A Little Introduction.
What I'm doing here.
Hello, I’m Nicola.
In 2021, shortly after I turned 30, I decided to leave my life in London and move to the coast. Soon afterwards, I was diagnosed with a rare pancreatic tumour. After months of back and forth for tests and scans, I was given two weeks to prepare for a major operation known as the Whipple Procedure. This was an eye-opening, heart-opening and, quite literally, stomach-opening experience. It drastically changed my perspective on love, life and the importance of letting go.
Before I reached the operating table, I befriended my tumour and named her Josephine. To make peace with the changes my body would undergo, I chose to see Josephine as a symbol of the emotional and psychological blocks I’d grown to keep love at bay. I was willing to be cut open in order to let them go. I hoped that love would flood into the space she left behind.
At first, it did. I survived and love seemed to be everywhere. I returned to the sea and spent a summer basking in gratitude for my life. My long-term crush confessed he’d had a long-term crush on me too. We fell in love. The days were full of wonder. My new perspective felt easy to hold on to.
But, over time, it grew harder to maintain my post-operative bliss. A year passed. My stomach ached, my relationship began to fail, and I shat myself on my favourite beach. I wanted to shut down. Close off. To reach back in time for the body and the life I had before everything changed.
It wasn’t possible.
So I turned, as I always have, to writing. In one big uncomfortable attempt to stay open, I began to write the story of what happened. After a while, I had a first draft of a memoir about love, letting go and living by the sea. Recently, I finished a second draft. Soon, I’ll start work on a third. I don’t know when, or even if, it’ll ever be published. So, in the meantime, I’ve created this Substack. Here, I’ll share short stories of that life-altering time, and my reflections on the fall-out of it all.
Whether you’ve had a life-changing illness, fallen in love then fallen apart, shat yourself somewhere special, or none of the above, I hope you’ll find something in my stories that comforts you.
I want to stay open to life, even when it’s painful-to approach its curveballs and catastrophes with curiosity and courage. I write and share these stories with you in hopes of doing just that.
These are my attempts to open.
I’ll be posting the first piece on the 26th of Feb.
Love,
Nicola
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