In What or Whom Do You Trust?

As much as we might like to kid ourselves otherwise, we do not have complete control over everything in our lives.

Instead, we hold hope, faith, wish for luck. We trust.

Without trust, our society, our lives would be very unpleasant indeed. We trust our partners and spouses to remain faithful.

We trust our children to behave themselves when out on their own, or with others.

We trust that when we get in to our car to drive somewhere other drivers will safeguard our lives by driving sensibly, obeying the rules and laws.

We trust that when we go to work, we will get paid what we are owed at the end of the month.

We trust that when we go to sleep at night, we will wake up the next morning and carry on with the day we had planned. Not having trust in these things would make life pretty challenging, wouldn’t it? We would always be on our guard, suspicious. We might be disinclined to leave the house. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.

Trust is good. But trust means letting go. Something we probably don’t trust as much as we should is ourselves.

We have forgotten to trust our instinct, to trust ourselves to make the right decision. We don’t let go. Of what others think, of what we feel we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be doing.

We choose not to trust our individual nature, instead steering ourselves towards conforming to norms dictated to others.

But sometimes we trust too much. We put trust in people who are undeserving. People who have hurt us. People who hurt us again, and again. We submit to the plea to give just one more chance. We do not trust our instinct, we ignore it, pretending that we can have a future with someone who is not worthy of our trust. Most of us will have given our trust to someone who doesn’t deserve it at some point in our lives.

We need to let go, but know when to reel it in.

A fine balance indeed.

We can put too much trust in expecting there to be an infinite amount of tomorrows.

Putting too much energy in to worrying about things, what we’ve done, what we should do, what we would like to do. Thinking about regrets rather than aspirations.

But we cannot be so fearful of there being a limited amount of tomorrows that we forget to live. Not to just exist, but to live. Really live.

In whom or what do I trust?

To be honest, I don’t know. I trust in people following our society’s everyday rules, that harm will not come to me when I leave the house, but my anxiety would like to tell me otherwise. Anxiety, expecting the worst is exhausting. I try to control it rather than it controlling me.

I have to trust.

I have learned to let go, to not care too much what others think. I try to trust myself: my instinct, remaining true to my nature. I am learning, where my trust is invested most wisely.

These investments offer rich rewards.

The hardest lessons to learn are those where my trust is not deserved. Those lessons can be learned only the hard way.

I trust that when I go to sleep at night, I will wake up in the morning and that I will go about my day as planned.

But my life has shown me that the universe does not always play by the rules. The universe can take your trust, rip it up, stamp on it, spit on it.

The universe doesn’t always care about what you have put your trust in. Where your hopes are stored. What luck you hope for.

Another important lesson to learn.

So, what do I do?

I try to be kind to myself. I tell myself that I am permitted to be furious at the hand I have been dealt.

But I also try to remember everything that is good. To be grateful for the time I had with Hugo. To be grateful for my family, my friends. To be grateful for the skills I have, for the positive contribution I can make on the world with Hugo’s legacy.

Remembering everything that is good, having hope, doing everything I can to truly live helps me to keep going.

Remembering that I have kept going when I could easily have hidden under my duvet.

Remembering that there is hope inspires me to never give up.

None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Paulo Coelho

I am not especially religious. I believe there is ‘something’, particularly since Hugo died feeling that there is an ethereal something, someone looking after him is a comfort. Feeling that Hugo is still with me, us, is also a comfort.

But I do not subscribe to a particular religion, or believe there is a ‘higher purpose’. For me, never giving up means trusting in the future.

It means trusting that while the past cannot be mended, things can never be put right, the future can bring happiness and joy.

When the past includes such sorrow, trusting in a positive future in an uncertain world is faith indeed.

Life After…Hyperemesis Gravidarum

Today’s Life After…guest post is from the lovely Jenni, who blogs at Odd Socks and Lollipops. Jenni suffered hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) during her pregnancy. You may remember that Kate Middleton experienced it during her pregnancy with Prince George (although it was often described, wrongly, as ‘bad morning sickness’).

As Jenni describes in her emotive post, HG is much more than that. Jenni’s post is so very important because she describes how debilitating the condition is – and the devastating consequences of not receiving appropriate medical care or support.

Thank you, Jenni for sharing your story – I am sure it will help countless other women.

