Walking back to happiness
‘The mountains reconnect me with my mother’
Sarah Jane Douglas, 46, is an artist, writer and former teacher, who lives with her two teenage sons in an old fishing village in northeast Scotland. When she lost her mother to breast cancer in 1997, she turned to walking to cope with her grief. That led to a passion for hillwalking that helped her deal with her own diagnosis, 20 years later.
I was 24 when Mum died from breast cancer. Walking was something we had done a lot of together, so after her death walking helped me feel close to her – though, at first, the grief was so raw I felt a strange mix of both disconnection and comfort from the countryside.
‘On the summit my heart filled with hope and happiness’
It was when my marriage of two years ran into difficulties that the fire in my belly to be outdoors ignited like never before, and I began hillwalking. There was no particular plan – out in the wilderness I took refuge in solitude.
