There have been a few occasions I have been caught off guard and have slipped into the old habits. It appears that we have just had Sale season, walking through town there have been a number of times my eye has been caught by a sale sign, thinking I could pop in and pick up a bargain I wander over until I realise just before I cross the threshold that, I can’t. As I prepared for a camping trip recently I wandered into Millets to get a new gas canister, my eye was caught by a pair of flip-flops in the sale, thinking, I could do with them when I’m camping, I headed over until I suddenly realised, shoes count as clothes!

I’ve been surprised how often my unconscious guides me towards bargains and items I really don’t need just through the power of advertising. over a number of years my subconscious has learnt how to win, well now it’s time to fight back and say NO!

Having had conversations with friends I have begun to realise that, for some, this challenge is a daily reality. Over the past few years a number of my friends, due to various reasons have had these restrictions imposed on them but, they have faith I can do it, their advice is ‘just avoid shops’. 

I feel blessed and humbled that many people do this daily and just get on with it – so I hope this will inspire other material girls like me when they idly buy a new item on each shopping trip. My husband is about to go freelance in October, leaving his salaried job behind which means a severe belt-tightening and budget cuts are underway in our household. This challenge has just become my reality as we begin to cut back on unneccessary spending. I think having the driving force of actually not being able to afford it will keep me going longer than pure will power.

Just in time for these budget cuts I have begun to notice, a number of items of my clothing appear to have developed holes in them, nightmare! Interestingly these are clothes I’ve owned for years and also the clothes I wear the most. It seems the most wisely invested purchase will last for a long time and get plenty of wear where as I have other items that I hardly ever wear, I need to think that one through! Time for some upcycling and patching me thinks.

I’ve also bought my first dress pattern and hopefully with the help of my wise mother it will shortly be transformed into a dress, i’ll let you know how that goes….

Credit: Phil hearing/Wearechapterone

I’ve been challenged by a number of things recently. Firstly I’ve been thinking about where our clothes come from, how they are made or created by people and whether those people are honoured in that process. Secondly I have been thinking about many of the easy options I take. I like doing simple things that make a difference but also make me feel like my life is being lived with purpose. I can list many things I have done which I have intended to be sacrificial but in reality, they have been far too easy. Take giving up christmas presents as an example, I still received gifts, although they were handmade ones, I also had the pleasure on seeing the money had been spent elsewhere with charities. On Christmas day there were a few pangs of jealousy but all in all it was far too easy to say I’m giving up presents for Christmas and feel a bit smug about it.

This time I want to do something that will actually be quite hard and character shaping at the same time. So I have decided that I will go a year without buying any new clothes or accessories. I have some rules to this that I will explain later but the essence of the experiment is to ensure I ween myself off a reliance on clothes and shopping whilst experiencing the value in creating and finding beautiful things.

I feel ashamed to admit this but, I also know I’m not alone, when I’m feeling a bit crappy I will ‘treat’ myself to some new clothes, when I feel a bit fat or spotty I buy a new top or the latest fashion item. It’s at those points when I fail to think about the ethical implications of my impulse purchase and head on down to Primark or Topshop and buy anything that takes my fancy because, advertising tells me things like ‘I am worth it’ or I should ‘obey my thirst’ . When, in reality, I don’t need any of it and buying something will not ultimately make me feel better, it will just mask the feeling with something a little more shallow or fake, like caring about what I look like a little bit more. SO ultimately I want to try to crack that cycle of ‘treating’ myself.

I also have a habit of convincing myself I Need a new pair of boots or a new hat or a new outfit for that wedding, I obsess over it and trawl the internet and high street for the best outfit or style until I have found exactly what I needed, once i’ve found it, cost and ethical principles don’t really factor in my decision because it is exactly what I believe I needed. The fact is I have a wardrobe full of clothes and plenty of friends and family who also have wardrobes full of clothes that I can borrow, I don’t really need anything I just want it. What I do need is to get over the I want always gets attitude and decide to really address some of my personal needs rather than masking them by buying even more things!

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t buy loads of clothes and I’m not an obsessive follower of fashion, in fact I’m far from it but I believe this is something God is challenging me on, I’m sure I will actually find this challenge a hard one – mainly because I have to break habits of a life time but also because it means that in some occasions I won’t ‘fit’ with everyone else or I will have to exclude myself out of social activities because I am not buying anything new.I will begin to learn the value in making my own clothes or accessories and also remaking and adapting what I already have, whilst at the same time being measured in my clothes buying.

