You just gotta keep smiling :)

It made me smile a lot, appreciate where I have come from and in some ways it made me remember what I have lost.

The good - I am now more confident then ever, I am comfortable with who I am as a person and I know where I want to go in life. I have a loving husband and family, with a house that we are making a home, and a job that I love. I get the opportunity to work with amazing technology, to manage interesting and awesome people and to, for the first time in six years, live with my husband. I am very much feeling lucky at this point in time for things to feel like they are falling into place. I have taken up netball again to increase my girls squad and get some fitness in and I volunteer as a scout leader to support my local community (something I have never had before with moving so much). I am genuinely hand on heart happy and content with who I am and where I am.

The not so good as life is never going to be perfect - I have put on weight with the stresses of life and deployments with the military, and I am trying hard to get back the fitness that I was so proud of myself for obtaining in my early twenties. Being a manager of people is something I was probably not fully ready for when I joined the military, and with my nature, I would take on all my people’s issues by myself to resolve. This has obviously led to me being able to genuinely make an impact in people’s lives but at what cost? I feel I have lost so much of my youths innocence and positivity. Don’t get me wrong, I am still a pretty cheerful character, but the years of stress really have changed me compared to who I was back in my days on here. I know that’s natural, but it still feels like a little bit of a loss. I am also trying to figure out my body again. Coming off the pill after 12 years of being on it has been massive. My moods have changed and I have now found out that I have been hiding the fact that I have PCOS. This has been hard news to come to terms with, after years of not wanting to get pregnant, to finally getting to a place in my career and life that I want a child. It’s early days so we shall see where it all goes, but it’s defiantly been a speed bump in the road.