The Here And Now Forms Tomorrow

I have not published anything on this blog for months, I have written things, but I havent published any of it.  I have tiled one of them "the one that will never be published".  At first I thought that I didnt have anything to say. I was getting into the whole lockdown vibe along with everyone else. Zoom quizzes, facetime chats with folk I havent seen in ages and more online family bonding than has happened in the past 2 years face to face. Youtube tutorials in yoga, life drawing, no dig gardening and making face masks. I started following loads of comedians on twitter and instagram and stepped away from the TV.  So much to do, that must have been it, no time avaiable to write anything, if there was anything to say, which there wasnt, like I said. 

Over the past few weeks I have been feeling that old familiar disconnect from the world and myself.  Like a heavy sadness that has been lurking under the cloud of all the distracting activities. All the bizz of lockdown provided a perfect smoke screen for me to feel and look active and engaged.  To feel connected without the connection.  Lockdown has been a big fat lie from start to wherever we are now. I don't mean that it hasn't been necessary, it has been vital.  What I mean is that the feeling of being connected through joined experience that I imagened I felt is the lie.  A lie to myself, that I was experienceing the same as others. That society would somehow now have an insight and understanding of a life in isolation that would live beyond the pandemic. That it would change the worlds view of those of us that live this for months, weeks and years because that is what we have to do for our childern and loved ones.  We all jumped onto that jolly idilic hay wagon of zoom choirs, nation wide execise for the family, clapping for the visible support, looking out for each other and generally feeling like a more genuine and caring society.  

I am aware that there is a bitterness seeping into my tone as I write this.  I really don't want to feel like this, but it is there.  The anger is at society in general. Part of me wants to rant and rage and ask why it takes a pandemic and lives being in danger before our society cares?  I include myself in the lump of society. I have been complicit in the whole incongruance of the here and now.  I did my usual and I fell in line with the crowd and zoomed with the rest, I was even the one that started up our family quiz nights!

I fooled myself into believing that something would change after lockdown. It won't.  We are in the process of reducing lockdown and the hordes are withdrawing already.  The illusion of connection feels like it is being ripped away with a backward glance that screams "you didnt really expect that we'd want to stay where you are?". I want to impress that when I am writing this I am not thinking of particular people, more the faceless "they" that represent the outside world.  

Today for the first time since March and the start of lockdown I felt shame wash over me. The shame of not working, of not doing what everyone else in the conversation took for granted.  Quickly followed by the shame of not being happy with where I am.

The minister for my church has been preaching on Pauls letter to the Philipians from prison.  Over the weeks I have been watching, engaging and reflecting on the advice he is emparting to this early church, but it wasnt until last week that the marvel of Paul being able to be so at peace, grateful and feeling genuinly blessed in his cell, hit me.  How can someone be so full of grace and joy in what for most would feel like a dark valley? Is that where my joy in where I am is to be found? I firmly beleive that there is purpose in everything and every situation. None of us can see that purpose a lot of the time, from the centre of lifes storms, but it is there.  I know that I wouldn't be who I am today had I not been through everything that I have, the good and the bad.  The here and now is no different. I will be who I am tomorrow because of today and yesterday. Every day is included in Gods plan.  

I noticed that earlier in this blog I refered to the world outside, I feel that I am detatched from the outside. I feared feeling far away and detached from God but I have learned over the past months that as fun and engaging all the distractions of lockdown have been, they are temporary. They will fizzle out as the world outside returns to work, school, holidays and days out with friends and family.  As everyones time fills up there will inevetably be less time and perceived need to connect.  As sad as this makes me, ....... Sad? that really sounds so small. The feeling under it is dissapointment and being abandoned. But these too are temporary. I have begun to learn that for me the only permenance comes from God. I have always felt the need to be around people, to be doing things and be part of things to feel connected.  I use to feel that the only way I knew that I existed, was by bouncing of others. I needed their response as validation, confirmation that I had substance.  

Now is different.

Now I dont fear being alone with my thoughts. I do fear places my thoughts can take me to sometimes, the old familiar valleys with the old familiar scripts. They are still there and no less painful or insignificant. Yet I am able to sit with them, with the saddness, the anger, the desolation and emptiness. God is always there with me. He doesn't silence the sadness or the pain, he doesn't deny the anger or the desolation.  He doesn't tell me I am wrong to feel something, that I "should" feel something else.  There is no shaming from God. Instead he validates the pain and hardship, he holds me up when my own strength cannot. He leads me to still waters in the midst of hardship.  Like Paul in prison, God is with us all in our valleys of darkness, ready to support, strengthen, nourish and care for us even, or especially, when we feel unworthy and unable ourselves. The circumstances of my life currenlty feels like my prison. I am cut off from the life I had, the freedoms that I enjoyed.  In my "prison" I am learning to rely more and more on God for the strength, support and validation that I have so often looked to the outside world for.  The world is ficle and temporary, God is constant and everlasting.

