Category Archives: health issues

Ok to be not ok?

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I was looking at my diary this evening trying to work out a writing plan for the next few months. I’d be ashamed to put a figure on how many blogs I aim to write a month versus the amount I actually have written. As I was going through my diary I saw that I’d written beside May 1: Mental Health Awareness Month. I had obviously planned to write something incredibly inspiring when I made this note, but as you can see when you scroll through my blogs for May, it didn’t happen. I couldn’t bring myself to write it, because doing so would’ve made me a hypocrite.

The truth is that on May 1, I was struggling to get out of bed, and I wish I could tell you why.

It wasn’t due to stress: sure, I was busy with the novel and other stuff but it wasn’t particularly taxing. Everything was great: JP was himself, and Ali her bubbly self and writing was going well. Yet since the end of January I had been feeling shit for no apparent reason. I started to feel fearful; I’d been here before and overcame it with the assumption that it would never happen again. That if I ever felt down again that I would speak out and get help before it got overwhelmingly bad.

It crept up on me quietly this time, out of nowhere. I was fine one week and not okay the next. I felt frustrated as I scrolled down through my Facebook feed, seeing the clichéd ‘It’s ok to be not okay’ and ‘needing help is not a sign of weakness’. Well, perhaps this was true for other people, I thought, but it didn’t apply to me. I had no reason to be down – I had a great family, great home, and I had lots of work coming in. And yet I was going to bed every night, tears falling from my eyes.

The truth is I felt like a failure. I felt empty. My novel might never be written. I don’t know how to go about finding another job. I still feel guilty about leaving my job behind three years ago, a job that I always felt that I was never any good at. These thoughts twirled around my head as I lay down each night. I had let my mum down, my daughter down and myself down. Some people see me as a role model, whereas I think I am a bit of a fraud.

Things finally came to a head on the 17th May. It was National Walk to School Day and I had walked Ali to school alongside other parents, a perfectly normal thing to do. But I didn’t feel normal at all. I left Ali at the school door and whizzed home, the tears stinging my eyes. I was sick of it, of feeling so crap. So I did something I’d never done before – I rang the doctor to make an appointment. There was an appointment that evening, and I took it. The minute I hung up, I felt sick. What was I going to say? What if the doctor thought I was crazy and had to go on antidepressants? What if she reiterated my feelings that there were people worse than I was, that I was being melodramatic? Also, the thought of handing over money just to have a chat with a doctor seemed like a massive waste.

As I sat in the waiting room, I felt like a fool. Across the room, there was a little baby in a carrycot screaming in pain. I don’t need to be here wasting time, I thought, picking up my handbag. But in true dramatic style, the doctor called my name at that very moment.

‘Sarah Fitzgerald.’

I followed her to the room. ‘Did you get your driving licence sorted?’ she asked, looking at the screen. I laughed.

‘Just this morning, believe it or not.’ (The rigmarole to get a licence these days is ridiculous).

‘So what can I do for you?’

‘Well, I don’t want to be wasting your time,’ I said, apologetically, ‘but the truth is I just don’t feel myself. I mean, emotionally.’

She stared at the screen. ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Ah, on and off, since the end of January.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s an awfully long time,’ she said. ‘Do you know what triggered it?’

I shrugged. ‘No idea. Just a general sense of failure I guess.’ I was starting to sound like an idiot, and was clutching my handbag, ready to run.

‘Okay. And did you suffer from postnatal depression? Or do you think you have it now?’

‘I had it for two-and-a-half years.’ She frowned.

‘There’s no record of that here.’

‘I didn’t report it at the time. Too scared.’

‘Right, and are you managing? Housework, meals, looking after Alison?’

‘Oh, absolutely. It’s not affecting my work at all, at home or otherwise. I just feel flat.’

‘And what do you do in your down time?’

She’s funny, I thought. ‘Not much. I try to work as much as possible. I work freelance, so if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. I like to stay active, and disability activism is so important to me. And I’m looking for another job. Love being busy.’

‘Hmmm, you don’t think maybe you’re too busy?’

I scoffed. ‘It’s not like I have a full-time job or anything!’

As I listened to my own answers, I could hear what the doctor heard, at last. Firstly, that just because I didn’t have a nine-to-five job didn’t mean that I wasn’t working, or that the work that I do wasn’t valuable. Secondly, my self-worth is so wrapped up in what I produce in terms of my parenting and my writing that having not finished my novel had become like the end of the world to me. Thirdly, that downtime is important. This is the one I struggle with the most. I always feel like I should be doing something: writing, playing with Ali, cleaning, exercising. To me, sitting watching TV or reading is wasting time.

And then the doctor said the one thing I absolutely hate to hear:

‘You need to keep your expectations in line with what you can physically achieve.’

I stiffened. ‘I don’t think my disability is relevant, to be honest.’

The doctor laughed. ‘Well, it is. And also, you’re human. Take more rest. And talk more.’ She scribbled down the number of a counsellor on a post-it, which is still lurking somewhere in the bottom of my handbag.

I came out of the doctor’s feeling emotional. I had expected to be told that I was silly, that I had nothing to feel down about, that I should buck up and  cop on. And she didn’t say that at all. She had validated how I was feeling and acknowledged that it was real.

I’m not writing this for attention. I didn’t even want to publish this to be honest. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me, or feel that I’m not able to work because I am (Keep work coming please – I like to eat). I was going to leave it languishing on my laptop. Then I thought of all the recent suicides, both local and celebrity, and reckoned that if I could help just one person reading this, then it would be worth sharing.

Sometimes, despite the clichés, it doesn’t feel right to be not okay.

But it’s not right to suffer in silence either. And I can’t be the only one who’s sick of it.

So let’s not do it anymore.

So if any of you guys want to share your stories please do. Even if it’s so I don’t feel like such a pariah

Happy World CP Day!!

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*Some websites are telling me this is the 5th October every year, others are saying 6th. I will be observing it on both days by eating copious amounts of chocolate*

Hey everyone, happy World Cerebral Palsy Day!

I wasn’t going to bother writing a blog in honour of this special day because I don’t want to get too repetitive (okay I know that ship has sailed but I did write a blog on it last year), but when I read last year’s (god-awful) blog entry I realised that I’d written it on the assumption that all of you actually knew what Cerebral Palsy was. For those of you who don’t know me, Cerebral Palsy is what puts the ‘wobbly’ into wobbly-yummy-mummy. There’s a wealth of information about the disability around the interweb, but why would you bother with that when I, an actual person with CP (and therefore an expert) can teach you everything you need to know?

