Happy Birthday Martha

It was my beautiful daughter Martha's 5th birthday yesterday.

Today she had her birthday party - she was confident and polite and glowed through the whole event. I'm so proud of her - so pleased that we could focus on her properly and happily. Her past two birthdays have been, for me anyhow, connected with so much angst and worry. At her party there were parents who didn't know that I'd been ill - to them I looked like any other slightly harrassed mother trying to keep things going in a party-like direction. And that's how it should be.

Over the past two years I really didn't ever imagine that I could ever really be free of the legacy, even as far as my appearance was concerned. But now I look tanned from the totally amazing weather in Scotland last week, and apart from needing to tone up and continue to get fit (and lets face it, one doesn't need to have cancer to get a bit out of shape!) I don't think that I look much different to how I looked before I was ill.

She's an amazing little girl, Martha, and she's had a truly tough time - a tough time before she was even old enough to start school. But... so pretty and carefree today in her new birthday dress, she looks like a girl who has a happy future. And that's my birthday wish for her.