One Friday evening, shortly before a move, I walked into a small Indian restaurant I passed every day without ever going in. That meal changed the course of my fifties. 

What followed: an intense love story across two cultures, a small wedding, a return to France, seven years together. And then, in February 2023, a separation I had not seen coming. 

What loss forced me to learn 

I thought I knew grief. I had already lived through losses, meningitis at fourteen, a twenty-five-year marriage that ended, a daughter who has not answered my calls in years. 

But this separation confronted me with something new: the necessity of truly sitting with what I felt, without fleeing it, without minimising it, without reaching for immediate distraction. I learned that grief is not the opposite of love. Grief is the depth of love. When you let it teach you instead of trying to outrun it, it makes you more capable of love, not less. 

What my body knew before I did 

After that breakup, I discovered Donna Eden's work on body energy. I understood that what I was experiencing was not simply fatigue, it was a specific kind of energetic depletion, what she calls the Triple Warmer meridian stuck in permanent alert. 

Five minutes a day of simple practices, small taps, precise stretches, changed something that years of sleep had failed to repair. 

I also discovered Feng Shui, much later than I should have. The bedroom I shared with my second husband faced a wall instead of a window. Papers covered every surface. A broken lamp had sat on the dresser for two years. I had blamed my insomnia on everything except the room itself. 

Forgiveness as freedom, not as a gift 

The hardest lesson of this decade was forgiveness. For years after an earlier breakup, I had waited for an apology that never came. 

I learnt Ho'oponopono, a Hawaiian practice built on four phrases: I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. Not only addressed to the person who had hurt me, but also to the part of myself that had been carrying that weight for far too long. I understood that forgiveness is not something you grant to someone else. It is a freedom you give back to yourself. 

What this decade really taught me 

My fifties did not ask me to be stronger. They asked me to be more honest, with my body, with my living space, with what I was still carrying without realising it. 

This is exactly why I am writing this book now. Because I learned these lessons too late to spare myself. But I can offer them to you in time. 

This week's question

Which practice helped you rebuild yourself after a great loss, and what did you discover you had been carrying without knowing it? 

Elisabeth Court, known as Babette
Author of The Strawberry Wisdom