The anniversary of my brother’s suicide was always going to be difficult, especially being sandwiched awkwardly between Good Friday and Easter Sunday as it was.

By my logic, the more time passes, the easier it should get. But, having already coped with this whole rigmarole for three years, what I couldn’t have foreseen was how unexpectedly tough it would turn out to be this time around.

Emotionally, I was already wrenched because Good Friday marked two years since one of my adult students killed himself, mere hours after sending me his homework, in which he documented his passions and palpable enthusiasm for life.

The parallels with my brother were startling: like Matt, he hanged himself. Like Matt, his wife had wanted a separation. Like Matt, he had just turned 35.

Whether or not you argue that they both had the right to die if that’s what they really wanted – and I’m still grappling with my views on this one – both of them had so much to live for. In my brother’s case, he also had three young children who depended on him.

So with Good Friday having involuntarily become a day of thinking about rope nooses and the futile loss of lives, I emailed my students and apologised in advance for what were going to be some very lack-lustre lessons.

But while I managed to just about hold it together on Friday – albeit with glassy, faraway eyes and grammar explanations that probably confused more than they enlightened – Saturday was much more difficult to get my head around.

Despite the texts, the emails and the Facebook messages, I could barely muster a smile. And that’s when I knew it was time to take action and get some more of my to-do list ticked off.

The afternoon saw Mario and I buying the rest of the kit that we’ll need for Just Walk on May 11. Florescent gilets and head torches for night walking; waterproof trousers should we have to spend 13 hours tramping soggily along the hilly South Downs; additional fleeces for warmth; and rucksacks to contain it all.

And, with startling clarity, that’s the moment that everything fell into place.

There are now only 33 days to go until the Big Em and M Challenge. By pledging to walk 60km in one day, I’ve already raised £1,285 for Winston’s Wish, which means I’ve got just £715 to go. Raising that amount of money in little over a month is a mission itself but I’m determined to get there because this isn’t about me. It’s about providing bereaved children with the professional support they need.

When I started this blog ten months ago, I had no idea of what I was getting myself into, beyond a madcap idea to raise funds in my brother’s memory for children who had experienced a death in their immediate family.

I thought I could do it, but May 2013 seemed so far off. Who knew what would happen in the meantime?

I also had romantic ideas about writing about my idyllic walks through the Dorset and Sardinian countryside. Little did I know that far from being uplifting and funny, this would turn out to be a blog in which I wrestle with my grief.

It’s only now that I’m beginning to understand the direction my writing has gone in, along with the enormity of the events that have shaped this last year.

To the casual observers, the changes are microscopic: I’m undoubtedly fitter from walking every day and hitting the gym three times a week, where I work out so hard, I can barely stand afterwards. They’d be hard-pressed to find anything else, though.

To me, however, the shifts that have taken place are much more significant - deserving, even, of a place in the record books. Four years ago, I was stretched to breaking point. My body was on the point of collapse, ravaged by broken sleep and traumatic dreams.

These days I relish the normality of sleeping for six hours at a stretch. Mirrors are also proving a source of glee, and I can’t go past one without pulling back my hair and marvelling, childlike, at my reflection. The spots of alopecia have now gone, covered instead by inches of soft, downy regrowth, proving that my body has finally pulled through the chronic stress it was put through and is beginning to repair itself.

But, superficiality aside, it’s what’s going on inside my head where the real progress has occurred. I’ve moved from a place of anger and guilt, to acceptance that I had no more control over Matt’s death than I do over the weather. In the same way, having only one-way contact with my nieces and nephew is something I’m powerless to change. All I can do – and, I think, that’s what this past year has been all about – is make the best of the circumstances I find myself in.

The scar of suicide is a part of me now, as permanent as my physical scars that have never faded, no matter how religiously I rub in the rosehip oil day after day, year after year.

As I gingerly trace my finger around its invisible outline, I know that it is hope and optimism and renewed enthusiasm that propel me forward into the future. These are qualities that I’ve always possessed, even if they chose to lie dormant for a while.

There is a sense that things are slowly returning to the status quo. Indeed, as I wrote in a letter to a friend this week: everything and nothing has changed.

On May 11, I’m walking 60km across the South Downs to raise £2,000 for Winston’s Wish, the UK’s largest childhood bereavement charity. Your donation can really make a difference. Sponsor me here