Day of Gratitude - The Writer's Cafe and Collaborative Art At Broadacre House

It's happened again.  Another brief comment on Facebook got longer than intended.  This time it was a post in the Sunday Assembly Gratitude Group, for today, July 13th.  I am excited enough by it and by the new beginnings in my life that I post it here.

_______________________

Grateful for having the spoons to try new things this week. After kitten cuddling on Monday and going to new places yesterday, this morning I took the plunge and went along to The Writers' Cafe at Settle Down.

I've known about such things for quite a while. But hey, that's where writers go. Proper people who write things. Proper writers who know how to use words. And I'm not a writer.

Except I am.

I am a writer because I want to write. I am a writer because this year have been taking steps and time to write - even if much of it is devoted to a small pink blob! I am a writer because the urge is there inside and maybe this time it won't be stopped by self doubt, self loathing, or any of the excuses I've invented over the years. Honestly, I am a writer because I am writing. It's obvious but it was obscured in the haziness of doubt and a history of unwillingness to ascribe positives to myself.

I have small beginnings. Of course. But they are beginnings. And I am truly grateful for them. What existed only as a desire that I never believed would be conceived into being, let alone born as a helpless infant, now exists in both childlike and childish reality

They say rightly that from small seeds grow great trees. My tree may never be as mighty as a giant redwood. But if my tree grows to have anything like the ecstatically interesting shapes of those I saw yesterday I will be far more than satisfied.

If my branches can be unpredictable. If they form shapes not seen in a child's picture book that shows only the acceptable, idealised form of the tree.

If my wounds, like the splits and scars on the trees, are allowed to proudly add to the story rather than being deemed shameful.

And if my tree can provide refuge for another being, if it can give life, then I will be rewarded by that privilege.

I enjoyed the group. I have another little writing project to try to find the energy and make the time for. I met good people. I met again a member of this Sunday Assembly group. And I'll go back and experience it again.

I could wish that I had managed to go along sooner. I could wish that I had been brave enough to walk into that place and be a part of something unknown. I could wish that I had not spent so many years holding myself back from living in abundance.

I could wish the same about so many aspects of my life that have been finding their place and their freedom over the last few years. But everything must happen in its own time and in our own state of readiness for them.

Maybe, as a writer, writing foremost for my own sensual joy of the words, of the thoughts, of the images, and of the story, it is my time of readiness to become what I often dreamed but could never dare.

This photo was taken in the middle of September when I was wandering around Broadacre House after a mindfulness group. A haiku on a window. It just happens to be by Marie, who led the group.

Oops. The above is over 500 words. Whatever happened to being brief?! This is enough for another instant, accidentally free written on Facebook blog post.  [And yes, here it is.  Hoorah.] Yay! It may be obvious that I'm a little enthusiastic tonight. That is probably a very good thing.

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A thought.

While I'm blogging the words I posted on Facebook.  Here's another photo.  It's of a collaborative piece of art that I was a part of a few days before taking the haiku photo.  Yes, this is really a day of gratitude from ten months ago.  I note that these photos were taken one month to the day after the start of Autscape and the day I first met Amanda.  The nearly a year that's passed since arriving at Autscape has been amazing in a lot of unexpected ways.  Walking into Broadacre House was one of the unexpected things.

There was a peace conference at Broadacre just a fortnight after I learned of the place. At the conference interesting people spoke about different aspects of peace, their own experiences of peace, and of the work they do in different ways to facilitate peace.  This was a couple of weeks after a friend had answered the question "And what do you do?" for me by saying "She is a peace facilitator."  A wonderful answer and I still don't know exactly what it means for me.  The day at Broadacre also included a wide range of workshops and discussion groups.  I signed up for a bunch of them at the start of the day and then participated in a completely different bunch of them.  But nobody minded such indecisiveness.

One of the workshops was to create this collaborative art.  Each person was given one square of the finished item and the idea was just to throw colour on.  This was completely new for me.  I still don't really know how to just throw colour on or to play or to just whack it on and see what happens.  But I had a go.  My first real foray into art as play.  And I think also it was my first time picking up a paintbrush for any purpose other than painting a wall since I was at school.  A day of new experiences.  Here, just so you know and I know, are my two attempts at slapping on colour and trying to let go and just have fun.  My first square is at the top.  My second at the bottom.

