Motherhood, Madness, God and Me

A colleague of mine is dying. She retired and was then diagnosed with terminal cancer. I think of her. I think of her sons who have only just reached adulthood. I feel sad she will no longer be here. I wouldn't have seen much of her but the loss of someone so sunny is sad just because it is a loss to the world. Then there is the shame. The shame that I would gladly take her place. Not to save her but to free me. The shame that whilst she has to plan her funeral because she is dying, I plan mine because I can't bear to live my life. The shame that I share a gospel of hope and profess a faith where I am expected to suffer. Where I know I am loved beyond measure. Where I know all suffering is for a purpose and will bring glory to God. The shame I tell others of this but cannot live it enough to see any way out of my own suffering. The shame that where my colleague has no choice, I do and wish I didn't. Trapped as I feel unable to share because I know how selfish this feeli...

Happy Birthday to me. If only it were that easy.  It has been lovely. I am really grateful for my husband and children. I had the usual random gift from my children (something they would want for themselves. Today a giant cuddly toy), lots of bits from my husband who put a lot of pressure on himself to create a perfect day for me. We went out together. Then we baked and did some craft. Then my family arrived. It's so hard. On your birthday you are supposed to be around your family. People who have been at your birthdays all your life. For me that's not so easy. My mother. Remembering my grandmother is deaf but forgetting I am not, she began to comment on how very miserable and stroppy I am. I heard. My husband confronted her, no apology, not even denial, just that she hadn't meant me to hear. Mother 1 strikes a birthday blow. Mother 2, my surrogate. My friend who filled the void for me.  No contact. No text. No FB post (not expected as she has blocked me). Nothing. I s...

I won't name. I wish I could but I shouldn't. I visited my GP today. I was expecting the usual sympathetic and kind but fairly unproductive 10 minute appointment. My appointments always start the same. Dr: So, how are you? Me: Fine Dr: You are still stuck.       You poor, poor thing.       This is so bloody awful and unfair.                Should we try a week of this?       You are a worry.       I am going to get you help today. His manner is sweet and often desperate. He's a prisoner of bureaucracy. Of funding cuts. I never feel seeing him is a waste of my time, even if nothing new comes out of it. I do worry it is a waste of his and feel guilty every time he books a repeat appointment. He has chased second opinions, questioned diagnoses, supported my husband, stayed late. He's made me tea several times. ...

I know I am loved. I often can't see why. I know my children love me. I don't think they could quantify why though, I perhaps wonder if it's just that they have been trained to love me, it's expected that small children love their mothers. I know my husband loves me. I wonder if it's still the love for a wife, or it's that he is my best friend, or it's a dutiful love. He married me and now he's stuck here. There are others I know care. I know I have friends who care. Again I wonder if it's a duty thing again. It's been implied that church members love me sacrificially. They are required to love me. Although some obviously do that more than others. I have some wonderful professionals looking after me, as well as some who, well, are not so great.  Again, some you can see do care. They care how I have cared and had fondness for some of my clients. They care, but they are paid to. Today was a bit of an eye opener. I said that I didn't want t...

They say a picture paints a 1000 words. I found this one on Pinterest today. This could be me. In fact this has been me. I have sat in the corner of a cold, bare, clinical looking room more times in the past year than I care to remember. This is exactly what I looked like. I'm pretty certain that even the demons were visible. I could feel them. This is what I look like still. I cannot shift it. I. Have. Tried. I try to repeat Scripture. I try to sing worship songs on loop, meaning every single world. Praying I will believe it's true and will deafening the demons. I take various concoctions. It's not just simple antidepressants. I allow myself to be drugged with poison that gives me dry mouth, hideous night sweats and hot flushes.  Drugs which despite not breastfeeding for 3 years cause me to lactate. Drugs which make me ravenous and have caused me to go from a size 8 to a 16.  Drugs which cause constipation, high blood pressure and diabetes. Even though my diagnosis ...

I am a should person. A should person is generally quite miserable. A should person is also loyal, honest, hard working and usually quite productive. A should person has a good sense of morals. They know how people should behave. They know the rules and they follow them. They set themselves rules and boundaries too and follow them meticulously. You know a job will be done well with a should person. A should person is their own biggest critic. They believe that they should and can manage anything. They do not do failure well. A should person will always be sorry for letting someone down. Should people are generally in demand because they feel they should help others. They are often very servant hearted. A should person also has rules she believes others should keep too. These can be rules that diminish someone else's responsibility. That others shouldn't be expected to do as much work, shouldn't be expected to manage alone, shouldn't be sad, shouldn't miss out....

