What Sophie Said

Hello, July. I’m really, really glad to see you. You’ve always been my favourite month, my birthday month, my happy month. June was really hard. In June I hit a brick wall when it came to my anxiety and depression and I had to press reset. I spent two weeks sleeping, reading, learning. I returned to work. I’m building up my food intake. I’m building healthy habits. I’m learning to cope. But it’s been a hard, hard month. There have been achievements during it and I’ve learned an awful lot, but I’m ready for the fresh feel of a new month. I’ve come out of June with a new outlook. Rather than masking my problems and pretending I’m fine, I need to tackle them properly. Fully. For good. Take on those deep-rooted issues I’ve spent three years just masking and ‘getting on with’. It’s been hard, and there’s a long road ahead, but long term these changes will make a huge difference to my health and my happiness. So, July. I’m glad to see you....

It seems an appropriate day to share a story about my dad. Soon, I'll fill you in a bit on why there's been two weeks of silence... but right now it's a space for a story about my dad. Or rather, a story about my dad and me. Of both of us, of a period of 15 months where we were both father and daughter, and boss and employee. When I first graduated, I worked for my dad for just under a year and a half, and in that period we learned a lot about each other and about ourselves. Not only were there new boundaries to navigate, and the need to establish that line between work time and family time, but I was in a period where I was struggling. Towards the end of university was when my anxiety first decided to properly rear its head, and the Sophie that was working with dad then was not the Sophie of now or the Sophie of six months before. I was cautious. I was apologetic, I had forgotten what my talents were, where my strengths lay and how strong I could be. We wer...

On this day thirty years ago my parents said ‘I do’. My mum looked beautiful. Dad had a dodgy moustache and wasn’t sure the correct way to kneel down during the marriage ceremony. Thirty years on, they’re celebrating their love on an incredible trip around Sri Lanka. They’re in love, and they’re the best of friends. I have so much admiration for the two people I call Mum and Dad, and their relationship is just one of the things I have been so lucky to grow up around. They laugh. They bicker. They support. They mess about. They make plans. They go on adventures. They go on dates. They have ‘couple friends’ and their own friends. They both run their own companies and support each other relentlessly through the ups and downs that come with that. They taught my sister and me so much of what we know. They put us through fantastic schools and helped us continue on to our universities. They help us when we need advice, or are struggling.  Th...