oakleythoughtso

Someone I didn't know very well died last week. She was important to me. She was not famous. But she was faithful, generous, and beautiful. She was Pat.

Decades ago, Pat went to a Billy Graham crusade, and became a Christian.* From the time that Pat decided to follow Jesus, she never gave up doing so. She joined a church. It happens to be the same one you will find me in fairly frequently. Despite difficulties with her health, and her advancing years, Pat was extremely faithful and attentive to that church. She was still attending up until a few weeks ago, at the age of ninety. When I say attentive, I mean to play on the word. Because, while Pat attended church regularly, she was also attentive to the needs of the people she came into contact with through that place.

I didn't know this until today: Pat was a prayer warrior. She prayed often, faithfully. She prayed for people's babies when they were born. She prayed for the children. She prayed for any need that she knew that anyone had. For decades. And because of that she prayed for me, and for my brother.

I'm new in town. I moved here in January. But I've lived here before. My parents and I lived here when I was a toddler. We happened to attend the same church that I've been talking about. And my brother was born here. Pat was here then. I find it staggering, really. Not just that someone would go to the same church for half their life. But that someone would so selflessly, quietly pray for so many people.

Years ago, Pat started praying for more men. Not for herself (!) If you've ever been in an Anglican church, you'll know that the common demographic doesn't include as many men as the general population. Also, most men tend to be older. Pat decided that she would pray for more young men to be involved at her church. She knew how brilliant men's contributions can be - to friendships, acquaintance-ships, families. So she prayed. Looking around the chairs this morning (I was going to say pews, but we've modernised), I could see at a glance how God had answered Pat's prayers in this matter. Lots of lads. Masses of men. Great gobs of grandfather-figures. Awesome.

My brother, who would've been one of the Pat-prayed-for babies, is also an awesome man. I'm not crediting Pat entirely with that. I'm just saying.

Tuesday will see our church filled with people celebrating Pat's life. Ninety years of being gorgeous. One of her last requests was for flowers, especially yellow ones. So tomorrow I'm going to raid my garden of every last daffodil and jonquil I can find. I'm also going to prune my just-flowering magnolia. Take down a boot-full of blooms for Pat.

No more pain for Pat. Just meeting her saviour and hearing, "Well done, good and faithful servant".

Shame can stop us from talking about things. So can guilt. For people like me, who like to talk about almost everything, this can feel awful. Others wouldn't dream of speaking about things close to their hearts, or buried down deep. Shame is not the same as guilt. [A very good book - John Piper's Battling Unbelief - helped me understand the difference.] Misplaced shame is feeling bad about something when we are not actually at fault. Depression is a prime example. I know I initially felt ashamed to be diagnosed with it.

I've never been one to shy away from talking...about pretty much anything. I'm a legend at oversharing, faux pas, feet-in-my-mouth, socially awkward conversations. Sex? Politics? Religion? Yes, I'll talk about all three, at once if you like, with people I have only just met. Well, I'm not quite that bad. But I'm close to it.

I've been upfront about my depression from the time I came to terms with my diagnosis. (I distinctly remember not being able to ring my parents when it first became a possibility that I had Post-Natal Depression (PND). Instead I sent a text message calling it 'mild PND'. Bollocks. It wasn't mild. But I didn't want to scare them, and I didn't want to be 'weak'.) Once I became sure of the diagnosis, and understood it a bit better, I was unsurprised to hear that many people don't talk about their depression. That was red-rag-to-a-bull for me, and I promptly decided I wasn't going to hide it, minimise it, shy away from talking about it. This presented other issues of course. I do need to be a little bit careful who I unburden myself to. Even writing this blog gives me pause at times. Because depression can be depressing! And awkward. Mental illnesses in general are less well understood by the general populace (as compared with physical conditions). They are more confusing for sufferers too. Because mental illnesses change perception, even of themselves.

