A Year On From the Hospital Bed

This time last year I was in a hospital bed on morphine, recovering from a burst appendix and peritonitis. I didn't know, lying there, whether I'd come through it properly.

I remember being grateful, simply, that it happened while I was at home, not somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no help nearby.

A year on, almost to the day, Campo gave up.

Engine light on, battery light on, booked into the garage for the 11th of August.

No trip to the Lakes this week.

I'd been looking forward to it, or thought I had, until the moment came and I realised I wasn't actually looking forward to going at all.

The old me would have driven it anyway. Would have pushed through, ignored the warning lights, made it work somehow. That's exactly the kind of thing that led me to a hospital bed a year ago.

This year, I didn't drive it. I let the van sit, and I stayed home instead.

Turns out Campo probably knew what it was doing.

Kendal Calling was on this weekend, the motorway's been a nightmare, and I'd have sat in traffic for hours just to arrive exhausted before I'd even started.

Maybe not every warning light is a crisis. Sometimes it's just good timing wearing a different coat.

What actually happened with that day was quietly ordinary. Hotel emails needing replies. A big international group checking in. A form for packed lunches to sort.

All admin that could be handled from home.

Home with two loads of washing pegged out on the line (thank you Pete - I scrub the stains he does the lifting and pegging).

Not the peaceful mountain scene I'd pictured for myself. Just an ordinary Thursday, dealt with as it came.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I found a few genuinely quiet minutes anyway.

That's stayed with me more than the Lakes trip would have.

For a long time, I thought stillness needed a particular setting.

A fell

A waterfall

A quiet beach

A retreat centre

Somewhere far from home

A place quiet enough that peace could finally reach me.

This year has been teaching me something different: that stillness has to be findable exactly where you already are, or it isn't much use to you at all.

It's the same thing I've been quietly building into REAL, if I'm honest. Not another course to push through, not a system to perform. Just simple tools, taught slowly, for finding that stillness wherever you actually are — no fell required, no waterfall, no need to wait for the "right" setting to arrive.

A year ago I couldn't have told you I'd feel better missing a trip rather than pushing through to make it happen.

But that's where I am.

Slower to prove things (everything is slower - I physically have no choice!), quicker to listen to a warning light, whether it's on a dashboard or in my own body.

If you're carrying something similar, some version of pushing through when your body or your circumstances are quietly telling you not to, I hope you can find a moment today to actually listen.

With peace and stillness, Linda xx