Tag: trauma

7 things 2017 taught me

2018 I have been so looking forward to you. Mainly because it means the epic flaming shitshow that was 2017 is finally over. Don’t get me wrong, there were many moments of grace, of wonder and a beauty. Watching A grow has been every bit as wonderful and knackering as I imagined it would be. But I don’t think I’m alone in being glad to close the chapter on this year and move into another one.

Long-term readers around this parts may remember that I like to write a year in review summing up the major events and lessons of the year. You can find previous yearly review posts here: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011. (With the exception of 2016 because sleep deprivation destroyed my brain.)

I am doing something different this time. Because if I have to look back at pictures of the last year I think I may curl into a ball and just cry and cry and cry. Some years are about thriving and some years are just about surviving. Finding a way despite the odds to grit it through. So instead of writing about what happened, I am going to talk about what I learned: what served me in 2017 and what I will be happy to leave behind.

7 things 2017 taught me

Perfectionism doesn’t make me better, it makes me weaker

Ah perfectionism, my slightly shitty old friend.

One of my longstanding myths is without perfectionism driving me, I would achieve nothing and be left worthless and unloved. At first when Lauren’s accident happened I was able to let myself off the hook and recognise that I was doing my best in an almost unbearable situation. But as the crisis passed I began to slip back into my old perfectionist ways. I often felt I was failing as a sister, as a daughter, mother, partner and friend. Trying to do everything right hurt me as I got increasingly drained, depressed and ill. But it also harmed my relationships most notably with A and HWSNBN (He Who Shall Not Be Named). I was often exhausted and short-tempered with A – a hollow shell of my former self. And when it came to being a loving and present partner to HWSNBN there was nothing left. By trying to be everything to everyone I ended up tearing myself to pieces in the process.

I wish I had been kinder to myself. I wish I could have offered myself the same love and support I tried to offer others. I wish I had put some boundaries in place before I began to drown. I wish it hadn’t taken almost collapsing with exhaustion to realise I needed to start taking care of myself. This year was never going to be easy but it would have been easier if I was less hard on myself. At the time ‘Only Human’ By Rag’n’Bone man was a big hit and I couldn’t get that song out of my head. As the year draws to a close I am happy to say that I am being a lot gentler on myself. One of the big lessons of this year has been that even though I would love to be perfect and untouchable, no matter what life threw at me – I am only human, after all.

Self-caring like my life depended on it (which, spoiler, it kinda did).

This year I finally mastered self-care. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit but at 35 years old I still struggled with the basics like making sure I was getting enough sleep, eating a vegetable, let alone making time for myself.

Because so much of what was happening this year was completely out of my control, it inspired me to finally put my attention where it mattered: on the little things I could do to make myself feel slightly better. 

I am going to start with the biggest thing I did. Immediately after Lauren’s accident the hospital offered the family individual therapy with the Major Trauma team. In the past I would have hesitated but I said yes immediately. Having a space where I could go weekly and talk about everything that was happening was essential amidst the chaos. I will be forever grateful for Kara my therapist. I am also very proud of myself because week after week I put the work in.

When I found myself overwhelmed in the middle of this year and I realised how much my need to do it all was harming A, we enrolled him at nursery two days a week. It caused so much guilt and anguish at the time (especially as the first nursery was not right for him so we had to repeat the process all over again). But he loves it at his second nursery. He’s developed and grown in confidence so much. And it’s given me some essential time to think, to mourn and to sleep! The time we have together is richer and I have so much more to give now I’m not with him 24/7.

The time freed up meant in the latter half of this year I finally worked my way through a long list of nagging personal care tasks like seeing the hygienist or blood test. Self care isn’t a cure all. Booking a dentist’s appointment didn’t help me heal my broken heart. But it did mean I wasn’t distracted by a cavity and could focus on the things that mattered.

Watching A grow has helped a lot. As a strong-willed toddler I know that I need to make sure he’s fed, well rested, entertained but not overstimulated… I am slowly getting used to asking myself the same questions: am I fed, rested, what do I need?

How I numb out

To get through this year (relatively) intact I’ve been numbing out. A lot. I’ve become very aware of how often I tap out of difficult moments. And why in my family that was such an essential skill to develop growing up.

