Let’s talk about that delightful little brain trick where the second you feel even slightly sad, you go full Sherlock Holmes on yourself trying to figure out whether it’s just a down day or the start of another trip down the depression mine shaft. Spoiler alert: there are no clear signs. No flashing neon that says “This is fine” or “Welcome back to the void.” Just vibes. And not the good kind.

This week? The vibes have been terrible.

It started with one thing—one stupid little thing—toppling. And like any good neurodivergent woman, my brain took that as an excuse to spiral into a full symphony of what ifs, what now, and oh god not again.

Because here’s the truth: when you’re autistic and life loses its comforting sense of constancy, your mental health is usually the first to file for divorce. We like stability. We like the known. We do not enjoy surprise plot twists. Especially the ones that come without commercial breaks or a warning at the top that says “this episode contains scenes of emotional peril.”

I’ve done all the things this week. Manifested like a woman possessed. Hugged my cats like they were emotional support therapy cushions (because they are). I’ve sipped ceremonial matcha and whispered sweet nothings to the universe while wondering if my brain is quietly sabotaging me behind my back.

Because once you’ve had depression—proper depression—you don’t just feel sad anymore. You interrogate the sadness. Is this depression again? Is this hormones? Is it burnout? Is it because Mercury’s retrograde and I haven’t saged my living room recently? Or am I just reacting normally to circumstances that are, in fact, a bit shit?

The answer, unfortunately, is probably “all of the above.”

And layered on top of that is the charming internalised monologue of my mother telling me I was born to make people unhappy and ruin lives. Lovely stuff. Really puts a bow on the whole experience.

So yes, I’ve spent too much time thinking this week. I’ve tried to soft life my way out of it with cosy corners and scented candles. I’ve tried to remind myself that just because I feel low doesn’t mean I’m doomed. But there's still a niggling fear at the back of my mind that happiness isn’t for people like me. That maybe I manifested too hard and the universe’s returns policy has kicked in.

But I’m still here. And if you are too—reading this, nodding along, wondering if you’re the only one panic-checking your mental health status every time your mood drops—then please know you’re not alone.

We’re not broken. We’re just human. Neurospicy, overthinking, cat-hugging humans trying our best to get through the week without crying on the bus.

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🔗 Soft Life Tools for When You're Falling Apart (But Aesthetically)

• Ceremonial Matcha Powder – The one I actually like, because no one needs bitter grass water when they’re already emotionally fragile.

• Milk Frother/Hot Chocolate Maker – For people who want barista energy without the burnout.

• Scented Wax Melts from the Northumberland Candle Co. – I call this one 'Emotional Stability in Scent Form'.

• Weighted Blanket – Like a hug, but from capitalism.

🧠 Neurodivergent Comforts

• Noise-Cancelling Headphones – Block out the world and listen to rain sounds while pretending you have it all together.

• Sensory/Fidget Tools – For when you need something to do with your hands besides doomscroll.

• Books That Soothe the Chaos Brain – Gentle reads for existential dread.

❤️ Mental Health Resources

• Mind UK – Coping with Depression

• Autistica – Mental Health in Autism

• The Blurt Foundation

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If you're someone who's been googling "how to know if you're depressed again" or "how to stop overthinking everything at 3am", welcome. You're in good company. This blog is filled with soft life comforts, neurodivergent tools, and tiny hacks that sometimes (just sometimes) help stop the spiralling. You’ll find my favourite matcha, the only wax melt that smells like emotional stability, and the cat-approved blanket I basically live under when life gets a bit much.

The hidden loneliness epidemic no one talks about

In 2007, I had no one except my then-husband who commanded my whole attention, he was the centre of my universe and I'd had agoraphobia, to all intents and purposes he was my whole world, I even heard a scathing relative say that if he ever left me they thought I would kill myself because I wouldn't be able to cope on my own.

Well, 12 years on and I'm still here, I still have very few friends but I am free, I have a good job that I love and I'm around people all weekend when I'm working.  I do have friends and I see Harriet a couple of times a week if I'm lucky but that's where it ends, I can't go out because the only compatible evenings for the pub quiz are the nights when Looby is home (now that she's at business school and I want to spend every spare minute with her) and not horse riding and I can't meet anyone to share my life with because I never go out.

Don't get me wrong, I am good in my own company, I like my own company and I'm independent enough to take myself out to the cinema, or for dinner or on holiday but I guess that's just it, I spend a lot of time with people I don't know being overly happy like I just won the lottery (because, try photographing kids or weddings and being miserable, it would not end well). When I come home it's just me a lot of the time.  So I live this life being perpetually lonely whilst on the face of it people not realising that I am. 