I'm emerging from the 'mud' these days. I have a bit more experience, and a bit more distance, and consequently clarity. That's why I can write about it. If you had asked me to write this while I was in the thick of it, you would not have wanted to read it. I kept journals. Their raw contents are not fit for publication. I do intend to share some contents. But not yet. To be honest, they are scary to read. They are not me. They are another me.

Which brings us right back to the quandary of sharing. What to share, how to do it, and with whom? I don't have all the answers. I do know that talking about depression is important. And I do know that others have found it helpful to read about it or to talk about it with fellow sufferers.

There is a growing feeling that the media also needs to play a part in removing the stigma of mental illness. There is a chance that media laws may soon change to allow suicides to be reported as such. Currently, the media refrains from reporting suicide, ostensibly for fear that it will encourage more people to attempt it. But this silence is not actually helping. Suicide is still the leading cause of death for young men in Australia.

A new men's mental health campaign has recently started up here (http://softenthefckup.com.au/). I'm still a fence-sitter about its approach (it won't suit many men). But I applaud the message: men need to unburden themselves of stress and despair rather than bottling it up until they can no longer stand it.

I've been reading a very graphic, moving blog lately which chronicles one young Aussie mum's story. Lori's husband committed suicide after suffering a violent psychosis and she is left with their two very young children. She is an advocate of talking. If you are feeling brave, her blog is here. It is not for the faint-hearted. This woman has guts. What she has been through is hideous, and I'm amazed that she can write about it. But she is helping others by doing so. Her message is: speak.

So I do. So we should. Obviously not out of our experience-zone, but definitely, at times, out of our comfort zones. Because when it comes to depression, there is no sense in blaming, or feeling shame. It is what it is. It is complex, and different for everyone, and it is personal. But recovery can be a community effort. And it starts with knowledge, awareness, and talking.

"Taking care of your personal appearance can make you feel better about yourself, give you more confidence...a spring in your step, a readiness for anything." Women's magazines (yes, I am going to criticise them in general, even though it is a cheap shot), advice from advertising, marketing, that silly shallow voice in your head. If you just dress nicely and put on a bit of makeup, you'll feel better. Hands up if you've heard it all before.

Well, my hand is thrust skyward like a teacher's pet's. And sometimes, this advice is true. Feel better, look better; look better, feel better. The bone of contention today is this: when you become a mumma, your appearance is not personal anymore. For a while, at least.

My personal appearance? I do beg your pardon, but I'm left barely a moment to myself to even visit the toilet, let alone have a shower, dress in anything resembling an 'outfit', or do any cosmetic-waving whatsoever. Also, these things cost money. Having given up paid work to herd cats raise kids, I don't have quite enough to splash around on this season's faux-minky-doo-blinky-whatsit. I do, however, have this charming (black) long-sleeved t-shirt with snot on it, which I would be quite happy to wear over my jeans that don't quite fit anymore, if I just give it a sponge touch-up. Go shopping? Well, thank you so very much for that sparklingly generous suggestion. Shall I go on a Saturday so that I don't have to drag two or three reluctant maningerers with me? (Yes I did make that word up: it's an amalgam of 'whingers' and 'malingerers', for those with an etymological bent.)

Ok. I'll stop it. I'm just stroppy today because my snotty almost-two-year-old will not nap, and my seven-year-old is home from school early (also snotty) The five-year-old better not get snotty or I'll have conniptions.

Sometimes, a mother's appearance is actually 'corporate' as opposed to 'personal'. Her man has loved her into a different shape. Her babies have changed her boobies, her toddlers have used her as a climbing-frame. Her older kids have run her a little bit ragged. So let her relax and dag-it-up for a season if she needs to. Soon, those charcoal bags under her eyes will be replaced with crinkles, and she'll be sporting a charcoal handbag instead. (O, gosh, no. Not 'sporting'. Erk.) Ok, she'll be carrying it, with a picnic-face on. (O, no, not 'picnic-face'. That chocolate bar add from a few years ago called the picnic bar 'ugly'; it makes her sound ugly instead of sunny-faced happy.) Ok. She will be looking ALL NICE and with SOMETHING NEW TO WEAR. (That will have to do.)

