All posts filed under: Life in General

Destined to be friends

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I heard someone quote CS Lewis yesterday. It was on the subject of friendship. “In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart.” He goes on to say that he believes God brings our friends into our lives. Much like people often say they where ‘meant for each other’ when they talk about a lover, he’s saying God orchestrates our lives so we will become friends with people, he goes on to say: “The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” I don’t know the context of this quote, and whilst I do think God (you can switch God out for whatever higher …

Choosing the way to go

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There are many ways to leave life, starving myself to death is not the way I want to go and I decided that when I was 19. When I was 15, I began losing weight. It was easy. I was already really into sport, playing hockey and netball, running, cycling and anything else that was competitive. Gradually, and without a plan, I started cutting out food that had fat in it. I began saying I didn’t like chocolate and only eating sweets that were full of sugar but has the all important ‘Trace’ next to fat on the nutrition label. I whittled my breakfast down to one slice of toast which would be tossed aside as I ran for the bus. I spent my lunch money on sweets and magazines, and avoided the lunch hall by running around the sports field for half an hour. I am not sure how long it took, I think maybe a year but certainly by the time I was in my A’level years, I was in the habit of …

New start

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This is not what you think it’s going to be. There will be no new year resolutions. No declarations or goals to be shared. No new me. Last year had all the new things; all the change. We left our life in New Zealand (again) to start life back up in the UK (again). We moved to a place we have never lived before. New job for my husband, new school for my children. New house. New sport teams. New friends. It might well have been the most stressful year of my life. January 2024, we began to move. A year on, we are moved. Changes everywhere. Postcode has letters in. Our bodies, belongings and dog are under a different roof. All our bills are in pounds. It’s winter not summer. We shop at Sainsbury’s not New World. Chocolate is not Whittaker’s. We are 13 hours behind not ahead. All these changes required my full attention. My family needed my full support. Day-to-day life took all day, every day. Six months into our new start, …

In the mirror

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I started working for a charity last year that is focussed on seeing homelessness eradicated. Whilst I have always been aware of homelessness and have been involved with charities that work with homeless or deeply impoverished people, I have lived a life that has come nowhere near what people suffer when their choices and resources are so diminished that they have to live on the street. I walk past someone who is sleeping on the street, see them in the news or depicted in films, hear stories about the injustices and abuse that have led people to the lowest of lows, and think that I am so far away from them that we have nothing in common. It creates a sense of distance and separateness that means I don’t stop on the street when I see someone begging or just clearly in need, because my mind has these thoughts: They’re asking for money and I don’t think that’s what I should give them, or more often than not I don’t have cash anyway I don’t …

The Middle

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If I was to describe the relationship I currently have with my body, I would say that we’re not on speaking terms. This has only happened a few times in my life. Most of the time, we’re the best of friends. This time, there was no major falling out, no dramatic incident, no third-party indiscretion. That said, there were some warning signs she wasn’t quite her usual self. Since 2018, I have had three mammograms and two ultrasounds to check as many breast lumps that have thankfully turned out to be cysts or ‘normal tissue’. A couple of years ago I had a polyp removed from my uterus and last year I started taking oestrogen and progesterone to help with some peri-menopausal symptoms that were significantly reducing my quality of life. My point being, I know exactly what stage of life I am in and I have been doing my utmost to listen to my body and give her what she needs to stay strong and healthy. Which is why I have been a little …

Fight or flight

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Well hello there. I think it might just be time to be back on here again. I’ve had ‘a bit of a day’ and I realise this neglected part of my life called writing, must come back to bring me some joy. I’ve just had a little wander round the blog and it’s 10 months since my last blog – oops! There is a very good reason for that.  We only went and emigrated over to New Zealand again. Yep that’s some crazy beans we ate somewhere along the way eh. We’ve been back in the land of the long white cloud since September. Back in March – when I wrote my last blog – we were beginning to make plans to leave the UK, again.  That’s why there has been silence from me. First because I didn’t want to share until we knew what we were doing, then once we knew, I didn’t have time what with all the organising, packing and saying goodbye. Then we lived out of a suitcase for five months, …

When the novelty wears off

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I remember in the month before we emigrated to New Zealand for the first time, back in March 2012, I used to get such a kick out of telling people we were moving to the other side of the world. The day before we went, I was in Tesco’s and the lady on the checkout asked, ‘Are you doing anything nice this weekend?”. It was so much fun to say, “Yes actually, I am moving to New Zealand.” I loved telling family and friends, because they were shocked, but in a good way. Pleased for us getting to do something so out of the ordinary and curious to see up-close how the whole emigration thing works, not least because NZ is a very pleasant place to visit. It was quite an out-of-the-blue decision.  Neither of us had even holidayed in New Zealand or Australia.  When I was younger, I was obsessed with the States and Gareth probably imagined living in Ibiza, but “down-under” had never featured.  We were going to go for a couple of …

Happy Women’s Day to my women

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As I scrolled through Instagram this morning, it seemed that there was an usually large amount of love going out to women on my feed. It took a moment to register as to be fair, in the current climate there is generally at least two or three ‘strong women lift each other up’ type posts every day. Today it’s almost constant, occasionally interrupted by a pretty plate of food  (I love me some #foodies). It is of course International Women’s Day. It’s prompted me to think about the women in my life and I realise that there have been, are and will be a HUGE amount of significant women in my life. What better way to celebrate than say thank you. To the most important woman in my life, who is yet to be a woman, my daughter. Thank you for being the little embryo that could. For giving me hope when I was at my most hopeless. You could forget every Mother’s Day and I will still be indebted to you for making me …

It’s not OK, but it will be

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Sometimes, it’s just not OK. You’re not OK. Life isn’t OK. Things are not OK. There is pain, disappointment, anger, fear and it feels like more than you can bear. You can’t stand up as it crashes down on you. You have nothing left. You’re lost. You can’t escape. But oh no, you’ll just have to go through it (yep that’s a ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ reference). To be in a moment where it feels like you have nothing left, is the worst place to be on earth. And yet, I’m here to say, it is possible to walk on, to stand, to get through. There is something that gives us what we need to conquer the giant in front of us. We see people do it all the time. A husband stands outside the room as a team of medical staff help his wife fight to deliver their first born through shoulder dystocia. A woman who has married three times before, in the face of her doubts and those around her, chooses …

When the dust settles

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In a few days time, we will have been in the UK for five months.  That’s almost half a year!  It has gone by so quickly, but I also think I should get some kind of a badge for the 143 days of “settling in” graft I’ve put in. Repatriating has been one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. It sits somewhere above emigrating and mercifully quite a bit below IVF on my hard things to do chart. I think what I find hardest is the underlying sense of being just a little bit lost in my life. Which is even more unsettling when you are a 41 year old wife and mother, who should really have her shit together by now. In actual fact my level of “togetherness” is probably not bad, all things considered.  I feel like I grew up a lot in my thirties and it turned out to be quite a decade of achievements and milestones, personally and professionally. I have my faults and I still wonder at …