Each year I write a post in honour of my favourite and best who I married 14 years ago.

We used to look like this:

Now we look like this:

We haven’t had an easy time in those 14 years, we’ve weathered many storms, been through a fair few changes and transitions, known grief and illness in various forms but yet have known the joy and wonder of being able to hold each other through it all. Honestly though, I’d take any one of those years over the one we’ve just had, the pain of loss, the struggle with ill health, any of it. This year has been brutal. There is no other word for it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to see hope again but right now I’m clinging to Carrie Fishers words in Star Wars, ‘Hope is like the sun, if we only believe in it when we see it we’ll never make it through the night’. I don’t think I’ve appreciated those words properly until this December. I am in the dark night, I don’t see hope, let alone any goodness which that hope might lead to. But I am vaguely aware that dark nights pass. I believe that, like the sun rises each morning, hope might come to us again. Well, sometimes I do. 

Anyway, in the words of Olivia Rodrigo (all the youngest offspring ever listens to right now) – ‘God, it’s brutal out here’. 

And yet. we somehow walk on, together. I would not be able to do this without the lovely husbandface, who has always championed hope in our lives, who optimistically calls me to see the path ahead. The hope of actually one day being able to hang out with him properly again keeps me dragging my feet forwards on this journey. 

We cling together as the years go by, he sees me, knows me and isn’t going anywhere, our boat is probably turned over and sinking but we cling to the hull together knowing that at least we are together in this storm. I am so grateful for his love, his care, his commitment to us, his ability to admin the crap out of the stupid crumbling systems that are meant to support but don’t, his ability to keep on emailing and phoning and asking for help that doesn’t come but at least he has the executive function to understand things my brain can’t right now. I am grateful for his smile and his arms which hold me tight. I am glad we are still in this with each other and I do not take that for granted. This man is a beautiful one and I hope in a one day world where we can hang out together, climb a hill, sit and look at the view, eat a lovely dinner on our own, drink wine and curl up to watch a movie together. (also nights away would be good but in this world where 5 min together feels like a treat I’ll settle for hoping for just a day of fun…). 

As ever, raise your glasses to the wonderful husbandface. No-one else I’d rather travel this dark night with.