Category Archives: mental health

Happy Blancmange Day

01 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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This Mother’s Day, following hot on the heels of this International Women’s Day, I’ve decided I don’t particularly want to be a Strong Independent Woman anymore. International or otherwise.

Like many Mothers, I’m sick of being strong – of coping. Of carrying on. Of being congratulated for keeping lots of balls in the air or things on my plate, when what I’d really like isn’t flowers, or chocolates, or random toiletries (that’d probably give me a rash/thrush if I actually used them), but for someone to catch a few of the balls, or wipe a few things off my plate, instead.

I think, just for a bit, I’d quite like to be a Feeble, Heavily Supported, Local Puddle.

Or perhaps a Blancmange.

I feel like I could really put the Bleugh into Blancmange (said properly, not like it’s spelled).

First of all, it’s just a great, GREAT word. And I feel like it’s weirdly onomatopoeic for this point in my life. People who don’t enjoy the shape and feel in their mouths of saying the word Blancmange are frankly, Bleugh-wrong.

Plus, the Blancmange enjoyed its heyday in the 80s, a situation I very much identify with…

It’s also almost entirely made of sugar, and EXPECTED to be pink and jiggly, without judgement, which sounds like something I can really get behind, too.

Finally, it does not have to hold itself up and maintain its own structural integrity: it can flollop at will, and takes the form of whatever harder, firmer vessel is holding it – possibly a rabbit mould. (Surrounded by lime jelly grass, obvs).

Being passive and gelatinous and allowing someone else to shape my destiny and make my decisions sounds pretty damn good at the moment.

So today, Mothers, I hope you get to be a Blancmange. I hope you get to put down everything you hold up, just for a bit, and rest in a mould of some kind, resplendently wibbly.

Because all of us need to be able to wobble, sometimes, under the impossible pressure of being everything to everyone, keeping everything in mind, everything ticking over, everyone on an even keel. All of us melt down, sometimes, before we pull ourselves back together, try again, woman up. Re-form. Un-mange.

This Mother’s Day, rest, if you can, like an 80s dessert. Feel free to let it all slide. Gloop. Smell of strawberries. (An inevitable consequence of the crap smellies you will inevitably be gifted).

And if you CAN maintain your own structural integrity, go forth and be the rabbit mould for a Mum you know.

It’s what she really wants.

And deserves.

Xxx

Life doesn’t stop

01 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in mental health

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The trouble is, life doesn’t stop. Even when you want it to.

There is tea to make, and pots to wash, and school runs to do, and bedtime stories to read – with voices. And washing. Constant loads and loads of never-ending laundry.

Your washing machine does not mourn the dead.

Nor does the sun.

It comes relentlessly up day after day and bathes everything in incongruous gold.

The birds sing.

It is such a jarring contrast to what’s inside it hurts – like a chemical reaction – and you are thrown off balance by the violence of exothermic soul dissonance.

I find myself sliding awkwardly sideways through the too-yellow syrup spilled carelessly over the day – not quite in my own body, not knowing if the brightness hurts my eyes or my heart – but wanting it to burn more, hurt MORE. My movements feel slow, and I go about the frustrating minutia of life like an astronaut in anti-gravity, a wasp in honey. I am surprised to find myself at the washing basket, holding dirty clothes, not knowing how I got there. And I watch other people move freely and painlessly around like the world isn’t entirely wrong – and I am half in and half out of it, coming in and out of focus, out of sync, out of breath as the stickiness fills my lungs.

This sense of being in between – in between lives, and deaths, and memories, and dreams and nightmares – of being apart, from the universe, from others, from yourself – erases you. Grief makes YOU the ghost in your life. And you are either too insubstantial to feel real or too wild to feel human – living with a Hyde poltergeist straining just under your own surface.

I know this monster.

It has always been there, waiting.

There are times of my life when it has been small and weedy and I have barely remembered its existence. It has been bigger, and whispered dark things in my ears which I have pretended not to hear. And it has been a raging wild-eyed beast taking me over, thrashing and clawing and writhing and keening – a bloody, sinewed horror-scream made solid.

It takes many different forms and has many names – and it lives within many people, I know. It is Anxiety. Desperation. Depression. Grief. Anguish. Pain.

I have always tried not to let mine take over. When I can feel it I think small thoughts and try and have small feelings and do small things so as not to provoke it. I hang washing out, carefully. Not breathing too hard, in case.

When it has broken free in the past I have been taught that it is ugly – unsightly, unseemly. That it makes me disgusting. I have been left alone with it.

One of the only people who saw it, and could soothe it, was my Dad.

And now he’s gone and it’s HERE – and I’m afraid to let it out. I am afraid of the damage it will do if I don’t.

But I have been lucky. Because for the first time in many, many years, somebody ELSE has looked at it – directly in the face – and not been revolted by it. Somebody else has held me, and seen what’s inside when it is at its most out of control, its most grotesque – and not walked away from me.

I don’t think I realised how much I needed that safe harbour. From the sunshine and from the storm. I don’t think I realised how much I had missed out on.

The washing machine beeps.

There is school uniform that must be dry for next week.

Life continues to roll on.

All any of us can do is to try and keep up.

And maybe find people who will hold onto us when we can’t.

The jigsaw piece

29 Saturday Oct 2022

Posted by in mental health

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Every now and again, I come across someone who reads my blog in real life. 

I still can’t believe anyone cares anything about my ramblings to be honest, so it’s always this weird sort of blossoming happiness inside when it happens. 

It’s also, obviously, ABSOLUTELY AND UTTERLY TERRIFYING.

And it’s terrifying not because the people aren’t lovely – but because I’m worried I’ll be a disappointment to them. 

I am worried they will see the disconnect that exists between what happens between my reflective brain and my fingers when I type, and my reactive brain and my mouth when I speak. (This is a gap I fall into ALL OF THE TIME so I can hardly blame them). 

Which of course makes what comes out of my mouth under these circumstances more weird, disconnected, awkward, out of kilter, intense, and un-sensed than normal – whatever that is, because I don’t really don’t know. 