God! What are you trying to teach me through this trial? When will my suffering end? I pour out my heart to you.  I know and love you. I desperately want to use my gifts from you to bring you glory.  I read your word when I am troubled. I then know I'm not alone. I need someone on earth to carry me sometimes. Please forgive me for trying to decide without you. Please rid me of the demons in my head. I see my home in heaven. I pray for this to end. Either by taking me home or helping me resolve difficulties I'm having on earth. I ask these things in Jesus name. Amen

I took too much. I did call for help before I began. They will get back to you as soon as they can. This half life I live in is too much to bear. The feeling betrayed, useless and that nobody cares. I hid behind the door when a friend came by.  I was alone having a cry. I'm broken I'm broken what more can I say?  Life is a challenge everyday. A huge sense of loss seems to ache in my chest. I miss you, I miss me. I failed the test. I don't see a future. The outlook seems bleak. I miss my my old life and that's what I seek. Alone by my own choice. But lonely and nobody listens to my voice. .

There is a place in this world that only you can fill; and when you do not take this place it will always remain empty from the beginning to the end. You are not for nothing in this world! You are a building stone of the universe! It depends on you! You must be there!   PAUL KLEE {1939 } My counsellor shared these words with me today. I've decided to share them as it is World Poetry Day. A me shaped hole. I've often heard of the God shaped hole in a person's life. I'm sure some of my Christian associates believe this is true about me. I've not thought of a me shaped hole. I've pictured the world without me, but never as a gap. I've thought about being a missing mum. That was a mum shaped hole, not a me shaped hole. You are not for nothing in this world. I'm not sure I have left any mark on the world. My counsellor is so gentle. She very sensitively asked me to consider what my expectations of dying were. It was strange to hear such harsh soundi...

Oh how I wish I could have celebrated today better. Oh how I long to feel happy. Feel content. Tonight I have tried. I've searched for pictures to sum up my happiness. Looking for memories. Looking for those things that make me smile. My son's first smile. My daughter on a bouncy castle. My son with a potty on his head. My children kissing me.  They do make me smile. Fond smiles. Smiles don't mean happiness though. Happiness is situational. Depression removes it. Spending international day of happiness a year into a suicidal depression is not funny. I was happy once.

I can't say the words out loud. I can usually type them, and if the right question is asked they tumble out of my mouth quickly once I've started. I can't just say "help me" or "I'm scared". Even when asked it is difficult to get started. The past few days I have been texting the samaritans. It's quicker than emailing but easier for me than phoning and also more private for me too. It takes around an hour for a reply, sometimes less. This is useful for me as my most helpful strategy is delaying action. The straight forward question threw me last night. Even by text I had not actually used the words. I had explained how I had planned. How pointless and hopeless I was feeling. A few hours in I received a simple reply. Do you want to end your life? Not "have you had thoughts of harming yourself?" or "do you have a plan to harm yourself?  I'm not sure that it was that plainly asked ever before. I struggled to answer. The ques...

TGIF everyone shouts. Weekends are great. No school, no work. Family together. Lazy mornings. There is also nobody around. The CMHT are closed. Even though they usually aren't much help, sometimes just knowing it's an option can be helpful. The GP surgery is shut. The two professionals who I feel listen to me. The two people who have made me feel that I am worth saving are enjoying a well earned rest. The hospital is run on skeleton staff. The thought of being admitted at a weekend fills me with dread. No leave, no consultant, no groups. No visitors. Long, long, lonely days of nothing. Of course there's the crisis team. Someone different every day. They know they can't help. They know I don't trust them. They don't see the point and neither do I. You can't be mad at a weekend. Take your pills and try not to kill yourself, OK? We will help you again on Monday. OK brain. It's Friday. Shut the F*** up and wait until Monday. The support probably won...

I cannot say the words. There are no words. I don't want to phone. I don't know what to say. I don't want to waste anyone's time or you to think I am seeking attention. If I did phone I'm afraid of what might happen. What you will do. Who you will call. Who it will hurt. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say apart from help. Take this from me. Make it so everything is normal. So I don't want to leave. So I don't feel alone. So I am not judged, wasting time, making everyone unhappy. Help me. Please help me. It hurts. I don't know how I can live anymore. I don't see a future. Although I have made plans, they are things to love and serve people. Activities for the children. Lifts for relatives. They fill me with dread. I even applied for a job but the interview offer sits unanswered. Scared of facing more rejection, or worse failing at something again. I've got the time. I've got the resources. For me there is no concer...

