“I love my kitchen.  But I don’t want to live in it.  Yet this Christmas it has often felt as though I was doing exactly that. One morning this week as I stood at the sink I could not remember what day of the week it was.  I have the domestic form of motorway boredom, I’m on complete autopilot, lurching from dirty dishes to smelly nappies to discarded clothes, and so the days were passing in a blur like the view from a car window. Once again I’m restless, staring at the patch of blue sky above the rooftops that seems so far away and watching the ivy on the wall taunting me as it dances in the ..read more

Some of the happiest days of my life were spent on this beach in Wexford with my babies. Like so many parents, I thought those days would never end. I forgot my children would stop being children one day. I forgot they would move on from building sand castles and and jumping in the waves.. But I can’t forget their happy faces and the excitement that would build as we turned left at Gorey and the roads got narrower and the trees closed in around the car, until suddenly we emerged and the green and gold fields stretched down to a blue sea under a paler sky. It was a simpler way of living, with ..read more

“You need to practise self care so you can keep on caring,” said the course facilitator. That was the moment the mask slipped. The promotion of self care is not about the carer, it’s because the Irish Health Service has “no money”, so all it can offer to many desperate families is advice on selfcare. Not respite, not supported living, not more help, not more therapies, not better services. Just advice, so we can keep doing the same thing for longer and therefore not become a problem, a family in crisis, an emergency, an embarrassment. Because that would NEVER do. It was one of many lessons I l ..read more

The tree is up, the cards are mostly written and posted, my virus is almost gone, but my stress levels are rising. My girls are fine, it’s my youngest once again. We’re back on the rollercoaster that I wrote about back in 2011. I try very hard not to write about him on here. Or anywhere. Which means I’m left to cope alone, and make major potentially life changing decisions alone: I can’t keep dumping on friends! The problems happening here are not discussed on social media, it’s all positivity, and if you’re not positive, you get trolled. So the help that was available ten years ago, is just n ..read more

This phrase popped into my head today. I sometimes feel so detached from everything that it’s like I’m confused and hopeless in the dark, and separated from the real world by a giant pane of frosted glass. This is all about the difficulties I don’t write about on here. Occasionally I do write about them elsewhere. Anonymously of course. But it’s worth mentioning on here because it’s why you may not hear from me for a while. It’s why I’m not taking so many risks. It’s why I say no all the time, or change plans. It’s why I’m still losing weight, because eating has become another chore too many ..read more

Sometimes I think I really can do this job – or I could if I had just one disabled adult depending on me and not two! But back to our 24 hours of fun… It all began on Friday with an 18th birthday party for the son of a very good friend. We arrived and left early (B doesn’t do late nights) but in between my disabled daughter had a wonderful time head dancing to her favourite DJs (Mick ‘n Dusty), smiling and laughing at everyone she knew and soaking up the atmosphere. She was able to sleep in a little on Saturday morning as I’d entered us for the 5K Great Pink Run for Breast Cancer Research, whi ..read more