A Rose by Any Other Name

Names carry stories, hold memories, and people that shape us. Growing up, I had many different names. Many that I didn’t value until adulthood.

FSHD: What’s Changing

Although I write openly about my health, I don’t track what I’m losing or what FSHD is doing. Every time I see my specialist he asks what’s changed, but I don’t give him the whole picture. I forget things and kick myself after. This post is a way of tracking it better.

Finally Understanding Myself: My ASD Assessment and Diagnosis

Anyone who has followed my mental health posts will know the journey hasn’t been simple. I’ve shared my breakdown in 2012, the years of rebuilding, the Dependent Personality Disorder diagnosis, the slow climb back to stability, and the long process of understanding who I am. I’ve also written about communication differences, sensory needs, routines, overwhelm, and the traits I recognised in Will and James long before I recognised them in myself. It all led to this moment.

World FSHD Day: A 2026 Reflection

World FSHD Day has arrived again. Despite posting on Facebook each year, I last wrote about it here in 2018, and looking back now is like opening a time capsule. I knew my condition and feared the future but didn’t understand it yet. I walked, even when it was difficult, constantly fell, experienced pain and vulnerability, and felt trapped in my body. 

My FSHD is different now. I no longer walk. I still fall, but it’s progressed to my core. The pain, vulnerability and trapped feeling have deepened in ways I never imagined. Everything I was worried about has now occurred and I've been living with it for several years. That’s the nature of FSHD. It’s not just degeneration, but progression.

Looking Back at a Diagnosis That Never Fit

I have been blogging consistently again since December. I have been trying to rebuild good blogging habits and have been working through old posts. As I said in my last post, I have noticed how much my writing has changed. I have gone right back to the start, revamping posts and reflecting on the person behind them.

Breaking Barriers with an Untold Story

There is a part of my life that I don’t talk about, my adoption.

To be honest only a few people over the years have taken the time to get to know me on a personal level from the blogging world will know that I am adopted but I haven’t openly spoken about it before.

Only because:

1. I have always been happy within my adopted family so any expansion isn’t needed. So when I have spoken about my Mum or my Dad I have, of course, spoken about my adopted parents.

2. Through a long and furthered investigation into my biological past I have found that all members of my immediate family are alive and although this is my blog I have always felt a little uneasy discussing other people’s lives when they are around to not have their own voice.

3. My past isn’t a pretty picture. It isn’t something that comes from scenes like ITV’s Long Lost family or Disney fairy tales. It is from a place of hurt, neglect, abuse and abandonment and although I am aware of this it is not a positive stick I like to poke myself with.

Today is different. Today something big is happening and I feel like I need to write it out and expose the thoughts inside Martyn’s head!

Yet, to give an account of today I need to give you a brief background but forgive me if it is exactly that and vague in places!

I was born in 1982 and both of my parents were both young and unmarried. Their relationship broke down before my birth but stayed in the same social circles.

Within that social circle would enter a man who would become my birth mothers new partner. Between the pair of them I suffered a range of mistreatment until I was left at a mother and baby unit at the age of 10 months because a choice was made between keeping me or the new partner; a choice enforced by him because I wasn’t his true son.

I bounced around foster care for a bit until my Mum and Dad fostered and then later adopted me.

The new face of discrimination?

Recently I have been caught up in what seems an on-going debate. It comes from different angles each time but it has the same conclusion; where we, as society, are politically and how I am wrong.

I am no expert on politics. Of all of the courses that I have studied or trained in, politics isn’t one of them. So I understand that sometimes I may be a tad ill-informed and not as knowledgeable as I may be compared to topics like child development or education. This being said I do try to keep up with political parties and big issues both home and abroad; for example, I would acknowledge that I had a fair understanding of the Clinton Vs Trump race but would never consider myself a poignant choice as a question time speaker!

One thing I love about politics is that everyone has an opinion on it. There isn’t one set, bog standard and accepting political view point that we all willingly follow with a joyful heart; a utopian world we are not.

Yet, obviously, from that you will get disagreement and at a further stance passion where people’s lives are invested in changes. Disagreement and passion combined just leaves a lot of situations rather heated and this is where I circle back to my first point; I seem to be caught up in such a regular debate.

My Confession: I don't need a Carer

I have a confession to make; something that I feel like I haven’t admitted to you guys before.

I can’t run.

I know that you have probably all stopped drinking your cups of tea and have left in absolute shock; your mouth is left wide open in a gobsmacked expression blanketed over your face.

