Onwards and Upwards (Going back to 2012)

I have many guises... Mother,  Boutique Market Owner, trader, writer, music maker, singer, social media whore, event organiser, wearer of ridiculous clothes...  They all have their own online sites.  But this blog is one of my earliest. It is not "the" earliest as some of my earlier personal blogs have well and truly been scrapped.  The angst ridden years from around 2003-2006 in which I blogged about pain and horror are long gone without even so much as a sedentary Myspace account as proof.

Because this is one of my earliest blogs and it doesn't really have it's niche or in fact any rhyme or reason.  It is my haven.  A place where I can write what I want to.  Only, last year was full of so many incredible highs and lows that I wonder how I am not in an asylum.

I have suffered from depression in the passed.  But despite the horrors the children and I have experienced, I have not felt the need to go the doctor.  I haven't asked for medication, or counselling or help from friends and family.  People look at me and are amazed at the things I achieve as a lone parent.  I like to be a good role model and am happy to be an inspiration.  But very few people know the truth of what the children and I have had to endure last year.  

In time I am sure that I will share with my readers of what we have been through as I want to raise awareness of some of the issues we have faced.  I wish I wasn't being dramatic.  I look at people suffering with their daily miseries - and I think - "Wow, you would not survive for ten minutes in my life."

And when it comes down to it.  I think that is just it, because I have had to deal with so many incredibly difficult things, it makes absolutely everything else seem easy.  When the difficult things rear their ugly heads, I am in a position to deal with them better and move on even though I feel like rolling around on the floor wailing and gnashing my teeth. It also makes all the wonderful lovely things that happen, even more appreciated.

I want to begin with the beginning, so I will write a series of posts chronicling our life in the past few years.

2012 began on a high. I was single and not exactly loving it because I was suddenly realising that most of Southsea men were single for a reason.  I very much wanted to remain single, but at the same time, I just couldn't do the player thing.  I am Mrs Monogomous through and through. I can only manage one man at a time, no matter how casual.  But many of the men I met seem to have different ideas.  I think this bohemian attitude may be down to the fact that Southsea men are spoilt.  It's a tremendously small place.  Every woman I see is thoroughly gorgeous in all shapes and sizes and they can all hold a conversation and make me laugh.  A lot.

Anyway, that's no my point, I digress....I had made amazing tracks with the Boutique Market and had just been accepted for Victorious Vintage a festival I was looking to put on at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard with another business, Love Southsea.  It was exciting times.  Suddenly I was doing work that I loved.  Work that mattered.  Work that meant something.  I knew that I wasn't going to be making any real money as the scale of what we were hoping to achieve was way beyond our budget.  But if we all pulled it off, it would mean good things for the following year.  Incidentally, I asked my friend Ben if he could help and the entire Little Johnny Russells/Belle Isle team came on board. Victorious Vintage was better than any of us could have imagined, but more about that later.

James my oldest son was diagnosed with ADHD.  Now,  it took me along time to get his autism diagnosed and now that he had the ADHD diagnosis, it looked like he was finally going to get the help that he needed from his school.