Sorry Elton, but sorry isn’t the hardest word. (As that sentence proves). The very hardest word is HELP.

Help, and its root source, kindness, has been missing in my life for a long time. I learnt not to ask, and not to expect.

Relearning that I actually deserve kindness, and how to ask for help, has been one of the very hardest things in a year of very, very hard things.

It has been harder even than learning how to establish barriers and boundaries, how to demand respect, and how to weather disrespect.

But I’ve been regularly floored by how much kindness there is out there, and how help often comes in quite unexpected forms…

Sometimes help looks like someone coming round to open the latest divorce papers, because you can’t face them by yourself.
Sometimes help looks like being taken on a night out for a treat.
Sometimes help looks like a Marks and Spencers voucher.
Sometimes help looks like taking the kids for an evening slumber party so you can get to a hospital appointment.
Sometimes help looks like someone reminding you it’s not you.
Sometimes help looks like someone reminding you it IS you, but that you should forgive yourself, and that it’s part of growing.
Sometimes help looks like medicine.
Sometimes help looks like advice.
Sometimes help looks like a compliment.
Sometimes help looks like a babysitter.
Sometimes help looks like a chat.
Sometimes help looks like a cup of tea.
Sometimes help looks like cheese.
Sometimes help looks like a tissue.
Sometimes help looks like a hug.
Sometimes help looks like money.
Sometimes help looks like sex (more on that another time).

And sometimes, help looks like a free silver-smithing workshop…

The latter was offered by a lovely lady called Alison, who saw this blog and thought I needed cheering up. Alison happens to be Mrs Handmade In Nether Edge, is a glass and jewellery designer, and runs workshops from her Nether Edge studio.

This involves rocking up to her house, shooting the breeze about life (and boy, has Alison LIVED), being fed homemade comfort food, and inbetween being taught how to make jewellery from precious metal clay (she also does glass workshops too).

If you play your cards right you might even get a cuddle and a few words of wisdom. These are worth worth than their weight in, well, silver. And glass.

Some people might get renewal from a spa day or a massage, possibly with a group of friends. I’d rather take that group of friends to see Alison, get lost in a bit of creativity, and come away with a full belly, something beautiful you can keep, a sense of achievement, and a vague feeling that life really is worth living, isn’t it?

I will never get married again, but I would LOVE a Handmade in Netheredge Hen Do (another of Alison’s services).

So thanks for your help, Alison, and all the other helpful and kind people of the world, and in particular of Sheffield.

Thanks for showing me that kindness rules, how to accept it (sometimes even without becoming teary – progress!), how to EXPECT it, and increasingly, gradually, how to ASK for it.

(No, I’m not asking for another free workshop, I’m still high from the first one and will be saving up for my second 😉 ).

Repeat after me:

Can. You. Help. Me. Please?

It’s getting easier every day.

As, indeed, is everything else.

Mumonthenetheredge
xx