 

Days of Gratitude - Finding Interesting People Across The Stepping Stones

It's time for another blog post.  As the days pass without posting I get further behind with it all.  I do my best to keep going out, to keep experiencing the world around me and taking photos of it all.  And there are things I want to be writing about too.

But between having days on which my head doesn't allow me to do much at all, keeping busy on the other days, and co-writing a blog with Blob Thing, I run out of time to write my own blog.  It's a problem, at least for me.  Blob's blog is taking more time than expected.  The plan was to post a photo of him each day and maybe add a short explanation.  It hasn't worked.  On every day in the last week we've written over 1000 words together about some or other adventure he had.

So here, at last, after a gap of ten days is a blog post of my own.  Another one of the gratitude posts.  There have been some pretty tough days this month with my head.  Some of them have been a major struggle and on quite a few I haven't had the mental energy to be able to leave the house.  Slowly I am learning to accept that I will always have difficulties.  Before accepting myself as autistic there was always some hope that a therapy or a self-help practice would offer a full solution, a cure all to my head.  While there were things that had helped me a lot - and most especially accepting myself as Clare - there were still lots of problems and I hoped to find a way for them to vanish.  But autism isn't curable.  It's for life.  And that's okay.  Coming to terms with it has been tough but I think I'm getting there now.  It is difficult to live with and it always will be.  But for various reasons I don't want to be cured, to be not-autistic.

That's something to write about another day.  Yes, another unwritten post that might become written eventually.  Here instead are five days of gratitude.

1^st July

Grateful for a little wander in Morpeth before visiting the local charity shops.

Grateful to have found Carlisle Park and walked by the river and seen the stepping stones.

Grateful not to have got very wet in the rain.

Isn't Blob Thing stunning?!

He was so brave on the stepping stones and jumped across them all.

Another day for Blob to blog about.  And another day for me to blog about too.  In all honesty my time in Morpeth was far better than I had expected it to be.

2^nd July

Really, really hard day mentally. And my knee (which managed over 12 1/2 miles walking today) hurt so much I was close to tears.

So. A quiet day at home.

Grateful for the game Fez. I played quite a bit of it a while ago and just started it again. I must have gone another way because I pretty much don't recognise anything in the game so far! It's nicely relaxing. Not much running about and avoiding things that kill you!

 And grateful for these guys in the picture. I sat and binge watched the last episodes of the final series. They have given me much enjoyment over the past few years. And now it's over. What began as a not that interesting good/bad guy of the week drama evolved into one of the best things on TV. Rest in Peace Person of Interest. Thanks for the wild ride.

3^rd July

Grateful for dry weather and a knee coping surprisingly well.

I started my Wear to Tees walk having been distracted by refugees when I tried to start it a fortnight ago.

It was meant to be a short walk but somehow became longer. From St. Peter's Metro to Easington Colliery. Next time, Easington to Hartlepool maybe.

Grateful that, though it's my longest walk in a LONG while, I am not aching much.

4^th July

Grateful to have got through a tough head day and to have managed to attempt at least one positive step in it.

Grateful to have Amanda in my life even though we have to be so far apart most of the time.

Grateful for photos and the memories they bring. The last year is full of good memories and having the pictures helps greatly on the most difficult days.

[I didn't include a photo in the Sunday Assembly Gratitude Group that day.  But here is one, a card I received from Amanda exactly one month earlier in celebration of my re-birthday, a day that means a lot more to me than my legal birthday.]

5^th July

Grateful to have gone out for lunch with Beth. Even though plans went very wrong.

Grateful for how quiet the cathedral cafe was when I later sat there with a drink and a book. I haven't been there in ages.

Blob enjoyed it too and went exploring afterwards.

Months of Gratitude - Master Post - Links to all the Gratitude

Here they are.  Every gratitude post so far.