I think this doesn't just affect me, I think there are lots of other people in the same position, the hidden lonely.  I also think I've led a weird life in some ways because I always introduce friends to other friends and they end up being friends whilst also having their own friends and there's me in the corner (not losing my religion, I never had one).

Please understand that I'm not looking for sympathy, I just want to raise awareness now because in the future I probably will end up being one of those old people who doesn't have a single person, I dread it, I worry about it and at the back of my mind I have this memory of when my husband left and he told me that he would make sure I ended up with no one.

I have raging anxiety today, my stomach is literally in my throat, and that's perhaps why I decided to write this, I don't know what the answer is, if I knew how to fix it I probably would have done that by now, currently, my energy levels are completely awful too but that's more likely due to the fact that I've been having a ton of medical tests for months and this week I finally hope to get a diagnosis, my doctor thinks I have hyperparathyroidism which causes depression as well as many other things, I've been just existing for months, and all I'm hoping for now is the diagnosis so I know it's not just my stupid brain again because really, I already take a significant amount of medication for my mental health, don't really fancy taking anymore.

How to survive Christmas with a mental health issue

Christmas is a joyful time of year, a time of togetherness, a time for love, for laughter and where family and friends gather around the fire to play festive games and drink eggnog...

Except, that's not what it's like at all is it?  The truth of the matter is that Christmas can be tough, for those who live with mental health issues on a daily basis, everything is amplified during the festive season.  If you're lonely, you feel lonelier, if you're depressed, Christmas can exacerbate that and heck, even the most joyous Christmas queens can be prone to meltdowns over the Christmas break.

Why?  Well the media doesn't help, Christmas movies show us a distorted perfection of the way we think our lives should be, those of us who are alone without families idealise what it would be like if we did have a big relative-filled get together but I think we're doing ourselves a massive disservice here because in all of my time on the internet, what I've witnessed on forums, in tweets and on Facebook is that for some of us, spending an extended break with family is actually like navigating the 7 levels of hell.

It's easy to believe we're not good enough just because we're not living that Insta-perfect life but just like Christmas movies, social media is a distorted view of the world.  Very few people are 100% honest on social media, feeds are curated to present the best of what we have, there's nothing wrong with that of course, I, myself love to post the best of my life in squares, pretty places, twinkly lights but at the same time, if you look deeper by following my stories or reading my blog I hope I'm much more real and down to earth.  I've certainly tried to give a first person account of a single mum who lives with bipolar and depression, who home educates, who tries her hardest to juggle multiple businesses.

Whilst I don't want this to become my own personal campaign for more realness on the internet and I'm not by any means a healthcare professional I wanted to give you my own top tips for coping with Christmas and all that it holds.

1. Remember that Christmas isn't just 1 day - over the years I've come to notice that if I put all of my hopes, dreams and aspirations into just one day I end up having the biggest come down around Boxing Day, if you think of it more like a two week break with treats throughout you're more likely not to have that nosedive back to depression on Boxing Day and no day is so important that it should do that to you.
2. Enjoy Twixtmas - Those days betwixt Christmas and New Year are some of the calmest quietest times of the whole year, time to read, to drink hot chocolates and mulled beverages, it's a time to look back at the highlights of the year past whilst planning for the new year, embrace this time and basque in it's specialness.
3. Don't overdo things! - I can't stress this highly enough. A large proportion of the population will get the Boxing Day cold because they've drank for the whole of Christmas Day, suppressing their immune system and no wonder Boxing Day is a miserable existence. I've never been one for alcohol, I'm mostly allergic to it, sulphite free alcohol should stop the hangovers at least but also remember that alcohol is a depressant and if you have any kind of mental health issue and especially if you are taking anti-depressants or other medication, it's probably not a good idea to spend Christmas Day caning it!
4. Overspending is the work of the devil! - I'd like to hold my hand up and say, guilty, guilty and more guilty. I do it mostly every year and being self employed I tend not to work for around three weeks over Christmas and it's really late February/early March by the time my income bounces back.  This year I have things in place to make sure this doesn't happen. Do you know I don't keep any money in my current account now?  I keep it all in my savings account and it helps me to spend less as I have to think about each transfer I make.   They won't miss my extraneous pile of crap I usually purchase at the last minute in guilt because I feel I'm not a good enough parent.
5. Indulge in "Me Time" - It's easy to forget to look after yourself when you're so busy catering for guests, entertaining the family or friends that you forget to take time out, so here's what I suggest, run a bath, get a glass of wine and escape to the bath with all of your new products, even that 30 minutes out can make you feel like a whole new person, especially if you've got little ones, that is of course discounting them looking underneath the bathroom door shouting "Mammy, what you doing?"  (yes, lovelies, I have been there too).
6. Don't be alone and lonely - There's a huge problem in our country with people feeling lonely and alone at Christmas. Maybe they don't have family or they feel isolated, you know what, no one should be alone at Christmas and whilst I can't invite you all for dinner this year I will be home for most of the festive season and even on Christmas evening so please, it's open house and I promise to do whatever I can to make you feel festive and fabulous.
7. Don't worry about not feeling festive - Now I could never be accused of this but for some people, for very many reasons, they don't want to celebrate or they just don't feel festive at all and that's okay. You can spend the Christmas holidays however you want to and if that means watching a Harry Potter box set, then do it, no one is going to judge you.
8. Make some time to get outdoors - spending two weeks cooped up inside your house isn't good for your soul so make some time to get outside, get some fresh air, I'm thankful I have Holly Bobbins to drag me out or I'd never go out, it's funny though because I always feel better afterwards, it's just the getting out there that's the hard part.

