This would be the first year I attend BritMums in London and to be honest, I am both excited and apprehensive! I am excited I will meet so many lovely bloggers, whom I have been following and befriending and admiring for ages! I am apprehensive because I am not very good with names, especially now, after losing Georgie. So the lovely people from Simoney have decided to make things a little bit easier for me and have offered a number of mummy bloggers, including myself, the opportunity to create a personalised badge with their name and the name of their blog. If you are a blogger attending BritMums this year, please look for the dragonfly badge! Feel free to introduce yourself, give me a squeeze and make friends with me! Looking forward to seeing everybody there!

Today, we landed in Normandy, France. It is our first time in this part of the world. We are here to visit family, to enjoy some time together and create memories. On the way, we decided to stop on the Omaha Beach to pay our respects to the thousands who died here on June the 6th, 1944. We did it with reverence. Having witnessed the death of our precious son last July, I do not take pain, especially a mother’s pain, lightly. On Omaha beach, the suffering of over 3000 mothers was incurred by machine guns,  vain ambitions and grandomania. It was almost overwhelming to set foot on the same beach where so many dreams and hopes and lives were shattered in a matter of mere hours. But what I didn’t know is that the beach is now guarded by Les Braves, a war monument erected in the memory of the thousands of American soldiers fallen there. Very appropriately, the memorial, as seen in the picture above, marks in its three composing elements Wings of …

Dear Dalriada Doctor, I am sorry I inconvenienced you today by phoning twice for a prescription I should have had the consideration to organise before the Easter holidays began. Mea culpa. But still, a bit of compassion and respect would have worked wonders, you know? I get it. You sounded bored and ready to go home. Maybe the extra money you are getting for working on a public holiday does not make you happy. I understand. Maybe you had been working from 9 in the morning and had had enough of snotty toddlers and drunk youths. Or maybe you were on call last night and you went to see a dying child in the hospice close by your practice. Possible. But you don’t know my story. You didn’t scroll long enough through my medical file to see that in July last year, my life changed into a nightmare forever. I know, it’s been nine months and I should be “over it” by now. After all, my son was only a baby when he died, right, …

Cinemagic is something new to me, I must admit. I had to research its history and future events before writing this post. A group of enthusiasts formed a charity meant to inspire children and young people through film and film making. The charity hosts now events in major cities like New York, Dublin and Belfast. To benefit the children and siblings that have been in contact with the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, Cinemagic had this morning in the Odeon cinema ( Victoria Centre, Belfast) a special screening of the new Cinderella movie. And we went, to Emma’s total delight and to ours too, we must admit! For two hours, we were given the opportunity to dream alongside our children about princesses and princes, love which conquers meanness and happily ever afters. We were reminded of good life principles of “stay strong and be kind” with which we would have agreed wholeheartedly before we were faced with our new reality. It is good to dream. It is good to forget, even for a couple of hours, …