8 Days 'til Key day!

Next Friday we pick up the keys to our new home. Then it's "goodbye St Albans" and "hello Maulden" again! I'm a bit gutted to be leaving such a wonderful community, it's a city that feels like a village. We meet other dog walkers nearly everyday in a group at the park, we go to messy play at the Baby Centre where the women who work there treat you as a friend, we go to the church baby and toddler group for coffee and squash and a chance for Grayson to blow off steam.

It took me ages to get to this point though. Nearly the whole time that we've been in St Albans I have been too anxious to join in. I avoided the other dog walkers in the morning as I felt like they'd see me as bad company trying to force myself into their group. I never spoke to other mothers at baby groups, heck I only started going to baby groups a few months ago! Anxiety consumed me. That's the problem with anxiety, it takes away so much of your life. I look back on my first year of motherhood with shame and embarrassment that I really don't want to feel. I've been living here over a year and I don't have any new friends. Maybe a dog walker or two that would meet up for a coffee if I was brave enough to ask. No mum friends. There's one lovely woman at the church group who I talk to regularly but have avoided getting close to as I knew we were going to move away. My brain tells me that there's no point getting close to people when you know you're going to move, but it's not logical and it's lonely.

I'm hoping that this move back to my parent's village will be a new start. It's less lonely knowing that they're not far away if I'm having a bad day. I think that it's ok to admit that, we all need a support system as parents. It's hard when you go from working 40-50 hours a week in retail, seeing people for most of your day, to it just being you and a tiny human most of the time.

So I've updated my Mush account and my Mummy Social to find new local friends, there's no "Maulden Mums" Facebook group unfortunately (St Albans Mums Facebook group has been a lifeline!) but I'm hoping that with those apps and some baby groups we will end up less lonely and who knows, maybe we will even make some friends!