Happy New Year!

I am not late! I am NOT LATE!!

The Happiest of the New Year to you lovely people! We made it!

Resolutions? What are yours? Are they still intact? I think this might be the first year I have not made a list of resolutions. I am big on new beginnings you see, Sundays, Mondays, new week, new month, New Year… it is a chance to start over, a chance to be better. But this year feels a little different because 2017 was a hard enough year and I needed to skip the intensity of a resolutions list for this new year. There are things that I would like to achieve, don’t get me wrong, but I simply don’t feel inclined to make a song and dance about them this year as I have in past years. I started 2017 on a high, ticking one of the items on my bucket list off- running a half marathon. Career wise, I had some of my best moments having organised a few bad ass work events which included taking a team of forty to italy for an adventure of a lifetime. I was on a roll. And then six months into the year, I came to a hard stop and found myself in hospital, fighting for my life after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that I will have to live with the rest of my life.

You know that saying, “Life flashed before my eyes”? Well life did flash and then proceeded to pass me by those endless days and nights of summer spent in the hospital bed.

Perspective. 2017 gave me some. And then some more. Introspection. Promises. Hopes. Dreams.

It was the year I got schooled in the invaluable nature of time and her impatience. A lesson of clichés that went through my head everyday like a bad record on a loop. I prayed for another chance, for time, made endless promises to do all the things I’d been putting off for a while. The days were long, really long, longer than the average summer day and the nights drove me stark raving nuts. But as frustrated as I was, these were the most pivotal moments of my life. Moments of incredible clarity, humility and hope. I got to know myself, understand, really understand, that I needed to take care of myself.

Body no be wood- an African saying meaning, you have to take care of yourself because your body is not unfeeling.

I took myself for granted way too much, was callous to my body, which led to a summer spent in the hospital. But in those days of what felt like eternal loneliness, some of the loneliest moments of my life after friends and family visits were over, nothing was more profound. I became and am more self aware and grateful for the beauty that filled my life, beauty up until that moment I did not see or took for granted. It was a wake up call that hit right through to my soul. My whole being hit reset and I began to feel again. I wasn’t dead inside, but life had become too chaotic for me to feel. I needed to be still in order to feel again, hear myself, get back in tune with my intuitions and listen to my instincts. I understood what it means to be in the moment, live in the moment and understand what the moment is. Lying still in the hospital bed, I have never been more present.

2017 was a year of lessons, tough lessons that had to be learned and the only way that I could do that was by coming to a complete full stop. Nothing was that important, but then everything was. A new perspective on who I am; owning and loving who I am. But more important, I understood that I could not get where I wanted to be in such a hurry. Life takes time, and so take your time with it. And take good care of it. For someone who’d been on the go, this was a hard thing to do but much needed.

For 2018, my hopes and dreams are infinite. For starters, I want to stay alive, to live. And I hope for Love.

I hope to find love in every corner of my life.

In the early morning walk to the train station and that arduous train journey.

In the wonderful sound of my four year-old nephew talking about everything all at once.

In the quiet of my room bingeing on Netflix.

In a book, lots of books.

When writing my book.

In the rejection letters sure to come as I send out my query letters to agents.

On Friday nights out with friends and Saturday mornings spent in bed.

I hope I find it as I sit alone in the silence of my room.

Travelling the world.

On my walks around London town, exploring and showing you my London…

I hope I find it everywhere, in everything, on the days, moments, when all seems pointless. By God, I hope to find all the love there is.

I wish you and yours the very best of the New Year. And lots of Love.