Windows of Opportunity
What windows of opportunity have just opened for you, and is there one which you can permit yourself to close?
“…there is a window of peak flourishing for any particular endeavour when all the circumstances and conditions - internal and external - come together to give us the best chance of making something work. And because everything is always changing, I think that is a window which opens and then, sooner or later closes.”
I want to talk this week about windows of opportunity, about permitting ourselves to close one window allowing time to tell if this will be permanent or temporary, and opening other windows to follow the breeze that is stirring outside.
The year anniversary of the felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap is approaching. A senseless act of vandalism on 28th September 2023 left our immediate and the wider community reeling. This photo was taken by my husband, of the first place he walked to as lockdowns during the pandemic were enforced and we were only allowed outside for an hour’s exercise a day.
We live a stone’s throw from the gap, and on Christmas morning, one of our favourite walks was to do ‘the short block’ up the hill and pose for photos with Sycamore Gap in the distance behind. The tree is no more, the gap is like a six-year-old’s mouth when a tooth is missing. I wrote about the collective grief we all felt, and the personal grief I witnessed: the anger felt around our family dinner table, a waitress in a local coffee shop crying in the toilet and a conversation with a man who told me he had cried when he heard the news.
At the same time, I was planning the next book after The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn and many were saying how much they looked forward to the sequel. The pressure was on! I had a series in mind and planned a book about urban flooding, beavers and boundaries following a wonderful trip to Knapdale Forest, learning about the introduction of beavers there. However, when the tree went down at Sycamore Gap I knew this was the story I had to write, zeitgeist and all that!
As in The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn, I wanted my protagonist, Molly to experience a time-flip to help her learn important truths, and with the tree being up on Hadrian’s Wall, what better time to set that time flip would be AD122 when Hadrian ordered the building of the Wall and Iron Age tribes and tree-loving druids were under threat. This new book would be about death, grief and hope, with a love of trees as its heart and started to research and write it, with the opening line:
‘There were two trees in Molly’s life - one she could no longer bear to be around and another to which she was fleeing on the AD122 out of town.’
But then I stalled. I needed to do a lot of research and family circumstances started to conspire against me. My mum got some hideous form of dementia and quickly deteriorated in her physical and mental health. I found myself travelling up and down from Sussex to Northumberland to nurse my mum and be with her as she passed, and to help my father, who at 86 was her main carer. Mum died two months ago, and just two weeks ago, my father landed in Worthing Hospital having had a series of serious strokes.
I also have grandchildren! As with so many families, the grandparents play a vital role in childcare that helps both parents work full time. I call it the care continuum, with aged parents at one end, little ones at the other, and everyone else in between!
When writing a book I think it important to turn up to the page every day, either reading, researching or writing to keep your head in the project. But when mum died, dad got ill, and my health imploded, whilst all my experiences around death and grief may well have been useful to this work, I just couldn’t be arsed to write the book!
Writing a book is one thing, but getting a publisher and dare I say, agent is just another thing altogether. And then there is the marketing! I marketed the arse off the first Molly book, and it’s done well, but I can’t keep it up at the moment. It all seems too much. By the time I’ve written it, edited it, had it proofread and copy edited, and then found an agent/publisher, the story of the felling of Sycamore Gap would be old news. The zeitgeist that seemed so opportune a year ago has passed. And that’s fine. I’m permitting myself to close this particular window.
I’m reading
‘s Kokoro at the moment, which I bought as soon as it was published, but hadn’t until now started to read or engage with the journalling prompts. However, there couldn’t be a better time for this book to have found me. It is a book about Beth’s own experiences of grief and her journey of discovery. Kokoro is about the intelligent heart, and I feel it is high time to make space for myself to go on a journey of self-discovery. I could write another substack or indeed a whole book and maybe one day I may well, about how I’m having to learn how to feel after a lifetime of stuffing down pain and masking feelings with overwork. Did you read my raw and painfully honest post, which quite frankly I should have put behind a paywall, ‘When Marketing Becomes Masking’?
I feel the window of opportunity for the sequel to The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn has closed. Maybe it’ll reopen at another time, and if it does, I shall give it all my energy and commitment, but for now, I want to properly grieve for my mum, write about her, think about her, and create a space for her in a heart that for so many years blocked her out. I want to meditate, walk, write, and learn how to feel. Another window has opened. A chance to just ‘be’ as I process all that is changing in my life. The window of my Kokoro: an opportunity to look within, to do things because I enjoy them because they are good for me.
I’ve leave you with a question Beth asked in her journalling prompt taken from Kokoro that has helped me to let go:
‘Where are you in your life right now?’
What windows of opportunity have just opened for you, and is there one which you can permit yourself to close?
Great post. I’m so enjoying Beth’s journaling prompts too.
First of all, what a glorious shot of you and the ‘grandbairns’. Joyful. And in a year of such heartbreak for you, much-needed.
This is such a touching letter to us all, and super-important. Not doing something is often WAY more important than doing something. Being, and seeing how life unfolds, feels necessary. JoJo and I have been answering Beth’s questions; a very affirming way of examining the life we have carved out for ourselves. Just ‘being’ is at the heart of it all. We hope it works as well for you as it does for us. Hugs from France. X