they all belong. As I end this year, I wear the necklace with gratitude and a sort of poignant radiance, along with a knowing that sorrow and happiness can co-exist in my my heart.

2026

If you are dying, I wish you peace as you leave behind this body and this earth.

If you are grieving, I wish you softness and care as you adjust to a new way of living.

And to everyone, I send my love. May 2026 be filled with sweet moments, connections that matter and a gratitude for life however it arrives for you.

With love,

Nickie

PS: Should you want to reflect on the year, you might like to do so using these prompts (and lying on a cushion!).

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NEWS

Writing Pilgrimage – Sunday 1st to Sunday 29th March 2026

More information coming next time (17th January) when you will be able to book. What I can tell you is, there will be:

Please do write to me now if you have questions or know you would like to join me. You can contact me here.

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