It’s been a fairly ordinary week — some nursing, coaching work, school runs, and February doing its thing with bright daffodils and snowdrops in gardens, parks and meadows.
But something small lit something up for me this week, and I wanted to share it.
My son Charlie and I went to the library. We came home with a stack of bright, picture-heavy children’s cookbooks — the kind where you choose recipes by the photos. I’ve been wanting to change my relationship with cooking for a while. Most days it feels like a chore to get through rather than enjoy. I needed some inspiration to energise it.
So I tried something different.
We made a Quiche Lorraine. A new chicken dish with mustard. Next up: homemade pizza, a sausage traybake, and lemon muffins for our cousins this weekend.
Charlie didn’t actually cook with me in the end. But that wasn’t the point.
The point was: I said I’d try something. I did. And I felt that YES — the “I did it” feeling nobody else can give you.
Because I have to cook every day anyway. I may as well make it something that brings me alive.
That’s rediscovery. Not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a library cookbook on a Tuesday.
Rediscovery doesn’t have to mean moving countries, changing careers, or making a grand announcement. It can be as quiet as choosing a different recipe. As small as borrowing a book. As simple as deciding that something you do every day anyway deserves to feel like yours.
Women over 50 are often waiting for the big moment — the revelation, the sign, the perfect circumstances. But the spark doesn’t usually arrive that way. It arrives in ordinary Tuesday afternoons when you decide, almost without thinking, to do something a little differently.
That decision — however small — is the beginning.
What gave you your spark this week?