New Year's Eve

It's been a busy old year and I certainly couldn't have predicted last New Year's Eve where I would be a year on. I'm so very happy to have ended up here though and it feels so good to be able to say that.

I love being with Paul, I love our new home, I love our life together; I wouldn't change it for the world. I love that my brothers and I have been able to move on from our hurt and sadness and that things are ok with us again. I love that I have begun to make friends in this area and am meeting new people.

Life isn't always easy. My PTSD is bad at the moment and I'm struggling with it every day but I'm working on getting better and that's the important thing. I'm working on regaining control and I'm determined that 2011 will be the year I beat it.

I always feel reflective when it gets to New Year's Eve, I've spent today pondering things. I've thought of my Mum a lot; I still miss her so much and I think I always will but the pain is fading all the time. More often than not when I think of Mum now it's to do with a happy memory and the more time that passes the more the good memories are pushing the sad ones further and further away.

But I have so much to be thankful for and that's where my thoughts will lie tonight as the clock counts down to the New Year. I'm spending tonight at home with Paul and will be thinking of all the things we've got to look forward to next year and beyond. And there's nowhere on earth I would rather be.

Happy New Year!

Gaz and Leonie

My youngest brother and his girlfriend came to stay on Monday night for the first time. It was lovely to have them here and to properly catch up. Gaz and I have always been really close despite the nine year age gap and I really miss him since I moved away. We talk often, which is nice, but it's not the same as spending time with someone.

We've had a great time just catching up. It was great to open our Christmas presents together for the first time in two years too.

It's so easy being with Gaz and Leonie, they're just really laid back and easy going. I love seeing them together because they are so right for each other. Mum worried how Gaz would cope when she died because he was only 20 but he met Leonie soon after and is doing brilliantly. He runs his own successful business and they've bought a house together. Mum would be so very proud of him. I'm so proud of him.

I really want to try to see more of them and think it will be my New Year's resolution to do just that.

Christmas in our new home

Paul and I have had a lovely first Christmas in our new home. It was everything we wanted it to be - it was very relaxing and we loved it just being the two of us. We drank champagne in bed on Christmas morning and opened our presents sat around the Christmas tree. We cooked Christmas lunch together, which turned out perfect and was delicious. We chilled out on the sofa watching Christmas films and TV. It was perfect.

Thoughts of my Mum were in my head but they were nice thoughts of happy memories of Christmases past. We raised our glasses to those who are absent before we ate lunch and we watched the Queen's Speech as it was a tradition of my Mum's to do that.

One of Paul's gifts to me was two gorgeous wooden bookends in the shape of @s. I love books so this was already a perfect present for me but Paul said he got them because they were @s and it seemed special because if it wasn't for @s we wouldn't have met. (We met on Twitter for those who didn't already know).

This Christmas was about moving on for me. It was about allowing myself to hold on to old, happy memories and to still keep to a few old traditions but it was also, more importantly, about allowing myself to focus on the future and to start new traditions with Paul. He is my future and I want us to have wonderful, happy memories of our own Christmases past in years to come. This Christmas was just the beginning of that.

To the future.

Christmas pondering

It's Christmas Eve and Paul and I are about to go our for a Christmas drink. I'm looking forward to it, it'll be the first time I've ever gone out for a drink on Christmas Eve so it'll be good to do something different. Christmas is a strange time; it brings a lot of happiness and also reflectiveness, and it's a sad time too when we remember all the people who are no longer with us.

I'll enjoy my drink with Paul today, it's the beginning of a new tradition. It's reflective too, I will raise a glass to my wonderful Mum and will no doubt reminisce a little about Christmases past. My focus is on the here and now though and on making this a wonderful Christmas with the man I love. I'm going to make sure that I enjoy every second of it. Time is precious.

Church rule change :'(

Yesterday I rang the florist in the town where I'm from to organise a wreath to be put for my Mum for Christmas. They told me that the church remembrance garden where Mum's ashes are buried has now forbidden large wreaths and you're not even allowed to leave a small bunch of flowers. I'm so upset about this, I think it's terrible.

