Mental health

Guard your grieving heart

/ Kelly 🌻

For many bereaved parents – coping with the worst thing that could ever happen – the next most awful thing is thinking about other people who might be affected by a similar fate. It’s distressing to think that anyone else might have to experience what you have, especially if it could have been prevented.

It’s a good idea to consider the things that are supporting you through your grief, and what is adding to your grief. In my recent post on Still Standing Magazine, I suggested some healthy ways to use social media in grief. Social media is a lifeline for us, but it also makes the world a much smaller place. Now, it’s a matter of a few clicks to find hundreds of people who have lost ‘exactly’ like you have. It can be distressing as the realisation comes that life’s fragility is more certain than its longevity.

Superhuman grief strength makes for super humans!

Forget ultramarathons though, nothing can match a grieving mother’s mental and physical strength (dads too, of course). I liken the strength to that of a woman in labour. The moment of crowning when animal instincts take over and she finds power that she never knew she had, despite overwhelming exhaustion, to push the baby out.

Grief pains create a similar inner strength. Often this is channelled into something worthy… a legacy, a charity, a cause. This work saves lives. Brings hope. Comforts the brokenhearted.

It’s important to remember that almost every campaign, whether small like my book or large like MP Carolyn Harris’s recent victory to scrap children’s burial fees, is driven by the strength of grief. There is a parent who is the driving force of the work. There is a child no longer here because of the work that needed to be done.
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5 ways to do self-care when you’re grieving

/ Kelly 🌻 / 1 Comment

Self-care is a power hashtag. Women of all ages and stages of life, in particular, are proclaiming the importance of making time for themselves amidst the busyness of life. Self-care encompasses anything that helps us unwind or makes us feel good, even for a moment, from little things such as sipping a hot cup of coffee and reading a book to spa weekends and aerobic workouts. The point is to not forget about you while you’re busy spinning numerous plates, and particularly when life is going wrong or is throwing up more challenges than usual. Taking a moment to care for ourselves is one way to help us find hope and restoration when we are up against it.

Instagram is one place that people share the ‘self-care’ moments. A quick search calls up nearly 500,000 posts, the majority of which are are exercise, beauty or food related. It can be easy to compare how we ‘invest in ourselves’. The gorgeous picture of a beautifully designed latte froth or candles by the bath can all feel a little unrealistic, and also that having this moment somehow makes everything okay, the audience are reassured, we’ve admitted a struggle but don’t worry it’s not too messy…

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Mindful steps to better health

/ Kelly 🌻 / 1 Comment

It’s still January… having consumed our body weights in rich/sugary/fatty foods in December, we now have the guilt trip for said festive indulgence as fitness gurus and media know-it-alls show off their fit-ness or sell us the latest diet that will make us ‘beach ready’ by summer.

We know the rules around this, it’s okay to put on half a stone at Christmas because we’ll burn it off in the new year. But there’s actually a far more important side to this whole ‘health’ circus… mental health. 

We’re usually too busy to stop and consider that the manufacturers of the food and fitness gear know as well as us that those DVDs and smoothie makers will be gathering dust in a few weeks.

Many of us feel like we are skating on the edge of sanity, holding down busy jobs, bringing up children, keeping the house going and the bills paid, dealing with some really traumatic stuff, let alone making sure we’re blimin’ ‘beach ready’.

Most of us are dealing with so much stress that food (or drink) has become a comforter. When I’m stressed I find myself reaching for the biscuit barrel. In the evenings, I sit down in front of the TV after a tiring day and often snack a bit more (I don’t drink so food is my ‘treat’).

Many people started the month alcohol-free or ‘on a diet’. After the Christmas binge, this is fine for the first two weeks but then it soon gets dull. Most of us give up when we restrict ourselves (or feel we are being restricted), which then ends in more binges and guilt.

Nine months ago, I was about to have my fifth baby and I had no energy to care for myself. Pregnancy, grief and hormones resulted in an addiction to food.

I didn’t have the willpower to consider what I was putting into my body. I could barely put a meal together and shopping was a challenge. I opted for quick and easy options. Fast food and takeaways added to the mix.

I felt hungry from the baby (and children) sapping my energy… So I ate.
I felt peckish because I was bored stiff sitting around unable to move far… So I ate.
I felt I needed something to fill the void in my stomach when I felt low and confused about life… So I ate.

Seeing the superfit on TV only played on my inadequacies further.

Are you having twins?! Nope just a massive cream bun!

Are you having twins?! Nope just a massive cheesecake!

There was the time I ate an entire cheesecake (not an isolated incident!)… a full-size one with the red warning nutritional label shouting at me to stop. There was not one thing good about it, yet down it went. I felt terrible. I vowed that the next day I’d avoid any sugar or processed foods… but if course I didn’t. In any case, I was so confused by the conflicting health advice I didn’t know where to start!

I was a perfect candidate for a January ‘lose weight in a week with a superfood, superburn diet plan’. However…

…the last three months I’ve been intentionally looking after myself, mentally and physically. I’ve taken a daily multivitamin and probiotic, cut right back on processed sugar, fat and wheat. I eat more vegetables and mostly cook from scratch. I’ve established a better bedtime routine. I’ve started reading books again. I already feel much better for it.

