I have a new Monday morning routine. Kids dropped off at school and nursery I head to my local cafe and meet with a lovely friend. Laptops on, coffees and smoothies ordered, we set to work. Heads down, brows furrowed we mean business. I get on with whatever it is that I’m writing and she works on reports and her ‘stuff’. We probably don’t even quite know what the other is doing. It really doesn’t matter. Our Monday morning meetings give us both a focus, a break from the distractions at home and the week gets off to a super positive start. Maybe it’s the feeling of uninterrupted time after the demands of the weekend or the blueberry and papaya smoothies that do it. Whatever the reason, I come away feeling energised, ambitious and appreciative of the way my working life is finally taking shape in a way that I’d always hoped it would.
Every twenty minutes or so we stop for a little chat – how was your weekend, how are the kids…the usual. Today we went a little deeper and found ourselves talking about the very reason we met.
Her cancer story started a year before mine. We were put in touch by a mutual friend when I found myself facing the chemotherapy she’d not long finished. She was rocking a cute, post chemo, pixie crop and my hair had just been chopped in preparation for impending baldness.
Over the tricky months that followed we’d meet for the occasional coffee, raise a latte glass to celebrate the return of our eyelashes and get the tissues out when one of us, usually me, was having a wobble. Cancer aside, we slowly but surely became real friends. We both get it. And ‘it’ doesn’t need to be talked about as much these days. But when it does… well, we just shut the lid on our laptops and order another blueberry smoothie…
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