When I started writing this is was going to be about the positive things and looking back but pressing forward. Re-reading what I have written there is a lot of looking back over events that happened nearly a year ago, none of which has been particularly cheerful.  We are coming up to the anniversary of admission and we are two months on from discharge. Good is relative but things are so much better.

Over one hundred days cutting free, this is an amazing achievement for someone who at their worst was doing it ten times plus a day. Colour coded razors for every part of the day, such was her level of obsession.

Self-harm is an addiction for my kid, it went beyond the emotional release that I had always thought it was. It is monstrously complicated and in her case so tied into her identity and sense of self it was both heart breaking to witness and confusing to try to understand.

The idea that someone can feel that they are good at doing something which is clearly so bad for them makes my brain hurt. It does not make sense but in a bizarre way she had a desire to be something, to do something well. That was something that could be channelled for the positive, not that we could do that alone, hospital was essential for her to make that breakthrough.

I feel that I was and am amazingly lucky in that I had a kid who wanted recovery even if at the beginning she was telling me that she was doing it for me and she still wanted to die. I was happy to take that, negotiation means change is possible.

She still wants recovery, she has ambitions to see the world, to be creative, to live and experience life. This makes it so special now when she talks about her future.

A future, that at her worst she didn’t want, she only wanted to die, she wanted it to stop.

It is still a day at a time and relapse is an ever present possibility. The world is still small and very insular, filled with safe people and gentle situations. And a massive level of surveillance but it is getting a little bigger each passing day.

We don’t look too far ahead, today is enough.

Today is a good day.