Can making jam save your life?

Growing up, all I wanted was a bright pink Suzuki Vitara. To me, that was the car. It was going to lift me from ordinary kid to one of the cool kids, and quite possibly into the kind of girl a prince would want to marry. Oh, the thoughts of a teenager.



In my teens, it was all about the stuff. Wanting more, wanting what my friends at school had: the right clothes, the right holidays and, let’s not forget the right perfume, (Jean Paul Gautier obviously). That was the perfume of perfumes. We all have that something we bought with our first grown up pay check, the thing we look back on, holding our head in our heads, saying to ourselves “What were you thinking?”

Where that hunger for more came from, who knows, but it lasted right through my twenties and well into thirties. I wanted to fit in, and to fit in I believed I had to look the part and be the part. God forbid I should actually be myself. That felt far too scary, so a mask went on, and it stayed on for many years.

The afternoon I made jam

In my early twenties I enrolled on an art foundation course at college. I loved art, but looking back, I was living with crippling anxiety. One morning, probably around this time of year and very near the start of term, I couldn’t get on the bus. Mum drove me home, then left for work, and I sat in the quiet house feeling like a failure. I couldn’t even get myself to college. How was I supposed to handle these huge feelings of rejection, when most of them were ones I had inflicted on myself?

So I went for a walk. A walk always made me feel better. Moving my body has always been the quickest way I know to move my mood. Along the lanes I started picking blackberries, and I felt a strong pull to go home and make jam. I raced back, put on my pinny and went out into Mum’s orchard (idyllic, I know), filling the pinny with cooking apples and carrying them back to the kitchen feeling happier than I had in weeks.

Blackberry and apple jam it was. It became a whole afternoon of quiet, cathartic cooking with no interruptions, and a tray of jars to show for it at the end. I decorated the labels and made little cloth caps for the lids. I remember the sense of achievement, and how light and safe my heart felt.

That was the day I knew the simple things were what mattered. How I felt counted for far more than the car I might drive or the way I looked. My road to recovery was long, decades long in truth, but that afternoon has stayed with me for over 25 years. It was when I understood that I needed more nature in my life, more nurture, time on my own to recalibrate, and some distance from the big crowds that overwhelmed me. It was also the first time I wondered whether I might be an introvert.

Twenty-five years of simple things

I’ve spent the years since building a life around those small joys. Running up mountains. Swimming in the sea at dawn. Baking a cake for my family. Hot baths by candlelight. Splashing in the sea on long summer evenings. Lunchtime walks with my husband. Picking my children up from school and watching them in the park with all their firework energy.

None of these need buying, tracking or upgrading. They simply need noticing, and a little room in the day.

I see the same thing in the women who come on retreat. Last week we had a guest with a big, demanding job in the city. When the conversation turned to joy, she told us that one of her greatest pleasures is refilling her bird bath every morning. She went into wonderful detail: the fresh water she puts out each day, the different birds that come to bathe, all in the middle of central London. I could see the light in her face as she described her little ritual.

What a gift, to find that much joy in something so simple. We all have that ability. Sometimes it’s just buried under the noise.

The pull of more

And there is a lot of noise, especially at this time of year. Everywhere you look, someone is trying to make you buy more stuff, guilt-tripping you into spending more and needing more. The countdown to Christmas starts before the leaves have even fallen.

I’ve come to believe the secret to happiness is simpler than we make it. Most of it lies in taking away. Subtracting the things that don’t serve you: the relationship, romantic or otherwise, that leaves you smaller; the dead-end job that fills you with dread every Sunday evening; the constant need for more stuff. It’s often said that the unhappier we are, the more we buy, and I can see that. The more you have, the more you have to worry about.

Don’t get me wrong, I still walk into shops and want to touch the new clothes and smell them. That’s the nice thing about new clothes, they smell so good. But then I look at the label, see where they were made, and pause for a moment to think about the woman who made them. The minimum wage for a garment worker in Bangladesh is still only around £90 a month. It’s hard to hold that in your hands and not feel how lopsided the world is, with so much wealth for some and so much poverty for others. If you want to read more about this, Charity Shop World by Tansy E Hoskins is an incredible book. It follows what really happens to the things we buy and give away, and I haven’t looked at my wardrobe the same way since.

Even wellness has been pulled onto the same track. So much of it has become something else to buy, optimise and keep score of: the tracker on your wrist, the sleep score, the step count, the latest supplement. Many of the women I meet are quietly worn out by it. Looking after themselves has become one more job on the list, and one more place to feel they’re falling short. So it’s no surprise that this year has seen a real turn away from biohacking and back towards pleasure and joy. Nobody needs a data point to tell them a cold sea swim felt good, or that a walk through the woods cleared their head.

Stepping off the train

My advice is to get off that train. Just step off onto the platform, watch it go by, then turn your back on it and go and watch the sunset instead.

Then think about your own bird bath. The ordinary thing that makes your heart feel light. Give yourself permission to do a little more of it.

Simple things are the way forward. Slow down. Sip the hot coffee while it’s still hot. Watch the sunset, and let your heart get bigger as you soften into a sweeter way of life.

And if you’d like a few days where the simple things are all taken care of for you, our January Lake District retreat brings together yoga, lake dips, sauna and seasonal food on the shores of Windermere.

→ Explore the Lake District retreat

Laura Bell is the founder of Zest Life and has been leading yoga and wellness retreats in the UK and abroad for over a decade. A qualified yoga teacher and experienced retreat leader, she designs and hosts small group retreats rooted in nature, movement and genuine care. Laura also works with organisations to design and deliver bespoke corporate wellness programmes and retreats — bringing the same standards of quality and thoughtful facilitation to workplace wellbeing.