Love from, Florence Grace

Relationships can be hard, can't they? Finding the ideal partner is hard enough for a start! Finding someone you want to invest your time into, spend your forseeable future with, build a life with- you've got to make sure you find the right guy or girl! But then there's other problems to overcome- small fights, big fights, making compromises, insecurities to get over, anxieties, disagreements and everything in between. Do you know what makes all of this 10 times harder? Coming from a bad relationship into a good one.  It's no secret that almost two years ago, I was coming out of a toxic and abusive six year relationship that absolutely destroyed me. It affected me so badly in fact, that I vowed never to have a relationship again. I wouldn't let anyone in again, I wouldn't bother to invest time or effort, or any part of myself into another person ever again. I didn't want to go through the heartbreak, the pain, the hurt. I was struggling so much t...

I've been blogging for almost two and a half years now (honestly, where the hell has time gone?!) and in that time I have learnt a lot of things, about blogging, about bloggers and about myself! Not all of them have been good things but all of them have been beneficial to the work that I do, so I thought I would share some of the most important things I've learnt with you guys!  Be wary of your stats When I hit 100,000 blog views- according to Blogger- I was absolutely thrilled! When I saw my blog posts getting 200, 500, 1000 page views, I was over the moon! And then I found out that Blogger stats are basically a lie. If you want to check your stats and page views etc. accurately, use Google Analytics. I was shocked at the drastic difference between the figures and it really made me feel a bit crap about my writing at first, but then it just made me work harder to push for more views and engagement! Bloggers are so supportive Honestly, I've rarely come ac...

Bullying is a huge problem across the UK- across the world, in fact- and can affect anyone and everyone.  With the growth of social media, it has become so much easier  to bully people, acting as an online 'troll' where you can hide your identity whilst hurling abusive comments across the web. However, with this happening, it doesn't mean that physical bullying has ceased to exist. This is still as big an issue as ever. In fact, some could argue it's worse because there has been a cross over of physical bullying at school or work, which then continues outside of school and work online as cyber bullying. Some bullying incidents in person are even filmed or photographed and then shared online in some sick style of documentation.   Long story short, bullying is still a problem. But if you're being bullied at school, college or university, what can you do?  Tell someone Yep, you've probably heard it one thousand times before, because it...

No one likes a holiday to end, knowing they have to go back to their routine of school or work and bad weather (well, if you're from the UK that is!). Having just come back from my holiday and being straight back at work at 9am the following morning, I definitely had a case of the holiday blues, and boy did they hit me hard! Here's some tips on helping to beat them... Make a photo album. Print off all of the photo's from your holiday and collate them into an album. Then, whenever you're feeling down about not being on holiday, you can have a flick through the album and reminisce on the memories! Make a scrap book. Similarly to a photo album, make a scrap book that not only has photo's, but also tickets, maps, wrist bands and the likes. This will bring back all of the memories every time you feel a bit blue.  Start planning the next one. Look at where you want to go, prices and then start saving up. All of the future planning not only keeps y...

In case you have missed all of this last week's worth of posts, I have just come back from holiday in Devon. However, despite being on holiday, I still wrote a blog post every single day, in order to keep up my 365 days of blogging. Now, some people might not like to blog on holiday or might want to be struggle with it...so here's how I handled blogging on holiday. Lost for content? Post about your holiday. They can either be diary posts like I did, recapping on the events of the day, or simply filled with all of your photos of the day. Photo's are of course, easier and require less effort, but its totally up to you! Post a day later.  I wrote about my day at the end of the day, and then posted it the following day if that makes sense? So I arrived on Tuesday, at the end of Tuesday I wrote about the day, and then that post went up on Wednesday. This helped my content to flow all week long.  Timings. So, how to fit it in? As I said, I posted a day ...

Health guidelines say that it is important to drink 8 glasses of water every day- or, alternatively, 2 litres. Now I know that I definitely do not drink this much water- in fact, it's a miracle if I even have one glass of water, despite it being all that I really drink. This often leads to a lot of negative side affects such as headaches due to dehydration. Recently though, I have started to try and drink more water than I normally do, managing to get in about one 500ml bottle and 2 glasses of water a day. I've noticed the benefit's of doing this already, and whilst the benefits of drinking more water are pretty commonly known, I thought I'd just remind you of them in case you too needed a little prompt to drink a bit more... Keeps you hydrated. This is obvious, I know, but being dehydrated is so bad for your body. It's important that your body has enough water in it so that it can function properly.  Clears your skin. If you find that you h...