This year I’ve bought all the things, I’ve scrolled endlessly through social media, and immersed myself in many fictional worlds. (I have not one iota of guilt about the last one). Thank god I’ve always had an inbuilt off switch when it comes to drinking and I’m too much of a control freak to enjoy drugs. Food, the least rock and roll of all addictions, is my weapon of choice. I eat when I’m sad, angry, frightened, bored and hurting. I eat to comfort or punish myself, to numb and to distract. And this year has been replete with all the feels.

Given everything that has happened a part of me just wants to surrender and dive head first into a bowl of salted caramel cookies. If it wasn’t for one thing – HWSNBN and I want another baby. As much as I would love to be one of those super-fertile women who decides they want another baby and just gets pregnant; it’s likely for me the journey will not be that simple. I have PCOS. To conceive A I had to undergo a complete lifestyle overhaul and lose three and half stone. Based on previous experience I am pretty certain I would be unable to conceive and carry to term at this weight. Losing weight is one of the key ways to manage my PCOS, help me start ovulating again and put me in a position to conceive.

I’ve been trying for six months to get pregnant and lose weight. I’ve tried the body coach (this worked last time), the slow carb diet and keto with some success. But after a month or so something will happen: A will get ill or my sister will go back into hospital or I will self-sabotage. And then I will eat and eat and eat. If I want A to have a sibling, I need to stop eating emotionally and find another healthier way to weather the storms. If anybody has any tips or wants to be a fitness or healthy eating buddy let me know in the comments. This is going to be one of my big challenges in 2018.

Morning pages

Envy. No other feeling makes me feel as monstrous, uncomfortable and wrong. But it has always worked as a beacon signalling me towards something I desperately want. Years ago a chance remark from a colleague that she was training to become a counsellor triggered a wave of envy so intense it nauseated me. I signed up for a beginners counselling course the next day. This summer I bumped into her again and she talked about becoming a writer. Envy felled me again. I love writing but I’ve barely written a thing since having A (oh hai, severely neglected blog). Committing to writing another novel feels too much. But I could try the morning pages that she mentioned.

That was six months ago and I’ve been writing my morning pages religiously ever since. It’s simple really. All you do is write three pages of whatever is in on your mind when you wake up. That weird dream you had about the mouse castle, the fact your best friend hasn’t messaged you back, the many ways you are screwing you’re child up… It can be as boring or a deep as you want. (A lot of my early pages where me droning on about how tired I was). All of those repetitive thoughts, moaning and worries of my monkey mind go down on paper and for some reason they don’t seem to bother me anymore.

Its very simple yet ridiculously effective  for me. It works as a foundation practise. If I do this I know I’m likely to workout, to meditate, to tidy, to reach out and connect with somebody. Feeling like I’ve achieved something at 6am means I more likely to tackle hard things. Deliberately not writing my morning pages is often a sign to me that I trying to avoid some uncomfortable emotional revelation. And if I start skipping pages I notice a massive knock on effect on how I felt for the rest of the day. Next year I am definitely going to keep up with my morning pages practice.

Purpose matters

I was due to go back to work in February. It’s December, as I write this, and I am still not working as a counsellor. I cannot absorb any more emotional pain. I am at capacity.

I know I am very lucky that we are in a position where HWSNBN can support me financially (something that would have been impossible a year and half ago when we were really broke). I am lucky I get to spend time with A, time that many of my friends who work full time would kill for. I am lucky to have a job I miss and love; rather than one where I lived for the weekend as I did for many years. But I don’t feel lucky, I feel bereft. I miss having purpose. I miss using my brain and my heart. I miss having a structure to my days. And the way I feel currently I am not sure I will ever be able to go back. I am trying to tell myself that for everything there is a season. That what happened to Lauren is so huge that it will take time to heal. But I feel adrift.

People ask me all the time when I am going back to work. Unwittingly it triggers a shame spiral. Because if I was stronger, better than surely I’d be ready by now. We derive so much of our purpose from work and without it – am I enough?  I know I cannot work as a counsellor now. So I wait. But what if I never feel mentally resilient enough to go back. What am I going to do instead? Now A is settled at nursery, my goal is to figure out what I want to do with my one and precious life. No pressure.