So…

  • Cerebral (brain) Palsy (paralysis) is caused by a lack of oxygen or a head trauma either shortly before, during or shortly after birth. Which is a bit of a pain when you think about it, because your brain controls everything your body does. So, for example, when your non-CP brain says ‘Pick up that cup,’ your hand grabs the handle and voila. Whereas a CPer could do anything from grabbing the cup to going into spasm and hurling it across the table. It’s this unpredictability that makes life that little bit more interesting.
  • It’s estimated that people with Cerebral Palsy use at least twice the amount of energy ‘normies’ use basic things (the perfect excuse, in my opinion, to laze around with chocolate in the evenings). As I’m typing this right now, my involuntary movements are in overdrive: my head is bobbing, my legs are moving – neither body part are needed for the act of typing.
  • Also, every person with CP uses their body in different ways. Unfortunately this can accelerate wear and tear, but there’s sweet FA we can do about it. For example, I’m unsteady on my feet but I find that if I do things on my knees I can do a better job at things like hoovering and folding laundry. I often get swollen knees, something I never got in my teens (I also did my homework at my bed, on my knees). I also fall a lot on my knees. My poor auld knees. I also know people who type with their tongues, elbows and feet a la Christy Brown. We are resourceful folk.
  • Cerebral Palsy is characterised by the presence of many things, including unsteady gait, speech impairment, involuntary movements, poor coordination and so on. But in my experience, it doesn’t affect any two people in the exact same way. I’ve yet to meet a fellow CPer whose impairment is an exact mirror image of mine. A few people may have moderate to severe intellectual impairments, but this is not always the case. A speech impairment is not an indicator of poor intelligence.
  • One thing that I’ve learned about CP that you won’t find on Wikipedia is that some of us (as in myself and at least five other CPers I know) are prone to bouts of uncontrollable giggling. Which on the whole is hilarious but also completely involuntary. If I had been any other student in my sixth year English class I would’ve been suspended for my ‘disruptive’ behaviour in class. My CP friend had similar experiences in college where her giggling disrupted whole lectures and frequently set off waves of giggling in lectures.
  • The following point is not only related to people with Cerebral Palsy but to all people with disabilities: cinematic depictions of people with CP should be portrayed by disabled actors and not Hollywood names ‘cripping up’ for roles. I mean, would you find it acceptable for somebody to paint themselves a lovely brown colour for a role? No, you’d call it racist, and rightly so! I bring up this point after meeting an actor with CP a couple of weeks ago who, for obvious reasons, only gets called to fill the roles of disabled characters. It seems that ‘cripping up’ for roles has now become normalised (look at Me Before You: a disabled character has the lead role, but is played by a non-disabled actor.) It’s not as if there’s a plethora of work out there for disabled actors, so let us represent ‘our people’ when we can!
  • Finally, people with CP are just that – people. Some are nice, some are assholes. Most importantly, we are definitely not inspirational purely in the act of having CP. In fact, comedienne and writer Francesca Martinez (who, if you look her up on YouTube, will tell you even more interesting gaffes about having CP) renounces the label of ‘inspirational’ by saying she spends eleven hours a day in bed (lucky sod). We are not all the same, and don’t they say that variety is the spice of life?!

Phew, that’s a reasonably long blog. I’m exhausted from my involuntary workout. Off to eat chocolate. For energy purposes, of course.

School lessons

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So, Alison is back to school on Wednesday. I know not every parent will agree with me but I for one cannot work out where that summer went.

Kids have a tendency to surprise you, though. Just this morning Alison had expressed trepidation about going into Senior Infants. ‘The work will be too hard,’ she moaned at me while I scoffed at her. Ten minutes later she had orally completed the first twelve pages of her new Phonics workbook. With Alison, I’d be more concerned about her getting bored than struggling. If she were to get bored, she’d lose interest and thus would begin the descent of a slippery slope into delinquency and mischievousness.

I suppose I’m still aghast at how much she’s learned in the last year.  Her reading skills are better than mine were at her age (it pains me to admit this), and she spent the summer doing Tullamore library’s Summer Reading Challenge. (This is where kids are challenged to read ten books over the summer. She read forty, easily). She’s retained most of her Irish and has been randomly coming out with statements such as ‘Six plus five is eleven’.

So she’s doing well which is a relief, because I had concerns about her starting at just four and a half. But of course academia, mathematical prowess and literary genius is not the be-all-and-end all either.

As the daughter of a wobbly mummy, Alison has learned that it’s good to ask questions about disability, and boy does she!! ‘How come you could walk before without a walker, but not now?’ ‘Why do you use  a wheelchair when you can walk?’ ‘How come these footpaths are not ramped? That’s very dangerous.’ I’m raising a mini activist. Together we are becoming a force to be reckoned with.

In addition, Alison has learned to deal with having a sort of celebrity mummy. If she thinks people are asking too many questions, she’ll change the subject with a kind of ‘who cares about that auld has-been in the wheelchair’ attitude. It’s so normal to her that she can’t work out what all the fuss is about. I used to worry that my disability would drive away some of her friends, but actually I’ve established a rapport with them all and subsequently lost my wondrous tinge.

I’d also consider her to be kind. I’ve tried to teach her empathy, sort of ‘how would you feel if’ scenarios. She can identify if people are being unkind to each other and she tries to include people. Sure, she’s not perfect, and if she’s part of a clique she’ll get caught up in it. But she also knows when she’s in the wrong – she’ll look at me with her big blue eyes that say, ‘sorry mum, please don’t give out, I love you!’

And what have I learned? I’ve learned that there’s more to being a mum than the ability to run around after your child. I’ve learned that I am in fact not an alien and am just the same as other mums. This year, I’ve made the nicest mum friends whom I love chatting to and I no longer have any qualms about asking them to help me out with lifts to birthday parties. I’ve learned how to let go and share my hilarious parenting fails with them instead of constantly being worried that they will judge me as a parent or report me to social services!

I’ve learned to enjoy motherhood – I mean, really enjoy it. I’ve learned to love myself, and take care of myself. Whereas before I felt like a fraud, I now know that Alison and I mean the world to each other.

And isn’t that the most important lesson of all?

 

 

Unproductive Days

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Lads, for the last half an hour I’ve been sitting looking blankly into the laptop screen silently willing the urge to write to wash over me. And these are the first few words that I’ve managed. So, instead of marking today down as an unproductive one, I’ve decided to be sneaky and write this blog and mark it as work. Genius or what?

