She wants me to write a blog post.   Urgh.  “People give to people”, she says.  “You’ve got lots to say”, she says. Okay, well, from what angle?  What kind of a point do you want it to make?  What do you want it to achieve? 

Overthinking, I’m told.  I imagine she’s right, but that doesn’t help me.  I’m not sure what visitors to our website will want to read, what will inspire them, or what might prompt them to engage with Headway Nottingham in some form or another.  So, I’m left hovering over my keyboard, in a stricken writer’s limbo, ultimately deciding just to tap away and see which words are formed on the way.

Headway Nottingham feels like everything.  I won’t go quite so far as to say I love it more than I love my children, but there are times when both they and I may ponder that question.  I’m not sure it should be everything, and I work hard to achieve balance in my life.  However, how can it not pervade every inch of my life, when the good it does can pervade every inch of someone else’s?

All charities are facing uncertain times.  The small, slightly obscure ones like ours even more so.  Statutory funding is shrinking by the day, the cost of everything is going up and the members of local communities (you and I) are being asked to dig deeper and do more to fill the gaps in provision that Central Government, the NHS and our Local Authorities just can’t plug.  I don’t doubt that they try, and that they would like to be able to do more but they can’t.  That’s what I’m told.

Does that, then, make it easier to handle when yet another client asks for help and I must tell them that the help won’t come from us?  That we don’t have the resources?  That our funding has been cut?  Will it stop me lamenting the state of a world that can let someone live with long-term profound disability and make accessing specialist support so incredibly difficult?  No, it won’t.  That is why this place, this cause, this group of bloomin’ fantastic people will keep making me push the boundaries of a work/life balance.  That is why we will keep justifying our very existence with statistics, reports, numbers and charts even though the best way of evidencing the efficacy of our service is an hour spent in this welcoming, inspiring and most worthy of places, Headway Nottingham.