I also want to do this to set an example. We have just written some small group notes for our church on fair trade and ethical clothing, not all my clothes are ethical, fair trade or sweatshop free, in fact many of them aren’t. I want to show that, I and many others can spend a year not needing to buy the newest or latest thing but we can take a step out of modern culture which tells us our wants are our needs and I can use this year to realise that God meets my needs not a high street shop. I can begin to master that great fruit of the spirit, Self Control.

So the rules go like this….

In the forthcoming year…… I cannot buy any new clothes, jewellery, accessories or bags.

The only new items I can buy is underwear this needs to be on a needs must basis only and will be planned rather than impulse bought. I also have to make every effort to buy this from an ethical supplier

If I decide I need any item of clothing or accessories that are not within my current wardrobe – I have to discuss this decision with at least one person and the item has to be required for a specific reason. I am able to

borrow off friends

buy something from a charity shop or second-hand

Or make my own item of clothing

In addition to this I am able to

Partake in swap shops/swishing parties

Buy the raw ingredients for making my own clothing or accessories such as wool, material and string.

Buy presents of clothes and accessories for other people

Receive presents from others which are new clothes and accessories but I cannot request such presents!

I would more than love it if I had some companions on this journey. If anyone else feels challenged and wants to join in please do, we can do it together! I am going to blog about my experiences on this journey in the coming year, telling you about what, hopefully, beautiful items I make and at what times it is most difficult and how well I deal with it.

I hope and pray that I will manage this challenge, I am backdating it to the last item of clothing I bought which was on 9th June – some may say this is cheeky but, like I said I don’t believe this challenge will be easy I need to give myself some headway! So until 9th June 2012 goodbye clothes shops, hello my existing wardrobe, we’re going to get very familiar in the next year!

Rose’s husband was killed by the LRA, Rose and her daughter were beaten whilst they dragged her husband away. She had to live in a refugee camp with little food, no sanitation and hardly any provision provided by the government. Rose has, I think, 6 children and she also cares for two of her grandchildren. She grows their food, feeds them, teaches them how to care for the home and pays for their school uniforms. Whilst we were staying with her, twins were born to her oldest daughter, Nora. Nora delivered the babies without any pain relief, far away from the hospital with the help of a traditional birth attendant, her aunt. A far cry from what we experience back home.

What came to mind as we stayed in her home was that this land was inherited by her husband, it was the same land he was taken from and Rose had returned to it without him and rebuilt her home and her family. She’d been through things I cannot even imagine, she still survives on one meal of Cassava a day. But as she made Shea Oil for the new-born babies and busied around the homestead advising everyone on what to do I was struck by her strength. Her strength to continue, that digging deep within herself to not let it all get on top of her. Don’t get me wrong, Rose didn’t have it all together. She struggles to understand what has happened to her, not to blame herself and I’m sure she struggles to see how things will be in the future. But she is still here, she is still caring for her children and ensuring that they can go to school.

From what I could see of Ugandan culture it appears that the women keep the home, fetch the water, weed the plants, do the hoeing, prepare the food and look after the children. The men do the ploughing and conversation with one another. I truly believe that the majority of responsibilities fall upon the women because of their strength, not only their physical strength but their deep strength that comes from within to face each day and not to fall.

I have had the opportunities to pursue my education, chose my partner, own my own home, work where I wanted and be financially independent because of the battles women before me have fought on my behalf. It makes me know that even though people think Feminism is all about Bra burning and lesbianism – it’s not. What it is about is recognising the women of the world like Rose who deserve to be acknowledged in their work, they deserve to be treated as nothing less than equal to their brothers. The women around the world who don’t have the opportunities to go to school, to protect themselves from rape or vulnerability. That’s why I will proudly say I am a feminist – I believe the women of the world should be treated equally and there is still a battle fight, maybe less so in the UK but in Uganda, in the DRC, in Cambodia and across the world, these women deserve to have their battles fought for.

And that is the responsibility that we carry, here in the western world, we must carry it well as other women of the world carry their own responsibilities well. Start by visiting Restored

I’ve decided to do a little series on why I’ve called this blog Acting Justly, or just get back to basics. I guess it’s what I would say I’m all about, the things that make me tick and get me going. When I initially started blogging I intended it to be completely anonymous but I soon learnt people want to read about personal stories, about who I am and those who most seem to want to read my blogs are people who already know me! So many of you will already know some of what I am going to blog about.

