Signs of Healing in Scottish Meanderings

I just thought I would document a bit of 'normal' progress on my healing journey - parts of me which are starting to come back. I've put the word 'normal' in quotation marks because on this journey, progress is very minimal and very much non-linear and sometimes doesn't feel like progress at all.

So for instance my brain won't acknowledge the fact I can now shower twice a week instead of once a week as progress because it's still not what I want to be able to do - or that I might be able to put a washing on and get the clothes into the basket in one go instead of not having energy to pull the washing out of the machine at all, because I still have to wait a while for energy to actually take the basket up the stairs, sort it all out and hang the stuff up. When you have to split ordinary tasks like that into bits, there's no sense of satisfaction at having done them at all. And there is often the situation of 2 steps forward, 32 back - or you think something is getting better at last, only to be thrown into something much worse that you didn't see coming.

In my last entry I had written - some more glimpses of the old me are definitely coming back - I was able to read some of a book last week which was nice - especially as I've carted that book round with me for literally 5 weeks hoping to feel well enough to be able to open it for 10 minutes! I had to restart it once more for the third time this year but I've got a bit further with it this time and I feel the information is being retained better now so hopefully won't have to do that again.

Shortly after that my Goodreads app informed me that I had read 7 books in 2024. I was actually quite surprised - I would have thought the tally was more like around 4 so was pleased. As many of us here are avid readers, I know that would seem like an abysmal total but because I had been struggling so much with reading, I realised that that was showing signs of progress. Better yet it was showing signs of progress in a linear fashion which was far more acceptable and much easier for me to acknowledge. I still wasn't quite there but like I said at the end of last year, I could feel my brain was coping better with reading and retaining the information.

So this year I thought ok I'll aim for 10 books as a total for 2025.

Well ...... I'm on my tenth book already!

This is nothing short of a miracle to me.

Funnily enough I never lost the habits of a reader - I would ask for books for Christmas and birthday presents, would check out reviews for books and keep adding them to my Want to Read list. I could also never get out of the habit of having a pile of books on the bedside cabinet. I tried putting them all away once and it just looked too bare and unnatural - it was a comfort seeing them there so I put them back. It was also a comfort looking at my bookcase opposite my bed before I went to sleep - familiar favourites, recommended books, charity shop finds - they were like old friends patiently waiting for me to revive and dip into them again.

One day I spied this demi-lune cabinet in a shop in a nearby town and quite fancied it for the sitting room but wasn't sure if it would look right.


I have such a small sitting room that I don't have much leeway to play about with so I thought if it doesn't look right in situ maybe I could just use it as a telly cabinet and replace the very scratched one I already have. So I was clearing out some of the videos and DVDs in the cabinet sections ready to go to the charity shop just after that when I suddenly realised they would be perfect for my extra books! I had a very annoying surplus pile of books beside the bookcase in my bedroom which I had to pile up on the floor because there was no room in the 2 bookcases I have so I set to and was able to fit most of them into the different sections perfectly. So the demi-lune cabinet got the heave-ho and the old one is staying!

Because apparently books are more important than bonny furniture😊


And my God I’ve missed so much in not reading - the first time I realised I could feel I was reading 'properly' in that the text was going in and staying in and I was able to conjure up images of what was portrayed in the words, it was like this whole new world was opening up to me again. So many connections were being made it was incredible - so many thoughts coming to me - so many ideas - so much resonance with what was written - so much knowledge gained - and from just one chapter of a book! I felt like this huge black hole had been scooped out of me - this huge dearth of emptiness where books had once been - where I had once been - and what was left was a tiny thread of a sliver of a soul, the only thing which couldn't be completely extinguished and was hanging on desperately trying to keep me together long enough to return to the world.

There was a line in one of the books I read - 'to rediscover what we have lost we must rediscover what we have loved' - that really resonated with me and I realised I had been doing the right thing by trying to do all the things which used to give me joy so that when the ability to feel that finally comes back I would be in the right place doing the right things.

