A Posting of Nerves

I would imagine some people feel like this upon posting their first comment into the wide blue yonder…slightly nervous, embarrassed and idiotic, because right now I know I do.

What on earth makes us want to shout out into the void and announce our daily dealings - especially to an innocent public who don't know me one iota from a bar of soap - perhaps it’s the idea of being slightly anonymous? Fortunately there are thousands of bloggers with plenty of admirers out there, shamefully I follow just two and have been inspired one - one that's beautifully written by someone I love.

My husband and I hurtled headlong into a nightmare on the 4th September 2008 when I gave birth prematurely to our baby daughter, Ella. We never thought we would be able to survive her loss and with it the pain, the hurt and the anger that followed, but with the passing of each day we began to recover. We look back now and realise that for us time wasn't the great healer, we've just slowly learnt to live with the pain of a broken heart.

Living in Africa has both helped and hindered us. Life and death regularly go hand in hand, but here it's seen in vivid detail. Death floats like an umbrella over the heads of most local families and far too many babies die in infancy. The average life expectancy of a Ugandan adult is 51 years of age.  Out of the way clinics often don't stock the simplest of drugs and witch doctors continue to scratch a living.

But as with any symbiotic relationship, life after death unfurls like a flower. Families rebuild their lives, children go to school, crops have to be tendered, gardens need to be dug and the diligence of a proud people reigns true. It hasn’t always made us feel any better, there’s nothing worse than the comment, ‘there are plenty of people worse off than you’, but living where we do sometimes helps us to stay on an even keel.

I say all of this, but on Sunday night after we’d had a big fat argument Chris punched a door with his right hand and broke two bones.......so much for the even keel! Living on this knife edge isn't easy, but we both know that whatever side we fall, we fall together.

Thanks for the ear cyberspace, I’ll bend it again soon.