FIFTY BLOGS OF GREY

It's my 50th blog and I'm feeling a sense of achievement. I love this special title but before you all get excited by it ( cos I know some of you sad souls will), let me just assure you this blog will be nothing like THAT BOOK. Nor will there be a Mr Grey. Disappointed? Sorry! The husband is the best but he's no Mr Grey!

My blogs started off being about my challenges dealing with a rare condition called Cowdens syndrome. As the blogs were written, another unexpected story developed as my eldest daughter was diagnosed with yet another rare condition. Two rare conditions in a family of four! Unbelievable statistics! These are the grey. Grey because nobody knows much about them and we constantly fight the lack of knowledge. And grey because I refuse to let them be black. I refuse to be defined by my condition and neither does my FED ( favourite eldest daughter). We are so much more.

The blog started off and continues to be a form of therapy, initially recommended by my sister and then fully endorsed by my psychologist.  The decision to share my blogs with the general public was not taken lightly. Maltese people ( my heritage) are generally quite private about these sorts of things. In my case this privacy was becoming my downfall.  I needed to talk about what I was going through. I needed to tell the world. I needed to get it off my chest...and still do.  I remember talking to a lady in my hometown who had just had breast cancer.  She told me that it drove her nuts that nobody around her really knew what she had really been through. She wanted to scream " I've had breast cancer. I've lost a breast. I'm still alive". I suggested she did. I'll stick to blogging but I get where's she's coming from totally.

Two people who have sometimes been forgotten in my blogs are my husband and my favourite younger daughter (FYD).  The husband is more resilient than he thinks. His hair is greying not just from age but from what he has been through with his wife and daughter. Hospitals are not places he's comfortable in but rather places he has had to endure...and endure...and endure.

The FYD is my arty farty, creative, loud, impulsive daughter. She has a huge heart and all who meet her fall in love with her. All through high school and beyond, she has had to face serious illness in her family and it's been tough on her...real tough. Even as I type this she is performing in her first city show. It's an exciting time for her and for us all, but one which unfortunately her sister won't share because AS USUAL someone is in hospital. It's been like this for at least six years straight.

There have been some really interesting times with this blog. I would like to share a few:

1. My blog Ninja about my husbands fight with a toilet aerosol had people in hysterics. That was a turning point for me because I figured if people could laugh then I could write.
2. My guest blogger sent my blog into meltdown and she takes every opportunity to remind me that though my blog is popular, she holds the record number of views on MY blog. If she wasn't so unwell I'd disown her.
3. People were concerned for my mental health after I wrote a story about a schizophrenic who saw rats. I had to reassure a few that I was not hearing voices except real ones...I think?
4. WHO is reading my blog in the United Arab Emirates??? This fascinates me no end!
5. People often forget this is not fiction. I am not writing fiction. We live and breathe this story which is why my husband won't read it. He says he doesn't have to. He knows the beginning, the middle and is hanging out for the end.

Not sure where the next fifty blogs will take me. I would like to call blog 100, fifty blogs of white but who knows what's to come?

In the meantime thankyou for reading and for sharing my blog and for your support. Your comments and the buzz I get seeing the different countries the blog is read in is amazing.

Till next time... xxx