I am unsure of exactly what I want you, the reader to take from this piece.  I think I began wanting everyone to understand how dissapointed and let down I feel, but in reality it is my circumstance that I am angry and frustrated with.  I am far luckier than this passage implies though. I have amazing friends who are there for me and family who care. I thank God for them all and His Love in all of my life.

A voyage for self through the swells of life’s ocean

Who am I to be writing about my stuff and publishing it to the world? What makes me think that anyone would be interested in anything that I have to say? There are so many reasons not to do it. What will people think of me? What if they don't like my stuff or worse, me? I am a terrible speller  and what if I miss a mistake and people think I am stupid?  What if they think I am just whinging? The list goes on and on “what if..??? What if..??” but at the core of them all is my fear of leaving myself vulnerable and exposed to being judged by the world, rejected or dismissed.

It has taken me over 4 years in therapy to be comfortable enough to share my fear of judgment and rejection. To be honest it took me the first 3 years to feel safe enough to acknowledge it myself. I have always felt that everyone else knows something that I don't.  In school I always felt that I was behind everyone else trying to catch up, socially and emotionally as much as academically. I felt that I was always on the outside looking in, that I wasn’t worthy of a place. I can still, and often do feel “other”. Not in the world, but experiencing it through others. Watching through a window but not in it. This has been my internal script for a substantial part of my life.  I developed a very skilled mask of calm indifference to convince myself, and others, that I was either up to speed or just not bothered and doing fine. In fact what was going on inside was my harshest critic nipping away with thoughts like “your just so stupid” “your good at nothing” “who wants to here what you have to say?” “Keep your head down or they will see just how stupid you are”. The walls of defence were built reinforced to protect me from pain and rejection, but as so often happens, the defence becomes immovable and impenetrable, becoming a barrier to joy and love as well as pain and rejection.

Stupid is a word that I feel really uncomfortable using.  It is one that I have fought against strongly because if I don’t defend myself against it, it would consume me. It is the word that, if I am honest, hits me hardest because I believe it. I have got the label welded to my core and no matter how much I achieve or do to show otherwise, it is still there, ready to jump out in stark relief when I slip or “need brought down a peg or two”. It’s the perfect stick to beat myself with as it cuts the deepest.  

As much as everything I have written so far is truth and really very raw, I have the feeling that I am getting distracted from the real issue.  I’m not entirely sure what that is yet, I am hoping it will reveal itself to you, and me, as I write.  

While I have been thinking about words and the significance they have for me, I have been reminded of a word that I never, ever use.  I don’t often have the courage to challenge someone’s word choice, but I have in the past asked someone not to use this word because I find it so offensive.  It is not what is considered a swear word by society, yet when used to describe an individual, it has the power to strip them of their humanity.  When a person or group are described as “scum” I  can feel anger rising in me. Unlike stupid, it is not a world that I use to punish and shame myself, but it has the same impact. It is to describe someone as less than human, not worthy of space or time. A nothingness.  Too awful for society, unacceptable and to be discarded.  I am aware that when others use the word they probably don’t mean this level of dehumanisation, but it is what is implied and I can’t bare it. 

Having just read the last paragraph I reolise that although I don’t call myself “scum” I do, in my weakest ,darkest ,loneliest moments feel everything that I have just described.  I think the label of stupid that I give myself is my way of hiding the label that I truly feel is mine. 

I feel an urge just now to run away from this very dark and painful reality by reassuring you, the reader and myself, that this is not the whole of me. That although I have lived in this dark place it doesn’t define me, I am not controlled by it or reduced because of it. I don't currently have the fear of it consuming me.  The familiar feeling of sitting at the top of a precipice that there is no way back from doesn't hold the same level of terror that it has in the past. I have days where I feel so low, worn down, useless, weak and not good enough that I visit this dark place.  The difference now is that I have a grappling hook tenaciously holding onto the top of the cliff face.  I am aware that these negative and severe thought are my core beliefs but I also know that they are not alone.  I know that some days I am strong, I am enough, I am resilient and I have a positive impact.  I am worthy.  