We all love pigeon holing people, It’s in our nature to draw boxes around people to keep them within our understanding and simplify the complex nature of how different everyone is. I’ve been pigeon holed into many categories in my time,

the ‘Justice’ one, Eco warrier, Drum Banger, rainbow cardigan wearing hippy, The religious one, The Christian, Liberal,

I don’t really mind these labels, at least I have a label about something I care about even if they might think I am extreme. In reality though I don’t think I am extreme at all or zealous or over opinionated. Feel free to disagree with me on this but I just think I am normal, a normal person trying to see how I can follow the teachings of Jesus and ensure the way I live my life doesn’t negatively effect anyone. In Micah 6:8 there is a mandate for how we should live and worship our God

⁸He has told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

I believe that as humans we are all created equally and therefore we should treat one another equally. That means that what I do, the choices I make, the way I use my rights affects other people, and I should take that into account when considering my actions.

So stay tuned to follow me and my thoughts of how I struggle to put this into action

I did collect some of my thoughts whilst I was out there and hopefully what follows in the next few days will be some of the stories of the people I met but also some reflections on my experience.

Lets start with a bit about the trip and the places we visited. There was a team of 9 of us plus Odiirah who is the communications officer for PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) Uganda. 4 Members of Tearfund Staff, two church leaders, an academic, a teacher and an artist/church representative for Tearfund. We were visiting Tearfund’s partner, PAG which is the second biggest evangelical church denomination in Uganda with over 5000 churches. You may have heard of Watoto church in Kampala, which is one of PAG’s biggest churches but the places we visited were simple, down to earth rural village churches out in the sticks.

On our trip we travelled north from Kampala to a place called Soroti which is in the North East of Uganda in the Teso region. From Soroti we visited various villages in the Amuria and Katkwi districts.

Many of the people I have spoken to since my return have known very little about the history of Uganda and it’s problems. The name Joseph Kony and The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) don’t seem to ring many bells, never mind the Kuramajong cattle raiders. So, if I may,  I’d like to fill you in briefly on the history of the Teso region.

The area we visited borders Kuramoja, home to the Kuramajong who are nomadic cattle herders, they live in the hills to the East and they are armed. Since the 1980s they have been raiding the cattle of the people in the Teso region, stealing their livlihood and forcing them to leave their homes and live in Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps.  They also nip across to Kenya and do the same there. Currently the Kuramajong and Ateso people are working towards peace but they caused more damage than that which can be seen by the eye. Living in camps means people are unable to farm their land, they have to live off handouts that are given to them, children often have no access to school and their parents can’t afford their school uniforms any way, sanitation is poor and disease is rife. It robs them of hope and dignity.

To add insult to injury for over 20 years North Uganda has been ravaged by severe civil unrest - led by Joseph Kony a man who believes the Uganda should be ruled by the ten commandments, to some that might sound like a great idea however putting it simply Kony is a nutter, a man possessed. He rules an army of abducted child soldiers, boy and girls who have been stolen away from their families.  In 2003 the LRA moved further south in Uganda to the Teso region, they were there for only 3 years as local militia fought back and the LRA retreated North. But in those three years they did plenty of damage to an already vulnerable place.  The Ugandan Government’s security strategy is to move everybody into IDP camps where they are ‘safe’ from the rebels. This conveniently means the UN and Aid agencies pump money through the country in the form of relief to abate the humanitarian crisis in these camps. The LRA are now thought to be in the Central African Republic, driven out of Uganda altogether, many people have returned to their homes from the camps and are rebuilding their lives often without many things, without hope, without family members, without cattle and without any sense of worth.

I spent two nights in Ogongora village at the home of a family who had suffered through these ordeals. They had lost a lot but through the work of PAG they were beginning to gain some things.

Today I am starting a journey, I’m currently on a train hurtling towards Kings Cross, my final destination is Kampala, Uganda.

Although I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a while, it feels like today has come upon me very fast! In the busyness of life I haven’t had time to contemplate this journey and what I will see in Uganda. So as I watch towns and villages whizz by I thought writing something down might help me reflect.

