Once upon a time I used to write five blog posts a week, sometimes more. These days life has somewhat overtaken me and now I manage it maybe 5 times a year. If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with me. I appreciate you.

I’ve been quiet the last few years for many reasons, not least I was in the middle of a not as fun as you might expect divorce, with all of the accompanying joys of selling the family home and moving my life and 50% of my son to a new flat. It’s been both stressful and heartbreaking and with all that going on, I just didn’t feel like I had any spare words to share on my blog.

Despite all of that, I find myself reflecting on my new life, it’s now two months down the road from packing my furniture into temporary storage and moving into a flat of my own. I love it here, I really love it. It’s temporary for six months while I complete the purchase of a new little house for me and my boy and our dog, but I’ve never lived anywhere where I’ve felt so content.

The flat is so peaceful, it’s safe and secure, it’s mine, or as much mine as a temporary rental place can be. I love that when the day is done, I can cosy up in bed with a film and a good brew and all I can hear is the very distant rumble of traffic. I love that my friends are able to visit now, there’s not much room for a barn dance, but a few friends for wine and nibbles is very much on the agenda after being unable to do that for so long.

Work and the people at work have been amazing, with several of them pitching up and helping physically move me to my new life. They propped me up when I was in a pretty dark place and they continue to love and support me, and take me for drinks to make sure I’m not alone or lonely.

I get to keep my boy every other week. He is the thing that lights me up inside. We are finding our feet in our new world, but he seems to have adapted really well and we have a lovely little routine worked out. I don’t want to talk about him too much in this, but he’s awesome and amazes me every day, and he’s so helpful now.

My friends, family and my new partner have been brilliant, supporting me every step and helping with practical things and well as emotional support. They’ve taken boot loads of things to charity shops and lugged a hundred boxes up three flights of stairs for me. At times like these you really see who steps up for you and who really does love you, it’s such a blessing knowing that if I fall, I’ve got so many people racing to pick me up.

For the first time in a long time I feel happy and content. I’m not in fear of anything, I have my own space, and my own peace. My money (after bills, obviously) is my own and I can spend it how I wish, and I’m spending it building a collection of Portmeirion pottery, which gives me so much pleasure.

I am really excited about the future, about buying my new house and decorating it ways which will please me. I want to make a lovely welcoming home for my son, so he feels he can bring people home too.

2024 was a tough year with an awful lot of change and some sadness. 2025 will be tough in different ways, but I’m feeling so good about my future. If I can continue with this level of contentment, I will be very happy with that.

This was a very long way for me to say, sorry I’ve been quiet, I didn’t know what to say, but now I’m on the other side of things, I’m still probably not going to say much about it. But look at me now, standing tall, standing straight and stepping into my power. Just watch me go!

My son was born in 2010. He was born six months into a new Conservative government under David Cameron. His whole life has so far been lived under Tory rule. He knows nothing else.

When I was pregnant with him I had a good job in the NHS. I’d worked my way up from office temp into hospital management. NHS budgets were tight and I’d often bring stationery in from home, our priority was patient care, getting people seen and sorted as quickly as we could. The hospital was clean, well maintained and the staff and patients were largely very happy with how things were.

In 2013, I left the NHS due to a spinal injury and became self employed. By the time I left, the cracks were starting to show, former colleagues were leaving, waiting lists for clinics were growing, and the brilliant clinicians and nurses I worked with were starting to struggle to manage with ever tighter budgets and fewer resources.

When my son was a baby, we were encouraged to attend our local and newly built Sure Start Centre. It was a place where Health Visitors would hold weighing clinics, you could go to stay and play, get breastfeeding support and find other local mums to make friends with. By the time my son was 3, the centre had been handed over to a local charity and was no longer the parental support lifeline it once was.

As part of the round of toddler activities we went to each week, we were regulars at the library, joining in with toddler story time, reading books in the children’s section and enjoying meeting other parents and small children there. In Manchester where we live, library services have been slashed since 2010, and our local library, though still open and thriving, had to cut back on what it could offer, including toddler story times. That was a sad day.

Aged 4 my son started school, joining the nursery and subsequently got a place in Reception. It was a small church school, again run on a small budget and parents and staff did their best to raise funds for all the little extras. It was a good school, a great school, but in order to survive it joined an Academy Trust, which is what many schools have been forced into since 2010.

At school it became clear that my son had some learning disabilities, and so the school did its best for him, arranging for various assessments to be carried out and putting additional support in place for him. The SEN team did their best, but CAMHS is chronically underfunded and massively stretched, and it took 7 years to get an appointment and ultimately a diagnosis for him, which enabled him to get the appropriate support he needed. During this time the school had to find the money for his support within their own budget as without an ECHP the local authority won’t pay for any costs.

From when he was born I’ve taken my son to all the local parks, visited playgrounds, explored the wooded areas where nature thrives, chased each other through woodlands and gone pond dipping. Since 2010 local authority spending on the upkeep of our local parks has been cut to the bone. Areas have been fenced off from the public, playgrounds not maintained and then closed, tennis courts locked and left to rot. Litter piles up, anti social behaviour is rife, I can’t relax if my son, now 13 goes to the park by himself as every week a teenager gets assaulted there and one day it could be him.

Like libraries, local leisure facilities have been cut. We’ve lost swimming pools and running tracks, and sports fields have been sold to developers. Each year the sporting, leisure and learning opportunities for my son become fewer and fewer.

And I now work in Adult Social Care, and I can’t begin to tell you how being chronically underfunded, understaffed and undermined by this government is doing incredible harm to the most vulnerable adults in society. That’s an essay for another time, perhaps.

In his 13, nearly 14 years on this planet, my boy has seen an NHS brought to its knees, he’s suffered due to a 7 year wait for his learning disabilities to be diagnosed, which ultimately impacts his education. He’s watched local services, which were set up to support him and children like him be decimated. His local parks and leisure facilities have been closed or neglected and that’s before we even start to think about the impact of covid on his generation.

When he wakes up on 5th July, I hope he’s waking up to a brighter future, and a new dawn. I vividly remember the May 1997 General Election, and how energised and exciting the whole country felt. I hope he gets to experience that buzz too. As they said way back then, things can only get better, and I really hope they do.