The greatest lie we tell ourselves? “Just one more thing, and life will be perfect.”

For years, I believed if I just had more money, I’d finally be happy. Or if I could just be thinner, everything would magically fall into place. Spoiler: I got richer. I got thinner. And guess what? My mental health still packed its bags and went on a little holiday without me.

Here’s the reality when you live with chronic mental health issues: there’s no magic fix. No scented candle strong enough, no bubble bath deep enough, no vision board powerful enough to chemically rewire your brain. Even with medication, self-care rituals, and my best attempts at being positive (insert slightly sarcastic jazz hands here), there are still days when my mind decides to take me on a journey I absolutely did not sign up for.

Yesterday, for example, my health anxiety took me straight to “You’re definitely having a heart attack and going to die before lunchtime”—a direct route from mild discomfort to full existential crisis in under five minutes. My anxious brain doesn’t do maths properly; it takes two and two and somehow makes six… and then throws in a bonus catastrophe for fun.

And here’s where it gets complicated. I long for a peaceful life where nothing changes and everything feels safe and predictable. But also? I would hate that. Give me the gentle pace, but please don’t tell me exactly what’s around the corner. This is the neurodivergent contradiction I live with every single day. ADHD and autism together mean my brain departments aren’t exactly… collaborating. It’s less a high-functioning office and more a chaotic open-plan nightmare where everyone’s shouting and no one’s sent the memo.

So, we take it one day at a time. Some days the world feels like it’s falling down around us. But even on those days, we have to remind ourselves—this isn’t the end of the story. Tomorrow is still waiting. And while I’m under no illusion that I’ll live to 101 (though wouldn’t that be a dramatic plot twist?), I can try to make peace with the life I have now.

Some days will be a write-off. And that’s okay. On those days, be kind to yourself. Sit under the blanket. Re-watch your favourite comfort film for the fifteenth time. Eat the snack. Ignore the productivity police in your head.

Because here’s the hard truth—they’ll replace you at work before you’re even cold. You are entirely replaceable to them. But to you? You’re irreplaceable. You’re all you’ve got.

So fill your own cup first. Love yourself like you’re the most important person in the room—because you are.

I love you. And I hope—truly—that you are loved. But even if the world feels quiet today, remember this: you are enough.

The Year of Living Quietly, slowing down in a frenetic world

During the lockdowns of 2020/2021, I decided to live a quieter and more peaceful life.  You could say it was the year of living quietly and now I'm here, ready to reflect on what that meant and how I'm holding those values more dearly going forward.

Before the pandemic I worked a crazy amount of hours, it was advantageous and some years I was lucky that I got to holiday once every couple of months but what I didn't realise until I stopped was how anxious I had become, I was living in such an anxious state all of the time that I believed that was what real life was.  I was wrong!

During the pandemic and the lockdowns when I thought I had lost everything I decided that when I came back into the business I'd worked so hard to build that I would regulate myself and live a quieter and happier life.  Of course, there were consequences, my income plummeted, my travel was encumbered but overall I got to live a more fulfilled life in the slow lane.

When I started Philomena's Boutique to help you gift better, my inability to sit and do nothing fuelled it.  I could have just sat and squirrelled away my government bounce-back loan but I chose to throw that into a new and exciting business rather than sit at home doing nothing.

2 years on and I have no regrets about starting the boutique, I get to be creative every day and between October and June 2022 I made or designed around 300 products.  The more febrile things became, the more I created to try and keep the business afloat.  I ploughed what little money I had from my photography business into the boutique.  It was the biggest mistake I've ever made but still, you only learn when you make mistakes.

Right now, I'm burnt out, I have pushed until I can push no more.  Our orders have dropped from approximately 35 a week to around 5-10 if we're lucky.  This week I stopped, I walked away and took a week off.  I didn't really do anything, I rearranged some furniture in my living room, went to Ikea, bought a chair from a charity shop and I breathed deeply for the first time in a long time.  At that point I was struck with inspiration, I realised, there are still spaces for treats and gifts, we just need to do it more mindfully and boxes of joy are the epitome of mindful gifting.  Find out someone's likes and dislikes and then curate a glorious box of treats based on that.