My Grandma (my father's mum) is a church goer so I rang her to ask if she knew what I can have put there. Apparently for this year the church will allow a few small wreaths but not too many. If too many are left they will throw them in the bin. I think this is outrageous. My Mum isn't here anymore but I still think of her all the time and cannot bear the thought of there not being something on her plot at Christmas-time. My Grandma is going to get a small wreath for me and she kindly said she will take it tomorrow. I hope the church has the respect to leave it there for the Christmas period.

It beings comfort to me to know my Mum has flowers at certain times of the year and I'm sure it must bring comfort to others regarding their relatives. I think it's completely out of order for the local church to change their rules to such a degree like this; I'd go so far as to call it callous.

It makes me so mad because every single time I've visited my Mum I have tidied up, got rid of dead flowers and made it all look presentable again. Other people do the same. All of us who have relatives there maintain it and all the church do is mow the lawn once in a blue moon. So they can't claim that having lots of flowers left makes more work for them because once Christmas is over, it will be relatives who tidy it all up again.

I'm so sad at the lack of Christian spirit on this and hope the local church retracts this new rule.

New wardrobe, New attitude

We finally got our wardrobe delivered on Tuesday so today I've been unpacking boxes again. It's great to finally start clearing our spare room of boxes and to be able to put things away.

I've loved unpacking my clothes and hanging them up. There aren't as many clothes as before as when packing to move house I got rid of all my fat clothes (clothes I kept in case I ever gained weight again but never have done) and all my thin clothes (clothes I'm supposedly slimming into but even if I did lose weight I knew I would never wear these clothes again anyway) and only kept the clothes that fit me. It's a great feeling to be hanging up clothes and knowing that every single item fits me.

I've never had so few clothes but I've also never had a wardrobe where everything in it fits me. So in many respects I do have more clothes than before because I can actually wear everything I own. It made me feel quite liberated and I feel good about myself today.

Facing my fears

I've just walked to the local shop/Post Office on my own to post my Christmas cards. This doesn't sound like much but it's the first time I've been to the shop alone since we bought the house in July.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it's relating to things from my past that were triggered again this year and I'm really struggling with it. I have nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety attacks to name just a few of the symptoms. Some days I'm so bad with it that I can't even be at home on my own.

I'm having treatment for it and it's hard but I'm determined that I will get over this. As part of my treatment I've been having to work on being outside on my own - starting with drinking a cup of coffee while standing at the back door and gradually building up. Today I wrapped all my Christmas presents that need posting and I just decided that I would attempt to walk to the shop to post them. And I've done it. It was really, really hard. My anxiety levels are through the roof and now I'm back home I feel absolutely shattered.

But I did it. And nothing bad happened to me.

It's a start.

Remembering AJ

Today it is 15 years since my friend AJ died from cancer. He was just 10 years old when he died. He had been born with cerebral palsy and was unable to speak but he had found a way of communicating and was such a bright boy.

I met him on a whale-watching cruise around the San Juan Islands. I was with my family and my cousins. AJ was with his family; they knew he didn't have long to live and were trying to make his remaining time as special as it could be. I felt a connection to his family immediately and we have kept in close contact ever since. His Mum Gina and I are great friends to this day.

Here is a photo of me, AJ and Aly taken on the day we met AJ. It's a photo that makes me smile and makes me tearful at the same time as AJ died five months after this photo was taken and Aly died five years later. It was a wonderful day though and one I will never forget.

Tomorrow is the www.compassionatefriends.org worldwide candle lighting for all the families who have lost a child. The idea is that everyone lights a candle at 7PM local time and it creates a wave of candle light across the world. I've joined in with this every year and will do so again tomorrow in memory of AJ and Aly and all the other families I know who have lost a child.

RIP AJ, forever in my heart. x

Family... :(

I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that my family were not there for me or my Mum when she was so ill. I'm coming to be more accepting that some people just really can't cope with being around a loved one who is dying. I don't understand it but I can accept it.

