Dear diary,

One of my favourite times of the year is my birthday. I absolutely adore it. I love celebrating a new year, I love celebrating achievements I have made. I love the facts I can fill room with people who are just as happy about my existence as I am. A lot of my friends were devastated on their journey towards 30, whereas I thrived in it. There was so much I was learning about myself once I passed 26 and I was so excited for what was to come. My 20’s were definitely the years of understanding and soul searching and I hoped my 30’s would be the time to implement those teachings. On my 30th birthday, I was surrounded by nothing but pure love. I had invited people who had made a genuine, positive impact on my journey so far and those who made the efforts to continue to be in my life as much as I made the effort. It was a beautiful night. We danced away to garage, soul, RnB and reggae. We ate some delicious Caribbean food and I drank copious amounts of rum and cafe patron. After my speech , which I reeeally didn’t want to do, I had a little cry with my Mum on the corner of the dancefloor. I was so overwhelmed by the purity of love and friendship. I remember feeling an abundance of gratitude and blessings as I looked around the room. During my personal journey of self discovery, I learned to be appreciative and to always find the positive in every situation as opposed to always seeing the doom and gloom, so I try to live by that teaching everyday. With all the beautiful energy I had found and this clear mind I had created for myself, I found the run up to my recent birthday the complete opposite. A few weeks ago, I turned 31 and found myself in a weird headspace. I celebrated with a dark cloud lingering over my head and I was struggling to channel any positivity. It was like I was spiralling into a negative place mentally and I didn’t know how to turn it around. The usual happy, positive woman was now a moaning misery and someone I did not recognise. I started to revert back to comparing my life to other peoples, looking at all of their acheivements and milestones they were hitting and realising I actually haven’t achieved much in my life. I was 31 with no children, I wasn’t married, my career seemed to have hit a brick wall and I was no longer motivated. I had completed a 8 week training programme to help me shift a few pounds but I couldn’t even do that! I tortured myself with eating 985 calories per day and chose to do it over the Christmas and new year period which meant my alcohol intake was zero – Not like my typical festive period antics – and I looked no different!! The day of my birthday was spent with my love who made such a lovely effort to make sure my day was special as he knows how much of a big deal I make about it usually. We spent an amazing night together and I felt uplifted. The next morning however, I was back in that negative place and felt unworthy. I didn’t even want to talk to anyone about what I was feeling because I knew whatever came out of my mouth was only going to drain the life out of anyone who was willing to listen and Imthat’s not what I wanted. I had to go back to 2017 and go through the motions of finding myself again. A couple of weekends later, I had a belated celebration with my closest friends. It was a day full of half price alcohol and a lot of rain! (Cheers Storm Jorge) As I looked around at the tables, covered with birthday cake and martinis, I turned to my friend (who is married and pregnant with her second child) and said “I’m 31 and I have nothing to show for it”. She looked at me in utter shock. “Nothing to show?” She scoffed. “Look at all these people here for you? Doesn’t look like nothing to me!”. It was in that moment that I came back down to earth. Here I was feeing sorry for myself when there was so much more important issues happening all over the world. Earlier that day, my Dad had called me into the living room to show me the news. Refugees who had fled their countries and travelled on foot for months just for a better life were on the main story. I thought about a family I know who had recently been deported, leaving Mum and her 4 daughters – aged between 10 and 2 months old vulnerable, homeless and not a penny to their name. I thought about people who have been given a soul shattering diagnosis. I had so much to live for and so much to be happy about. This little blip was just that. A blip. Ok, so I’m not a mother yet, I’m not in my dream job yet and I still have belly rolls BUT I am so thankful to be alive and be living the life that I am sure plenty of people would happily trade for. Everything I am upset about now, CAN be and WILL be changed, if I am willing to work for it. So it’s time to pull up my big girl knickers and get everything I want from life!

Count your blessings daily, for we will never know when they will run out xo