Don’t Give Up!

Crazy Summer Curveball
Writing this I feel like I am trudging through mud but I keep hearing in my head “Don’t give up!”. This lovely blog that I worked so hard at and enjoyed designing has been untended for six whole months. Just when I felt like I was getting going, the curveball of us having to move house happened. What I couldn’t have predicted was that we would struggle to find a house for six weeks and end up living in temporary accommodation for the summer. Moving house is stressful enough as it is! Having your family’s possessions stored in 5 different places across the county is very challenging, to say the least. We had to leave the temporary home twice as it was booked by others and there were times when we had two vehicles full to bursting with stuff (time to downsize perhaps?) as we spent the night in a family hotel room. I am eternally grateful that we were able to find a roof over our heads on those nights. We are the lucky ones. I have always had a great concern for the issues of homelessness but now I have a more acute vision of what that could feel like.
So I am not going to rant on about letting agents fees and requirements and the lack of affordable housing but instead just take a few moments to write about resilience. When we knew we had to move we made a family vision board. Amazingly, the house we had imagined appeared for viewing within a few days. We loved it but then all sorts of financial and practical issues got in the way which meant that we viewed many other houses (some of which were barely fit for habitation yet still at extortionate rents!). Time marched on through the summer weeks as the boys and I tried to make the best of a very strange summer holiday. The start of term at my eldest son’s new school was getting uncomfortably close. Of course, we wanted to be settled before then and so the temptation to take a house in a location and condition we weren’t happy with was strong. The tension was mounting and the September weather was moving in.

Don’t give up!
What about my blog?
Well, I am back.

Resilience
