Five wonderful things #1

Magical creatures that live by the sea

Inspired by

Lisa Olivera

’s profound and generous essays, I’ve decided I’m going to share five wonderful things with you every fortnight. These will be:

1. What I’m feeling grateful for. I’ve been writing down three things I’m grateful for each evening for years now and it has completely shifted my perspective on the world. Thanks to this practice, I feel gratitude many, many times throughout each day, even on tough days. So I hope my shares are inspiring for you if you find gratitude a little tricky.

2. What I’m finding hard. I am utterly allergic to ‘love and light’ toxic positivity and influencers/healers suggesting they have life all figured out. I want to be real with you, and I will never present sobriety as a state of feeling great all the time. That just isn’t how being a human works. Being a healthy human is about feeling and accepting all our feelings and being loving to ourselves when things are tough. So I want to share with you something I’m finding hard, and how I’m supporting myself through it. I hope it’s helpful.¹

3. Three things I love that I want to share with you. Maybe a brilliant Substack piece I’ve read, maybe some joyful news, a song, a film. Just some little reasons to be in love with the world.

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Here’s the first edition of Five Wonderful Things for you.

I’m grateful for…

A weekend with family, love, connection, and the little creatures who live by the sea

We spent the weekend with my brother, sister-in-law and two-year-old nephew at their home in St Leonards-on-Sea. River and Ro held hands and went down to the windswept beach. The tide was out, revealing a wide expanse of gluey sand and rock pools. River and I crouched down and peered at the creatures clinging to the wooden groynes: dark pink jelly anemones and tiny barnacles. Whelks of all different colours huddled together; they had shells that were pale purple, yellow and with black and white stripes that I’d never seen before.

I was ecstatic to see a flock of turnstones darting about, peeping to each other and hunting for worms and flies in the sand. The boys ran towards them, laughing, and the birds took flight. They paddled in the rock pools and their wellies filled with water. I watched River sit down, take off one of his wellies, carefully fill it with stones, then put it back on.

‘Is that not uncomfortable, with stones in it?’ I asked him as he limped about.

‘I like it with stones in it,’ he said. He grinned up at me, his bright blue eyes reflecting the sky.

Having family close to us means so much to me, and my heart swells to see River getting to know his cousin, auntie and uncle. Growing up, we had no extended family nearby and our only relatives were our great aunt and uncle who lived hours away in Gloucestershire. The few family members we did have lived in New Zealand and this is still the case. Even my sister moved there in 2020. So to see River spending so much time with his wider family, including his grandparents on my husband’s side, is such a gift. My son is growing up surrounded by people who love him and I am immensely grateful for that. And for me, too, of course.

I’m finding this hard…

If you know me IRL, you will be familiar with my response to the question ‘how are you?’ being almost always related to my sleep. Either ‘I feel great! I slept really well!’ or ‘I feel awful. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for days.’

I didn’t sleep well for either night in St Leonards for various reasons including eating late, being too hot and waking up abruptly at 6am with the thought ‘Oasis!’ and not being able to get back to sleep. (And no, I didn’t manage to get tickets).

When I don’t get enough sleep, even for one night, I wake up the next day feeling angry and full of despair. It completely changes my outlook on life. It’s quite incredible. I find it helpful to remind myself ‘Ellie, things are not terrible, you just literally need to get some sleep’ so that I know this is temporary, this will pass, it’s not an accurate reflection of reality.

I recently discovered that women need more sleep than men. And I’ve realised I personally need 9 hours sleep to feel really great and energised, and I virtually never get that much. This morning I got woken up by River jumping into bed with me, as I usually do, and it was wonderful for him to coo ‘hug’ and snuggle up to me but also… oh my god I needed more sleep.²

Three things I love

• I recently rediscovered Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, thanks to reading his response to the question ‘In your opinion, what is God?’. And his description of the ‘shivering joy’ of cold water swimming has inspired me to visit our local lido this week - wish me luck!

• I’ve been using this magnesium spray to help with my sleep and energy levels. I tried pills and they didn’t seem to make a difference, so a friend suggested a spray as apparently some people don’t digest the pill form very well. I think it’s helping.

• Andrea Gibson
  ’s post about how ‘self-love’ is actually an experience of letting go of the self and feeling truly connected to the universe. She says you cannot not love yourself because ‘love is always ringing through the essence of every being.’

And a little extra one for you, since it’s the first post of this series. A glorious pink cosmos flower in my garden that I grew from a tiny seed:

1. But Ellie, something you’re finding hard isn’t a wonderful thing, surely? Ah, but it is! Because finding things hard is a sign that I’m a normal human who feels all different feelings. Finding things hard means I have the opportunity to choose something loving, rather than harmful like drinking. It’s a chance to practice love. It’s a chance to practice acceptance. This doesn’t mean ‘I’m finding this hard but I should be feeling grateful.’ This is: ‘I’m finding this hard and I wish I wasn’t and yet I am and I’m here and I’m alive in this moment, having this experience. This is what is true for me right now.’

2. Deeply grateful not to be using alcohol which significantly messes up sleep