my angel of graceful persistence
(on miracles)
This is a post for my paid community, and a taster is offered for free subscribers. I’ve seen lots of criticism of this recently, and want to begin by saying I’m sorry if this feels annoying/ unfair. My reason for doing this is that I personally subscribe to substacks based on having had a taster read, so I imagine others appreciate too. I so much appreciate all of you here, and as usual if you can’t afford a subscription but would appreciate one, reach out. I am so grateful for every one of you, and it is my paid community on here who continue to support my writing in ways I will never ever get over…
Tenderness warning: baby loss, maternal grief, PND.
With love, always x
When the miracle comes, it comes quietly.
No bells, no whistles; not even a light, shining, brightly, or otherwise.
When the miracle comes, it comes quietly.
This last while has felt miraculous to me.
A certain slant, a particular way of being in the world, all of this has led me here, and I am asking myself: REMEMBER THIS.
I’ve been through a lot this year, already, I’m not going to lie about that.
It has been, so far, a season not dissimilar to the ending of last year. It has been heavy and hard, and sometimes it has felt like I was drowning. Despite the spring weather, beautiful and life giving, it has felt like winter at times.
I’ve been working ridiculously hard. The January I was meant to take off became the January I mostly worked double every other month’s amount; catching up on what I missed when I miscarried in December.
And it’s carried on in that vein. I’ve worked too much and now I’m ready to not work. For an extremely long period of time.
So what of this miracle?
Where does the miraculous fit alongside the mundane?
Where does the hopeful sit alongside the heavy?
This publication is named
g l i m m e r s
and I guess I also want to speak a little to that.
Quite soon after I named it, I walked away from a very big project just before I signed on it, all about glimmers. Something about it had changed, and I felt lost. By then, a year and a half after I started the proposal, I began to feel like really I had no actual right to write about those bright shards of light in darkness.
This was last summer, and to be honest things weren’t feeling that bright for me. I was already
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