5.30am starts, 7am lifts to bus stops, packing lunches, sorting breakfast, clearing kitchen, washing the washing, dropping kids at school, meetings, design, shooting video, creating graphics, illustration, organisation, details, details, picking up one kid, making dinner, welcoming home next child, signing letters, starting homework, bundling two year old into car and collecting eldest child, coming home, serving dinner, bathing smallest, putting him to bed, completing homework with middle one, putting on pyjamas, collapsing into bed, two hours sleep, then “Mum! MUUUM!”, smallest gets into my bed, curls up on my head, does backflips in his sleep and then eventually falls asleep in a position that only works for me if I twist my limbs like the dislocated tentacles of a tortured Octopus, BRRR, alarm rings and the whole cycle begins again.

This, my beautiful friend, is the whirlwind that has been my life over the the last five months.

The result?

Very little blogging.

Little FB page activity.

General not-to-be-seen-ness.

The near completion of a  WORLD-ROCKING girl’s personal growth and body esteem online course.

The soon-to-be-launched Grow Your Gorgeous 2017 Daybook.

A calendar of vibrant, transformational events lined up for 2017.

Ohhhhhhh … *sound of very deep sigh of relief*

I am uber very grateful that the Gorgeousness Programme is in its final stages

and the Grow Your Gorgeous 2017 Daybook is soon to be launched,

not only because I can experience what “having five minutes to sit down” feels like again but also because of this:

November may be grey and serious as an old fashioned school master, but holy hellfire, I can feel a sense of Wonderland blowing in and my Inner Alice is getting all twitchy with excitement. She keeps catching whiffs of pirate ship incense, glints of tinsel feather boas, glitter and blackbirds that can tell the future.

This burstingly voracious appetite for amusement makes my Inner Novemberness very nervous.

He says (in a grey, November tone), “Bethan, you have worked Very Hard for a LONG time on getting this Gorgeousness Programme complete and now, instead of being Very Serious, about a Serious Issue and writing blogs that reinforce the Seriousness of What You Are Doing … you want to ditch your whole marketing schedule and instead write frivolously about Passion and Creativity and Adventure and Expressing Your Authentic Self. ARE YOU MAD?”

“I don’t know,” I declare. “But this is just who I am and it’s actually what the Gorgeousness Programme is all about anyway.”

It’s about a woman/girl getting fired up about BEING herself

following the beautiful truth that is HER,

celebrating what what makes her head tick,

her heart sing 

and her body want to dance.

It’s about being bold enough

self-loving enough,

and courageous enough to walk to the beat of one’s own drum

and possess in one’s toolbox

everything needed 

to combat, heal, cope with, recreate, love into submission, boundary and harness whatever happens along the way.

Inner November sighs, puts his head in his hands and shakes his head.

(Clearly he hasn’t done the Gorgeousness Programme.)

“What about your Very Serious Marketing strategy?” he groans. “You launch this programme on January 28th and all of your articles about body esteem were in place! They were ready to go. They were going to pave the way.”

I shrug helplessly.

“I’d rather authentically dance my way into launching the programme. The Gorgeousness Programme is about coming to life in your TRUTH, not following some launch strategy sold by online entrepreneurs or trying to frighten people into buying it by pointing out the shit in the world.”

November sighed heavily. “You’re crackers. You’re off the wall. You’ve gone. Loop. The. Loop.”

And there’s not much one can say to this.

All I could do was give him a playful elbow nudge in the ribs and whisper, “Come on. Where’s you sense of spirit? I mean, don’t you ever look over at December and wish …”

November frowns defensively. “Wish what?”

I pause. Take a deep breath. Then plunge. “Haven’t you ever wished you could be less serious? Wished that you could put on a glittery feather boa, grab a dance partner and swoosh around on the deck of a pirate ship with a fortune telling blackbird on your shoulder?”

Inner November mutters something.

“Haven’t you ever wished that there was more to being November than grey days, fitting in, trying to get through “it”?”

November nods. The tiniest little nod.

“So come with me,” I whisper. “Let’s forget the Super Serious Marketing Strategy. Let’s go on an Expedition into Excitement and Extravaganza instead. I can write all about what happens on the blog. The stories will embody what Living your Gorgeousness actually means. It will be so much nicer than woeing everyone down with how the world is killing our sense of self love and body esteem. Fuck that!  Let’s dance and sing and joyfully gasp our way to the birth of the Gorgeousness Programme.”

November whispers very quietly, “It’s scares me.”

“You’ll forget to be scared. We’re going to go on such an adventure.”

“Okay,” says November stiffly.

And that’s fine.

November can be stiff.

I will send him for a massage with Yasmin, at Seven Sisters Serenities and once he’s feeling suitably divine, he (and you and I) will escort ourselves outside, under the Super Moon, to where a Pumpkin Carriage awaits and we can set off on an adventure into excitement and extravaganza.

I sense it’s going to be wild, spirited and breath-taking.

I hope we’re all sufficiently prepared!