If you’ve read more than one of my blogs you’ll know that my normal can vary, A LOT. I worry they are too schizophrenic, too unrelated, too unrelatABLE – that I will lose people because I am not what they expect, even in writing, where I am generally more comfortable being me. 

I worry that they will arrive here on a funny one, or something political, or something championing women’s rights, and then tune in to one where I’m depressed and self-reflective and wonder what the fork they’ve gotten themselves into – because it’s defo not what they thought they signed up for. 

This happened (again) very recently, in person. 

I met a nice Sheffielder, we got talking, it came up, and I told her I was Mumonthenetheredge. 

And she was cartoonishly astounded and told me I wasn’t what she expected. 

GAH. 

This – this is it. Probably the biggest fear of my life, brought to life. 

Because my biggest fear is really the fear of failing – and there is no bigger thing to fail at than to FAIL EVEN AT BEING YOURSELF. 

I mean, that’s a very special sort of a failure, isn’t it? 

I suppose it’s all related to imposter syndrome – and my pathological fear of abandonment. Because I really am afraid that people will find out that I’m actually rubbish, and then bugger off. That they’ll get to know me and just move on because I’m not good enough. That they will see me for what I am, and discover I am stupid, and boring, and shallow, and inarticulate, and repetitive, and maudlin – and not actually very likeable.

Because… that’s happened. That’s happened to me. More than once. 

I’ve shed people I’ve liked and loved… because I haven’t been good enough? Because I haven’t tried hard enough? Because they found out I wasn’t who they thought I was? Or because I didn’t know who I was… I don’t know.  

But it has hurt so much I never want it to happen again. 

It affects nearly all of my very closest relationships today. 

When I see BoyNotQuiteOnTheNetherEdge after a few days apart, I’m paranoid he won’t like me any more, and I’m conscious of TRYING to make him like me all over again, to be amusing, and insightful – and whatever the fork else it is he actually sees in me. (He is not here for my stunning good looks). 

With friends, too, even close ones, I am often thinking too hard, trying too hard to sparkle, to be what they want me to be, to attract, to accommodate, to appease. And part of me is always on the outside looking in. 

When my children come back from their Dad’s I am nervous to see them, too, anxious that we fit back together, afraid we won’t, that they’ll realise how flawed I am, that they’ll turn away or look over my shoulder for someone better. 

I am always this oddly shaped jigsaw piece trying to slot in, trying not to keep popping out of whatever picture I’m attempting to be part of. 

Some days I am all blobby bits and no sharp angles. 

Some days I’m the opposite. 

Some days I fit in a jigsaw.

Some days, I don’t anymore. And I never know why. 

Some days I am an integral piece. I am an eye, the pearl earring, the bit you’ve been looking for that slots in with a satisfying dull click.

Some days I am sky. I am background. I am miscellaneous sludge like a thousand other pieces. 

Some days I am the bit that’s not actually going to spoil the picture if it goes missing. 

And that is all… holding me back. 

This fear of being different, of not being liked, of being found out, of being left behind. Of standing out; of not standing out. 

It stops me being me. All of the mes I am. In writing. In person. In each shade of mood that ebbs and flows. 

So I’m going to start trying to be a jigsaw piece of one. I’m going to start trying to be whole. All of me. All of the time. 

I’m going to be me, whatever me it is that gets out of bed in the morning, whatever comes out of my mouth, or my fingertips on the keyboard, whatever is betrayed by my eyes when I look you not always quite in yours, whether you like me or not, World. Random strangers. People I actually know. 

One of the many things being an ill-fitting, inconstant and inconsistent jigsaw piece has stopped me from doing is making more of the community I’ve found on this blog – a community and contacts that are incredibly important to me, that have saved my sanity, and my tenuous sense of self… and possibly even more than that. 

So I am going to try and start putting myself out there a bit more. Meet more people. Be socially awkward and weird at them. 

I’m not sure what this might look like, but I’m open to ideas. Especially from other jigsaw pieces that won’t fit with mine – but will – because they don’t. 

Liz Truss killed my hamster!

29 Saturday Oct 2022

Posted by in mental health, Parenting, Politics

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Liz Truss Killed My Hamster!

Okay, well, to be fair she didn’t come into my house and PHYSICALLY preside over his demise. (Wouldn’t put it past her, mind).

But the absolute disaster of her government’s policies has meant – like so many others – I’m pretty worried about money right now. And steadfastly refusing to put on any heating.

So she is DEFINITELY responsible for the fact my house is colder than it’s ever been, and I therefore couldn’t be 100% sure he wasn’t hibernating, and thus had to sit with a gently warming corpse under my desk on a hot water bottle for an entire day JUST IN CASE.

(That’s not the kind of mistake you can come back from. Certainly not if you’re a hamster).

Although there are no long queues around the block to see him, or any national periods of mourning, Mr Tulip’s death (Chewy for short) has hit me pretty hard, because he was a KING amongst hamsters.

And I loved him as I am apparently fated to love everything – all consumingly and slightly unhingedly.

He was – and this is true – the favourite of my dependents.

This is because unlike any of the others he was incredibly easy to care for, easily pleased, endlessly accommodating, consistently kind, endearingly self-entertaining and unrelentingly cute. It was simply not in his nature to object or grump, in his physical abilities to whine or scream (or indeed to purr alluringly and then attack me).

He was a Nice Critter.

But he was more than that too…

We got him as a little beacon of fluffy hope in the midst of lockdown horrors. He gave us something to love, something to laugh at and something to glue us back together. He ended strife with the magic wiggle of his little Syrian shelf-butt.

He was a tiny, soft, sweet and good thing in a big, hard, cruel and bad world.

And his going has somehow let all of that dark pour in – the dark that pours into my soul every October – this year through a small rodent-shaped hole, the black of shiny bright eyes.

And my while my sadness is hamster-shaped, it is not hamster-sized. Because I’m crying about more than Mr Tulip.