I. Can’t. Run.

I must therefore mean that I am dying and you should all enter a stage of mourning. 

In reality there are elements of truth in this statement. I am disabled, I can’t run and I am slowly dying (much quicker than you are but still slowly) However, I am not to the extent that might be implied. So why is this necessary to exaggerate?

The fact that many of you have read about posts that I mention about my muscular dystrophy or the fact that I fall over or get into circumstances where I leave myself vulnerable is clearly a ridiculous and irrelevant point. Or, the fact that many of you met me in person to know that I am clearly disabled but I somehow manage to do all that I do with the boys and home education.

My son is my Hero!

My son is my hero.
 

These are the finest words I think a Father could ever type.

 

Why can't I finish my posts?

Argh!

I am going to do that post that always seems to hit most bloggers; I have writers block!

This isn’t about what to write because I have lots of topics that I want to cover. This isn’t about the motivation to blog because that has continued to be the same (somewhere in the middle) and this isn’t about finding time to write because that is also the same as normal where I don’t have time to write but I somehow manage to post regularly.

It is literally the ability to string two words together and then to form one sentence that is followed by another that makes it viable for a blog post. I know what many of you are thinking, “That’s nothing new” and you would be correct but this seems worse than normal.

The Plunge

Just over a year ago I wrote a post saying that I was done with dating and at the time I really meant it. However, this year saw me start therapy and make a real attempt at healing properly. A lot of topics have been brought up and dating was one of them.

Cancer and Quiche

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I don’t often talk about my dad on the blog because if I am truly honest we have never had the greatest relationship; the fact is that my dad and I are just two very different people.

Before mum passed away the above relationship was more strained than it would be now. We wouldn’t really do more than say hello and utter small talk at the dinner table.

None of us expected to lose mum because she was, undoubtedly, the rock that kept us all together and her loss hit us all terribly and, as expected, after over 50 years of marriage none more so than my dad.

Yet, within her passing a lot of things changed.

I, within 4 months, ended up being homeless and having a nervous breakdown following a variety of other life shattering experiences.

I had tried several times to talk to dad about it but not only did the aforementioned relationship make it difficult the added problem of him being of a generation that really didn’t understand mental health.

However, at the biggest breaking point he could see that I was struggling and that I was in pain. Unsure on what he could do and despite his lack of understanding he came to visit me a couple of times a week in hospital and we just talked. (Apart from my aunt and cousin something no one in my immediate family did)

Through this he offered an olive branch and invited me to live with him and get back on my feet and in his words “it is something your mum would have done”; something I am truly grateful that he did.

Admittedly it was difficult to start. We were both never going to become best of friends and we would always bump heads but we were making it work and forming a better relationship because of it.

Yet, in that time it started to become clear to me that whilst he was in principle “looking after me” that he also needed a level of care. He was becoming confused more easily, repeating the same conversations continuously and showing levels of aggression that was unlike him. The man that I struggled to have a relationship with was clearly struggling himself and from what we could see it looked like he was suffering with onset dementia.

One main attribute for him was his lack of memory. He might, for example, go to the shops and then drive back because he forgot what he was doing whilst he was there or he would forget what he needs and always end up buying the same four items: cheese, cream, bacon and quiche.

Although onset dementia isn’t a joke I did always find the irony amusing where he would buy all the ingredients for quiche and then a quiche as well.

He, of course, did buy other items so we weren’t overly concerned but equally kept an eye on him as he is a man of that age who still feels it necessary to ignore the doctors’ orders, eat a fry up every morning, drinking 1,000 coffees, smoke 40 cigarettes a day and then having a bacon and cheese sandwich in the evening; somehow, despite having 3 heart attacks, 2 hernia operations and several other surgeries he seems to be carrying on stubbornly.

That was until he went to the doctors’ and then to the hospital and sat us down to have a chat.

Whilst tucking into his quiche he told me he has cancer.

Despite everything I am truly heartbroken. In many ways we are being told that we’re lucky where he has prostate cancer and it’s a more treatable cancer but have equally been told that dad has an aggressive form so more likely to spread. We haven’t had much else to go on apart from that fact that this week he starts his intense therapy to see if it can help.

Whist still eating I asked him how he felt. He just shrugged his shoulders and said “I either have cancer or I don’t and there’s nothing that I can do about it” and with that went onto some story about how he broke his finger when he used to play cricket so he’s not worried.

