I didn’t plan to rebrand my entire presence on the internet this week, but here we are. I’ve been on a quest for meaning. I was clearing out my flat too, but I got tired halfway through, so apparently I decided to clear out my digital home instead. Typical me: the metaphysical is easier than the physical.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll have noticed that the name has changed, the domain has changed, and I’ve essentially packed up my old digital house and moved into a new one. I even privated my Instagram and created a fresh account. I needed a clean slate. Needed oxygen. Instagram had begun to feel like floating in space with a punctured suit – suffocating me every time I opened it.

Goodbye Seren Bear.

When I created this blog, I was deep in my eating disorder relapse, deep in grief, and nowhere close to myself. You can’t really be yourself in a relapse; a severely underfed, malnourished brain doesn’t have enough energy to hold a personality, let alone be philosophical. Eating disorders make your world collapse inward until you can only see the four walls around you. I was temporarily blind to the Universe.

Over the last few years, I’ve lost pieces of myself in many different ways – undereating, losing my best friend, and losing the identity of being the parent of a younger child once my son grew up. Creating this blog was my first attempt at finding myself again. But because my personality was missing in action, I couldn’t think of a name. So I reached for my favourite bear and named the blog after her. Seren does mean “star” in Welsh, so at least it was still space-related.

Jellycats got me through my relapse and recovery, and they still mean a lot to me – Biscoff the Bear is helping me write this – but they’re not all of who I am. Loving Jellycat bears at 42 is probably the least interesting thing about me. But at the time, when I didn’t feel interesting at all, it was good enough for a name.

So I changed it.

Hello, Absurd Universe.

Why Absurd Universe? Well, it’s actually pretty close to the name of the blog I had when I was in recovery 13 years ago. I really liked it, and it fit me at the time. This isn’t me changing who I am or pretending I’ve invented a new identity – it’s me returning to who I actually am. If you read my most recent post, you’ll know that meaning is very important to me, and this name means far more to me than serenbearblog ever could.

My old blog was called Adverse Universe, after my dad’s favourite phrase: “Strength through adversity.” I once believed life was adversity – something the universe placed in my path intentionally, as something to overcome.

But then physics ruined that for me in the best possible way. I learned I’m just an atom in a universe of atoms. The universe isn’t testing me, punishing me, or teaching me lessons. It doesn’t care. I am insignificant. It simply exists in its absurdity – and I exist anyway trying to find meaning along the way.

And weirdly, that was comforting. Because if adversity isn’t assigned or required for character development, then I’m not failing anything. I’m just pushing my Sisyphean rock because I choose to, not because I was meant to. That’s what Albert Camus calls the Absurd: no inherent meaning, only the meaning we give our own rocks.

Writing about my rock – and the struggle of pushing it up the hill endlessly – has always given my rock meaning.

So I changed the name. Seren Bear helped me survive, but Absurd Universe, born from Adverse Universe – the place where I met my best friend WeeGee, reflects the truth I’ve grown into: life is strange, indifferent, often shit – and yet I continue living anyway.

Will My Content Change?

No – but also yes.

Another part of this “rebrand” (Gosh, I hate that word; it sounds like I think I’m a corporation or that I got cancelled on Twitter for a bad take and now I’m launching an MLM) is harder to talk about, but it matters.

Instagram has been suffocating me for a long time, and I didn’t notice quite how much until recently. I kept wondering why my writing felt cramped, why I was second-guessing every sentence, why I rewrote posts fifteen times to make sure no one on Instagram could misread them… only for people to misread them anyway.

Not because I wasn’t clear. Because they weren’t actually reading.

Worse – when I finally called someone out on it, they blamed my writing. As if my clarity was the problem, not their superficial skim of my very real feelings.

Over time I realised something painful: I was writing for people who didn’t want to know me as a person. People who wanted cute captions, simple messages, or plushie-only content – not nuance, not depth, not grief, not honesty. And honestly, calling the blog serenbearblog invited that misunderstanding.

