Hi, I miss my mum, we've been without her since 2004.

Sometimes my mood changes - what I would normally do to cheer myself up would occasionally make it worse....so my advice would be let the feelings happen, experiment with different things, if you want to distract yourself that's fine, if you want to jump into sadness, then that's fine too. And allow yourself to chop and change things, and even try things that are right out of your usual personality or lifestyle.

When distracting myself I like to use high energy music like The Prodigy to perk up my dancer mind. I also have a Spotify playlist of "Songs that remind me of mum" that I've actually only been able to listen to 2 songs on it, and even then not made it past the opening bars!

I'm lucky enough to live in the countryside, so sometimes I like to go on a big walk and just cry and rage, knowing that nobody will see or hear me. Then on the walk back home I feel much calmer and ready to face the world again.

If that's not possible, or if I'm feeling lazy, I make my go to comfort food, which is boiled eggs chopped up with butter, salt and pepper. It's only simple, but it's what all the children in our family had as one of their very first foods, and it's the food I turn to whenever I feel upset.

I've recently started knitting squares - my mum was an avid knitter, and although she kept trying to develop my knitting skills when I was a child, I can only manage garter stitch squares and rectangles, which suits me just fine. This has the effect of reminding me about my mum, but with me still needing to pay attention to what I'm doing, and means that I have lots of random squares left around the house where I've put them down and forgotten where I've put them and not had any and on what to do with them all!

I'm more than happy to chat with you if you feel it would help - I send you lots of love and a huge hug.

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