Tag: writing

Well here we are at the end of another year. One year older, one year wiser? Not sure about that. But with  the end of this year I know I am not the same person I was at the beginning.

2025 began with me recovering from the worst 4 years of my adult life. The worst of the 40 years spent with my beloved David. 

We had lived in wonderful Wales for more than half of our life together, very happily. 14 years in Monmouthshire and 12 years in Ceredigion. We never intended to leave England  but the MOD had other plans and because we had the ponies, David going to Bristol meant moving across the water to Wales was the obvious answer to this dilemma. I didn’t want it, we didn’t want it but my, how it changed our lives. For the better. We could never have dreamed our life could be as happy or as good.

Living in Monmouth we renovated an old cottage and loved every minute. We began our life in earnest with more ponies, dogs and cats. It was wonderful. A few issues with family but not serious. I went back ypo college and eventually took a degree and gained a Masters in CBT Counselling and began my own practice. A career I loved.

When David retired we decided to go mortgage free and move to West Wales, where we bought an old farmhouse, a big house with a few acres of grazing and beautiful lakes and ponds. Our ‘farm’. I would pinch myself some days not believing I could ever have been so happy.Surrounded by hills, and fields and watching our growing brood of ponies growing and grazing in our paddocks, right outside of our home.

Life was amazing for 12 years, apart from ill health and again, family issues, people intent on trying to ruin our happy place. Even though family again caused us so much pain, trying to ruin me and destroy our happy life. They failed. Our pony, horsey family increased. We found ourselves the boarding home of a pair of Canada geese, Gordon and Gloria who came every  year, had their brood and once fully grown, left again only to return the next year. Our ponds were the home for around 30 Mallards who frequented the barn at feeding time and shared our lovely home. Life was blissful.

After the horrors of the pandemic, life changed. David and I seemed to have been shut out of our lovely family life. Never knew how or why but it happened and destroyed something precious in both of us. We had lost all of  our ponies, then Ellie Mae my little girl Shih Tzu and both of my lovely cats, Boukie and Luther. Only Cody remained. It was the worst time of my life, we found ourselves on our own, empty fields, and paddocks, empty ponds the geese did not return and the ducks were very few. My family were not around and memories of the wonderful times echoed as though they had never happened. I was in shock. David was heartbroken , we then lost Cody and my heartbroke over and over again. We were lost.I had a breakdown and the only way out of the emptiness we both felt, seemed to be to move back to where life for us both had begun and to ‘family’ we believed would love us. How wrong we were. We know now we were running away but you can’t run from heartache, it goes with you and you can’t shake it off or replace what was lost.

The following few years found us wavering in disbelief and sadness. Life was not good and Hampshire we realised was not our home. After a very short time we began looking to move back to Wales, Home.

Those Christmas’s in Hampshire were sad and lonely and this year we wanted to make sure happy was part of our vocabulary. And it was and is.

After 2 years of trying we eventually sold the Hampshire house and found a beautiful 200 year old cottage back in West Wales where we now live. Happy? Oh yes, blissfully happy again. Not the same happiness but so grateful for all that Wales has given us over the 26 years we have lived here. Wales is home and we don’t intend to ever leave.

So life now will be good, I am determined that whatever time David and I have left, worry will go out of the window. That sadness won’t get a look in. That the only people we both really need to consider is each other. 

Yes we have our youngest down the road and that is a happy bonus, was not intentional. They came to us for Christmas and we went to them for Boxing day and it was really lovely. But they have their life and we are getting on with ours.

So after many years of worrying about others, of trying my hardest to bring my family back to together. To look after my siblings family and reunite them, I am done! Now David is my first priority. Marie and Jason are important but they have their own lives. I cannot fulfill promises to my sister Georgina or my Brother Tony, and bring the family together because the ‘family’ don’t want to know. 

And do you know what!? That’s just fine.

I have wasted so many years thing of them, now before it’s too late, I need to concentrate on my husband and my home and yes… me. 

So good bye not only to 2025 but to the years before that I wasted being ill, being sad, and being sorry for failing to fulfill other people’s dreams. 

I was told this year by my nephew Steve, that although I had believed family had loved me, they hadn’t. They pretended, lied, took from me and bad mouthed me all the time professing to love me. Again, do I care? No.

Life is good. I have a wonderful man loving me. A daughter and son in law loving me and my eldest grandson loving me. And also, as a huge bonus I have a great grandson who will know me and love me I hope. Welcome Ryan Paul to our loving family I will look out for you as long as I am here.

So let us all look forward to the New Year with love, gratitude and care for each other and let those who cause us pain, drift into the oblivion of the past.

Happy New Year all and thank you for reading xx

 

 

 

As some of you will know, my childhood, on a personal level, was not good. But as a family, we were seen as a good family. A close family. Which I suppose in some ways we were. There were five of us children, the woman they called my ‘mother’ and my lovely patient and gentle ‘Dad’ William. But we had a huge family outside of us. Aunt’s Nan’s, great aunts and many 2nd cousins. Christmas’s and birthdays were always full of people, gatherings in the local church hall or at my Great Aunt Rose’s house. We shared weddings, christenings, 21st and 18th birthday parties and always had a huge number of people at all of these. Family.Every Sunday we would have a house full. Happy times. A sad times, deaths etc. we all pulled together. But not now.

I have a huge family from my siblings. Nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews but see or hear from only a very few. Sad. Many have been told lies, lies told to hurt me and alienate me from them. Lies told to my eldest daughter to do the same and it worked. I have never had the chance to tell my side. The truth.

I believe that this is what is wrong with the world today. On a larger scale, the family of Mankind has lost it’s way. Every country seems to want what other countries have and try and take it. The leaders convince their neighbours to be against others, alienating them against the ‘enemy’. And so we have many many wars. The world belongs to everyone and if only the leaders remembered that, we might have peace.But. People don’t communicate. Don’t talk about things. So that results in war, estrangement, bad patterns continuing and people getting hurt.

This begins at home.

So back to my blog. When I was growing up, the woman they called my mother would fall out with me often. There was no love from her to me for reasons I discovered as a 17 year old but that’s another story. On bad days, if she was cross, angry with me for no reason most of the time, except that I had ‘ruined ‘ her life by being born, she would stop talking to me. Later when we had all left home, if she wasn’t seeing me then no other member of the family could see me or talk to me. Not their choice but how she controlled them. This made for some very difficult times. When my brother got married, she wasn’t talking to me so I couldn’t go to his wedding. When my sister in law was dying, I couldn’t visit her and so on and so on.She continued after I was married and tried hard to influence or control my first daughter but I wouldn’t let her and this led to us falling out, many times.

She would fall out with my Nan, my Dad’s mum, once for 2 years, and forbid anyone of us to see her. My Dad and I did and she never found out. But it should not have been necessary for this ‘secrecy. None of my siblings liked the way she behaved.Dividing us, her children, controlling us and making us choose sides. Unforgivable. This was not love.

Because of this, I made very sure my children grew up to be able to see any of my relatives they chose to see, even the ‘woman the called my mother’. I would never let my feelings affect how they felt towards a person. If I fell out with family, not sure I can remember this happening, except with the youngest, Patricia who dropped out of my life for more than 40 years. I would have encouraged both of my daughters to stay in touch with any family that they wanted to. If I had a falling out, it would have been between them and me. When my eldest shut me out a while ago, she was in touch with my youngest and I would never have discouraged that.That is what a good Mum should do. This is what love is.

But I obviously failed where my eldest daughter is concerned.I have many letters here, letters of love. Thoughtful, caring letters and cards from her to me. I will always keep them.Because no matter what she does, I am her Mum and will always love the child she was.

I have 3 grandchildren, and now a new great grandchild. I love them all as I do my children, all of them. I had wanted to break this cycle of estrangement but over the years, if I fell out with my eldest daughter, she would make sure I didn’t see or have contact with my grandchildren.Alienating them against me with lies that I had no way of disputing to them. I have missed so much of their lives. I have messages from my youngest grandson that say I was ‘an awesome Nan’. I so wish I could see him now as a young man. But he is fiercely loyal to his mother, a misplaced loyalty that was one sided, that should never be necessary or wanted, he has never had the opportunity to know the truth, but he will. I have made sure he will. I have a granddaughter who I know could have enjoyed many happy times with me but never had the chance. She too, will in time know how much I wanted her and to be part of her life.My eldest grandson is in touch with me and I hope to visit very soon and see my new great grandson and give him a hug.

I am almost 80 years of age and don’t have time for all this nonsense. If you fall out with someone, you should not influence others to do the same. If more people valued family, valued what the older generation can give to the younger, life would be so much richer. No one has the right to alienate anyone against anyone. Ever.

I can’t do anything about the state of the world, the disagreements, the wars, the fighting etc. across so many countries.

But I will try in my ‘own backyard’ as they say.

So this estrangement, alienation needs to stop and I will do my very best to stop it. I have to. Family is family and we should all look out for each other. The world currently is a scary place. So many wars. So much heartache. Family needs to be close, safe and full of love. I will do what my eldest sister asked me to do, just one more time and try to bring my family back together.

Thankyou for reading.

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