I see it very much like grief and loss, that it never goes, but can take up more or less space in your life.   Some days regardless of how long ago the loss, it can be all encompassing and another day it can be a more manageable size, allowing more space to see and feel a fuller spectrum of emotions and experiences. I see my darkness, my depression in the same way.  It is always and always will be a part of me, but sometimes it will be small and can be slipped onto a shelf at the back of my awareness. But it can also come creeping up, growing in size until its too big to be disregarded.  My hope is to be able to see it creeping and swelling up before it blinds and paralyses, so I can allow it expression and space on my terms, allowing space for me to be more whole hearted. All together with nothing hidden or denied to myself.  That is the dream.

I still find it hard to believe myself when I say “you are worthy” but thankfully I believe God . When I discovered that God knew all of my inner blackness and still loved me was a turning point for me.  I say discover, it really wasn’t like switching on a light, it took me a considerable amount of time to hear it and accept it was for me too and not just the shiny, smiling, sorted people around me in church. It took just as long to reolise that the shiny sorted folk around me, weren’t all that sorted and were just as flawed and in need as me. When I was able to form the thought “why not me?” I was on the road to recovery.  

I use to think that grace was something that ballet dancers had, I had no idea of it’s true awesomeness. To be given something with love, with no expectations, no strings attached, no fuss, no drama and no judgment.  Nothing I had done earned me anything, just as nothing I had done eliminated my chances of receiving the gift.  The fact that I can do nothing to earn his love, but that I have it already, has been such a powerful and life changing revelation. I don't need to be enough, it doesn't matter what others think, it is God that matters. I know that this may sound alien to some reading this and I get that.  I went through life , and still do I am afraid, trying to earn the approval of society, the universe, a person or myself and if I were reading this 20 years ago I don’t know if I would have been able to connect, but I hope I would have. 

For me, regardless of where I am emotionally I know that God is there. I am never alone. I am always loved. I am never worthless, always worthy. I am so thankful and grateful for the blessing of the protection of his love from the abyss because if I do fall in, this time I won’t be in there alone. The shadows in the darkness are made by the light that comes in with you.    

It has taken me 2 months to write this post. I started it in March and have been avoiding it ever since.  It was too close, too raw to finish. I think I was afraid of what would come out, what I would see in writing. But as usually happens it is not as scary as imagined.  It’s curious the route that this post has taken. Although I felt it was disconnected and bitty with no flow, I can now see that there is a very real and natural flow. The significance of the words “stupid” and “scum” being connected had never occurred to me before. That my self-judgment as stupid has been my defence against feeling . The defences are built to stop pain, so to feel displays weakness. The defence wasn’t good enough, I’m not good enough. The use of the word “scum’ triggers my terror of being unseen, unloved, unworthy of life.  Although these deep and traumatic feelings are part of my story and part of me, they are exactly that, a part, not the whole. I am me because I have experienced these things. I am me because of all the good in my life, all the good I have done and seen as well as all the darkness I have felt, experienced and seen.  I feel uplifted and lighter finishing this post. I am able to see and believe that I am not where I once was. I am on the road to whole hearted living, accepting all aspects of my being, even the ones that have been forbidden in the past, love, joy and fulfilment. No longer will shame be the figurehead at the bow, leading and determining my direction. I surrender that to God with relief and peace.

The Shifting Sands Of Isolation

I have sat down and opened my blog this morning with a really strange mixture of feelings. I want to speak, to put something down and send it out to the world to be read and seen by others, to be connected. I feel an unidentified sadness, one that feels risky to unravel direct in a blog.  I want to be able to write the funny side of life, the ridiculous and relatable, but I know that behind all the silliness and jokes lies the sadness and unbearable vulnerability of isolation.  
Everything seems to be taking me back to the sadness, even the distraction of humour, like a colourful smiling clowns face that barely disguises the sorrow within. I feel that is one of the loudest screams of sadness, like laughter with dead eyes. 