At the end of 2015 someone in the Sunday Assembly Newcastle suggested a Facebook gratitude group.  The idea is to post something every day for which you are thankful.  The idea doesn't work out that way as there are maybe half a dozen posts each day in total from the current bunch of seventy-five members.

I've been trying to post each day but haven't always succeeded.  So far I have missed nine days.  Nine.  Maybe my next challenge will be to write a gratitude thing for each of those days - if I have a photo or a facebook post to remind me of what on earth I was doing at the time.  I know that for some of the days I just didn't have time to post.  I can see from the days around them that I was having a good time.  Yes, maybe a post of all the missed posts is needed - just so I can have a sense of completeness.

And for my own benefit mainly I have blogged my gratitude diary so I can look back on the days and weeks and months and see how much good there has been in my life.  Due to my mental health and also the difficulties inherent in autism it can be very difficult sometimes.  It's great to be able to look back so easily and great that my screensaver on the laptop contains hundreds (maybe thousands by now) of photographs of things that were good or still are good.

I think keeping the diary has been good for me.  It's become part of my self care regime.  I remember in 2001 I was part of an online support group for people who self harm.  As part of that group people wrote lists of "pozzies".  Ten positive things each day.  There were times back then I could sit for an hour trying to write that list and would still be struggling to write the first one.  And yet there were good things in my life then.  I just couldn't see them or think about them at the time.  Life is so much better now and I can find things to be thankful for even on the days that I could chalk up as being pretty crap.  Like the ones where I have panic attacks in the street.  Or can't leave the house at all.  The ones on which I meltdown.  The ones on which it's tempting to give up, despair, hate myself.  I still find the positives.  Because there are always positives.  Always.

I am very thankful for my life.  It's a struggle.  But I am determined.  And so, there is all this:


2016.  Day one.

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/2016-day-one-things-for-which-i-am.html

December 30th to January 7th.

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/days-of-gratitude-first-days.html

January 8th to January 18th.  (Missing January 10th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/days-of-gratitude-eleven-days-ten-nights.html

January 19th to January 23rd

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/days-of-gratitude-five-days-of.html

January 24th to January 30th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/days-of-gratitude-hard-times-tea.html

January 31st to February 7th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/days-of-gratitude-worst-of-meltdowns.html

February 8th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/one-day-of-gratitude-big-decision-for.html

February 9th to February 15th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/days-of-gratitude-freedom-and-friends.html

February 16th to February 22nd (no February 20th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/days-of-gratitude-drums-darkness-and.html

February 23rd to February 28th (missing February 29th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/days-of-gratitude-lent-and-love-autism.html

March 1st to March 7th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/days-of-gratitude-persimmon-piano-and.html

March 8th to March 15th (missing March 9th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/days-of-gratitude-awesome-people-art.html

March 16th to March 23rd

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/days-of-gratitude-hindu-gods-ambition.html

March 24th to March 27th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-fun-is-banned.html

March 28th to March 30th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-bad-days-and-sudden.html

March 31st

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-international.html

April 1st to April 8th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-puzzles-plinths-pills.html

April 9th to April 15th (no April 12th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-birthdays-and-bubbles.html

April 16th to April 23rd (no April 17th or April 20th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-friendships-forests.html

April 24th to April 28th (no April 24th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/days-of-gratitude-walking-down-wansbeck.html

April 29th to May 2nd

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/days-of-gratitude-walking-from-tyne-to.html

May 3rd to May 6th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/days-of-gratitude-ice-creams-and.html

May 7th to May 10th (no May 7th)

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/days-of-gratitude-rivers-and-benches.html

May 11th to May 14th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/days-of-gratitude-cakes-cream-keys.html

May 15th to May 19th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/days-of-gratitude-psychiatrists-dwp-and.html

May 20th to May 23rd

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/days-of-gratitude-to-jeremy-hunt-we.html

May 24th to May 29th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-liquorice-love-and.html

May 30th to June 5th

https://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-tombstones-depressing.html

June 6th to June 12th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.com/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-angels-and-blob.html

June 13th to June 17th

https://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-cafes-cakes-north-in.html

June 18th to June 21st

https://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-for-food-friends-and.html

June 22nd to June 26th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.com/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-why-friendship-and.html

June 27th to June 30th

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.com/2016/06/days-of-gratitude-smushing-away-with.html

The missing days - or at least eight out of nine of them

http://reborn-as-woman.blogspot.com/2016/07/days-of-gratitude-missing-days-in-first.html

Days of Gratitude - The Missing Days in The First Six Months

This is going to be a challenge.