Sleep is everything

I always find it amusing that when it comes to our children we had bedtimes and set routines to help lull them to sleep. But when it comes to our adult selves… anything goes.  A’s sleep has always been variable but he went through a really unsettled patch this autumn. I noticed that after spending all day being used as a human trampoline I was staying up later and later trying to desperately eek out some ‘me time’. But I was too tired to do anything except scroll on my phone and try and fail to not fall asleep in front of the TV. I’d sit there knowing I should take out my contact lenses and brush my teeth but felt too exhausted to move. With A still not sleeping through the night the sleep I was getting was fractured. And during the day the tiredness built and built and affected everything my mood, my diet and my relationships. Something has to give.

I decided to set a ‘go the fuck to sleep alarm’ for 10.30pm each night. But I found it didn’t work. I resented the alarm. I always felt rushed and not ready. And in a weird in between state of exhausted and too wired. I realised I needed more of a run-up to get to sleep. There’s significant evidence that the blue light from devices can affect our melatonin. So installed a blue light blocker on my devices and starting wearing these weird orange glasses when watching TV.  I also realised if I wanted to go to sleep at 10.30pm I needed to get ready for bed at 9.30pm. So I started changing into my pyjamas, brushing my teeth and taking my contacts out as soon as A had gone to sleep. Then at 10pm, I’d switch off all devices (phone and tv) and read before falling asleep at 10.30pm.

At first it made me feel a little like a grandma. I had a bedtime? Seriously? But within a week I was noticing how much better I felt and how getting enough sleep before A decided it was time to wake up made everything easier. I could write pages and pages about sleep especially the importance of vitamin D so I might write a separate post about this at some point.

That within me there is an invincible summer

In the books, they call it resilience. I personally labelled it as my ‘Fuck you’ instinct. But I prefer Camus who perfectly expresses what I discovered this year.

‘In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

‘And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.’

This year, it seemed like the world threw everything it could at me and my family. It was, without a doubt, the worst of times. But even drowning in darkness, and friends it was dark, I still found a glimmer of light within me. There was something within me that made me get up, go to therapy, play with my baby, cry with my husband, go to the hospital but also to the beach and keep living. Some ‘fuck you’ part I found within me that wasn’t going to let the bad things win. The key part of those sentences is that I found it within me. Often well-meaning friends would try and offer hope or cheer me up because they found it too unbearable. It had the opposite effect of making me aware of how alone I was. I had to find the hope for myself and it often meant sitting in some dark places emotionally and accepting that this was where I needed to be. Only then would the glimmers of light show themselves. I still have to do that. What happened earlier this year is life-changing and the ripples for my sister, my family and me are still being felt and will be for the rest of our lives.

Even bruised and broken there is still within me an invincible summer. A ‘fuck you’ instinct that will not give up.

There’s a moment in Buffy at the end of season 2 which I’ve always loved. She’s fighting Angelus and she’s losing. He knocks her to the floor, her weapon is out of reach. And he stands over his sword raised for a killing blow, taunting her.
‘That’s everything huh? No weapons… no friends… no hope. Take all that away and what’s left?’ She closes her eyes as if anticipating the blow to come. And as he raises the sword to strike, she says ‘Me.’ And begins to fight back.

What’s left after last year took so many things away? Me. And as long as I am I will keep keeping on. And despite 2017 knocking me down again, and again and again – still I rose.

What did 2017 teach you? Let me know what your taking forward into 2018 in the comments

The Promise


One night I dreamt I visited Santorini. I didn’t know what it was called then – just that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Closer to the sky, it seemed god-touched. The azure blue domes made the bright white walls shine even higher. The town tumbled down the hill vertiginously. Below the wine-dark sea sparkled stretching to infinity.

In my dream, I was old my hands wrinkled and covered in sunspots. HWSNBN was stooped, his hands gnarled and weathered as mine. We walked haltingly down the cobbled paths curving between the cave buildings until we reached the sea. We sat in the comfortable silence watching the children play it on the docks. 

The strangest part of this dream was how I knew two things: we had never been able to have children. And I was happy.

