I went out excitedly to get a Greggs Festive Bake – the first of the season, as soon as they were released. Anyone would think I was just picking up lunch and being a bit too obsessed with Greggs. (I am… but that’s not the point.)

Because it was so much more than that.

The Festive Bake has become a symbol of my best friend – a way of connecting with her across time. Every year since she died, I’ve cried when I’ve seen Christmas sandwiches or Festive Bakes; they felt like constant reminders that she wasn’t here anymore.

But this year… this year was different.
And it made me realise how much my grief has changed.

So join me as I walk to Greggs and get the first Festive Bake of the year.

The Christmas Sandwich Tradition

I’ve written about the Christmas Sandwich Competition before, but here’s the short version:

Weegee and I had both been through eating disorder recovery, yet even years later we still struggled with Christmas. Christmas is a very food-based tradition; it often feels more about food than goodwill. Especially if you set foot in an Asda from mid-November onwards. Suddenly everyone is stressed, angry, and elbowing you for parsnips. It doesn’t feel like goodwill – it feels like seasonal Hunger Games.

When you’ve lived with an eating disorder for most of your life, Christmas isn’t nostalgic. It isn’t warm or comforting. It’s something you’ve learnt to survive. The only memories I have of Christmas are trying to survive the gauntlet of watching everyone eat constantly and trying to avoid it.

Food = joy never made sense to me, it was something I never had access to. For a long time in my last recovery, I had to think of food only as fuel – one step above medicine – because anything more emotional made it too complicated.

But we did both like Christmas sandwiches.
And that tiny overlap became ours.

So we turned it into a ritual: we would try every supermarket’s entry and judge them seriously, as though we were MasterChef hosts reviewing something lovingly handcrafted… by machines. We started with sandwiches exclusively. Then Greggs brought out a Festive Bake and a little pot of pigs in blankets. I got so excited that I basically ran home and yelled,

“DOES THE FESTIVE BAKE COUNT AT GREGGS?”

She messaged back, “OMG OF COURSE IT COUNTS – WE MIGHT HAVE TO EXPAND.”

So we did. Every year for years. I kept doing the competition on her behalf when she couldn’t eat them during cancer treatment, and I continued after she died. But it’s been so hard – every year. I felt like I’d been eating them out of obligation: to be a good friend.

But this year was the first time I felt genuinely excited about it, because lately… I’ve realised my grief has changed.

My Grief Back Then

For years after she died, seeing every festive sandwich and bake felt like an ambush. I wasn’t ready for memories. They didn’t feel warm; they felt like proof she wasn’t here. Proof of the gaping hole she left. Every supermarket became a seasonal reminder of her absence that I couldn’t escape. Every time I bought food or coffee, I’d see the sandwiches and think:
she’s not here to join me in our silly little tradition.

It hurt to see something she would have loved, because that love suddenly had nowhere to go. Back then, Festive Bakes felt like the world rubbing salt in it:

“Look what she’s missing.
Look who’s missing.”

Even if I did buy one and eat it, the warmth only came from the food – not from thinking about her. I was too angry.

My grief was heavy with absence. I couldn’t honour what we had; I could only feel what I’d lost. So I pushed the memories away. Not because I didn’t love her, but because loving her hurt too much. When people asked what she was like, I couldn’t share stories. I stuck to safe qualifiers – she was kind, intelligent, a gifted writer. I couldn’t risk the “this one time we…” because I couldn’t bear to go there.

I was terrified my grief would soften into remembering her fondly, and I clung to the pain like a security blanket.

In that desperation to hold on, I relapsed into my ED – something we had fought so hard to recover from together. Because this indescribable pain felt like all I had left of her, and I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want to heal; I wanted to hold tight to everything I still had of her: the pain, the emptiness, the anger.

My ED became a way to wrap myself in it – to stop time, to keep grief from changing, to show the world how broken I was, how deeply her absence had reshaped me.

Part of me even wanted to return to the time when we met. We met when I was underweight and struggling with my ED, and a part of me thought maybe if I went back there, I’d find her again. But instead, the ED only returned me to the wrong timeline – the timeline where we were both suffering.

The biggest hurdle in recovery this time was that I still didn’t want to move forward.
Not without her.

