Julie Helen: 'I feel relieved that I have made it to 41, beyond all the warning milestones'

I turn 41 this week. I have always liked the birthday after a ‘big’ birthday.

When I was growing up with a developmental disability of cerebral palsy, consultants would say that I might not be able to walk by 30 years of age or possibly even stand by 40. As a young child and teen, they were trying to either motivate me to accept a surgery or do more physiotherapy.

In the grand scheme of things, I was actually pretty good at dealing with appointments, but I was treated as if it was expected that I would revolt. Fear never motivated me. If the same professionals had explained how physically well I could be if I worked hard, it would have felt so much better.

I feel relieved that I have now made it to 41, beyond all the warning milestones. I can’t walk as much as I would like, but I’m not in the knots I was warned I would be either.

In those teenage days, nobody spoke to me about having my own family or my own home. I never remember any professional talking to me about those kind of real life things. There wasn’t a holistic view of having a disability like mine at the time.

It’s funny how the warnings have stuck in my mind, but I feel very proud to have debunked them all. I feel like there is a lot of pressure put on big ages for many of us in society too.

Most of my classmates are turning 40 this year - I was one of the oldest in my year group and I see too many people posting some kind of funny comment about how they are trying to run away from their advancing age. Imagine the alternative, imagine if we didn’t get here?

There are so many scary things going on in the world, even knowing people stuck in Dubai this week, the uncertainty of all the surrounding politics and power, that I feel very grateful for my safe and happy life.

My Mum has been dealing with serious cancer for three years now. She recently got news that the latest bout of chemotherapy hasn’t worked as we had hoped. That means all treatments and routines must switch again and she is dealing with far too much pain. Watching her just take new information on board, give it a moment and then launch straight at it is nothing short of inspiring.

It was such a hard blow to her to realise that two cycles of treatment, just plain and simply didn’t work. Mum has a great team of doctors around her who quickly reassessed everything and came up with the next line of defence.

It’s at junctures like this, I feel most useless. There is nothing I can do to help, nothing I can do to make things better and there’s a sadness in that.

My Mum is one of the people in my life that makes everything better, so it feels so unfair not to be able to do the same for her.

She is great at minimising the impact of cancer on the rest of us. She faces the unknown with great strength but she is also honest about feeling sick and tired. There is still great banter between herself and Dad. There was a search for the remote the other day that brought me right back to my teenage years in the nicest possible way.

We don’t know what the next months and years will bring, but the truth is, nobody does, so I will enjoy the ordinary days of being 41 surrounded by my favourite people.