I ‘came into work’ at 9.30pm this evening with the intention of researching an article. That hasn’t happened so I’ll have to do it tomorrow.

When I started writing a novel two years ago, I told myself I’d be finished the first draft within six months. Ha. Hahahahaha. I should’ve been a comedian! New aim is to have it done by this Christmas. Oh, and possibly a play too. And a few more newspaper/magazine articles. And play a part in a major event organised by disability activist group, By Us With Us in September.

What do you mean, these are totally ridiculous, unattainable goals? Well, I’ll show you…

I didn’t manage to write much today. But I did manage to bath my child, bring her to the hairdressers and to a birthday party, complete with card and present.

No, I’ve written sod all. But I did manage to clean and hoover the house.

It’s hard to explain, but when I don’t manage to write, I don’t feel like myself. In fact, I’m grumpier, harder to live with, and sometimes this borders on self-hatred. When I see everything I expect myself to do written down on paper/on the screen I can see how ridiculous it is.

I’ve been pushing myself a little harder lately, conscious that the summer holidays will eat into my writing time. I know I won’t be blogging as much, and that my working week will be at least halved.  I might get one or two days a week to work, and the rest of my time will be my daughter’s. And rightly so.

If you had told me ten years ago when I started and abandoned the novel I’m working on now that I’d be a writer with a handsome husband who supported me and a beautiful daughter who loved to read, I would’ve called you mad.

If you have told me that I’d be totally obsessed with the Independent Living Movement, I would’ve scoffed. I hate committees and commitment and yet both seem to be dominating my life at the moment.

I’m coming up to the third anniversary of the July night that I was determined to end everything, once and for all. If you had told me then that I would come out the other end and start to recover, even like myself a little, I wouldn’t have believed you.

And I think of that Sarah back in 2014, who was struggling to stay together for five minutes at a time, and how thrilled she’d be to have a novel on the go, some freelance work, a little blog and a real opportunity to help people. And not in an arrogant way, I think of how far I’ve come from three years ago, just by taking one day at a time.

Suddenly, not being able to focus and write a few words doesn’t seem like a big deal, because I know there’s  always tomorrow.

And it’s great to be able to believe that.

D-Day

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It’s the first day of the Leaving Cert exams, and I can’t stop thinking about my godchild, whose christening I remember as if it were yesterday, going in to sit what she’s been told are the most important exams of her life.

I was listening to the radio yesterday (not sure who – Matt Cooper, perhaps?) who was talking to students on air and generally saying listen – the Leaving Cert is important, but not that important. Study, but don’t stress. It’s not the end of the world. The Leaving Cert is not the be-all and end-all.

That’s certainly not the impression I somehow got when I did my Leaving Cert, fourteen years ago. I did Transition Year the year before, and I had been on a respite break with seven other friends with disabilities during that year (incidentally, that’s where I met my husband). The message I got from that week was that the best prospects for disabled people was in doing a computer course or going to the National Learning Network to do an endless string of courses in job preparation. Has my journey through mainstream education been a waste of time? I thought glumly. Now don’t misunderstand me, or interpret my reaction to be borderline snobbery, but I was afraid that society was trying to mould me into something I wasn’t. These courses are great, but I do think that students with disabilities should feel that anything is possible.

So, as a statement against the status quo, and because I wanted full control over my future, I decided that the only way I was ever going to do this was to get 500+ points in my Leaving Cert (yes, I am a little mentally unstable-how did you guess?) For nearly two years, I threw myself into my studies. I don’t know how I still had friends at the end of it because I never went out to the Harriers or the Bridge House. I don’t exaggerate when I say I spent a solid six hours after school, studying. Soon I became obsessed. If I was going to spend the time studying, I had to be the best. If I got 75% or less in a class test I would openly bawl my eyes out.

I remember my dad saying to me about a month before the exams that if I didn’t slow down, I would have a massive heart attack and be dead before the Leaving came around. He was so worried that he threatened to stop me sitting them altogether. I looked at him incredulously! What did he know? How could he possibly understand how it felt to be the only person in my year with a (visible) disability and so much to prove? Didn’t he know how important these exams were to my future?

No, and he didn’t care. Neither did mum. What they did care about was the fact that I had no friends apart from John Paul, about the fact that I couldn’t relax, or take an evening off study without having a massive panic attack, about the fact that at 12 o’clock they would walk past my room on the way to bed to find me still studying, my books sprawled all over my bed and me panicking because I couldn’t memorise that Irish poem or the ins and outs of the heart in spite of studying all evening, probably on little or no food and definitely no rest (food and rest is for the weak, yo.)

And yet, it paid off. I got enough points (bang-on enough) to get into Trinity to study English (the DARE scheme may have helped a little). The relief was immense; it took a long  time to get used to not stressing out over the Leaving. And just when I became accustomed to calmness, I had my dissertation and exams to worry about! I really wanted an Honours Degree, and I did study just as hard (albeit in the final few months!) and it paid off…

…and now I am a writer, spending day after day writing and researching, blogging and editing. Did I need a good Leaving Cert to do this? Was it worth the hardship? Personally, in spite of the hellish experience that was my Leaving Cert, I don’t think it’s fair or right at this point to be dismissive of its importance. How can teachers, parents, society think it’s okay to spend two years of a student’s life drumming into students that this is the most important exam they’ll ever sit, and then turn around afterwards and say that it wasn’t that important?

Yes, it’s true, no-one ever asks how many points you got twelve months later or (unless you’re an Irish teacher) you’re never asked about the main themes of A Thig Na Tit Orm. And yes, many of us do want our children to have a strong work ethic, but at what cost? Why are we still sending out the message that your worth as a person is based on one set of examinations, and lying to our young people, saying that it could shape your future for the worst or the best?

Because I’ll let you in on a dirty secret: your worth is not how many points you get. It’s how you use your talents to shape the future, be that through medicine, teaching or volunteering to help others. And guess what? Learning is fun – it’s true! I don’t mean school – I mean the learning you choose to do. I’ve done three correspondence courses so far and it wasn’t about the marks, it was about accomplishing little challenges. I loved them and can’t wait to do more.

So do your best in your exams, and spend the summer doing some proper learning. Learn how to cook, how to use the washing machine, how to budget. How to get a week’s worth of groceries for €25 so you can go out on a Thursday night. Meet new people and learn how to tolerate their quirks and annoying habits.

