Three big things, and very little walking today.

1. MS counselling - out it all poured, yet another ocean of tears.

2. A really long call from Young Dementia UK - returning mine of last week when she was on holiday - offering support, asking exactly the right questions and offering to put me in touch with a woman whose 45 year old son has early-onset dementia. If she fancies it, the woman. I hope so - I so need some kind of peer.

3. Peaches Geldof dying just finished me off. I thought I'd cried all the tears in the world, but no, there was another ocean in reserve. I know very little about this young woman, other than that her mother died tragically young, she carried on like an unmothered child for several years, and that she's left two young sons, a husband, three sisters and her poor old dad, St Bob Geldof. While this is clearly a tragedy, it's not my tragedy and I was quite shocked at my response. Also inclined to think less harshly of others who have become overwhelmed with seemingly inappropriate grief for famous people's deaths - it's your own grief, that you can't let yourself feel directly, even when you think that's what you're doing.

So I'm exhausted now, having only walked 1,458 steps, which is nothing. YD has visited ED today and reports that she was quiet but clearly happy to spend time with her sister. My babbies.

Today I am grateful for: support, good support; a sense that I am strengthening, somehow; a warm home; telephones; novels

xxx