Sometimes, when it’s hard to look at your life straight on, it helps to consider moments in it as a story – or metaphor.

The week before my husband left me, we’d booked tickets for a ten-day music festival in Scotland. Six months later I went to that festival with a friend.

It was a wonderful, yet difficult, experience.  My ex and I had seen Dougie MacLean – the main performer – just a year earlier, and although I loved the company of my friend, I couldn’t help thinking about my ex, and how he should be here with me.  The fact that the festival happened during our first wedding anniversary apart made it all just a little more painful. But it was a great ten days – the music toe-tapping or soulful, but always inspiring.

The final concert was to be held in a large tent in the grounds of an upmarket hotel. As it was only a mile away, we decided to walk.

On the way it started to rain.  And rain.  And rain.  And rain.  Too late to turn back, we just kept plodding on, getting wetter and wetter. Loads of cars passed us, but none offered us a lift, and by the time we got to the hotel, we had to try and dry ourselves out under the hand dryers in the Ladies.

Not  a good start.

But the concert, with all the musicians who had participated in the festival that week, was amazing.  And in keeping with true Scots hospitality, tea and biscuits (or a ‘wee sensation’) was served at the interval.

The last night of the Perthshire Amber Festival 2015

When the concert ended, Dougie MacLean asked us not to head home, but to gather outside on the lawn. He wanted to record his song ‘Wild and Windy Night’ with the audience singing the chorus.

Fortunately the wind and rain had stopped by then.  The sky was littered with stars, the trees around the hotel lit up with fairy lights.

And then we sang.

Will you hear me if I’m calling on this wild and windy night? Will you catch me if I’m falling on this wild and windy night?

With all those voices around us – some on-key, some off – it was pure magic.  (And my friend and I can now say – legitimately – that we have sung with Dougie Maclean!)

But there was more magic to come.  We met up with some friends and decided to walk home together in the dark.  Plenty of people now stopped to offer us a lift, but now that the storm was over, the sky was so clear, the stars so bright, the constellations shimmering… none of us had ever seen anything like it, and we didn’t want to miss a moment by getting inside a car.

What about the story/metaphor?  Only six months since my husband had left me, I truly was in the middle of my own personal Wild and Windy night.  But, just for a moment, the skies cleared, the stars came out, my friends gathered around me to hear and catch me when I was calling and falling.  It was a night of peace and hope in the middle of what was, for me, a very dark emotional landscape.

As my friend said of that evening… we were truly blessed.

I am truly blessed.

Listen to Wild and Windy night on Dougie MacLean’s latest album (aptly named) New Tomorrow.