A thank you to Smile4Claire

Recently a wonderful organisation named Smile4Claire reached out and has donated to my wheelchair fund. They are meeting tonight to celebrate all the wonderful fundraising they've done this year and since I could not attend I wanted to include a little write up and thank you. I've been truly overwhelmed by their generosity.

I would like to share something I wrote two years ago, in a time when I felt more hopeless than I ever have in my life. In a time when the light at the end of the tunnel seemed so far away.

“The last few days and nights have been really hard. I just sometimes feel like life hits you really hard sometimes, when you’re not expecting it. I feel lost, like I'm in limbo, trapped between two worlds, always fighting to be the person that I was. I feel like I can't put myself out there in the same way as I want to. Part of this feels like despite how much I try to reject what's happened to me, all my illnesses are apart of my story and I have to accept the person I am now to be able to move forward.

But I want to change the way people see me I want them to see me as me, Hope.”

It’s been a long journey for me, as I’m sure it’s been for many others, the light can seem so faded at times and in the moment that I wrote this I could never have imagined the people that would soon surround me. With little pinpricks of light that transformed my little world, people walked and continue to walk with me through the darkness and without them I don’t think I ever could have foreseen an end to it.

Thank you will never be enough, the excitement I felt when my mum picked up the phone and made the order for my new chair was something I never quite imagined experiencing! When your world gets turned upside the strangest things can become such blessings and this will offer me so much. This can help me to become…me! And for people to see the person, not the chair and certainly not the illness. Thank you to everyone involved and to the amazing Ellie whom I’m so looking forward to reconnect with. This has been filled with so many different blessings, thank you.

Hope