Four years ago today Charter completed its first week as a daycare.  We had 10 clients in the room and the atmosphere was potent with possibility. Four years on and I find myself again looking at a room still full of brave people, struggling like Marlin on a line to gain purchase on recovery, and clinical and admin teams I am proud to be working with.  And I think to myself, isn’t it amazing what can be achieved in 4 short years? Since 2008 I have co-founded Charter working a 70 hour week got home most nights and kissed my children as they slept, launched a residential site, spent weekends on windy sidelines cheering my children on, completed 2 years of an MSc, wrote essays alongside my eldest as he revised, moved house, painted my youngest son’s bedroom red, mourned my father’s death, cleared our small woodland of laurel, gained stability around my Rheumatoid Arthritis went riding with my daughter and then last year I bought the company off Tony and watched TV in front of the fire with my husband. It has been busy…and something has had to give. While I do have a close and personal relationship with each of my children, I miss the minutiae of their days, which sometimes makes me sad. And my husband and I have almost no social life.  But it feels worth it. I feel a sense of connectedness and security that perhaps can only be achieved through loving what I do and doing what I love, ethically and in fellowship, so I accept the bill.

Then as I listen to Thought For The Day I find myself reminded that these last four years achievements are the fruit of the hard graft I have put in over the preceding 20 when the seed was first planted (be careful what you wish for!). I remember so well those early years in my 20s when I was so old yet so naïve, and everything felt so difficult, each step so precarious. I am truly grateful to all those who supported me, then and now.

And as I look around the room today and see these ‘Marlin’, biting at the hand that tries to feed them, I celebrate the human spirit whilst encouraging and challenging these ‘mighty fish’ to have the courage to accept help. For ‘you cant chew meat with one tooth’ (Desmond Tutu).