First off, happy new year and welcome back. It’s been a while, but after receiving the loveliest message recently from somebody I used to know in my teens that read my book over the Festive period, I have decided to bring my writing back. It brings me peace and grounds me all while helping me to get my feelings out into the universe so if you’re here for the ride, thank you for joining and if I’m just rambling to myself, it’s a great platform for me to look back on and reflect in later days.

It’s a new year and I’ve just come back from a much-needed, wonderful break in the mountains. I feel like it’s only right to reflect on 2024 before we move on as I set intentions and focus forwards on the year ahead, so here’s a very brief outline on one of the most challenging yet rewarding years so far in my thirty-three years on this earth.

Last year was undoubtedly the greatest in terms of work where we achieved amazing things by opening our second location (for those that don’t know, I have owned and run a cafe in lovely Surrey since 2020 and now, proudly own two of the buggars!), I published my second book and built an amazing team of employees, all while I continued on my unwanted journey of health issues.

Much like 2025 already has, last year started with pain, appointments and health issues. Following being floored in spring of 2023, I already had a few procedures and investigations lined up so I was realistic with myself in knowing that it was going to be a tough road ahead and entering into a new year was certainly not entering into a clean slate as often people think it may be. I had surgery just three days after getting the keys to our second location and I began that journey in an unwanted state of ill health and I was always conscious that my new staff only knew this half-as-good version of myself. Things got better, then they got worse and better again and I am currently somewhere in between, I think.

In June, just four days before my birthday and two days before heading off to Greece for holiday I had a routine GP appointment after speaking to the consultant I was under while awaiting another minor surgery. This appointment was to discuss all of the things that had been wrong in my body since I first fell ill and I honestly have never in my life been as scared as I was when I walked out of that appointment. I had the “c” bomb thrown at me and was told to attend the hospital urgently for some blood tests. While sitting there in the waiting room, I had three phone calls from separate people in a calm state that somehow panicked me even more. All of a sudden, everything I had been facing for the past fourteen months was a matter of urgency and they each tried to book me in for emergency appointments the following day or after the weekend.

I had a party arranged at my house to celebrate my birthday the next day so I put the appointments off until I returned from my holiday and while I had a lovely time in Halkidiki, it was by no means restful or peaceful with such daunting words hanging over my head. I was, in fact, terrified of what awaited me on my return home.

Sure enough the appointments and tests amounted to nothing. Well, not quite. But it wasn’t the dreaded that the doctor so convincingly told me it may be. In a state of relief, I continued about by life until in August I was faced with the same words again, from the same doctor yet about a different part of my body. Filled with fear and overcome with stress once again, I cried my way to appointments and shut myself away from the world. I was consumed by work and hospitals and felt like I had little else going on and certainly found myself with little headspace for anything else, although I realised that it was in fact these things that I was surpressing that I needed the most: friends, family and fun.

Fast forwarding to October, after going into hospital again with more of the same, I finally left with a diagnosis and while it wasn’t something I wanted to hear, it was almost the closure I needed.

Fibromyalgia. What does that mean? I still don’t really know, but as I wait to see the specialist to discover how best to move forward living with a chronic condition, I have been speaking to a “long term conditions pscyhologist” that is helping me to navigate through a life of pain, fatigue and consequently stress both mentally and physically. I am weaving my way through days of intense emotion and moments of pure pleasure. I am not entirely sure where I stand or how I feel, as I have spent almost two full years of living in daily pain and I am not certain there is a way to process this into words, but here we go: a new year is upon us and new challenges await.

All I hope for is some clarity, a lot more happiness and fun moments than negative ones and in hope of that, I am here to log whatever comes to my mind and my fingers type, so feel free to join me for the ride, skip past these rambles or, better yet, provide me with some sense of hope if this is something you’re familiar with.

I’m grateful for each of you, especially my nearest and dearest and all I can do is wish each of you the happiest, healthiest and most prosperous year ahead as I wish for that for myself.

2025, let’s do this!

LL xo