The challenge is to write a gratitude post for each of the days I have missed when posting in the Sunday Assembly Newcastle Gratitude Group.  I try to post each day but even I have missed days.

Nine days so far.  In six months.

The obsessive completist in me can't cope with that.  I have to fill in the gaps no matter what.   [Okay, so one of those gaps has been impossible to fill.  The obsessive completist will just have to put up with it.]

It's going to be tough.  For some of these days I have no photos to choose.  And no Facebook posts to crib from.  I'm going to have to guess.  But here goes.  This is me, doing my best to be grateful for things that happened weeks or months ago.

January 10th

The first missed day.  And the first with no photos and no posts.

But I know that it was a good day.  On January 8th I left for Manchester to stay with Amanda.  On the 9th we went to Bury together.  On the 11th we stroked alpacas in Heaton Park.  And the 12nd was a wonderful day ending with going to the Into The Woods (... to grandmother's house).

I haven't got certainty about what we were doing on January 10th but it would have been a good day.  And I know that there was no post only because I didn't have the time to do it.

Here's what I think happened:

It was a Sunday.  Amanda works for part of the day.  I am pretty sure we went to charity shops in Didsbury on that day.  If that's the case then I bought myself The Big Red Book, a big book of poems by Rumi.  Then before Amanda began work we planned to walk round Fletcher Moss Park.  But it was so waterlogged and flooded that we couldn't get far and retreated to drink tea in a cafe.  And if that's the case I had a good time before heading back to her house and resting myself while she worked.  Lucky me!

February 20th

The second missed day.  But I know how it began at least.  And I'm grateful for that.

After 38 days away from Manchester, and 35 without seeing Amanda, I set off and caught the 7am National Express Coach and was with her again by the end of the morning.

I have no photos of the day so have no idea what we did for the rest of the day and evening.  Did we stay in?  Go out?  Get visited?  Eat curry?  I don't know.  But I know that we were very glad to be together again.

February 29th

It was a day for finding all sorts of autism related things on Facebook.  Images such as this.

And it was a day to sit at home posting all sorts of things on Facebook too.  An excellent page on autism acceptance by Steve Silberman and also a whole bunch of actually autistic people.  A page that sadly doesn't exist now.  John Oliver talking about how awful Donald Trump is, how many false things he says and how often his businesses fail.  Plus cheap humour about Trump not having the same surname as when his family moved to America.  That's very cheap humour.  Lots and lots of immigrant families changed their names, very often to avoid racism from American people.  It happened in the UK lots for the same reasons.  And if you want to attack someone for changing their name - well I changed my entire name in 2013.

There are photos from this date.  Yay!  It looks like I could have been grateful to have cleared out enough CDs so that they all fit on my many CD shelves.  Considering how few CDs I've played in the last couple of years I have a heck of a lot of them.

March 9th

Nope.  No photos.  No Facebook posts.  But it was still a good day, whatever I was doing.  It was the first of two days in a trip to Manchester.  So it would have been good, just with no time for photos or Facebook or gratitude posts.

Working hard to remember.  That day was 200 days since I had danced and played in the puddles with Amanda and ended the evening hoping and wondering if I might have found a friend.  I think we celebrated 200 days.  We made cake.


April 12th

Guess what?  Another missed day that happened when I was visiting Manchester.  That's four out of five!

I couldn't tell you what happened that day.  The day before we were in Stockport and I went swimming for the first time as Clare, which was a big overcoming of fear.  The day afterwards we were blowing bubbles in Bury.  But on April 12th, I don't know.

