On 24 July 2021 I wrote:
Black dogs. Brown river.
These black dogs and the brown river help protect you from that other black dog.
On 24 July 2021 I wrote:
I love it here.
The fairies leave out giant pink marshmallows in the fields for when you’re hungry.
Mum was safe. She had come home.
It might not have been the home she’d lived in for 30+ years, but all she knew was that it was home, and that she was being cared for. Not just looked after, but properly cared for, with real care.
And I was so relieved. Finally we could acknowledge how tired we were, how much we needed this, as much as Mum did too.
We now had the luxury of time.
And when I have time, I allow myself to think, some might say to overthink. I’d been thinking about Mum’s house, and I realised that it wasn’t so much her house, but the things in it which made it home. But also this part of the world. I felt that the hills and the coastline were the contours of my own body.
***
Finally, if you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.
Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking inspiration then you could check out my recipes here. You could try my Apricot Upside Down Cake, which was made with non-butter and I felt it necessary to give you my thoughts on such things. Several years after I first wrote that recipe I am much more relaxed about non-butter, and regularly use Stork to bake these days – butter is probably The Best, but Stork is perfectly good and much more affordable. This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.
Shewolfinthevalley 
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