Mothering Sunday

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

Robert Browning

And so mothers day has come around and it is my first one without my mum and if the predictions are to be be believed, my last one as a mum. How does this feel?

Looking firstly at the loss of my own mum, I have to say that my approach is very much that the glass is half full today. The thought of having to watch my own mother witness the changes in me would just be too much. The day that I was given the devastating news of my brain tumours, was the day that I essentially stopped grieving deeply for the wonderful Janet. For 3 years she had watched helplessly as i went through my cancer battle and I know for sure that all of it had a deeper impact upon her than it did me. Thats the thing about being a mum. It really is a double edged sword. Our children bring us joy (sometimes) and yet only they have the capacity to break our hearts like no other. It does not matter the age of the child the mother will still suffer when the child does. This was my mothers experience and it took its toll. I often tried to protect her from bad news at appointments, but she was no fool and I know that she armed herself with all of the facts. It was unspoken but i am confident that my mum believed that my death would not be too far away. When i asked her in the hospice why she had not attended to her own cancer sooner her answer was that she did not want to be saved as in her words "I refuse to inhabit a world without you in it". A Mothers love indeed. Therefore today I can toast my mum without too much pain because she is at peace and and i have all of my wonderful memories of her, whilst knowing that she didn't have to live with memories of a daughter who suffered.

Another poignant point of course is this, according to statistics, this will be my last mothers day. Now I am by no means sitting here entrenched in this belief as none of us know and until my scan results I have no idea what my future holds. However, being realistic there is a fair chance that I won't be here and so today I will make the most of it. Thats what we should all do after all. When i woke up this morning I choose to see today as a positive. So far it's working. Happy Mothers Day.

The power of people...

Faith in good people can carry you even in the hardest journey.

Lesley Graham




My blog encouraged quite a lot of you to get in touch with me yesterday and i am very grateful for that. And so last night I had a bit of insight as to why my mood has been so low (apart from the obvious)

As we know my life has been topsy turvey these last 2 months and it really has taken everything from me moving house. However the main problem is having been let down badly by people whom I had considered friends. The actual practicalities of the house renovation and all of the stuff that goes with it were not my undoing...people were.

For the first time in my journey I have had to recognise that not all can be trusted to do the right thing even in dire situations. Well lesson learned but I can't and won't let it beat me its just the way of it and I have enough battles to fight. Many messages last night showed me the good in people again and i am going to hold on to that. I have set myself 2 tasks for today nothing too strenuous but i need the focus.

Scared to live...

"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily"

Napolean Bonaparte


I have had to set a new account and this is is my first new blog. Where to begin? My health is poor and I have some very bad days whereby I have no energy whatsoever. I saw my consultant this morning and i will have a full body and brain scan in the next couple of weeks. I am not scared I think because of how debilitated i have become. My mood right now is so low that death does not daunt me. Now that is something that I never dreamed that I would say. It takes me back to when I blogged last year about a woman I knew from chemo clinic who chose to stop her chemo with inevitable death around the corner. I said then that I did not judge, but simply that I did not understand, I think that I do now.

No one can fully appreciate the fine line between living and dying until virtually everything that they knew as their life is basically taken away. This, at the moment is my situation. I am not me anymore in any real way. In a way such changes bring great acceptance to alternatives and take away fear. Mother Nature is a clever devil. There is no miracle cure for me and yes chemo may extend my life a little but I have to weigh up whether that life is worth it. These decisions are a good few weeks away, who knows what will have happened in between times .

On the house front, I was rather ambitious and the whole thing has taken its toll on me. Hindsight is such a great thing!