RELATIONSHIPS:

British-born author and mother of two Hannah Richell tells how, after she lost her husband, Matt, in a surfing accident, she felt compelled to leave Sydney for England. But Australia had seeped into her soul.

Hannah Richell is soothed by water after tragedy

We all have moments that change us forever, events that can spin the course of our lives in an unimaginable direction and alter everything. For my family, that happened when my husband died suddenly in 2014. One moment I was married to a man I loved, the next I was a single parent making decisions for myself and my children while navigating our grief.

As soon as the deep brain fog that comes with loss had eased a little, I took the dif cult decision to leave Sydney, the city I had called home for over a decade, and return to England. In November 2016, we packed up our house and our lives and left Australia. We exchanged summer clothes for winter woollens and set up base in rural Wiltshire, near my mum. I began to reacquaint myself with seasons and landscapes and faces that I had known long before my Antipodean life. I had my rst cold Christmas in years, the kids their rst snow. Relationships that had been conducted over email and long-distance phone calls, with occasional, intense weeks of reunion grew easier, softer. I was able to drop in to my mum’s for a cup of tea, or babysit my brother’s kids, or visit my elderly grandmother in her care home.

Yet moving meant a painful trade-off. It meant leaving good friends in Australia and saying goodbye to a country that had nurtured and sustained me for 11 years. I missed my local community. I missed the glistening harbour waters, the salt-breath of the ocean, walking barefoot on the warm, golden sands of Sydney’s iconic beaches. I missed the watery beauty of the city I had called home. I felt its loss like a deep ache.

We’ve known for some time about the inherent bene ts of ‘green spaces’ on our mental health, but recent studies have shown that spending time near water, be it an ocean, a river, a lake or even a well-placed fountain can also improve our mental and physical wellbeing. My husband died in a sur ng accident and in the early months after his death I felt drawn to the ocean, rather than repelled. As well as reminding me of the man I loved and missed, I found time spent beside something as vast and permanent as the sea helped to remind me of my own fragile impermanence, and often revealed the trivial nature of my own worries. There is, after all, something undeniably soothing about the constant wash of the tide, so reminiscent of the in-out rhythm of our breath or the closeness of another’s heartbeat. There is something meditative in its repetition and something hopeful in the sight of the sun rising over a tide-swept beach. We tend to think of our bodies as solid esh and bone, but we are 50 per cent water. Perhaps it’s no wonder many of us feel ‘better’ when we are near it. It is our life force.

I had prepared myself to miss my Australian friends and routines. What I hadn’t prepared for was how I would ache for the ocean – a glimpse of it at the end of an Inner West lane, or spread beyond the sprawl of Bondi’s promenade. Settled in a small, landlocked town in England, I missed my proximity to the ever-churning ocean. As pretty as my new town was, I missed walking down to the harbour and watching the ferries traverse the water, or jumping in the car to sit on the sand at Bronte Beach to watch the Nippers

play and the surfers face the waves. Worse still, as a novelist, I discovered that landlocked meant mind-locked. My creativity had vanished. Away from that big, vibrant landscape, ideas for my work were frozen. I didn’t recognise myself in this alternate environment.

Understanding the part of me that was aching for big skies and an endless, blue ocean, I took myself to the nearest source of water I could nd. The River Avon curves through the town I now inhabit. It neatly bisects it, the two halves joined by an ancient stone bridge, picturesque but just a little too narrow now for the volume of traf c and pedestrians churning through the centre. I found a riverside path and started to walk, following the curve of the green water, my solitude broken only by the sighting of grey heron, motionless on the riverbank, or a canoeist quietly paddling upstream, or very occasionally a rare king sher darting from a branch. Outside, beside the owing river, I felt that same sense of calm and perspective slowly return.

Walking, sometimes jogging, along the river became a place of healing and, gradually, it also became a source of inspiration. The idea for a new novel – about a family growing up in a ramshackle riverside home, facing the ebb and ow of life and love – surfaced in my mind.

The head-clearing quality of being outdoors and moving through the landscape began to unlock my imagination, and my own experience of love and pain became woven into a new ctional world. Gradually I found my creativity, my peace, and my sense of self.

We often speak of life as a journey, almost as if there is a map to follow or a sure direction to take. While most of us are lucky enough to be able to make calculated choices and decisions that can help steer our lives, the truth is, none of us know exactly where we are headed, or what life might throw at us. We all learn this at some point. I try to look upon life now as a little like a river – the endless ow – the relentless course of it. Through my own experience, I have learned that acceptance is key; we follow the meandering

ow of our lives, allowing new tributaries to emerge, weathering occasional storm- oods or droughts.

Being fortunate enough to travel and live in other countries is a gift, but it can sometimes feel like opening Pandora’s Box, offering a tantalising taste of a myriad alternate lives. Travel means we cannot always have the ones we love the most at our side. Can we ever be sure

we have made the ‘right’ decision? If we are truly home? In moments of dissatisfaction, loss or deep sadness, we might question, ‘will I ever be truly happy anywhere?’

I’m learning that whichever corner of the world you live in, wherever you plant your feet, there is beauty and peace to be found, if you look for it. I may no longer have the Paci c Ocean on my doorstep, but I nd the pull of an English river soothing me. I nd my beauty now beside the river, in the light playing over streaming green reeds or the autumn leaves drifting on its surface. I recognise my good fortune for the continued ow of all those varied moments we string together and call a life – the love, the joy, the pain. So I keep walking new paths, keep following the unknowable ow, knowing that even in the darkest moments, life returns. Sometimes, you have to trust your instincts. Sometimes, you have to seek out your ‘blue space’. Sometimes, it might just be the thing to lead you home. AWW

The River Home by Hannah Richell, published by Hachette, is on sale now.