Whatever you do remember that it's your Christmas and you can do anything you want, I shall be doing what I did for a while during summer, turning my social media notifications off, and only going online to post occasional photos or you'll find me on Instagram which is my happy place on the internet, I need those two weeks off, I have much planning to do for next year and much reassessment of 2018.  It's been a pretty tough year over all and I need to make some decisions, tough decisions about where I go from here.

I am everything and I am nothing - A Post for World Mental Health Day 2018

Today is World Mental Health Day, a day when we raise awareness and understanding of mental health and I personally believe we've made more progress in the last 10 years than ever before.  The first news article I was featured in talking about bipolar caused me to lose business but now more than ever most people I know, clients, family, friends, pretty much all of them are aware of the personal battles I continue to fight, they also know it doesn't make me a worse person in business or in my personal life.  Because I have the ability to talk about my own issues in a public forum it also helps to create an understanding that I am who I say I am and if I'm not doing so well I will let people know, that's actually part of my own self care.

Bipolar, severe anxiety, agoraphobic thoughts, social anxiety, autistic traits, that's how you could describe me and I'd own every single thing because I'm also brilliant, slightly eccentric, a business woman, a mum, a friend, an entrepreneur, I own 2 companies and one beagle, I laugh, I cry, I love, I feel, I am everything and I am nothing all at the same time.

On days when I'm on top form, I am great at making money, I am fantastic at coming up with new ideas, I can speak in public passionately without any fear, heck I can even do a spot on the radio.

On the bad days, I worry about everything, I overthink everything, I'm scared of the world, I'm terrified of people and I'm paranoid that every single person out there hates me, I dread opening emails, I can't pick up the phone and I want to hide from the world forever without ever having to think about the simplest things like cooking or getting dressed or even getting out of bed.

I favour the good days over the bad although I have no choice which is going to hit me, sometimes it's situations I can't handle, sometimes it's work stress but sometimes it's none of that, sometimes I just feel so very very lost and completely lonely and the worst thing, those are the times when I have trouble reaching out and asking for help, the crazy upside down life of mental illness is that the more poorly you become, the more you feel trapped, that's when it's hardest.

I'm lucky, on the neurosis to psychosis scale I've never tripped into anything near psychosis since 2003 and I hope I never do again because that's when it's a quagmire, that's when you feel you are trapped at the bottom of a well with no way of escape.

I write about this stuff because there are others out there who can't, there are people who still don't feel they have the strength to talk about this stuff or they feel if they do it will affect their jobs or the lives they lead and in some cases we do have a way to go in the workplace understanding the effects of mental illness.

Today, I'm okay, I'm fighting a battle at the moment but it's not affecting my work at all and when I'm not at work I get to sleep lots, I don't go out very often but on the self care scale, I'm so much better than I could be.  I'm still funny and make people laugh, I can still have deep and meaningful conversations with friends and family and spending less time going out I have reacquainted myself with my love of cooking and baking, I try to turn each negative into a positive and one day I'll win again, I know I will and if you're in a similar place, if you understand what I'm saying and you feel it too, one day you will be fine too, with help and love and treatment and understanding.  Just don't sit there in silence, reach out to a friend, a mental health professional or there's always a listening ear here with me.

And when you can, continue to burn light the brilliant, bright burning star that you are.

Depression, a personal battle...

You may have noticed that I have been quiet quiet of late, I was throwing myself back into work only to be derailed again just a couple of days later.  Since it's World Mental Health day soon it seemed appropriate to share what's been going on.

Since around June of this year I have been experiencing overwhelming depression and the most awful anxiety attacks I've ever experienced, as someone who already has bipolar and is prone to agoraphobic behaviour this has been my greatest challenge of 2018.

I have run away and travelled as much as possible, I have hid away from the world on weekdays so I had the strength to go out to work at weekends.  It has been the hardest time I can remember for years but I feel I should write about it because there's something you need to know.

