This bank holiday was one of the best weekends I have had in a very long time. It was an unusually busy weekend filled with socialising, a boot fair, drop off and pick up for sleepovers and ending with a family bar-b-q yesterday. Just as I placed the finishing touches to the table outside, the heavens opened. But I was with friends, it didn’t really matter and within an hour we were basking in sunshine. I was with my family, my husband and our children, his parents and my mother as well as old friends, and some of my team from Charter. It was a sober event, but you would never have known it from the raucous laughter and excited storytelling over a lunch that extended across the afternoon. Later as we sat and talked, the conversations became more meaningful until impatient children urged us onto the lawn to play cricket where we remained at their mercy until it was dark and the rain sent us inside once again. I am so very grateful to be sober, to have connection with others that feels honest, to be able to be there for and with my children and to feel.