You have done all the right things. Susanna commented today how lovely it was to meet you and see your care and concern for me. It obviously reassured her  that somebody loved me. You have said this isn't my fault. This isn't a choice. You have done the school run. Checked on me and left me to sleep and write in bed. Now you are tired. You are worried and you are weighed down. You are short with me and the children and you don't know what you are supposed to do or how you are supposed to feel. We are on our own with this. I am weighed down with the pain of watching your heartbreak. I am full of shame for my inactivity, my selfishness and the frustration I sometimes have when I don't know what to do or you become overwhelmed. We have been failed. I am sorry that you have had to endure this. I'm sorry I can't stop this. I'm sorry this isn't how it was supposed to be. This is not fair. It's not good enough. Don't you see this is why I feel I n...

My counsellor shared a poem with me yesterday. Below is the ending. Hold on to life even when it is easier to let go. Letting go isn't easy. Letting go is hard. It seems easier than holding on. Some days I just feel so tired of holding on. So weak. Holding on isn't a long term solution. Think of holding onto a cliff edge.  You hold on and on and on. You don't want to go crashing into the rocks below. You are too weak to pull yourself up, or the shelf is too narrow or out of reach. Your only option is to be rescued. You cannot hold on forever. Your weight is too heavy for your arms to manage. If rescue doesn't come you will eventually have no choice but to let go. Just at that moment someone hears you call for help. They want to help. They don't want to see you fall. They stay with you and reassure you somebody will come and save you. They want to but they don't have a rope, or long enough arms. They do have a phone! They know someone who is really good at t...

Just as when the care coordinator visits, looking at his watch and avoiding questions which may make more work for him, today we ran out of time. The new psychotherapist had not read my notes. She did not know I was married. She did not know my family composition. I said I had filled out paperwork. She said she could read it but she'd like me to tell her. 50 minutes is not enough to summarise 18 months. I started with the panic of yesterday. She didn't ask any more.  After 50 minutes halfway through a sentence describing how I feel my voice isn't heard she said, "sorry, times up, we will pick up same time next week". So that's it. The great rescue plan is a woman who can't even prepare herself by reading or even skimming notes, who is blind to someone saying they were in great distress and who interrupts someone part way through a sentence describing the frustration of not being heard. We have sat lamenting what is supposed to happen now. Who do we tur...

So ....your GP informs you he has spoken to a lovely, sensible lady who wants to come up with a decent plan to support you. They will phone you to discuss. Midnight arrives and you hear a hammering at your door as 2 people turn up unannounced and don't listen to anything you say. They've read your notes and assume your children are on a child protection plan and that you are having group therapy. Neither are true and are judgements based on documentation that is disputed by other professionals. They do not seem to believe that nothing recently has triggered this and seem to think it's some whim and you've now changed your mind. There is nothing they can offer. Phone if you need to. They repeat the same over and over. Go into therapy with an open mind. Call us and we will help you. Followed by that  there is nothing they can do to help you. You tell them you have missed your opportunity for now. You are tired. You are fed up of being judged and belittled. You agree t...

Therapeutic touch is an interesting subject. As a paediatric nursing student we did discuss it. We talked about massage in palliative care. We talked about holding distressed babies. Holding the hand of a parent was second nature as they sat outside resus waiting for news of their seriously ill child. Off the ward it seemed less acceptable. Had times changed or was it just a different environment? Often Health visitors were referred to as a hands off profession. Parents picked babies up and put on the scales. The official line seemed to be we weren't to sit and have a cuddle. It always felt naughty when a parent thrust their child into my arms whilst they went to make a bottle or get the red book! I would sometimes think of all those babies I rocked and sang to during night shifts and how it would have been wrong not to do that. Sometimes I would want to reach out and hold a hand. I never did. It seemed too much. Crossing boundaries. Today I realised something. I have often jus...

My lovely children have made a huge effort today. Waking up early and dressing themselves without being asked. Making me breakfast, luckily asking whether sugar was in the pink or blue condiment shaker (neither: they are salt and pepper)! Flowers and chocolates and handmade cards. One including a line drawing of me in bed being jumped on by a child. Church, as for every mothers day I have been a mother.  My children presented my son's godmother with a card. There was prayer for grandparents, for those not yet mothers, for parents bringing up young children, for those whose mothers have died, for the spiritual mothers, those who lead Sunday groups. Private prayer offered, for those who find today difficult. Those without their mums. Those with fertility troubles or who have lost pregnancies or children. It seems a bad day to discuss and lament on the grief of having a physically present but emotionally distant parent. The grief of no longer being 'a spiritual mother' to ...