People on Instagram, and in my life, have consistently made me feel like I am not welcome unless I’m small. They’ve said it openly:

Too emotional.
Too complex.
Too philosophical.
Too honest.
Stop talking about grief.
Stop talking about your ED.
And perhaps most bizarrely – “stop posting your macramé.”

So I made myself smaller, and I didn’t even realise I’d done it.
I softened everything.
Removed edges.
Removed meaning.
Dumbed myself down.
Stopped being so Welsh.
Deleted entire posts so strangers wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.

But I am recovering from an eating disorder, and eating disorders are literally about shrinking yourself. And something strange but predictable happened: when I started eating again and becoming more myself, people talked to me less. Two people ghosted me. Others who spoke to me daily have forgotten I exist. They preferred me when I had no personality – not because of my weight, but because I was quiet, apologetic, empty, soulless.

Recovery means not shrinking anymore. So I am not shrinking my voice, my thoughts, or my feelings here anymore either.

I don’t want to sand myself down just to make someone who only came for plushie photos feel comfortable or unburdened. I don’t want to perform a quieter version of myself to make it easier for people to not pay attention.

The truth is:

I’ve been writing for the wrong people – people who pity my rock, or treat it like a burden, or get annoyed that I’m still pushing it. When really, I should be writing for the people who are helped by my rock, who recognise their own rock in mine, who don’t demand I minimise it so they can talk about the pebble rattling around in their pocket.

Absurd Universe is me stopping all of that.

This new space is for me to be entirely myself, without shrinking to make everyone else feel comfortable. I’m 42, and I am done shrinking – done hiding my rock, done having it compared to someone else’s pebble by people who want to centre themselves in my words.

So yes, the content will stay the same, and there will still be bears – but this time I’m writing as my whole self, not shrinking or hiding my rock to keep others comfortable. Especially when those people never once considered my comfort.

How Blogging Helps Me

One thing I want to make very clear, especially after everything I just said about Instagram, is that blogging has been the opposite of suffocating. Blogging has helped me survive this year. Blogging has kept me moving, kept me reflecting, kept me accountable, kept me honest, and honestly – kept me alive.

There have been so many days where I’ve said to myself:
“Do it for the blog.”
Eat the meal. Do the recovery step. Write the truth. Push the rock. Show people that recovery at 42 – with grief, bipolar, perimenopause, reactive hypoglycaemia, cluster headaches, joint problems, and a lifetime of obstacles – is still possible.

It’s not performative. It’s not inspirational content. It’s simply this: when I write, I stay present. When I write, I don’t dissociate from my own life. When I write, I can see my progress in words when my brain can’t feel it.

Blogging has been like having a witness to my recovery – not someone judging or pitying me, but someone watching me push my rock and saying, “I see you. Keep going.”

And the WordPress community? They’ve been kind. They’ve been supportive. They’ve actually read my words. Not skimmed, not moralised, not told me I’m too much – just read. And it’s hard to explain how healing that is unless you’ve spent years feeling misunderstood in every direction.

I think that’s why blogging feels like oxygen. Instagram felt like space without a suit; WordPress feels like gravity. It holds me in place.

And yes – there were people on Instagram who made everything bearable. They know who they are. They’re the people I trusted enough to quietly send my new account to. Actual friends. Actual humans. The ones who saw me, not my plushies, not my “aesthetic,” not the version of myself I shrank into.

Instagram wasn’t all terrible – it just became mostly terrible.
Blogging never did.

So part of this rebrand isn’t just me returning to myself –
it’s me returning to the place where my writing actually gets to live.

Lets Join Forces to Push Our Rocks.

So yes – the content stays the same, there will still be bears, pigeons, philosophy spirals, grief, recovery, and the occasional existential crisis over a cup of coffee.

The only difference is:
I’m not hiding my rock anymore.

Welcome to the Absurd Universe. Please mind the gravity and also the logo placeholder, my son is going to draw me a new one.

To space, to black holes, and beyond! –