You see, this is the face of depressed me, both of these images I've taken in the last week, the top one just after I'd had my hair cut if you're thinking (why is her hair different colours?) and look, I'm not lying in a heap, I'm not crying all of the time, thankfully the medication I take helps with not crying all of the time.  I still laugh, I still go out, I still continue to work and parent and run multiple businesses but I am depressed and it's important that you see the real face of depression because so many of us who look quite "normal" are actually fighting battles that no one can see or understand.

I have days in the week when life is like walking through a quagmire of the thickest mud, where I am scared of every single email and phone-call, where I believe I am the most evil person on earth who's surely heading directly to hell.  That's what ill mental health is to me, it's self loathing, it's over introspection, it's forgetting even the simplest of things and feeling like you are losing your mind.

I have good self care, I force myself outdoors and enjoy walks with Looby and Holly Bobbins, I go to events which make me socialise because if I had the choice I would make a pillow fort, crawl right in and never come out but I can't do that.

I am a mum, I am an entrepreneur, a photographer, a blogger, a CEO of a global organisation, I'm challenged daily by depression but I try to remember that this does not make me a failure.  I think it's so important for CEO's an people who have a voice to speak out about mental health for those who can't or don't feel they want to.  Too many people suffer in silence and worse than that, there are way too many lives still lost because someone felt helpless or didn't feel that anyone would care or understand and that there was no other avenue, or that the world would be better off without them.  Let me tell you now, I understand, I have been there myself, I have been to the darkest of places and only my inner stubbornness has made me not want to let depression win.  I am one of the lucky ones I guess, initially 15 years ago I got help within the time before things spiralled from anxiety into psychosis, it took 2 years to see a psychiatrist and another before I had reached the top of the list for therapy and I believe that things in the NHS and mental health care fields are so much worse now than they were then.  It's something I wish I could change but without that ability I am at least doing something.

This weekend I'm shooting 40 photo shoots in one weekend, I've raised money for Mind for several years now and it's the very least I can do.  I'm worried I'm not going to make it through all 40 sessions but I have friends, my daughters and their friends who are all coming along to help, it's going to be the most full on work weekend I've ever experienced and I'm dedicating Monday to sleep and recovery.  I'm having an easier week on the lead up to it and resting as much as possible.  I hope I do make it to the end, actually I have no choice but if you're around the Tynemouth Longsands area this weekend and you see me on the beach, come say hello, come hug me or my helpers, feel free to bring me cake, bring me coffee or maybe just a few extra vitamins for it's going to be the biggest thing I've ever done!

Mandy's Photography Marathon, here I come!

Fake Sunshine Saved My Life

Sunday morning, just after 8am and I'm sitting at my desk with my new Beurer SAD lamp faking the bright sunshine needed to make me feel like it's summer and all is good with my bodyclock.  It arrived on Wednesday and I have to say that the thing is miraculous, for the first weekend in ages, I've just got up for work instead of thinking "I can't do it, I can't smile, I can't talk to people, I can't go out of my house". On the same day that my lamp arrived so did my super high dose vitamin D3 tablets recommended by my good friend Steve as well as my doctor, so I'm also taking 50,000iu a week.

When I eventually saw my GP, she asked me those questions "Have you thought about harming yourself?" I told her in truth that I had laid in my bed lacking the energy to even cry just wanting to be dead although I hadn't actually thought about killing myself, I also told her about being on a 12 week waiting list for CBT since January and suddenly I had call the next day inviting me to my first session a week on Monday.

At the same time I received a proposal to go on a travel assignment to Bluestone Wales tomorrow and  accepted in less than 3 milliseconds and just as we'd done that I was offered an emergency review of Crepeaffaire, clearly the Gods were on my side, they knew I needed sunshine, a break from real life and a hefty amount of sugar, in just one day the universe answered all of my prayers.

That's not to say that it's been an easy week, my head has been all over the place and I snapped at Looby who being hormonal ended up in hysterics, we chatted the next day about anxiety and being kind to one another as well as the fact that sometimes even the least shouty people lose it.  Thankfully I think she's forgiven me and I know that it was just a symptom of me having acute anxiety and being unwell at the moment.

Crepeaffaire was exactly what we needed on Wednesday, if you've not been before, it does what it says on the tin, delicious crepes done really well, we were already previous fans and though we tried the indulgent menu this time, I'll be honest and say they were just a little too sweet for me and I shall be going back to savoury the next time, if you have the sweetest tooth ever though you should really try the Reeses peanut butter, Looby loved the milkshakes and her crepe which I can't tell you what was in it as I wasn't allowed a taste, therefore I'll assume it must have been amazing.

