A 'little' post!

I know I blogged only a week ago, but I have a backlog of very interesting guest bloggers to get through! Some of you will remember that I did actually used to blog every week, but I did a short survey which was sent out to you all over Twitter back in March/April time and the majority of you said you felt that a blog post every week was a little too much ... so, I listened and took note!

This weekend is the weekend that Laura who I met from CP Teens UK comes to stay with me. We are going to a Country Show on Saturday, and we have hired a couple of mobility scooters for ourselves ... this is going to be hilarious! We will so race them and play dodgems! On a serious note, I cannot believe how many friendships both myself and all of you have made through CP Teens UK, and this is only in the first year!

I cannot believe that CP Teens UK is very nearly one year old (I make it sound as if it's my child!)! The 17th of October will mark a year since I launched the website! The 5th of October will be a sort of birthday party for CP Teens UK with the 'Sponsored Wobble' taking place (check out the 'Events' page if you're unsure of what I'm on about!). But, it would be great if we could all do something on the 17th October. I know it's highly unlikely that we will be able to get anything trending on Twitter, but it would be cool to have a go! What other ideas do people have? Tweet @CPTeensUK or send a message to Facebook.

Now for guest blogger, Hannah! Hannah is one of the CP Teens UK Ambassadors and you can check out her profile here. Thank you Hannah! The story Hannah tells in her piece is exactly why I set up CP Teens UK, I am so glad it's helping people like Hannah!

'I have always been a very shy person, hating to be around big groups of people as I would be very embarrassed and awkward not knowing how to act in these group situations. I would feel like I was not cool enough o r popular enough to have anything worthwhile to say. However, I am slightly better in smaller groups of people as I do not feel so overwhelmed.

In 2012, I moved schools as I was having a hard time with bullying in my previous school, so I and my parents thought it would be a good time to move as I had just recovered from an operation, so we felt it was a good time as any and make a new start. I would be going in to Year 10 and granted, I was very nervous; as I said previously, I am a very shy person and what made it 10 times worse was that I would be the only new person in my year, which was hard as everybody would have already have formed friendship groups and would probably not want a new comer in their group.

Anyway, despite my worries, on the first day of my new school, I was introduced to my form tutor and form group and a group of girls that seemed friendly were asked by my form tutor to look after me and help me find my bearings around the school. I got to know the girls whose names I learnt were Hannah and Bessie, I quickly realised how friendly and chatty they both were and we agreed to meet up for lunch later.

Then I went to my first lesson of the day and I was feeling more optimistic about the situation having found some friends. In my lesson I was seated next to a very nice, but somewhat quiet girl named Shona, who on talking to her I learnt was taking exactly the same option choices as me (Photography, Food Technology and Health and Social Care). I could not believe my luck as, not only would I have the other two girls as friends, but I would have Shona as well who would be in nearly all of my lessons to keep me company. Things got even better at lunch time when I realised that Shona was in the same group of friends as the other two girls, which meant we could all sit together and talk about how our day had been and what interests we had. I later learnt that we were interested in the same TV shows and liked the same books. I also learnt that we all loved the same comedian, Miranda Hart, and all keenly watched her TV show!

A few days later at lunch time a few more friends of the girls joined us for lunch and they were also very chatty, friendly, bubbly girls and I started to think that maybe this whole changing schools thing wasn’t so bad after all. As time went by and I got to know the girls more they started inviting me to their houses and out places with for which I quickly returned the favour and it was all going so fantastically, I was not so shy and quickly opened up to the girls about secrets and private things. I was starting to think that maybe my shyness and CP was not a barrier to making friends and being confident.

My confidence grew massively and I got invited to more and more things including Hannah’s 16th Birthday Party. It was a fabulous party, we did not do anything exciting or unusual, to me though it felt like we did as I was just loving being a part of such an amazing, lovely, fantastic group of friends; it could have been the most boring party in the history of the world and I would still have loved it! Being swept up in the whirlwind of friendships and lots of other exciting events, before I knew it, it was quickly nearing the end of Year 11. Year 10 had flown by at lightning speed what with everything that had been going on; before I knew it there was exams to revise for, College’s to apply to and Prom dresses to think about. In all of this, I did not have time to think very much about what would happen when we all went off to different Colleges and moved on with our lives.

Leaving those negative thoughts behind, I threw myself in to revising hard for my exams and planning my perfect Prom outfit. Sooner than I realised, Prom night arrived (which I dreaded as there would be a awful lot of people there and as we have learnt before I am not good around lots of people). Anyway, I thought it would be fine as I had all my friends there to make it that bit more bearable (as it turned out it was horrible but that’s another story altogether). So, the prom was over and exams were well and truly under way and I realised that I would have to face the fact that we would all be leaving school and eventuality that we might not all stay friends. I talked to the girls and we agreed that we would stay in touch with texts and phone calls after leaving school and meet up to go to the Cinema etc.

However, now I have left school and have all these weeks left of the Summer holidays stretching out ahead of me, I have realised just how lonely and isolated I am, as I have contacted all of my friends but they are all busy doing different activities that I cannot join in with as a result of my CP, and therefore I have begun to feel more and more lonely and more and more isolated that I quickly realised something had to be done! So I set about joining different clubs and different organisations hoping to find some companionship, which lead me to come across CP Teens UK which on reading the website I realised I wanted to become part as it was something I felt would hopefully lead to new friendships and support from people with the same worries and concerns as me.