There’s no such thing as a bad year

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It must be said – since about April last year a ton of things have gone horribly wrong for us. We’ve been worried about money, whether we can continue to run a home business. My father was diagnosed with cancer and died.

Phew, that should have been the worst thing to happen, right? Wrong. After the funeral, my mother and youngest sister went to mush and remain that way. Instead of being comforted by the show of support from my father’s sisters and brothers, they spent more time criticising and bitching about them, which was distressing to hear.

To make matters worse, the other sister was caught stealing from my mother, and when confronted by me, tried to claim that I’d assaulted her in doing so. We can put this down to her myriad of mental health ‘issues’, or we can say that she’s just a truly toxic individual. Needless to say, she wasn’t remotely assaulted – she was caught out stealing during an extremely difficult time for the family and chose to lash out in the most vile way possible.

Then, in the late autumn we discovered that Lisa’s mother had got cancer. Not only was there the very real possibility that she would die from the disease, there was the prospect of yet another family cracking under the strain of this disease. I’m not ashamed to say it – my own family’s poor behaviour after my father’s death has left me scared and distrustful of people under stressful situations – some people crack up entirely, other people make it about themselves, and other people become solid and stoic and dependable.

And that’s where this last twleve months has been a good thing. I think Lisa and I can be self-critical to the point of self-loathing. But this year proved to us that we’re a great team, and above all else loyal, strong and resilient.

Lisa doesn’t get enough thanks for just being a tower of strength to everyone around her. She gets on with things, doesn’t ask for thanks or praise, she just does the right thing every time. And even when she’s struggling, she gives of herself fairly readily, although we’re both realising that giving too much often leads to being taken for granted. So we’re learning to strike the right balance between helping others and not damaging our own lives.

More than that, I think we both know that we’ve grown in some very profound ways. Dealing with so many huge events all at once has made us much more tolerant of little foibles and gripes that used to seem major. I think we now see the long game – the consequences of our actions in the future – and don’t react so quickly to events surrounding us.

We know who our friends are. There have been people who supported us in subtle ways throughout the events of the last year. And there have been people who leaned on us heavily, used us without a single thought for what we were going through. As a result of that, there’s been a subtle recalculating of our priorities for the future.

But most importantly of all, as buffetted and battered as this year has left us, we profoundly love our little family more than ever. Because when everything else has been tough, and challenging and painful – and it has been a painful year – our family has been growing closer than ever. We can take comfort in how Rachel (our eldest) is growing up – a wisecracking little madam, but also a wise little soul. She’s starting to see our personalities and identify the things we like and she loves nothing more than a late-night conversation, which is the best time to get her to share her day!

Jake is affactionate and shy and loveable as always. He’s the artist in the family, and goes through a rainforest’s worth of paper making drawings, cartoons and crafting bizarre items at the kitchen table. Daniel – the baby of the bunch – is starting to come into his own. We’re fighting a constant battle to keep him away from video games. He’s addicted. But he’s starting to go out and play a bit more with friends in the street.

And though they sometimes have their meltdowns, our little fivesome remains a close-knit, loving family. So when everything is at its absolute worst, we can look around ourselves and feel good that we’ve got such a great bunch. And that’s why it’s been a good year – because the bad stuff is in the past and we still have our family.