This week when meeting up with relatives I was asked how I was doing.

"Just bumbling along", I said. And reflecting on this I wondered why I described myself and my life like that. It seems to imply to me that I was wading through, just getting on with it and surviving somehow.

Then at the end of the week as I reflect back I have to challenge myself why I came out with such a mediocre response. In reality this week I have:

1. Met up with relatives and helped my Mum entertain relatives with three little boys running round the garden

2. Taken no 1 son to a party

3. Taken both kids to a craft workshop

4. Met one of my old school friends for dinner

5. Done a couple of days of work

6. Organised for teenage daughter to stay with a friend in London for the weekend and revelled in her "grownupness" and mixed emotions as I put her on the train to Euston

7. Supported a friend who had flown back to Canada as she buried her Mum

8. Went out with my partner for an evening of Yoruban music

9. Persuaded one of my daughter's friends who had taken an over dose to tell her parents so they could take her to hospital

10. Booked next summer's holiday

None of this seems particularly out of the ordinary. This is the every day stuff of my life. It's the constant juggling of demands from all directions. I haven't even mentioned the two dog walks a day!!

Maybe I'm not "bumbling along"....maybe actually I'm doing a bit better than I give myself credit for. I am lucky as I am pretty well at the moment but sometimes it still feels all encumbering. Life has so many demands.

Look back over your last week, what have you managed to do? In moments of illness that achievement might just be to get out of bed and have a shower. It might be going for a walk...

But also ask yourself what have you done well? Maybe we should be kinder on ourselves. Maybe we need a pat on the back because we are managing better than we think we are and those bumbling, just doing days are better than you think they are.

"You can't make yourself feel positive, but you can choose to act, and if you choose right it builds your confidence."

BrumMum

A Moodscope member.