Right, the advicey-bit is here: if your friend/self/significant other is looking shabbier than usual, remember, in interior decorating: Shabby Chic is great.

"Shabby Chic is a form of interior design where furniture and furnishings are either chosen for their age and signs of wear and tear or new items are distressed to achieve the appearance of an antique. At the same time, a soft, minimalistic, and feminine feel is emphasized to differentiate it from regular vintage decor; hence the "chic" in the name." 

(Yes, I Wikied it. Four years of Uni and now most of the time I use Wikipedia and Google for research.) 


Note the key-words above: age, signs of wear and tear, distressed combined with soft, minimalistic, feminine, chic. And the most important word: chosen. Yes. Chosen. 


I now consider my changed-bits and tired-lines to be 'badges of honour', thanks to a smart suggestion from a friend a few years ago. I'd rather be chosen than selected, soft than hard, distressed than cosseted. If there is one thing I have learnt recently, it is that when things are easy, cooshy, I don't learn very much at all. 

Years (and years) ago, my brother and I (rather sadly) played a computer golfing game. Our shots would often hit the trees, roll into bunkers, or miss the fairway by half a lunar mile. There was a completely hilarious commentary kept up by two faceless american-accented men. Any time we would hit a tree, one would remark to the other, "Looks like he hit the tree, Jim." Exactly the same words, and tone, each time. We were in fits of hysterics the first few times it happened. So after a while we gave up on trying to sink the little ball in the hole. We just basically tried to whack it at the trees. So much juvenile fun.

This week, when I joined my local gym, I tweeted to my brother, "Looks like I hit the gym, Tree." He was bemused, and everyone else was most likely mystified or hurriedly clicking the 'Unfollow' button. [Ah, no. I followed another loony one.]

Exercise and I have been...estranged... for the last decade or so. Let us list, very quickly, the things that are responsible for this: year12-boyfriend-fiancee-husband-goodfood-studying-sedentaryjobs-threekids-depression-and-not-enough-partridges-or-pear-trees. Got that? I particularly like the way I managed to blame James four times (boyfriend-fiancee-husband-goodfood). No I don't. I hate it. The whole list of excuses annoys me. But the fact of the matter is, there are good reasons sometimes why we don't hit the gym. And sometimes it's because we're actually busy trying to sink a hole-in-one. Other worthy things often take our focus away from good habits.

The link between exercise and good mood has been made many times. Endorphins get bandied about a lot in conversation. For the last few years, during my most depressed times, I have seriously struggled not to hit people who have suggested that all I need is exercise and I'll feel very different. Depression not only disturbs your mood, but also your energy levels, your motivation, your thought-processes, your sleep, and your concentration.

Post-natally, there are also issues for those contemplating exercise. A weirdly-different body, possibly still recovering from major trauma (caesareans, internal injuries, tears), often breastfeeding (where-o-where to find time to be fitted for a good sports bar in size 14Double-Bazillion, or the suitcase of cash to pay for one? Can I get a bra for my other floppy bits too?), perhaps with continence issues, and so, so tired. When a walk doesn't feel like 'enough', people like me think if we can't do exercise 'properly' we won't do it at all. Add to that the predictable pressure of comparison to the strange breed of famous women who 'lose' their 'baby weight' and 'get their body back'. You end up with motivation in the negative. Yes, there are many women who are wonderful and manage to ignore all the pressure, who are not perfectionists and don't hold to the all-or-nothing imperative, and just get on with things. And there are many women who are wonderful, and falter.

I faltered. In some ways, I'm glad. I ate well, and that fuelled three years of breastfeeding (one for each child) very well. Many depressed people go off food and struggle to eat healthily. If I ever go off my food you will know that I'm at death's door. Food and I are good friends (except when I'm in the early stages of pregnancies, of course). Plus, food gives us mums the energy we need for this demanding job.

