A Foreword

I have started writing a book, a book to share all my deepest pain with the rest of the world and to share the beauty that has come from it all. To say Thank You for every lesson learnt. To say there really is a reason to live and to ENJOY the experience of being Here, wherever Here may be for you.

"Before we begin, I find it important to say that this is my one sided, yet as balanced as possible, tale of what has felt like survival in a challenging World. A world that recognizes milestones of materialist achievement and appearance more than the strongest roots, and most valuable aspects, of human nature. Of Compassion, of Empathy and of course; of Love for others and ourselves.

This is a story that goes beyond Divorce and it’s wider impact on the cataclysmic scale I experienced; the stuff we bury so unbelievably deep to try and save face and fit in. The vulnerability that comes with losing a home, financial security and what feels like your grounding in the world as you have known it. You become a child all over again but without a parent to do the work for you. Lost, confused, scared, sad, alone.

It is a story of a girl growing into a woman and dealing with all the pain and grief that comes with certain truths hidden under the inner pebbles. It is perhaps a journey so many of us go through in silence when our lives get turned upside down or we are knocked back by a grief we never knew could exist.

It is a sharing of all the things that I have learnt about being human, mistakes and all. I am not perfect and I have caused pain to others in the process. This book is maybe my most sincere apology to those whose lives I have inflicted my own wounds onto, but it is also my statement in that we all deserve to be acknowledged and seen in the pain that others have too caused us. That without doing so we continue to hurt, to destroy and to judge based on the inability to always be able to understand on a truly empathetic nature of what others have experienced, in a way that we may never fully understand in ourselves.

Whatever your experiences in life, I implore you to be open about the challenges you face within yourselves and to hear those that try to share theirs. To look beyond whatever comfort and security you have to know that those without such pillars are literally fighting to stay alive. To offer help and support to those who extend beyond your immediate network to encourage and support balance in this ever-divisive World. Between rich and poor, stability and vulnerability, privilege and the lack thereof. I come from immense privilege but I can now recognize more than ever how kindness to those who don’t have such a warm coating is vitally important to the wellbeing of us all. I had a glimpse of what it is like to lose our connection to the floor and it has been truly horrendous. In all of it, that I had so much, yet the emotional complexities of the process too were and continue to be, incredibly hard to handle. I was just not prepared.

It’s important to try and have those hard conversations, to ask for help when you need it and to cry when it all gets too much. We keep so much hidden inside, which burns like a pit of shame and anger. And when we feel shamed, and angry, we feel guilt and we feel like terrible people and we turn into people we are not.

I became someone I’m not in the process of the events leading up to my relationship and marriage breaking down to someone I had loved so very much pretty much from day one. Something that perhaps still feels like a life sentence at times as I still work through and learn to appreciate and understand that the choices I made were also the responses to the actions of others. That the love we have had for others in the past doesn’t threaten those we love now, that it is a constantly evolving exploration of dealing with all we give to one person and the life we build with them versus what we lose when it ends.

That I was screaming to be seen, screaming to be heard, screaming to be loved in the way I needed to be loved, to be content with what I had whilst also knowing I wasn’t on the right track to where I needed to go. In doing so I lost all that I loved, and more. I would hate to see this happen to others as it did for me, and this is why I felt the story was important to be told. Be kind to those who make choices you don’t understand. I wish I could have understood that then, but this is now and I am so immensely grateful for the life I am creating now. And the Now is all we have, so there is no better time from which to make change and to acknowledge all there is to explore and be grateful for in our lives. For there is plenty. There is so very, very much that we just do not appreciate until we lose it.

Maybe it’s time we took stock of all we have, become more aware of those who are less fortunate, pay more for our clothes and chocolate because it means someone else has a better life. To remember always that there are those who have to swim across oceans in the fight to stay alive, before we destroy it all in wanting more and more and more. And ultimately, shower those you Love with Love. Because once they’re gone, you’ll really wish you had given them more."