April 17th

You know what?  I think I may have been having a really crappy day.  I posted this image on Facebook, shared from Spoon Shortage Sue.

But I need a gratitude thingummy so here goes:  Grateful that the majority of days are better than that one.  And grateful that I have a 100% success record at getting through the crappiest of head days.

I think I might have been feeling bad because I knew that I had to do something important, something that felt like a huge chunk in a total breaking away from the central reason I'd lived the previous twenty-five years.  The next morning I formally resigned my church membership.  And felt a lot better once it was done.

April 20th

I know I was feeling bad.  Bad about things that I had hoped to do and knew I couldn't.  But I got out and sat outside a cafe with someone for half an hour.  I thought it was going to be at least half a social thing but no.  It was entirely about the starting of a business connected with autism, with big plans and a whole "here's what you need to be doing and we need you to be doing it."  But I knew I couldn't do it.  Not at the moment anyway.  It's just too much and it's totally unrealistic.  I wanted it for a while and felt awful about giving it up.  But I did give it up, formally doing that the next day.

But hey, grateful for the sunshine.  And grateful to be brave enough to give it up even though I wanted it and other people wanted it for me.  Continuing to try would have continued to hurt me - and it was hurting me.  Letting it go I think has been good for me.  There is so much I just can't do.  What I need to do is accept that and start to learn what I can do and what my passions really are rather than ever allowing myself to be driven by other people's passions, hopes for me, or enthusiasm for a cause.

I need to live.  And I need to live as me.  With all my limitations.  And with all my strengths too.  That's part of what learning to be autistic is about.  To grow in my strengths and be proud of them.  And not to be ashamed or guilty for all the stuff I can't do.

Blob Thing enjoyed the cafe anyway.

April 24th

Lots of missed days in a short space.  I have to confess I was considering giving up the gratitude diary.  It's a group where most people don't post and there are fewer posts than at the beginning and without a few pretty faithful people the idea would have died by now.

It was a Sunday.  And it was the Sunday Assembly.  And I missed it.  My head wasn't doing well enough and I knew that I wouldn't be able to cope with the theme or the promised extra amount of noise.  I missed it in May too due to being away.  And I'm booked to be away for the June assembly too.  Maybe I'll manage to get there in July.

Grateful though.  Because a friend was staying and was there for most of the day - for longer than she had planned.  She is always welcome though and it's great that she is so comfortable here.

May 7th

As I type this, May 7th is only four weeks gone.  But I do not have a clue about the day.  Not.  A.  Clue.  No photos.  No Facebook.  Nothing.  At all.

I can tell you that I had returned from Manchester on May 6th after an excellent time there.  I can tell you that my mental health was pretty damn shaky when I returned.  I was trying my best, and getting myself out as much as possible but I was finding things pretty tough.

Of May 7th I can't tell you a thing.  Great isn't it.  I manage to write something - no matter how tenuous - for each of the days I missed.  But for the most recent one I have nothing.  A big blank.

Oh well, one failed day out of the nine is a lot better than I was expected when I wrote out the list of missed dates.  One out of nine isn't much.  Or one out of 184 - including the two days I posted before the year began.  It's pretty good.  And that in itself is something to be grateful for.

Days of Gratitude - Smushing Away with Laughter, Liquorice, and Liberation

So here we are.  It's the end of half a year.  Happy new half year to you all.

I've kept this up for six months.  I never expected that.  I thought I'd probably manage it for a few days.  And then it came to April and I thought the diary would soon be stopping, that the Sunday Assembly group would be dead, having died the death of half-heartedness, a good idea that didn't quite happen.

I'm glad it's lasted this long.  Posting something (nearly) every day has been good for me.  There have been plenty of wonderful days.  And they have been plenty of days too which I could have marked down as being pretty crappy.  I could have just put them in the "bad days" drawer and felt bad.  But instead I've had to find things to be grateful for on those days and that's helped me.

I've been quite faithful in the gratitude group.  I am the most faithful member.  And I'm also the annoying one who doesn't just post a sentence and a photo but posts paragraphs and multiple pictures.  I've tried to post every day.  And I haven't succeeded.  In these six months I have not managed to post on 9 days.  Out of 182.  That's a 95% success rate.  Woo hoo!  I think I pass the gratitude practical examination!