But exercise has been largely missing from my life. I am now convinced that it is also going to be an important part of my recovery process.

So, I have joined the gym. As a side note, this has coincided with a reduction in my medication. So far, so good. Brilliant, actually. Far from wanting to hit the people who suggest endorphins will help, I now want to high-five them. It's true. How annoying.

Of course, if you know someone is clinically depressed, it's not a good idea to go in all-guns-blazing and tell them exercise will create a smooth path to wellness. They might hit you.

How can you not notice you are depressed? It's fairly easy, for a time.

When you have two children under two, life is very, very tiring. All of the time. For the first year or so. When you're in the thick of that, you don't see the end. You don't know whether things will ever settle down again. The 'now' becomes your life, and you might just lose the ability to believe that things will ever change.

After the birth of my second daughter, I was on a complete high for two weeks. I didn't get the usual baby-blues. The labour and birth had gone quite well, really. My recovery was quick. The baby was gorgeous. We had bonded. That seemed to me to be a crucial indicator of how things were going. If you were going to get post-natal depression, you were going to be one of those mothers with a) a difficult baby, b) no support, c) a traumatic delivery to recover from, or d) an inability to form a bond with your baby. None of those boxes was ticked for me. I had: a) a fairly easy-going baby, b) very good support - my husband James took about 5 weeks off work, c) smooth delivery, and d) instantaneous bonding. Even the breastfeeding was going well. (And breastfeeding is NOT a piece of cake.)

I was, however, tired. I'd been mildly anaemic during the pregnancy, and also extremely nauseous. My beloved grandmother had also died very early in the pregnancy. I had had to telephone my parents, who were in Alaska at the time, to tell them. It was 4am their time. It was the most terrible phone call I have ever had to make. Although I went to the funeral, I think the grieving was somewhat muted; my mind and body were busy dealing with the next generation. I did miss my Nana terribly. I still do. But I was comforted by knowing that my lovely Dad had seen her before flying to Alaska, and had told her about the baby I was carrying.

And now that the baby was here, I was tired. Have I mentioned tired? And exhausted? Ok. So I was very tired.

One night my husband put his hands on my shoulders, hoping a hug might ease some of my burden of weariness. I jumped and shrugged him off with terrifying rapidity. It was an unconscious reaction, and one which shocked both of us. For James, it confirmed some suspicions. He brought me a large book, and opened it to the Post-Natal Depression pages. He gently said that he thought I might have PND. I looked at him blankly, furious at I-didn't-know-what. Then I determinedly read the pages he had referred to.

I had read these pages before. Kaz Cooke's KidWrangling is an amusing and enjoyable read. Like all well-prepared mothers, I had read the PND material so that I could be ready to spot any warning signs. But that had been months ago. Now, when I read the checklist, I cried.

Only two tears squeezed themselves out and landed on my cheeks. They didn't even have the momentum to roll downwards. They just stopped there in their tracks. Inside, it felt like I was sobbing. But nothing much was coming out. There was a dam wall of anger and confusion blocking it. James knew, though. The lack of protest on my part was disconcerting for him.

One of the things I'm grateful for is that Kaz Cooke's book had a wide range of possible symptoms of PND in it. It actually made me feel a bit better to realise that there could be something deeper going on than just being desperately tired all the time, and quite possibly a terrible person - or worse: a bad mother. Because, for me, the single biggest symptom of depression was anger. I don't mean hormonal grumpiness, either. I mean full-on rage. Mostly inside my head, but sometimes, dangerously, leaking out into my dealings with my beautiful daughters. And making me shrug off the love of my life.

to be continued...

What has happened to me is by no means uncommon. My story is not all that simple, although nobody's ever is. At least to me, it was nowhere near predictable. Maybe wiser people saw it coming. but no-one likes to cast doubt, or to wear the doom-sayer's mantle. So there was no real warning that I could hear buzzing on the airwaves.

