It’s been an exciting but a tough few months for me. I’ve been working a lot – at the Happy Mums Foundation – and for an increasingly busy contact tracing service, as well as getting ready to give children flu vaccines and work some shifts at the hospital.
It has also been challenging facing some of the issues that contribute to my poor mental health – sometimes the layers we have built to cover those issues are all that is holding us together. So it is hard when you try to get to the heart of things.
I continue to struggle with caring for my toddler – when your sense of yourself is so fragile (almost non-existent) it is nightmarish riding the storm of two-year-old emotion. I still feel like I am surviving, not thriving or even living, and cannot shake the sense that I am like a transplant patient whose body is rejecting a donor organ. I suppose what I feel is so different to the sense of completeness and love many mothers describe, I think of it as the diametric opposite.
But in the darkness, there is some light. By being vulnerable and honest about these problems can help others who are also struggling. The sense of loneliness and shame that shrouds our parenting doubts is often worse than the doubts themselves.
And in amongst the tantrums and the “No Mummy” my daughter has started watching 30 minute-long programmes, namely the Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s child (Gugo and Baby Gugo). It feels huge – like there might one day be a time we both enjoy, rather than I endure. Suddenly she seems more like a whole person and not just a series of passing phases.
The return of Strictly has also done a lot to catch my mood. The sparkles and lights; dancing and kindness have shown us the world does go on – even though it may be a slightly different world to the one we lost last winter.
So while the glitz of strictly, and the lilting music of the Gruffalo, don’t fix all my other problems they show me that even in the darkest of nights there is also light. The ruins might lie crumbling and smoking around us, but the sun will rise and its rays will catch the shattered windows and dance.