Vhari here for my first Weekly Check-in.

How many days did you do your Morning Pages?
Every day! Yayyy! I’ve done Morning Pages before and tend to use them as a sounding board, a diary, a place to brainstorm ideas for the future, or just to rant, and I found myself doing all four of those things this week!

Did you take yourself on an Artist Date?
Chinatown in my city is less than a 10 minute walk from my home, but I’ve only ventured into it a couple of times with a friend who offers walking tours of the area. So, I decided my date would be to wander through the main mall on my own. I discovered some interesting finds – I didn’t realize you could get Green Tea Kit-Kats! – and I was quite tempted by the ‘lucky’ bracelets that promised me good fortune. (If only life was that easy!) I’ll definitely be back!

Did you take your walks?
I’m currently trying to get back in a routine of walking 10,000 steps every day, so as soon as I did my Morning Pages, I threw on my clothes and headed out the door. I’m really lucky, living by the river, as there’s always something to see. But there was one thing I found myself unable to do that Julia asked – go for a walk without my phone. It felt like a safety thing. Since I hurt my back last year, I feel a bit vulnerable going out with out it. What if I fall? (I wonder if that’s an age thing, this feeling of vulnerability?) So I took it along for safety’s sake… but I did turn it off, so I hope that counts.

What “aha’s” did you discover this week?
I had two. One came from my morning pages and the other, believe it or not, came from going to see the movie Mamma Mia 2 with my daughter and her baby.

Morning pages (MPs) first. I woke up to an email about my ex one morning. I don’t want to go into details here, but it really upset me and I ended up gorging on tea and Marks and Spencer’s orange chocolate biscuits for breakfast – along with some tears. I wrote about my feelings in my MPs – I told you there was a rant in there! – and by the end I was angry, rather than upset. Angry and determined. So I took action.

Waaaaay back in the day, I did a bit of writing. Not enough to ever make a living from, but I had a few short stories published here and there, that kind of thing. Long story short – since the divorce I’ve barely been able to read, let alone write fiction, but I decided that morning, after polishing off the M&S biscuits, that I would finish a short story I started a few weeks ago.

And I did! I don’t know if it’s any good, but I gave it to two of my writing friends for their thoughts. One laughed aloud at the ending, and the other, who read it in her doctor’s waiting room, said it was ‘Better Than The Ativan’ prescription she had gone to the Dr’s for. So… I’m going to pop it in the mail to a magazine later this week and we’ll see what happens.

The other aha moment…?

I went to see Mamma Mia 2 with my daughter and her baby girl. At heart it’s a story about mothers and daughters (grandmothers and granddaughters too.) Half way through, I started to bawl (in a good way) and could barely talk at the end of it.

I wrote my emotion out in my MPs next morning, and the realization I came to was…

I thought my husband was family. I thought he was even closer than family. I believed he was my soul mate and I was his. But clearly I wasn’t, so the failure of that relationship was really – really – hard on me. But through it all, I discovered that my blood family was amazing. My mother has been dead for almost 20 years now, but it was following the wisdom of things that she taught me that helped me get through the pain.

And sitting there watching the movie with my daughter and her 9 week-old baby…   I still feel a lot of guilt over her first pregnancy and the birth of my grandson. It all happened when I was in that well of despair. I wasn’t there for her in the way I wish I could have been, but she was there for me.

So I have been so blessed by my blood family. Not just my mum and daughter, but my dad’s wisdom, my son, my siblings and in-laws. (As well as amazing friends.)   I lost what I thought I would not be able to live without… but I’ve been blessed with so much more.

Did you experience any synchronicity this week?
LOL.  I think I did. But I didn’t realize I was supposed to remember any for this check-in session. I’ll try to be more conscious of things next week.

What did you find in your memoir that you would like to explore more fully?
I started my memoir pages after the insight with my mother and daughter. What I want to do now – hopefully for Xmas – is to go through the old home movies from before my kids were born that I had transferred to DVD a few years ago, upload/download them (I never know which is which) into my lap-top and create a voiceover telling the stories of my/their family.

And I’m now almost at 1,000 words. If you’re still reading, thanks for hanging in there with me. If you’re following Julia’s programme too, I would love to hear what insights you’re getting.

Now… to post this and read Isobel’s post. (We agreed not to read the other’s until we had posted our own.)