I've been very quiet on here over the last 18 months.
Reading, something that usually anchors me, slipped quietly into the background, not because I didn't love it anymore, but because life asked me to put my energy elsewhere.
The main reason is my mum. She's 89 and I adore her. Following a dementia diagnosis, she moved into residential care, a road I never imagined navigating, and one that came with a steep learning curve. In the early days there was a small silver lining, her care home was close enough that I could pop and visit her every day during my lunch hour and those visits mattered more than I can put into words.
Over the last year though, her dementia has progressed very rapidly. There was pneumonia, and then on Christmas day sepsis. And as if that wasn't enough, a relative made the decision to move Mum to another care home further away from me, but nearer to her, meaning that I can no longer see her every day. Losing that routine felt like another quiet grief layered on top of everything else.
Somewhere in amongst it all, I fell into a complete reading slump.
No book could grab me. I couldn't settle. My mind was constantly elsewhere...with mum, with worry and with general, everyday life.
Just before Christmas, something shifted. I picked up The Lucky Winner by K.L Slater and wow! It absolutely punched me in the stomach, it was so easy to read, so gripping absorbing that it dragged me in and pulled me out of my slump. I followed it with What Lies Between Us by John Marrs. He kept popping up on my Tik Tok feed and so I thought I'd give it a go. Honestly! Why haven't I read one of his books before? Incredible and I'm now on a mission to seek out all his others!!
It reminded me of something I think we forget when life gets in the way. Books are patient. They're like loyal friends who gently say "Don't worry if something more important takes over, we'll be right here where you left us when you're ready." There's no guilt, no pressure, just quietly waiting, and that's exactly what I needed.
Like the petals on the rose in the glass case in Beauty & The Beast, every day we lose a little bit more of Mum. Yet she's still here - I can still sit with her, often in silence and hold her hand, hug her and just be together and that, more than anything is what matters.
So if you've found yourself in a reading slump because life became too loud or too overwhelming, or painful please know this- you haven't failed as a reader. You're just human and the books will wait - they always do and when you are ready they will welcome you back as if you've never been away.
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