My brother, sister-in-law and I have tried to talk about it more with him as he really doesn’t take the severity of it in until it dawned on us that he probably doesn’t understand it fully with the onset dementia.

We have no idea at the moment what will happen, if the cancer has spread anywhere or if this oncoming treatment is going to work but the little comfort we can take from it is that he is happy sitting eating his quiche, slightly oblivious and enjoying his life as he has it.

I do hate cancer. But, I do like quiche.

What do I wear for Awards night?

Argh!

It seems such a long time ago when the nominations for the blogging awards were floating around and everyone was asking for nomination!

I also can’t believe that somehow, this blog of mine where I write my utter nonsense, made the final category for the Best School Days blog.

However, ignoring the great time that has flown by, the awards ceremony to find out the winner is slowly creeping up on us.  This, therefore, has left me with a big old question: what am I going to wear?

Be the Persistent Blogger

Recently a few of my friends have started blogging and subsequently they reached out and asked for some advice.

I thought for a while about all the different advice I could offer but the reminder of the statistic that apparently new bloggers give up within three to six months stuck with me and most of the ones who ‘make’ it, simply do so because they either have high quality content or, quite frankly, last longer than others because they have persisted with their writing.

Should I stop writing about Home Education?

Should I stop writing about Home Education?

I recently received feedback from more than one blogger that I should maybe consider stopping these posts and to be honest it isn’t the first time.

I have been very fortunate recently to have had some amazing response and views to several of my posts. In fact these posts have achieved more in one day than I would often have in some weeks!

However, from what I can gather some, maybe new as well as existing, readers had repeatedly returned to my blog to see what my latest post was (wonderful that they thought I was good enough for that!) but some were instantly put off when I did my recent Home School post.

Subsequently, and once again, it has prompted some people to ask why I write about Home Education when they much prefer my parenting posts or my really deep and personal posts.

When Blogging is put on Pause

As you have probably noticed it has been pretty quiet on the blog this last week.

Everything has been hectic here. Last week was a bit of a muddle and to be honest I failed massively at juggling everything!

The boys Mum was in hospital which meant that I had some extended time with the boys.

Within this I had to juggle work as well. I had the quiz night and the preparation that goes with it. Then I still somehow managed to teach the piano and the guitar and in each case I had to move a few lessons around, find cover and get a babysitter; this alone was a nightmare.

This week also meant that I had my article deadlines for the magazines that I write for which, the majority of them, needed to be written as well as edited.

Between Home Ed, Parenting, general housework and the many jobs that I do meant that blogging needed to take a back seat.

Who needs Blogging Friends?

I have read quite a few times about the importance of finding your tribe within the blogging community. Those people that you can call your “gang” but importantly, your friends.

Despite the fact that I have been blogging for almost 7 years now, although only openly across social media for 20 months, I have never found my “tribe”.

At times it is hard to build these relationships where I have also seen the nasty side of the community; negativity in Twitter threads, Facebook posts, pages and groups and comments and all, at times, have left me asking “Where is the love?”

My Reflections on #BML16

Like I was with my “I’m going to #BML16” post I seem to be a little late with my post about the event! Yet, I am still thankful that I was able to go thanks to my sponsor Salisbury Parenting.

I loved the event last year. Despite finding elements of it hard physically I found a few of the sessions really interesting and came away feeling energetic for my blog and where I wanted to go with it.

I found the format of being over 2 days incredibly useful because it gave me the option to miss a few sessions and to socialise but to still learn.

This year, even with my physical safety precautions in place, I left feeling a little less energetic.

However, I am not going to spend this whole post discussing my views on it all because, let’s be honest, everyone is pretty much all saying what I felt about it.

I'm going to #BML16

#BML16 is now only 2 days away and like most things I am a little late to the party with my "I'm going to" post where the run-up to the event, attendees usually write a personal introduction to help everyone get to know some of our fellow bloggers in advance.

So, here I am and I still have done it just in the nick of time

(I'm usually found pulling a silly face!)

An Open Letter to a Stepfather

Dear William and James' Stepfather,

When you first came into our lives you entered in at a time of hurt and pain.

We were all hurting and in different ways. We all took some blame for the marriage breakdown even if we didn’t admit it then. We were quick to speak and quick to hurt in the cruellest way possible. Every movement of the tongue was full of hatred and all because we wanted the other person to hurt as much as we were hurting.