I haven't fully decided what to do, I live a pretty quiet life now.  I've bought 2 pairs of shoes in the last year, I buy all of my clothes from the charity shops and my weekly groceries are from a food waste hamper.  In some ways, I can live on very little and as long as I have cats, books and music I can be very happy. It's the little things like engineered wood flooring that can still bring joy.

In other ways, living costs are spiralling, my energy cost in the high of summer is £160 a month approximately and I worry deeply about winter.

1 month on...

I wrote that first chapter one month ago and today I was compelled to write.  I've been researching the concept of wintering and over the next few months, I plan to practice the things that I am learning to see if it will helpfully and peacefully get me through the darker months with my mental health still intact.  

The clocks will go back in just under 2 months and I will stop going out, my body will intensely work against me if I try and fight it, it happens every year and the more I fight it, the worse it is.  This year I will try and winter, I will let myself rest and stay home and I will shelter from the difficult world outside.

In Denmark, they practice hygge and in the Swedish countries, they call it Mysa, the Finnish call it talvitelat, that's preparing for winter and the art of stowing away for wintering.  We need to prepare for winter, we need to let ourselves retreat and more than that, we need to cosy up our spaces so that we help our bodies adapt to the dark times which are forthcoming.

Instead of fighting winter and becoming exhausted, if we simply let ourselves retreat and winter and be quiet and cosy, when we emerge in spring it should be more glorious.  In nature so many things winter, we don't try to make nature fight it's own urges to follow the seasons so why should humans be forced to live the summer life in the bleak mid-winter?

I hope you'll follow my journey, through wintering, there will be preserving, there will be cosy but simple recipes and in every day we'll try and find those little pockets of joy (something I record on my Facebook publicly at the end of every day)

How to embrace the cosy life and escape the winter blues

This is a collaborative post

Without a doubt 2020 has been a challenge so far and with the longer nights encroaching I'm here to tell you how to embrace the cosy life and escape the winter blues.  I've had the seasonal affective disorder for many years and built up all kinds of coping strategies so I know what I'm talking about and the past couple of years I've mostly managed to knock it on the head by living the cosy life so here are my top tips.

The basics

There are some basic proven things that can work and I wanted to start with them.  Taking a vitamin D3 supplement really can help, I'm under the care of an endocrinologist who told me that the biggest vitamin we lack in the UK is vitamin D3 because we just don't get enough oily fish or indeed sunlight so taking this as a supplement during the dark winter months really can help.

Buying a lightbox and sitting in front of it for 20 minutes a day can also help if you can't get outdoors into the winter sunshine, there are all kinds of lightboxes available which range in price, you just have to find one you like, you can even switch your light bulbs to daylight bulbs which can help brighten up the living space although that in itself might not be enough so just bear that in mind.

Live the cosy life

The most powerful tool I've learnt is to live the cosy life, dedicate the darker months to fairy lights, furry throws, comfortable furnishings and cosy pyjamas, candles which remind you of happy times or the rich scents of baked apple, cinnamon, pumpkin spice, all of these things give you a life which is more hygge and less horrible. Simple things like changing your surroundings with things like Parquet flooring can make for a much cosier life.

Connection with the earth

One of the best mindfulness tools is to reconnect with the planet, it's also called grounding, basically, we have moved away from our connection with the earth and so being barefoot on real wood flooring is one way of reconnecting ourselves, I know it might sound a little woo but honestly, the carpets many of us have in our houses do not help us to ground and it's one of the reasons I have real wood flooring all through my home and why I like to be barefoot as often as I possibly can.  If you can get outdoors and it's not too cold, try walking barefoot on fresh grass, or the ground or sand and breathe deep, honestly, I promise this stuff helps.

Celebrate the seasons

Christmas is coming and it's going to be different this year so I don't think building up to "One special day" is going to work and in fact, it might prove to be completely counterintuitive so instead, I would encourage you to celebrate the seasons, embrace them for all they are worth and see the Christmas period as a wholly wonderful thing on its own.

