Although I agree with the idea that we shouldn’t dwell on the past, and we should be focused on the now to get a better future, I also believe it’s the events of my past that have made me who I am.
I try to live regretting nothing, these life events are all the things that have made me stronger.
The past is a life lessons moulding me into who I am today.
I haven’t always seen the good in something straight away, and often they have caused me pain whilst I learn, but I always get there in the end.
In the recent weeks I have spent a great deal of time looked back on my past.
My posts about my Dad and my Grandad have reminded me of the the family and friends who have been there to support me.
This week I have also celebrated 7 wonderful years since meeting my Husband, on a freezing cold match-dot-com date, and for that I am so grateful.
I have seen my Mum and Sisters lives change and evolve.
Mum has recently moved to the seaside and married lovely Bazza, and my Sister is watching as her house is rebuilt to accommodate her growing family, busy choosing new paint and curtains trying to imagine the happy memories her kids will soon be making in their new home.
I have even been toying with a story set in my family home which has conjured up all sorts of childhood memories, both happy and sad.
I have also spent many an hour thinking of how I started running my own business, of the journey it has taken me on and what I have learnt over the past 10 years.
It certainly hasn’t all been fun, but at least I can say I tried.
The first seeds of wanting to make a difference in my life was after my first husband had been involved in a terrible accident.
I was stuck at home caring for him, for a newborn baby and a crazy energetic toddler.
The system, as it was, didn’t recognise that I needed to be home looking after all of them whilst he recovered rather than my going out to work. (But trust me, if I could have, I would!)
Each week I filled in form after form never quite knowing when the next money would be coming in. We were racking up debt and I felt it was all out of my control.
I spent hours in the Mansfield job centre trying to get the help we needed.
That place was the stuff of nightmares to me.
I witnessed arrogant bastards who refused to get a job they were more than capable of, knowing how to play the system so it continued to support their lifestyle of cigarettes, afternoons in the pubs and daytime tv on their state of the art plasma screens.
I witnessed the grieving widow, terrified that they had overpaid her husband’s carers allowance and that she would face prosecution, her grief had made her forget to call in the 2 weeks since he’d passed.
I witnessed broken men and women who once were professionals in their fields, their industries vanishing and them redundant, trying to fit their skill sets into jobs that were below them, but so desperately not to fail the families they love.
It was after one of these trips I vowed to change my stars, I never wanted to be back here again!
It was then I chose to set up my own business so I could support my family and give my children a future they deserved. I would be holding my future in my hands..
I spent hours plotting and planning,writing business plans, turning my creative hands to different crafts in a hope to find one that would be profitable and pull my family out of that hole.
Life is never predictable and I really thought I was going to make a permanent change for good. I never could have predicted that I would get sick and have to walk away from the business that I loved.
And for a few months I thought the dream was over. But you know what? I think I’ve still got a little bit of fight left in me. Maybe it’s time to reinvent myself again.
So many doors have closed and other doors opened in the corridor of life, But maybe not all the doors were meant to be locked shut. Maybe some of the doors were never really shut after all and I hadn’t really finished all that I started.
Watch out world! I’m coming back fighting
