How I learnt what makes me happy

I started this year feeling anxious and unhappy. I had been trying and failing to get pregnant for a while and my husband and I were living in a small central London flat surrounded by noise, lights and endless activity. In late February, I went to stay with my parents at their house in Cape Town. Each morning my mother and I would go for a long cold swim in the local tidal pool and in the early evening we would walk the dogs in the foothills of Table Mountain. I started sleeping well, and when I picked my husband up from the airport he said he hadn’t seen me look so happy in months. Clearly something clicked, because I’m now nine months pregnant, but that trip really taught me what a difference being on an empty forest path or swimming in the sea can make to your mood – even when you haven’t yet got the thing you desperately want.

Since writing this article, I’ve been far more aware of the difference small habits can make: charging my phone away from the bed, reading a book rather than scrolling, and having one-on-one dinners with close friends instead of the lesssatisfying group catch-up. Refusing to give food the label of good or bad has been a lovely side-effect of pregnancy, and one I hope to continue. And while I am aware that the small pleasures I have spent much of my adult life indulging in – long baths, dinners in exciting new restaurants, theatre tickets, new clothes – are about to disappear, I like the idea that meaning can be just as much of a serotonin-booster.

For now, though, the realisation that all I need to do is to get myself somewhere green or watery remains a major lesson. Even last weekend – in the midst of a daunting move – I made myself go to our new local park for a walk. An hour earlier, our chaotic box-filled house and impending due date had felt overwhelming but suddenly, with a view of the ducks and a couple of cold swans, I felt lucky. And very happy. MT