I came back to say it stays fine

Started 26 December 2025 · 17 replies · 128 hearts · read 1.3k times

TheaBergen, NO · 26 December 2025

7 months ago

I came back to say it stays fine — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

Writing this partly to ask and partly because writing it down usually tells me what I think.

The practical side has settled and the rest of it has not, and I would like to hear how other people at this stage handled the part that is not practical.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this stage was, and how long it went on for before it changed.

Anyway. Thank you for reading this far. Any experience of this stage gratefully received, and I will come back and say what happened.

BethanPontypridd, UK

I have stopped tracking almost everything and kept exactly one habit, which is writing two lines on a Sunday. Everything else fell away and nothing bad happened.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

Stepping in to say that nobody here is behind. There is no schedule this community keeps and nobody is measuring anybody against one.

AmbroseYork, UK

My maintenance has had two wobbles in it, both around big life events, both of which passed. I mention them because a smooth account would be a dishonest one.

7me too 6

ColNewquay, UK

Ambrose has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

What I did not anticipate was becoming a person other members ask questions of. I still feel like I am making it up, and apparently that never entirely stops.

TychoLeiden, NL

Col said something I want to sit with for a second.

Two years in and the only thing I actively do now is a note in my phone once a week and a review once a year. Everything else has become automatic.

InêsPorto, PT

There is a particular kind of quiet grief in maintenance that took me a long time to name. Something that had been the centre of my attention simply stopped needing it.

TiernanOmagh, NI

I would say to anybody approaching this stage: decide what you want your ordinary week to look like, because nothing is going to arrange it for you once the novelty ends.

MattNottingham, UK

Maintenance is where the non-scale things came into their own for me. All the things I noticed in year one turned out to be the things that stayed.

7me too 2

GigiNaples, IT

No advice, just company. Here if it helps.

DotFalmouth, UK

#10

Picking up Gigi’s point rather than starting a new one.

The conversation I found hardest in maintenance was about how long. My prescriber's answer was that we would keep reviewing it, which is honest and was not what I wanted.

PoppyLeeds, UK

#11

Well said, and thank you for taking the time over it.

10me too 1

IdrisCardiff, UK

#12

Nobody prepared me for the strange flatness of it. Not sadness. Just the absence of a project, after two years of having one.

BrodyDunfermline, UK

#13

I still come to this circle in maintenance because the newer members ask the questions that keep me honest about what I actually know.

BelCroydon, UK

#14

The practical shape of my maintenance is: one review a year, one set of bloods, one conversation about whether anything has changed. That is genuinely all of it now.

GusStirling, UK

#15

The thing that caught me out about maintenance was the absence of a finish line. I had built the whole thing around arriving somewhere and then arrived and found there was nothing to do.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#16

Before anyone offers a schedule: what has been described here is a conversation for a prescriber rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

StefanZurich, CH

#17

What changed in maintenance for me was the questions. They stopped being about symptoms and started being about how long, and what happens next, and nobody has a very good answer to either.