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It was all very exciting and a bit scary seeing that positive test. We had 9 months to prepare for the biggest change in our lives. I dreamed of 9 months of buying all things baby related, spending hours browsing all those tiny clothes in the shops, planning and decorating the nursery. I envisioned, wandering (waddling) proudly around with an ever growing bump. These dreams lasted all of 2 weeks.

At 6 weeks my nausea started, creeping at first, a meal that I just didn’t fancy, feeling extra travel sick in the car, slowly it got worse. I was actually glad at first; didn’t sickness mean baby was healthy? And it would, of course, pass by 12 weeks, I could handle vague nausea for a few weeks. Piece of cake.

Wrong.

By week 10 I had been in bed for over a week throwing up most of what managed to pass my lips, which was rapidly becoming only sips of water. Everything smelt awful, the house, the outside, my husband. Any movement of the bed and the nausea got worse, most of the time I didn’t even have the strength to make it to the toilet. I gave up trying and lay there with a sick bowl next to me and my pockets filled with small plastic bags when I finally did start making the long journey down the stairs, sitting on each step and waiting, waiting until I know I wasn’t going to throw up – on this step at least, until I eventually reached the bottom and crawled on to the sofa.

I made the marathon trip to the Doctors a few times, sat in the waiting room swaying backwards and forwards, grey, praying I could last without throwing up in the middle of the waiting room. After two sets of medication which had done nothing to ease the nausea or the vomiting, I saw a different Dr who signed me off work for a month with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, told me the meds wouldn’t help so I should stop them and that all I needed was bedrest.

WRONG.

Most days I lost count of the amount of times I vomited. I couldn’t brush my teeth to get rid of the metallic taste which made the nausea worse because the thought of putting anything in my mouth made me sick. Some days I didn’t even go to the loo because there was no fluid – I realise now that I should have probably gone back to the Dr’s but I was too busy surviving each day.

I lay day after day, week after week staring blankly at a muted television not caring what was on an on my worse days hoping I would fall asleep and not wake up. I existed in a world where everything made me sicker – sounds, smells, bright colours, movement. Being awake was torture, only sleep offered brief, disturbed respite and I fell asleep knowing I would have to wake up and live through the hell again tomorrow.

One day I had made the effort to get up and have a shower, with my husband’s help, and I can remember vividly begging him hysterically to promise me that no matter what I would say in the future that we should never get pregnant again, ever. I remember most days wondering if I should carry on (was this a sign that I shouldn’t be a mum?). And most days I wondered if I could carry on – I know that some women feel they have to have terminations due to HG because they cannot cope, especially when they have children to look after and need to work. It was an awful thing to even consider in the darkest corners of your mind, terminating a healthy baby but it does cross your mind…

Finally, after what seemed like years, the vomiting started to happen less often and I could boast going X amount of hours without throwing up.   Then I went 24 hours without vomiting, it felt like such a milestone. At around the 19 week mark my vomiting was only occasional and stayed that way for the rest of my 41 week pregnancy.

The nausea however did not fade, it did not get better, it stayed with me until my daughter, Boo, was born at 41 weeks. The only respite was when I was sleeping, and the second I woke it hit me instantly again. Food tasted wrong and although I wasn’t throwing up it was still an effort to eat, and I could only stomach very few foods. Being nauseous all of the time zapped my strength and I felt exhausted and had to start taking iron tablets, which in turn made my nausea worse.

I had to force myself to eat every two hours otherwise the nausea became overwhelming, and I found it very difficult to function, I had returned to work at this point. The weight I had lost, about 10kg, slowly returned as my pregnancy progressed and my daughter was born healthy – which I am immensely grateful for.

I feel the guilt of taking those tablets even though it was only for a short time (especially after the Dr told me I shouldn’t be taking them). I feel the guilt of failure – feeling like my body had failed me – like I wasn’t up to the task of becoming a mum, a warning that I was doomed to fail from before I really started. These feelings not helped by the constant stream of advice…You are just pregnant not ill … Have you tried ginger (have you tried throwing up ginger?) … It’s all in your head … Morning sickness goes at (insert arbitrary week here)… Go for a walk…

I was essentially left to suffer, and because I had neither the energy nor the presence of mind at the time I didn’t argue or research any other options… this makes me feel angry and upset. There are lots of treatment options for HG, safe treatment options. No woman should be left to suffer. There have been deaths due to HG related complications in the last ten years in the UK. No ginger biscuit is going to solve HG… proper medical treatment is needed not well-meaning, outdated advice.

