Jessica Williams - Enough: Learning to simplify life, let go and walk the path thats truly ours

Enough

Jessica Rose Williams

This edition first published in the UK and USA in 2022 by

Watkins, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited

Unit 11, Shepperton House

89-93 Shepperton Road

London

N1 3DF

Design and typography copyright Watkins Media Limited 2022

Text copyright Jessica Rose Williams 2022

Jessica Rose Williams asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Interior Designed and Typeset by Alice Claire Coleman

Author photograph on : The Melias

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78678-565-7 (Hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-78678-666-1 (eBook)

www.watkinspublishing.com

CONTENTS

Jessica Rose Williams is a writer and lifestyle blogger and vlogger who is best known for her personal writings on minimalism, slow living and capsule wardrobes. Her work has been featured in publications such as Forbes , Refinery 29 , Project Calm and Psychologies . Her newsletter the simple letter has attracted over 6,000 loyal readers. She currently lives in the Peak District with her Cavachon, Hope. This is her first book.

I ts my hope this book offers you a path to a different way of thinking, that it encourages you to think about how you live your life and how you want your life to feel. Somewhere along this path I hope you find reassurance that its ok to be you, the real you the beautiful, flawed and unedited you. Like anyone else who reads it youll interpret my story and words with your own version of reality. Take the bits that speak to you and feel free to leave the bits that dont. Above all, always know youre enough, a million times enough right now, just as you are.

for my grandad ,

who always told me to take the road less travelled

and for Tria ,

without whom this book wouldnt exist

INTRODUCTION

CROSSROADS

H ave you ever felt like you are striving for a life that you arent sure you even want? The life you think you should be living as opposed to the life you actually want to be living. Have you ever saved up to buy something special for yourself, and then quickly realized it wasnt what you wanted at all? It didnt make you anywhere near as happy as you thought it would for anywhere near as long. Have you been so focused on pleasing everyone around you in a desperate bid to feel liked and accepted that you regularly forgo your own needs, wants, desires and even your identity?

I have. Thats why I decided to change everything.

If I didnt have to tell you, I wouldnt.

I still cant remember the name of the doctor who said this to me. I cant remember the journey to the hospital, details of the office where she broke the news or what the weather was like that day but Ill never forget those words, the way they so casually slipped out of her mouth, or how they made me feel. Numb. An overwhelming sense of numbness born out of sheer shock. It was the kind of numbness you see depicted in films, where everything around you blurs, and sounds seem distant, as if the person right in front of you is drifting further and further away but you dont care because you cant concentrate on what theyre saying anyway.

The news was confusing, which only added to the shock. Id had cervical cancer, but now it was gone? And it was at such early stages she wouldnt even tell me if she didnt have to. How was that possible? Following the initial numbness and disorientation, I turned to order and logic, perhaps in an attempt to regain control of a situation that had just transported me to a different life, one where I was both a cancer patient and survivor at age 25. But this wasnt supposed to be the order of events. Surely, I was supposed to be told Id got cancer first, so I could get my head around that, before dealing with treatments and outcomes. The entire process had been fast-forwarded in the space of a minute, and any attempt to regain control quickly failed me. I felt the warmth of my mums hand squeeze mine tightly and the gesture beckoned my mind to return back to the room. Looking for some sort of reassurance from the woman who had raised me and always kept me safe, all I saw were the tear stains on her cheeks.

I can remember the day I first felt concerned about cancer being something that could actually happen to me and not just elderly relatives or people I vaguely knew. I was 21 and it was during one of those glorious university days when I could tell the time based on which daytime TV show was on. I was living with my fianc Jason in our first apartment. It was a ground-floor two-bedroomed haven in the leafy suburbs of Sheffield, which we had scraped a deposit together for earlier that year. It was close enough to university that I still felt like a student whilst being far enough away to make me feel like a grownup. The living room, dining room and kitchen were open-plan, which suited my daytime TV habit because I could combine dipping in and out of reading and writing essays at our dining table with hopping over to the sofa for a well-earned break.

A firm favourite of mine has always been the morning chat show This Morning . Its an establishment as comforting to me as the Queen. When I was too poorly (or pretending to be too poorly) to go to school as a child, my mum and I would sit and watch it together. Since then, being able to watch daytime TV always felt like a treat, and my love of the High Low features never faded. This particular day, presenters Holly and Phil were talking about how young women my age were at risk of cancer. My ears pricked up. The feature was about cervical cancer, a type Id never heard of before, and how smear tests designed to detect this particular form were available for those age 21 in Wales and Scotland but were not available until age 25 in England.

There was concern about this disparity, as science suggested women were actually at risk of contracting the disease from age 21 and, as a result of a lack of testing, were being diagnosed with cervical cancer in the latter stages. Ever the hypochondriac, behaviour I claimed as the daughter of an intensive care nurse, I promptly booked an appointment with my doctor and asked if I could have a smear test. Knowing I was at risk of cancer at such a young age stirred up a lot of panic inside me and begged the dreaded question: what if?

At my appointment a few days later, the doctor looked confused by my presence and concern for my own health. I explained my panic, but she was very matter of fact about the situation. She asked me if Id had any symptoms of cervical cancer like abnormal bleeding. Was it painful when I had a wee? Was I weeing a lot more than usual? All my answers were a resounding no. She told me a smear was unavailable to me, just as Holly and Phil had discussed, and that I would be written to in four years when I turned 25. Unless I wanted to pay for a private smear test, if I remained symptom-free I had no choice but to wait like everyone else and wait I did. Even though I was frustrated by what felt like a huge injustice, I soon forgot all about cervical cancer, and time passed on. I graduated, Jason and I got married and moved to another house, then sure enough, when I turned 25, just as the doctor had promised, the letter came through our letterbox requesting I book a smear test.