I had seventeen days off work over the holidays.
The first half was exactly what I’d hoped for. Quiet mornings. No alarms. Slow days. That rare, slightly unreal feeling of having nowhere to be and nothing urgent pulling at me. I rested. I pottered. I enjoyed the peace in a way that felt long overdue.
And then, almost without warning, everything unravelled.
The second half of that break became a steady accumulation of things – not one dramatic event, but several heavy ones arriving close together, with very little space between them.
My dad died.
That sentence still feels strange to write. There was the grief itself, of course, but also everything wrapped around it: organising, conversations, decisions, logistics. The kind of practical demands that don’t pause just because your heart is somewhere else. It wasn’t unexpected, but that doesn’t make it easier. Loss has its own weight, regardless of preparation.
Less than a week later, my car died.
Living rurally and on my own, that was more than just an inconvenience. It was transport, independence, contingency plans, and the quiet anxiety of suddenly having fewer options. It removed a layer of autonomy at exactly the moment I needed life to be simpler.
There were also emotional complications from the past that resurfaced during this period. Old patterns have a way of reappearing when you’re already depleted, when your boundaries are thinner, and when you don’t have the energy to manage someone else’s needs alongside your own. That situation added its own layer of stress and distraction, at a time when my capacity was already stretched.
None of these things happened in isolation, and I think that’s what made it so overwhelming.
It wasn’t just grief, or just practical stress, or just emotional fallout. It was all of it, layered together, unfolding during a season that’s already emotionally loaded for most of us. Christmas and New Year have a way of lowering resilience, even without everything else piled on top.
For a while, I was simply dealing with the next thing. Doing what needed to be done. Keeping plates spinning. Functioning, but without much space to actually feel or process any of it. When life does that, you don’t always realise how much it’s taking until you finally pause.
And just as things are beginning to ease slightly, there’s more ahead.
I’ve got hospital stuff coming up next week – planned, necessary, and manageable, but still another thing to mentally hold. And in a couple of weeks, I’ll be heading to the UK for my dad’s funeral. Another threshold to cross. Another moment that will ask something of me.
I’m only just starting to feel like I’m coming out of the other side of all this now.
Not because everything is resolved. It isn’t. Some things are ongoing, and some feelings are still very close to the surface. But the intensity has eased enough for me to look back and say, honestly: that was a lot.
I think there’s something important in naming that, especially in midlife, especially when you live alone, especially when you’re usually the one who copes.
This isn’t a post about silver linings, or lessons learned, or tying everything up neatly. It’s simply an acknowledgement that sometimes life stacks several heavy things together, and the achievement is getting through the season without collapsing under the weight of it.
For now, I’m choosing fewer expectations, quieter days, and more gentleness than usual. There will be time later to make sense of everything properly. Right now, it feels enough to notice that I’m still here, still standing, and slowly finding my footing again.
One breath at a time.