It’s difficult for me to reconcile what should have been one of the happiest times of my life with the worse experience I have ever gone through. I cannot help but feel angry that I essentially ‘missed out’ on pregnancy, a lot of this anger is directed to Drs who should have given me the correct treatment and towards my own body for letting me down and failing me so miserably.

I have lost count of the amount of times I was told ‘It’s worth it’ whilst I was pregnant. And if I look at it like that, yes it was. Boo is worth it, worth every single second of the nausea and the vomiting.   But I very firmly believe that it wasn’t necessary to pay that price. Boo and I didn’t have to go through this if I had been given the proper treatment.

Once I gave birth the nausea faded and it thankfully became just a memory, one easily forgotten in the whirlwind of newborn baby, sleepless nights, feeding and nappy changes. Sadly, HG has had some lasting effects: my newly developed obsession about hands being completely clean at all times; food if I even think it could be off has to go in the bin, even if there is no reason to think it would be out of date; certain foods I still cannot eat; and catching a sickness bug a couple of months ago was a horribly traumatic experience and caused major panic.

I live with the constant fear. Fear of feeling sick, of being sick and of feeling as helpless and worthless as I did when I was pregnant. There is also the guilt about what damage may have been done to Boo, the grieving for a pregnancy which I never ‘had’ (which sounds silly when I write it down), the jealousy when I hear other ladies are pregnant (which I have been assured is common by other HG survivors but I still feel ashamed to be listening to the green eyed monster). I am also grieving for a baby I will probably never have, a sibling for Boo. I am not sure I am strong enough to go through HG again, I am not sure I would be able to look after myself and Boo.

I try hard not to feel guilty that I am probably not going to give Boo a sibling (even though in my heart of hearts I think she should have a sibling). I quietly grieve for my pregnancy and the baby that never will be. At times I feel ridiculous for feeling like this, selfish even, because I have Boo, she is my world, she should be my focus and nothing else. And I do count my blessings, I have Boo, she is healthy and we have a happy life with my husband and as a stay at home mum which means Boo and I have all the time in the world together.

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If you would like to share your Life After…story, please get in touch:

email headspace-perspective@outlook.com

 

 

 

Life After…My Childhood

I am honoured that Sian, whom fellow bloggers may know from The Potty Mouthed Mummy, has chosen to share the story of her childhood here, in the first Life After… guest post. After reading her sad yet so beautifully told story, I desperately wanted to give her a huge hug. Thank you, Sian, for being so brave and for helping give hope to others.

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Many a night in my childhood, I would awake in a cold sweat from a recurring nightmare. In the nightmare I would climb out of bed, peer over the banister and see a bag at the bottom of the stairs; one of those giant army green camping style bags. And I would know, he was back in our home again.

Some nights the nightmare would turn out to be real. As every time I had the nightmare I would wake up to check if it were indeed just a dream or if in some horrific way I had seen it coming.

He. My mother’s boyfriend.

My father left when I was five or so. Soon after my mum’s boyfriend, Paul, moved in.

He was much younger than my mother. So many people upon hearing what he had done would say to me, as a youngster, “Oh but he’s young”. As if age excuses it.

To my mum she believed I adored him. I put on a good show, as she loved him so much. When he was away she was a shell. Nothing I could do would please her. When he returned, my brother and I were almost invisible. She certainly wasn’t her best self while she was with him.

Days when she would forget to pick me up from school as they were in bed all day

Days when they wouldn’t care who heard or saw what they were doing…

Things like that haunt me, stay with me.

So, in a desperate plea to make my mum happy with me, to find some common ground with her, I acted like I loved him.

He was in our lives while I was 6-11 years old.

Sometimes I think of myself at that age, how much older I already was than everyone else.

A childhood lost.

Because the truth is, he hit me.

He would hit my brother and I viciously.

My mum would go to work and leave her unemployed boyfriend to care for us.

My brother and I were united, for once, in our fear and hatred of him. My brother, being older, was able to escape the house more. I do not blame him for that and to be honest, he wasn’t really aware how bad it was for me.

I remember playing out in our street with friends one day, the other children who lived doors away. I had to check in at an allotted time throughout the day. I remember checking my watch and seeing it was 2.04pm and running for home. My friends were shouting after me that it was in fact 1.04pm. But the fear was so ingrained in me that he might hurt me that I could only run home preparing to apologise for being 4 minutes late.