I'm writing it. I hope it will help others. Sometimes we must learn by doing. At other times, we may dodge a bullet if someone has handed us a little piece of Kevlar just at the right time.

Backstory? Yes. There should be some. At the risk of skimping, I'm going to rush through this bit. I may come back to it later. Just picture me as an idealistic young woman for whom first pregnancy and early motherhood went fairly smoothly. Note the loving, supportive, actively-involved and fully-employed young lawyer who is my husband, standing just next to me. The cute little mini-version of him toddling around is our first daughter. We think she's fairly easy at this stage, because she sleeps fairly well at night. And isn't that what people talk about most?

We buy our first house, just as we embark on 'trying for' another baby. The day we move I don't feel very well. I'm dizzy. A few weeks later we realise we didn't have to try very hard for another baby. We are blessed.

The second pregnancy is nauseating. It is virtually impossible to describe how bad 'morning sickness' (VERY insulting name for it!) can be. You know that queasy feeling when you have gastro? Imagine that not really going away for months on end. That's some kind of approximation anyway.

But I cope. It's hard, because the one-year-old is demanding, and not at all good at daytime naps. (I'm very good at daytime naps. It's my gifting.) We live far away from family, although we have some very good friends. We get there.

I can tell you the exact moment it all began to unravel. I was at my Mums' Group. [Whatever bad press such groups have received, let me tell you that mine was a stellar bunch of completely wonderful, warm, genuine and real friends. We met for six years and still keep in touch.] Ok, so I was at Mums' Group having a cuppa. The toddlers (approaching two years of age) were playing nearby and I was breastfeeding my second daughter; she was a perfect little two-week old.

A friend of the host dropped in, and marvelled that I was 'out and about' by myself with two children under two, a couple of weeks after giving birth. I basked in this admiration. I considered myself a strong person, and able to cope with a lot. This was the kind of affirmation that sustained me, and to some extent contributed to my identity. Not good.

The friend asked about the labour - four and a half hours, I told her. "Yeah, Sal coughs them out!" someone said. I laughed, but a penny dropped. Perhaps my front - the one I wasn't actually aware of until that moment - worked so well that it even persuaded my friends that I was finding all of this easy. People were talking about labour being easy for me. I would concede to 'uncomplicated' and 'relatively short'. But NOT, emphatically NOT EASY.

Nor was having two kids. I'd always imagined that two wasn't many. But when my husband went back to work, I realised I was out-numbered. And that could be dangerous.

That very afternoon my toddler ran onto the road while I stood on the footpath helplessly holding my new baby. I was distraught, and overwhelmed suddenly with feelings of failure. The 'what-if's were quite insistent. That morning, my eldest hadn't wanted me to buckle her into her car seat, and suddenly that mattered too, and the feeling of rejection stung. Now I sort of shrivelled up inside a brain of rage. I was all contained within a blanked face. And I didn't really notice.

to be continued

"One of the things I love about you is your wanton abandon," my husband said. Don't be concerned, I know you're probably thinking this will be the most hideous over-share in the history of blogging. But honestly, I was washing up at the time. James' reaction was ironical, and in response to my suggestion that we have a cup of Earl Grey tea and eat chocolate in front of Doctor Who, "...it being Saturday night and all". 

A friend, a lovely friend, who blogs here, found my blog yesterday. Being a kind and helpful sort, he recommended that I get all technical and track visitations. (To my blog, that is. Nothing extra-terrestrial going on here.) Will was kind enough to send me a little tutorial via Twitter, so that I could, you know, quickly and easily add the tracker. 


An hour. Blerk. I don't understand HTML at all. I mean, I completely admire it, and I find all those computer-whizzy people quite astounding and interesting. I have one friend who tweets about it, and I don't understand a single syllable, but I enjoy reading his tweets nevertheless. (One likes to feel that one associates with the intelligentsia.)


