There is I think a kind of pregnant pause peculiar to the end of February. All of us, runners crouched at Spring’s starting line, eager and somewhat quietly desperate for the whistle that says, NOW, now you can live again! Go!

Imagine then washing lines swaying and doors flung open to banish the stale of Winter. Lemons scenting the kitchen instead of the warming spices of the season now almost bidding us adieu. Imagine walks that don’t demand stifling layers and hours spent sat in the conservatory sipping morning coffee, writing in your journal and watching the tiniest of birds line up to gossip on the fence! Oh heavens, yes, indulge me and imagine…

It is has been the most arduous of Winter’s I can remember in this lifetime. Exasperated I think by the endless worry of the cost of energy so whereas once keeping the house warm to a comfortable temperature was simply not something I gave much thought to until it became possible to have to declare myself quite bankrupt should I take it into your head not to muddle around my own living room dressed like a yeti, or give up on each evening silly early and instead retire to bed so that layers of quilts and blankets would do in lieu of frittering away expensive gas.

Yes. It has been a long, cold and I suppose, lonely Winter, and I am both more than I was for all the quiet contemplation and less – for the silence of a house that now feels too big for me, has been discombobulating and some nights I simply don’t know what to do with myself and yearn for someone to be sat on the sofa with me, for the reliable certainty and heartening security of family and partnership again, for conversation and laughter – because a person who talks too much to herself is in deep danger of starting to believe her own opinions without challenge and that is I suspect how a person ends up utterly off her head.

(Note to self: try to avoid going off your head).

Thank heavens then for Spring. Despite you see, how much I profess to love the long dark nights, they simply aren’t the same when the nurturing purpose of family life is lost and there really is only so much pampering of body, soul and house a person can indulge in without finally giving up on suppressing the scream spiking her veins. And it doesn’t do either to pretend that all is well, because despite instinct trying her best to stick to her independent roots, when you make too much of being ok, people believe you!! It’s the darndest thing.

Last week I barely left the house because to my utter fright, a man walked up to me in the garage and whispered (as if he was kindly telling me I had got my skirt accidentally tucked in to my knickers and was thus frightening the horses with my cellulite), that my tyre was soft. I stood looking at him, hoping he was about to offer a solution to this apparent crisis, and instead he kicked the tyre, said, yeah, soft, then jumped in his car and drove away. So I did too. Because in fifty years, I have never blown up a tyre alone and needed to get home to investigate said situation and spend a silly amount of days working out how to turn knowledge into action, so that what was once soft would now be firm again!

And there I stayed. At home. Ringing people up and asking what to do and nodding wisely, as they all said the same thing, take the valve off and watch till he dial goes to about 35. Umm yeah, cool , I will do that. Except I didn’t, instead I wandered about feeling horribly stressed, and googling the matter, and deciding that living life via Deliveroo wouldn’t be too terrible and resolving to address the fact that I have been MOLLYCODDLED my entire life by both Finn’s Dad and my own, neither of whom, rather rudely, were in calling in and blowing my tyre up for me distance or position. Dad three hundred miles away and Mark suffering the slings and arrows of a devastating loss in his family at the same time as the starting of a new job, so very definitely not available to manage the more ludicrous aspects of his son’s Mother’s failings as a human being.

Oh yes, I have been a mollycoddled woman if ever there was one: never really attempting to deal with the nitty-gritty or mechanics of life because I am ashamed to say, I’ve never had to. I can do all sorts of wonderful things, but I am not particularly practical and I get scared, and fright leads to the freezing of my can-do and we all know a woman is quite lost when her can-do freezes up! So now there is a pile of nonsense in the back garden I don’t know how to get rid of and a drain now so blocked the garden is permanently flooded. Not to mention a soft tyre, and a bulb I couldn’t reach!

So I stayed in and worried about what isn’t very worrying at all, but overwhelm, it seems rollicked into my life wearing a trye shaped hat, and when my laptop decided to behave badly too, I felt at the end of a tether I have been clinging on to for dear life since last May and so reader, I’m sorry to say I cried. I sat in a fleecy muddle on the sofa that is probably going to need grafting off my bum come March, and I had a little sorry for myself sob. Suddenly realising that all this being brave is exhausting, and that to prevent my own decline into a slump (one must NEVER slump) I needed to have a stern word with my Can-Do and insist she bite the bullet and GET. ON. WITH. IT. And of course it wasn’t about the tyre at all. Sense (and Racheal) told me that could be fixed in a jffy, but was I suppose a sort of slow puncture of a soul determined to wheel along her own path to prove she could, without acknowledging that no woman is an island and that even the strongest and most resilient of people have their weaknesses.

But all things are possible in Spring aren’t they? A shy sun making it seem as though that which felt impossible when dark came a’calling at four in the afternoon, could in fact be easy-peasy on days that promise warmth on our walking faces. And so I asked the man next door to help me, a man who it seems has an entire mechanics garage in his back garden and who pumped up my tyre in a heartbeat and told me that I never needed to be afraid to ask for help because him and his lovely wife knew I was struggling and would do all that they could for me. So I had a tiny silent little weep as I stood on his path nodding, while vehicular order was restored and I could once again get to Finn should he call in the night to report a crisis, and then I went home and later asked a visiting man to stand on the table and pop the very badly behaved lightbulb in too, and lo and behold, all was well with the world and though it is clear I remain MOLLYCODDLED at my own bidding, at least I am now working up the guts to say, help me please, instead of pretending I am capable of ALL the things.

For I am NOT capable of all the things. And the pretending has to stop. But so to does the acknowledgment have to come that despite it all, I am doing ok. People I care about are rooting for me, watching from the sidelines and providing gentle encouragement when I least expect it, so that nine months later, though the pain of having to start again is still horribly raw, I am learning everyday and slowly but surely edging my way to both authenticity and competence enough to adapt to a way of living of my own design.

I may not know whether I’m coming or going yet, but Spring does and I do believe she is on her way.