The most awful moment was one Christmas Day. I had been bought a Walkman and some version of “Now That’s What I Call Music”. I was listening to a Queen song and I remember feeling a little sad, recalling that Freddie Mercury had died the same year.

He saw my face, grabbed me and hauled me upstairs calling me ungrateful.

I was thrown into my bedroom.

He asked me why I was such a brat.

I tried to explain. But he would not listen.

He bit my lip and pulled me off the ground with the force of it.

He left deep purple marks in my lip, obvious to all.

My mum asked later what it was and on the spot I blamed the dog, who was later hit rather harshly. The guilt was unbearable as his yelps repeated in my head. And the irony of my mum protecting me, but against the wrong person.

Another time I was thrown down the stairs, I have no idea how nothing broke.

Eventually age 11, while he was away again, I told my mum what he had done to me, to my brother.

In my heart I believed she had known all along and was ignoring it.

But she did not.

She had no idea.

She wept, got drunk and ended it.

He was never seen again.

But it stays forever.

The secret behind my slightly, and ever present, serious yet sad face.

The way I have seemed 40 since age 10.

My quick temper, the one that makes me worry the same darkness in him has passed to me. I know I could never hurt Harrison like that, but I fear it nonetheless.

My quick to defend myself attitude; born through trying to stand up to him on many occasions. I remember him shouting at me once “Who do you think you are?” and I responded fiercely “Sian Johnston”. That one line stopped his raised hand in its tracks. Surprised perhaps.

My aversion to being held for too long. Due to seeing far too much intimacy as a young girl.

It would have been so easy to become someone who just stopped trying.

I could have been the girl who didn’t work at school.

The girl who slept with the boys too early.

The one who took drugs and lived on handouts.

That’s the obvious pattern for someone like me. I was told as much by teachers at school when they generalised about “certain types of people”.

People who are abused become abusers, they would say.

Criminals tend to come from a history of abuse, they would say.

As if they knew.

But instead, all I ever did was fight.

From that age, where he would hurt me, I began my love of getting lost in books. Escaping to worlds that were not my own. Which lead to a desire to learn, to read more, to be better and to actually escape my world.

I saved and put myself through University.

I got a degree. I got good grades. I got good jobs.

But the story doesn’t always end that way. Every time I see a girl in the news who was from the wrong side of the tracks, abused and has been arrested or worse, murdered. I always think of myself. Because I could have been her; I could have let myself fade away into nothing. Used my past as an excuse for so many things.

Now I have my husband, who knows all this past, who is so patient with me. Then of course there is my son, who I will never tell about this. He doesn’t need the burden of knowing how much I was hurt. He doesn’t need that darkness in his life.

My mum and I are now very close, the past will always be there. There isn’t a week that goes by when a memory doesn’t pop up in my head. But I try hard to push it away.

I try to focus on what I have now, my life after that childhood. Because thinking about it all too much, it hurts. It doesn’t feel like my life.

I wish it hadn’t been part of my life.

But in a way, it shaped me to be strong, determined and someone who never quits.

Which is truly the most perverse part of it all.

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If you would like to share your Life After story, please get in touch headspace-perspective@outlook.com

A Successful Week

This week, I am happy to report has felt successful for me personally, and for my blog:

Me

For the past few months I have been making a concerted effort with my food intake and exercise. I’ve been doing particularly well with my running, doing regular 5km distances on the treadmill at the gym. I’m feeling the benefits physically: I’m feeling more toned, lighter, and generally better. The number on the scale isn’t going down as quickly as I would like, but slow and steady wins the race for sustainable lifestyle changes. And the main thing is the number is going down!

Sadly my gym is closing next week. It is part of a hotel, and the hotel has decided it is no longer profitable. It is a shame because it is a small, friendly gym with a good community atmosphere – and it is much cheaper than the regular chain gyms. As we are heading in to the better weather, I am going to be exercising outside for the time being. I invested in a Fitbit to keep track of my activity and help keep myself motivated. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a snazzier sort of pedometer that can also record your total active minutes, and your sleep. It can connect to your phone via Bluetooth, and it stores your records on the Fitbit app where you can also track your food and fluid intake. It arrived a couple of days ago, and so far so good – the app is really good; I like how the band vibrates and flashes when I’ve reached my activity goal – and it’s bright pink, so it’s pretty!

Bright pink Fitbit

I am delighted that my garden is flourishing in the spring sunshine. I was especially pleased to see the forget-me-nots doing so well, after thinking the seeds had been annihilated last year. Many of the wildflowers are sprouting now, and I’m looking forward to even more vibrant colour in the garden.