I am not sure if I am alone in this, but I feel a dread of what the end of lock down will bring for me. As I write this I am questioning whether it is the right thing to include, but it is my truth and therefore has a valid place regardless of the discomfort it may bring me to publish. I have spoken in previous blogs about the resentment I felt at the beginning of the lock down, this has settled and evolved into a comfortable new norm. I am sure that all of us have needed time to come to terms with whatever the new norm is for us. I feel involved, connected, supported, and even part of the outside world. There is a positivity and joy in no longer being alone in my isolation. Along side this I am feeling unsettled. I am overwhelmed by all the things to do and a loss of motivation and staying power with the things that were anchors before the lockdown. Small things feel too much, like the pressure I feel in myself that I don't ever finish anything I start. I have so many “projects” ongoing and not finished, yet I get distracted walking to the kitchen and realise after 15 minutes of dusting or sanding a piece of furniture, that I was actually getting B a drink. It’s like I have no idea what to do first so I go fo the one in front of me. It may sound ridiculous, but currently the thing that causes me to want to rub myself out, to cringe and shrivel up inside, is the kitchen sink.  I never finish the dishes. I wash a load, stack the draining rack and then for some crazy reason that I am struggling to unpick, I leave the basin with a pot or a bowl soaking. There is no need for the soak other than it ensures that I don’t complete the job. I know that the response to this would be, if I am aware that I am doing it then surely I can just change it and I don't know why I don't.  Washing dishes. It’s a strange thing to be brought round to when talking about the effects of the lockdown. But I wonder if it represents more than just clean dishes. For me, over the years washing dishes has given me moments of distraction, focus and order. In the early years of Bs struggles and major frequent melt downs, washing dishes was my go to distraction. It helped me detach from the distress of the moment. The fixed sequence of washing cleanest to dirtiest, glasses, mugs, plates, cutlery then pots, brought order and something that made sense in a world that was anything but ordered and sensible.  Is that it? Is it that nothing, not even dishes can neutralise the disorder, distress and hopelessness of the moment? 

I have a deep dread of the impact of everyone else’s lives opening back up and returning to semi normal, with work and school, while my world will retract and be reduced again. My journey into isolation was gradual process that I fought and took a long time to accept as my life for the moment.  It scares me to think of how it will feel to have the rug, the feeling of being in it together, is pulled away suddenly. I want to be part of the return to the world. It don’t want to be eft behind. I know that my family and friends that have been with me the whole way along my trek through the past few years, will still be there, and I am forever grateful for everything they do to help me through. Yet nothing can take away the fact that without a miraculous change in Bs anxiety, I will need to stay home, reliant on asking for help to be able to go outside. The relief that the world will experience when this is all over will not be something that I can fully share in.  The image that I get, is being forced to watch the celebrations on VE Day but not being able to be part of it or to connect with it.  These societal celebrations are of massive importance to everyone and it feels so unfair and unjust that some will not be able to move into that joyous state of transition.  We will all have changed by the time it ends, through loss of a loved one to Covid or some other cause, loss of work, trauma of isolation, a change in our personal and societal priorities, a rediscovery of self or having survived illness. Whatever the change we personally experience, we will all have to renegotiate our next new norm and for most that will look and feel as changed as they do. For those of us that were already in isolation through caring, illness, poverty or disability, we will need to navigate our way through the old familiar loneliness and helplessness.  For me the lockdown has brought the comfort that I can do a video chat with a friend or have a zoom quiz with family, in the knowledge that they will be there. I don't have the same level of fear of being a burden or not being able to be fitted into their day or week. I feel rejection very acutely, and absorb my response to it when I know that it is not justified resulting in my fear and avoidance of asking someone else. Rejection comes in lots of different forms and most of them are completely in the way I receive the response to my request and no the actual response its self. Let me explain. Asking for help before the lockdown from someone to come and sit in to let me out, the response could be a very reasonable, “I’m sorry I am doing xxx so I cant help”.  My response would be to feel wrong for having asked in the first place, that I was stupid to think that folk would have space for me, reaffirming my aloneness.  Now I know in my head that this is a ridiculous and unreasonable response, but knowing something doesn't always take the feeling away. The shame of “I shouldn’t have asked” has the power to silence me and to cut me off from the help that I need and depend on. 
This is what I fear returning when lockdown is lifted for those around me, their presence, availability and the solidarity of being in the same situation. I know that I am not isolated from God and that with him I will have what I need to come through this.  I will continue to pray for everyone struggling through the lockdown and the different emotions and hardships that this forced isolation raises. As hard as things are I am truly grateful for all the blessings that I have, the support of friends and family, my counselling background and therapy, the dry sunny days and the technology that enables so much connection, to name a few. I am who and where I am by Gods design. Often feel that all I have experienced has been in preparation for me to be the mum B needs and to be able to care for myself.

