The last Christmas Card

There was no Thursday Adventure today, my Dad is ill in bed with Flu, his parents have required some help and it was torrential rain and I just did not fancy getting wet and risking the camera.  So I thought I would share the last Christmas Card I am making this year.  This particular card is for family, the Welsh/Maltese side of my family.  I have used the bookatrix embossing board to make a book shaped easel card.  The robin image is from my favourite stamp store Hobby Art, here's a link:  Hobby Art.  I've written the quote myself so I apologise for that.

Whilst on the subject of family it brings me neatly to the how tricky things have been this week with my Dad ill.  There is lots of extra things to do and time is even more limited.  I felt really bad about letting a friend down but she said the kindest thing about how she couldn't imagine how hard it was caring and juggling life. I also, very unlike me, made a comment on a post from carers uk on facebook about accepting that some friends/family will be with you for your caring journey and at the end of it and others will not. 

My caring journey has changed a lot since it began, it's more time consuming and in some ways the guilt is larger because it has to be my priority and yet at the same time I can see others points of view, the views that I'm making excuses, that I'm making things difficult, that I'm the one being awkward on purpose.  I'm sure to them it does look like that but from my perspective it's just another person who doesn't want to understand the decisions I've made and who appears not to notice that I feel guilty about letting them down, that I lose sleep over letting them down, that it slowly but surely eats away at me ensuring I am too scared to speak to them.

However, there are a few people I want/need to thank. I have four extremely good friends who have been there for me and given large amounts unwavering support lately.  One was from a surprise source, a friend who others had encouraged me to give up on and now happens to be the one who has stuck by me and understood when I've let her down, in fact we are surprisingly closer than we ever have been.  The others have been there for me for quite some time now, in fact a surprising number of years and I am and always will be so very, very grateful.