You know it's been tough for me and my family this year.

I won't bore you with details – the details are not mine to bore you with, and I wouldn't want to bring you down, but – it's not been a joyride for any of us.

At times it has felt like looking down into a great chasm. At times it has felt like there has been a great divide between my family and me.

I am not talking about the thick sheet of fogged plate glass that exists when I am in one of my depressions; I'm used to existing in that murky gloom while they continue their normal lives around me. This is more of an ideological divide.

I first became aware of it with the Brexit vote. We were split: they were all on one side, I was on the other. Passionately and completely on the other. I can never remember falling out with anyone over politics before. But it wasn't about politics: the politics was only a reflection of the way we viewed the world. I saw that my children's views were a pure reflection of my husband's views and that they all saw the world in a way utterly alien to me.

I have felt that my ideas and philosophies have been dismissed, unvalued and disregarded. I have felt myself dismissed, unvalued and disregarded.

And that pattern has been repeated in a number of areas so that I have felt more and more isolated.

But this morning my sister turned it around for me with one sentence. She said, "You're looking at the hole. But you need to look at the cheese."

And I'm going to leave it there. I am looking at my cheese, and feeling grateful that I have cheese (and that no one has, as yet, moved it). It is a good and tasty and nourishing cheese.

And there is far more cheese than holes.

Mary

A Moodscope member.