I’m crying for the end of a mini-era; for a tiny light in a very broken world that’s no longer there to brighten it; for all losses my own and others’ – big and small, past and present; for the deaths I know are coming round the corner; for the inevitability of future abandonments; for the futility of love with nowhere to go; for nice things taken away; for powerlessness; for all the cold places and for all the awfulness all around.

And the other bad Things and bad Thoughts I have been holding at bay flow in as fragile walls crumble into sawdust, and roll around on an endless wheel behind my eyes. My seed-ball head cannot hold its shape under their onslaught and I am scattered – tiny pieces covering the floor.

Mr Tulip would have known just what to do about this situation.

I can see his little cheeks now.

They say January is the most depressing month of the year, but for me it always October. And I traditionally spend the month berating myself for my low mood, running away from the looming, nameless things chasing me, and trying to pull myself together with varying degrees of success.

But this year – this year I’m just going to embrace being sad about sad things. However small they are. However huge.

Sometimes you have to acknowledge the dark before you can leave it behind again.

Sometimes it helps.

And sometimes, so does blaming Liz Truss-ed-us-all-up-good-and-proper.

xxx

Summer Loving

04 Sunday Sep 2022

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood, Postnatal depression

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Sometimes, I worry that I don’t feel the right way about my children.

Or at least, not the way other people do.

That I love them too violently and too all-consumingly and too hard.

The thing is, I just don’t know how else to do it.

If I’m honest, it’s one of the things that probably cost me my marriage.

We tell our kids – and maybe we tell ourselves – that love is this huge, infinite thing, or that it grows and encompasses and enfolds anyone else that comes along – that it doesn’t run out, that loving one thing a whole lot makes it easier to love other things too, not harder.

But that’s not been my experience.

I think my love diverted, and funneled into those babies. And the bond was so strong, all others felt weak by comparison. I fell so hard for my children I couldn’t see straight – for YEARS. Still.

And I couldn’t understand why my ex didn’t feel the same way, or at least feel IN the same way I did.

I’ve always been like this.

There’s a famous family story about one Christmas where my Granny Betty had made my sister and I two matching stuffed cats. They were the first presents we opened. And I loved mine so much I refused to open any more presents, and my sister had a bumper year of opening everything. But more than that – I followed her around with her cat as she was playing with double the new toys trying to make her cuddle it and love it as much as I loved mine.

That’s how I felt about my children, and my ex.

That’s how I tried to make him love them in my way, not his way…

I still have a great deal of this huge, hard, fierce, overwhelming love to give. But sometimes it bubbles over. Sometimes it burns through rationality. Sometimes it lacks perspective.

When my children first started spending time with their dad, one night a fortnight at first – I felt like my heart had been cut out. I was bereft. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t do anything but feel empty – literally hollow on the inside while on the outside my arms ached for the imprint of their little bodies, my nose caught ghosts of their scents and my ears strained to hear them in their empty beds.

I wrote about it once, and someone on this blog told me I should stop acting like they’d died.

She was right.

But that’s still what it FELT like. It was still real to me, even if it wasn’t rational.

Since then, lots of people have said to me that I’m living the dream. Getting time off from the kids! A whole weekend to yourself every other weekend! A kid-free summer holiday! Whoop!

Well my dream was to be part of a functioning, happy family… So, it’s not so much a dream, really, as a reality I have had to learn how to appreciate.

And I have.

Mostly.

I mean, intellectually I KNOW they need to be with their dad – and I KNOW I need time to be the me that isn’t only their mother.

Sometimes I crave it. There ARE Friday nights when they’ve pushed every button there is and I’m almost – ALMOST – glad to see the back of them. When I know we need the distance from each other to be healthy. When I am glad to go out, and see friends, and drink, and lie in, and read and write and play at being care-free and child-free with Boynotquiteonthenetehredge – and be the me that’s there when they are not.

I KNOW this.

And I know it does me, and them, so much good.

I know a lot of stuff in my head.

But my heart… my heart knows stuff, too. And it knows it louder; wrenchingly, gutterely, roaringly.

And despite how far I’ve come and all the perspective I’ve gained, it is still hard, sometimes, for my head to wrestle it into submission.

This last week has been one of those times.

It has been one of those times because it has been the week they have been away abroad with their dad and their ‘other’ family.

The step-mum who I’m sure is lovely but I still want to scream at for having her hands on my babies and playing the role that means the very most to me, however part-time; the grandparents-by-marriage they see more than they see my own parents; the family unit I wanted so badly; the experience I can’t give them – won’t know anything about, and can’t control.

It is the longest and the furthest I have ever been away from them.

And it has been HARD.

Don’t get me wrong, it has also been wonderful to be with the Boy, pretending not to be parents, putting that bit into a box. But the lid has kept cracking open under the pressure of what’s been locked inside…

Like those first nights without them all over again – I have been grappling with all this anxiety, and all this love that suddenly has nowhere to go, and won’t be contained.

If I’m honest, I am a bit afraid of it.

When they call, they are like other people’s children.

They are browner and blonder in the sun. They don’t speak to me normally, can’t relate to me on the phone because we’re never apart enough to call – and it is all stilted and wrong. They are wearing clothes I don’t recognise, and have done activities and have family stories and jokes I’m not part of.

They are less mine.

I am less me.

And that tiny slice above my eyebrows knows this is the way, this is right, this is proper, this is growing up – but the rest of me… Oh God the rest of me is WILD with longing for them.

I get off the phone, and I weep.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way about their children, or about co-parenting their kids.

I don’t know if the way I love is the wrong way.

But if this is you, too, I want you to know that I KNOW how hard the summer holidays are when you’re a single parent without your kids.

Much harder than they look.

And I hope yours are back in your arms soon, too.

xxx

Abortion.

23 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by in Abortion, Infertility, mental health, Miscarriage, Motherhood, Politics

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I’ve spent a long time wondering what, and if, to say anything about abortion.

It’s a divisive issue.

And it’s a gift for for keyboard sancti-warriors everywhere, and I’m not really one to put my head on the chopping block for no good reason.

But I’m going to. Because this IS a good reason.

