Susan Bennett and her husband Chris were living busy lives in Belfast when, in their mid-30s, in the same week and at the same hospital, they were both diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The shocking news nudged them to make major life changes and follow a long-held dream. They set about simplifying everything, packing up their lives, and taking to the road for a year in their campervan, Hans.

Susan’s memoir, One Year, tells the story of that journey and the opportunities it presented for processing grief and learning to stop and breathe. In this extract from the book, Susan writes about the years of quiet frustrations that led to the moment they finally cut the strings and took to the road…  

WE HAD PLANNED this for the longest time. The Big Trip. The Year Out. Many years ago, just before Chris and I got married, we’d bought a clapped-out old van and converted it into a campervan (of sorts) and taken it travelling for three months on a UK honeymoon.

Ever since, we’d promised ourselves that we’d do it again, but this time properly. Maybe when we were old – say, in our mid-40s. Well, as tends to happen, we got old. Midlife had arrived while we were looking elsewhere. Time passed, and always on the horizon was the dream of packing all our stuff into a van and running off towards the sunset.

After many false starts and delays and problems, we hit the road on a grey spring day in early May 2018, waving from the ferry to family members we knew were waiting on the shore – invisible, but there.

It felt surreal after all that time. It still feels surreal now, like it happened to someone else. Of course, there had been obstacles in our path to freedom: bureaucracy,........

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