What a year…..!!

“What would your highlight of the year be Mam?” asked my son today as we were driving (we do a lot of talking in the car…) and like everybody else today, I found myself thinking about this last year.I found myself straight back to this time last year, in a hotel in Llanelli making a vow, a promise, a hope that this next year would be better and a positive one.

We had suffered through two whole years of misery; becoming disabled, in constant pain and losing the career I loved – the ever lovely P and I decided that we couldn’t stay in the pit we found ourselves in, that we had to go forward with a smile and just bloody well keep going.

With all this in mind, the first thing we decided to do was set a date for our wedding! We’d put it off long enough, wheelchair or no wheelchair, it was time to plan a future. And plan a future we did – in short we managed to squeeze in a wedding, a house sale and finally finding our dream bungalow all into 12 short months. If that’s not a feat to be proud of, I don’t know what is!

So at the end of 2017, to answer my son’s question, I found it so difficult to pick out just one, the year has been littered in wonderful memories. Memories of amazing friends who played ‘Willy Bingo’ with me in a pub in Canton for my hen night, memories of my fantastic family, sisters who came wedding dress shopping with me, a daughter who organised a hilarious hen weekend, blissful holidays, crazy fun making tv programmes house hunting with the stars and of course, the most amazing memories of all – our beautiful wedding day.

Once the wedding was over, it was time to really push ahead and find this seemingly impossible accessible home…..until we found it! Months dedicated to searching, sorting and packing resulted in finally finding it, hard work or luck, I don’t care what made it possible, I’m just grateful we found it. It’s been tough; emotionally certainly and so very tough physically but we’re here and I couldn’t be happier.

All of these wonderful memories would not have been possible without a huge amount of help, support and love from many people but none of them would be possible without one very special person – my wonderful P. He is the rock that I cling to and stand on everyday and I love him for that.

So, here’s to a Happy New Year to us all- to all my friends who have been beside me all the way this year, to my wonderful family and to those of you who have supported me by reading my scribblings, (over 6,500 of you!!) I thank you from the bottom of my heart, wherever you may be, I love you all!