Looking after yourself starts in your head; train your brain to love yourself for being alive rather than punish yourself for eating foods that you enjoyed. What we eat and how we exercise are directly controlled by our mental health. Get mentally well and you’ll eat better and want to move more. I’m all for improving our health (with the dramatic increase in diabetes we need to do something), but it’s about taking small steps to make big changes: moving more, getting outside, eating well, reading a book, doing absolutely nothing once in a while…

Now that I have the food side of things pretty much under control, I plan to get back into exercise. But I’m not going to join a gym, get a personal trainer, or run a marathon… (not yet anyway), I’m going to go for a walk, and that walk will become another and another, and then I may want to walk a bit further or possibly jog. Either way, it will be a slow but positive progression to find a pace and an activity that suits me and my life at the moment.

My 90-year-old grandma is old but she is mentally alert and still has a job! Her secret isn’t kale, or smoothies, tracking her heart rate, or busting a gut in circuit training… it’s real food, sensible portions, daily physical activity, friends and family, reading and crosswords.

If you’re feeling like you’ve failed before you’ve started, keep going at your own pace and remember, even if you’re tiptoeing you’re still going in the right direction.

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If you enjoyed this post, why not see what else I’m talking about:

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Health anxiety (hypochondria) after the death of a loved one

/ Kelly 🌻 / 15 Comments

As someone who now openly admits to suffering with health anxiety, since the death of my 12-year-old daughter and three pregnancy losses, I tend to avoid any kind of health-related TV programme. In fact, I wrote this blog post about why TV alienates the grieving as it contains so much death, blood, gore and trauma.

Yet there have been a new spate of health-related shows advertised on our screens. One of which is ‘Doctor in the House’.

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In this show, a doctors stays with a family for a few days and gives them all a full medical before advising them how they can avoid and improve any ailments they suffer from and, essentially, improve their chances of survival for longer!

Now, to me, this looks interesting as – being health anxious – I would be interested to learn about what we could do to improve our health as a family. But watching the trailers, I know that it’s more likely to spark off further health anxiety in me. I would worry we had the same ailments!

Let me explain, health anxiety, or hypochondria, is where you worry excessively about your health. This also seeps out onto the rest of the family as anxiety over their health comes into the frame, but it’s mostly an anxiety of the self.

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The dark side of grief – craving escape from the mental and physical pain of loss

/ Kelly 🌻 / 16 Comments

I recently went for my first month check-up at the doctors, to see how I’ve settled taking the antidepressants.

For anyone who has not taken antidepressants before, or who hasn’t experienced anxiety – and especially for those grieving mummas out there who are finding that anxiety and depression are adding to their grief, I wanted to share my experience.

Firstly though, I want to stress that feelings and emotions around anxiety and grief are different for everybody. I may know someone who feels similar things to me, but it will still be unique and personal to the individual. That’s why it’s so important to listen to your mind as well as your body and seek help.

Anxiety, however, is a mental illness, grief is not and it can be very hard to tell the difference especially when you are living it day in day out. A big problem for me about why I got to this point, was when I told anyone my story (ie, my daughter’s sudden death) and that I had anxiety they responded with ‘Of course you’re anxious, you’re grieving’ and then the anxiety was ignored because it was put down to grief. This created a build-up of symptoms that led me to the brink of breakdown –  I simply couldn’t cope if grief was going to be this horrible to me.

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My failures as a grieving mum

/ Kelly 🌻 / 38 Comments

I’ve failed.

Life seems fractured.

Daily events feel insurmountable.

Relationships are strained and unstable.

Work is challenging.

Motivation to care, about much, is gone.

I’m sharing this deeply personal post because I know for sure that I’m not alone. That out there are other mothers, in mourning, trying to hold it all together, being strong every second, achieving amazing things just by getting through a day but feeling like a failure throughout it all. I want to reassure those readers that they are not failures, but that the feeling of failure is normal living with what we do.

Failure is a cruel term. How can I possibly have failed at anything?

I am loved.

I am safe.

I am provided for.

I’ve read all the posts, seen all the ‘grief charts’, know the lingo of the phases and stages… but I’ve yet to see the word ‘failure’ mentioned.

As an independent and determined woman, I worked hard to carve out a career and a stable family home. Then death came knocking at my door and decided to pull the rug from under me.

The feeling of failure is huge, but in order to shrink it I’ve tried to consider exactly where and why I feel I’ve failed.

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Word of the Week: Loss

/ Kelly 🌻 / 9 Comments

It’s World Mental Health Day today, slap bang in the middle of Baby Loss Awareness Week. So I’ve been thinking of loss – physical loss, mental loss and biblical loss!

Of losing three pregnancies in my life, of the little beans that I didn’t get to meet. Of little Bella who we thought would bring more joy to our already happy home, which then turned into such a tragic story of baby and child loss. I’m pretty realistic when it comes to pregnancy. I know it doesn’t always go to plan, that if a pregnancy ends in the early days then it’s not meant to be, but it doesn’t make it any easier to have that hope taken away. It’s a physical and mental loss.

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The whirlpool of grief

/ Kelly 🌻 / 9 Comments

A friend shared an insightful diagram with me called ‘The whirlpool of grief’, which I thought would be good to share here (see illustration far below).

As soon as I saw this, it made perfect sense to me. I recognised the many elements to the ‘process’ that were illustrated. I call it a ‘process’ because I see that there are various stages and emotions to work through before an adjustment is made through mourning and acceptance. The stages aren’t linear, however, and move in cycles.

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