It's interesting which books I picked to read as well. You know that thing where you get drawn to a particular book, or a book seems to stand out to you at a particular time and when you begin reading you realise it was exactly what you needed to read?

When I realised things were starting to improve in that area at the end of last year, I happened to be rewatching a good film one night and remembered I'd been given the book as a present and had never read it so I picked that one for my first one of the year.


It was weeks later before I realised how much of an apt title it was to start the New Year off!

Next was one I had attempted 3 times at various points before, each time having to give up. I knew it wasn't the book itself - the writing was excellent but there was so much packed into each paragraph that I wanted to wait until I was able to make the most of every word and not lose anything.


Again although it's a memoir linked to reading, it wasn't a deliberate choice.

Many of us on this withdrawal journey are drawn to reading about the suffering of others and how they managed to keep going in hopeless situations so when I was looking for a shorter length book just to encourage me to keep me going, my eye lit on this one.


Primo Levi was a concentration camp survivor and wrote excellent books about his experiences and his life afterwards but this book comprises of conversations with him about his experiences and making sense of them and his writing of those experiences. He died by falling over the banister of his apartment complex and plunging to the stairwell below and there's always been controversy as to whether his death was suicide or not. After I read the book I read an article about this and was horrified to find he was on an anti depressant and was having severe dizzy spells as a result of it - I was appalled to read this and realise that suicide was automatically jumped to as a reason because of his past even though it didn't fit at all with his life at the time and recent conversations he'd had with friends and colleagues. Now that much more is known about these medications and the effect they can have on people the whole theory is being debunked and it's acknowledged that he probably overbalanced and fell.

Anyway onto cheerier things!

At this point a newsletter from the Enid Blyton Society (which I joined years ago) had arrived in the post. I'd had an article published in it and when I was reading it, I realised again that I had also received Enid's biography as a present but had never read it so I got that out to be book number 4. And again, there were relevant connections made with an area of spirituality which I'm developing at the moment (which would be too much to go into here) but I discovered something I hadn't previously known about her connected with that. Something I'd never have known had I not read the book.


The next one jumped out at me when I scanned the bookcase when I was looking for another shortish one.


Really interesting piece by Virginia Woolf who struggled with illness all her life and ended up committing suicide because of it yet still managed to write prolifically through it. I have never really got on board with her fiction but absolutely love her diary and non-fiction writing.

And then something really nice happened. Someone posted about this next book on our withdrawal chat recommending it - it's a very good book about what happens when we're forced to slow down or take a break from our lives out of necessity. In my old life I would have checked out reviews of it in Goodreads, had a look at other books she'd written to see what they had been rated, maybe downloaded a sample on Kindle and if I liked it, added it to my 'Want To Read' list. Recently none of that has been possible so there are notes everywhere on my phone of books, music, films, TV programmes, podcasts etc which people have recommended and which I don't want to forget about but don't have the energy to check out at the time.

Well the morning I saw the post, I checked out the reviews, listened to a podcast by the author talking about the book, bought it on Amazon and had read it a week later!

Sooooo chuffed with that.


This one is a classic and was one of the ones I managed to read in the worst of withdrawal because it was short. It took me months though and I struggled with the second half of it where he explains his concept of logotherapy which is basically finding meaning in suffering, especially if it's in a situation which you can't change at the time. Nevertheless I got the gist of what he was saying and it was really helpful to me. This time I was able to take it all in and got so much from it - and was able to go on and listen to Viktor Frankl interviews where he explains so much more about it.


This next one was a lovely book about an unusual friendship, telling our stories, migration, family, belonging, resilience in the face of adversity, paths crossing, synchronicities and connections.


And another excellent one about strength over adversity and what you do with unbearable situations, reframing and how you always have a choice in how you respond to what life throws at you. Also about working through trauma and what that actually means and how psychotherapy can help both client and therapist.


Don't worry - I'm not going to write about every single book I read this year - I just wanted to mark this bit of positive progress in an otherwise extremely frustrating journey and celebrate a part of me returning.

'A room without books is like a body without a soul.' - Marcus Tullius Cicero