There’s a truth behind this post that I never told. One year on it feels important.

Last September I posted a video.

I was on Snapchat, swinging from side to side, with a steam train behind me. I was ready to jump on board and and have an afternoon tea train ride with Mr Al and Mama and Papa Wareing.

I couldn’t have looked happier.

I was very excited.

The reason for posting the video to all of my amazing photography friends and followers was to let you know that I wouldn’t be posting my usual advice blog that day because I was too excited about the tea train and I’d forgotten to post.

It was true.

But you may have noticed that I haven’t posted a blog with advice since.

After the train ride was over, I walked to the car with my mum. I sat in the driver’s seat, feeling more like a lost child than I had done in a very very long time.

My grandma was about to embark on a third round of chemo and I was worried.

The weeks that followed were heart breaking.

A couple of days after the first new dose of chemo, my grandma was rushed to hospital. She was never to return home.

While my cousin Emma got ready for her wedding at the family farm, and we helped her to decorate and organise, we visited grandma in hospital. It was bitter-sweet that we were all brought back together at the very time she fell so ill.

Last year I wrote - “today, I’m out of words”. The truth is, I’ve been out of words ever since.  

The experience has taken something from me. I have sat silent for lack of words in conversations with friends, I have shied away from making new friends this year because I knew I would be lost for anything to say. 

I used to sit and write fluidly, it was something I enjoyed.

It is as though someone has taken my voice. It’s not someone - it’s the magnitude of everything we experienced and feel.

And this week I realised, it’s been a year since it all began.

It feels like time to write, perhaps I’ll begin my weekly posts again soon. It's certainly time to talk to you all about it.

It’s difficult to lay the raw truth like this, I don't like to feel fallible, but it's important to be open with you. We’re all human, we suffer loss. Some losses take longer to recover from.

Speak soon ;)

J x