Blogs

Sometimes it is hard to know which piece of good news to start with. For those of you who are ardent followers of our page and the Daily Echo you will know that on Wednesday Jon, Steph and I met with Matt from the National Lottery Community Fund to confirm Chrysalis’ award of £283k funding for core costs over the next five years. Wow! The culmination of many months of hard work which started on the 7th Dec 2017 and a massive thank you to all the players of the National Lottery who made it possible.

Today in the adventures of Tiny Car – what to do when your owner forgets their laptop on the way into work? Thank goodness it is half term and a swift round trip was possible otherwise I fear you would have been waiting rather longer for my blog than usual.

Tiny car gets a well deserved rest today as I'm off to London for the Social Media Exchange #SMEX2019 courtesy of The Tudor Trust, one of the first funders to believe in my vision for @ChrysalisGIM and the reason everything else has been possible. Hopefully after today I'll be able to take our social media to the next level!

I thought it was April when we were meant to get all the rain. Yuck! The drive in this morning was rather dark and dismal. Well the week surely can only get better with a start like that. Tiny car is mighty though and we battled through the roadworks and the floods with equanimity.

What’s that coming over the hill, is it a monster? No! It’s February! Surely this means that the days are going to get warmer as well as lighter. I don’t think I’ve got much to write about today, which probably means you’re in for another 1000 word essay.

Wow! Congratulations to @Mermaids_Gender and to @HBomberGuy for an incredible fundraiser over the weekend. As one of our volunteers has said “perhaps we have now reached that Trans Tipping Point”. The real people out there are our allies. Those who are, like one of our newest volunteers, sick of reading about all the hatred towards trans people and are saying ‘enough is enough’ and looking at what they can do to help.

Well done everyone! We’ve nearly made it halfway through January. Snow may be coming but so is the sun, it’s getting just that bit lighter as tiny car and I make our way into Warsash each morning.

I’m always pleased when someone comments in real life about words I have said in this blog, I do hope that you are getting what you need when you read about these busy weeks in the life of Chrysalis.

And we’re off! Smashing into January. Braving the morning traffic. Back to work and school and college and generally heading into 2019. January is often a hard month to maintain positivity, we worry that the cold will never really lift and that although the days are getting lighter that promise of summer could still be broken but never fear, the Chrysalis AGM is here! What better way to brighten up your new year than to find out how your favourite charity has been doing over the last year and to help us map out the next one.

Welcome back after a warm festive season. I was reflecting whilst Tiny Car and I were making one of our epic journeys on the meaning of family. For so many people, myself included, family is not so much those people related to you by blood but those people who gather around you, who share your joys and your challenges, who celebrate with you and who are there when you need a shoulder to cry on or a strong arm to hold you up.

It is odd to think about expansion when everything around me is contracting with the cold. All the molecules drawing that little bit closer together as we endure freezing rain and the other exciting side effects of our approach to the shortest day but expansion is a heart-warming topic within Chrysalis.