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Life is a bitter-sweet adventure that never fails to amuse, baffle and astound me. I’m a great believer in things happening just as they are meant to, unfolding at just the right time, in the right way with the right people like a carefully thought out plan that I am not party too and makes little sense….until of course it all starts to make sense!

Three things have been happening that I recognised were all linked but I wasn’t quite sure how so I took a step back and allowed the process to unfold and now it has!

So firstly, I like doing the big stuff, the stuff that challenges me and makes me a little nervous, a little frightened even and a few conversations I have had over the last few weeks with different people had me gazing at the Charity Challenge website thinking could I? Should I? Can I really climb Kilimanjaro? Am I fit enough? Do I have the physical endurance to manage 18 kms uphill for days at a time? I’ve jumped out of a plane before (which I shall never do again!) but this is quite different. I like to push myself outside of my comfort zone so I can keep growing and developing myself all the time.  Kilimanjaro was looking like it might be a challenge too far, and then I spotted walking The Great Wall of China as a possibility.

Alongside a number of days of exploring this, I visited a couple of  services that blew me away in terms of what they actually achieved for and with people, the difference they made, the approach they took in their work. They were services focused on Recovering from Addiction and Alcoholism.

In the background, I’ve been getting to know someone again who I was in care with all those years ago who I had had to walk away from because of his offending lifestyle and what I now know later became a 15 year heroin addiction.

All these things were happening simultaneously linking and connecting along the way and cultivating a feeling in me of pure love and respect for all that so many of us have to overcome and also what happens to that energy when it is not about destruction but about living and connection and awareness!

People can want to change. In fact we must want to change. It has to come from within, because we absolutely cannot take any more of dying slowly and desperately mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

But in order to change fully, there needs to be a road map, support, a structure of help that makes it all possible. For me, I remember lots of charities helping me in my late teens and early twenties to recover form having been in care and then being homeless when I was without any other human being in the world to help me all while I was recovering from my own dependency on alcohol and drugs; self medication until I got sober at 20 years old.

The charity that I am supporting also provide that roadmap in the most powerful of ways. My friend could have been, should have been dead a number of times over. But he isn’t. He lives in his own rented house, with a full time job and friends and pays bills and all the normal stuff. Why? Because The Ley Community gave him the framework and support he needed that meant that he could achieve his desire to be free from drugs and all that comes with that lifestyle.

That, my friends is why I am walking the Great Wall of China on the 18th October 2014….as a thank you to them for saving lives! I am so excited about the fundraising opportunities that I can try, about actually doing it and most of all about being part of the solution. After all, being part of the solution is what prevents us from being part of the problem ……

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