Grieving in isolation

At the centre of chaos and helplessness

The loss of a dearly loved family member or friend can be devastating on any day, but how is isolation impacting people living these losses today, this week?  
I am a member of number of closed facebook groups supporting each other with the stresses, questions and pressures of life being the parent of a child with complex needs. I have begun to notice that there is a growing number of posts asking for support with sudden losses and how to support children going through these losses. It has struck me, where do people go that don’t have access to a trusted facebook group?  Where do they find the wider support?  My experience of the groups is that I feel safe to write about my darkest moments, sometimes as they are happening, without the fear of judgment or the need to worry about how my words impact on another.  The other members are names, some become familiar and valued but there is still a distance that brings the safety for honesty to be revealed. My heart breaks for those that loose their mother suddenly to Covid 19 or those struggling with an unexpected stage 4 cancer diagnosis in their families.

 There are so many people in similar situations all over the country.  I am so so very pleased that the people that have turned to these groups for support and advice actually have these places to turn to.

To be able to open up and talk about how you are truly feeling inside is a valuable way to help process loss and having open discussions with family is immensely beneficial for the family grieving together.  I am aware that this sounds great but I am sure there will be many reading this that are thinking “thats easier said than done” and you are right. Often to talk about the raw agony of grief brings the fear and risk of causing hurt to the listener and increasing their own pain in grief. The instinct to protect those around us from the huge, painful and dangerous feelings barely held in check within us is understandable. If we fear them exploding out and overwhelming us, how on earth can we expect others to bare them along with their own pain?  This is where the rest of the world would come in. Trying to keep busy to avoid the feelings, then finding yourself telling your story to the stranger on the bus, or the dog walker, or the person at the supermarket checkout.  That person that in that moment feels safe enough, removed enough from the grief, to be given your reality.  It might be simply going about what use to be normal that brings a sense of being in the world, being part of life and not living solely through grief.  But what do you do in isolation? Nothing is normal at the moment. 

Grief its self can be the feeling of your world being turned upside down, the solid ground becoming quick sand, no longer stable and forever changed.  How must isolation impact on this?  How can you process this unreal removed feeling while the world is so unreal and distant?  Will the grieving process be missed during the isolation to impact later, when the world its self has righted its self? When the world may make the assumption that it has been long enough, ‘surely your through that bit by now’?  There is no set timeline to grief. Or will the isolation plunge some into a dark spiral of self reflection, pain and regret?  Many of us are experiencing the awareness of being left with our own thoughts and either trying to drown them out with noise and activity or resolving to embrace them in an attempt to understand ourselves better.  To have the magnifying glass of isolation focused over grief ......... to be honest it feels unimaginable.  I am struggling to find the words to describe what it brings up for me.  I keep getting the image of sun beaming through the magnifying glass and burning the ‘paper’. I wonder if that is what it feels like to go through. That it could destroy and overwhelm.

I confess to feeling helpless in this situation. I myself am not currently experiencing this grief, but I fear for those who are. Especially those that don’t have anywhere to bring their brokenness, their overwhelmed moments and their need to be held and those who feel the expectation to be ‘ok’ for others.  
I suppose what I or we, could do is to make contact. If we know of someone going through a bereavement, we cant fix their pain, but we can acknowledge it. We can acknowledge

them by being there and being genuine. If you don't know what to say, say that. To know that someone sees or hears them, whether its virtually or across the street, and isn’t telling them how to fix the pain, will feel real.  When we avoid contacting or talking to the person because we don't know what to say, helps no one. We feel guilty and inadequate and those grieving feel abandoned and even further away from reality.  If the world is carrying on without their loved one and nobody talks about them or acknowledges the pain of their loss, how can the worlds be the same or both be real? This is true even when the world is not in isolation, for both adults and children. Be real, be genuine, if it feels uncomfortable say it,  you won’t  be the only one feeling it, you can bet the other person if is feeling it too.  Just like there is not a guidebook for grieving, there is also no guidebook for supporting someone, other than simply be there, allow them to grieve their way without judgment and remember you can’t fix them. To try would be to deny them their pain and therefore the importance and love they feel for their loved one.

I will be praying for all those experiencing grief, those with children to support through their grief, whether they have complex needs or not, all children need guidance through grief. How they see the adults around them process grief impacts how they too process theirs.  I will be praying for support to be there for them in the form of friends and neighbours checking in, contacting online and finding a space to share their reality. I will also be praying for support and emotional care beyond this period of isolation.  The impact of it will be felt by many far beyond the restrictions being lifted. 
From within your own isolation bubbles remember to care for yourself and each other.  That person you haven’t heard from may be the one that is struggling the most.  Communication is a two way process, by making contact you may just be providing that wee bit of recognition and care that the other person needed to help them back into the world. Don’t hold grudges but show you care by reaching out instead.

