You're listening to episode 73 of the Baggage Reclaim sessions.

I'm your host Natalie Lou, author of Baggage reclaim.com,

where I help people to offload the shady relationships and emotional baggage that block healthy self-esteem and loving relationships.

This week I talk about personal anniversaries and help a listener work out whether it's a bad sign when your new partner doesn't ask any questions about you.

On the 31st of January it will be 16 years since I moved to London, but it will also be nine years since I became officially self-employed.

So these are two pretty big personal anniversaries for me. Now I make a distinction really about

personal anniversies because I think you know obviously we have other

anniversaries in our life that might relate to for for instance, our romantic relationship or the loss of a loved

one, but actually it's important really to take note of certain big milestones that have

previously taken place in your life

because I think that it's a great way to notice the progress that you've made.

Sure it would be all too easy to look at when you did something and maybe the hopes and dreams that you had at that time but actually if you can acknowledge the journey that you've made in that time and see how you've grown regardless of whatever has gone on.

But I think that it can become quite restorative to, you know, really take a moment,

take a bit of time to celebrate the fact that actually you have a particular anniversary at you that you've done something over a passage of time.

For me, and I don't know if I've talked about this on the blog, but I moved to London, you know, as I said, almost 16 years ago because I had decided that I needed to make a big change. Now funny enough I had already made some

changes that would have appeared so because I'd moved away from home. So at home technically for me, even though obviously I've lived in London for 16 years and it is my home,

the other place I call home is Dublin back in Ireland.

And that was where I'd been brought it from when I was 10 until I was 23. But in my only 20s I travelled quite a bit.

And in the last several months of the year 2000 I had lived in Fort Lauderdale and I had done a

semester at the Art Institute in Fort Lauderdale and also had a pretty toxic relationship during that time.

And so I'd thought that I was going to be, you know, living in the US for a few years and had suddenly realized one it was extremely expensive to go to

university and two that I had somehow thought that I was going to create this amazing new life, but that my problem seemed to follow me wherever I went.

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