On Friday we, with much excitement headed to the first day of the Christmas Continental Market which is on until mid December, it's based around monument and once that's finished it'll be replaced by stalls selling local crafts and foods in it's final weekend.  Now don't get me wrong, I love the continental market but it just feels like there's too much food, Looby gave it 5/10 because although there's a lovely Christmas feel to it, for us, it needs to have more things you can actually purchase for Christmas, we're big fans of the German Christmas market in Edinburgh and if it could be a little more like that we'd be delighted.  It'll be interesting to see how the second phase of Hadrian's Tipi and Winter Wonderland compares when that opens in a couple of weeks.  When we did try Hadrian's Tipi I wasn't actually all that impressed, yes it's warm and yes, it's dog and child friendly but £3.85 for a pint of lemonade is actually scandalous, I'd hate to think how much they're charging for alcohol!  For me, I also think you can't get away from the fact that it's been put up on a building site which is still full of rubble currently, I know in a couple of weeks this won't be the case but it's just not pretty or Christmassy as yet.

Tomorrow we leave for Wales, we have a 9.5 hour journey to get there but the middle of week looks about as relaxing as it can get and I'm looking forward to many, many Christmas themed activities too, I think it's really going to get us into a festive mood and I wouldn't be surprised if we end up putting up our Christmas tree shortly after we return.  I'm really on the countdown now, for my health and happiness more than anything, I only have 12 sessions to fill for the rest of the year so once that's done I can breathe and start marketing for January which has already thankfully started filling. January is a tough month as a portrait photographer but if we get snow you can bet I will end up being busy and I'm always super thankful for that!

The week I nearly gave up

This last week has been the most physically and emotionally draining I can remember for a very long time, it would be completely understandable had their been a large life event, some kind of crisis but no, last week was just the week when I crumbled not imagining I would make it out of the other end. The week I finally said "I can't do this anymore, I can't take the pressure, I need a little help"

I've continued to work throughout and I've tried to not let clients down, people depend on me and if you're me, ringing in sick means telling your boss 10 times you can't come to work today, so even in the wee small hours when I didn't think I could make it through another day of work, I did, because I have to.

Whilst I'm not entirely sure what's going on or what the cause of my acute anxiety is due to, there have been times when I have struggled to breath, where I thought my heart would leave my chest because it felt to tight.  I've dreaded each email in case it was someone who was angry or wanted to shout at me.  To put this into context, in over 10 years in business I've probably had less angry shouty emails than I have fingers, it's a rare occurrence but with acute anxiety you imagine every single person in the whole world is angry, everyone hates you, the world is going to end, "run for the hills, we're all doomed". I have to laugh and make light of it because the only way through this is with humour, love and understanding.

I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow, I'm not sure what they can do, I'm already on the top dose of meds and I've taken those for 13 years and they're the only ones which suit me and actually work.  I've been on a 12 week waiting list for CBT since January, oh the irony!  I mentioned it to the doctor the last time I saw her and she said "Oh yes, we're really busy, mental health services are so underfunded". How the freak can it actually be like this, one in every four of us will need to use the mental health services at some point in our lives and yet our doctors just very glibly acknowledge it because they know they can't do anything about it?

Meanwhile, the unfortunate fact of my self employed life is that I can't take time off, if I stop working now, we'll all starve over winter, I dread the quiet period of Jan/Feb every year so although I'd quite like to switch on an autoresponder which says "I am now out of the office until spring" it's not actually feasible.

What I have done is looked at my remaining calendar up until Christmas, I've taken the decision to not shoot at all on weekdays because spending time home educating Looby is way more important right now and at weekends in December I'm going down to shooting sessions from 10-2 and having a lunch, it's so cold out there and I feel it more than I did 10 years ago, I still love it though, actually when I'm out photographing kids at weekends, I get the buzz of adrenalin I need to make it through, I bounce around, I'm jolly like Santa, it's only when I stop I'm instantly exhausted and fighting the urge to go to bed at 4pm in the afternoon.

When I said that I wasn't sure why I have succumbed to mass anxiety, I do know in reality the things which have caused it, small things which have just tipped the weighing scale, mostly I did way too much, I put so much pressure on myself and I crumbled.  I constantly try to be Superwoman because I want to prove you can be a single parent, you can run a business, you can be a good example to your children.  I hate being a mum with mental health issues, I hate having conversations where I try to explain to Looby about why my anxiety is so bad and I hate that sometimes we have to leave places because I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack and I can't breathe.

Christmas is my most favourite time of year and I want to get to the point where I can just focus on that without worrying about deadlines and bills and our general survival, I need a SAD lamp definitely  and I need to be less afraid of the outside world when I'm not working.

I wrote this today, not because I want or think I deserve any sympathy, on the contrary, I chose this life I have, well not all of it but certainly the self employed bit.  I wrote this because I have the ability to, because there are people all over the world who feel the same way as I do but they don't have a voice and they think they're alone, anxiety, depression, bipolar, it's out there and it's more normal than you think to feel the way I do.

The rules of being a hermit

Over the last few days I've reinvoked my hermit clause, that is, at any given time I may choose to retreat from the world as much as possible, speak as little as possible and sleep as often as possible. I'm binge-watching Sex in The City and so far this week I've eaten at least 3 bags of varying kinds of mini chocolate eggs (thank you Easter) and today I've even eaten Pizza courtesy of my kind son and Pizza Hut.  These are all items on my banned list and I really need to sort myself out soon before I end up looking like a cross between Miss Piggy and the Marshmallow Man.

My thumb is sore from swiping left too often on Tinder and I've officially run out of men in a 50k vicinity.  My work calendar is so quiet that I've questioned if I'm even still alive and it's still not spring, as the kids would say FML!!

Now I don't mean to get all maudlin and really, you shouldn't feel sorry for me but I do think soon the tides have to turn a little, for every bad time, slow time, down time I've had an equal an opposite period of joy and fun and glory, my life I guess is symptomatic of bipolar, go figure!

I keep thinking that transitional times are good for the soul, being a hermit is good for the soul, you have to be alone so that you appreciate the times when you aren't so alone. So I am embracing my hermitage even if it is 20 minutes away from the city centre and not on the top of a rugged cliff on a remote island somewhere in the pacific.

If I have to go out for work or groceries or if one of my teens isn't walking Holly Bobbins then I'm going but you can bet that as soon as I possibly can I am returning to my nest, my small quiet sanctuary where mostly life is quiet and straightforward, where 4 people can simultaneously watch Netflix at once (yes I upgraded) and where real life doesn't hurt quite so much.

I commented to Laura yesterday that I really need some sunshine and maybe a book or two which will restore my positivity, I'm usually one of the most positive people and I'm not sure how I've gotten to the point where I feel that life is genuinely beating me over the head with a big stick.  I'm sure I get to this point at the end of each winter though and then just when I'm about to give up all hope, spring happens, I get some sunshine in my soul and life feels good again.  I think I'm going to need some tactics to get through the next 22 days.  Did you know by the way, that spring officially starts on the 20th March at 10.30am, so 10.29am it's winter and then boom, 1 minute later and it's daffodils, tulips and the great slide into Easter, I think this year I may have some kind of ceremony at the exact moment of springs arrival if anyone wants to join me?

What do you say we all synchronously plant up a tulip at 10.30am on the 20th March followed by diving straight into a packet of Dime mini eggs?  A welcome to spring party we can all get on board with, feel free to pop in, the mini eggs are on me!

Unexpected Emotional Overload

Sometimes in life we find ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff, sometimes we sit and dangle our feet off the edge, sometimes we feel we are going to fall and sometimes we stand on the precipice wondering if we should just jump, occasionally we feel like we've been pushed and we're spiraling through the air waiting to crash onto the ground below.

Today I fell off that cliff, you could call it a meltdown, an emotional breakdown, a mental health crash, whatever it is, it's not the most fun thing ever and I just didn't see it coming...

Except, I did, it's been waiting to happen since at least October, you see I found myself or I thought I had, I thought I could go back into the world, find someone, love would blossom and for the first time in my life I would have it all.  The truth is though that no one wants the broken girl, I'm so completely damaged the repair work is going to take a long time and it's probably going to cost a fortune, at least in the emotional sense.

You see, the thing is, we just don't know how broken we are until we try to begin again, I thought I was healed and at least whilst I was on my own I really believed it but as soon as I tried to date again, all of the patterns from my past life started to unravel.

I'm a crowd pleaser, I lack self-worth so I seek approval in others whilst lying to myself that I don't require validation, the truth is, I needed to find someone who would build me up, someone who would tell me every day that I'm a little bit special and I'm ok, one of my greatest goals in life is to enrich the lives of others in as much as I possibly can and I always hope that a little of that might come back to me.

I've cried today, more than I've cried for years, please don't think there were floodgates opened but I cried, I spoke to a therapist but they couldn't offer a treatment plan until they've spoken to colleagues about my previous mental health issues, yep, bipolar is a bitch!

There are good things in my life, I very much have control in many areas, the part I'm lacking is learning to love myself and see myself as someone who's good enough to be loved and until I fix that, as much as my heart is lonely and broken it's got to be a brave and supportive man who would even consider being with me, it's literally the biggest ask, maybe too big?

So, what happens now?  Well I get some therapy, I try to work through it, I need some new challenges and to be honest, a nice overseas assignment I could throw myself into would be lovely right now, in as much as I'd love to stop the world and climb off it for a while I'm not sure it's going to be possible.  I'm lucky I have good people around me, not lots of people but a few good people are all it takes and I have the best teens, we're a super team together and always have been.  I just wish life was a little simpler and I myself was easier to understand.  I'm brilliant in so many ways, photography, writing, being a mum, it's funny that I can see those bits, I just can't see the part where I deserve to be loved.

Blue Monday, Why I'll never apologise for being happy ever again...

It's Blue Monday, traditionally the most depressing day of the year and so all over the internet bloggers like me are writing about it in various articles and a lot of them relate to mental health awareness which in my opinion can only mean good things.

Whilst January itself is the dark, bare and sometimes bland month after the sparkly, glittery month of December and I'll be the first to admit that it's usually the month where I want to hide under my quilt and hide from the world but this year is different for a few factors.

Firstly I only shot 184 portrait sessions in the whole of 2016, this means I wasn't completely exhausted by the time I got to Christmas and this usually stretches right through January.  Secondly, I have given up alcohol due to being intolerant and while I had a bit of a sad face, I hated hangovers and was pretty much a lightweight anyway, My doctor did say that I would probably get away with having a couple of glasses of wine a month due to the way the lack of enzyme works so it's not all bad!  Thirdly, a huge contributing factor is that I'm just altogether happier, I feel like I've got my shit together, I'm such a lucky person, I have a job that I love, amazing teenagers, I have friends I adore and I, of course, I have my Mr France who makes me smile every day.

My motivation to blog has never been higher, it takes me next to no time to write what I think are pretty good articles every day, now that I have my writing style I find it easy to sit down for an hour just about every day.  I guess the best thing about my blog is that it's a diary of my life, some people tell me it's like Sex in the City (it's not quite that fruity, I'm sure) and some people tell me it's like Bridget Jones diary but it's not quite so sweary as her life although we are the same age you know!

It's testament to the happiness and positive influences in my life that I have reduced my bipolar medication again and I've done it in January, I was going to wait until spring but I feel I'm coping with life so well and my doctors agree so why not do it in January, the leap from 8mg of Reboxetine to 4mg wasn't actually that painful although it was completely life changing, so far the leap from 4mg to 2mg is pretty much just physical withdrawal, I feel a bit fluffy and have headaches, my sleeping is also a little out of sync but I know in a couple of weeks I'll see the changes there too.

I think just like any day of the year can potentially be the best day of your life, every day also has the ability to become the darkest and depressing and please don't think I'm being glib with that statement but part of self-care is I believe setting your intention for the day,  you have to be kind to yourself and think, today I am going to have a good day, if you can't quite manage that then think about what you can do to break the days down into hours, and really, when I was super poorly with bipolar I would focus on the hours rather than the whole days, I would force myself to get dressed or to go in the bath and then I would reward myself for achieving the small tasks I'd managed, please don't ever think I know how it is to be trapped in the dark abyss of depression, the kind of depression which makes you question if anything is worth it anymore, the kind of depression which makes you wander to the side of a busy road thinking how easy it would be to just walk out, get hit and escape the quagmire of depression forever.  That was life, 15 years ago nothing I was then is the person I am now other than the fact that I am a fighter, I am a survivor and in the end I chose life over death, maybe through stubbornness more than anything else but in the end it was my children who got me through the darkest days, their laughs, their smiles, their hilarious behaviours, some things never change in that respect.

So I hope you'll excuse me if I skip through this Blue Monday, I hope you won't mind that I have a spring in my step, I hope when people call me the bounciest person they know that you won't ever underestimate what I had to go through to get here.  I feel I have earned the right to be this brilliant, bouncy unbeatable woman I've become and so I will never apologise for my happiness, life isn't and will never be perfect but that doesn't mean that every day I live can't be perfectly wonderful.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve and why social media is a lie

The problem with wearing your heart on your sleeve dear reader is quite often it opens you up to being hurt but it does have the bonus that people always know what to expect from you, there's no real hidden side to me, I am on my blog as I am on social media as I am in real life.  I hate that thing when you meet someone you've spoken to on social media and they're not anything like the person you thought they were.  It's happened to me a couple of times and I've always been taken quite aback by it, those people were obviously far clever than I to be able to create a wholly different online persona.

The thing is though, and I was reading about this recently, is that social media and more importantly Facebook is a lie.  How many of us actually say how we're feeling on social media and how many of us only put the stuff out there that we want other people to see?

I read these kinds of statuses "life is totally amazeballs, I love everything" and I think back to the days when I myself used to write similar and it wasn't that they were an untruth but there's definitely something about putting those statements out there and the reasons we do it.  When you think about it, lets for example take holiday photographs, you know the ones, you're at your desk and it's noon on a Wednesday in August and Polly Perfectlife posts a photo of a giant cocktail she's having on her uber hot beach holiday, is she putting it out there because she needs to remind herself that her life is perfect or is she putting it out there to make other people say "oh look at her amazeballs life, I'm so jealous"  Conversely how many people do we mute or remove when all they do is moan and complain about the bad things in life?  I'm guilty of it myself, I simply won't tolerate rain cloud people even though I myself am going through a period in my life where not much fun stuff actually occurs. 