I’ve chosen to post in particular because I’ve not only been following what’s been happening over in America, but some of what’s been happening here as Britain’s pro-lifers have been galvanised by the ‘victory’.

[I’m going to say now that I’m really happy to discuss this issue in comments, but I reserve the right to stop talking to you if I feel it is unproductive, and I will immediately block you if you are disrespectful. This is my page, and I can choose what I share, how I spend my time and energy on it, and who I let in].

I’m sorry I’m late to the Roe v Wade response-party. But I’ve been watching, and listening, and processing.

And I’ve found some of the coverage and comments very disturbing, in many different ways, but in particular for the stunning lack of empathy and imagination I’ve witnessed – for other people’s pain, and for other people’s pleasure.

Because fundamentally when I’ve boiled it down to it’s roots, abortion opposition seems to stem largely from a belief that women SHOULD NOT BE ENJOYING SEX.

This is actually the crux of the matter. If you don’t want a baby, and if you’re not prepared to take whatever risks that involves for you, you shouldn’t be having sex at any time, FOR ANY REASON. Particularly not because it feels nice. That’s not a ‘good’ reason. That’s dirty. And wrong. And if you do it you deserve everything that’s coming to you.

But remember, also don’t do anything ELSE fun (and more expensive) to feel good, like drinking, or taking drugs, or dancing, or dressing up – because that’s also BAD, and you deserve what’s coming to you. Again.

Look, you should basically just stay at home and be safe and small and miserable, as God intended.

(I’d be interested to see, incidentally, what this would all look like if the religious masses were coming after MALE sexual pleasure, because I suspect if would look very different).

It has been made very clear from the pro-life camp that women should not be having sex if they don’t want the baby-consequences. But even if they are ‘virtuous’ and abstain, but someone has sex with them anyway against their will, they should STILL have the babies. (See the miserable clause).

It’s here I’ve seen beleaguered pro-choicers try to appeal to the common sense of the pro-life-at-all-costers, citing cases of rape or incest or extreme youth – followed by cases of fetal abnormalities and risk to the mother’s life.

But this is a mistake. Not only because they seemingly can’t listen to reason or nuance – but because IT’S NOT ABOUT THE EXTREME CASES.

You don’t need a ‘good reason’ (as defined by a branch of Christianity, or anyone else at all).

The only reason a woman should need to have an abortion is that she doesn’t want to be pregnant.

And while the cells involved are at the organising stage where there is no sentience, no viability and NO DAMN LIFE – that should be it. Period. (Which you might not even have missed until you’re already 6 weeks along).

If you’re really pro-life you should be pro the life that actually real-life exists already – the mother – and what she wants and feels as a person. Not a vessel. Not a publicly-owned incubator.

You should of course also be PRO child-lives when they exist in the world outside the womb – and ready to support them through the simple expedient of paying more taxes for public and social services, and doing practical things to help families in your community. Because if birthing and raising kids was safer and less expensive, having babies would be more a viable option – and you say that’s what you want.

But pro-lifers never seem to want that, do they? The people picketing outside the clinics typically aren’t doing anything to actually help mothers. And mothers who DO choose babies outside of the very strict parameters vast swathes of pro-lifers prefer – including heterosexual marriage, being between 20 to 30 years of age and sticking to 2.4 by the same father – are also vilified by them as irresponsible, promiscuous, selfish, or tainted.

Sigh. Look, I’ve seen a lot of coverage about pro-lifers only being pro-fetus, and there is so much that has been said and is still to say about institutionalised sexism and deep societal problems and the problematic role of religion in politics – but that’s not actually I want to talk about right now.

I want to talk about my own experiences.

I’ve come to believe we should all be talking about this more often. We don’t talk about our fertility journeys, our losses, our choices or lack of them, our menstrual and gynaecological health and traumas – or our struggles with motherhood. And our collective reproductive privacy, secrecy, shame and fear have been used against us to get to this point. At the end of the day, when it came to Roe v Wade, we simply weren’t the ones shouting loudest.

I have two children.

But I have been pregnant four times.

I have been pregnant when I really, really wanted a baby.

And I have been pregnant when I really, really, didn’t.

And the difference was complete and utter, and undoing.

I am not going to go into the minutiae of the circumstances that have resulted in me not having four children, but I DO want to talk about how it FELT. Because I feel like it’s a bit of the picture that’s been missing.

I’ve read the extreme examples, and how it feels to desperately want a baby and for something to go wrong to make abortion a neccissity – but I’ve not read anything about how it feels just to plain NOT WANT TO BE PREGNANT.

So. Here’s what I want to add to all of this.

I have been pregnant when I wanted the baby so much it was all I could really think about, to the exclusion of all else, and I floated through the rest of my life willing it to stay, to be, to just make it all the way through to my arms. When I felt that baby in my heart from BEFORE I saw two blue lines. When I loved it with the sort of subwoofer love that you feel in your chest, that rings in your ears, curls your fingers, buckles your knees, clenches your womb and eventually drips from your breasts in milk. A violent love with the whole of your body, the whole of your mind, and a little bit more of you that wasn’t even there before it.

And then I have been pregnant, and not pregnant, and grieved for a baby when it wasn’t even there – when it wasn’t even real. When it was an empty egg sack. But it felt real to me – I wanted it. I loved it already, truely and wholly and desperately. And when I lost something I never really had in the first place, it felt like I had lost a slice of myself. I HOWLED at the empty. And there is still a space inside me where it was. Or wasn’t. Still.

I have also been pregnant when it wasn’t my choice. When it wasn’t fair. When I had done everything right. When I had been good. When I didn’t want it, and didn’t want it and didn’t want it in every single fibre of myself, every single second, profoundly, profusely. When I felt like my body had betrayed me and I wanted to punish it, to hurt myself, to claw this alien thing out of me before it robbed me of everything I knew, and dreamt, and planned, and WAS – until I was a scream inside out of myself, vibrating and keening and helpless and IMPOTENT. It was so other, so foreign, so invading. It was raw rage and resentment, flat, bone-deep repulsion and souring, soul-deep refusal.