I began to wonder what it was about the HTML that I didn't like. Was it the <arrows> and strange fragments of not-words? Was it the blank spaces which, as I later discovered, as just as important as the letters? I think it was the feeling of being in a half-familiar world. A world which, given half a day's tutorial, I technically could understand, but which I had no interest in learning about. 


Limits to knowledge annoy me - always have. I can remember vividly learning as a small child that in heaven, when Jesus sets everything to rights, we will understand everything we need to know. "I'm in!" said my soul, and the rest is (complicated) history. 


Limits to understanding also frustrate me. One of my pet hates as a child was being misunderstood. In truth, this is still a problem for me. And I can see that trait in my eldest daughter too. It's linked somewhat to a strong sense of justice. But that's a story for another day.


Several events have thrown me lately. I posted a photo of my childhood teddy on facebook last week. My Dad saw it and corrected the spelling of his name. It seems, for thirty years, I have thought my teddy was Ralphy. In fact, he is named after a dog in Richard Adams' Plague Dogs. And so, it turns out that my teddy is in fact called Rowfy. It's a similar pronunciation. All these years I have just thought my parents didn't really annunciate their 'l's very clearly (sorry Mum and Dad). As I remarked to my sympathetic sister, "I feel almost as if I've found out I'm adopted!" Of course, this is a completely over-the-top remark, but it does tip its hat toward the depth of surprise I was experiencing. 


So, what have we learnt? (Erhgh. That phrase doesn't half give me the shivers!) Several things, which probably could be written out in a little poem, but won't be, because I've other important, cheese-related articles to be writing.

• Learning is a lifelong and worthy pursuit.
• Knowlege is wonderful, but until that Great Day, we won't ever have enough for our own liking.
• When faced with uneasiness, we could perhaps let go of perfectionism, or whatever else is getting in our way, and learn to learn like a child again.
• To knit.

There is a delightful little kids' TV show called Peppa Pig. There's Peppa, there's Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig, and Peppa's little brother, George. In one episode, Peppa has a 'secret password' that Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig must guess. This turns out to be 'Daddy's Big Tummy'.


So this evening, as I was putting the girls to bed, my way was blocked, and I tried 'Daddy's Big Tummy', and it worked. Anyone who knows James will understand the irony of this password in our household. On the way back out of the room my way was blocked by a different daughter, and the password had changed. So, naturally enough I tried 'Mummy's Big Bottom', and it worked.


Middle daughter got the giggles.
"Daddy doesn't have a big tummy!" She said.
"No," I assented, "he doesn't".


There proceeded a longish pause before I added the predictable self-doubting dialogue.
"I notice you didn't say that Mummy doesn't have a big bottom," I said.
"No," assented the Assessor.
"Does this mean you think my bottom is big?" I ventured.
"No," she assured me, "not very big."
I felt relieved. Until she continued thus: "It's not a very, very, very, VERY big one Mummy."


Marvellous.


And this may be why I have a certain fondness for my laptop right now; it lets me choose my own passwords.

A Long Time After


A bit of a working title. It's an idea James and I have had, to write (perhaps together?) about our experiences of depression. It sounds depressing, I know, but the idea would be to make it extremely practical and readable; something that anyone could pick up and get something out of. Anyone who would like to know more about depressive illness, parenting, marriage, and surviving all three. And all the bits in between.


The working title comes from something one of the girls said...about them being born so close together, and their brother being "a long time after". One reason for a larger age gap between second and third children was my first incidence of depression, which began during my second pregnancy, but was only diagnosed when my second baby was about two months old. 


It also has to do with the fact that sometimes we only have profound realisations "a long time after" events. Just as we only think of that witty riposte long after we have finished a banter with someone, our brains often continue covertly to cogitate on happenings, only dishing up 'the goods' later on.


So, just as Kel Knight on Kath and Kim dictated his "idea for a sausage" using his trusty dictaphone, I intend to use this space to start some drafting.