The end of 2020 might well be a challenge and especially if like me, you live on your own so be good to yourself, treat yourself kindly and surround yourself with the people or animals who you do have near you, I know that Holly Bobbins and the cats are a great source of entertainment so they'll be good company and when it does come to festive decoration, well you can be sure this year I'm going big, even if it is only for myself because twinkly lights and a glowing Christmas tree are most certainly a tonic which can make everything better.

Just slow down...

Since January, in life and work, I've been slowing down, trying to live life slower, at a more gentle pace, I have been reminding myself, "Mandy, just slow down".

You see, in life and work, I'm not naturally slow, I move fast, I live life at 100 miles an hour, I want to progress, I have no patience (with the exception of photographing children).  I have been guilty of wanting everything and wanting it now and in business, that's a dangerous place to be.  You cannot, after all, be the same place in a 2-year-old business as you are in a 12-year-old business and it's dangerous to try and do so.  Travelling at the speed of light is counter-intuitive, as Ferris Bueller said "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it"

Business in the slow lane

I suppose it started last November really, I found myself plummeting towards yet another Christmas wanting the tree to be up, the house to be twinkling and life to be better, I'd launched a membership element into my second company and it wasn't working because I took no time to research or find out what it was that my members wanted.  So after several mental health touch points and crises where I would run away to escape the things I couldn't deal with, I cancelled everything.  I told everyone who'd joined that I was stopping their payments, I had let them down but I would make it up to them.

By the time I got to Christmas, I found myself in the slump of depression, Christmas Day was a write-off and by the time I got to the 28th I'd taken my tree down wanting life to just go back to normal.  Something happened though, first I started "Hinching" clearing and cleaning everything in sight, I decluttered so much that it took many weeks of piles of rubbish in my garden which finally, with the help of friends made it to the local tip.

In my work, I started really trying to help people, my mission changed, it was no longer about being successful, it was about being the best I could be, helping as many people, nurturing and finding out what it was that women in business struggle with.  I redesigned the membership with the help of wonderful, positive, intuitive people and when we re-launched, it went better than expected, in fact, today we're approaching 150 members in less than 2 months.  That might seem fast, but it's not really, it was just right, how do I know?  Several of the people I told to stay as members who I felt I'd let down, those wonderful women, joined the new membership package, they didn't need to but they felt nurtured and valued enough to do that.

Living the slow life

With business going well in a mindful and slow way I tackled the same things in my personal life, I can't remember the last time I worried about being single and as you know, if you read regularly, my sole purpose in life has been to transform my garden and my life by spending more time outdoors, amongst nature.  Now, not everything I touch has turned green, the slugs and snails are literally ravaging my potatoes and my mange tout are in crisis after being strangled by a very overzealous Japanese Anemone.  Most things though are growing well and I've already eaten the rocket that I've grown.  My peas are fairing much better than their cousins and I have spinach which is ready for harvest.

Spending time in the garden has taught me the joy of the slow life, business has bumbled along happily without me feeling the need to go and shoot a million photo shoots, it's slowed down so much that now I'm trying to encourage my clients to do the same, to take more time, to see the joy in the quality of photography done slowly, you cannot achieve the same results with 10 back to back 15 minute sessions as you can with one 100 minute family adventure photo shoot.

When you learn to appreciate the life cycles of plants and you enjoy each and every stage, then truly, you are living a more mindful life.  To live a life of purpose is a joy which I have perhaps discovered late in life but I truly appreciate this lesson that life has given me.  For the first time, I have no want to escape because I'm just happy to be where I am.  Don't get me wrong, I still want that caravan retreat by the sea but for the right reasons, I'm not trying to find somewhere to escape from life to, I want somewhere I can go and continue to enjoy that slow pace of life.  Somewhere to sit on a quiet beach, to listen to the waves crash on the shore.  To take in sunsets and occasionally see the sunrise without wondering what we should do for lunch or dinner.

Living  a life with purpose is loving life, stopping to sit and watch the family of starlings who noisily come and feed at my bird feeder, watching the tiny great tits take happy baths in my bird bath, that's the real joy in life as William Henry Davis wrote, in his poem, "Leisure" "What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare"