It's been a while since I last did some fundraising, the reason for this is the exact reason why I am back in the saddle now.

I spent 2024 concentrating on my own mental health, being a bit of a hypocrite, at the beginning of last year I finally followed my own advice (though mostly my wife's advice) and sought the help of a professional.

Meeting Eileen has been life changing. Over the year she has helped me to re wire my brain, making the challenging times of year less painful, but also being able to remember the wonderful 16 years I was lucky to have my most amazing daughter.

Things had got pretty bad and I had fallen into a hole, I was simply doing what I had always done and that wasn't helping. Changing the routine on the days which were the hardest, such as going to Hopefield animal sanctuary (Kiera's happy place) on the anniversary of losing her changed the dynamic of the day. As they say, if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.

What I learnt was that by suppressing everything, I was robbing myself of the amazing memories Kiera and I made, of which there were many, which is far from honoring my beautiful, caring, funny and incredibly clever daughter.

I will be forever grateful to the help Eileen has given me and I would encourage anyone who is struggling to seek help.

So this year and with a renewed vigour I am taking on a new challenge, however, this year, as with previous, there is a fantastic twist.

This year, I, along with my wife and some of Kiera's amazing friends, will be taking on the Nuclear Rush, an assault course guaranteed to get you muddy. As with last time, I am doing this for "The Mix" who are an amazing charity for young adults, who help with all the life challenges children come up against from videos to one on one chat, Mental Health to drugs and homelessness.

I was lucky, I had access to the help I needed, for many, the help, though available is far from easy to access, so what The Mix do is invaluable.

The challenge now will be to keep up with a bunch of 23/24 year olds, they certainly have age on their side, but I won't be defeated!!