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Christmas Wishes
This Christmas I’m supporting Centrepoint, the UK’s leading charity for homeless young people and it would really make my Christmas if you’d consider doing the same. Homelessness in the UK jumped this year by 15 per cent from last year, and more than a third of this increase was made up of young people between the ages of 16 and 24. Using their More than a Gift service you could give a ‘gift’ on behalf of a friend or loved one to help a young person that’ll be spending this Christmas on the streets. From as little as a fiver, you could help provide a cooked meal, a book, or a warm bed for the night. Pretty much every single one of us could go without five quid’s worth of something to give someone who’s not facing much of a happy Christmas a better chance. Please think about it. If you’ve enjoyed my posts and tweets this year, you could even send the virtual gift on my behalf – my email is josie@sleepisfortheweak.org.uk if you’d like to.
Many, many thanks, and merry Christmas.
love Josie x
Read MoreThe blog is BACK! Hurray!
It’s back, it’s back! Apologies for the, um, ‘technical difficulties’, the last few days. Turns out my automatically renewing domain and hosting subscription weren’t so automatic this year (stupid Paypal’s fault) so everything got cancelled! Took a lot of fairly frantic emails to get it sorted but there we go. I hope you enjoyed learning all about acne in place of my usual content.
As the blog was down on Monday, apologies that the Writing Workshop linky didn’t appear. I think the best thing to do will be to push everything forward a week so I’ll put the linky up this Monday coming if that’s alright. That gives you a bit more time to join in if you want to, too.
I’m aware that even without the blog going tits up, posts are a bit lacking in general at the moment. Trying to keep up with the degree as well as take care of Kai is proving a bit knackering, but the promise of PRE-SCHOOL in a couple of weeks looms large, so hopefully there will be a bit more time for everything.
Ta-ra till I get a free evening then. x
Read MoreThe Journey
A poem by Mary Oliver.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
***
See you soon x
Read MoreBroke
Something got a bit broke in me on Friday. I’ve talked about emotional limits before and this time, for the first time, I was taken beyond mine.
There has been a lot of sleeping and a lot of crying and a lot of very tentatively picking my way around the sharp bits. I mostly want to hide and not tell anyone about it, because it all feels so pathetic that I actually want to bang my head against a wall. But people care, and people worry, and by people I mean you, so I just wanted to let you know that, although I can’t really talk about what’s happening, I’m still here.
I seem to have timed all this rather dreadfully. My Grandma has stopped eating now and is unconscious so it will be any time. The last thing everyone needs is me falling apart but it feels like trying to hold water in a sieve.
I have never felt so alone and lost and stupidly, irrationally afraid. My little red friend here seemed to sum it up rather beautifully.
I’m just waiting now. For Grandma, and for me, for the reset that will get me going again and let me start picking up the pieces. I hope both are soon. In the meantime I hold my boy a little closer and life moves on.
