Tesco Mum of the Year AwardsAbout 97% of me always enjoys the Tesco Mum of the Year Awards. I’ve been to three of the annual award ceremonies now and this year’s, which took place last Sunday, was just as inspiring as always – eight amazing women going above and beyond to make a difference to other people’s lives.

Then there is this niggling 3% of me that I’m actually slightly ashamed of, as it feels pretty selfish. It’s the 3% of me that feels bad because I haven’t set up a charity or saved a life or raised huge amounts of cash for a good cause.

You see? Pretty selfish isn’t it? Because none of it is meant to be about me. I comfort myself with the thought that it’s all part of the normal parenting guilt thing, where nothing you do is ever really quite good enough. The internet makes it worse because things like Pinterest instil in you the idea that all the proper mums are creating simple yet elegant windowsill displays at the same time as preparing wholesome bento box packed lunches for their funky yet casual looking, ruddy faced children. View Post

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For the last couple of years now I have been an official blogging ambassador for the Tesco Mum of the Year Awards, and I’m very honoured to have been asked to be involved again with the 2015 awards, their 10th anniversary.

Tesco Mum of the Year Awards

The Tesco Mum of the Year Awards are about recognising and celebrating those mums who have gone the extra mile in supporting their families, communities and causes close to their heart. We’re not talking here about simply going to the effort to bake something homemade for the summer fair rather than buying something at Waitrose and roughing it up a bit around the edges, this is about amazing women doing truly amazing things. View Post

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Seriously, blessed.

I know that normally I complain about stupid stuff like car air fresheners and generally take the mickey out of myself, but I want to be serious for just a couple of minutes.

My life is blessed. Honestly, it’s awesome.

You know why?

Because I am alive.

And everyone I love, apart from my grandparents, (and that’s sort of normal and OK, even though I have dreams where they are alive and wake up sad), everyone I care about is alive. No one I know has died tragically. No one I know has experienced the ultimate trauma of losing a child.

I know it’s kind of obvious, but sometimes it is worth saying. Sometimes it is worth just taking a minute and saying ‘do you know what, I am so bloody grateful that my life is normal, and that nothing really disastrously shitty has ever happened to me.’

I am writing this on the train on the way home from the Tesco Mum of the Year awards – I wanted to capture my feelings now while I am still raw with emotion from hearing the stories of the winners and my cheeks are blotchy from crying. I don’t want to look back in a few days and think ‘oh yes, that was fun, I got to mess about taking selfies with Gail from Coronation Street’, I want to do it now, when I have been consumed with that feeling of wanted to ACT. I want to contact every Tesco Mum of the Year Award winner and offer them all of my money. I want to DO something. I don’t want to sit and watch stuff happening around me, I want to DO.

Tesco mum of the year awards winnersCan you even imagine losing your eight year old daughter and having the motivation to do anything other than sit in a dark room drinking gin? Laura Young did. Laura started a charity – the Teapot Trust – using art therapy for kids in hospitals to make their visits not quite as crappy as they might otherwise be. Laura lost her daughter Verity at eight years old and it was Laura’s story that tipped me over the edge and saw me with tears rolling down my face when I was trying oh so hard to look cool and glamorous just in case the cameras were watching me.

Laura Young Tesco Mum of the Year award winnerIt was Laura that made me stop and think about just how fragile and precious life is and how easily it can snatched way from us, even though we take it so much for granted. We spend literally years building up these precarious lives around us, we agonise over ridiculous things like catchment areas, when what really matters is that our children are alive and that we can speak to them any time we want to.

Just think about it for a minute. Your kids might annoy you sometimes, but just think about what it would feel like never to hear their voices again.

You can’t really can you?

Please, if this post has pulled at you heart strings at all, please take the time to read the stories from the Tesco mum of the year award winners, to watch the show this Sunday at 6.10pm on Channel 5, (you might spot me…), and to think about whether there is anything, anything at all, that you can do to help.

Disclosure: I am a Tesco Mum of the Year Blogger Ambassador

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This Sunday I am off to London to celebrate the achievements of a group of extraordinary women as part of the Tesco Mum of the Year awards.

I went last year and found it a very humbling experience. While I am ranting about car air fresheners and my children’s inability to find objects that are right in front of them, these women are been through actual tragedies. Real grown up stuff that would knock the bottom out of anybody’s life. What’s truly amazing though about the eight Tesco Mum of the Year award winners is that they have faced difficult circumstances head on and turned tragic events around into something positive.

Take Jane Plumb for instance.

This is Jane. She looks very normal doesn’t she – down-to-earth and friendly?

Jane Plumb Tesco Mum of the Year awards

Jane’s achievements though are anything but ordinary. In fact they are extraordinary.

17 years ago Jane’s newborn son Theo died. Theo was born 15 weeks early and doctors told Jane that Theo had died because of Group B Strep (GBS). I cannot even begin to imagine losing a child, especially to an infection that you soon discover is actually preventable – the very idea of getting out of bed and getting dressed everyday feels like it would be challenge enough.

For Jane though, this personal tragedy became a mission, a mission to prevent other parent’s suffering as she and her husband Robert did following the loss of Theo. Just six months after Theo’s death, when most people would still be in shock, Jane gained charitable status for her organisation Group B Strep Support and ever since has been supporting parents and campaigning for pregnant women to be offered advice and testing for GBS.

It is through this work that Jane is able to positively impact the lives of the 500 babies who are made ill or who die from GBS every year. It’s hard work, but for Jane, totally worth it.

“Sometimes I hear from parents who say the information we gave them meant their babies were born free from GBS infection,” says Jane, “and it all seems worthwhile. It’s for those babies, babies like Theo, that we’ll keep campaigning and raising awareness.”

Disclosure: I am an ambassador for the Tesco Mum of the Year awards 2014

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I have been away this weekend, staying with some friends in Scotland. Before we left I told Belle that if she saw me using my phone, that she was allowed to tell me off. For the whole weekend I restrained myself from checking my emails and tweeting, except for a couple of occasions late at night or in a toilet, which I’m sure is absolutely fine and not at all a sign of a problem.

This was me making an effort at being a Good Mummy.

It would take a little more though I fear than restricting my Twitter usage to public toilets to get me on the Tesco Mum of the Year Awards shortlist, packed as it it full of women who are actually amazing parents.  View Post

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