When I woke up I couldn’t wrap my head around it. How could I be happy and not have children? This dream came to me when infertility was killing me slowly. If it hasn’t happened to you that may seem hyperbolic – but it has you will know exactly what I mean. I wasn’t sure how many more months I could stay on this cycle of hope and despair. How many more times I could be torn apart and slowly piece myself back together?

Then I dreamt of Santorini and I knew, the way I knew my own face, that whatever happened I would find a way to be OK. Maybe that longing to be a mother would never fade, would twinge like an old wound when I thought back on my life. Maybe life wouldn’t look anything like I envisaged. But somehow, in some way it was possible to build a life among the wreckage. A good life with joy as well as sorrow.

If I was reading this I was struggling to have a baby I’d think ‘Fuck her’ of course she’d say that now. How can she know that? She got her happy ending.

And I did. I am so unbelievably lucky to have Nibs.

But I know that because this year when struggling with a different tragedy there was only one place I wanted to visit. Last month we went to Santorini: He Who Shall Not be Named, the toddler and me. And it was even more beautiful than in my dream. But more important than its beauty was the promise Santorini held – that healing was possible.

My visit to Santorini was very different than how I had pictured. I wasn’t visiting to heal a heart broken by infertility but by trauma. It wasn’t a couples trip, but one with the family  I wasn’t sure I would ever have. Instead of spending evenings staring lovingly into each other eyes, we spent our time tackling our toddler as he tried to repeatedly throw himself into the caldera. We swam in the sea, we sat and watched the sunset, we marvelled at how beautiful it all was.

The details had changed but the promise remained the same. That one day, somehow I would find my way back to OK.

The one thing that I know is true is that life is both beautiful and brutal. Sometimes even at the same time. I remember sitting next to my sister in intensive care laughing more than I could ever remember I had. I also remember weeping in a corner of a garden centre so much that I didn’t have any tears left. Beautiful. Brutal. Brutiful

What happened to my sister’s is always going to hurt. Just how losing Lianne will always kill me. It will always be the wound that never completely heals. The ‘what if’ that haunts my life. There are things that hurt us so badly the only thing we can do is figure out how to live with them.

Some days distracted by the joy of watching Nibs the pain fades into the background. Still, present like a background ache but not at the forefront of my mind. Some days the pain is so excruciating  – it’s all I can do is to breathe through it. Still, I have days when it fells me anew. Both my sisters I think, both of them?

‘No, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all?’

A holiday couldn’t cure that. How could anything? But it did remind me that I had felt like this before: lost, broken and hopeless. And before that and again before that many times. And yet I am still here. I have survived 100% of my worst days so far.

Out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness and with a lot of work I know now that I can find my way back to OK. I am not there yet. I may never be entirely there. But slowly piece by piece I am putting myself back together. The promise of Santorini showed me that no matter what life throws at me and those I love there will always be a path back to OK if we search hard enough. There has to be.

Nothing gold can stay

For my wonderful beautiful, clever and courageous sister. Thank you for giving me permission to share this story.

Here’s how it goes.

You are living your life. Maybe you’re happy immersed in the bubble of you and your new baby. Maybe you’re weighted down with such despair you imagine your skin can barely contain it.

Then it happens: you see the blur of the car mounting the curb; you overbalance and then there is nothing but stars; trauma falls from the sky. And nothing will ever be the same again.

The first time trauma came for me and mine I was 4 months old.

The second time I was eighteen.

The third time, a couple of months ago.

One minute I was lying in bed luxuriating in a rare lie in. The next I saw the message.

In that hour and half car journey to the hospital, I prayed my sister would live. I already knew that OK would be far too big an ask.

I felt immense guilty. We’d fought viciously a month before. Don’t die. Don’t die. I chanted at each rotation of the wheels. I could not bear that she could die thinking I hated her.

When I arrived, they’d already taken her down to theatre. We were told 7 hours and two operations awaited her. In actuality it would take 18 hours of operations and be two days before we saw her again. Two days of the minutes stretching like hours. Two days of making phone calls to deliver the worse news because somebody had to do it. Two days of sitting, waiting for the hospital to call, as family and friends arrived.

Even in the midst of such utter bleakness, there were moments of grace. The surgeon and anaesthetist had operated on her neck for eleven hours without a break. They knew that tomorrow at the crack of dawn they would get up and do it all over again on her back. Both of them after scrubbing out took the time to call my parents and tell them how the operation had gone.

