Clean Slates, with our names on

So I have a new kitten and a new nephew. Within hours of each other, these two brand new little blessings have arrived in my life.

We met the kitten yesterday and she is exactly perfect and I'm very sure we'll be bringing her home in a couple of weeks time.

My brother and his wife had their first baby in the night, a healthy boy, and I'm finally an Auntie! Woke up to a text message: 'IT'S A BOY!!!' .

How did Sylvia Plath put it - ' a clean slate, with your name on it?' .... Two new, beautiful arrivals to our family.

Good things haven't been happening very often lately so it's brought us a bit of joy. In fact, it's brought my children a LOT of joy (they've been wanting a kitten for years, ever since we were all set to get one last year before I was rushed to hospital, and they really wanted a boy cousin) and for me a glimmer of hope that things might just start to improve.

I'm really going to work on focusing on the good things and not going over and over what is wrong.

With the chronic pain, that's pretty hard to do, as it is going on all the time, so self-pity is always there, waiting in the wings, ready to suffocate you with its thick black smoke. Poor me, poor me, poor me; why me, why me, why me; you bastard, you bastard, you bastard...etc...

But this kind of thinking is not going to get me better, and it is certainly not going to make me happy.

This morning I am grateful and happy to have two sweet new members of our family; welcome to the world. Life goes in circles and cycles; after the dark, comes the dawn.

I am going to practise staying in the moment, in the day, and not giving up hope, however tough that may be.