Yes, it's been a good six months.  I end it in a better mental state that I had at the beginning.  I end it having experienced people, events and places that I had not experienced before.  I end it with several thousand more photos - some of which are actually pretty good.  I end it more comfortable with myself.  I also end it by taking more psychiatric medication than before.  That seems to be helping too.

I began the year as a regular church goer.  Then made the decision, somehow, to take a break from it.  And then made the decision not to return to it.  That's like ripping out the centre of the meaning of my life and not knowing how the gaping wounded hole can be filled.  It's like jumping from a cliff without knowing if there is any safe landing, or any form of landing at all.  But I believe it was the right decision.  Not knowing the answers is very liberating.

So happy new half year everyone.  Wishing you interesting times for the second half of 2016.  In some circles that's a curse.  But may it be interesting anyway - even if the interest leads to dark places those places will be ones in which we can grow in love.  I for one still have much growing in love to do.  But where there is the opportunity for growth, there will be found hope and new life.

Here goes.  The final four days of June.  Who wants to place bets on whether I'll still be doing this at the end of December?

27^th June


Grateful that it's not forever.

Nothing is forever.

Be like Blob Thing.

Hold onto the laughter.

I say no more.

28^th June

Grateful to have got through it. Tough head day.

Grateful for liquorice.

Some may consider that this amount is excessive. They may be right.

Katjes Kinder, Joris Zouts, Joris Rounds, Toms with 7% Ammonium Chloride, and lots more.

Plus plenty of our favourite salty liquorice toads.

Grateful too for Blob Thing. Everything he represents to me. And that though it may be slightly odd writing he is at least inspiring me to free write at least something every day.

And of course to post it at blobthing.blogspot.co.uk

29^th June

Grateful today for having wandered into St. George's, Jesmond for the first time.

It wouldn't have happened if I had remembered to get off the Metro in the right place and gone somewhere entirely different!

Also grateful for replacement certificates that arrived in the post.

They have my name. Yay.

And that I bought lots of ingredients in the market for smushing (pronounced smwshing because I have to say it in a particular accent).

Tomorrow I will attempt smushing in the smusher that turned out to need a LOT of cleaning.  It hasn't had a lot of use in

Who needs a Nutribullet?!

30^th June

Grateful to have sheltered from the noise by drinking tea in the Lit and Phil. I have never drunk tea there before.

Blob Thing enjoyed it too and he found some friends to talk with.

He should be able to come to Sunday Assembly in July. Another adventure.

Also grateful to have been typing these things for the past six months and to be in a better space than I was at the beginning.

I think the photo shows just how much more sane I am now.

Days of Gratitude - Why? Friendship and Freedom in Greater Manchester

And the gratitude continues.

These were good days.  Another of my trips to stay with Amanda.  I love that part of my life.  She was working quite a bit - which is good.  It's great to watch her life continue to blossom even if it does mean I may get to spend less time with her.  I was able to use the time apart well and to enter more into what will eventually be a pretty wide exploration of Manchester.   Twice I walked from Manchester city centre and found good directions to travel.  Even with a duff knee that keeps hurting every step I enjoyed the experiences.  And Blob Thing got to visit the Blue Peter garden too and was extremely happy about it.  He'll blog about that sometime.

22^nd June

Grateful to have travelled back to Manchester/Salford for a few days with Amanda.


We went to the theatre in the evening to see The 39 Steps. Cast of 4. 138 characters.

Afterwards the light in Salford Quays was brilliant and the temperature still warm.

It's good to be here.




















23^rd June

Grateful to be able to spend the day with Amanda, relaxing in Southport and buying much liquorice.

Grateful to lie under the skies and watch the bubbles from our bubble guns.

Grateful to play on the beach and have moments on which nothing matters at all except for being together.

 Grateful for having so many more photos than these.


24^th June


Grateful that it didn't rain hard for too long and there was somewhere nice to shelter.

