It has been a long while. Six and a half years. Years, full of some of my most wonderful and painful moments. Six and a half years of the best and the worst. Life has happened; I have a lot to be angry about, a lot to be sad, proud, happy, grateful about, a lot to be nostalgic about, a lot to be confused about, a lot to be anxious about – I have a lot, and that’s a good thing.

Big things have happened. Some big human experiences – new jobs, new houses, new family members, new cats, cars, plants, just big things. And, of course, wider things in the world that have undoubtedly had an impact on myself and those around me. Sometimes life can feel really great and sometimes it can feel like things are too ‘big’ to quite know how to navigate, or how to move forward. This blog was about mental health, I shared my thoughts during some challenging times in my life and it’s a tricky experience reflecting back, feeling proud of what I have navigated, whilst feeling like some things are unchanged. I still have a brain, and a brain that likes to keep me entertained in ways where I still wish I could ‘pause’ it and exist in any other way on this planet other than as me.

I used to blog regularly on this site; when I stopped writing I was dealing with some big stuff, some transitions in my life which felt simply too big for me to write about, things were too big for me to process and it was a matter of just getting through things pretty much one step at a time. My brain couldn’t figure out how to put everything into place in advance, or how to make sense of things in the moment, so I just ‘did’. I just kept moving forward, navigating some extremely stressful circumstances, but with an abundance of hope that things will be alright, and knowing that eventually they would be. (How optimistic of me.) I, being merely human, did not know what the next few years would have in store, my inability to predict the future consistently failing me.

When I think back over the past six years, I am incredibly proud of how I navigated some complex circumstances – it’s been a bit of a mix, with some positive stuff and some ‘hold on to your seat, it’s the end of the world’ type stuff. Having this blog – Dearest Someone – is effectively an odd personalised time capsule, I have blog posts saved in drafts from over the years, where I didn’t feel comfortable sharing at the time (or it was simply unfinished rambling – drafts of me processing things through writing), and now years later I read back and I’m proud.

I write. Writing has always been the most effective way for me to process and shift what is in my mind, a way to get things out into the world, and not just existing in my head. When I was younger I used to write poems, lyrics, lists, letters, diaries – I also had a real specific fascination with synonyms and discovering new ways of explaining things, or new meanings – writing for me has always felt like a magical process of discovering what on earth is going on in my mind. I like words, always have done, always will. Journalling – or more specifically – attacking a piece of paper with every word in my mind and then never reading it again – is my favourite way of dealing with big feelings and stressful things.

But something big happened. I experienced a loss that seeped it’s way into every aspect of my life, I was thrown into a world of grief which I had no idea how to navigate. It was too big for me to even know how to start processing other than to just let it impact me in whatever way it impacted me. I couldn’t bear to write, the thought of writing about how I felt, or what happened, was terrifying to me, it was too big, too painful and I needed to keep a safe distance from writing. I wanted to write, I wanted to sit and list every possible thing I could remember, all the memories, everything. I had to hold back the words, I couldn’t write because it was simply too big – and my grief existed in every other part of my life – and I knew that if I sat and wrote about things then everything would come crashing down, and honestly, I was just trying to keep myself functioning as best I could. (I did want to scream at every person who suggested I journalled during this time, not because it was a bad suggestion, but because I felt that I had lost my magical coping escapism tool that was writing.)

Now, it’s April 2026, several years after my last blog post. The internet has changed a lot in six and a half years. But this blog is still here – I have toyed with the idea of deleting it throughout the years, but it brought me so much comfort to write, to share my experiences and to connect with so many others. People still engage with the blog posts, and my brain is still whirring around full of words, and I still want to write. I do not know if I will blog regularly, I do not know if I’ll delete this site, but I am grateful for Dearest Someone, and for the self-understanding, processing and comfort it gave me. I am grateful for those who have engaged with the content, shared their stories and for the mutual understanding found from others in a digital world! Thank-you for being the ‘someone’ who read this.