A little introduction
I hate writing intros, they always feel so forced and a bit fake.
I started this blog because I am a compulsive writer. I'm a journalist but the obsession with writing began long before I even knew what one of those was.
I had a bit of a stutter as a kid and have always been pretty anxious so I found writing WAY easier than actual communication.
I wrote letters to my Granny from the age of about 7 and have kept a diary since then too. It's more of a emotional-dustbin than a diary though really, as there probably isn't a single detail about what I've been up to and instead are my ten-thousand-feelings-a-minute written in splurge form. If anyone ever reads it they're going to think I'm mad. Maybe I am.
Anyway, I write. And that need to write moved into an actual compulsion when my mum died after a short but brutal battle with lung cancer in 2019. I've never experienced life-changing pain like that, the world has become unrecognisable. It made the depression I'd previously suffered look like a fucking party in comparison.
In the immediate aftermath - the weeks and months after she died - I couldn't function. I went to work because I love my job and welcomed the distraction, but the minute I was alone in the office I broke down in a sobbing fit of despair, unable to cope. I found myself desperately reaching for a notepad to handwrite whatever was in my head. Weirdly, it sometimes came out in rhyme. Shit ones that no one will ever read, but still rhyme! I think the weight of my feelings was so heavy I just had to get them out the only way I knew how - writing.
I still write in my diary nearly every day. Sometimes, on particularly difficult days, I'll write a few times. I just sort of word-vomit all the things I'm thinking to get them the-fuck out of my head. To anyone overly stressed, anxious or struggling - I highly recommend trying it.
Around 10 months after my mum died, I had my first (and only) child - Eva. She spent three weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because she'd had a collapsed lung and nearly died. She had severe respiratory distress syndrome (so we had more ventilators at the William Harvey Hospital) because she'd been brought out by C-section 5 weeks early. There's more on that in this blog, but put it this way - we had a very unfortunate and rare experience at the start.
In the impossibly difficult time while Eva was in hospital, I wrote compulsively then too. I think writing is the only way I can process anything now.
So here we are. I am a new mum who started this journey already full of grief and with an added truckload of retraumatising hospital experiences.
I am a mum without a mum.
And I'm going to start sharing my emotion process with other people, here on this blog. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one finding this relentlessly hard but ultimately the best thing ever.
I'm having regular breakdowns, meltdowns and kitchen-floor-resets. But I'm relentlessly optimistic and determined to find the light in the darkness.
If you are still reading, thank you and hi!
Get in touch, let me know what you think, share your story or just have a nice day. I swear like a sailor but I'm all about the love.
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