The Blog

My blog has been an invaluable retreat. However, much as I enjoy writing for the sake of writing, I had to reflect my blogging schedule was becoming rather wearing. There were times that I found I was forcing myself to write through grief fog, even though it took me much longer than it should have, and I didn’t have to write it. As much as blogging is a wonderful therapy, that kind of behaviour isn’t healthy for me.

I came up with few ideas to help sort myself out.  I find I have so much to say about things, and my head is often bursting with inspiration. So, the first is Sunday Thought, which launched this week. It’s a simple concept, where I will write a few lines about what I think about a quote or a saying. Brevity and words from the top of my head is key here, rather than pushing myself too hard.

The second idea, Life After… came about after reflecting everything that I have survived in the past year. In the immediate aftermath of Hugo’s death, I didn’t want to believe people who said things would get not better necessarily, but different, and so they have. I wanted to offer that hope and reassurance to other people. I was pleased to have people getting in touch to take part, and the first guest post will be published next Tuesday. If you would like to feature, or know someone who might (anyone is welcome, you don’t have to be a blogger), please do get in touch. I hope the series helps make a difference to other people’s lives.

The third idea is a bit of fun, and a bit of much-needed regular light relief for me. It will be launched tomorrow…watch this space!

I was proud to achieve one of my ambitions earlier this year by becoming a Huffington Post blogger. Most of my posts for them have appeared on the front page of the relevant section (lifestyle, parenting), and this time I was a featured blogger – and on the front page of the whole site, too. The article was about how I deal with seeing the many pregnancy and baby photos on Facebook; it is not something that is openly talked about. The response I have had shows that it is helpful for other mums in a similar position to be open about these things. It is an excellent boost for the profile of Hugo’s Legacy, too.

Talking of the Huffington Post, it has been a successful week for fellow bloggers. Em from Brummy Mummy of 2 was also a featured blogger alongside me, and Katie, Katy, Aby and Amy have also recently become HuffPost bloggers too. It’s fabulous to see these lovely ladies going for it and enjoying success, too.

Featured Bloggers…I like the Emma Watson quote on the right, too.

Earlier this week I was approached by BBC World Service to appear on a radio programme. I declined because the topic wasn’t right, but I hope they will ask me again with another issue. The producer found me through social media, so it’s fascinating to think who is observing. The request felt like a big success because it’s the kind of PR approaches I wanted – to talk to a wide audience on such a prestigious platform about Hugo’s Legacy would be incredible (thankfully I haven’t had any baby product offers for a while).

New Guest Post Series: Life After…

Life doesn’t always work out the way we planned, or hoped. Sometimes things that happen to us are out of our control. These unexpected events can change our lives completely. Somehow, though, we have to carry on. We have to live the life we have, after.

My blog is about my life after two life-changing events that happened to me last year. The events are related: my pregnancy nearly killing me (I had HELLP syndrome, which is rare pregnancy complication that can cause organ failure) when I was just 24 weeks pregnant, and my much-wanted, much-loved baby son Hugo dying just 35 days later.

I will never be ‘over’ the death of my son, or what happened to me when I was pregnant. My acceptance, if you can call it that, of what happened to me changes like the tide. Acceptance or no, however, I have had little choice but to live the life I have now.

Life after Hugo has been really, really tough, challenging, awful, terrifying, sad, heartbreaking, devastating, exhausting. Living with grief and trauma is like that.

But I have survived, I am surviving. I could not have imagined saying that this time last year.

That is why I thought I would start a new weekly guest post series on my blog, ‘Life After…’. It is open to anyone who has had any life-changing experience (it could be bereavement, a life-threatening illness or accident, abuse, breakdown of a long-term relationship….this is not an exhaustive list).

The purpose of the series is to try and give hope to others experiencing similar issues. To let others know that (dependent on the nature of the life-changing event) things may never be ‘better’, you may desperately want things to return to the way they were even though you know that is impossible, that life after can be really, really tough – but you can survive.

If you would like to tell your story, please do get in touch. You can email me at headspace-perspective@outlook.com. While not wanting to prescribe how you tell your own story, as a guide you may like to include a bit about yourself; what happened; how it changed your life; and what your life is like now. You may also like to talk about what you found helpful and unhelpful, and things like coping strategies.

I look forward to reading your stories.