Grateful that it turned into a good day walking in central Manchester and then along the canal to Salford Quays.

Next time, a lot more of the canal waits.















 25^th June

Grateful for a full day with Amanda.

She came up with an advertising slogan for Fleetwood:

Fleetwood It's a Bit Shit.

[Honestly: She just said "It's a bit shit" and I said that could be the slogan on an advertising brochure.]

Actually there were things to enjoy in Fleetwood and the ferry to Knott End was fun.  I felt a bit sad walking in the main street mid-afternoon on a Saturday to see it almost totally deserted.  It's certainly got a lot more deserted in the years since I moved away.  Hopefully one day the fortunes of the town can improve again.

So tired by the end and the world is very hard work for both of us. By the end, it felt far more shit than the most shit part of Fleetwood, wherever that may be.  It was tough.  Very, very tough.

Many times it would be far easier to not live than to live, to hide each day. But we have determination to live as fully as we can. And part of my determination arises from her example.

26^th June


Grateful for a morning of quiet, alone with Amanda.

Grateful to walk through the afternoon beginning at Manchester Victoria railway station and following the River Irwell.

In the rain. In a cute short-sleeved top but no jacket or anything waterproof.

Grateful to find pretty things even by the centre of Manchester. And very pretty things as I walked further. Some will need proper return visits.

Another time the walk can continue from where I ended, Clifton Park and on another occasion I can return to Drinkwater Park too. Looking forward to those days.

 

Days of Gratitude - For Food, Friends and Fellowship ... And Unexpected Meetings

Hoorah!

Some more days from my gratitude diary.  I am immensely grateful for the diary.  After nearly six months I can say that it has helped me a lot.  It's not the only thing that's helped me in the first half of the year.  The biggest three helps - all of which either didn't exist six months ago or were very new six months ago are this diary, the realisation of how much I can do with a bus pass, and my friendship with Amanda.  Without each of those three I would not be as well as I currently am.  I am immensely grateful for them all.

I have come a long way in the first half of this year.  My mental health has improved a lot, especially since the middle of April.  I'm actually quite proud of having reached the point I am at now as I was a long way from it six months ago. It feels good.  Or at least it feels good when it's not feeling bad!

So here we are.  Four more very varied days.  A couple were very quiet.  A couple were very busy.  And one of them went in a brilliant direction that I couldn't have predicted if I'd had all the astrological skills of Russell Grant and Mystic Meg combined and if I lived in an alternative universe where such astrology actually works.

18^th June

Grateful for a quiet day and for friends.

Grateful to have had the time to write blog posts for Blob Thing who is getting increasingly thoughtful at times.

Grateful to have learned more about quick photo editing on this phone. On the old one I could do nothing.

Although it turns out that negatives can be almost terrifying!

Grateful to have the confidence in me to go out unshaven and dressed in a short skirt and a panda top complete with panda hood.

Beth's friend saw me and called me adorable. Yay!

19^th June

Grateful to visit the Quakers today for the first time in ages. It was nearly silent worship but I go away with things to think about.

Today they unveiled this colour wheel. Each crayon is next to handwritten text, adjectives that members of the meeting had written about Quakers and being a Quaker. Each crayon has a specially made label.

It really is rather a special thing.

And afterwards there was a shared lunch.

Very glad to have been there today.

20^th June

I went for a short walk today. But plans changed quickly when I encountered these people crossing Monkwearmouth Bridge. Grateful to have joined them and walked with them to North Shields.

Grateful too for the good people at The Sage this evening singing songs to protest Nigel Farage and the UKIP event.

Glad to actually have the mental health today to stand with them, hold a placard, and sing out.

21^st June

Grateful for this £1.99 box set from Oxfam. I just finished season two and am almost in awe at it. This was 1984. Tea-time children's television. Yet it was THIS show.

Probably the best Robin Hood version ever. I can rave about it.

And grateful to look at my photos and other people's photos from Monday.

Many good people.

Pleased with how this picture worked out for me.  I took it on Marsden Beach if anyone is wondering.  Just before this we made a friendship circle round the rock stack.