In 2023, I called my 100 days Scotland project ‘100 places I’m glad I’ve been’. It was a mixture of collage, word and stitched art, and was a very personal journey. In early spring that year I had a major illness crash, which forced me to stop working, again. I still had no medical treatment, or professional support, for the disease I have to live with, and – while being sicker than I’d ever been – had to start negotiating the benefits application system to try and ensure enough money to survive. I was facing up to the likelihood that I wouldn’t be well enough to ever work again, and many related tough truths.

But for whatever reason, that summer was also the first time, since becoming chronically ill and mostly housebound some 3 years before, that I’d felt ready to think back on, and celebrate, the good things I’d done in my pre-illness life, none of which I can do anymore. The grief of chronic illness, around losing your old life, and your hope and plans for the future, is huge and heavy. For a long time it was too painful to think about the life I had, all the things I did, before becoming ill, because that’s wrapped up with knowing I’ll very probably never be able to live like that, to do those things, again. But sometime during 2023 it had started to become a little easier, and I wanted more of that. I wanted to be able to remember more happily, and to celebrate, the wonderful, fun, joyful, exciting, interesting, challenging, beautiful experiences I was privileged to have in life before I got sick. 

Each day I took a 11 x 11 cm map excerpt of a place I’d been to in the past that was meaningful to me. All but one or two are places I’m no longer well enough to go back to. I stitched onto each map a route I’d taken in or across or through that place, or in some cases just outlined an area where I’d spent time. Recreating lines I’d walked or run or cycled or paddled or sailed or driven across the land. And added a few typed words of explanation about the place and my memory of it. I stuck each map into a purpose made book, and shared each one on Instagram with the hashtag #100gladplaces. 

The project did bring me new gladness. There was (is) still huge grief alongside the happy memories. But I enjoyed the journey of looking back and celebrating the past; and it helped in the (life?)long process of coming to some acceptance of my new sick life.