Some of my Story

I remember the first of two breaking points for me. It was a couple of weeks after the passing of my Mum.

I was stood in my kitchen, my eldest two children who were 5 and 3 were in the lounge entertained momentarily by the television. My new baby girl, 3 months old lay in her pram with me in the kitchen.

The pain in me was unbearable. I ached in a way I cannot put words to and I felt like my whole universe had shifted to a place I did not want it to go. Everything seemed darker, like a shadow had been cast, the colours had faded.

I was stood at my open kitchen door looking out to the sky, something I had started to do to feel a connection with my Mum. The endless unknown of the universe, too far for me to see, comforted my confused belief in heaven and I liked to imagine my Mum being able to look through the opposite lens and communicate back.

I just remember this complete feeling of being alone. It was a void inside me. It was terrifying and I couldn’t escape it.

It was tea time. The children needed feeding, my baby needed me to feed her and the bedtime routine lurked in the clock tick, tick, ticking almost taunting me that I had to keep moving and giving and going.

My family were amazing and even though we constantly checked in on each other and did what we could, we all had lives and families of our own to return to. We were all battling our own grief journeys, functioning as best we could, trying to live.

As I stood there, crippled inside by the fresh pain of this immense loss, I realised something.

No one is coming.

No one is going to arrive to cook tea. No one is going to breast feed my baby, read stories and kiss faces and put them all to bed. No one is going to step in and take over my life.

At first it felt like a punch to my stomach. I couldn’t catch my breath. I was on the edge of coping, often falling silent and just functioning to survive. I couldn’t carry on. But in that moment I realised it was up to me. It was my choice.

I could give up. The pain was so big and all consuming. I was so tired and physically drained from my body still healing from giving birth and now this heavy layer of grief.

Or I could chose to live. To breathe in one breath at a time and to keep going. At the time the decision seemed undeniable as I could not give up on my children, that I was sure of. They needed me and I needed them. However, it was one of the hardest and heaviest decisions I have ever made. It was not easy on any level and I knew what lay ahead.

Days filled with pretending. Smiling when I didn’t want to. Walking when all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball. Playing and reading stories and going on the school run when I wanted to be silent. Then nights, after the children were asleep, filled with crying in the lounge, sobbing into the space trying to release the pain from my body. In time, the pretending got less and I began to allow myself to feel happiness again, but it was part of a process I had to start.

Why am I writing all this down and wanting to share it? The last few days, I’ve felt very reflective. I’m in a happy place and on a path I know is the right one for me. Life is ever changing. But sometimes we all have those times when we need to remind ourselves how we got here.

I want you to know that even in your darkness, you can choose to find some light. Mine lay in my beautiful babies. I fixed onto that and they literally saved me. Eventually I learnt to do it for myself too, that came later down the line.

It’s ok to be struggling. Life throws some big balls of shit at us, we can’t avoid them, it’s part of being a human and living a life. And I believe it’s in these moments where we find our true strength. That grit that you literally cling onto with your teeth, just enough to get your head above the water so you can make a plan to swim to shore.

It’s our choice. Do we sink or swim. Maybe we do sink for a little while but just know if you can find that chink of hope, do everything that you can to swim towards it. Start swimming. Reach out for help. Talk to someone, text someone, arm your yourself with research about how others did it too.

I physically felt myself galvanise that day. Something grew over me that hadn’t existed before and today, I’m grateful for that. It allowed me to step into a new phase of my life where I knew that I could do hard things. I could dig deeper than I ever had before and I could show up for myself. It was so fucking hard but I can look back now and know I did it. It was a starting point to the rest of my life, even though I hadn’t a clue it was then.

Believe you can. Life is so short, time passes so quickly and we have to honour that gift right now. You can chose to fight through the hard things and one day they might just turn into the beautiful. x