Identity is mutable in cyberspace. I have a lesbian friend who fell in love with another woman online only to discover she had been corresponding with a man who wanted to "turn" her. A common enough story. But I really am a woman, and although I'm not here to prove it in person I think the stories eradicate doubt.

And I'm not a fantasy porn queen. I am up to here with work, kids and, if that wasn't enough, my darling husband died last year (there's a tribute to him here.)

My writing used to bubble up from the spring of a blissful sex life and many, many memories. I was an adventurous young woman and a contented married one.

Now, when I reach inside me for stories there's a very different landscape. Bleak and desolate. Even my pre-marital memories are coloured by my loss. Ignoring the lesbian connection, the phrase "Well of Loneliness" seems apt.

And there's another thing: when my husband died it changed how I saw myself. In his eyes I was the most desirable woman on God's earth but, as the months passed and I had time to glance in a mirror, I realised that I was actually just a fairly pleasant looking middle aged woman and about as invisible as most middle aged women are.

Sounds daft, but I was never one to think much about how I looked. I'd always been OK looking and I was so busy with him and the kids and work I never really thought about the time passing. But it has. Leaving, to my eyes, a considerable amount of havoc.

It's heavy going. I guess this too will pass. However I am vain enough to include a couple of genuine but out-of-date photographs to demonstrate that at one point I was quite a babe.

Aside from all this, I live a life of placid respectability in a pretty English town. I write and design professionally, I'm a good cook, almost unbelievably untidy and am grateful to be an ex-drunk — 16 glorious years. I have an adult stepdaughter, two small boys, a cat, 2 snake, 12 goldfish and a pondful of amphibians.

Now I've been alone a year and a half. I'm learning to write without a pool of constantly updated sexual memories to draw from. It's tough. But I'll make it. I'm good at turning lemons into lemonade.

And there's always the chance that one day, if I'm lucky, I'll find someone else to share my and my children's lives. Though don't, for mercy's sake, take that as a signal to send me obscene email. Like a hole in the head, I need that.

© BronwenSM, 2004-2009. Click here for copyright/legal info.