So here’s what I know, and what I’d like you to think about.

I know that up to a certain point, a baby is a baby because you BELIEVE in it. It is an idea as well as a bunch of cells.

But if you don’t believe in it, if it wasn’t your idea, it’s not. It can be a violation.

I don’t think any pro-lifer is going to read this and suddenly have an empathy revelation by understanding something of what it’s like to lose control over your own body. But people who are on the fence might just read this and think that maybe, just maybe, not wanting a baby desperately and viscerally…. IS a good reason. Maybe people who have been in this situation might feel seen. Maybe people who will inevitably be in it someday sooner or later might remember this, and feel validated.

Whatever your views on abortion, I really, really hope you or someone you know never has to experience what it’s like to be pregnant – and not WANT to be pregnant.

And if they do, I hope they get some sympathy – and some mercy.

I hope they get to have some control over what happens next.

And I hope there are still good, safe options available to them.

Because – believe me – they WILL take the bad ones otherwise.

And if you felt like this – if circumstances you are lucky enough to currently be unable to imagine put you HERE, in this head space, in this body that is no longer your own – you might too.

Parenting the child in front of you, and inside you

23 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by in mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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There are many, many, MANY hard things about being a parent, many of which I don’t get right. But the two very hardest lessons I find I still have to learn over and over nearly every single day, are these.

You have to parent the child that is in front of you.

And you have to parent the child that is inside you first.

I was lucky enough to have be on an Easter break by the seaside, and was sitting on a bench at a park when I saw a young couple with a toddler, doing A Trip To The Park.™.

This toddler had a baby doll, and all she wanted to do was to push the doll on a baby swing. The parents, however, were desperate to persuade HER to go in the swing, because that’s what you go on A Trip To The Park ™ , and they kept trying to make her go on the equipment, and threatening to leave if she didn’t because there wasn’t any point in A Trip To The Park ™ otherwise.

And I remembered being there, SO CLEARLY, with a really Small Small, wanting it to join in at a baby group, or try a slide, or stroke an animal – or take part in whatever the experience I wanted it to experience was – exactly as I had imagined it.

It took me so long to let go of the expectations I had about what my child would be like, what it would like and not like, what I’d be like as a mother, and what parenting and family life would look like and feel like and taste like – and just let my baby do what it wanted to and be there to support and enjoy it as it did so.

And as I sat there thinking ‘just let the damn kid push her baby she’s perfectly happy’ – I realised that I still haven’t actually learnt this lesson for myself. I’m STILL doing the same thing – just with slightly older children.

Because too often I find myself parenting the child of my expectations, and the not the child in front of me.

For a start, I didn’t expect the child in front of me to be so anxious. Or for her anxiety to make her so angry, for it to make her not want to go anywhere or do anything – including to the park. For it to stop her eating, and playing, and enjoying, and joining in.

And I was on the bench because I was ANGRY the day wasn’t going as I wanted it to, and the Big Small wasn’t behaving how I wanted her to.

But you have to parent the child that is in front of you.

And the very biggest challenge you have in doing that is having to parent the child inside you first, and harder.

The one that gets cross when it is thwarted.

The one that remembers what it loved as a child and tries to recreate it.

The one that remembers what it hated as a child and tries to resolve it.

The one that feels rejected.

The one that craves approval.

The one that wants to be understood.

The one that wants to be seen.

The one that feels injustice.

The one that feels despair.

The one that feels afraid.

Managing myself, my baggage, and my emotions remains the very, very hardest part of being a parent. And the most unexpected.

Like all of us, I thought I was going into this whole shabang as a whole and rounded person. But having children made me realise how little I knew about myself, about children, and about my own parents – particularly my mum. And I realise it again and again at all the different stages of my motherhood and their childhood – and the echoing stages of MY childhood, overlaid.

The only way not to be crippled by the confusion, guilt and shame of it all is to recognise the child inside you, acknowledge the feelings you’re feeling, accept them, think about why you’re feeling them – and then offer yourself the same kindness and grace you’d like to be offering your own children in their own peaks and troughs.

Because it’s the only way you’ll be free to properly give it to them.

So I forgave myself for feeling angry. And I forgave the Big Small for feeling angry, too. And I got off the bench, smiled my biggest smile at the couple with the toddler, and went to see what the Big Small was doing, what she wanted to do, what she was feeling now, and what she wanted to feel next.

And we walked along the seafront and performed poems on the benches in front of the sea instead.

And for a moment, a perfect moment, all four of us were in front of each other with no expectations between us, and all four of us were happy.

Post separation abuse

08 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by in Divorce, Love and sex, mental health

≈ Leave a comment

I’m not particularly interested in Kim Kardashian. But I am interested in post separation abuse.

Post separation abuse is coercive control or emotional abuse that continues after a break-up. And that’s what’s happening in a very public way to Kim.

It will be familiar to a lot of people who’ve been through it, because it is depressingly common.

One of the many complex answers to the facile question ‘Why didn’t they just leave?’ is post separation abuse.

Because far from getting away from the abusive situation, leaving actually puts you at more risk of abuse.

In the worst cases we all read about, post separation abuse kills women. Sometimes it kills children, too.

In less dramatic, or at least less fatal, cases, post separation abuse still causes immeasurable harm.

[I am going to put the usual caveat in here that it has been statistically proven many times over that women are more likely to be the victims of domestic abuse, coercive control, and post separation abuse than men. This is not to say men cannot be victims, and women cannot be perpetrators. They absolutely can].

WHAT DOES POST SEPARATION ABUSE LOOK LIKE?

Post separation abuse takes many forms, but there are consistent and recognisable patterns of behavior.

It can be financial. That can mean cutting off access to money, evading child support, closing credit cards or accounts, moving funds, not passing on bills or important financial correspondence/information, or running up debt in your name.

It can be legal – a constant barrage of frightening solicitors letters, dragging you through the court system arguing over every point (especially if you are experiencing financial hardship and can’t afford a solicitor). It is common for perpetrators to claim safe-guarding issues or parental alienation – and to use mediation to intimidate you under the cloak of reasonability.