Sadly, I started 2016 as a single lady, after being in a wonderful relationship for nearly 5 and a half years. Since I was 14 I have been with the same lovely man and we had a brilliant time. Yes there were ups and downs but that's relationships for you. However, things ran their course and now it's all over. I thought I'd share with you all some tips on how to get through a break up in the best way possible- to help myself and some of you too! 1) Don't say things you'll regret. It's easy to say things you don't mean in a heated argument. My advice? Don't. You may never see or speak to this person again, do you really want things to end on such a bitter note? It will more than likely leave you with regrets later on in life, so just keep things to the point and as civil as you can.  2) Don't dwell on the past. Don't dwell on the shoulda coulda woulda's. They will make you feel worse. Just accept that things are over and ...

I have been with my significant other for over five years now- that is over half a decade  and, in short, an incredibly long time. We've been through our up's and down's, good times and bad and made plenty of memories that I will treasure for a life time. In all honesty, I wouldn't change my relationship for the world. My other half may not be perfect, be neither am I- who is? However, being in a long term relationship (LTR) does come with it's problems, and I'm not talking partner-based problems either. Here's what I struggle with in my LTR... 1) Relationship status. They're your best friend, other half, soul mate and every other term you want to use in the book. They're everything . The word 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' simply doesn't cover it...it sounds so immature, like you're 14 and going on your first dates still. But what does work...partner? Significant other? It's just such a dilemma! Also on job applications, ...

"Bitch" "Whore" "Pathetic" "Attention seeker" "Man hater" "Embarrassing"  Don't these words make your skin crawl? When you imagine somebody calling you pathetic? When you picture someone standing right in front of you, looking you in the eye's and calling you a whore? Don't worry. That's not something I've ever had to deal with. Instead, I dealt with having these words, plus many more, flung at me almost every day for the vast majority of my teenage life via the "safe" platforms of social media. I've been named and shamed for things I haven't even done, had screenshots of my statuses, blog posts and comments shared on Twitter with hundreds of people making nasty comments. I've had subtweets about me, almost every day. The worst part is, about 40% of these people were people I called friends. People I spoke to and hung out with regularly. Yet what kind of "frien...

I am just 19, and am currently in a wonderful relationship with my boyfriend- and have been for nearly 5 years now. When we first started "going out" aged just 14, I'm pretty sure that neither one of us had imagined that we would spend the rest of our teenage years together, not only growing up as an individual person, but growing and changing as a partnership too. When we first started dating, it was pretty unusual for couples to last as long as we did- of course it was, we were 14/15! However, whenever I'm browsing (aka stalking) through social media pages of people a few years younger than me, I can't help but notice that it's becoming more and more common for couples of a very young age to "go out" for a matter of years. This surprised me, and then it inspired me to write a post, listing all the things that I learnt throughout my teenage years whilst in a long term relationship and how it effected both me and my boyfriend. Whether you're in...

Back in July, if someone had said to me "Flo, in six months time, you'll have your own radio show", I never would have believed them. Nor would I have believed that I would be a blogger, a columnist or have started my own mini gift line- I definitely wouldn't have believed I would be more well known as 'Florence' than 'Flo'! Everything I have achieved in just six months is really quite unbelievable, and I wouldn't have believed it coming from anyone. So often I have people asking me how I managed to do this, how I managed to make time for that, how did I get all of the lucky opportunities that I have had? I'm always telling people the same few facts about how to get to where you want to be, so I thought I would share them on a wider platform to help out and maybe even inspire more people who feel as though they're not quite sure about what they're doing with their life. Don't worry, you aren't the only one- six months ago I ...

WARNING:  The following content is sensitive and may be triggering to those suffering from, recovering from or recovered from depression and/or other mental health problems. We all know when somebody is ill, or not quite right. It is normally quite obvious. If it's anorexia, they look frail and you can see every bone in their body through their skin. If it's a cold, we see the victim with a red raw nose, tissues in hand. If someone has broken a bone, we see a cast, or crutches. If it's cancer, we see people who are losing their hair, in wheelchairs or maybe even hooked up to an oxygen tank. Most of the time, when we see these people, we feel sorry for them. If it's a friend, or a family member, we might even buy them a card and some flowers, telling them we hope they get better soon. Depression is not the same as the other illnesses above. Yes, it is like anorexia and can take over your life, affecting every aspect of it. Yes, like a cold, it will affect you for th...