I was born in Liverpool in 1972, and now live in West Lancashire in a little village with a canal cutting through it, meaning that the loveliest of walks are right on my doorstep. My nineteen-year-old son, Finley, is now at university studying creative writing (and wonen, wine and song I suspect!) and I suddenly find myself lining an empty nest ready for my own Renaiisance after my relationship broke down following my partner’s traumatic battle with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder.
And so in the eighteenth year of BrocanteHome, I am in the process of discovering myself all over again, because life isn’t linear is it? We grow, and we change, and things hurt and there is so much joy and so very much sadness and we have to keep stitching ourselves back together with hope in our hearts and a firm belief that we are more than strong enough to create a life less ordinary. and heaven’s to Betsy, I am now fifty-one and it is time!!
So BrocanteHome is the culmination of my journey through the years: it is single Motherhood, neurodivergence and Hashimoto’s Distease, it is the joy (and horror) of internet dating and long periods of domestic bliss. It is testimony to what it is to have to start over and over again, to do battle with self-esteem issues created by those who knew no better than to cast their own pain out, and a determined and relentless journey back to myself.
It is about me, and it is about you. For here at BrocanteHome I tell my truth simply so that in its telling you will find the courage to tell yours. To believe that if I can do it, you can too, as I share all the tools, tales and resources, I hope will help you along the way, while nurturing a strong community so that you never have to feel alone as together we navigate the unchartered waters of mid-life, the empty nest and all the new joys ahead.
So in this, the year BrocanteHome turns eighteen, I want to welcome you to my very own renaissance. A coming of middle-age I am determined to embrace, the search for a sense of home after I foolishly sold the beloved cottage you will find me talking about throughout my site and the putting back together of my heart as I learn once again to stand in front of the mirror and remember who I am.
This then is my invitation to you. To be brave. To re-invent yourself in your own image. To get loud about who you are or to let yourself go within and enjoy the kind of private Wintering you allow to slowly, but surely repair your soul.
I am here to hold your hand, as you have held mine for eighteen lovely years.
A life less ordinary is created by a woman who wants her world to reflect her soul.
Alison May – What Is a Life Less Ordinary?
It is fashioned by she who may not know exactly what she wants, but knows for sure, precisely what she doesn’t want. It isn’t a perfect life. It is sometimes messy and muddled. Constantly changing direction, not on a whim but to reflect the growth in her soul. For she who lives a life less ordinary is never static. She is always learning, needing, wanting, growing. She wants more and she knows with every inch of her being that more will never be delivered to any door she is content to hide behind.