- ‘’Despite the natural belittling of one’s self, the doubts, the insecurities, we have to wake up to the realisation that we all write our own autobiography, we are the authors of our life story. Realising that, write a good story with your life and make sure to write yourself as the protagonist. Be the hero of your journey’’ Yossi Ghinsberg
3rd March 2025
We all have a story. Some of us are just starting at the beginning yet to unfold the chapters of what will hopefully be one of the best stories to ever have been told. It could be a story of success, triumph or romance if you’re one of the lucky ones. It could be comedy filled with joyful moments and wild adventures along the way. Yet for most people it’s likely to include some form of tragedy, hardship and loss.
I’ve said this many times before and I genuinely believe it that if you throw all of your worries and problems up in the air you would be thankful if you caught your own. What ever you are going through in this very moment there is always someone worse off than you. That’s not to say your worries aren’t important and to dismiss any emotions you are going through by any means.
It’s a sort of optimistic way of what I imagine a group of men sat in the pub having a chat and setting the worlds to rights in between the banter of football and whatever sport happens to be on at the time looking at their one last pint of bitter before they need to go home to face the music (several hours later than they should have done might I add). Glass half full and saying ‘yeah but at least we’re not Dave the poor bastard’ pointing at the dishevelled bloke sat in the corner on his own. His wife has just run off with a salesman called ‘Tray’ twenty years his junior and to top it all off his trusty border collie he used to have by his side has just died. He would give anything to just have had his wife throw his dinner to the dog for being late home after a few pints.
A Story worth telling
When I write my blogs, I write them from my heart and my head. I’m giving the reader (I hope) a snippet into the strange world that goes on in my head. My words that appear as I type can be different at any moment in time they’re determined by my feelings and thoughts in that moment. I always try to be honest with how I’m feeling and what events I unfold. Sharing them openly to be totally honest makes me massively vulnerable. When I post a blog thoughts go through my mind of the readers (if any) what are they thinking what judgement are they making? Will they like it? Will I offend anyone? The thought of someone not liking my writing is very daunting. It’s like the first time you tell someone you love them and you genuinely don’t know what they might say back.
However, after listening to some Ted Talks at the weekend. I took away quite a few elements for future posts. But a common theme that stood out for me is that in order to succeed and achieve things we have to be accepting of failure. We have to put ourselves in vulnerable positions and take on risks in order to accomplish things. Now I’m not self-indulgent enough to think that my blogs will be for everyone. I for one don’t like every single book I’ve ever picked up. Sometimes I’ll get a few chapters in and I’ll get to that decision point where it’s either waste the time I’ve already invested to see how the story unfolds or cut my losses and ditch the book.
For those of you that have read my blogs some you might enjoy some you might have thought were a bit shit to be honest. However, I still like to think that I make some sort of connection with you that it entices you to keep on reading. I hope that the words I write make you feel some sort of emotion whether that be happy, sad, mad or you might pick up one useful snippet of information (although if you’re reading my blogs for words of wisdom, I genuinely urge you to read something more educated like the Dalai Lama or The Beano). What I took from this weekend however was that I have the power to hopefully help people from my misfortunes. By sharing my thoughts, emotions and experiences. What I deemed to be a hardship is in fact a blessing in some obscene sort of way. Not many people will have experienced (I hope) what I have having Stage 4 cancer twice so not only it it blessing to share but also by sharing it might lead to early diagnosis in some individuals or provide glimmers of hope and support along their own journeys.
Write your own autobiography
We all have the opportunity to write our own stories. We may not always have the opportunity to chose every chapter and what happens to the characters that surround us. I for certain would not have chosen to have Stage 4 cancer to go through all that I did only to find a couple of years later having to write another story of having Stage 4 cancer but Brain Metastasis. It’s like watching a really good film that has a happy ending and then discovering they’ve made a sequel which is totally not what you were expecting, to top it all off it comes without sound (and speech in my case) a bit mind boggling and is very slow moving!
We may not be able to write the content or keep the characters within our story. Some will no longer want to be a part of your story and that’s ok. They will go onto make their own stories but they have served their purpose in your story to a point. We can however challenge and choose our ending. A bit like those books that you used to be able to make a choice on what happened by turning to certain pages.
As a middle age woman I honestly don’t know where my life story is going. I have never been organised I just like to live in the moment. Planning too far ahead for me creates unnecessary stress I don’t need. Imaginary deadlines I don’t want. I’m not sure if this has been a recent thing since my cancer diagnosis as thinking too far ahead when the prognosis you have isn’t good. Nor was it about being in denial about what could happen. It was more enjoying the present moment and focusing on what I could achieve.
I don’t think about the ending in my story as that’s not going to be for a long time yet. All I know that it’s one with HOPE and I like to think RESILENCE maybe some triumphs and tragedies but hopefully one that people around me will keep helping me turn the pages one exciting chapter after another. One that doesn’t necessarily have an ending but one that is told to the next family generations to come…..a Never-ending story