I felt like I’d be dishonouring her by being okay – by recovering – by feeling joy about something as small as a Festive Bake. I honestly didn’t even know how to recover without her. She had walked with me through the first recovery. She knew the language of it. She understood what I meant even when I didn’t have the words.

But Now I’m Excitedly Getting a Festive Bake

I still don’t know exactly how I kept going or how I’ve got this far in recovery without her. She helped me so much through it last time, and this time I’ve felt so alone.

Part of it was revisiting what she taught me – the way she found joy in food again, how she saw it as colourful and life-giving instead of something to fear. She even gave me The Happy Kitchen to nudge me toward that joy. I tried to carry those lessons with me. To live the way she gently encouraged while she was still here.

But the details of that journey are a whole story on their own, and this isn’t that post.

What matters here is that, slowly, I began eating more – and the grief began to shift with it. The sharpness softened. I didn’t notice at first, because nothing dramatic happened. It crept in quietly, the way winter does. One day, I stepped into Marks & Spencer and saw their festive sandwiches had arrived early.

And something was… different.

WeeGee would find it hilarious that after all our deep, meaningful conversations about life, the universe, and our obsession with all the tiny things that make being human bearable – the strongest memories of her would live in the M&S fridge section.

I thought about the year Marks and Spencer went rogue and added sprout salsa to their Christmas sandwich. I can still hear her:

“It is surprising that I actually do not hate it,” spoken exactly the way she said it when we judged sandwiches like they were Michelin-star meals.

Suddenly, that fridge – which for years felt like a glowing, cold reminder of the hole she left – became a kind of altar. A place of remembrance. Every shop I walked into seemed to be joining in, stocking their festive sandwiches as if they, too, were remembering her.

Christmas food was no longer something to brace for. It had become a celebration – a ritual of our friendship stretching forward through time.

Instead of being sad or annoyed that Christmas arrives earlier every year, I found myself smiling. I remembered our silly debates over which sandwich was superior and the proper filling ratios. I was firmly Team Extra Cranberry Sauce; she was equally devoted to Team More Stuffing. I could hear her disapproval or delight over every new sandwich at Marks & Spencer.

I went home still feeling a little unsettled – I’d lost the harshness of my grief, and that felt strange. But I also knew I needed to honour what had changed. To celebrate her, finally.

So when Greggs announced that their Festive Bake would return on November 6th, I knew I had to go. I needed to get one – for her, for my love for her, and for this recovery I didn’t think was possible.

WeeGee would never want to be remembered through pain. She’d want me to remember her through all the tiny, ridiculous, wonderful things we shared – because that’s what made life bearable for both of us. Christmas was always complicated, especially with eating disorders, but festive sandwiches gave us a new tradition – a small pocket of joy we could rely on.

Now, that Festive Bake felt like my way through the winter – a way to carry her memory forward with warmth instead of only loss.

It’s Still Hard, Though.

I wish I could say this realisation was enough to make the Festive Bake easy to eat, but I’m still in recovery, and I still found it difficult. But I did eat it, and I let the warmth come. I let the ache of her absence come, too. I let both exist.

I sat there with that pastry, letting memories of her flood through me – talking, laughing, debating sandwich ratios – and I cried. Because I still miss her so much, and I still wish she were here.

But for the first time, I could also feel that, in her way, she was here – through time, through love, through connection, through fridges full of Christmas sandwiches, and through pastry.

I even realised that she has actually been with me all along:
in the way I returned to recovery,
in the little penguins I take everywhere,
in the trinkets tucked around my flat,
in the way I started blogging again,
in the songs I add at the end – just like she did.

But it’s only now that I can feel it. Before, I could only remember. Now, I can sense her presence threaded through my life.

I’ll never “get over” her – that’s impossible. I love her too much. But feeling her around me makes her absence just a little more bearable. And as for recovery: I have to be recovered to keep feeling her. None of this was accessible to me when I was underweight. But she’s still helping me, because I finally did what she always told me to do:

Find joy in the little things.

Because that’s what makes life bearable.
And finding joy in food – even tiny joy –
makes eating food more bearable, too.

So here’s to the first Festive Bake – the one that finally gave me love, not anger.

For the anthem of this post (like WeeGee always did with her blog posts) a song that has comforted me so much in grief as it’s exactly how I feel. Zoe Wees – Control.
“I wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t have you holding my hand”