Should I be missing my children more and struggling with my empty nest?  Or is it okay to feel a little bit pleased that I have more space, more time and am loving getting my house and wardrobe organised?  I have been a stay at home mum / working at home for 23 years and I loved every minute of it (well mostly).  But I was also ready for a rest!  I don't think I realised just how tired I had got and how much I missed 'me'.   In today's post I am sharing details of my new walk in wardrobe (or dressing room), some pretty new underwear for the autumn and a super cotton white shirt!

We have a beautiful cottage in the woods but it isn't a mansion and being a period cottage it does lack storage space.  We have three bedrooms, two bathrooms plus a spare room in an annexe, we are also really fortunate to have the log cabin.  But my dream, since our trip to Florida years ago, was to have a big walk in wardrobe.  Okay so I am not going to quite get the equivalent of the big American homes but I can compromise.  I am not going to be one of those mum's who keeps the kids bedrooms exactly as they were for them to visit.  Oh no, space is too precious for that, and my son owns a flat ten minutes away so he hardly needs a bedroom here does he?  And he can still stay over for Christmas if he wants to.  I have therefore utilised his bedroom and made it into my dressing room and it will also be a spare room.

There are currently around 850,000 people with dementia in the UK, this is projected to rise to 1.6 million by 2040.  Two thirds of the cost of dementia is paid by people with dementia and their families.  Unpaid carers supporting someone with dementia save the UK economy £13.9 billion a year.  There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease or any other type of dementia (source the Alzheimer's Society).

​The long goodbye ....

Dementia is something that has come to challenge me and my family, now and in the past.  There are very few families untouched by this cruel disease and yet there is no cure and it is very difficult to access help, carers feel alone and forgotten.  Care is horrifically expensive and many don't even know how they can get help.

Dementia has many causes (and sometimes there is confusion over the term dementia and Alzheimer's), Alzheimer's is a disease that causes dementia.  Other causes of dementia include vascular dementia, lewy body dementia and Parkinson's disease for example.  However, Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia.  The Alzheimer's Society explain it here.

September is World Alzheimer's Month with World Alzheimer's Day being today, Monday 21st September 2020.

​And I wanted to do my part to raise awareness.  Especially now.  The situation for visiting loved ones in care homes due to the Covid-19 restrictions is horrifying and really unacceptable.   The suffering for those living alone with dementia and the way lockdown exacerbated decline for dementia has been dreadfully sad.  So many forgotten victims of Covid-19.

This blog post is as much about me researching osteoporosis as it is about giving my readers some information of what it is all about.  My knowledge up until now has been that women are more at risk of osteoporosis than men (but men can get it too) and that our declining hormones in midlife are a risk factor, I also know that taking HRT and doing regular exercise, especially strength training can really help reduce your risk.  But when I was approached to write a blog post about it, I obviously wanted to find out more and check my facts ... and there is much more to it, for starters I learnt that as well as osteoporosis there is osteopenia and brittle bone disease as well - read on!

Now as you know I am a huge supporter of women taking HRT if they possibly can and that doing regular exercise and especially incorporating strength training into your routine can have a massive positive impact on our health overall in midlife.  And maintaining a healthy weight is important, we all know the risks associated with obesity but losing a lot of weight can also reduce our bone density.

Towards the end of lockdown, I met Nikki from Creative DeZigns for the first time, she had got in touch with me to ask if I would be interested in working with her, trying some of the styles from her lovely range of cotton and sustainable clothing and maybe sharing my thoughts on the blog.  I suggested we meet up and chat, I wanted to find out more about her and her small ethical fashion business.  We hit it off immediately and I loved her story.  I loved the clothes too!  So I asked if Nikki would be happy to share her story in more detail on my blog.  So here it is, as part of my (somewhat irregular) Embracing Life (in Midlife) series.

In this interview series, I invite inspirational women, normal women like you and me, who are busy getting on with it all and keeping all the plates spinning, to tell me about their life and their business.  I am always amazed at their stories.  And I am very impressed with how they manage to do it all. 

Nikki is no exception, she has two grown up children, she spent a large part of her childhood growing up in South Africa and she then took over Creative DeZigns form her mother and has enjoyed taking the business in a new direction whilst staying true to its original ethos.  

I really loved reading Nikki's responses to my questions, I am sure you will agree, that she is certainly very talented and very inspirational.  Do take a few moments to read what she has to say and support her small business!  I've been looking forward to sharing this post!