If you stopped writing for a long time

If you stopped writing for a long time--and I mean a LONG time, on the order of several years--and then managed to start again successfully, I would like to hear a little about your experience. Why did you stop? What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?

Story fragment idea

Playing (i.e.; don't think I would write this; just toying with the idea):

"The Bone Comb."

A woman receives a comb made of bone (a legacy from an eccentric aunt who never married? found in a junk shop?) Attached to it is an elegantly handwritten note: "Do not use unless you are prepared to live with the consequences."

She uses the comb and is startled to discover that her hair starts falling out. Soon she is completely bald. She is angry at first, but then thinks about the note. Some assume she is going through chemotherapy. Some think she has alopecia. She tries going bald to work. Her husband's reaction? Does he reject her? She embraces the baldness, buys a tough-girl leather jacket. The leather jacket makes her feel like a completely different person; she experiments with going places she would never have thought to have gone before. More consequences follow this. She starts treating her identity as more malleable than she has ever done before.

Where does this story go? Does she encounter her inner artist, becoming a photographer, just as her eccentric aunt was a potter?

Thinking . . .

Have been thinking about kijjohnson's journal bio: My goal is to be the bravest person I know.

Is that a goal of mine, too? Should it be?

How would that work for me?