Grateful, early.

Ok, I know it’s a few days yet until 2025 begins, but I thought I’d get in early with the gratitude because I have such a lot to be grateful for this year.

Time off: I’m grateful for the fanciest holiday I’ve ever had – Curaçao in January 2024, and a lovely day in Paris in March to celebrate passing my Viva, and a week in Dungeness in August while healing from knee replacement. And I’m currently pleased with myself for taking almost three weeks off client work this Christmas and New Year. I’m not skilled at time off (and admittedly I am using this time to write!), but I do recognise that therapy work really needs breaks – therapists need it to recharge and clients need it to remember that life without therapy is do-able. I’m also delighted to be having a break that isn’t also a recovery from surgery!

Learning: I’m grateful that I passed my Viva for my doctorate in March with no corrections – other than the two pages of typos I found all by myself (do’oh). I’m especially grateful to 2021 me who, never having heard the term ‘literature review’ before, was so terrified of trying to create one that I started several months ahead of everyone in my year, certain I’d never get the work done. If I hadn’t done that I doubt very much I’d have been nearly finished the first draft of my thesis by the time I had a ruptured brain aneurysm in 2023 and I definitely wouldn’t have had the impetus to keep going after the aneurysm and get the thing finished. Good work, 2021-scared-Stella.
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I’m excited to start teaching existential thinking & therapy at NSPC in 2025. I’ve taught loads (improv, writing, arts & cultural engagement etc) and I love teaching. I hope I can bring value to the courses I teach this year.
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I completed a Supervision training with Headstrong Academy. I chose this course after looking at many others for the past couple of years. This is the only course I could find that actively includes cultural competency training – not just as an adjunct to the training, hived off in the ‘diversity’ section (as do far too many therapy trainings) but threaded throughout the work, as core. Vitally core. I learned loads and am enjoying putting it into practice.

Health: I’m grateful to have had top-up brain surgery (I can’t think of anything else to call it!) in May this year to re-close the aneurysm that ruptured last year, I’m especially grateful to the brilliant neurovascular surgeon at KCH who offered a way to do this so I didn’t have to postpone my knee replacement any longer, having already postponed it for this fix that was needed. I had February’s postponed knee replacement in August. I found the knee replacement more painful than both lots of cancer surgeries and my hip replacement (though not more painful than the aneurysm rupture), and I’m particularly grateful to the two people who went out of their way to bring/share with me their good drugs. You know who you are, beloveds. I am enormously grateful to NHS physios, that I could afford extra private physio, and Hot Yoga Brixton (especially Laila Bhunnoo & Michael Logie) for their support in my recovery. I’m pretty skilled at recovering now, after all these surgeries, but this one was hard & I’m really grateful to be almost five months in.

Work: I love therapisting. I guessed I would, but I couldn’t know for sure until I began the work. Now, as I approach three years of private practice I’m delighted with how it’s going. My rooms in Brixton and Peckham come replete with lovely other therapists and between them, my doctorate training mates, my supervisor, and my clients, I feel hugely supported in my work.
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And I’m loving making time to write. Virago are publishing the non-academic version of my thesis; Being the Change is about creating a postmenopause in which we can thrive, about ageing on our own terms rather than accepting the ageism and misogyny of our culture, about growing into our fullest selves in this vital third act of our lives. It’s part research, part memoir, and is (at least so far, still on the first draft!) a joy to write.
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The menopause work & world has connected me with some phenomenal people – among them Prof Joyce Harper & the wonderful people behind In Tune. I’ve been really grateful for the chance to work with Joyce, Shema Tariq, Nicky Keay, and Florence Rowe. I’ve also adored being on podcasts around menopause/postmenopause, change, and possibility with Joyce, Kate Codrington, Rachel Lankester, Emma Thomas, and Dani Binnington. These and more are here.
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Childlessness events have been important this year too, those with Jody Day’s Gateway Elderwomen hold a special place in my heart, and I loved speaking at Storyhouse Childless in September this year.

Love & life: this year had fewer close personal deaths than the several years previously, for which I’m grateful, but the losses we have had are very, very hard, including the most recent loss of our dear friend Sam. I know that as I continue to age, the losses will come more often. I trust that I’m telling my loved ones how much they mean to me often enough and even so, I intend to do more of that in the coming year. I’m grateful to dear friends old and new, my siblings, my wider family, godchildren & guardchildren (only a few of them still in the ‘child’ category now) for their love and friendship. I remain enormously fortunate to be in a long and growing relationship with Shelley, especially knowing how tough our culture is for single people. It is thrilling to me that she continues to learn and train, as I do. I like that we’re growing old learning new things.
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Mostly I’m just glad to be alive. As I approach the 25th anniversary of my first cancer diagnosis I’m increasingly aware of how much time has passed, how little is likely left (my parents died at 67 and 81, we’re not a long-lived bunch). My staying alive has come at a cost, any staying alive does. My costs were infertility and the ongoing losses it carries, along with early menopause during chemo, decades of chronic pain which sometimes presents as disability, and the need for new hip and knee joints (which yes, I’m fortunate to have). All of us who survive serious illness are grateful to do so, and none of us survive major illness without some cost. Those costs may be physical, emotional, psychological and are very often a combination of all three. Learning to live more gently with these costs has been my big work of the past decade, since my second cancer. Learning to live well with them may be the big work of the rest of my life.

You: thank you for reading this far. I wish you a peaceful start to 2025. I wish you warmth, ease and kindness. If none of these things are available to you just now, I wish you the ability to get through this hard time, and that peace, warmth, ease and kindness come your way very soon. I wish you connection – with loved ones, creatures, trees, ocean or whatever else lifts your spirit.

This lifts my spirit …