Surviving The Blip To Smile And Carry On

I was going to tweak and “fix” this piece before publishing but I have decided to leave it as it came.  I think that if I were to alter it, it would stop being a true reflection of me. Instead, like many facebook and instagram posts, it would be the ideal and filtered version of me and my experience. For that reason I have left in the double start.  I was going to call it a false start, but in reality it is anything but false.

I really don't know what I am going to write this morning.  What I do know is that I need to write this morning.  I am a bit scared to let what I am really feeling in this moment come spilling out onto this page.  What if its too much? My instinct is to clear up all the tears and snot and tell you everything is ok, and its just a wee blip.  That may well be true, but blips are real. They are part of me and what I am experiencing therefore why do they get denied and swept away into an unmarked box somewhere behind me?
It’s the same old reasons really, fear and shame.  Fear of judgment of the world and the shame left after my own self judgement.  “What will they think of me?”, “how could I be so weak?”.  On the whole I don’t feel like this but.....
I haven’t quite mastered or clicked with the idea of finding true strength in my vulnerabilities. Well, in saying that, I do recognise my vulnerabilities more readily than I ever have, and although I still feel shame when they side swipe me, it is a shadow of the true shame and loathing that I have experienced in the past. On reflection, I think I am probably further down the road to accepting my vulnerabilities than I had appreciated when I started this piece.  I don't believe that I could have managed to sit with my shame long enough ....

I am going to restart this.  I feel that I am going down a very deep and heavy road and my instinct is to say that it would be too much for you, the reader, but I think it is actually that it is going to be too much for me today. Digging over my past inner feelings still feels a bit too raw.  I hope that I find the strength to write and then publish something on it in the future.

The reason that I sat down at the keyboard with the need to write my thoughts down was my unexpected response to the post and how it has made me reflect on how this past 

week has gone.
I will start by saying that this week has been a tough one.  B has been ok in most part, struggling with boredom and feeling unable to do anything well. The dog has, well from my perspective, I have had a terrible week with the dog. On reflection I think that she has been feeding off of my emotions as well as her own boredom.  This morning after trying to fight past the dog on my way to get the post, I sat down with my back against the living room door (with the dog still trying to get at me through the door) feeling just a bit battered, attacked and bruised. There was just one letter on the mat.  A letter from Bs occupational therapist or at least her service. We haven’t seen her since December due to absences and other appointments.  The letter was to inform us that due to Covid 19 all services were being pulled and Bs case would now be closed. It did manage to imply that this was because B has been unable to engage when the OT has visited, due to her levels of anxiety.  After reading it I just sat.  I sat. I sat and I cried, behind the door, hiding from the dog. Feeling deflated, beaten, helpless

and alone.

It’s not that I have pinned any huge hope on the OT services or that I expected them to do anything in the current circumstances. But it still felt like an invisible lifeline had just been severed.  Sitting there, I was aware that it was more than just this letter that I was crying about. I realised that I had been off all week. I have been struggling to focus on tasks.  Feeling overwhelmed by the radio, barking and the noise in my head all at the same time. I have felt like the day has run out before I realise that I haven’t done my daily Duolingo or I realise that I have missed yesterdays bible 20/20 reading. I feel like I am never getting on top of the dishes when there is only me really using any.  
CAMHS have cancelled all appointments but I have spoken to them and B is still on their list and will be contacted when this is all over. I am not good at asking for help. When things are getting too much for me to deal with, the first things to slip are phone calls and asking for help. It gives me the image of being on a raft that is only held to the shore by some weak looking lines and the letter was another of them being cut, putting me at greater risk of going adrift, praying desperately that the final connections aren’t lost.
I need to go and see what B wants just now and fight my way past the dog.  So life goes on through the blips, stumbles and prayers. That is where I will find my feet, my strength and my security.

I am aware that this piece is unfocused and unrefined, but this is where I am currently.  Part of me feels I should apologies for this, but I won’t. I do not want to apologise for me. It is a scary thing, letting you in and showing you my mess before I have had a chance to process it, tidy it up and present it all neatly wrapped with a bow. That is what I have tried to do today. No bows. Just simply how I feel warts and all.