It takes a blink of the eye for a person to be smashed apart. But even with all the technology and expertise we have nowadays, the surgeons couldn’t put her back together again. Not as she was.

When we saw her for the first time in intensive care she was almost unrecognisable. Unconscious, swollen, more wires than human. The hiss and beep of the machines surrounding her, keeping her alive.

We stood vigil my mum, my dad, HWSNBN and I our tears splashing on her skin. As if our presence would make a difference when the damage had already been done.

There’s a room they take you into within intensive care: the relatives room. But really it should be called the shit news room. The consultant and nurse sat down opposite us and asked in a practised way what we knew. I realised then that for us this was a moment we would never forget despite how we might want to. But to him, as compassionate as he might be, this was simply a part of his day – that long ago he’d been on a training course on how to break bad news and he was putting those skills into action.

Each sentence was like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. I could barely absorb it before another blow came.

He told us that the break in her neck was very bad, the spinal cord almost completely severed and contorted.

Over the next week they would try and take her off the ventilator and force her to breathe on her own. If she was lucky she would be able to breathe on her own and talk.

If she was very lucky, she may in time regain some movement in her arms.

But she would never walk, dance or run again.

Lucky? Was all I could think. This is fucking lucky!? But of course these are the small increments that make up a life. A twist to the right and she would, after much rehab, walk out of hospital. Another angle to the left, or if my parents hadn’t been there and there would no point calling for an ambulance at all.  Lucky.

History repeats itself, with an extra cruel twist of the knife just for kicks. 34 years ago my older sister lay in intensive care in a coma. Her life forever changed after a traumatic accident: her brain was irreparably damaged but her body would be fine. Now they told us that my younger sister’s body was irreparably damaged but her brain was fine.

If my life was a book, I’d cast it aside – too unrealistic and far too bleak. Because after all that effort to rebuild here my family was again.

Another freak accident.

Another daughter in intensive care.

Another traumatised mother (this time me).

Another baby granted special permission to play among the machines.

If you’ve never had to sit with somebody you love more than anything as they come round from an operation and listen as they desperately fight with their breathing tube to mouth at you ‘I can’t move, why can’t I move’ – I envy you. God I envy you.

In those early weeks I kept thinking: I did not want this for her. I did not want this for my baby. As if I was toddler who asked chocolate pudding and instead got fucking tragedy in a pot. I almost wished I believed in the great sky father so I could march up there and demand her a refund. ‘You see, I think you got this wrong. Because she deserved the life on the beach in Honolulu and instead you’ve given her this shit sandwich of a life.’

Nothing about this was fair.

Every day I’d ring the buzzer outside intensive care and wait to be admitted. That was the worse, the not knowing how she would be. The shock of that day when I walked in and saw the space where her bed was and thought she’d died and they hadn’t told us.

Every day I’d see the other families sitting shell-shocked outside. Nobody starts their day thinking it will end in intensive care. We all know at a deep level that bad things happen unexpectedly to people like us, to people we love. But there’s a difference between knowing it in the abstract and living it. Trauma peels back the veil and you realise that nobody is safe. Not your sisters, nor your husband, not even your baby.

The shock left me reeling. After everything my family had been through was this really happening again? It felt a little bit like that instance right after you hurt yourself badly. Before the pain fully arrives and you’re still wondering did that fucking really happen? Except this period lasted weeks instead of seconds.

That’s the worst thing about trauma. You cannot prepare for it. It simply arrives unheralded from leftfield. By the time you see it coming, it’s already felled you and you’re lying gasping on the floor.

The list of things I will no longer take for granted grew. Breathing. Coughing. Being able to brush my tears away. The feel of my baby in my arms. Getting up. Walking.

Driving home from the hospital along the seafront tortured me because I knew she would give anything to get in her car and drive far, far away.

If you told her before it happened that she would spend six weeks bedridden staring at the ceiling, barely able to move her arms – she would have said I can’t. But she did. Again and again I was left amazed by her resilience and her courage in the face of unspeakable horrors.

I was also surprised that even in my moments of deepest pain there was joy too. When she was stable enough to be taken off the ventilator I felt like punching the air in relief.

