The best birthday present

I'm going to break from the norm a bit here and write what is a pretty personal blog post about something from my life rather than our work. I hope you don't mind.

Today is my birthday and I am 39. I've been telling the team it must be the best age - I'm both 18 AND 21 so I am doubly grown up. We've been joking about how I might start wearing suits and high heels instead of my usual 'I can do anything in these clothes' uniform of vest tops, 3/4 trousers and not-converse shoes. We all know it's not going to happen, even though I did like the suggestion of the bowler hat.

Ten years ago, I was 29. I was a few weeks away from a holiday in Rhodes where two of my very good friends were getting married. And things weren't great in my life.

Some of you may know this, some of you not. I'm personally not a huge fan of trigger warnings but if I was going to put one in it would be here.

I went on that holiday, and the wedding was perfect - funny, warm, and just right for those two people - and I swam in the sea as I watched Mars pass across the sky and on the way back, on the plane, I started crying and I didn't stop for a long, long time. I'd been keeping something balled up inside me since I was 15 and it finally broke out. I came home, lay down, and pretty much didn't get up again for six months. When I did get up it was to go the wonderful, wonderful, life changing Southampton Rape Crisis. I was fortunate enough to see a brilliant woman there for almost two and a half years and I am as well and happy and content and confident (and as comfortable with my ever present human anxiety and worries and slight paranoias) as I am today because of that time. I will never stop being grateful to them and I urge anyone who needs similar help to talk to Rape Crisis - they won't make you do or say anything you don't want to, they won't make you report it or talk to the police. I am a passionate, permanent, furious that they have to exist, supporter of their work.

Ten years ago I was working in the public sector in a job I didn't think should exist, heading for a breakdown. Ten years later, I am sitting in a tiny factory surrounded by brave, bright women and Pants. Everywhere Pants. And I think to myself, I am one of the luckiest* people in the world.

There are two kinds of cake in the WMYP kitchen and a fridge full of food. Every day I come to a job I love and believe in - even on the days when I am short tempered and irritable because this job is hard and I care about whether it works or not. I am a single woman who owns (well, with the bank) a house. No-one in my close or extended family has seen a bomb go off, we all have electricity 24 hours a day, we have hot and cold water coming out of our taps, we women here in the west are (broadly) able to access education, money, legal support - and we have devices in our pockets that bounce signals off satellites just so we can send a picture of a kitten! What a world we live in. What a world.

My birthday present to myself today is to remember the feeling I had when I left Rape Crisis. To remember that feeling that I'd been given the world wrapped up in a ribbon and told gently, go play. Have fun. Try things. And the great thing about that present is I can give it away too, and keep it for myself at the same time.

I fervently hope that that feeling of hope and possibility makes it way into the lives of the women touched by WMYP - the team here but maybe also you, out there, if that's not too big a hope to have. Some of you have told me the most personal of stories because I have shared mine, and some of you have told me I've inspired you to do new things. That's a funny (and absolutely wonderful) thing to hear - I think we all think we're in our own bubbles so to find you've touched someone else's life is a surprise and a great honour.

And I want to thank you all - because of you buying our Pants, supporting our work, I am able to do this job I love, work with these astonishing women and do the thing I believe to be right. So Thank You. I'd offer you some cake if you were closer :)

*I can hear my old counsellor chiding me gently, 'it's not all luck you I know. You worked for it. You made it happen'. Yes I did, but it was an accident of birth that i was born here, now and I am glad of it.