I have been trying to nudge myself back to life over the past few months. One of the ways i've been doing this is quietly working in my studio. It's process work but i needed to work on projects that are not all about Jon. I probably have too many balls in the air at the moment and some are sat on back burners simmering away, the smell of them mingling with whatever i am giving more concrete focus to on any given day. 
At the beginning of the year i decided to give myself one fairy tale a month to play with. This month's fairy tale is The Little Mermaid. With the two previous months i have used the time to immerse myself in the stories i have picked. I have made bits and pieces of work but nothing finished. I am ok with that at the moment as getting myself back on my feet feels more important than meeting a strict or heavy weight done goal. If anything my heavy weight goal is to stop spinning and re-find my still point so I can know and begin following my yearning again. 
Yearning i think is something i will be able to explore this month with this story. In many ways I was here before Jon died, wondering where i was going contemplating if and feel directionless. The time i am spending now in my studio with no deadlines and only my will and heart to follow is a parting gift. A gift maybe not wanted, but maybe needed. 
As i'm thinking about mermaids it seemed like the right moment to go to the sea. I had unfinished business to attend to in Southwold so that's where i went. The sea is always a comfort to me. I walked from the pier to the end where the river runs into the sea where  I met a lovely man who said that two metres of beach had been lost in the recent east winds and that tonnes of sand had been lost. His job was to put the sand back. 
I can't step on a beach and not beach-comb, i have so much sea treasure sometimes i feel a tad silly for picking up more but there is something meditative about the process. And it's funny what catches the eye and curiosity. This time it was wooden beach pebbles, and scraps of cloth, primarily. I think I know what I will do with the cloth, not so much the pebbles they may just end up in a bowl until i find a use for them.
For a while I sat and gazed out to sea. I hadn't been to the sea since my daughter and i had been to Dublin before I knew about Jon being dead. Of course i cried. There was no-one to see me cry and  who cares anyway. 
And I came across two gorgeous broken statues in slightly ramshackle garden. A marble man, a god or hero, grotesque in his broken-ness and a wooden woman, headless and legless.  Both useful and beautiful research figures.
I guess that yesterday was me picking up my threads, yes saying goodbye to Jon, Southwold was where we had our first proper date and our last, but also recomposing my world as it is now. Letting myself be soothed by the sight, sound, smell and feel of the sea, letting it lullaby me back into a walking life.