I went to school on the Isle of Wight more than three decades ago.

It was a turbulent time for me, as I was a troubled teen: angry, damaged, resentful and violent. I couldn’t find my place in a world that I felt I didn’t belong in, and I did not have any values to be proud of.

But slowly, organically, after months of horseback riding on the deserted shores of Bembridge, I found some modicum of peace. The violent storms within me abated. Later on, I would come back again and again, with my children. They are blessed that they had been sheltered from storms such as mine.

And I would come back with the people I love, when my children are grown and my mother too frail for fossil-hunting.

A fortnight ago, I went back to the island for the first time in three years. It was a long time that I stayed away, though my parents still live in Portsmouth and I visit them once a fortnight.

As we parked the car in Bembridge, by what that used to be Trevor’s Caff, a myriad of old feelings surfaced. The emotions came crashing down all around me, the anger and the hate, the love and the forgiveness. The sea, the little woods, the stones on the beach, that bore witness to my changing emotions were all still there.

And here’s my sharing – feelings come and go like thunderstorms and precious days of summer. Your worst days and your best days are not yours to keep and hold. They pass. So be in the moment. Experience it to the full, because – good or bad – they will surely pass and today is yours to live. x