Because I have done the work to look at my limiting beliefs and gained an honest view of who I actually am from facts and not from someone’s opinion of who they think I am or who they believe I am, my confidence has grown. My anxiety has lowered, and I'm much better at stopping negative thoughts now, so I don’t get stuck in a negative self-talk track and end up in a downward spiral.

As you can see from the title, this is part two of a post that I wrote in January of this year. If you haven't read that one or you would like a refresher of what I talked about, you can head on over here to read that one. Over the past few weeks since publishing that post, I have had additional thoughts about the subject of making friends as an adult, that I wanted to voice.

This post started as notes on my phone after chatting with a friend on Instagram back in June 2020. She'd posed the question on her stories a few days earlier about feeling the pressure to buy a home as an adult, instead of renting a place.

I replied with "It's what society expects; marriage, kids and a mortgage, although not necessarily in that order." And when she agreed I added, "So if we don't have one or any we feel like we're failing. Even though we're not."

As a kid I wasn't the most outgoing, I was shy and quiet. I had a few friends but as I moved around a lot due to my dad being in the army, we never managed to stay in touch. This was the days before the Internet, social media and mobile phones. To stay in touch we had to write letters or *gasp shock* call people and actually speak to the other person at the end of the phone line! I mean. The horror!!!

Late last year, I was asked by one of the pastors at my church if I would share my testimony as part of a message where it would be an essential part of it. I said I would think about it as it involves domestic abuse trauma from my past that I'm still working through.

After the November lockdown, the UK government came out with a tier system for England as different areas had different rates of infections, so needed individual rules about what we could and couldn't do. The lower the tier number the lower the covid number so the more you're able to do.

Christmas for most people looked very different in 2020. It was my first ever one entirely in my own home and also the first one where I didn't see any of my family in person because of the COVID-19 government guidelines here in the UK. My mum is classed as vulnerable so I stayed away in order to help keep her safe and healthy. I usually spend a couple of days at her house from Christmas Eve until Boxing Day. So, as I was unable to do that this year, I decided to make my Christmas as special as I could.

As a child, we always went on family walks looking for conkers to play the game; conkers. Sometimes the conkers would still be in their shell and they’d have to be broken open to get to them. I remembered one year a conker, still in its shell, fell from the tree above and hit me on the top of my head!