I am so sick of being cast as the Bad guy around here. I'm trying so hard to fight against having the view that I am an awful person who is unworthy of love, recognition or kindness. It sucks when your automatic view is to blame yourself and convince yourself of responsibility for all the sadness in the world. Some people just can't help piling on more evidence that these beliefs are in fact true. I didn't always feel I was bad. I used to think I had to be good and I had to be kind and do what I was told, and put in 100% and never fail. I had high standards but although I felt I always could do more I felt that most the time I was almost there, that at least I tried to do the right thing and generally was a good intentioned person. I am very much the bad guy at the moment. My family expect me to carry things for them, if I can't, or I disagree, I am publicly berated on Facebook, or abusive or passive aggressive messages are sent to me. I am the bad guy in my friends...

Flat, deflated, fed up. Going through the motions. With the children I do what's needed. Clothes are clean, if not always put away. They get fed. Sometimes I try and make a memory for them by making lunch a face. They do homework and reading most nights. I break up fights. They get to school on time. It is just going through the motions. I love them. I am proud of them both. I'd rather be in bed, or under my duvet in the chair. Alone. The pets get fed and cleaned out when they smell. They are some company to me. They don't expect anything more of me than feeding them and ensuring they have somewhere to poo. I can manage that. I'm becoming more sluggish. I just pause and can't get started. I don't know what to do. I try to do a little more in the house, to relieve the burden on my husband and my sense of guilt. My motivation is poor. I do not leave the house unless it's for the children or for an appointment. Even for appointments I some times rehears...

On Instagram I have been attempting to do a lent photo challenge with prompts from The Bible Society. Each day the prompt is a word connected with the gospel. Sometimes my photos are gospel related, sometimes they aren't particularly. I am finding reading the bible hard just now. I don't have the hunger I had a few months ago. I can't really remember the last time I opened my bible. I snatch little bits via online studies when I remember but this challenge is opening my mind up to what God has to say about things. Today the prompt was family. I have a large family. One day my a practice teacher challenged how I could understand poverty, suffering, different lifestyles as an educated married white christian woman with 2 reasonably spaced and visibly 'normal' children. Apart from the fact my circumstances in no way predict my empathy. I know some very good midwives who aren't mothers. Some very good health visitors who aren't mothers, or who aren't poo...

I love call the midwife. It joins together call my loves babies, motherhood, nursing, faith and history. I love it. I've just caught up on last nights episode. A couple of series ago they dealt with a Ruth and Naomi relationship. An older and younger friend. Drawn together by situation (working together) but a deeper fondness occurring over time until you realise they are inseparable. They are true, if unlikely friends, Last week Phyllis offered to nurse a flu stricken Barbara to give Barbara's sweet husband a break. It wasn't flu. Barbara had meningitis and septicaemia. This week it looked like Barbara may pull through, although there was grief as she realised her lifelong dream of being a midwife, her career and vocation would be ripped away from her due to loosing feeling in her fingers. Yeah, a little close to home. My circulation in my fingers remains in tact but the scars left from the past year are almost certainly going to have an impact on the only career ...

Yesterday's Lent Challenge Prompt was "still". This is what I came up with. Still: I've been thinking about the meaning of this one for a couple of days. The Hebrew root of "be still" is "let go". I've been drawn to a few verses. Psalm 37:7 Be still and wait patiently on the Lord. Oh how I struggle with this. Pretty much every word. Wait?? Patient?? Still? Currently I'm 1 year into my depression. 1 year. I'm very impatient. This isn't how it was meant to be. I started off being still. Letting go was what started this. I waited on the Lord, to begin with. My sense of timing and His are obviously out of sync! Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God" Let go, rest. God has it in hand. I don't often feel still. My body is often still. My mind never is. My mind is full of 'what if'. It's like I could do with reprograming. Getting rid of all the useless files and reloading with the simplest software. Jus...

Pretty much exactly 5 months after my last church attendance I returned today. Since my last time I had only seen 3 people from the congregation face to face. People who live in my town. Who I've seen at least twice a week for years, I'd seen so few of them. Children had grown. Newborn babies now starting to move. Barely bumps now earth side. There were a few new faces too. We decided to go today because we had been invited for Sunday lunch by a couple from church. The sweet, kind hearted, godly doctor who was on duty the weekend I was first taken to hospital. I didn't give myself a choice this morning. I'd set up an excuse not to go for lunch already. Our car was broken. It was true, it was, but I knew it would be fixed in time to go. So I got up and we went. I'd spoken with my counsellor about not feeling it was my home any longer. That I wasn't part of the fellowship anymore. That physically I didn't know where to sit. Our usual seats, middle,front, with ...