There are no grades, but these are lessons you won’t forget.

And Caoimhe, best of luck. No matter how these exams go, never forget that you are a kind and wonderful person and we all love you so, so much xx

Enda the Line

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Finally, after what seems like an inappropriately long wait, Enda Kenny stepped down as party Leader of Fine Gael at midnight on Thursday 18 May, and a new party Leader will be announced by the 2 June.  And predictably, many people in this country, including myself, are reflecting on the work (or damage, depending on who you’re talking to) he’s done over the course of his time as Taoiseach. Many of us will not be sad to see him go, especially the many people with disabilities that he’s let down so badly over his term.

Now, I am not saying that by any means that Enda had an easy job. Nor am I denying the fact that his predecessors, Bertie Ahern in particular, left a massive mess behind that Enda would have to clean up. However, during Enda’s time as Taoiseach, I have witnessed a frightening change in the narrative of disability in this country. Perhaps it’s merely age-acquired wisdom, because I don’t remember feeling this trapped as a disabled person during the early noughties. I went to college, I found it easy enough to find summer work and for a very brief period, I was even naïve enough to view myself as equal: willing to contribute to society and worthy of respect for it as a result.

I was just watching an interview activist Joanne O’Riordan had with Gay Byrne’s RTE series The Meaning of Life, in which Joanne discussed her experience with Enda Kenny. Kenny had promised her that the funding for P.A. (Personal Assistant) Services would remain untouched, and then turned around and delivered the blow that a whopping €130million would have to be taken from the HSE Budget, including a €10m cut to the P.A. budget. This soul-shattering announcement demonstrated how little our Taoiseach thought of our lives. This announcement drove activists with disabilities to sleep out in the cold for three days outside Leinster House until these cuts were reversed. It was both a victory and a slap in the face for people with disabilities, because although we were listened to, we realised that we would always have to take drastic measures to have our voices heard.

I worked in the area of Independent Living for seven years, and Enda Kenny was Taoiseach for four of those (since 9 March, 2011). Part of the reason I made the tough decision to leave my job in 2015 was because I found it too difficult to watch, as I saw it, the degeneration of the Independent Living Philosophy. When I joined Offaly CIL first, I was told to have passion. I was encouraged to get excited about equality for people with disabilities, to see the Personal Assistant Service as the key to achieving this equality. I was told that Independent Living was about freedom, control, choice. It was a liberating service with its own unique history and philosophy.

For me, Enda Kenny’s government destroyed all of that. Suddenly, service provision was about a hierarchy of needs, and the service became more about covering the basics rather than encouraging ability and individuality. When I spoke to people about this great ‘philosophy,’ I felt I was lying to them. I would ring my fellow Leaders and ask them to come into the office for a coffee and a chat, and they would tentatively ask me ‘are my hours going to be cut?’ I have to hand it to Offaly CIL, they did and still do resist cutbacks and they go above and beyond to protect Leader’s hours. But it infuriates me that because of Enda Kenny’s nonchalant attitude towards disability that my fellow Leaders continue to live in fear.

I’ll never forget reading the coverage of the three-day protest Martin Naughton led outside the Dáil in 2015 (unfortunately, I was out of the country at the time – yes, I really am just an armchair activist). Martin was asking for the opportunity for people with disabilities to have more control over their own lives by allowing money normally paid directly to service providers to be redirected to the experts, the person with the disability. The protest bore little results apart from a lot of negative press about Enda Kenny, with people by now being so annoyed with him that the focus from the public was more about what a complete tool he is as opposed to what Martin Naughton was asking for (the right for people with disabilities to truly experience Independent Living, in case you’re in doubt). And yet, even after talking to Martin and other disability activists, the future of our lifeline – the Personal Assistant Service – is constantly in jeopardy.

Oh, one more thing – some of you out there think that Leo Varadkar should take over as Taoiseach. And perhaps he should, but I’m personally a bit wary. Aside from the fact that our health system is currently a shambles, a report entitled ‘Make Work Pay for People with Disabilities’ recommends that people with disabilities keep their medical card, as well as raising the current cut-off point of €120 before they start to lose their Disability Allowance. Now, don’t misinterpret me – this is great progress – but given that a report from Inclusion Ireland in 2014 estimates the weekly cost of disability to be €207, it seems that there is a long way to go before people with disabilities can expect a decent quality of life. Also, there is a fear that this system could force people into work that they are genuinely incapable of, a bit like what’s happening in the UK at the moment.

So goodbye, Enda Kenny. Undoubtedly you did many great things for many people across Ireland during your time. You’ll have to forgive the disabled population of Ireland for struggling to remember exactly what they were.

And a quick message for your replacement, whoever you may be: We as people with disabilities have put up with enough shit over the last nine years to last a lifetime. We definitely are not in the mood to tolerate any more. Just thought you should know that.

1-7 May: Maternal Mental Health Week

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I was just scrolling through Facebook this evening, you know, doing some important web-based research, when I saw a post saying that it was Maternal Mental Health Week this week (May 1-7). According to talkingmums.com, up to one in five women experience mental health issues either during pregnancy or in the year following birth. Yet, out of these women, only 7% of them are typically referred for specialist help.

How many of you, like me, have suffered from PND, yet never admitted it to a doctor or health professional? How many of you out there are still suffering?

I’ll never forget the moment I knew for sure I was suffering from PND. Alison was only three months old and we had just discovered (or rather, the Public health nurse finally believed me) that she had a cow’s milk allergy. We had Ali put on special formula. She started gaining weight and became the happiest baby ever, sleeping through the night and everything.

I should’ve been happy, but I wasn’t. Relieved, yes. Happy? No.

All I wanted to do is disappear. I was just waiting for the right time.

I had this vision of having PND as standing over your baby’s cot with a pillow in your hand or wanting to throw your baby down a flight of stairs. While I appreciate that some women feel like that (and this doesn’t make you a bad person – you’re unwell and need help), I didn’t. I felt that my daughter was the most perfect person in the world and that she must have done something truly horrible in life to end up with a mother like me.

I didn’t know that PND meant looking in the mirror and being repulsed by the pathetic specimen staring back.

I didn’t realise that ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away. I ended up in the doctor with chest pains, shoulder pains, stomach aches and yet the doctor couldn’t find physiological reasons for any of them. She prescribed painkillers which didn’t seem to help. I always denied feeling down or depressed. Big smile on my face. Sure what would I have to be depressed about?

