HAPPY EVER AFTER – empowering people through words

Exciting times at HEA head quarters (currently Starbucks in Harrow!). Our local church have raised a considerable sum of money for the Ghanaian Literacy Programme and the minister and his wife have agreed to become involved on a more on-going basis. This is great news as they already have a lot of experience working on a project in Malawi so it will be good to ‘pick their brains.’ A huge thank you to everyone at the Trinity Church in Harrow who gave so generously.

Submissions for the book have been coming in thick and fast and are all extremely uplifting. Now I just have to write the rest of it!!

Naa Otua and I are also about to book our tickets for our first trip to Ghana to start putting plans in place for the launch of our literacy programme later in the year.

I have also decided to start using this blog to write articles on the therapeutic powers of the written word. I will be publishing at least one a month and each one will contain a writing exercise designed to help uplift and inspire. So add this page to your favourites and make sure to call back regularly. It would be lovely to receive your comments and suggestions too. So if you have a particular issue and you would like a writing exercise designed to help (ie; confidence boosting, positive thinking, overcoming fear) then please post a comment or email me via this site.

Till next time – be happy!

Siobhan x

It’s been all go on the Happy Ever After front so my apologies for not blogging for a while. NaaOtua and I were delighted to welcome our new recruit Bea Curham to the team and will be taking her to the Debenhams perfume counter for her inaugural squirt as soon as! Seriously though, with her previous experience working in mental health and for a charity she is going to be a huge asset to Happy Ever After, especially with her work as project co-ordinator on our course for carers.

We had a meeting last week with some of the carers from our previous course – to get their advice and feedback to ensure that the next course is even better. Themes that came up again and again were loss of identity and self esteem. If you are caring for somebody 24/7 it is easy to lose sight of who you are and this is something we are going to focus on very intently in our new course, with exercises designed to help boost confidence and reaffirm identity. As Bea herself has experience of being a carer this is a project very close to her heart and her input has been invaluable.

The submissions for the book are growing by the day and already make a very inspirational collection. It feels extremely exciting to be putting it all together and I am very curious to see which big names will be contributing…

Final plans are being put in place for a fund-raising theatre night, but more on that another time. I’m off to contact Barack Obama re his contribution to the book – well I’m sure he won’t have anything better to do as he waits for the keys to the White House!!

Siobhan x