Forgive me readers, for I have sinned!!

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned! It has been almost a month since my last blog post.......

Now, as this is my therapy, you might think that this is  good thing - that perhaps life is all good and there is no need for me to blog, but as I've written before, sometimes I find it hard to say what needs to be said.

History has also taught me that I internalise my stresses - I'm told this is not a good thing! So, the saying is that Silence is Golden.....for this bird that is not always the case!

Now, don't get me wrong, on the whole life is moving in the direction I would like it to, moving house, cutting out some of the commute, daughters living their lives well..... But with all these life stages, there's a bit of pain to go through to get there.

So currently, I am excited about the move and going to view the new house for the second time today (can't wait, know I will love it even more). Looking forward to my first daughter graduating Uni this Summer and my youngest smashing her A Levels.

But, the minutiae day to day detail is that moving house is stressful, anything to do with money is stressful!! Will I get the mortgage offer ok, will the survey be fine, will my solicitor get everything sorted on time......

The minutiae detail that is keeping me awake tonight (yes this is a very early morning post) is that ALL the A Level coursework is saved on a harddrive which underwent a slight accident yesterday and is no longer working...... we are waiting for the computer repair shop to open and hopefully tell us that they can retrieve all the data that is due to be handed in on Tuesday.......the stress the teenager is currently feeling is enormous, but darling, I'm right there with you.

Middle daughter has also been texting in the night not feeling well, parenting doesn't stop when they leave home.....it simply becomes more virtual.

When you have children it is the greatest, most incredibly gift - but you ride every wave of their lives with them, you feel every inch of pain alongside them, and you would give any limb on your body to make their lives easier at times. If anyone tries to tell you that being a parent isn't stressful, then they are lying, it is! 

Doing it alone is not the easy option, though it does make for less arguements about how to bring your children up, but sometimes, just sometimes, having someone else to share the joys and the troubles with would be nice.

One of the harder times can be as they start to grow up and the reality of lifes difficulties hits them - at some point in all of their lives now they have each asked me what the point of life is when it's so hard?!

Well, to be completely honest, for someone who has been through an incredibly difficult divorce, lost her mother at the tender age of 50, dealt with more cancer than is fair and having a chronic illness that cannot be cured................. that can be a challenging question to answer at times!

But, perhaps more so because of those things, I do have an answer to that question........

Yes, life is hard, it is challenging, it doesn't always go the way you would like it to, people die, people leave and you find yourself changing in ways that you would never believe. BUT despite all of that life gives you this - it gives you great fantastic moments, children are born, people are loved, there is beauty in this world, compassion, kindness.

The feeling that you get from these moments, the joy, the pleasure, the heart-warming gives you so very much that you battle through the tough times because life IS worth it.

And that is why I'm trying to change my life and I encourage my daughters to do the same, to bring more compassion and kindness into it, more positivity and light. To bring kindness and compassion to others.

After a hard day in the office and a crappy cold wait for a late train in the snow one Friday this winter I got talking to a woman on the train who had a long walk home in the snow and had forgotten her hat and gloves, when we got to our destination I gave that stranger a lift home. She was incredibly grateful - but I feel I got the better deal, meeting her, talking to her, knowing that I'd helped make her evening better made me forget the crappy day!

So here I am advocating the idea of doing one kind thing everyday - because it does make a difference to us all. I'm advocating that we don't linger too much on the troublesome minutiae because the bigger picture is always better.

And here I am praying that the nice computer man will be able to retrieve the data, because God knows I would do almost anything to put that wrong right.........