I haven’t been to Africa for 5 years, As a continent it has moved and shaped me into who I am today, my first experiences in Mozambique and travels around neighbouring countries were experiences I will never forget. I have a deep fondness for the inspirational people, the stunning landscape and smells of Africa. But all this is stored in my memory, like a faded photograph, I know when I step off that plane it will come rushing forward into the present in full HD like a gust of wind hitting me hard in the face.

I’m both excited and apprehensive about going, it’s a new country on a massive continent so it is unfair to compare it to places I’ve been to before bit secretly I hope I find enough similarities to bring back the familiar feelings of freedom and closeness to my creator that I relate to that part of the world.

This will be my first work trip to see Tearfund partners and from what I have seen in preparation I think I am going to be truly blown away by the power of the local church. I get this funny feeling in my tummy just thinking about it. I probably won’t have access to the Internet whilst I’m there but I’m aiming to write my thoughts down to blog on my return, I can’t wait to share some really positive stories of what God is doing through his people.

So I am excited, I’m also apprehensive about what are, in reality, small things but big things to me. I have a fear of toilets, always have had ever since I was little, I get serious stage fright – I’m not looking forward to long drops. I also have a stupid thing with food and textures I know I will need to man up and get it down me but it’s never an enjoyable experience. Finally I have somehow let myself develop an irrational fear of cockroaches, in my opinion the worst creature on earth, I just hope the brown flying type aren’t around.

We’re a team, it’s not just me but a fair few other people going both staff and church leaders. I’m definitely the youngest on the trip and in the minority of females, the dynamics will be so different to any other trips I’ve been on before.

So I think my conclusion is that, I should roll with it and let the experience wash over me, soak it in and reflect. This is an opportunity to learn not to ‘do’ as I often end up trying the latter rather than the former. I’m dumping my thoughts down here so I can go with an open and clear mind. Uganda here I come!

I first recognised this when I found myself with an afternoon to spare between morning and afternoon meetings, a long way from home. As I pondered my route to the next meeting I considered finding a place with WIFI that I could use to check my e-mails and use the spare time constructively. I found myself ascending the stairs to a Starbucks in a huge ladies clothing store at a retail park on the edge of Coventry. Feeling a bit nervous about installing myself there for a number of hours to work I spotted a gentleman tapping away at a laptop. Once I’d gathered my drink and biscuit I reluctantly joined him and fired up my machine. Whilst observing him I realised he seemed very comfortable settled in his seat with his papers, laptop and mobile strewn over the table beside a long forgotten coffee cup. In our working corner we were ignored by the Starbucks staff, no clearing of tables, no bored stares trying to get us to move on. It was perfectly accepted this space was our office for the afternoon and we were welcome to stay as long as we required.

Once you know how to spot the Transient Workers you see them everywhere, beavering away in coffee shops, holding meetings at service stations and working on trains moving from one meeting to another. Pulling into a service station I can now spot the company cars usually silver estate or hatchback, and lo and behold inside the Costa or Starbucks are the suits in meetings with their notepads out or perched at the bar, laptop plugged in, mobile glued to their ear.

But, I wonder with all these people in the work from home, officeless, remote working world how do they create a community, the office spirit? Or even how do I create it as I seem to have joined the transient workforce. I might not be in a grey suit but I have the laptop, iPhone and company car to match. Although I live along neighbours and friends my work takes me all over, my team mates are around the country and my office is nowhere. Work can be so separate from my home life it can be a lonely place to go.

In this flexible, routine free world how do we ensure we have balance? This is something I’m pondering on my 5 hour train journey. How do we stop working when we can see our e-mails on our phones, we can access WIFI anywhere and we can be contacted all the time, does ‘flexible’ hours mean you can actually be contacted and expected to respond at any time of the day or night or does it still mean you can turn off, shut down and silence the work distractions whenever is required in order to take your time off in lieu. Is it called TOIL because it’s so hard to take it? Balance is one thing I hope to achieve this year. Being newly married it’s something that is required to build a foundation in our relationship but with a new job and joining the transient workers club I feel it’s going to be a battle to achieve it.

Is anyone else in the transient workers club, how do you balance it?

The  21st February 2005 may be remembered as the day it snowed, thick snowflakes dropped from the sky and piled up in huge drifts inches deep. I remember that day well, it was the last day I saw my sister Faith, the day she passed away to be with her Father. As Faith left us the snow came down like the world was gently weeping. I remember my mum looking out of the window watching the snow settle saying, ‘she always loved the snow’, realising she was speaking in past tense.

