It's hard to know where to begin so I hope this isn't too rambling. This blog was the brainchild of Jen's, she has the good ideas and is always so positive about life. Hopefully our blog will help us with the changes we both want to make in our lives so we are no longer stuck in the toffee but floating on marshmallows! If it helps anyone else on their journey it will be even better.
I am in my mid-forties, a wife to a secondary school teacher and mum to two children, my son is seventeen and doing A levels, my daughter is eleven and in her final year of primary school. I don't work at the moment and hate to call myself a housewife. It sounds so straightforward, but we all know life never is quite how it seems.
Without boring you with all the details I feel it might be useful to say what I have experience of- these are subjects I may write about over the coming days, months and years.....
I have personal knowledge of birth and death; my own difficult attempts at childbirth and losing my father to cancer when I was nineteen.
I know about following a dream to become a doctor then leaving my career to care for my family. I haven't been able to return to my previous career which has taken a long time to get over. I am still struggling with what to do next, I feel that I have so few skills but am overqualified at the same time. I am hoping this blog and spending time with the lovely Jen will help me find a happy solution to what I should do with my time.
I certainly know what it is like to be a lone parent. I left my career to enable my husband to continue his. Prior to retraining as a teacher in 2010 my husband was an officer in the Royal Marines and away from home for a lot of the time with work. My son was born in Exeter and my daughter was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, although we moved to Cambridge when she was a tiny baby. We didn't want the kids to spend their childhoods moving every couple of years so decided to stay put in Cambridge. I still don't know if this was for the best, we had roots, but not the support of other families in the same situation as us. Both children found it hard to have a dad who wasn't around for ages and then would suddenly appear again. I found it hard.
I also know how important our own health is, my life has been plagued at times by illness, both physical and mental, which has affected those I love the most as well as having a life-changing effect on me. I became ill at the age of twenty-one with ME, commonly called 'yuppie flu' back then, which stopped me in my tracks for over a year and from which I don't think I ever fully recovered. More recently I was told I have fibromyalgia, again a diagnosis made by exclusion. My biggest health problem however is something which has dogged me for the whole of my adult life- the Black Dog aka Depression. I have such experience now of psychotropic medication and talking therapies I could write a book! Things are pretty good right now but I am conscious of the need to stay well and expect that the roller-coaster ride is going to take a dip again at some point.
Parenting is the most rewarding and also the hardest thing I have ever done. I am so proud of my children especially as they haven't had an easy ride, a depressed mum and absent dad can't have been easy, but I believe they have always felt loved. The last few years have been a huge strain on our family as my lovely daughter has been a school refuser for several years and she suffers with severe anxiety. She was eventually admitted to a unit for children with mental health problems in January and was finally discharged in July. It was the most amazing place and I feel so grateful that such a facility was available to us. The work we all did was tough and not over yet, but it really has changed things for us. My daughter now has a statement of special educational need(SSEN)and is getting the support she needs. She is back in school full time, the first time she has managed this for three years, although she has gone back a year so she can hopefully do some catching up before moving on to secondary school next September. She isn't 'cured' but has learned ways to manage her worries better and we have learned how to help her more effectively.
As always I have more to say but can't do it all at once, I am looking forward to wherever this takes us next...
Love Janie
No comments:
Post a Comment