By May 2014, I could barely get out of bed. I wasn’t eating properly. I was crying all the time; it was all  I seemed to want to do. In order to get from one end of the day to the other, I had to measure my time in hourly units. Then half-hourly, and towards the end, minute by minute. If I can hold myself together for ten more minutes I’ll be grand, I would think to myself. But of course, I wasn’t grand – far from it.

When I took time off work, I considered my treatment options. I know it sounds ridiculous and shallow, but the thought of going on antidepressants filled me with dread. I wasn’t too keen on counselling either as my previous experiences were quite negative. But I knew I had to do something, so I started writing. Writing how I felt. Writing about my flaws. Writing about my talents. Suddenly, I felt liberated. I’m not recommending this course of action over medication or counselling, but writing was my saviour. It’s something I enjoy, am (reasonably) good at and writing my thoughts and feelings down helped me to own them, and then let them go.

Postnatal Depression has changed me into someone different to who I used to be. I am more sensitive now, and I hate myself for it. I’m still conscious of how people perceive me as a mother. In addition, I now have to make a conscious effort to look after my mental health, to recognise the signs of feeling sad or overwhelmed and act on them before they take over. I also have to be careful. I love helping people, but I have a tendency to internalise their problems to the point where they become my own problems. Sometimes I need to step back, say no and this is hard. I hate doing it.  But I have to remind myself that if I don’t mind myself, I can’t help others.

This week is National Maternal Mental Health Week, and while it’s great to have a platform to write about PND and mental health, the issue of maternal health shouldn’t be confined to a mere seven days of the year. We need to open up the conversation to all mothers, make them feel supported and not feel alone. When I published my long preamble about my experience with PND, I was convinced that either no-one would read it or that it would be dismissed as being a tad melodramatic. What I didn’t expect was the hordes of girlfriends, as well as women I’d never met, emailing me their stories and reminding me that I was not alone. Thanks to those women for validating my story and for making me feel that my depression was completely normal.

And if you are reading this, and you are silently suffering from pre- or post-natal depression, you are not alone either. Look after yourself and get the help you need. Trust me – even mothers who appear to be perfect can suffer silently.

You are worth the help. And after the fog lifts, life becomes so much simpler.

You are wonderful. You are beautiful. You are everything to your children, and they deserve you just as much as you deserve them.

But you can’t pour from an empty cup, so look after yourself.

Cripping Up: Useful Exercise, or a load of Crap?

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Earlier today my daughter, who is growing increasingly aware that her mummy is different to other mummies, asked me if I could walk properly when I was a little girl. ‘Nope,’ I told her, ‘My walking was pretty rubbish when I was a child too, but I didn’t need a wheelchair.’ She was silent for a second, then she said, a tint of sadness coming into her otherwise unblemished face:

‘Some of the girls in my class make fun of you. They say “ha ha, your mummy can’t walk properly.”‘ For a second, my heart stopped. This is the conversation I’d dreaded having with my daughter since the day she was born.

As nonchalantly as possible, I prodded. ‘And what did you say?’

Alison shrugged. ‘I said “don’t make fun of my mummy, it hurts her feelings” but they didn’t stop. I didn’t like it mummy. I would never do that to anyone.’ She was so absolute in her defence of my that it made me want to cry. ‘Mummy,’ she continued. ‘You know I don’t care if you can’t walk properly, or you’re in a wheelchair. I love you and you’re the best mummy.’ I sat, reeling. Where the hell had all this come out of, all of a sudden?

‘School,’ my friend said when I told her the story. ‘Kids learn all sorts from each other at school. They learn to see things differently, to question things, and most worryingly of all, they trust what each other says.’ This isn’t my first encounter with schoolkids of course; once upon a time, in the very same school in fact, I had the honour of dealing with this sort of thing first hand. And while some of the comments hurt (and they did, because I was an impressionable child, just as Ali is now), others were downright hilarious. One particular time I caused grievous injury to a classmate who was enjoying imitating my walking and consequently whacked herself off a door. ‘I never do that,‘ I laughed. And bingo, humour became my new method of self-defence. To be fair, it’s lasted pretty well.

But what has always interested me, even from my prepubescent years, is how people tend to be so fixated on my impairment and how they see it as problematic. ‘Do you ever wish you didn’t have Cerebral Palsy?’ is a question I’ve been asked more times than I’ve had hot dinners. My answer has always been the same, but it’s only in recent years that I understand why I’ve always said no. Cerebral Palsy, and any other disability for that matter, only becomes problematic when others are uncomfortable with it. Impairment and disability are different things. Impairment is a condition or diagnosis, and disability is the collective term for physical and attitudinal barriers facing people in society. I’ve lost you now, haven’t I? Allow me to explain.

My impairment wasn’t the reason why gaining entry to mainstream school was a battle, but the lack of supports available was.

My impairment didn’t stop me reaching third level education because I was enabled through Assistive Technology and Personal Assistance to do so. I used these as tools to unlock my potential.

I built a ramp on both sides of my home so  that I could consequently get a wheelchair to enable me to be independent and get out of the house. A lack of ramps would hamper my freedom, not my impairment.

My heart always sinks whenever I hear the words ‘disability awareness training’ because it often involves so-called ‘able-bodied’ people ‘cripping up’ to try and get a feel for what the world is like for a wheelchair user. With all due respect to those  of you who think this is a good idea, it’s not. Often, it involves able-bodied people using oversized or unsuitable wheelchairs and trying to navigate a physical environment. It’s an unrealistic portrayal because wheelchairs for full-time wheelchair users are designed for their specific needs. While doing something like this, you get a flavour of what it’s like to use a wheelchair to get around and the physical challenges involved. However, you cannot possibly be expected to know what it’s like to carry the burden of a history of hundreds of years of neglect, discrimination and degradation.

It creates awareness, as Kathryn Thomas did on The Late Late Show on Friday 7 April. Everyone knows her face. She was selected to create awareness of the barriers facing wheelchair users in Dublin. It got a great response from many people, saying that it was great to see this issue being highlighted at last. The reality is that people with disabilities have been saying these things for years. And yet, many wheelchair users, including Louise Bruton, who reviews access in Dublin for her blog, Legless in Dublin, was not asked to participate. She wrote an article for the Irish Times before the Late Late aired in which she said: ‘These pieces are a gimmick and if they help change the minds of a few people, then that is great, but they remove us from the discussion. By doing this, we are passing the baton and the opportunity to go deep into the experiences of a wheelchair user is missed.’