Something else I was reading about yesterday is concealed depression, something which I'd like to come out and hold my hand up and say that most of the time that's actually me at the moment, I think I've been pretty depressed since I lost my one true love but you can't go on about it endlessly can you?  It's not helpful to anyone if you just post "so bloody depressed" on every single Facebook status and it's going to get you muted/unfriended/hidden from newsfeed so it's just easier if we all post only the good things about our lives or if there isn't anything good it's just better that we post nothing, well no, that isn't ok actually because I think social media can lead to us concealing depression even more so and I actually think depression is something we should be talking about a lot more often, we should be normalising it because so many people have to go through it and still far too many people are suffering in silence.

I'm not sure how much if any of this blog post will make any sense at all but I think one of my goals for this year is to go out into real life situations and see friends, make more friends, do things which aren't all about social media because as I noted yesterday I've just reached the point of having 5000 followers on Twitter, I spend far too much time on social media when in my actual real life it can be days/weeks/months between seeing friends in real life.  I'll tell you what I would love to do, maybe I could invite all 5000+ of my Twitter followers to have a real life party, I wonder how many of them would actually turn out not to be robots eh?!

Bad days and holidays

Good windy morning to you dear reader, I have to first apologise for my absence this week, it's been the first week back at work and I've been trying to catch up to date with actual work, you know the stuff that pays the bills so I've been beavering away and I have 3 tasks left on my to-do list, 1 of which was blogging so well done me!

Yesterday was a thoroughly crappy day, the girls are going to Majorca in August with their dad and to say I'm not dealing with it well is an understatement, I can't stand to think of them so many miles away having the time of their lives without me, it's quite heartbreaking and I haven't found a way to deal with it yet.  I've asked them not to mention the holiday or anything about it because it just makes me cry and it's not that I don't want them to always be happy and have new experiences but I think it caught me off guard and it's just another realisation that life has changed forever.  I had been looking at holidays myself but more along the lines of a week in a caravan in Berwick, it's hardly likely to be able to complete with Majorca is it?  Even worse is the fact that I can't seem to get 2 weeks away because of when Paul has booked and my summer schedule for weddings so a week in a cheap caravan doesn't even slightly compare but I want to be able to take Holly with us, I want her to have a holiday too, I think I would miss her smelly paws (and they are smelly) without her by my side, you know they talk about dogs getting separation anxiety, I think with Holly and I it's definitely the other way around, I hate leaving her and miss her so much when I am not with her, this is her current position next to me - 

I think one of the problems is fulfilling everything on my needs list for a holiday, it's got to be dog friendly, child friendly and accessible by train or public transport plus not too long a journey as Holly will need toilet breaks and she can't exactly nip to the loo like us!

I think yesterday was just confirmation that I'm still not especially in a good place and it's January which of course amplifies everything, I've always hated January, it's the worst month of all for Seasonal Affective Disorder which I thought I was doing ok with given that I walk Holly every day but it really seems to have hit me this week and I am struggling to stay on top of it.

Do you ever feel about running away to the circus and not coming home again?

One thing I do know is that I am going to have to have some kind of massive coping strategy for when the girls are actually overseas because at this point when I think about it I fear for my own mental health during that time, I'm so glad I have Holly at least, she's the one thing which stands between me and the cloak of madness!

Abigail and Looby are both staying at dads tonight so I need to give myself a shake and go and do something with Holly or I'll just end up sitting in a corner and crying and that's not going to help anyone.

Hopefully by the time I write again (which may well be after the weekend and then I promise to get back to a regular schedule) I'll be feeling better.

I'm not Hiding!!!

Well maybe I am a little, I have had a severe dip in my mood of late and the depression is coming, thank goodness I already take anti-depressants or God help me. I've been trying to hold it together for a while now in the face of more and more letters from mother and now letters from granny. I haven't exactly been well due to my HRT not being strong enough, so off i went to the doctors with happiness and anticipation for it to be increased. That was the plan and then he took my blood pressure. Apparently it was dangerously high so he promptly tore up the prescription in front of my face and told me to not take anymore of the ones I have at home for fear i'll have a stroke or heart attack! I have to go back next Friday to have my blood pressure taken again and until then no HRT, to say that i'm feeling low is an understatement. Mother wrote to Iain again today and i had to ask him if he understood what emotional blackmail was before he read it. He did say when he finished that he thought she was mad, ah that must have been the part about not celebrating christmas this year due to what has happened, or one of the other many similar statements.

Dear reader life truly is getting me down today, pray that tommorrow it feels brighter.