I am Claire, a 42 year old mother of 3. I am married to Dominic, and we live in East Yorkshire, UK. Mark is my 35 year old brother; he lives in the Midlands.
2015 was a dreadful year for all 3 of us. It's a long story, but the headlines are these: Dom and I were both made redundant from our teaching jobs. Dom had a breakdown. I coincidentally ended up with acute kidney failure, using the loss of one of my kidneys permanently, and then, after 9 months of a chemo treatment, I had a total hysterectomy. Mark split from his wife of 8 years and, eventually, got divorced.
One morning, Easter 2016, we were all surveying the wreckage over mugs of tea. Where on earth did all that come from? And what was coming next?
I think I speak for us all when I say we are a bit nervous about the future. How could we patch things back together in a way that made sense? Where should we go from here?
After much discussion, we realised that we needed to turn our weaknesses into our strengths. Yes, cheesy as it sounds, we realised that the only way to move forwards is with hope in our hearts, thinking positively, with the faith that our lives will improve if we are consistently brave. I'll be honest, I do not feel very brave. I'd quite like to go back to bed and hide under the duvet for a bit. But that is not going to get my life back on track.
We dared one another to say "yes" to things that we might normally not do; put ourselves out of our comfort zones every day, and see where things will take us.
This blog is our story...
No comments:
Post a Comment