Blogger John Doyle was more direct in his criticism of this approach, saying in his blog: ‘Would your celebs paint themselves black and claim the understand racism? No they would not. Did John F Kennedy mimic being a different ethnicity to highlight racism? No he did not. He acted with legislation because he lived in a country that had one rule equality for one section and a rule of inequality for others’. We still haven’t ratified the United Nations Convention of Rights for People with Disabilities, which would mean so much more than a celebrity endorsement.

And why do we need celebrities to highlight the issues that we disabled  people have been discussing for years? The answer is simply we don’t – but for some reason our voices seem to only matter when they’re endorsed by politicians, celebrities and the likes. I wonder is this because people don’t want to know about the nitty-gritty of the discrimination disabled people face, or is it because they feel they can relate to an able-bodied person better? If that’s the case, will our voices, our own voices, ever be heard?

Because I don’t want my daughter answering questions about her ‘different’ mummy forever. I hope that one day she will be wise enough to say ‘You have a question about my mummy? You ask her yourself. I don’t speak on behalf of her, or anyone else.’

Apologies for absence!

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Hello to my adoring fans! I hope you are all well.

Hoping to get my blogging mojo back soon (probably will as soon as I’ve posted this, lol) but may not be around for a week or two owing to other projects like my first commission of the year (Watch this space), trying to submit something for A Date With An Agent (for which I fully expect to be selected of course) and another blog in progress for an activist group called By Us With Us. We’re a new group made up of  people looking back on the history of the Independent Living Movement and joining together to face the future. You can visit our blog here.

But don’t worry: as Arnie says, I’ll be back…….

The Secret Agony of Postnatal Depression

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(Me and my little princess)

Sometimes the hardest thing about being a writer is writing about real feelings, about your reality. Once the words are out there, you’re opening yourself up to merciless scrutiny and possible criticism. But I’ve decided that in order to be free of the most horrible experience of my life, I have to write about it and share it with you. And I’m so happy that I’m finally in a good enough place to do it.

(written Wednesday 22 June 2016)

It is one o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. All is quiet, now. We’ve spent the whole morning talking to a lovely woman who is interested in our story of how we, two parents with various degrees of Cerebral Palsy, found the whole experience of having Alison and whether we would have any advice for the so-called medical professionals if they ever come across a case like ours again.

We are not a ‘case’, of course. We are people. Real people with real feelings. Talking about how we were doubted when we had Alison and when we brought her home first is always draining. As a person who loves to bottle things up and have that bottle explode at the most inopportune times, talking openly and honestly about what is going on in my head is something I hate to do.

So why now? Well, maybe it’s because no matter how hard I try to deny it, the fact that I had postnatal depression will always be part of my identity. I will never forget how I was made to be so afraid that I had to go through it alone, even though I know that some friends tried to help me. They couldn’t of course. I had to help myself.

I was nine weeks pregnant when I self-referred to a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist. I wanted to be the best for my baby, I wanted to improve. I wanted to show people that I was capable. Deep down, I wasn’t sure if I would be. The last time I’d cared for a baby was when my little sister Alex, six years younger than me, was born. Dressing and feeding a doll wasn’t going to be the same thing, I knew that.

Anxiety lingered where excitement should’ve resided. Our Public Health Nurse started visiting when I was twelve weeks pregnant, asking questions that I didn’t know the answer to. How are you going to feed the baby? Change it? Carry it? (Apparently my plan to wheel the child around the house in a buggy was inappropriate; a sling was more suitable. How was I going to get the baby in and out of a sling?) It didn’t really matter – they had come up with a solution, they knew best. Sure what did I know? I wasn’t a medical expert, like they were.

But if they were medical experts, then I was treated like a medical marvel. We’ve never come across this sort of situation, I was told countless times. What did they mean, this ‘sort of situation?’ Surely I was just a normal woman, having a baby? I was told that I’d have to be under general anaesthetic to be sectioned, and it was only the week before the section when we discussed our concerns with the anaesthetist that a spinal was considered. Then there was the apparent issue of me being  left alone with the baby. I spent months trying to illustrate how, if I got help with basic tasks such as bottle making, washing and cooking, being alone would not be a big deal. I later heard about how everybody was apprehensive, watching me with bated breath, expecting me to fail.

Alison Mary Fitzgerald was born on the 9th February 2012 at 11.52am, weighing a sizeable 8lbs 4oz. She was, and remains, the most beautiful person I’d ever met. As I held her in my arms I was blown away by her huge blue eyes, her physical strength and her flawless, unblemished skin. Immediately after the birth the lactation consultant showed me how to breastfeed. I hadn’t really considered breastfeeding, nor had I any interest in it, but Alison took to it easily and I watched her ‘help herself’ it occurred to me that if I could do it, then I would always be useful. Even with my horrible, mangled body I would still be useful.  Even if I couldn’t do anything else for her, I could do this. And if I  was her main source of food, then no-one could take her away from me.

Warped thinking, yes, I know. But I wasn’t thinking straight at this stage anyway.

I was a fog of hormones, crying from hormones and  tiredness. But finally, everything was in place. We became claustrophobic in that small hospital room, the three of us, and by Monday, all I wanted to do was go home. There was no medical reason why this couldn’t happen. John Paul was staying with a friend and that morning, it was just me and Alison in the hospital room. I looked into the little cot and sang ‘Baby, now that I’ve found you’ to her, studying her little hands, her thick head of hair. I promised her there and then that I’d always do my best by her, that I’d always love her. just as I was doing this the anaesthesist came in, grinning.

‘Do you remember calling me a legend last Thursday?’ he asked. ‘I recorded it in case you don’t!’ He checked my stitches, which were healing  nicely. ‘So are you off today? There’s no reason why you can’t. You’re recovering well.’ My heart soared. The ward manager agreed.

‘You’re doing really well,’ she said, ‘and we need your bed. What time is your husband coming in?’

‘Ah, soon,’ I said, packing my belongings. ‘Can’t wait to go home!’ But I was nervous too. I’d never handled a newborn baby before, and here I was, her primary caregiver, and like so many first-time mums I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

The trouble was that I wasn’t like other first time mums.

I was just after feeding Ali when the head midwife came in. ‘I’m going home today, aren’t I?’ I said excitedly, gesturing at the half –packed suitcases on my bed. The midwife smiled, her lips pursed and shook her head.