It can take the form of harassment. That might look like ‘love-boming’, extravagant gestures and gifts, often in public, turning up randomly at your home or work, refusing to give up house keys, letting themselves in, constant direct messages, social media bombardment, or enlisting messengers to get to you. That is often alternated with criticism, online tirades (either angry or sympathy-seeking), and attempts to isolate you, discrediting your reputation, your sanity or your parenting – again often publicly or even directly to the authorities.

It can be intimidation – direct threats, stalking, making sure you know you are watched, that you are monitored, that you will be punished. It could be damaging property, or threatening your children if you don’t do what they want.

It can be through co-parenting – or ‘counter-parenting’ – undermining you and your ability to parent, arguing over every little parenting point – often through the courts. It could be refusing to honour bedtimes, feeding schedules, school hours, clubs or commitments. It could be not giving children back at agreed times, constantly changing or pushing for extra contact time. It could also be taking them to inappropriate places or to see inappropriate people.

It can be directly through children – getting them onside with extravagant gifts or treats, telling them you’re to blame, asking them to report on your movements. It could look like emotionally abusing them, or coercing them. It could also look like physical abuse.

HOW DO I DEAL WITH POST SEPARATION ABUSE?

If you think you could be physical danger, or think your children are in danger, or if you think someone you KNOW is in danger, it is imperative to call the police and report it. Every time something happens. Awareness of coercive control is improving, and they CAN do things to help.

It’s really important to get a solicitor on board to help fight your corner, particularly in cases of legal abuse. If you can’t afford it, you might be eligible for legal aid, and it’s time to turn to places like Refuge, Women’s Aid, and other agencies who can offer you specialist advice and support.

In the meantime, here are 6 things you can do TODAY that might also help.

1. Keep a record

Start a diary of every interaction. I know you’re tired. I know it’s the last thing you want to do. But record it. Dates, times, incidences. Take pictures of abusive messages and save them. Record your conversations. Document, document, document.

Not least because once you see it all together, maybe you’ll finally believe yourself that it’s true, and happening, and you’re not actually mad or misinterpreting it.

2. Talk to authorities

It might not be time to call in the police, but it IS definitely time to talk this through with your GP, and with your kids’ school.

It’s part of keeping an official record of what’s going on, and it’s part of how you can get access to expert support and extra resources.

3. Ditch social media

Social media is a great way to torture you, if only with pictures of how great their life is without you. More ominously, it’s a great way to keep a track of you.

Even if you think you’ve culled every one of the people ‘not on your side’, I promise you some sucker who belives your abuser’s propaganda is still lurking – and has possibly been persuaded to report back on you.

Start over. Go anonymous. Keep your contact lists very, very small. Never post pictures or personal information, especially about your whereabouts. Tell your friends not to tag you.

Consider just using social media apps as a news feed – or to follow your favorite pages or influencers.

4. Get a burner phone and email account

It can be really traumatic to see the name of your abuser constantly popping up on your phone and email – places you can’t escape from. Get a cheap burner phone, and get a new email account that is just for them. Set very clear boundaries about when they can contact you, and ONLY check for messages a couple of times a week.

This will take discipline. You’re going to have to put it on silent and make yourself not look. If they continue to use your other, banned, channels, you may need to get solicitors involved – or the police.

5. Go ‘Grey Rock’

Grey Rock is a method you can use to make yourself a less attractive victim. It means being factual and functional and taking out all emotion and expression from every single interaction you have. Make it so boring to talk to you and so impossible to get a rise out of you that they don’t have ANY of your energy to feed off.

They don’t deserve it.

It’s important to understand that Grey Rock is not about being rude, or curt – it’s about being dull, and pragmatic, and not wasting your words.

6. Cut out the flying monkeys

Flying monkey is the term given to the enablers and entourage of abusers.

Some of them are the people telling (Kan)Ye they’ll ‘get’ Kim’s new boyfriend if he says the word.

Some of them are the people saying, Ahhh, he’s just fighting for his family, look how much he still loves her.

Some of them are the people that think the love-bombing actually has something to DO with love.

Some of them are the people that don’t believe it, or minimise the experience, or believe the lies being told about the victim.

Some of them will be saying, look, it didn’t look that bad to me – they’ve never treated me that way, so it can’t be true.

Some of them are the mutual friends and family who turn a blind eye, justify the behaviour, or justify their own inaction by ‘staying neutral’.

If you have children, you are obliged to have what can hopefully become a working relationship with their other parent.

You are NOT obliged to have a relationship with the people who knew about how they treated you, but didn’t care enough to help you – or the people who were more ready to believe you were a ‘psycho’ than that they were an abuser.

Women in particular place a lot of value on social relationships, and peace-keeping. Setting new boundaries can be very, very hard. Cutting people off may feel dramatic – it even may feel like you’re giving the flying monkeys more ‘evidence’ that you were the unreasonable one in the first place. But who really cares? This is not your circus, and these are very definitely not your monkeys – or your friends.

They do not get to be part of your new life.

HOW DO I HELP SOMEONE GOING THROUGH POST SEPARATION ABUSE?

You can listen, and you can signpost, but one of the most important things to remember if you know someone this is happening to, is that THEY might not know it’s happening to them.

Because before the question ‘Why didn’t they leave?’ comes the far starker question ‘How didn’t they know?’

And the answer is because they’ve been trained not to see it, and not to believe themselves.

One of the best things you can do in this situation is to keep that person’s incident diary on their behalf. Write down everything they tell you, everything you witness.

And maybe, when they’re ready to see it – before or after separation – it will help them believe it, and ultimately deal with it.

How to home school in Lockdown 3

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting, School

≈ Leave a comment

I’ve seen a lot of people on my news feed expressing frustration about home schooling.

It’s really just something we have to get on with and a matter of just getting yourself organised. I’ve put together some simple steps to help you plan your day.

How to Homeschool in Lockdown 3

1. Set the alarm for 6am so you can do some work before the kids get up.

2. Tell the kids to get themselves up and dressed, and head downstairs for simple, healthy breakfast you’ve prepared the night before and some educational screen time.

