I’m returning to this blog eight years after setting up this site as part of a 5 week self-directed art retreat in Tasarte, Gran Canaria.

Reflecting on those 5 weeks as I flicked through the site pages and read the never published first draft of my weekly blog, I realised during those 5 weeks I made my first steps of unmasking. Being in that neutral place enabled me to connect with myself without the armour of protection I’d hidden behind all my life. It was during that retreat that yet another close friendship of mine unravelled. The 30+ year friendship – so close we referred to each other as siblings – like a few others during those years, crumbled apart along with the coping mechanisms and masking that no longer served me. The time we shared on that retreat revealed the distance that had grown between us and the differences which planted the seeds for conflicts.

Shedding skin is one way of describing what I went through then.

So why am I writing this blog now? Basically I need a space to record my daily experiences and identify the things that point to possible symptoms of ADHD or is it just my cPTSD, or post-menopause, or Long Covid?

Speaking of Long Covid, or Post-Covid Syndrome, today the 13th January (also the Full Wolf Moon) is my 2 year Sickiversay! Yup two years since my first – and thankfully only – positive test for Covid-19. My symptoms are slowly improving after a relapse in April 2024.