Which has 2024 been? At the start of this year, I felt quietly confident that 2024 was going to be a year of answers. I had made a lot of progress in my grief work; I knew I was going to apply for a promotion and felt reasonably confident I would get it; I was early in a new relationship I thought had potential; my health had improved significantly.

As it turned out, there were a lot of bumps in the road this year. Three funding rejections; a relationship breakup that while amicable enough turned out to uncover various raw spots from my bereavement (the endless gifts of grief!); a promotion freeze at my institution (after I’d spent many hours on my application!) and much more serious changes afoot too. Amidst all this, I had the worst period of insomnia I’d had in years, which through therapy I worked out was a result of yet more unresolved trauma from both the time leading up to Kieran’s death and from my own serious illness last year. Things have improved since, but the late summer and early autumn in particular were very difficult, and I don’t feel entirely clear of all of that yet.

And yet the year also had a number of unexpected surprises. My Politicised Nostalgias workshop, that I put out mostly on a whim, was so popular it expanded to two days, and a nascent network was born. We are currently in the process of developing a three book proposal for a major publisher, who seem very excited by it. It connected me with lots of new academics and reforged links with several people I know and admire but hadn’t had a chance to work with yet. I am also developing some exciting new research directions about online cultures, which has resulted in me having a paper accepted at a cybernetic cultures conference and having conversations with people who work in cybersecurity, counterterrorism and terrorism studies. I wouldn’t have anticipated any of that a couple of years ago! In some ways I feel my work is moving away from medieval studies in terms of what I want to write and publish on, but I am very happy that it is still my home with my teaching.

I do feel frustrated that, particularly in the second half of the year, I’ve felt a lot of the time that I’m just treading water rather than moving forward. But when I look back on the year I realise that I am making progress – it’s just slower, but that’s natural when the waters that I’m wading through are filled with more debris than I had hoped. It has been frustrating to feel as if I have gone “backwards”, somehow, in my grief journey, but that’s also not true. Unfortunately, I have complex grief from a traumatic bereavement and from serious trauma that took place before and after Kieran’s death. The journey through that cannot be linear.

If you’re reading this and this sounds familiar, the best thing I can recommend is a good therapist, but I know that can be difficult to access – I see one privately, which is a bit of a stretch on my resources but I see it as an essential investment in my health. I know, though, that for many people it’s not an option, and NHS resources are so thin that any support you can get for free is likely to be inadequate. I know people who’ve had free or very cheap therapy through this suicide bereavement charity, and the Sepsis Trust offers great support (including by phone) to sepsis survivors. Beyond that, I’ve been trying to go to the gym, to eat well, and I now take so many different supplements I probably rattle a bit as I move. Complex bereavement, PTSD and post-sepsis syndrome can have impacts on your entire body and mind, and it takes a lot of work to take care of yourself. Our culture is also very bad at recognising this self-care (real self-care, not just bubble baths!) as work that takes up time and energy. I still have a tendency to judge myself by the standard of peers who have not had the kinds of experiences I have and who have, for example, out published me, have higher public profiles, have more career laurels. What I am trying to internalise is the knowledge that in addition to my career, and my role as a single parent to a bereaved child, I also have a lot of work to do helping my body and mind recover from some very punishing experiences. I have come a long way, but it is alright – it is normal! – not to be completely healed. And indeed, while I don’t expect to walk around with open psychic wounds for the rest of my life, I have come to accept that some of the scars will always ache under pressure. That is just part of the cost of being human, and of having loved.