This Chapter Is Mine

Something has shifted in me. Not in a loud, performative, “look at me, I’m healed” way. Quietly. Steadily. Like a tide turning without drama. I feel in my power. I feel capable. And for the first time in a long time, I know this without hesitation: I cannot be destroyed. Not because life hasn’t tried, but because I’ve rebuilt enough times now to know I always will.

I look around my life and think… this is it. This is mine. I have less on paper than I once did, but somehow I have more. More clarity. More space. More gratitude. Two incredible children living their own lives. Grandchildren who give me the purest joy, the kind that doesn’t demand anything in return. I get to see them every week. That is wealth. Real wealth. For years I believed something was missing, that life was slightly on pause, that something needed fixing. But what if nothing was broken? What if the pause was preparation? We need to normalise starting again at 50. Divorce. Reinvention. Changing direction. Rebuilding. It is not failure, it is evolution. Life is not meant to be one straight line. People grow. Circumstances change. Sometimes beginning again is the most honest thing you can do.

This week has felt like movement. I’ve ticked off jobs that have been sitting on my list for months. Sent emails I’d been overthinking. Had conversations that nudged things forward. There is a different energy when you’re not acting from fear. Decisions feel cleaner. And then there were the little signs. When I collected a red bath on Chinese new year, free on Facebook Marketplace, just sitting there waiting for me. If you know the Wellness Tavern vision, you’ll understand why that made me laugh out loud. Then three huge wooden candelabras from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, used in a production and no longer needed. Also free. My first thought was to do them up and sell them to raise funds. But when I saw them in my space, something shifted again. They belong in the Tavern.

And here’s the new thinking. Everything I create for that space should be for sale. Not because I don’t want to keep beautiful things, but because that is the model. I create art and atmosphere. Someone buys something with a story. The money goes back into running pay as you can days, keeping the doors open, funding community access. Then I make more. I stay in my art. The space evolves. Everyone wins. I do not want to build something precious and untouchable. I want to build something living. Moving. Circulating. Art that funds access. Access that funds more art.

Life is short. Far too short to sit still waiting for the perfect moment. The magic seems to be in motion. In saying yes to the red bath. In collecting the candelabras. In replying to the DM from someone I have not seen since my wedding day in 1997 and spending the day together as if no time has passed. I only recently understood the true meaning of serendipity. It is not luck. It is alignment meeting action. It is life circling back, not to repeat itself, but to open something new.

Same person.

New chapter. xx