March 2026.

Last month I had an issue with my newsletter, in that I didn’t really have anything to write about, apart from the weather!

Mar 22, 2026

Recently I read a meme posted on Substack which said something a long the lines of – You can never write properly if you are afraid of offending anyone..

Interesting!

It occurred to me that it wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to write about in February (there was a lot to say) but I was, as always, censoring myself. I was worried that I would say things people might think controversial, or that I would inadvertently upset people, or that, Oh No, people might disagree with me! So, I wrote a small salutation to the Sun and the Sea, because I love them dearly and that all needed to be said…but..

I have things to write about this month which if some of my family were to read, they might be upset. I hope not.

The subject of this March entry is bringing to light an event which lay hidden for 30 years. I will also include a trigger warning, because suicide is mentioned.

Nostalgia is suggested to be, by the Oxford English Dictionary, a feeling of sadness mixed with affection, when you think of happy times in the past. It goes on to say that it is like a sentimental or bittersweet longing for a specific past period.

I am not generally a nostalgic person and prefer to live wholly in the present. But sometimes nostalgia does creep up on me and suggests that I take notice!

I have been feeling nostalgic recently. Thinking back, which starts with a flash of memory, sometimes triggered by something, or sometimes a memory floating into my head. Usually though, there is a prompt. A certain flavour or smell, which transports me immediately to a place, or a particular kind of evening light, reminding me of back then, some time ago, in the past. Associations.

A particular nostalgia for me is from a time in my life which was taken from me very quickly. Various events took place, which shuffled everything up and changed my life forever, in a dramatic way. That time was between the ages of maybe 2 – 5 years old. My Mum was separated from my Dad and we were living in Lancashire, not far from her parents.

Lancashire in the 1980s had a particular feel to it, just as everywhere had a particular feel to it in the 1980s! There was though, a certain light in the mornings I remember and it always seemed to snow heavily in Winter.

I would go and visit my Dad, where he lived in East Anglia, in the Summer and at Christmas. I remember going to Safari Parks with him and visiting the Norfolk coast in the blazing heat of August. I would generally return to My Mother in Lancashire with sunburnt shoulders!

This is me as a little person in Lancashire in the 1980s, where it was snowy and i wanted to know what i looked like with my eyes closed!

In December 1985, just a week after my 6^th birthday, my Dad took his own life. And that changed everything, forever.

We then moved away from Lancashire, from my Grandparents just down the road, from the little primary school where I had so many friends, to a new life.

I always missed my Dad, but I learnt to accept that he was gone. I had to adapt and keep going, which children often do and which can cause problems in later life when the pain resurfaces and has to be excavated!

Nobody was talking about my Dad, or wanted to tell me things about him anymore.

Nobody told me he had killed himself, because they thought it would be too upsetting for me and that I wouldn’t understand why he would do a thing like that. So I didn’t find out about the circumstances of his death until I was 35, in 2015, when my Aunty told me.

Back to the present day and I will let you know something which came to me as I fell asleep the other night, that state of partial unconsciousness where messages often arrive,

“There is a little Buddha in everyone,

How are you going to help people to access their little Buddha?”

That has definitely given me something to think about.

With love, until the next time, Keep Well x