I’ve been isolated for a while – marooned on a metaphorical island; I’m geographically isolated because I chose to live in the middle of nowhere, linguistically isolated because I chose to live in a foreign country so I rarely speak my mother tongue, and isolated because I found myself (and this I did not choose, obviously) on what felt like a very desolate, deserted island when my daughter suffered a major brain injury and almost died. Each week I’m planning to toss out a message in a bottle with what I hope will be a (sometimes) darkly comic or (occasionally) inspiring despatch from my not-so-splendid isolation.
Here on Substack, I’m hoping to forge some connections with other readers and writers, and get a little less stuck, a little less marooned. I’ll write about picking up the pieces after the penultimate maternal nightmare; about my attempts to reinvent myself (with varying degrees of success) and turn this isolation into a paradisiacal desert island, once again making the most of the amazing environment, the scenery and wildlife here, transforming the isolation of becoming invisible as a 55-year-old woman into a superpower (it must be good for something… shoplifting? Spying?). I’ll describe my efforts to find paid employment (no mean feat in a remote hamlet at my age with the obsolete skills of milking goats by hand, typing on a typewriter, and translating, which has become redundant with the rise of AI); I’ll write about how I’m trying to age gracefully and proactively, and my progress giving up wine and tobacco; I’ll also report on my efforts at finding a publisher for my memoir; I’ll muse about language and the isolation of being lost in translation; Thanks for following and supporting me by reading my messages in bottles as I try all sorts of different ways of connecting with the outside world!
Glad you are here!