I went on retreat last week! For two nights and three days, it was like the best, loveliest feeling in the world. I'm so happy now haha. It felt like being back at my grandpa's house, with the old windows that you push open with a lever, and holes to catch the lever, and the heat of the afternoon sun, the intermittent creak of the fan, the trees rustling, the birds chirping - I didn't know I was heartsick, but I had been, and it felt so good and familiar.

I practically had the whole retreat centre to myself because there was no one else on retreat at the same time as me. The whole third floor, at least, was mine! I was right next door to the adoration chapel and like it's so special to be neighbours with our Lord hahaha. I remember sitting in the chapel, tilting my head back to look at the ceiling with its craggy white tiles and black nails, and thinking it looked exactly like my grandpa's room. And I felt so moved and I asked, why it felt so familiar, and the answer was because I was loved.

I think the reason why I hold so much affection for my grandpa's house was because I knew I was loved in that place. As a child, I knew I was loved, unthinkingly, unquestioningly, I knew I was loved. And in this retreat, again the affirmation from our Lord, that he loved me, that I was unthinkingly, unquestioningly loved. I remember again, sitting in the pantry, feeling very peaceful. For dinner I made myself a peanut butter and jam sandwich, warm and toasty, and looked at the sky change colour, and the low, far-off sounds of traffic. The butter biscuits in the Tupperware box were stale, but it made me laugh, because again, in my grandpa's house, sometimes the biscuits were stale. How to describe the great sense of peace and wellbeing that I had in that moment - to know oneself as protected, looked after, taken great care of - I was loved, I am loved.

Yesterday I looked at the money I had spent on myself and today I spent the whole day obsessing over it, feeling guilty, feeling envious, feeling, just feeling. It's been a long journey, but I am glad that I have these emotions. I tried to brush them off as the old me would have done, but I'm thinking that I would like to sit with them - there are many reasons for my emotions, but I think what I'm learning to do is to identify them and to let them sink in because they're a part of me. Sometimes I give myself emotional whiplash, but it has been a great part of healing, and I'm grateful.

Did I mention that the retreat was silent hahahaa. I'd been feeling so upset and restless recently - the tiniest thing made me frown and glare, and it felt like my introvert glass was pretty much empty - like I couldn't take any more interaction or I would explode and shatter. So I'm very glad for the silence. I have been well-acquainted with silence and it has become precious to me. Although!!! I got to have the loveliest conversations in prayer, so like it wasn't that silent haha and also every day I checked in with a spiritual director and she helped me uncover new, beautiful things from my time in retreat - shiny, luminescent, bejewelled moments of love.

I know I keep talking about love and I think one of the biggest revelations for me was that I'd been thinking about love all wrong - that unconsciously I still thought that love meant submitting all my wants and likes and desires to please the other person - being subservient to someone else's desires. And even now, writing about this, it makes me sick to think about it. I was very upset that I was taught to think about love in this manner. Because Love wants what's best for the other person, but never demands or forces the other person to do what is right. Love desires what's right, but the other's freedom is much more important. Love always hopes. And like I was kind of flabbergasted haha to arrive at this understanding. And I'm really glad that this happened anyway.

I had the best time. God is really good! I think one funny thing was that I was so preoccupied with how to arrange my time, but it turned out that God's the real retreat master hahaha I found myself occupied all the time and kind of like having the deepest conversations and now I know that I can grow, I can be fruitful. I'm not the barren branch I was so many iterations of me ago and I'm grateful, is what I can say, in the way a thirsting tree drives its roots down into the purest, clearest, spring, and drinks and drinks, and buds and blooms. I am grateful.