3. Ask your older child to help any younger siblings with teeth/hair/pants.

4. Ignore the screams from the bathroom that indicate power crazed, overzealous brushing.

5. Ignore the screams from downstairs that indicate IT’S NOT FAIR, IT’S MY TURN NOW, I’M TELLING MUM and I’VE DROPPED THE NUTELLA.

6. At 8.30 head down to set up home school for the day.

7. Try not to baulk at the fact all the furniture is now strewn across the room for The Floor is Lava to accompany the telly.

8. Save the cat from a lava-prison constructed of cushions.

9. Clean up the nutella now on every surface and every piece of soft furnishing. Including the curtains. And the cat.

10. Re-dress and re-brush all children so they don’t look like demented ballet dancers and cause the school to call social services.

11. At 9am log the first child on to a video conferencing registration session consisting of far too many children and the pure essence of chaos.

12. Simultaneously attend a work meeting, while also starting the other child off on the day’s learning, using all 3 of the devices you apparently have at home!

13. Try to figure out why the microphone that was working two minutes ago is no longer working.

14. Ask child what it pressed.

15. It doesn’t know.

16. Tell it to use sign language.

17. Go back to the other child.

18. Re-login the registration child who has inexplicably logged off and can’t get back in.

19. Get another Mum on the What’s App to message the teacher to let the child back in.

20. Update your team on the priorities for the day.

21. Miss what the teacher has asked the child to do that day.

22. Ask the child, which doesn’t know. Even though the meeting only finished two seconds ago.

23. Figure out where the day’s learning is for BOTH children by consulting What’s App, visiting BOTH woefully inadequate school websites and searching for information buried under 300 random levels. This will take at least an hour.

24. At 9.30 log the next child onto a registration session, which has to be supervised.

25. Repeat steps 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21.

26. Print out twelvety-hundred worksheets for the day, across eighteenty different websites and links. None of these will print out properly.

27. Break up a fight over who gets which device first.

28. Re-fill the printer ink. Which you don’t have. Nor the instructions on how to refill it. It’s now beeping at you and flashing red.

29. Ignore this until tomorrow, knowing you will hate yourself even more in the morning.

30. Realise you’ve had 3 missed calls from your boss because Child 2 is on your phone.

31. Set up Child 1 with it’s first task, which involves downloading a Powerpoint, watching a BBC Bite size video, and a youtube video, none of which it can navigate to or operate independently.

32. Set Child 2 up with it’s first task, which needs them to be on the same device at the same time, and involves a reading app which the other one is logged into and you can’t remember the password for, a maths games app, and a really annoying Youtube woman doing phonics who talks to children like they’re chihuahuas.

33. Explain to Child 1 that yes, Child 2 is watching the telly, but no, it is work so it IS actually fair.

34. Write a work report for 10am deadline.

35. Provide snacks to shut the children up.

36. Cry for the first time of the day.

37. Know it will not be the last.

38. Help a child shouting it’s stuck.

39. Help a child shouting it’s boring.

40. Help a child shouting it can’t do it.

41. Help a child shouting MUMMY just for the sheer bloody hell of it.

42. Good news! 25 new emails from just one of the schools, including with details of a new learning website/app/sharing platform.

43. Follow the instructions to register.

44. Keep following the instructions. Over and over again.

45. Fail to register.

46. Try to download another of the random phonics/timetable/colouring/maths websites/apps/sharing platforms.

47. Realise your phone is full because the children have been recording long videos of themselves doing The Floor is Lava, and nothing works, not even What’s App, cutting you off from other desperate parents.

48. Weep for the second time.

49. Take a work call, while pretending you’ve not just been crying.

50. Break up a fight.

51. Put Child 1 in front of a maths sheet.

52. Ten seconds later help Child 1, who is stuck. Already.

53. Try and remember everything you ever knew about long multiplication.

54. No, that’s not how they teach it at school, are you stupid?

55. Listen to Child 1 scream about not being able to do it, having not even tried.

56. Attend an external client meeting while doing this.

57. Set Child 2 up with art supplies to draw a picture and write a sentence about the weather!

58. I don’t know what weather, you have to decide.

59. You can draw what you like, darling.

60. How about snow? You can write a sentence about what you did in the snow and draw a picture of you on a sledge.

61. You’re right, that’s a stupid idea.

62. So is that.

63. JUST DRAW SOMETHING AND WRITE ANYTHING I DON’T CARE WHAT ANY MORE.

64. NO YOU CAN’T WATCH THE FLOOR IS LAVA.

65. IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR 9 TIMES TABLE WRITE IT DOWN DON’T JUST GUESS.

66. THEN DO THE COMPREHENSION.

67. YOU CAN DO IT. THE ANSWERS ARE LITERALLY WRITTEN DOWN IN FRONT OF YOU.

68. I’M NOT SHOUTING.

69. Realise you are shouting.

70. Realise it’s not even 11am.

71. Cry.

72. Pull yourself together.

73. Email the school about losing the latest password.

74. They can’t help.

75. Make lunch.

76. Clear up after lunch.

77. Prepare and present a lunch and learn presentation for 30 people!

78. Set Child 1 up on it’s next task so you can read peacefully with Child 2.

79. Lol! Don’t be silly.

80. Scream JUST WAIT and CAN’T YOU GO ON TO THE NEXT QUESTION and I’LL BE UP IN A MINUTE while listening to the torturously slow adventures of Biff, Chip and the other one.

81. Put Child 2 on a maths game.

82. Run between children like a slightly sweaty ping pong ball.

83. Ignore your phone ringing.

84. Mark a maths sheet.

85. Put Child 2 on kids Youtube. Tell it to be quiet.

86. Child 1 has heard anyway.

87. She’s younger than you, so she has less work.

88. Yes, well, life isn’t fair sometimes. TELL ME ABOUT IT.

89. Placate with snacks.

90. Child 1 tells you your work computer, which it has borrowed, isn’t working.

91. It has somehow managed to log in as a completely different and non-existent person.

92. Re-start computer.

93. Lose some important documents in the process.

94. Cry.

95. Attend to screaming Child 2 who has been scratched by the cat, who for some reason doesn’t wish to play schools.

96. Sympathise GREATLY with this point of view.

97. Shove it out the catflap.

98. Wish you could do this with children.

99. Comfort child.

100. Apply a plaster it doesn’t need.

101. Check your work email to discover you’re now up to 200 unread emails.

102. Miss another deadline.

103. Cry again.

104. 1pm – time to log Child 1 in for it’s next registration session!

