fragmented.ME …
the notes …,  uncovering ME …

uncovering ME : places …

I have started a 52 week course with Daily OM called A Year of Writing to Uncover the Authentic Self and I hope you will join me by reading the posts that are born from this course.

They can be found under the mind * body * soul category as a subcategory entitled ‘uncovering ME …’.

I have wanted to write my own story for such a long time and I have never done it. The reason for this I am sure will be discovered and discussed through the 52 posts to follow.

So please join me …

. . . uncovering ME . . .
. . .  places  . . .

introduction …

I will be using this space to free write and post my unedited thoughts, words, and scribbles. So, I am sure there may be errors that appear in the text. I do not need you to tell me about these errors as this will all be part of the process and I hope you can look past this.

places …

This week I’m taking a page out of my novel writing brain and asking you to reflect on setting — an aspect of our lives that we may not think about all that much …

Places are as varied and interesting as the people that inhabit them (and perhaps even more so when you think about uninhabited places as well!) …

Where we are can certainly also affect our mood. What would it feel like …

The goal for this topic is to get you thinking in new ways about spaces and places. As a reminder as you’re going through the questions and prompts — you may use one prompt or you may use many. Go with what inspires you today.

Questions/Prompts to Guide Your Writing:

remember a new place you visited …

(a cool house or restaurant, a new neighborhood, or even a new country) … try to remember seeing the place for the first time … how do you feel … write as if you were telling a friend about the experience …

Slovenia has to be the most beautiful place I’ve been. It felt like a much warmer Cumbria. Lake Bled was incredible.

The people are so friendly and warm. The weather was lovely, maybe too hot at some points, but when on and in Bled it was beautiful.

However, on this particular trip we also spent two weeks in Bologna, Italy, and ate almost daily and an outside, side street, restaurant, which was beautiful and evokes wonderful feeling when I think of it.

did you have a special place that you often went to as a kid …

this can be anything from a tree fort to an arcade to a fictional land in a book … tell us all about it …

Beautiful Cumbria. We had boats on Windermere and a caravan too and so we came every weekend and I loved going there for our weekends.

think of a place that awed or surprised you when you first saw it …

go back to that moment and write about it … describe it with all your senses (how did it smell, how did it look, what did it sound like, etc.)  …

When I arrived in France in 1979, for the first time in my life I felt free. It was warm and breezy and so different to England but definitely felt like home for me.

I simply loved the countryside and the cities and especially Avignon, where I stayed for a good few months.

Gorgeous memories are evoked by just remembering it.

I so wish I could go back there …

if you like the outdoors, think of a favorite place and describe it as if you’re an explorer discovering a new land for the first time …

Anywhere where there are trees, especially pine trees. The smell.

I recall a beautiful winter break in Scotland when it had snowed. We had a beautiful walk through the trees and hills. Devine …

what place have you always wanted to visit …

why …

France, because I felt I was French.

what would be a cool setting for a book or movie …

(it can be helpful to really think outside the box for this one, such as the surface of the moon, a cemetery, or even the inside of someone’s mind) … with your setting in mind, what might that book or movie be about …

A cool setting for a book or movie would be the small villages and the smaller lakes in Cumbria.

It would have to be a mystery. When the mist meanders through these villages or lakes it has a very mysterious feel to it and so it’s a wonderful mystery setting.

… without health, life is not life; …
… it is only a state of languor …
… and suffering-an image of death …
… François Rabelais …

in summary & in conclusion …

I am not sure if I have the health to write about anything this week. But, if I do it will be a short story about the little village where I live or from when I lived in Avignon.


The Essay : places …

From the bed to the settee.

I seem to have only two places I go these days and that is from the bed to the settee and then back to the bed again.

Opening my eyes I cast my scanning senses throughout my body in order to assess how I am doing today. I do this today and every day because if I don’t I may attempt to get out of bed and collapse to the floor.

have I got a migraine … 

This has to be the very first and most important question that I ask myself. Otherwise, too much movement could make me vomit severely and without let up, every 15 minutes, for the rest of the day.

what and where hurts and can I make it to the bathroom or do I need to wait until my pain medications have worked enough, or even at all …

Again the questions must be asked and the answers will determine my behaviour.

the bed or settee

places to choose from to ‘be’

maybe the coffin

… the end …

Please feel free to contact me to share your outcomes or with any questions you may have.

 fragmented.ME xXx

My birth name is Denise, but I’m know as Bella to those who love me. I have a first class honours degree in education & psychology and a strong passion to keep learning and educating others ... I have severe ME/CFS and lots of other chronic illnesses and I started this blog as an expansion to my instagram page, where I advocate for chronic illness. I am married and have two grown up boys, or should I say young men. I have three gorgeous grandchildren, one boy and two girls. And despite being chronically sick and housebound I am mostly happy. 🥰