I am sitting in my bedroom back at the farm, a place I’d resolved never again to be. It is really only from this place that I can write this blog, because it’s hard to seek a life of the mind while living a practical life on the farm if you aren’t actually living on a farm.

Until last month, when to my great surprise I returned here for good, I lived on the LaHave River in an exquisite small cottage owned by two of my dearest friends. How and why I came back here is a story for another time. 

My marriage is completely over and has been for a long time. This time, no attempt was even made to save it. Although my ex husband and I are cordial, we have not really managed to remain friends. He has no idea how to do so, and I am far less invested in this notion than I was when we separated all those months ago. It was the romantic in me, I suppose.

Sadly, right after his return from a residential treatment programme in the Valley, he began a sexual relationship with a woman in his recovery group, thereby foreclosing on his chances of becoming self-sufficient and creating an immediate new set of co-dependencies with her. He is now deeply enmeshed. Although he appears to be clean and sober, his complicated interior problems have obviously not been resolved and this makes the chances of relapse far greater in the long run. As unfortunate as this may be, it is the path he has chosen to follow. With all the challenges that lie before him, I wish him nothing but the best.

In the year that has passed, I’ve had a great deal of growing to do on my own behalf. I’ve worked with a good therapist, had the help of an incredible support group, and benefitted greatly from the emotional and practical generosity of my friends. Slowly I have found my way back to reconnecting with the woman I once was and the woman I want still to be - free spirit, idealist, adventuress, dreamer and warrior in the cause of creating a better world.

Without the constraints of the film business to circumscribe my leisure, the enormous beauty of the Nova Scotia summer has made itself once again wonderfully apparent to me. And then there is the companionship of my girlfriends - kindred spirits encountered anew and woven, this time forever, into the fabric of my life. I am a lucky woman and I know it.

So from this place that was once our home and where I’ve begun to make a life on my own, I plan to live in nature, care for the animals, work, love, dream and, in countless other ways, live out my story. To make this my own sanctuary, a cocoon of serenity and comfort, a haven for friends, I began by painting the kitchen and living room pink. May the warm glow cast by these pretty walls envelop all who come here and invest this lovely old house with renewed life.