It is very telling that my last post here was well over a year ago. It is proof (not that I needed it) that I was in the depths of the deepest crisis back then, which is why I disappeared, slipping under the waves again, no energy for this.

When I started this blog, way back in 2017 when I was the proud, if not terrified mum to one beautiful baby girl, I imagined that I would write every day about how she had grown, the wonderful activities we were getting up to to build our bond and how I was overcoming challenges as a disabled mother, so that any other disabled parents that found me here would know it could all be done.

News flash, from a tired but nevertheless blessed mum of two beautiful girls 6 years on – it can’t. I am truly sorry therefore if that’s the hope that bought you here. It nearly killed me trying to do it all, to cope, to keep my head above water whilst trying to give all my heart to my daughters.

But take heart. I am a woman that during the life of my parenting journey has been bereaved several times. I achieved things for myself I never dreamed of (house, degree, driving licence, not least the aforementioned youngest daughter.) My mental health throughout this time has been, to be blunt, chaotic and increasingly dark. But today, I am back here, tapping at keys, wanting to reach out to you because, I am finally at peace with the fact that it can’t all be done. I am no longer trying. Instead, I am committing to myself in ways that I have never done before.

I have spent all of this year (2023) working intensively on what I want out of this life, the person I want to know for myself that I am. Because so far, I feel I have been a small, frightened spectator. The work I have done on myself, the life this disabled woman lived as a disabled girl has confirmed the truth of this for me.

I lost my mum in January 2021. She was an alcoholic, which I do not remember through the fog of grief if I shared when I reported her death back then because, somehow I felt it made her less. COVID hastened her death, but in itself, her death was caused by alcohol related liver disease. That in itself is heartbreaking, because it is such a needless waste of life. Her life. But in the work I have done, rather than being furious with her for not living a life that she deserved, full of everything she might have been, I have come to see that she lived in a way she could manage. Alcoholism is not a choice. It is an escalation, a desperation of trying, but of course, failing to cope. This, I can appreciate like never before. I have spent much of the 3 years preceding this one in crisis, feeling like a failure, slowly feeling distant from all the things that brought me joy, not recognising anything as belonging to me, or being something I am deserving of.

I mean everything. I keep a little book that I have kept in my bag for times of crisis since I did cognitive behaviour therapy & stress control courses in 2019, full of notes from the courses and all the mindfulness and parenting books I have read. In this book also, are lists of things I like: to watch, eat, drink, see & do, because if left inside the trauma of my own head, I couldn’t pull any of those things out or feel their associated joy and calm.

Counselling has been a mainstay of my commitment to better mental health since 2022, simply because I was desperate, because I needed change. I needed to survive. I go every 2 weeks now and when I started, my counsellor wouldn’t get to say a single word for the full hour because I was ranting, sobbing or railing angrily against myself. I truly hated myself. I believed I had failed as a daughter, a wife, a mother and that it was not possible for things to be different. After all, I was always trying so hard and I was getting nowhere. Therefore, I was the problem right?

No! No. NO! NO! This I know now. But only now, in the last six months, when I learnt the value of the inner child. My inner child was that triggered, traumatised part of me that I had ignored for 33 years. Imagine how messed up and desperate a child would feel after being ignored for 33 years. So was it really any surprise she had been fighting against me all my adult life? Was it really a surprise it was she who had been in charge of my triggers and emotions? So could I really be surprised by the realisation that she is why I have never been able to feel like an adult? Because I wasn’t. I was an ignored, broken child. Without a mother.

So, that left me, just me. I quickly learnt about generational trauma. That is, how I was the product of how I was brought up and therefore, how my poor mother was also the product of her own childhood. I was clearly damaged by many ways in which my mum had seen fit to parent me. But I feel keenly able to empathise with her at the realisation that she could only learn what she had been shown and everyone knows how much behaviour and expectation change from generation to generation. So now, I was my own parent, determined not to pass down many of the things I had been taught and shown in my childhood. And it is a lot to get a troubled child to trust you, especially when you have no way to escape one another.

But the year is passing with increasing cordiality. I have made many new commitments to myself. This month, I was recommended the app HabitNow & it has transformed my life (and no, I’m not being paid to say that and I never use such strong words either, so let that be a ringing endorsement).

Now, I am committed to many daily or regular tasks, my head full of the self-composed mantra “Some is better than none.” So what can be achieved in twenty minutes or less?

Daily

• Meditation (1-10 minutes)
• Body scan meditation (1 minute)
• Washing & moisturising my face (3 minutes) I am 34 years old and am just a week in to this habit. I would have been horrified by my inaction before. But what does before matter now? I am a committed grown up now!
• Physio (20 minutes)
• Reading (5 minutes-Hours a day) I used to have such a love of reading. Then motherhood and I assumed there was no time. I discovered the library app on my phone for reading in front of the TV in the evenings & audiobooks from Audible, so that I can get through a book when on the school run or doing washing. So far this year, I have read 21 books and I feel awesome.
• Journalling (10 minutes) I bought a one page a day diary on New Year’s Eve. So every day is there, one line, or a whole page, it’s there. No need for endless, rambling adventures. Just life. Just there.
• Gratitude (3 minutes) Tapping out the nice moments of the day or the funny things the kids says in a specific app on my phone
• Walking (Half an hour on the school run daily, or hours running around.) Just because I can, because I deserve to be proud of that capability

Weekly or more

This, here. Ignored for so long, I no longer intend to use this blog to hold myself to stanards I can not maintain as neither a woman, a mother nor a disabled person. All I can attempt to do is maintain me. It feels like a success so far this year. Writing is still important to me in many forms. I have undertaken a year long writing course for the last 2 years, both aimed at uncovered a simple, less chaotic, pressured and authetic life. I am very big on the authetic self now. I hope she will live here. I hope that one day, my daughters will find me, for she is me, right here.

And so, my commitment is for short, regular bursts of life here, as it should always have been. As I discovered with journalling, long rambling is not productive. Because life will bear down and I do not wish to crumble under its weight again.

Therefore, today I added “Blogging” to my HabitNow list.

Blogging: 2 times a week.

In twenty minutes or less.