It’s a very special day today – a very happy birthday to my first and biggest fan, my Mum. Probably the only person to have read every blog post, listened to every podcast, laughed at every joke.
I know I’m beyond lucky. When you are loved and appreciated so completely, from your earliest days, you grow up with a fundamental conviction that whatever happens, you’re going to be ok. Whatever challenges you face, no matter how bad things seem, at bottom, life is good and I am strong.
As I grow older, and particularly since I’ve had my own children, I’ve come to appreciate this more by the day.
I hope I can get it right as they grow, that balance of being there to catch and giving space to fly.
It’s something like the relationship I as a writer hope to have with my reader, I think: I want you to find what I write useful, but I want you to go beyond it too. There’s the words, and there’s the space. And underneath it all, enabling everything, is the trust.
Thanks, Mum – it all comes back to you.