105. Find out it has actually done none of the work it was set this morning and you’ve missed the upload deadline on the app you can’t download.

106. Give up on this child and do some number line subtraction with Child 2.

107. Realise it is functionally innumerate and despair of either of them ever learning anything or leaving home.

108. Update some complicated spreadsheets that require intense concentration.

182. Fear innumeracy may be catching.

830. Repeat steps 38 to 41.

990. Miss another online chaos session and send grovelling email to school so they don’t report you.

Q. Chair a meeting.

249. Put kids in front of Joe Wickes in the hopes of 15 minutes to yourself to actually get something done.

150. Listen to kids whine that Joe Wickes has a whiny voice and they’re tired/bored.

151. Break up a Joe Wickes star jump injury-based fight.

152. Provide more snacks.

153. Put on an educational Bitesize video and hide upstairs.

12ish. Pretend you don’t hear it turn into the Floor is Lava.

13.5. Oh, don’t forget to get them out in the fresh air!

*7. And don’t forget to squeeze in some enriching family activities like educational board games, baking, or maybe just a mindfulness session together.

450. Only do what you can, but also do it by these deadlines or your child’s future will suffer.

451. Next, make a delicious nutritious tea!

452. Try and get children to help you clear up the bombsite of printouts, cushions, pencils and snack wrappers.

453. Give up.

454. Put kids to bed.

455. Promise everyone tomorrow will be better.

456. Sit around and feel overwhelmed.

457. Do all the work you’ve missed.

458. Probably have another little cry.

459. 11-12pm – continue to avoid going to bed yourself because the idea of doing it all again tomorrow is totally forking terrifying.

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Smelly year, smelly year, it’s not (all) your fault

02 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by in mental health, Parenting

≈ Leave a comment

2020.

2 oh 2 OH. 

Oh is a good word for you. 

As in, Oh GOD. 

You were… a year. 

I suppose you were trying to make your mark. 

The last time it was the roaring twenties it was roaring with exuberance and prosperity, not loss and rage. 

Maybe you felt you had to be different. 

Part of me feels a bit sorry for you, like I’m a bit sorry for all damaged things and think I can fix them, when really I can’t actually fix anything, including myself, especially right now, in your immediate wake. 

But I am still sorry for you because everyone HATES you – this history they had to live through. 

Or, you know, not. 

I’m also sorry for 2021. 

As someone who crumbles under any type of pressure I feel like a lot of people have a lot invested in 2021 – and it might not actually be able to deliver. 

Others might say it’s only got to meet a pretty low bar, but I don’t think that’s true. So many people just made it through, waiting for you, 2021, pinning their hopes on you. Thinking you’d solve all their problems. 

And of course we bring our problems with us…

They take little notice of thresholds, like the ticking over a year, problems. 

Trust me on this. 

It’s why the whole ‘New Year, New You’ thing is so doomed. You’re still YOU. January 1 changes nothing unless you decide to change it. The year cannot in and of itself make you lose 2 stone, stop shouting at your kids, give up cheese and write that damn novel. Only you can. And change is so very hard… 

Especially when so much of it is already being done TO you and not BY you. 

I’m talking about you again, 2020.

Of course, 2020 you had to live up to stuff, too. Your awful symmetry, for start. That’s got to be hard, right? Like being model-beautiful has to be hard – a sort of backwards curse. No wonder you rebelled with such ugliness. 

You were also a pseudonym for clarity – 2020 vision. And you definitely took that bit to heart. Because if nothing else 2020 certainly showed us a few things more clearly… 

It showed us climate change. 

It showed us white privilege. 

It showed us division, inequality.

It showed us elitism. Sexism. Racism. All the other dicky isms. Inside and out.

It showed us desperation. 

It showed us fear. 

It showed us loneliness.

It showed us the power of popular lies, feelings over facts, slogans over science. 

It showed us selfishness, and ignorance, and insular myopia. 

It showed us the importance of loo rolls. 

It showed us we weren’t washing our hands enough.

It showed us our own fragility. 

It showed us our lack of patience, lack of resilience, how close we were to the edge.

It showed us the cracks in ourselves, in our relationships, in our society.

It showed us our worst bits as both individuals and as human beings. 

And it showed us the best bits, too. 

It showed us what was really important. 

It showed us what heroes really look like.

It showed us experts. 

It showed us communities. 

It showed us small things make a big difference. 

It showed us kindness mattered. 

It showed us our families – and helped us see the families around us.

It showed us what we had in common. 

It showed us that we could work in new ways. 

It showed us simple pleasures. 

It showed us social welfare was important – and politics was important. 

It showed us PEOPLE were important. 

It showed us our power when we rise up, and when we rise to a communal challenge.

It showed us, even on our very worst days, when we didn’t think we could do any more or give any more, that we could. 

It showed us that showing up mattered – on a doorstep to clap, for a neighbour in isolation, as an ally, as a voter, as a volunteer, for our own confused and scared and often crappy kids. For each other. For our damn vaccinations. 

If we can say anything for 2021, just a few days in, we can say it SHOWED UP. 

No, it may technically not have had any choice in the matter, but I’m choosing to see it as a Good Start. 

Welcome 2021. 

Don’t worry about anything. There’s no pressure. 

We have seen our problems. 

We will work on them. 

We are ready to BE the change this New Year, and not expect you to do it all yourself by magic, and be all disappointed and blamey when you don’t.

All you really have to do is roll on gently, try not to kill too many people, and leave the rest to us. 

Bests, 

MOTNE & People

xxxx