What a Difference a Year Makes

One year ago, my life changed direction. I was fighting with a health issue that not only depleted my energy but caused me pain, anguish, and fear.  To this day, I remain undiagnosed, left with the doctor’s parting remark, ‘we’ll probably never know what it is or why it happened.’ I translated this to mean ‘just get on with it.’

So I did! I chose to take control of my life and health - it was the hardest decision to make but in hindsight, it was the right one. After seven years of hard work, I closed Body & Soul Holistics, my holistic health spa. A small business that had evolved and flourished until I had an eight-month waiting list for ladies wanting treatments.

My clients were incredible and supported my decision, having watched my health deteriorate before their eyes. They were also wise and intuitive about where my life would take me.

What Would You Tell Your 16 Year Old Self?

It's been a while since I blogged, and as I type this post I feel like a new student returning to school after the summer break.

I was in a fortunate position to take four weeks off work to enjoy the summer holiday with my kids.  My time off also included a step away from blogging.  This meant I developed a nervous twitch on what would have been blog post day, but on the whole I was able to take my own advice, and switch off, unwind and have an incredible summer.

As with any family holiday we document every tourist hotspot, sunset and sunrise, and every international #selfie on our phone, tablet or with a camera - or is this just me?



16 Year Old Shelley

It was as I uploaded the numerous photographs from my iPhone to my laptop that I spotted an old picture in a frame on my wall.

This was taken on my 16th birthday.  The same day I sat my GCSE maths exam - the same day I failed my GCSE maths exam!

My eldest son collected his own GCSE exam results last week, along with many other 16 year olds across the UK.  He did incredibly well - much better than his mother!

How to Identify Your Life Lessons

Freedigitalphotos.net

At my creative writing class this week we worked on character development.  The exercise our tutor set for us challenged us as writers' but as I sat staring at my notes, I couldn't help but apply the writing exercise to my own life.

The exercise went as follows:-

1. Think of a person you know and make them your main character, they can be family, a friend or neighbour, work colleague or a fellow club/church/slimming group member and they can be dead or alive.
2. Write a single sentence, including physical descriptions, of how this person looks.
3. Write a second sentence and describe how they show emotions.
4. Write a third sentence using key words to describe gestures they use.

We then had to interview each other and took on the role of our characters.  We asked basic questions about age and name (most of us used fictional names) and interests we had.  The most interesting part for me was when we asked about family - it really stirred up an emotion in all of us.