Reigniting my creative joy

Are cocoons gluten-free? (I'm back. Sort of)

To my right is a sleeping Mousey, a five-month-old tuxedo boy with a tiny white tip on his tail. Behind me is his sister, Lolly, asleep on the back of the sofa, one little paw resting on my shoulder. The kittens have been with me for three months and every day they cause more chaos, and bring more heartjoy, into my life.

It’s been needed.

I didn’t celebrate my birthday this year because it arrived only a few days after my beloved Baba died in my arms at 9pm on January 29th. A few months later I’d discover the kittens I went on to adopt were born in those empty days between her death and my birth(day). 

That was how I knew they were for me. 

I’m still grieving my girl. It’s only in the last month or so I’ve been able to look at photos of her without feeling stabbed in the heart¹.

And I knew this grief would drag my other losses out the cupboard. Animal loss and human loss are different, of course, but for me it’s been just as painful and yet softer too. Baba was my witchy familiar, my soul cat, woven into the fabric of my existence. Her reassuring presence got me through countless lockdowns, the disappointment of dating and the letting go of dreams I’d held all my life.

After her surgery in 2022 Baba had 17 months seemingly symptom-free, but her last few months were tricky and in the end she had a tumour on her heart and a collapsed lung. Her passing was peaceful at home with me, with pain relief for her and my sister supporting me. I wasn’t prepared for it but I was there for it, unlike the devastating loss in my 30s.

And just as her death was “good”, my grief has felt simpler than before. Sadder in many ways, an echoing void in my daily life, but less complicated than a human death. We never argued and she never let me down. I loved her unconditionally and was honoured to walk her home on her last day on earth, exactly as I’d promised when she climbed into my life through the bathroom window. 

[Outside on her last day. A slow 10 minute meander she cherished]

I managed two months in an empty shell of a house before I brought the kittens home, and it was absolutely the right thing to do. And, predictably, it’s been all-consuming. When you work from home and live alone, baby animals stick to you like glue. Needless to say, we’re all very bonded and my main pastimes are now human laddering, food providing, litter scooping and bird puppeteering.

They haven’t healed my heart, they’ve expanded it.

Baba is as present in my home as she ever was, their big sister impressed onto the blankets they snuggle and toys they chase. Two kittens are such a different dynamic to an independent old queenly cat, so the replacing I feared would happen hasn’t at all. 

But I struggle with the forgetting. 

Our six years together are collapsing into a small pile of recollections and I resent it. There are days I don’t think of her at all and I’m reminded how brutal that felt in the months after I lost my partner. Grief requires you to say goodbye over and over and it’s necessary and horrid until it quietens into simply what is: they are gone and the brain finally lets it in.

So while I didn’t mark my birthday this year, I can authoritatively report back from Level 51, an awkwardly numbered age that feels like a no woman’s land and honestly that’s exactly how I’m experiencing it.

I’m still stranded in perimenopause. Holy shit, when’s this ride going to end? It’s been dragging on for six years and that sweetly naive apprehension about the loss of my menstrual cycle has been replaced by an impatient and bone-deep readiness for this to be done, thank you very much.

I’ve gone from six months without a bleed last year to an almighty period the day Baba passed — and it hasn’t stopped! That’s five months of cycling through daily spotting and bleeds. Fun times!

At least once a day I’m so tired I could lie down and die. Dramatic, yes, but ACCURATE. I’m terrified that this is it, that this fatigue is the shape of the rest of my life.

And while I relish the give-less-of-a-shitness of this age, I’m too bloody tired to do anything with it. 

So this slightly whiny return to Substack does have a purpose. I miss the ease of my days with Baba. Kitten time is not peaceful time. I miss my stationery delights! Everything’s been put away while the kittens are so boisterous. And I miss my creative cave — I haven’t been able to work in there since January. 

In short, I’m out of sorts and I want my creative joy back.

This cocoon is starting to pinch and these new wings need to dry, so I guess I have to gnaw my way out?

Are cocoons gluten free?

So yeah I’m back, sort of. I have a few ideas for this space but I’m also still very neurodivergent² so I’ll keep composting it all down before making any announcements I can’t follow through on.

Ahem.

How are you guys? I’ve missed you xo

1. This is partly why it’s been hard to visit here. Too many photos of her.

2. Bahahahaaaa.