As one door closes, another door opens

It has been 20 days since my last confession.  Of course what I meant to say was since my last post.  Why the silence you might ask?  Put briefly it is because my life was turned upside down on 4 January and putting it bluntly it has been messy.  It's curious though that there is a perception that we need to present a professional image at all times and so I struggled away in silence.  An observation: birth is incredibly gory with blood, guts and fluids everywhere as are other parts of nature.  Put another way manmade people appear plastic and it is hard to relate to them.

That said we are multi-faceted and so whilst one part of life can be chaotic, another can be blooming.  As members of the local school PTA, we were faced with the possibility that we would have to cancel our next event.  This seemed crazy.  A lot of hard work had gone into finding an Indian chef to do the food and an actor to be the compere for the quiz.  Initially I thought oh no here I go again and then there was a voice in me that said no I was not going to take this lying down.  As a team we needed to believe it was possible to get a successful outcome.  It required pulling together through leadership and direction.  Everyone on the PTA needed to believe we could do it.  As a new Mum at the school, I know very few of the parents but I have a wide range of contacts outside school.  Relying on the dogged determination that has been a trademark since childhood, I took 30 tickets, plugged the event like mad and sold most of them.  It is not going to change the world, it's an event at a small rural school.  However I am pleased with the result because it is a living example of what leadership means.  It shows that we need to keep open minds when we are observing others as we rarely know what they are fully capable of.  At the time the decision to act was taken, we had sold two tickets.  The event is now sold out.