This is my room. This is your room. It is not our room. We have all been here before. This is my chapel. It is your treehouse, your orangery, your workshop. This is where we want to go; a place that calls us closer; a space that says we are home. This is where we know everyone, where people are few – where our demons and angels surround us, where we exist not by choice. The walls are the colours in our mind. The floor carries us around the space. There are no windows because

This is for all those who just need to know someone is listening and is on their side right now. XXX Monday finds you like a bomb It’s been left ticking there too long You’re bleeding When you try your best but you don’t succeed Some days there’s nothing left to learn From the point of no return You’re leaving When you get what you want but not what you need Hey hey I saved the world today Everybody’s happy now The bad things gone away And everybody’s happy now The good thing

I wrote this post about there years ago. What followed was a hospital visit on arrival at the beach holiday destination because I had not been consistent with my medication which resulted in me collapsing off the airplane. I spent the first days of my holiday under observation in a non sea-facing room. As we begin the One Month of Gratitude for 2016, I want to acknowledge and give thanks for the gift of Life. There is no greater gift. There are 2 me’s. One on medication and o

It’s been just over 4 weeks now since Toughey the hamster died. We eventually broke the news to the kids by faking a “who-left-the-cage-open-and-the-hamster-escaped” stunt. This didn’t go down very well – turns out it’s Mom’s fault… However, there were tears of sadness and I’m happy that we decided to go this route as opposed to telling the 7 year old that his pet had died. (I blogged about this in Our Four-Legged Friends) My son was more upset that I threw out his box of mot

Our hamster died 2 weeks ago today. His name was Toughey. The kids haven’t realised that THEIR rodent pal has died yet. I’m not sure how I feel about that actually… On the day that Toughey left us, my husband had the grand plan to not tell the kids because he was just going to replace Toughey 1.0 with Toughey 2.0 as such. We didn’t end up following through on that plan so we continue to gaze upon an empty but well equipped cage day after day. I didn’t particularly like him mu

People hurt. Whether you’re on the brink of attempting suicide or a suicide survivor. Everybody hurts. I’ve recently blogged stories from two friends who are suicide survivors in the build up to International Suicide Survivors Day which is on Saturday, 17 November this year. There is always another side of the story; in this case, the person who committed suicide. Both Craig (Losing Your First Love) and Michael (Losing a sibling) are no longer around to provide reasons – or a

Wow, this blog is getting very serious… I agree. But I feel I have to do my bit to support International Suicide Survivors Day this year in the best way I know how. I should almost add “regular programming will resume after the break” to some extent. This is another friends story as a suicide survivor which follows on from my post Losing Your First Love. A message of enablement came across quite strongly for me in that post. I’m glad that Carrina and her family have been able

Following on from my post about International Suicide Survivors Day I came across some tips online that I thought I’d share with you. I’m not advocating that all these will work for every individual but I always find checklists are good when your mind isn’t clear on what the next steps should be beyond waking up in the morning. “…no matter who the victim is, their loved ones may also feel like victims. Suicide survivors feel sad, angry, betrayed, confused, and shocked. The tr

Sometimes seemingly random information makes its way to me and I am left asking “now what?” but when I came across this ad for International Suicide Survivors Day I knew exactly what I had to do. I had just published 6 Degrees From Reality on this blog site and decided to have a meaningful conversation with my nanny about her experience on this matter. She’d mentioned her husbands’suicide to me a while back but I’ve never asked her how she felt, and how she is doing. Nobody i

One Month of Gratitude – my story. I am grateful I met my mother-in-law before she passed away all those years ago after suffering many years with cancer. I have no doubt that if she was around today that she would be very proud of her son and a doting grandmother too.