‘Not today,’ she said. ‘You see, we have… concerns that you might be a danger to your baby, that you might drop or hurt her. What we’ll have to do is ring your social worker, your public health nurse and the Centre for Independent Living again and just verify what supports you’ll be getting, see if they think you’re ready to go home.’

‘But I’ve already done all that,’ I cried, my words an indecipherable screech. ‘Everything’s organised. I spent my whole pregnancy getting everything ready. How can you say we’re not ready? I can’t believe this is happening…’

The midwife shook her head. ‘I can’t understand what you are saying,’ she said. ‘Can you take out your phone and text out what you’re saying, like we agreed last week?’

Tears fell out of my eyes as I looked at the perfect sleeping baby beside me. I could hurt you, I thought to myself. I shook my head dismissively and instead rang John Paul, not letting Alison out of my sight for a second.

‘You have to take her,’ I sobbed down the phone. ‘There’s no point. They won’t let me take her home. You take her, you look after her. I’m obviously the problem, so you take her.’

A startled and breathless John Paul burst into the hospital room fifteen minutes later. ‘All right?’ he said casually, looking at the nurse. ‘Sarah said that you won’t let us home with Alison…’

‘Oh no, that’s not what we said at all,’ the midwife gushed. ‘We merely wanted to make sure that you two would be fully supported when you got home. So the Public Health Nurse will be out to ye every morning…’ I waited for John  Paul to protest angrily, but he remained calm. ‘And she’ll be a great help, no doubt. We’ve also ordered Sarah a cloth sling which she can use to carry Alison in her wheelchair. It’s sixty euro, so…’

‘I’ll get that,’ John Paul said confidently, although I knew by his reaction  he’d no idea where it’d come from. ‘And all going well, we’re going home tomorrow?’

‘Of course,’ the midwife said, although I felt like a royal idiot at this stage.

Getting home, away from the maternity hospital, felt surreal. We arrived at our house where my P.A. had decorated the house with ‘It’s a girl’ signs. Our family was waiting inside, armed with presents for me and Alison. There was even lasagne, and cake from friends. It was lovely. But I still felt like crap, as if I’d escaped from prison and that at any minute the midwife would come and try to take me back.

And so I began the journey of motherhood constantly feeling like an imposter. As those early days wore on, I began to feel tired. The physical effort of breastfeeding took its toll, but I persevered nonetheless, determined to do it. It took me forty-five minutes to do a nappy change and outfit change, and the fact that Alison had reflux and spewed during each nappy change didn’t make the process any faster.

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My aunt informed me that now that Ali was born, I would always chart life events through the life of my child.

Alison was eight weeks old when I started to feel odd. I wouldn’t say miserable, and I didn’t think I was depressed. But I definitely didn’t feel like myself. I put it down to exhaustion, physical and emotional, as well as recovering from, as my aunt put it, major surgery.

One night, when John Paul was at work, I sat looking at  Alison in her buggy. She was crying frantically and I was bent over her, ready to pick her up. Suddenly I felt light-headed and the room started spinning. All I could see was Alison’s head smashing against the floor, blood splattering everywhere. They were right, I thought with trepidation, I can’t do this. I’m going to hurt her. I phoned my friend, and when she arrived I was holding Alison in my arms, shaking with the relief that she was okay, and that I hadn’t hurt her.

But one day I will, I thought, and they will take her off me for sure. It’s only a matter of time.

I say ‘one night,’ but in truth, there were many, many nights like this. And if it weren’t for this friend, I don’t know if I’d be writing this blog right now. She saved me from myself more times than I can count.

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As part of my bail conditions, the Public Health Nurse came nearly every day, for nearly six months. We would try to look together, calm, pretend to know what we were doing. However, Alison had severe reflux which gave the Public Health Nurse the perfect excuse to drop by, sometimes twice a day, often unexpectedly, to weigh her. The house could be a tip. I could be wrapped in my purple and white bathrobe, curdled milk encrusted in my hair. To this day I firmly believe that Ali picked up on my nervousness, which in turn exacerbated her reflux to the point where she was throwing up whole feeds. She also had colic, but that was nothing compared to the pressure I felt to show people that I was able, capable.

‘Do you think it’s a cow’s milk allergy?’ I asked one day, as my heart ripped in two watching Ali spew another feed over yet another newly changed outfit. The Public Health Nurse smiled and waved her hand dismissively.

‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘Do you know how rare that is?’

By Friday of that week, I’d had enough of this shit and brought Ali to the doctor, demanding a letter for the A&E in Mullingar, that I wasn’t going to be fobbed off any longer. It was the June Bank Holiday of 2012 and the hottest weekend of the year. We spent it in Mullingar hospital where the doctor finally prescribed Ali Nutramigen, a soya-based formula. I felt like kissing his feet in gratitude. Between the Saturday and the Monday Ali gained four hundred grammes and the heart-wrenching colic dissipated instantly. The colour came back to her face  and she became a happy baby, full of chat and smiles.

‘You see?’ my husband said as we came home from the hospital. ‘You are a good mother. You know exactly what you’re doing.’

I closed my eyes tightly and desperately wished it were true.

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I went back to work in August 2012, for fifteen hours a week. Fifteen hours a week filled with anxiety, wondering how she was. Fifteen hours a week that I had to hand her over to someone else. Some days I would look forward to the break, until Alison left the office with the childminder. I knew I couldn’t have it both ways, but it was still so hard. It’s something I still struggle with, but I suppose every mother does, to some degree.

It was around this time that a horrible, mean voice moved into my headspace, and I was feeling too low and vulnerable to tell it to fuck off. Whoever this voice was, he/she/it was intent on destroying me. It was the voice that told me that I was going to drop Alison whenever I picked her up. The same voice told me that Alison was not safe in my care, that she would resent me as she got older because I wasn’t a normal mum. If I spilled something or knocked something over, the voice would never fail to criticise.

Alison turned one on 9th February 2013, and I’ve never felt relief like it before or since. Relief that I hadn’t caused her any serious harm or injury. Relief that she was home with us, celebrating her birthday in the company of friends and family. Relief that the first year was over. But I also felt anger. Angry that I had lost so much enjoyment with her because I was constantly worried about what others thought of me and my parenting skills. Angry that I would never be good enough for this little girl, no matter how hard I tried.

As Ali bent over her birthday cake and grabbed the flame, burning her little hand, I burst into floods of tears in front of my friends and family.

