She Made It!

Julie has just come home from her weekend away.  She launched herself through the door, flushed with success, clutching her suitcase in one hand and a handful of things she had made on her course in the other.  "But I don't want to eat for a week!" she groans (the food on these courses is legendary).  She is tired after classes that started before nine in the morning and continued late into the evening, but happy.  The other people on the course were all older than her, but she had no problems making conversation, and (as I had hoped) was taken under the wing of some of the older women.  Thanks are offered once again to the unknown women who have looked out for my daughter.

To say I am pleased by this success is an understatement.  Each one of these challenges she meets lets in a little more air into a very claustrophobic life.  For the first time, I can imagine her leading a life without my constant attendance.  She has slept away from home before this weekend, but only in the hospital, under the close supervision of staff.  We are gradually dismantling the scaffolding that had to be built up around her when she was very ill.  I am slowly spending longer days at work; she can manage longer periods of time on her own.

The next challenge is to manage a day trip to London on her own, but I think that can wait until she has sat her exams this summer.