Sometimes life just… takes over, doesn't it?

Not in a dramatic, one-big-thing kind of way. More like a slow accumulation of everything at once— grief, exhaustion, illness, chaos in the garden (more on that shortly🙄) — until you look up and realise two weeks have passed and you've been running on autopilot, just doing your best to get through each day.

That's been me lately. And I wanted to be honest about it, because I know so many of you will recognise that feeling. That sense of I'm coping, but only just. Of holding it all together on the outside while quietly feeling a bit wrung out on the inside.

So this is a joint post for weeks 70 and 71. Bear with me — it's a big one.💛

💔When Life Gets Heavy

The last few weeks have been shaped, more than anything, by grief.

We lost my sister-in-law, and the weeks that followed have been filled with all the things that come after a loss — the admin, the phone calls, the paperwork, the solicitors, the decisions that need making even when you're exhausted and sad and just want everything to pause for a moment. Grief is strange like that. It doesn't give you a day off. Life keeps moving, and somehow you have to move with it, even when part of you really doesn't want to.

I won't pretend it's been easy. It hasn't. For my husband especially, it has been an incredibly hard time, and when someone you love is hurting, you feel it too. You carry a little of it for them, because that's what you do.💛

What I will say is this — and I mean this genuinely — journalling has been my quiet anchor through all of it. Not in a grand, revelatory way. Just… having somewhere to put things. Somewhere to write down the messy, complicated feelings that don't have a neat answer. Somewhere to say this is hard without having to explain it to anyone or wrap it up with a bow.

If you've been considering starting a journal and haven't quite got there yet — I promise you, even five minutes on a difficult evening makes a difference. It really does.📓

🌿Returning to Routine (Slowly, Gently, Without Pressure)

The good news — and there is good news — is that things are beginning to settle. The most urgent pieces have been handed over to the solicitor. There's not much more we can do until probate is sorted, and then it'll be a case of sorting the house and getting things moving. But for now? For now, I am quietly, gratefully looking forward to a little bit of normal.

I hadn't realised quite how much I'd been missing routine until I started to get it back.

Regular meals cooked at home. Consistent sleep (or at least, attempting it — the menopause is still very much doing her thing🙃). Getting back to the pool. Walks before work in the morning light. These things sound so small, don't they? But when life has been chaotic for weeks, small and steady feels like absolute luxury.

I've been swimming three or four times across these two weeks, which feels like a win. No gym yet — but I'm not beating myself up about it. I'm getting there. The lighter mornings are helping more than I can say. There is something about spring that just lifts me — the light through the curtains in the morning, the warmth starting to creep back in. I love it.🌸 It makes moving feel like a choice I want to make rather than a battle I have to fight.

🤧Giving Yourself Grace When You're Not Well

I also want to talk about something I think we all struggle with — and that's giving ourselves permission to just… not be okay for a bit.

I had a few poorly days in week 71. Nothing dramatic, nothing Mounjaro-related — I think I was simply run down. When you've been running on stress and disrupted sleep for weeks, eventually your body sends you a bill. Mine sent it around week 71.😅

And here's the thing I've been sitting with — the old me would have felt guilty about it. Would have spiralled. Would have counted up the missed gym sessions and the meals that weren't perfectly planned and decided the whole thing was falling apart.

But it isn't falling apart. It's just life.

Your body is not a machine. It doesn't perform at 100% through bereavement and exhaustion and illness and hormonal chaos and then cheerfully bounce back the moment you'd like it to. It needs rest. It needs kindness. It needs you to say this is a hard season, and that's okay.

I wrote about this in my journal during one of those difficult evenings — about how we would never speak to a friend the way we sometimes speak to ourselves. We'd tell her to rest. We'd bring her tea. We'd say of course you're tired, look at everything you've been carrying.

So that's what I'm trying to do. Talk to myself like a friend. It's a work in progress. But I'm getting there.📓💛

🥂A Work Event, A Champagne Bar & Some Questionable Life Choices

Right. On a considerably lighter note.😂

Week 70 involved a very early start — 4:30am, because apparently I enjoy suffering — for a trip down to London for an all-day AI event. Now, I go to work events. I know how work events go. Slightly sad sandwiches, lukewarm coffee, a lot of PowerPoint.

NOT THIS ONE.

This one had a free champagne bar. A free gin bar. A free beer bar. And genuinely lovely complimentary food. At a work event. At lunchtime.🍾

I mean. My job, some days. I have no complaints. None whatsoever. It was genuinely fascinating too — interesting content, great speakers — but I won't pretend the champagne bar didn't make the 4:30am alarm feel significantly more worth it.😂

🦔Meanwhile, In The Garden…

I need to tell you about the mole.

Our garden — which I had modest hopes for this spring — currently looks like a building site. An absolute, unhinged, architectural building site. Because we have been visited by what I can only describe as the world's most ambitious, most productive mole.

Every. Single. Day. New mounds. Multiple mounds. Sometimes it feels like he's showing off.😤

After numerous phone calls (which is its own kind of endurance sport), I have finally found someone who can come out and — and I want to be clear about this —humanely capture said mole. I am not a monster. I just want my lawn back.

I will keep you updated. This situation feels far from over.🕵️‍♀️

📊The Numbers

Two weeks, two losses, and both feel hard-earned.💪

Week 70: -1.6lbsWeek 71: -3.4lbs

Total lost: over 7 stone.🎉

Honestly, given everything these two weeks held — the grief, the illness, the exhaustion, the early starts, the champagne bar🥂— I'll take every single pound of that and be proud.

Because this is the thing I keep coming back to, and the thing I wrote in my journal on one of those harder evenings when I needed reminding:

Progress doesn't stop just because life gets hard. Sometimes the most important thing you do is simply not give up.

These numbers are proof of that. Not perfect weeks. Not easy weeks. But weeks where I kept going anyway.

And that is always, always enough.💛

Wherever you are in your own journey right now — whether things feel steady or whether you're just trying to hold it all together — I see you. And I promise, it's enough to just keep showing up.

Helen x

Still grieving a little. Still moving. Still becoming.🌸