I treasured those moments sitting and laughing and crying together as I fed her skittles. There was nowhere else I’d rather be.

The nurses in intensive care and on the general ward were angels. They made an impossibly shitty situation that much less shitty with their kindness.

On my first day away from the hospital after weeks of going in every day I knew there was one place I wanted to be. We went to the sea and I lay on the stones and cried and cried as Nibs crawled around me followed by HWSNBN. There was something immensely comforting about watching the waves crash too and fro on the shore. They had seen aeons of pain and joy before. Nature was indifferent.

Quickly life settled into a new normal. In the morning I sat with her. Sometimes she wanted to talk. Sometimes we cried together. Then in the afternoons I’d go home and see my baby.

Stuff which I had found hard or frustrating about motherhood was now the best antidote to the miasma of illness and pain I’d spend the day breathing in. Days after it happened as I lay unable to sleep Nibs woke crying at 1am. I went and took him into bed with us. Lying there in the darkness feeling the sweet susurration on his baby breath on my face was the first time I’d felt OK in days.

The comfort Nibs, my baby, provided was a double-edged sword. I worried incessantly about how this would affect him. Family and friends stepped in to look after him so I could spend time at hospital. But his mother had been replaced by crying husk of a person. I knew from my training and from my own experience that this could not fail to affect him.

One of things I still find hardest about dealing with trauma is the intense loneliness. I felt as if I’d been branded by a scarlet T. I didn’t feel part of this world anymore but permanently outside it. I’d stare at people wondering how they could walk around so carelessly as if they were invincible when we all so desperately fragile under our skins.

Messages poured in, some of them so lovely they made me cry. But eventually the weight of them when I was juggling hospital, Nibs, and supporting my family felt overwhelming. I felt and still awful for not being able to respond to some of them. It was just too hard.

Some people told me, out of love I know, to be brave. As if this was a test and a stiff upper lip was preferable to weeping on the floor. They didn’t yet understand that when tragedy strikes all we can do is gut it out as best we can.

Then there were the people who acted as if all this tragedy was catching. And simply disappeared. I don’t blame them. There were times when if I could have ran far away from my own life I would have.

In one fell swoop my family had become the winner of the shittest game of top trumps ever.

The only thing that helped was spending time with other people who understood. There is a brotherhood of pain. The same night she was brought in in the bed opposite a young guy with head injuries arrived. Our family knew better than most what they were feeling. Every day we’d talk them and see how he was doing. When he was transferred to rehab a couple of days before she went to Stoke Mandeville I felt bereft. I still think about him and this family often and wish him well. Even though life should have taught me the futility of wishes by now.

Trauma is a gift that keeps on giving. It’s too big to be absorbed in one go so every day a new wound opens as a realisation hits:

My baby walking for the first time. Owh

Going to my parents house and seeing where it happened. Owh

The ‘on this day’ feature on Facebook. Owh

The good thing about being through something like this before, although every experience is different, is that you have a rough map of the landscape. Ah, this is the period where I wonder how I’ll ever be able to leave the house again without worrying that the sky might fall in.

The bad thing about being through something like this before is we recognise the comforting lies we tell ourselves.

At least now the worst has happened, it won’t happen again. (It can and it will. We cannot inoculate ourselves against tragedy).

It hurts so much maybe my heart will simply stop with the pain of it. (It won’t, treacherous thing that it is.)

It’s different now to how it was in the beginning. I am able to have days sometimes even a week where I feel almost normal. But more commonly are the days and weeks where I feel so devastated I wonder that I am still standing. One of the hardest things is that she isn’t down the road anymore. I can’t pop in and spend an hour with her. I miss the reassurance of seeing her daily, more than I can say.

Somedays I wish I could just crawl into bed and never leave it again. But for Nib’s sake I keep keeping on. I go to therapy. I read stories to my baby. I kiss my husband. I hold tight to those fragments of joy that come my way like rays of sunshine through the clouds.

I am not OK. But I know I won’t always feel like this.

Sadly Option A where nothing bad ever happens to anyone I love is off the table. So I am just going to have kick the shit out of Option B. And I will, have no doubt about that.

It could always be worse. Remember that.

(But god, did it have to be this fucking bleak?)

 

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