Trying To Rewrite My Inner Script

The tsunami of survival, inspirational, and “look how well I’m doing” posts definitely trigger my feelings of inadequacy and shame. These powerful emotions are familiar old frienemies that never actually leave me, but shrink in power, into the back ground only too happy to grasp any opportunity to swell up to fill my inner space with doubt and accusations. 

We all have our inner script, that dialogue that goes on within us that we believe to be absolute irrefutable truth.  Our core belief about ourselves.  Many of us are adept at ignoring, masking or defending against these without even

being aware of it.  Our subconscious works really hard to protect us from uncomfortable and painful feelings, emotions and traumas. Often these defences become obstacles and prisons that inhibit our awareness from recognising who we truly are. A lifetime of minimising emotions and trauma can result in an impenetrable citadel being constructed around the raw darkness and pain that you fear seeing or the world catching a glimpse off.  
I am not suggesting that anyone should take a battering ram to their inner citadel.  Defences are there for a reason, to protect.  Awareness is at the centre of gradually uncovering the hidden and finding who we are.  It doesn't matter how far along the road of processing your “stuff” you are, awareness and acceptance is key. With awareness comes the opportunity for change or to choose not to.  For me it has taken years to get to where I am today, and I am very much a work in progress.  

In preparation for this I did a timeline of when I thought I started working on myself.  Off the top of my head I would have said that it was around the time of some major incidents that occurred within my job that shook me to the core and turned my perception of who I was in relation to the world upside down. A full on identity crisis. In doing the timeline and listing in order when things happened, started, stopped etc I noticed that I actually started the process over a year earlier.  Out of the blue and with no identifiable reason, I asked my close friend if I could go to church with her.  I never had a road to Damascus moment of suddenly and spectacularly switching the light on. For me it has been a much slower and organic growth. In saying that, a moment that particularly comes to mind as being a significant point in my awareness process and my faith, was during a session of Christianity Explored. The group were shown a clip looking at what it means for God to shine a light on your heart.  I am sure I wasn’t the only person in the group that felt the terror of my all being known, but what it did for me over time, was to unlock something.  In feeling the fear of being seen, I had acknowledged that there was something to see.  I wasn’t simply what the world saw, the mask or what my blinkered view revealed to me.  Was this all part of Gods plan? He allowed me the space I needed to build trust in what I was feeling about developing faith. Had it happened like a bolt of lightening, I wouldn’t have trusted the extreme nature of the emotions. Going through life, relationships, work, trials and challenges as well as intense psychodynamic training and therapy, without God would have been unimaginable. That clip had given me a new inner script, a counter script. God knows all of me and yet he still loves me. No matter how massive my shame grows, no matter how unworthy and helpless I feel, it cannot consume me any longer.

The understanding that feelings, losses and traumas don't leave us but instead become a part of who we are was both reassuring and disappointing. Knowing that I didn't need to defeat them was welcome but that I wouldn’t be free of them, not so much.  In a training session the void and emptiness felt in bereavement was described as always present but altered in the space it took up within. That it changes in size and density. Sometimes it is overwhelming and yet it can become like a smaller shadow that sits with you always and is welcome as part of your life as you hold the loss and allow it to be.  As overwhelming as it is to begin with, I would wager that nobody would want the love and memories to be forgotten. To denying your grief and loss of any sort is denying the importance that the person is to you. I feel that viewing other difficult emotions in the same way could be helpful.  I know it sounds good but it isn’t my default position and therefore not easily maintained when remembered.
My identity and therefore my world were turned upside down by external events and loss, triggering my inner vulnerabilities and accepted perceptions of my place, purpose and defining character. For you it may be or have been something very different, a bereavement, the loss of relationship, empty nest, a change of place within a family, loss of health or the loss or addition of a label that has defined you in some way.  The list goes on and for each of us, whatever it is that changes your solid ground to swamp, it is life altering. The desolation of being alone in the swamp, vulnerable and uncertain and not sure how you are supposed to be now.  Who am I now, without XXX? It takes time to reorder a world.  

