MIA for so long! A little (rambling) update...

Hello my dears! I'm so sorry I've been MIA for a while, I've been busy, busy, busy with work and life in general and just haven't had the time to blog myself or catch up with everyone else's... I've really missed you all :(

The main reason for my absence is because I've started swimming again. I used to swim a LOT because it's fab for my CP (cerebral palsy), which can make my lower leg muscles really painful and tense, especially if I am stressed or tired - it basically feels like permanent cramp, which sucks! When I was struck down (!) with depression last year, I lost ALL of my confidence and stopped socialising, my physio, swimming... and even had problems looking in the mirror at myself. I won't bore you with all of the details now, however a few of my older posts address that time in my life if you're at all interested :)

I'm slowly making good progress (yay!!) with the help of counselling and fantastic support from family and friends, and started swimming again about 4 weeks ago. I'm so proud of myself as this was a huge thing for me to do - not the swimming itself - but to put myself in a situation where people can see my legs, and lets face it it's scary enough for all of us girls to put on a swimming cossie!! I'm also annoyed at myself for giving up on it in the first place when it's so important to keep active, so am trying to win myself some brownie points back ;)

I swim with my Aunty Sue, who is sooo funny, I love her. She keeps me motivated too which is what I need. She's nearly drowned me through laughing at least six times!! We both love swimming and managed 60 lengths on Thursday evening (when we started we could barely swim 20) ... I REALLY ache and feel pretty exhausted for a couple of days afterwards but already feel that my balance and general fitness has improved :)

I'm going to start my hydrotherapy programme again in the next couple of weeks too, which will help to build up my core stability etc again. The plan is to swim once a week and do my hydro on the other pool visit - Aunty Sue is keen to give it a go too... go Aunty Sue!!!

I've also started socialising again with my lovely friends... not as much as I used to because I still feel pretty anxious about it, but baby steps and all that... it's been great to get myself glammed up for a night out on the tiles and feel like the old me.

So although I only swim on two weeknights per week, the rest of the time has been swallowed up by domestic drudgery, seeing friends and family etc etc, but as I said I've missed the whole Blogger community so I'm going to try harder to blog/comment etc.

Thanks for sticking with me, I really, really appreciate you all following/reading my musings. Big hugs :) xxxx