Too late?

When you feel sad, bereft and discombobulated, it’s so hard to keep the faith.

A year ago I wrote a blog post on Substack after visiting The Alnwick Garden Cherry Tree Orchard.

The blog posed the question: is it too late? Is it possible to blossom again?

My son had gone to uni and I was bereft, I’d left my big job in London behind and I missed my work family, I was heartbroken after a relationship break up and I was building a new life in Alnwick from scratch.

A year on, I have just been to visit the gardens again. (The Alnwick Garden has a cherry orchard with the largest collection of ‘Taihaku’ trees in the world, comprising of 329 cherry blossom trees, they all bloom together for up to two weeks around the end of April.)

The blossoms are in full bloom.

I managed to sneak in for the last hour a few days ago and sat on one of the swinging benches among the flowering trees and cried.

But in a good way.

So much has happened in the past year - my Heart Leap Substack has grown, we’ve created our second

Alnwick Story Fest

and it inspired me even more than last year, I am building a beautiful new community which I love, slowly building my freelance journalist career and have nearly finished my book.

I have even started dating a lovely new man.

When you feel sad, bereft and discombobulated, it’s so hard to keep the faith.

But if you keep on taking the baby steps, reaching out, not closing down, putting yourself in the way of beauty, doing the things that make your heart leap then magic can happen.

And you end up sitting in an orchard and discover that the trees love to celebrate with you and they throw blossom confetti at your feet.

• How do you keep the faith when the chips are down?

• What baby steps can you take?

• How can you reach out, not close down?

• How can you put yourself in the way of beauty?