When Faith died I was in my first year of University. She had been ill for about 6 months and been treated for Cancer for 4 months. About two weeks into my University life, the end of freshers week, I went home to visit her and the realisation dawned that she was really ill. It took far too long for the doctors to find out that she had cancer, a very aggressive form which had spread all around her body. We still don’t know where from.

It’s been quite a long time now, 6 years. I remember wondering when the feeling of loss would go away, if it would ever leave. Truth be told it doesn’t but you learn to live with it.

We’re not designed to cope with death, God never created us to experience it and until Adam and Eve took a sneaky bite of the apple we didn’t. So to us death, any death is a tragedy. Although we believe there is more on the other side we cannot see it and so, to the ones left behind we struggle to cope with the loss of our loved one. I read so many books about suffering, pain and grief to try to work out the answer to why God didn’t heal my sister on earth, I didn’t find it and eventually decided I would never find it. I had to make a conscious choice to keep following the footsteps of Jesus rather than turn away in hurt and trust that God know’s best, It wasn’t easy.

In English culture we don’t really talk that much about our feelings, I guess I’m pretty English – stiff upper lip and all. Shortly after Faith died I went back to University after 2 weeks off, it had been 6 days since she died. Looking back at it now I didn’t give myself much thinking space. I had essays to write and lectures to attend. There were times I considered sacking it in, going home and coming back next year but I guess I thought that was quitting and Faith was so worried about me having extensions and not being able to do my work whilst she was ill in some small way felt like I had to do it for her.

Although I had some brilliant, caring friends at Uni they were many who had no idea how to deal with my loss. I don’t blame anyone, they were young and had never experienced anything like it. So I guess what I did was lock it all away and put on a brave face. I can only remember a small number of conversations I had about Faith in those last months of my first year at University. I wouldn’t talk about it unless I was directly asked and so I never gave myself the chance to speak out the thoughts in my head about what I had seen, experienced and lost. If my brave face needed to crack would shut myself in my room and play one song over and over again looking at photos of Faith and crying. It was a really sad and lonely time for me and also paved the way for me struggling to talk about Faith for a long time. This mainly came from a fear of thinking people wouldn’t want to listen, it made them feel uncomfortable or more often than not their response made me feel uncomfortable.

In the summer of 2005 I spent time with a counsellor at Gaddum House in Manchester who specialised in bereavement counselling for young people. It was really useful for me and there I learnt some of the feelings I went through were the normal stages of grief and everyone’s experience is normal. Like I said death isn’t something we were made to deal with.

Slowly I began to feel like I was emerging from a fog and began to enjoy life again without the constant ache. My second year of university I look back on with fond memories, the counselling really helped me to try to talk about Faith, however old habits die-hard and a combination of self-consciousness and habit meant I still found it hard to open up to people and I put walls up around me.

Often it is the anticipation of milestones and occasions that are worse than the day itself, the first Christmas was hard but it also felt like Faith was just away for a bit, she’d be back next year I don’t think it was until the second Christmas that I really felt like she was gone. On the run up to the one year anniversary I had a play by-play of the memories of the last two weeks in my head, until the actual day which wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. My 21st Birthday kind of came and went as I couldn’t imagine celebrating without Faith. On my 23rd Birthday all I could think of was that I was the same age as Faith when she died, when I was 24 I had outlived my sister.

As the years go by I often look at my family with its new additions, my nephew and my husband, and wonder what life would be like if Faith had lived, we’d probably have a lot more little people running around and we’d still be up North in beautiful Yorkshire. I sometimes feel guilty for living my life without her, for keeping moving without her around. I’m still caught out when I think I see Faith in the street or when I remember something I want to tell her and realise I can’t. It took me a year to delete her number from my phone.

But more often than not I just miss her. On my wedding day as my mum and my sister Joy fastened up my dress and I looked at myself in the mirror I blinked back tears remembering the exact same scenario with Faith 5 years earlier. In that moment I really missed her, I was getting married and Faith wasn’t going to be there. Still my walls were up and my upper lip stiff so I didn’t say a word to my mum and sister – now isn’t the time to cry I told myself.

I guess my lessons learnt are to give yourself time and find your people, the ones who will ask and will care. Life won’t and can’t go back to normal. Allow yourself the time to emerge from the fog, eventually you will.

A beautiful and accurate quote from the film Rabbit Hole

“does it ever get better?”

