A Year of Growth and Healing

Navigating the In-Betweens

Hi friend,

Every year since I can remember, I like to take stock of the year gone by and plan for the year to come. It allows me to regroup and find out what to prioritise for the year ahead. My 2023 began with a blank canvas, filled not with the excitement of new experiences but with a daunting void of uncertainty. It was a year where I had to rediscover myself, rebuild my health and learn to thrive without the familiar anchor of work.

On January 1st 2023 I awoke in a co-living space in Canary Wharf with my partner. It was a new part of the city for me. Glass, concrete, towering buildings, the Thames. I have always loved London’s many identities. You can move from one part to the other and feel as though you’re in an entirely different city. As I looked out the window of my temporary home, I was struck by its transience. We lived somewhere that felt like an in-between. On one side, the East End, Docklands. On the other, the newest part of the city, a place heralded as London’s central business district.

"Reflections of Resilience: Canary Wharf Dawn" generated by DALL E 3

I spent much of 2023 in the in-between. Not healthy enough to live a normal life, but not as unwell as I had been in the years before. If I tried to resume the same activities as before, I could feel my health deteriorate and symptoms increase. But if I stayed in the house and only rested I felt stagnant and began to withdraw into myself further.

If 2022 had been a year spent on the move, travelling and moving around, 2023 became a year in search of home and stability. My partner and I moved into a flat in April. Somewhere that felt more long-term and stable. We didn’t realise how much we had yearned for it until we moved in. The first quarter of the year was spent planning and imagining where we might end up. He’d go to viewings and send me videos of the flats he’d seen. We’d share links to furniture and things to do in different neighbourhoods. We were too nervous to get our hopes up until we got the keys.

2023 was also the first year since my early twenties where I did not work. It took some getting used to. I learned that I thrive on projects to work towards, goals to complete and a sense of purpose. With that pulled out from under me, I felt at a loss. I spent a lot of the year working out who I was without those things.

I found new ways to recalibrate. I learned to meditate and have done so every day for the last three hundred days. At first, it was nightmarish quietening my mind and remaining still for twenty whole minutes. But eventually, in one session, I checked my timer only to see that twenty minutes had gone by in what had felt like three. I was hooked. Since then I’ve looked forward to these moments of stillness that punctuate my day.

Most of my time was spent focusing on my health. Prioritising my health has meant saying no to a lot. I’ve lived with the looming fear of reinfection and the knowledge that a relapse could force me to start the recovery process all over again. It has been an isolating year as it has felt like the world is moving on without me.

There is still a lot to be grateful for. Even if progress has been slow the cumulative effects of rest have meant that I felt much better at the end of the year than at the beginning. I got to spend time with my family in Paris for a couple of months at the end of the year.

Towards the end of the year, I could tell I was on an upward trajectory because I began to look ahead towards the future. I started imagining what I might be able to do when I was 10% better, 20% better, dare I say 30% better. I became well enough to explore part-time work and ended the year with a couple of opportunities. It’s helped me to see that most things are not permanent even though they seem like it at the time.

When I look back on the year, there aren’t necessarily key defining moments like years gone by. It feels as though 2023 was about self-discovery, exploration and laying the groundwork for years to come. 2023 may not have given me a clear roadmap for the future, but it laid the foundation for the person I am becoming. It taught me that self-discovery is an ongoing journey and that sometimes, the most profound transformations happen within.

As I step into the next chapter of my life, I carry with me the lessons of 2023—the importance of home, the beauty of small, daily practices, and the resilience of the human spirit. In this ever-evolving city and the ever-evolving self, I find solace and excitement in the unwritten pages of the years to come.

With love,

Naïma