Working on my awareness of me, has been key in my search for self. Once, during a check in at the beginning of one of my first counselling trainings, I described myself as being like the weather. Some days its not rainy or sunny or cold or hot, it’s just there.  There was nothing there to identify.  That terrified me. Either I was totally empty inside or I was unable to feel. After 4 years of therapy, it turns out that I have spent a lifetime denying my feelings and silencing my inner voice because of my belief that I’m not worthy to be heard. The irony of this is that, throughout my childhood I was called a chatterbox, often told that I say the same thing in several different ways, using too many words where only a few were necessary (necessary for who?). Amazingly my subconscious has been trying to be heard all this time. Trying to be seen. To have a voice. To feel understood and acceptable. 
The first person I need to be seen, heard and accepted by is myself. How can I ask it of others, if I don’t connect with and acknowledge myself? My whole self, the good and the bad, my strengths and vulnerabilities, my darkness and my light.  There are still the same internal scripts and feelings that have overwhelmed me more than once, but they are not the whole, they are a part. They no longer fill my horizons.  Knowing that I have God beside, behind and in front of me, holding me up, I can weather whatever storms are released from within, little by little, even through the overwhelming darknesses there is light.

In The Isolation, Together

As my blogger name suggests, I am a mum living/ watching life from inside the bubble of isolation.  At first when social isolation and possible lock down was banded about, I thought that my daily existence would be unchanged, unaffected by these monumental changes in our society. I mean, I’m in all the time anyway. I’m not, or at least didn’t feel  part of that society.  But I was wrong. I have been affected. In some quite surprising ways.

I thought that having been isolated for so long I would feel, 

‘been there, done that’.  For the first week I think I probably did.  When people asked how we were doing I would respond with a “oh, same old, same old. Not much of a change for us”. I believe on occasion there was a note of frustration and accusation, as if to say “don’t you know this is how I have been living???”.  I will admit to having felt a certain amount of resentment at the sudden interest in how to connect with those isolated, all the resources and ideas, apps, chats, challenges, and the impression that it was only elderly people that would be alone and vulnerable.  I am very glad to say that I got over myself.

I think it was when I sat and engaged with the online church service, that I realised that I wasn’t alone.  I wasn’t isolated in my isolation.  I had been accessing the Sunday morning services on the church facebook page for probably the past year.  I would sit at my table for 10:30am, having made sure that the menagerie, including B, had been fed and watered, to reduce the chances of interruptions.  But this was different.  For one thing it had been moved from facebook to a youtube channel so I could have it on my TV instead of a tablet.  I could see the words of the hymns and actually join in. But I think the difference for me was that, how I was experiencing it was the same as the rest of the congregation.  I wasn’t different.  We were all the same. No longer looking in through a window, but on the inside. I felt more connected with the church family than I had in a long time.  I was part of, no longer apart from the congregation.  I know that I am very much a part of my church family, but sometimes for all of us, situations and circumstances can play games with our perception and leave us feeling disconnected, far away and believing the inner saboteurs.

The main point is that I was aware of feeling part of something.  Over the past week, that feeling of being part of something has grown and its not all too sensible.  For starters, has anyone else noticed how much people are willing to risk doing something totally out of the norm?  I’m talking about people like the guy who took his dog for a walk in Inverness in a huge dinosaur suit. I have begun to notice my own desire to do the silly things that I would normally never think of doing.  Like dying the ends of my hair green (it didn’t take very well, think my hair is too dark).  I feel an air of excitement that people are at home and accessible.  I am not alone.  I am patiently waiting on the next #hometasking challenge to come out so that I can get my ‘thinking outside of the box’ head on.  This new willingness to stand up and do the ridiculous and the unexpected is wonderful.  I think it is due to the lives of the whole of society changing and therefore our place in it is up for grabs.  There are no rules on how to be in lockdown, no right or wrong.  You can be who you want to be, you can be the real you, if you are lucky enough to know who that is.  Or you can try on different hats for size until you find what feels most authentically you.  That is what I think we are all doing, finding who we are in our empty rooms. That gives me a sense of excitement and terror in equal measure.  I am also aware of being left with sadness and guilt, sadness that this feeling of being together and part of something may be lost when this is all over, and guilt at feeling happiness for myself because the world is isolated with me.  Especially in light of the risk and trauma that so many are facing daily across the world due to this virus.

It is a truly horrific time for so so many people around the world and our friends and families.  The virus is destroying the lives of everyone it touches, from the poor souls that loose their lives, their families and loved ones and the health care staff around the world that are finding themselves climbing out off trenches and going over the top armed with a popgun in the face of missile launchers.

Whatever your part is within this crazy upside down nightmare world that we all find ourselves in, its important to allow yourself the space to be afraid, to feel sad, to help each other to laugh and to be that silly, radical, daring, whatever it is, authentic you. And above all else, Love each other, including yourself, be kind, thoughtful and be there.