It's been about 6 weeks since my last post - apologies, it has been a bit busy! I'm training to be a solicitor and the busy-ness seems to come in peaks and troughs at the moment. I was also supposed to be going on holiday over the first May bank holiday, but unfortunately our flight was cancelled so I've also been trying to get over the trauma of a cancelled holiday as well as trying to claim everything back from the airline! Nightmare!
Anyway.......so, yes I am a budding solicitor to be. I am 7 months off qualification after a long hard slog - this is my 7th year of training now (including my degree). December is going to be very exciting, provided there are jobs around by then! I did my degree (Law and French) at Manchester, and then moved to Bristol to do my Legal Practice Course (compulsory post-grad course) whilst working part-time for two years to pay the fees - they don't lie when they say it's expensive to qualify - and now I'm three quarters of the way through my training contract (which is basically full-time practical training within a firm).
I think I've said previously (and if not I'm saying it now!) that my parent's separation has influenced very many areas of my life, in particular my career.
We were always a close family. My brother and sister and I always spent a lot of time together, both with our friends and just the three of us, so we were close growing up. We were also close to both our parents. I think from a young age I appreciated how hard my parents worked to keep the family running. As I've said before, Mum suffered from bad arthritis after my little sister was born but she ran her own business, and Dad worked in London during the week and came home at the weekends. Anyway, we were very close and all felt very loved and supported throughout our childhood. The custody "battle" was always going to be bad.......
Mum wanted full custody, and Dad wanted what we wanted. I think I have blocked a lot of it out, because it really was awful. It was by far the messiest part of the divorce, and perhaps the hardest thing for us was being asked what we wanted, when all we wanted was for mummy and daddy to be together and for things to go back to the way they were. I was 11, my brother was 8, and my sister 5 so it was difficult for us to express what we wanted in the future in terms of seeing our parents separately. It was horrendous having to effectively choose between my parents, and even now there are times when I still have to.......I promise there is a positive to come out of this story....
I am not entirely sure what happened in the end or what the court ruled, but our "home" was to be with Mum, and we saw Dad often in the week, and went to stay with him every other weekend. The rules were strict - pick up at 10am, drop off at 6pm etc etc
I remember thinking at the time (and still do think now) I hope no-body else ever has to go through this. Slightly naively, I know, as of course people will, but those couple of years were not pleasant. It was at that time that I started to think about the process of divorce, and custody hearings, and became really interested in them both. I became really driven and motivated by wanting to help people who were going through the same process - particularly, making sure it goes as smoothly as possible, with the minimum heartache possbile. Obviously, again this was somewhat naive, but since then I have been passionate about becoming a family solicitor. I find the subject fascinating. I am interested in both family law (divorce and all that that entails, as well as domestic violence etc) as well as public childcare law, which mainly consists of care proceedings. I hope that when I qualify and start practising as a solicitor I will make my clients feel at ease, and I feel I should be able to relate to what they're going through and therefore become more engaged with their case.
So, who knows what I would be doing now if my parents hadn't got divorced! There is a long history of teaching in my family, so I suspect I would be standing in front of one of those fancy whiteboard thingys a lot and getting agitated with the kids in my class! I probably am one of the few who can say that their parent's divorce will hopefully lead to a high flying career in the law - I am certainly not in it for the money.

Fires and friends!

I have just come back from a weekend in Wales for Mum’s birthday. My family is now spread out all over the country – my sister and Dad are both down in Cornwall , Mum is in Wales, my brother is in Plymouth and I’m based in Bristol at the moment. Dad keeps threatening to move abroad but I doubt that will happen if we’ve got anything to do with it!

So, where was I? Mum and the three of us had just packed up and moved out of the family home. I have to say I don’t really remember a lot about the first bit of living in the new house, other than there being a lot of boxes. I also remember our cat, Ruby, who must have been in his late teens at the time, was very unhappy about it all, although I’m sure he was pleased we had left the dog behind. Mum has never been one for mess, so I imagine she would have got the house into order pretty quickly. It was a struggle for her to begin with - a single mother, with three young children. She had married Dad fairly young and probably wouldn’t have remembered what it was like being on her own. The house we moved into was rented and had no central heating. It was a lovely house, but small, and very cold in the winter. Mum suffered from arthritis pretty badly at this time and I remember her having to lug wood and coal about for the fire every night after she got home. However, she has an iron will and a heart of gold, and I know her number one priority would have been keeping us warm.

At this time, I was only a year into high school. I was away at boarding school, and remember having to go back to school for only my second term and to tell everyone that my parents were splitting up. It was hard, and I don’t really think I properly understood what it meant, other than we wouldn’t be living with Dad and we had moved house. I think being away from home really helped provide some stability for me, and the friends that I made at school whilst my parents were divorcing, are still my best friends – I don’t know what I would do without them. Even though we were only 11 at the time, they were so supportive, always eager to take my mind off the unpleasant things that were happening at home. Looking back, it’s amazing how intuitive young children are! I am truly grateful to all my friends who were there to listen to me moan and to hug me when I cried. I have to say that my friendships are one of the most important things that came out of my parents’ split – I honestly believe that if I hadn’t been going through such a hard time, I wouldn’t have opened up to them, and we wouldn’t be as close as we are today – I’m sure some of you reading won’t understand that, but I really think my friendships are stronger as a result.

Tomorrow, I am going out for dinner with Lydia, who I still refer to as my “best friend”. I haven’t seen her since November as she now lives in London, and although we don’t speak as much as we probably should, I know that if I ever needed her she would drop everything for me. I have known her since I was 11, and she is one of the few people my age I know who have parents who are still married.

My first blog - the beginning

Hi everyone

I am really pleased to be writing this blog, to try and tell you about some of my memories and experiences of being brought up in a single parent household. I hope to try and tell you about all the positives because, even though there were many negatives and difficult times, I feel that there have been many many positive aspects to my parents’ divorce from a personal point of view. I am sure that many of you reading will be going through all this at the moment, and so I hope my blogs will provide a little reassurance for you.

I wasn’t sure where to start with my first post, as there are so many things I want to write about, but a logical place is the beginning – my parents’ split. I am conscious that this first blog may be a little disheartening given that I have been telling you about how positive my blogs will be, but I promise there are lots of positives to come! To fully appreciate the positives, I think you need to hear about the negatives first. So, here we go………….

When I was eleven, my parents sat me, my brother and my sister down on Boxing Day, with a huge pile of Quality Streets (probably to pacify us), and told us that they were separating. I remember sitting on Dad’s lap and feeling scared, as Mummy told us we were moving to a new house but that Daddy wasn’t coming. I didn’t really understand why Daddy wasn’t coming, but the whole thing was a whirlwind, and after the initial worry, the three of us thought it was a big adventure. We packed all of our things in big cardboard boxes. I can remember being excited to find a necklace Mum had given to me. Mum was helping me pack up my bedroom and she said “Don’t show that to Daddy”. I asked why and she said “He gave it to me. It will upset him if he sees it”.

We went to see the new house on the day they told us. They kept reminding me how close it was to Dad’s house (he would stay in the family home) but at eleven years old, eight miles was a long way, and I still couldn’t understand why he couldn’t come too.

Within a weekend we had packed up our stuff in boxes and moved eight miles away from the big house we had lived in since I was three, and eight miles away from Dad.

This was the beginning of a very different life for us all and I hope to be able to tell you about it in my future posts.