“The weight of it, I guess. At some point it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and  - there it is”

These past few weeks I’ve been feeling the weight of that brick I carry around with me but soon I will forget it again until another day.

I know I find it difficult to adjust to change. Many times in my life I have struggled with changes I didn’t impose or changes I wish I had never made. I remember moving into my house in the third year of university and sobbing to my sister about how I was struggling with the new home, new housemates and big changes in my lifestyle. I look back on that now and think it was so little, so minor but I battled through it, finding it really difficult to adjust. Since then there have been bigger changes in my life, moving city, starting working life, and my parents leaving the family home. Again I have found these difficult to adjust to and I have come to accept that I find change hard.

They say change is as good as rest – somehow I don’t believe them.

I think the main reason I’ve found change so hard is that, it has never been complete. It is always a step on a journey or a stage in the process. For example moving into my third year house signalled the end of university life was drawing close. When I started working it was the first step on the ladder, a job that wouldn’t always last but the first stage in the career journey. Moving to Lincoln was supposedly a temporary measure before I decided what to do a change that was irreversible but not a change I had committed to.

So when I started approaching some big changes in my life I was naturally apprehensive. My housemates were moving out, I was getting married, living with a boy and I was starting a completely new job all within 4 weeks. I thought I might as well do it all at once and then at least maybe the adjustment would be less drawn out!

However, this change hasn’t created the usual ache, it’s been different.

All my life I have been looking for the next step even from primary school I was looking towards starting secondary school, I’ve been through the education system and then started the career journey. There was always something better down the pipeline to work towards. I would describe myself as driven, ambitious even and I was proud of it. The word settled sent shivers down my spine. I never wanted to settle, settling to me meant making do; it meant stalling on the progress I wanted to make in my life. It sounds like a contradiction, I don’t like change but I don’t like standing still. I was in a constant internal battle to keep moving and be challenged but I never liked leaving things behind.

In the past 3 months I have learnt something new, something I never expected I would experience. The warmth of being settled.

Thinking about new years resolutions for 2011 I was pleasantly surprised when I realised there was nothing I had to achieve this year, no big goal to work towards, no more moving on and having to face change. I have this overwhelming feeling of being content in where I am and who I am. I think what I owe to this feeling is that month of change back in October. When I made life long commitments to the most wonderful man on earth, I committed myself to no longer striving for the next step but for standing together and taking a new path, one which is wide enough to take us both together. I have also been blessed with a new and exciting job with Tearfund, an organisation I have always wanted to work for, a job that I am content in – but one where I am constantly being challenged to grow and stretch. But most of all I have made a change which is lasting, one that is forever. I am married, committed and content in being settled.

I am pleasantly content in my changes and settled in the here and now.

Three years ago when I made the decision to move to Lincoln after university I decided it would be the most challenging step, the hardest, the one I would have to rely on God to transition through. I was right but, I had no idea what that would look like.

I never used to be very good at coping with change and so moving to a new city was pretty challenging for me. Initially I loved it, I missed my friends from uni but as most people had moved on there was little left to hold onto. I was blessed with a caring sister and brother-in-law who introduced me to their friends and as I found my feet I formed friendships of my own. I had an ideal of what Lincoln was like and living a graduate lifestyle and when I first arrived everything lived up to it. It wasn’t until life started to take a hold that I realised people don’t spend all their time socialising, drinking coffee and meeting up for lunch!

After a few months when things began to get a bit tough and didn’t work out how I wanted,  my friends were there to pick up the pieces and love me better. I am forever appreciative of the effort that they made to make me realise who I am.

Being not from Lincoln and not even studying here I often felt like I was always going to be new, the comer-inner. Even when new people came I felt more affinity with them feeling like I was still new with them. It always takes a long time to settle into a new place and to be accepted. My parents moved to West Yorkshire before I was born but, the 20+ years they lived there my mum always commented on how they were comer-inners and not ‘locals’, never welcomed as one of the kind. I will never be a local in Lincoln and maybe I have separated myself a little bit from completely settling here, in a few years we might move on. But, I came to the realisation in about September last year (when I first drafted this post) that I am finally no longer a newbie, I am just Ruth, not the new girl, not a local but just me, Ruth. I am accepted.

I don’t think it is about people welcoming me but rather about being comfortable and finding my fit. It takes time, 3 years for me and maybe I will have to go on and do it all again in a few years but for now I can enjoy that I’m no longer the newbie but just me.