‘Don’t worry,’ my dad said, hugging me tightly. ‘Her hand is fine. She didn’t burn it too badly.’ I looked up at him and smiled, relieved that he didn’t know the real reason for my tears. Ali hadn’t been afraid to grasp that candle; she’d been strong and fearless. I’d felt that way too when I was pregnant. Now, all I felt was constantly afraid and so, so useless.

And my biggest fear was that somebody would guess how I was feeling, and threaten to take my little girl away from me. So I stayed silent, plastered on a smile and threw myself into the monotony of work and my daily routine.

***********************************************************************

I started to have thoughts of suicide, as they say, when Ali was eighteen months.

I’d no intentions of going through with anything, but I had it all carefully plotted out in my head, just as a back-up plan. Knowing it was there made me feel safe, happy even. (Don’t worry, there is no backup plan now. If there was there would be no way that I would even mention it on a blog).

John Paul and I would have a row, and I would storm out of the house, vowing never to come back. Sometimes I would take pills with me. Sometimes I would storm out and walk around for hours. I would come back. John Paul would say that I needed help, but we would both agree that we could not live under the scrutiny of nurses and social workers again.

He was tired, as was I. tired, and alone. So, so alone.

***********************************************************************

We moved house in 2014, to a bigger house with a lovely garden and lots of storage. And, it seemed, mirrors everywhere. We had no mirrors in the last house we’d rented and I found it difficult to deal with seeing my inadequate self everywhere I looked.

It was a tough year. My nephew died at thirty-four weeks gestation, which really affected me, having had my own baby just two years beforehand. I was grateful that Ali’s birth had been so straightforward, but also felt guilty because Kaleb’s should have been too.

Ali started crèche, which meant she was sick every week with one thing or another. It was an exhausting, sleep-deprived time. John Paul and I would stay up with Ali at night, then head into work the next day, frustrated when we weren’t able to function properly. And the voices spoke louder than ever, telling me I was useless, inadequate, nothing but a waste of space. I was constantly tired to the point where I myself was sick all the time.

One day I went to the doctor’s with swollen glands. I had had a tummy bug the week before, which had wiped me out completely. I sat in her surgery, answering the routine questions.

‘I can’t go on like this,’ I said. ‘I’m sick nearly every week, and I’m constantly tired.  I’m taking my iron. What the hell is wrong with me?’

‘That’s what having a baby does to you, I’m afraid,’ the doctor smiled. ‘Unless – well, how are you feeling in yourself?’

I stiffened. ‘I feel grand, great. Why?’

‘Sometimes physical symptoms can point to an underlying emotional problem,’ she said. ‘Has anything particularly stressful happened over the last while?’

‘Well, we moved house, and my nephew died this year,’ I explained. The doctor nodded.

‘That’s probably what’s causing it,’ she said. ‘Just try and take it easy.’

As I left the surgery, I thought of how one of my college friends had recently sought help for postnatal depression and how she had bravely posted about the whole experience on Facebook. And I remember reading it and thinking oh, if only I could be so brave. So strong. So honest with others, and with myself.

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By July 2014, I was exhausted. I was ringing in sick at least once a week, and producing no work whatsoever in the office. All I could do was stare mindlessly at the screen, scrolling through random Independent Living sites, taking nothing in.

And I hated myself for this lack of productivity. (You’re nothing but a waste of space)

I would come home in the evenings, and spend time with my lovely daughter, playing on the floor with her, silent tears running down my face from the pains that radiated from every fibre of my body. (You will never be good enough for her)

I wanted my house to be perfect, my daughter to be perfect. But how could that be when I wasn’t perfect? When I looked in the mirror, all that I saw was a deformed nobody, an imposter waiting to be exposed. I was a terrible wife and mother, and I was convinced that the two people I loved more than anything in the world deserved better.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ my husband asked, his face shocked. It was half one in the morning, at the end of July and I had been in bed. Now I was awake, looking at him from the doorframe of the sitting room, fully dressed under my bathrobe. And all I saw was mess. In reality, it was a couple of dirty dishes, but it might as well have been thousands of dirty dishes; I hadn’t the energy to deal with them. If only someone had given me the memo that a couple of dishes wouldn’t signal the end of the world, but there and then, I couldn’t deal with it.

I couldn’t deal with anything.

‘I’m off,’ I screamed, jumping into my wheelchair. ‘And you can go and fuck yourself for all I care. I won’t be back. I mean it this time.’ John Paul tried to stop me but I tore out past him and headed out into the darkness. I didn’t know where to go so I wandered around aimlessly for hours, watching the cloudy sky gradually become brighter. The grey haze enveloped me as I sat beside the canal, and cried, and cried and cried.

Later that morning, I went into work, sitting mindlessly in front of my laptop. After about an hour two of my colleagues collared me.

‘You look dreadful,’ said one, surveying my dark circles. ‘Something has to give. You can’t go on like this.’

‘You need a break,’ agreed the other. ‘Before you crack up.’

My initial reaction was oh shit, I’m going to lose my job, but they were right. I couldn’t go on like that. We agreed that two months off work should help me to feel like my normal self.

Within two weeks of being off work, I felt more like myself again. which was odd, because I thought that I would hate it. I absolutely loved being home with Alison, and getting to know her better.

And then, I started writing again.

It began as a few words here and there in an empty Word document. As the weeks wore on, I began to write out the thoughts in my head, and they didn’t look as stupid as they sounded in my mind. I wrote exactly how I felt, staring at the words until I smiled. This was how I felt. And as I explained in a previous blog, I began to understand why I’d felt so shit; so many things had happened that I’d repressed, including the death of my mother and the way I’d been treated after Ali was born. I started to blog about them and it made me feel happy and peaceful in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

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I didn’t write this very long preamble because I want sympathy. I wrote it so that I can say that that horrible part of my life is over. I’ve never been happier, although loving myself is going to take a bit longer. I still have bad days, but everyone has; none of us are perfect. The main reason I’ve written this, however, is because it breaks my heart to think that there might be other women out there, suffering as I did, afraid as I was to speak out and ask for help. I know it’s easy to say this now, but there is no shame in having PND. It’s an illness, a horrible, horrible illness, and nobody should have to wrestle with it alone. And if you’re reading this and can relate to any of the above,  please ask for help. I’ve heard that there are so many great counselling services out there and I’ve read and heard so many success stories. Don’t hold off – just do it. You are worth so much to so many people.

Most of all, you owe it to yourself. Because despite what those head demons are constantly trying to tell you, you’re actually pretty damn fantastic. You really are.