COMEBACK queen

After a few hard years, Kate Townshend is looking to rediscover her lost identity

- Kate Townshend

It's not an easy thing to admit, but between covid lockdowns, the beautiful fever dream of early motherhood and a prolonged spell of mental ill health, I've started to feel that somewhere in the last few years I might have dropped my mojo down the back of the sofa.

Don't get me wrong: a temporarily misplaced groove is a small price to pay for taking the time and space to look after my health. And I wouldn't change the intensity of falling in love with my baby and learning to become a mum for anything in the world.

But I do sometimes feel I've retired a bit from the 'world facing' parts of my personality – and as I tick over into my forties, there's some hormonal low self-esteem also adding to this slightly tricky mix. The truth is I don't feel as dynamic as I once did, or as in charge of my own destiny. And it seems like ignoring these issues – or worse, accepting them as the new and forever-after normal – isn't going to cut it.

So I'm wondering, instead, if it might be time to tentatively come out of this period of rest and hibernation, and stick my head back above the parapet. I'm wondering, in short, if it might be time to stage my own comeback.

I realise I'm muscling my way into rather esteemed company here, since comebacks have long been de rigueur for every celebrity, sporting or artistic talent going. Just as the world counts them down and out, they return in a blaze of milieu-defining glory.

But the truth is, this is everyday magic for all of us, regardless of whether our own comebacks play out on a world stage or in the rather more intimate setting of our private lives. We can all find our way back from times of stress, failure, trauma or confusion — or at least that's what I'm hoping.

'The idea of a "comeback" holds immense psychological power because it represents resilience, transformation, and the ability to rewrite one's narrative,' says psychotherapist Kamalyn Kaur. 'It's like getting a "do over".'