A happy place...

This time last week I had what I consider a near death experience – I didn’t actually nearly die but I thought I might!  I was flying in to Dublin airport on a very windy day and the pilot had to abort our first attempt to land – the scariest bit was the point at which we were maybe 500 metres from the ground but the pilot accelerated very hard and ‘took off’ again.  The irony was I was flying to Ireland for a funeral and I laughed (to myself !) on thinking that I might be meeting my dearly departed friend sooner than I’d thought.

The funeral was for a family friend, Michael, who inspired me to work in the field of human rights and development. When I was a child, our families became friends (he is the same age as my parents), he took his family off to Jamaica which sounded so exciting to me and then worked for Christian Aid travelling the world, then ran Celtic spiritual retreats.  He was very good at making connections with people from all over the world and telling their story with passion. 

The funeral was a relatively joyous affair, Michael had made the most out of his life and many people loved him – but funerals do make you stop and think ‘what have I done with my life?’  On thinking about this question I feel deeply privileged to be where I am on my life journey.  Setting up Children Unite has been and continues to be - fantastic.  I love it!  I do feel very, very lucky to be in this position (and with that comes a slight dread that the shit must hit the fan at some point – if you’ll pardon the expression!!).  However, we’ve just held a Trustees meeting where I kept having to add updates from my ‘Director’s Report’ as so much has happened in the last two months I didn’t manage to remember it all when I was writing my report.  During the meeting, we looked at an overview of Children Unite’s finances for the last year as well as a projection for the next 15 months…and I didn’t quite trust my maths, but it seems we’re OK?!?!  (We’re still tiny, but I think I can safely say we’re small and strong!)

So I’m in a happy place after staring death in the face – bit melodramatic but hey, I’ll use artistic licence to end my post. But I want to acknowledge all the people who have helped me to get to this happy place…too many to mention by name so here’s a little happy face thank you cartoon (slightly manic looking admittedly - but it took me ages to find an image that would download!!).

Click here for a cartoon thanks  Try this....it's a little cartoon thanks...(it's taken me ages to add to the blog - so please tell me if it works!)

This post is dedicated to Michael Begg