Nurture21

It's been notoriously hard this last year . 'Unprecedented' is perhaps one of the most frequently used words of this time. Circumstances that none of us saw, none of us anticipated, none of us wanted. This mind blowing disruption has thrown itself at our feet like shattered glass from a car crash. We all feel bruised, we all feel weary, we have all had enough. The pull to get back to seeing people we love, doing the things we love and just being 'normal' is enormous and we all feel it, we all need it. We all grieve that which we have lost and it can be argued, 'we' will never be the same people again.  But what about our children? This generation of brilliant people who have had to adapt this year perhaps more than any other group of people. For children growing up in these times it has been a unique, challenging and difficult experience. Our children have had to learn and grow up in ways no other generation has ever had to. We have asked so much of them and

Imagine for a moment that you have to stand in the shoes of the woman you have been the most critical of in your life. The person that if you're honest - you've judged. The person you promised yourself you'd never be. As you stand in those shoes, you start to see her life from a new perspective. You start to see the reason she is the way she is, why she does things the way she does. You see her hurts, her struggles, her insecurities - but you also see her successes. Do you think your opinions of this person would change? Do you think that you might be less quick to judge the next time you see her and her life doesn't meet your high (or low) expectations and standards? I'm ashamed to say that for me, there have been quite a few fellow women throughout my life that I've internally sneered at, criticised and judged. I didn't sit around with a clip board marking them, I didn't openly arraign them. But I did draw conclusions about them, I did satisfy myself

  March - September 2020 March - My family and I were self-isolating, my daughter had a sore throat and high temperature. Coronavirus was taking hold in our nation. My job as a palliative care staff nurse about to change forever.  In the early days of the Coronavirus Pandemic, things happened quickly. Government guidelines changed daily, managers in all health organisations struggled to keep up with the daily changes, information was disseminated as soon as it was digested but it was fast paced and ever changing. The aim to protect both patients and staff became priority. It seems strange now, but at that point wearing face masks was not an expectation unless a patient was showing symptoms of a high temperature or cough – that soon changed of course. But those first two weeks meant that the virus took it's opportunity and spread quickly through staff members and some patients. This wasn’t to last though; we caught up, we cleaned, swabbed, isolated and became a Covid free Hospic

Faith: 'The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'. When I was 20 years old, I became unsettled. It started as a slow bubbling of discontent within me that churned away like an un-erupted volcano. I was at University just finishing my second year of my degree, I had every opportunity in front of me, the world at my feet. But it just didn't feel like enough. I felt I just couldn't see the point. I couldn't see the point in anything. This wasn't just a seasonal dip in mood, it wasn't a lack of direction, it was a soul searching that wouldn't leave me alone, one that kept me awake at night.  During a family holiday in Portugal that summer I stood in the middle of a market square and just cried, really sobbed, overwhelmed by something but not sure what. When my Aunty asked me what on earth was wrong, I simply replied, "I don't know, but I think it has something to do with God".  The drawing feeling and the pull towards

2008 was a bitter sweet year for me. It was the year I became a Mum and it was the year I lost my own Mum. My Mum missed meeting my daughter by five and a half weeks. I think we both kind of knew that it was never meant to be, but it remained a deep unspoken truth that hurt too much to voice. It was a remarkable thing really. My whole pregnancy was littered with poignant moments that seemed to tie my mum and my daughter together before she'd even entered the world. I remember an occasion when I was four months pregnant at my parents house; I was being sick in one bathroom due to my progressing pregnancy and my Mum was in a bathroom across the landing being sick due to her progressing cancer. The circle of life never more magnified than at that moment. My nine months of pregnancy mirrored nine months of deterioration in my Mum's health. During the last few hours of my Mum's life I sat next to her bed and placed her hand on my huge pregnant tummy. I watched the colour gradual