Thank you Alexandra Schreck for the use of the beautiful photos

Somewhere along the way this year, I realised I was back — that I recognised myself, if not my life.

I noticed it when I saw people I hadn’t seen for a while. When they asked the dreaded “How are you?” question, I could answer it fully, completely, and honestly. I’d say something like, “You know — I feel good. Things are good. I feel good. I feel like me again.”

It’s hard to pinpoint when it happened. There wasn’t a single morning when I woke up and thought, “Oh look, here she is. Emma’s back!” But over the months of this year, I’ve consistently felt myself again — with my familiar energy, focus, creativity, and a renewed capacity to hold more of the world’s chaos. Perhaps even a bit of my old mischief.

It’s been a long time coming. For years after all the deaths and dyings, griefs and grievings, I recognised neither myself nor my life. I was present, functioning, even capable, productive and effective (!), but even when I felt to be in a good space, I didn’t feel the coherence that I do now.

So finally, in 2025, something has shifted.

Maybe it’s the microdosing. Maybe it’s better sleep. Maybe it’s writing my book. Maybe it’s bringing new offerings into the world. Maybe it’s just time. Maybe it’s all of it. But I’ve felt myself re-entering my own skin, re-inhabiting this body, this self, this being called Emma. A different Emma, more ragged and crumpled, but Emma nevertheless.

And yet, while I recognise myself, I still don’t recognise my life. The landscape is still foreign. Mike and Julia, Edward and Don are still dead. Our surviving two children are alive and thriving, which means I don’t hear from them much. I live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, Medjool is increasingly around, but the energy is so different.

It’s Samhain now — the Celtic New Year, the season when the veil thins between the living and the dead. And after last night’s Hallowe’en, I find myself contemplating how it used to be in this house.

For nearly two decades, Hallowe’en night was glorious chaos. Children tumbled in and out of the house, the doorbell ringing endlessly, little ghosts and vampires (and princes and princesses… what?) demanding “bonbons!” while I, ever the cultural educator, tried to explain that Hallowe’en wasn’t just about sweets — it was about ancestors, death, and the turning of the year.

Sometimes Mike and I would give up entirely — slip out for dinner at a restaurant, leaving a big bowl of sweets outside the door so we could eat and converse in peace. One year, he placed the bowl in front of the cat flap, knowing full well that Black the dog — in his hearing-sharp days — would poke his head through whenever he heard footsteps outside. Mike loved the idea of some unsuspecting child getting a fright from the “ghostly hound.” Gentle, angelic Mike could be quite the trickster.

Now the doorbell no longer rings on Hallowe’en. The village kids don’t know me anymore. I even remembered to go and buy some sweets, but the packets will remain unopened. I can’t help but smile at the irony: once I was the mother helping to orchestrate village mayhem, and now I’m the mysterious woman in the house by the village church. The woman who might just be a witch.

Maybe I am. The kind of witch who brews mushroom teas, talks to her dead loved ones, and becomes more nourished as we turn towards winter. I love this time of year — the shortening days, the longer nights. The darkness feels kind and inviting. Spacious. More space to inhabit my evolving self.

Perhaps that’s what’s been happening with this homecoming — not a return to a particular life or thread in it, but to the capacity to be here, as my fullest emerging self. To know myself deeply, even when the landscape is still unfamiliar.

There’s an unexpected freedom in recognising the self, if not the land. It’s like re-finding my internal compass after years of wandering through dense fog. The external world may keep changing — kids leaving, loved ones dying, organisations crumbling, governments tumbling, the planet burning — but I feel so much more grounded within. A steady pulse reminding me that I am here.

Sometimes I still miss the old life so fiercely it knocks the breath out of me. I still ache for the ordinary chaos of family dinners, of Julia rolling her eyes at me, of Mike shimmying in his apron as he cooked up delicious meals. But I no longer feel so stunned, erased, by those absences. I can feel the ache and still feel myself, be myself.

As always, Nature is the truest teacher. The Celtic calendar, so closely attuned to the cycles of decay and renewal, reminds us that nothing is static — that every ending carries the seed of a beginning. Samhain teaches us that death and life, past and present, are not opposites but companions — the visible and invisible cohabiting. The truest homecoming happens not when the landscape returns to what it was, but when we return to who we are becoming.

So yes, I recognise myself again. Emma is back — even if my world still feels uncharted.

Wishing you a gentle, soul-stirring Celtic New Year.