It’s Chrrrrriiiiisssttttmmmassss!!!!

This morning I opened the curtains to a stream of sunshine. The skies were clear, crisp blue and the road behind the house glistened with a fine sheen of ice.

The fields had been sprayed with a shimmer of white and the bare arms of the white birch tree outside my window looked as though they had been dusted with icing powder. December has crept up on me slowly and tapped me on the shoulder with his chilly fingers. It seems like a blink ago that I was lying in the recovery position, the July sun beating down on me, knowing that something terrible and life-changing had just happened.

Christmas will mean more to me this year. We all know it should be about the people, not the presents. We know it should be about spending time with those we love, putting feuds behind us and showing goodwill to all men. Yet somehow it slides into too much to eat, much too much to drink and before you know it, you’ve given someone a snippy answer and someone’s snapped back.

This year, I’m going to be one of those annoying people who say, ‘remember what’s important.’ Believe me, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Look in the mirror and be proud of yourself, be kind to yourself and love what you’ve got. Then look around you, at your friends and family and remind yourself how lucky you are.

As you know I’ve just read Katie Piper’s book ‘Beautiful,’ and her alternative Christmas message, aired a few years back on Channel 4, says it all. I’ve borrowed her powerful words to post here.

‘My life before was very self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and it took a tragedy for me to reassess my life and how I felt and what I thought was important. Don’t wait until you lose somebody. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Appreciate the beautiful things and the beautiful people that you have in your life now…My Christmas message would be to tell people that I used to hide away and be ashamed of how I looked, frightened of people’s reactions. If people are doing that or feel that way now, I would urge them not to, because they don’t have to feel like that. You can become accepted, you can regain the confidence. And for the people that need to do the accepting, who maybe freak out when they see somebody who’s different, you absolutely don’t have to.'

Even when you think things can never move forward and you feel so low, there’s always a way out. I never thought that I’d be sitting here saying this. Never.’

So Merry Christmas everybody; enjoy, appreciate and savour.

Something for the Christmas list; ‘Beautiful’ by Katie Piper.

I’ve always been a fast reader. I devour books, whipping through pages so quickly that people think I can’t possibly be taking it all in. The more I enjoy a book, the faster I go, until the words become an independent chatter in my head and I’m lost in the story. As an English teacher this is an important skill; I can get the gist of things quickly and I can speed-read my way through a text to teach the next day. The downside is that good books never last more than a day or so! As a child, my Dad once watched me zoom through The Diary of Adrian Mole in 3 hours and couldn’t believe I’d actually read it. He set up a quiz and watched me I disbelief as I answered every question correctly, sometimes quoting directly from the book.

So when I picked up Katie Piper’s ‘Beautiful,’ I knew it wasn’t going to take me long. I was hooked and spent the next 4 hours churning through the pages, only stopping occasionally to wipe the tears from my eyes and swallow the lump in my throat. We all know Katie Piper and we all know she has a harrowing story. Yet to read it first hand and empathise with her emotional journey is very different. She’d chosen her words carefully to explain exactly how she felt and didn’t shy away from the more personal details. It was a riveting although difficult read.

Katie’s attitude is one that I think people who are experiencing any difficulties in their lives should strive to adopt. Her mantra, ‘you’re a survivor, not a victim,’ is a potent one. Those who see themselves as victims of circumstance feel powerless to help themselves and in the case of emotionally and physically gruelling circumstances, you have to help yourself as much as possible. Taking some control and being a ‘survivor’ is often hard to achieve but very satisfying once done.

Katie’s Uncle says to her, ‘you haven’t just survived, you’re thriving too.’ It’s no good just existing day to day. As an individual you have the right to lead a full, flourishing life bursting with the things you enjoy and surrounded by people who love you. Much of this is to do with your own actions, being brave enough to try new things and take opportunities and not always worrying what others think of you.



If you have had an accident, particularly a burns accident, this is a very reassuring read. The medical team keep saying to Katie, ‘it won’t always be like this, or look like this’ and her recent press photos prove they were right - she excludes confidence and fabulousness. As someone in the early stages of recovery and skin changes, it’s positive for me to see the results of time and patience. Katie also found she disliked things like hairdryers, cooking, candles, hot drinks and so on. This is something I’ve found difficult (especially around Christmas time: chestnuts roasting on an open fire; mulled wine; fairy lights and all that!) but am pleased to know that it’s something burn survivors do, a process they go through. It doesn’t matter how you were burned, fear of being burned by something else, even if completely unlikely or illogical, is common.

Overall, I’d recommend Katie’s book to anyone, as a reminder of what’s important in life and how fragile our construct of our sense of self can be if it is based on a superficial form of beauty. Katie is beautiful, her friends and family are beautiful and her medical team are beautiful. There is a wide world of beauty out there and it doesn’t all look the same.

‘Burnt and fabulous, that was me.’



Life is like an hourglass......

Eventually everything hits the bottom, and all you have to do is wait it out until someone comes along and turn it around again.

Katie Piper, looking fabulous

Recovering from an accident takes a combination of time and mental and physical power. Unless you have had an accident, you can't appreciate the level of effort that goes into becoming yourself again. Although a large part of this is physical, it also takes time to feel mentally well and 'yourself.' Any one who has experienced a trauma, for example a break-up or a death in the family may look back on that time of stress and wonder how they got through it and managed to function day to day. These periods of time may seem blurry or particularly vivid. You remember how you felt, what happened around you, almost as if it's a programme you are watching on TV, or if you are watching it happening to someone else.

Once you have battled your way through and taken the steps towards recovery, you start to reflect. For me, once I begun to reflect, this was when I realised I was starting to feel like myself again. I was beginning to enjoy going out and socialising instead of it feeling like a battle, something I 'should' do. I felt less self-aware and this helped me feel more confident again.


Someone who should be incredibly proud of themselves is Katie Piper. Her photo was taken at the Jersey Boys west end show recently and she looks fabulous. Not only does she look fabulous, she looks confident in the way she stands and the way she smiles. Katie has had a difficult battle during her long recovery and hopefully she is on her way back to feeling like herself again.