Small steps, slowly

Words by Sarah Hunt

Photography by Christopher Owens

In September 2021, my clever, creative, lovely mum unexpectedly, inexplicably, impossibly, died. She’d been diagnosed with cancer only six months before, just as lockdown restrictions were lifting. She was a wonderful mix of contradictions – as happy turning Deep Purple to maximum volume as painting delicate watercolours, forever patient but no-nonsense, unbeatable in a pub quiz and able to hit a baseball clean over the house with one hand, an avid reader and boundless traveller, mild mannered until she was watching the football, gentle but courageous, reserved but competitive, calm but occasionally a little wild.

During those strange early weeks, everything was a blur. Someone advised me to keep a diary and write everything down to make sense of things and remember the details. I promptly ignored this advice. Partly because it all felt too monumental to belittle with my flawed, small words. And partly because it felt like a kind of grave robbing, squirrelling information away while I was too dazed to take it in, so I could manipulate it later.

“Take it day by day’ is the advice, but in those early days, you have to take it hour by hour. You can go from laughing to crying and back to laughing a hundred times.”

As a result, I don’t remember much about that autumn, or winter, or spring. I’d been freelancing for eighteen months and was lucky enough to have a few long-standing, regular clients. My partner and I were living in London after spending the first lockdown in the North East, and we were desperate to leave. In the first few weeks and months, I felt a little mad. The world seemed far away, yet somehow overwhelming all at the same time. “Take it day by day” is the advice, but in those early days, you have to take it hour by hour. You can go from laughing to crying and back to laughing a hundred times. And you need to give yourself permission to do all those things, and have infinite feelings in between.

I do remember buying books about grief that I just couldn’t read. I went to the theatre and found the music and lights and noise all too much. I couldn’t watch any TV programmes featuring funerals. Random things became landmines – hedgehogs, Mary Berry, certain flowers – that brought it all to the surface. People say grief comes in waves, and they’re right. Sometimes you can see it coming; other times, it comes out of nowhere and completely knocks you off your feet.

I can piece together some details from emails, text messages and calendar entries. The first out-of-office I set up, stating, “I am unexpectedly away from my desk due to a bereavement”. Then a second, explaining I was away again – this time for the funeral. I asked for a couple of days off from the projects I was working on. Wildly ambitious and ridiculous, in hindsight. Two days turned into a week, which turned into two weeks. I can tell from the meeting cancellations still in my calendar. 

I can’t remember the specific freelance work I was doing then. The spreadsheet I still use to keep track of workdays tells me I did half days for the next two months. Something else I was lucky to be able to do as a freelancer with an understanding client. That Christmas, we made the move to the North East. I put most of my stuff in storage as I wasn’t ready to sort through it. I listened to endless trashy podcasts and worked my way through various cookbooks. When the world was opening up post-lockdown, I needed the small, domestic things everyone was leaving behind. I thought back to my trip to Nepal with Mum. We spent a week trekking, led by the always-singing, always-drumming guide, Buddhi. His advice when we took a hill too quickly or felt we couldn’t keep walking became a family saying. Small steps, slowly. That’s what I was going to have to do. Small steps, slowly. There’s no getting around it or finding a shortcut. You simply have to grieve. 

Freelancing had its benefits and challenges. You can hide away at home or work around the difficult hours when the grief is unpredictable and untidy. You get the quiet solitude you need when crowds and commutes and chat feel like they’ll bury you. But there’s less to distract you, and the hours at your desk can be long and lonely. There’s no office structure or HR department to fall back on. Everything is on you. Finding the right balance between paying the bills and looking after yourself is hard and as individual as each bereavement.

“People say grief comes in waves, and they’re right. Sometimes you can see it coming; other times, it comes out of nowhere and completely knocks you off your feet.”

A ten-month, almost full-time contract came along just at the right time, bringing structure and routine to that first year. That’s the time when everyone else returns to their normal lives, and the real hard slog begins. The waking up on dark winter mornings and remembering all over again. Finding yourself wondering what you should buy them for Christmas. Thinking, just for a moment, that it’s been a long time since you spoke and you should give them a ring. Catching a glimpse of them in the street. Thinking they’re always about to walk through the door because they’re just in the other room. 

Following a bereavement, we take time off for those first bewildering weeks or the funeral. But what about six months, a year, eighteen months later, when we can still feel like we’re completely coming undone?

When that contract started winding up at the end of 2022, the time felt right for something different. Mum left me some money, and I wanted to find a way for something meaningful to come out of everything that had happened. So, I decided to step back from freelancing to finally finish writing a book. I needed a break. I needed mental space. I needed to be able to focus on one thing completely. I stopped chasing new projects and logged out of LinkedIn. I’d been freelancing for three years and was confident I could pick work up again when I came back. More wild optimism.

I aimed for three or four hours of actual writing every day. I ticked off every cliche: covering a wall in post-it notes, printing stacks of paper and scribbling notes all over them, drafting and redrafting. I also spent weeks working my way, day by day, through archived newspapers. I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to take this time away when I didn’t have to think about meetings or deadlines or expectations or feedback. I needed that to complete the book. But I probably just needed it. By September, I had a manuscript I was happy with and started sending it out to literary agents. 

“Finding the right balance between paying the bills and looking after yourself is hard and as individual as each bereavement”

I came back to a freelancing world that seemed eerily quiet. I worried I’d made a mistake taking time away. But it seemed a lot of writers and designers were experiencing the same thing. Everyone I spoke to said the same thing, “I’ve never known it like this”. The usual pre-Christmas lull didn’t pick up come January…or the spring. I read different theories online. AI was eating into jobs, creative budgets were being cut, companies were reducing creative team numbers, which meant more freelancers and more competition for the jobs that were around. I refused to regret the time I’d taken away. It was the right thing to do. I just knew it.

Quiet market. New city. I had to treat it like starting out all over again. I did everything you have to do: networked furiously, sent out emails, got in touch with contacts and ex-colleagues, filled in recruiter forms, answered LinkedIn ads, picked up my copywriting blog and polished up my website. I met loads of brilliant people and discovered the vibrant creative community in Newcastle. Slowly, slowly, the work picked up. I found one new client, then another, then another. The market’s still tough and I think it’s changed forever. I don’t know what the future holds for freelancers. Finding a literary agent is an ongoing process. I’m still emailing out my submission pack. But I just learnt I’m one of ten writers to be awarded a spot on a novel development programme.

I’ve just passed my fifth freelancing anniversary, but it’s felt like a mosaic of completely different experiences. Lessons learned? 1. Don’t take anything for granted. 2. People are incredibly understanding when the worst happens. 3. It’s not like the movies – you don’t skip from the funeral to wistfully looking at photographs of someone you’ve lost. Grief stays with you. Every day. It doesn’t get easier exactly. It changes. In the beginning, you have a lot of bad days. Then the bad days get more infrequent. You have to take it hour by hour, and then, day by day. 

Small steps, slowly.

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