This week I'm looking for

I’M NOT A BAD MUM!

Do you let your child drink or take drugs? Maybe they have a much older girlfriend/boyfriend who you have welcomed into your home. Or maybe you’ve paid for your child to have plastic surgery. Have other criticised you for the way you’re bringing up your children? Would you like to put the record straight?

HURT BY THE PERSON I LOVED

Have you been the victim of a crime at the hands of someone you loved – a partner, parent or sibling? They will need to have been convicted of the crime.

I’M A SERIAL BRIDE

Have you been married five times or more? Are you about to get married again?

LOVE TRIANGLE

Did you catch your man cheating with another woman? Was it someone you knew – maybe even a friend or a sister? Did you forgive them? The more unusual the story, the higher the fee.

PARTNER’S SHOCKING SECRET

Was you partner hiding a shocking secret? Maybe they’d committed a terrible crime, or had another family. Did you turn detective to uncover their secret life?

UNUSUAL WEIGHT LOSS

Have you lost weight in an unusual way? Perhaps you devised your own diet or exercise regime, or came up with a strange incentive to encourage yourself to lose weight. We will need before and after photos.

Love: Lost and Found

With Valentine's Day just been and gone, this week seems like a good time to post about long lost love.
I always love these stories where couples rediscover each other years after they originally broke up and find all those old feelings are still there. It's so romantic. 
Of course it can also be very disruptive when they've married in the meantime and often people can end up getting hurt. I remember years back there were a string of stories about Friends Reunited breaking up marriages after old school romances were reignited. Nowadays it seems to be Facebook, or even Twitter, that are the main culprits.
I suppose love - and life - are never simple, and you just have to do what you can. And I think it's inspiring to hear that the decisions you make don't always have to be final, and there are second chances.  
Here's a story of mine that was published in Woman's Own last week. I'd love to hear any of yours about starting over with someone from your past.

Post Secret

Love this website. Keep thinking about sending them a secret confession.

http://www.postsecret.com/

Going to the chapel

For the last few years the Office for National Statistics has reported that marriage rates are at their lowest since records began.
Last year it was reported that, for the first time ever, fewer than two in 100 women over the age of 16 got married in a single year.
The rising cost of weddings and cultural changes, such as women working and wanting to get married later, or not at all, have all contributed to the decline in marriage.
With these statistics in mind, this week I'm exploring the reasons why women do or don't get married, and looking for women with stories to illustrate the arguments for and against.
Perhaps you went through with your wedding only to regret it afterwards. Or did family and/or friends try to talk you out of it? id you overcome all the odds to get married and was it the happiest day of your life - or did you break up on honeymoon and vow never to marry again? Or maybe you came close to marriage and decided against it at the very last minute.
Whatever your story, I want to hear it, so please get in touch. Email alice@medavia.co.uk

Surrogacy

Surrogacy has been in the news again since Elton John and David Furnish’s son Zachary was born to a surrogate mum on Christmas Day. Since then we’ve had a few requests from magazines looking for surrogates, or parents who have had children through surrogacy.

It’s a topic that really interests me. I worked with a young woman last year who decided to become a surrogate after watching a documentary about women trying to conceive – she was so moved by their plight she wanted to do something to help.

And I was fascinated by the C4 documentary My Weird and Wonderful Family which aired last year and featured Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow and their family. The couple broke new ground when their eldest twins were born to a surrogate in America ten years ago and it was really moving watching their journey as they tried for more babies.

Now the couple are opening a surrogacy centre in Britain to help other hopeful parents through the process.

The issue of surrogacy, whether for gay or straight parents, will no doubt continue to cause debate. But watching the documentary on the Drewitt-Barlow’s it was clear that the couple had created a happy, stable family life for their children. And that, after all, is the most important thing of all.

Friends with no strings attached benefits

“Friends with benefits” seems to be a popular theme in Hollywood this year. Two films are due to be released in the next month or so, both exploring the idea of no-strings attached sex with a friend. Rather unimaginatively, one, starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, is called Friends With Benefits, while the other, starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, is called No Strings Attached. See what they did there?

So, do these kinds of set-ups ever work? In my experience, no. It’s a situation that’s inevitably fraught with all kinds of complications and one, if not both parties, almost always ends up desperately hurt. The trouble is that the guy is usually genuinely delighted with the arrangement while the girl pretends she’s all fine and dandy and laidback about it but secretly hopes he’ll fall madly in love with her. Which never happens.  Except maybe in a Hollywood film.

New Year resolutions

So, we’re all back at work. Christmas seems like a distant memory and we’re full of good intentions for the New Year. As it’s already January 4^th it’s more than likely many of you have already made and broken your resolutions by now. Which is why this year I decided not to make any at all. But I was interested to see what other people have resolved to do. I found a poll online of the most popular resolutions.

1. Lose weight
2. Be happy
3. Save money
4. Fall in love
5. Get a job
6. Read more
7. Eat, drink, try or learn something new
8. Quit Smoking
9. Take a photo every day for a year
10. Run a marathon

Lots of these seem guaranteed to make you feel like a failure. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as waking up one morning and telling yourself that today you’re going to fall in love. If only it were.
With unrealistic goals like this, it’s no great surprise that, by the second week of the year, many people find themselves at the bottom of a bottle of wine, shoving chocolates in their mouth in between puffs of their cigarette while bemoaning their single status (I’m not judging, I’ve been there).
So I want to hear about people who have made unusual resolutions – ones they can keep and that will genuinely make themselves, or other people, happier, healthier and wiser.