But it really hurts when someone who should have been there and helped then tries to re-write history to make out things were different than they were. My Aunty has just said that it was my brother who first took my Mum to the doctor (it wasn't, Mum went on her own after I forced her to go and the only reason I wasn't with her was because I was sitting an important exam that day) and that I should have been around then. I wasn't living at home, I wasn't seeing my Mum every day and I didn't know how bad her symptoms were. As soon as I saw the severity of it I made her promise to see a doctor the next day. And as soon as I knew she was going to be diagnosed with cancer I packed all of my belongings and I moved home to be with her.

I wish I could let this wash over me but it still really hurts. I nursed my Mum by myself and I did everything I could for her. But I still feel guilty that the cancer wasn't caught sooner.  I don't need my own family, who weren't even there, making me feel bad by bringing it up again.

My Aunty and the rest of my family spent Mum's last Christmas at my Aunty's playing games and having a laugh while I stayed home and cared for my Mum. I was glad to do it but it was one of the loneliest days I've ever had. And now I'm made to feel bad because I'm not going over there for Christmas this year. They didn't care when it mattered, it's too late to care now.

I'll be spending this Christmas with Paul, the man who has loved me and cared for me through my grief and pain and hurt. The man who makes me laugh every single day, even on my bad days. He is my family and we're having Christmas on our own in our new house and I absolutely refuse to be made to feel guilty about that.

Christmas Tree

Christmas was always a really big deal in my family's house. When each of us were born Mum made us a Christmas sack, which was filled every single year even when we were all grown up. We've always made an effort in our family to spend Christmas together and we always managed it. All of our family and all of my Mum's sister's family. Even as our family got bigger, partners were included. No one ever missed being there. We did the same thing every single year and we all loved every minute of it.

Mum loved us all going home to put the Christmas tree and decorations up. Even when me and one of my brothers had left home, we still all went to Mum's to do the tree. Mum's living room always ended up looking like Santa's Grotto and that was how she liked it. Her Christmas tree told the story of our family. Every single bauble, every ornament, every piece of tinsel had a story behind it. Every year we reminisced together and laughed.

When my Mum died I kept just a few of the baubles for myself and I'm so glad I did. Last Christmas was very hard being the first one without her and it was hard putting her baubles on mine and Paul's tree. It was Paul and my first Christmas together last year which was as special as it could be but it didn't feel like Christmas to me. I missed the chaos and noise of my family at my Mum's house. I missed my Mum.

This Christmas I want to begin new traditions with Paul, it's our first one in our new house and I want it to be really special. We've debated getting a new tree and new baubles and having a really posh Christmas tree and matching colour scheme but when it comes down to it I can't. It seems my Mum's idea of how a Christmas tree should look is etched on my soul.

Last night Paul and I put our tree up and this is it:

In amongst the matching silver and blue baubles that Paul and I bought together last year, and some that he had already are the decorations I got from my Mum's:

• The Father Christmas that I won as first prize in my second year of junior school for the best Christmas hat competition.
• The Winnie the Pooh bauble that my Mum got me, which I adore.
• The snowman with my Mum's name on that our cousins sent us on what was to be Mum's last Christmas.
• The very old and fragile baubles that always hung on my Nan's tree and then my Mum's tree and now my tree.
• The bear that is wearing a pinny and carrying a Christmas pudding that my Mum bought me because I said it reminded me of Nan in her pinny.
• The angel on the top of the tree is one I made during my first year at infant school. I want to replace it this year with something nicer but for now she is adorning the top of the tree.
• Tree ornaments that our cousins in America have sent us over the years, including lots of frogs in memory of Aly. Aly and I used to collect frogs and now Kathy sends them to me in memory of her.

amongst others.

I said to Paul that we should begin a tradition of buying ourselves a new tree ornament every year so that gradually our Christmas tree will tell our story too.

I love the fact that our Christmas tree has a story to it, it makes me smile. I miss my Mum so much but more and more I can think of all the good times and smile. I know she would love this house and Paul. And I know she would want us to really enjoy Christmas, which is exactly what we plan on doing.