New Year’s Eve a time to reflect; a time to celebrate and both of these are on the agenda for tonight.
When I think of New Year’s Eve, I think of being a child and a teenager and the preparations for New Year’s Eve parties at home with my mum and dad.
Each year there was always a New Year’s Eve party lots of drinks, music, and food and a roaring coal fire.
The tradition of letting out the old year with a lump of coal running around the block and letting it in the new year with the same lump of coal and throwing it on the fire. Memories of people I loved who are no longer alive, wonderful memories but sadness that they are all no more.
When I think of those parties I get this warm tingling feeling inside. At midnight people stretching across three rooms all linking arms and singing auld lang syne and by the end of the evening when the Watney party seven, sherry, whiskey, Babycham and snowballs were gone resorting to cherry B and the bottle of Italian apéritif
They were times of celebration.
Then the times with Seth, trips abroad just enjoying each other’s company and relishing being together they seemed like times of reflection and celebration.
The last 11 years after Seth have been sad times reflecting on what is no more, a relationship now continued through an eternal bond with no physical presence. They have been years of reflection.
This year 2025 this is a year of celebration and reflection.
People keep saying to me I bet you will be glad to see the back of 2025 after everything you have been through. But no actually it has been a year that saw me go from having lobular breast cancer to being cancer free
It has been a tough but very rewarding year and one I feel incredibly grateful for.
It bought me the opportunity to have chemo for lobular breast cancer; to have surgery; to finish off with radiotherapy and it is an absolutely amazing feeling to have started the year in January worrying that the cancer might have spread that the only option might have been palliative care to finish in the year knowing that currently I am cancer free and there is a future for me.
As I move forward into 2026 there is a lengthy list of things to do things that I had put on pause in 2025 due to the treatment. Whilst that list feels quite daunting it also feels extremely exciting so tonight in the spirit of reflection, I am thinking about the value of friendship love and support.
Those three things have been at the forefront of everything that I experienced this year; a year when I have had the time to think about what is important in life things like being cancer free having love support and friendship.
Being clear about what is important in life seems like a really good foundation for 2026.
Happy New Year everyone, thank you for a wonderful, awful year in 2025 and looking forward to 2026.
And of course, Seth, I will love you with all of my heart forever.
