Each day after my accident, when the realisation was setting in that I couldn’t return to uni, people kept telling me “don’t worry your baby will be here in December, that will be a magical moment and something for you to focus on.”

Nope. It wasn’t. No offence Reese.

Then after that, people told me the following year would ‘be my year’ ……..

Low and behold it wasn’t. My symptoms worsened and Dani and I nearly divorced. 

And the bit in between was “don’t worry, you have the student nursing times awards to focus on. Giving out an award at a prestigious event with the head of nursing for the NHS will be amazing…

Nope. Drew a blank there, too

After a certain amount of time I told people to stop wishing my life away. The realisation occurred to me that it never stops. There will always be something major happening, life will always find a way to challenge you. I even used to say when I finally get back to uni after three years, there will be something else to worry about. I was starting to see that life doesn’t let up on you.

Uni starts. And as expected, life has another change for us all

Tomorrow my mother in law will be going in for surgery to remove part of her brain tumour, which sits in the medulla oblongata, her brain stem.

My advice to anyone is not to keep hoping for the day life settles down and is finished with you, finished giving you and your family challenges, because sure as I’m loony it won’t happen. Don’t keep waiting for things to ‘settle down’ because you’ll waste years of your life doing so. My answer? Well, it worked for me anyway –

When in Cambridge, on my own sitting in my hotel room every night, my marriage in tatters, 7 weeks since I’d seen Reese etc you get the picture; it was torrid to say the least, I made myself find brief happiness. I focused on what was good right now, small things.

Like the fact I enjoyed watching Louis Theroux documentaries on my laptop. every dinner I would sit down and savour the state in the moment so I was living in the now – I love curry so I ate it pretty much every night. I worked out, that made made happy. I listened to Maino, that makes me happy. I looked at photos of Reese, I looked after myself, I enjoyed the occasional gin feast, I was jovial with everyone I encountered. I lived in the now.

Albeit true, my relationships were falling to the ground all around me. My mother in law and I aren’t nearly as close as we used to be, following a misunderstanding attributed to the joys of brain injury. I was leaving Dani and Reese. No one understood me and I was the black sheep. Everyone knew I had a fierce temper, it can pop like a balloon. I don’t want to be the black sheep and known to screw everything up, I wanted to make my family proud and I loved them all. I even ended up having a misunderstanding with my B and B land lady, who took me in from the start of my Cambridge adventure. they treated me as one of their own, but the dispute meant I turned my back on them and stayed in a cold and dark travel lodge for my time there instead. C’est La Vie.

But by finding small solace in these everyday things helped me get through it. I focused on Hustling Hard and having the soul of a lion, because that’s all I had left. My belief.

Even now

I remind people that after this surgery, there will be something else that will crop up; that’s life.

It will all be ok

No it won’t. but you have to make it ok by getting your head round things, accepting it and moving on. Get past the rubbish thats happening in your life, and be audacious enough to still be happy. Only then can you ever truly experience peace. You can’t just sit around waiting for life to let you be happy. Sod that. Just be happy now, whatever is going on. As Ralph Waldo Emerson says;

Find Peace Within The Storm

My thoughts and mind will of course be with my mother in law tomorrow. She has displayed the courage and soul of a lion by focusing on what is important in the here and now. She has got past the waiting period (which has to be the worse time in my opinion) and now she is ready for the surgery.

Julie has shown the grit and determination that will get her through this surgery and recovery. She has done as well as anyone ever could and I have no doubt in my mind that she will fight it and win.

That’s what we do in my family. 

Whether she understands or recognises the term or not; she has Hustled Hard. Maybe I’ll buy her a hustle hard hat…then again, maybe not.

I’ll finish this blog with a line from one of my favourite poems, Desiderata, which happens to hang on the wall in my mother in law’s toilet;

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

It’s just a series of events that happen and life is not biased in what it gives you. It’s not personal. It’s just seeing if you’re good enough.