Slow Grind

I don’t know what it is, but I feel like I’m grinding to a stop again. Work is slow, but that’s fairly normal. Family life is an uphill push, but that is also normal, particularly during grey, wet and cold February. Covid has kept Y and me isolated, with only a few brief chats in the doorway with the excuse of running an errand, but masked up and at a distance over the last 2 weeks.

I started writing this last night. Since then, Y has tested negative and we were able to spend some time together again. I’ve also had a therapy session, hunting for whatever made me feel overwhelmed and ready to creep away somewhere and hide.

We got somewhere when I started listing the things that felt like they were too heavy for me to carry on my own. My daughter and her emotional instability came up quite a few times.

She has had a hard couple of weeks. First, I misunderstood how she felt about her half term school report, which is better than it has been, but not great all the same. French remains a big problem. She was pleased with herself, but I misunderstood her, because of a typo and because I was doing three things at once again. For her, it seemed as if I was only seeing the weaknesses, although she’s overcome so many of her previous difficulties. Although the misunderstanding was quickly resolved, she had still been hurt and it left a bit of a dent.

Then she had her first therapy session. It was hard for her, although the session centered around gathering the facts – where she lives, who her siblings are, parents, grandparents, school history, interests and talents, etc. Just being reminded that she is struggling with certain things left her utterly exhausted for the rest of the day and beyond.

Her reaction and the fact that such a small issue had thrown her off track so forcefully put me into a kind of hyper alert state, trying to read her every move and be there for her if I could at all be of any help, tracking her energy levels and moods and trying to be wherever she might fall before she falls.

I had already noticed that she mirrors me. If I’m having a bad phase, it rubs off on her and pulls her down. Apparently, it works the other way around too. I mirror her as well, and maybe that is why everything started feeling too heavy for me.

My therapist had something helpful to say about the whole thing. Of course there are deeper layers to this, but he said that first of all, what I can help with is calm. And to help her calm down, I have to calm myself, or even better, stay calm right from the beginning.

So next time I’m going to try and put extra focus on being calm myself. I don’t usually struggle with being calm. In fact, I’m so used to people admiring my calmness and feeling calmed by me doing absolutely nothing apart from being me, that I don’t always notice when I’m not calm – especially if I become unsettled little by little.

I hope that just knowing that it is a good idea to seek calm whenever I’m confronted with something that could be unsettling will help us both, my daughter and me. If there’s one thing I’m really afraid of, it’s spiralling out of control myself when the kids need me. Being ready, knowing what to do to prevent that from happening and maybe even removing that fear altogether will be a huge relief.

Passion

I’ve been sort-of challenged to think about my passion by a dear family member. It got me thinking – what is my passion compared to what it used to be?

I have no trouble telling you what my passion used to be – it was music, classical music in every shape and form. I loved finding the essence of a piece, learning about the composer and trying to find evidence of their life and experiences in their music. I tried to put myself in their shoes, getting as close as possible to how their music was intended. In doing so, I quite often learned things about myself, exploring different ways of feeling emotions, and connecting previously unconscious thought patterns to patterns I found in the music.

I’m sure I could rekindle that passion again if I chose to, and found enough time to dedicate to music again. The same goes for cellular biology. I loved mucking about in the lab, reading up on the latest scientific discoveries in the area, and pouring over the results of experiements. I still get quite excited when I get to explain something to the kids. I’ve had loads of fun explaining rna vaccines to people who were sceptical of the whole idea, and showing them how elegant and beautiful the whole thing is. But again, I’m not making the time to read the latest papers, and I can only dream of one day getting back into it and studying for a phd in the field – a dream I put to rest in favour of moving the family to France to start our home education journey. And earning enough money to support the entire family of course.

My passions have become a lot more subtle and abstract over the years. I love being a helpful presence to others. I burst with pride each time one of my children comes to me for help, whether that’s help to understand something, or help with sorting their feelings out, or help overcoming their fears and doubts. I truly enjoy helping an overwhelmed friend calm down and see what positive side there is to see. I get a kick out of people on teams that I serve as a manager letting me know that they are happy being on my team. I dance a happy dance when I see people I’ve been nudging forward take big steps and grow. I’m ultimately proud when they refer back to me as the main reason they felt ready to take the next step. At work I can get quite passionate about building good software solutions too (my actual job as a product manager) – but in the end, it’s all about helping users and making their lives easier. On the other hand, I’m very bad at feeling interested in the financial success of the software – I really couldn’t care less about that part of my job…

I would love to do some proper, serious helping. Like foster parenting, or volunteering at a childrens home, or helping underprivileged kids with their education, or help overwhelmed single mums find their feet, or help grieving parents find their way, etc. Everytime I am close to writing an email though, I stop. I hardly have time and energy to get all my stuff done. I really can’t take on anything else at the moment without giving up on sleep, friends, the little music I do, running or work.

So for now, I’ll be content with the opportunities life offers without seeking new ones. And who knows, maybe one day I will go and get myself a phd.

Keeping Depression at Bay

Christmas last year was break down time for me. It started with a small trigger, which sent me into a spiral of mess. Heavy thoughts persistently roared through my head, shutting me down on the outside. All I could do was sit on the floor and fit the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together – it kept my fingers and my mind busy so that I wouldn’t listen to the accusations and blame flying around in my head too much, while I waited for the storm to pass.

Since then, I’ve got myself therapy, and I’ve learned to see depression like any other passing illness, like a cold. It comes, it feels horrible, but as a rule, you recover at some point. You may feel weak for a bit afterwards, but everything will be back to normal given time and patience for recovery – even if it takes weeks, months, or even years.

It raised its ugly head again this year. The combination of work being heavy and feeling done with the never-ending fights I have to have there, together with the days getting short and dark makes a small trigger a lot stronger than it would usually be.

On top of that, Y had been cancelling plans often, which robbed me of a wall of stability. By the time I brought it up because it was bothering me so much I couldn’t ignore it any longer, I had been collecting my injured feelings in a safe, locked place. When they came out, they were already a raging storm, and came as an attack out of the blue.

It’s a good thing I had a therapy session just after that. He helped me separate my inner reactions from the facts, and I’m beginning to understand myself better, and why some little things hurt me more than they should.

I feel like I saw the dark pit, and came right to the edge to look down – but I managed to stay out of it. I made some important decisions, I’m making an effort to make more connections with people and I’m taking part in real life instead of living in my head. Facebook and Instagram has disappeared off my phone. I am letting go of feeling every one of Y’s decisions as a reflection on how he might be feeling about me, about us. I know it’s not, so why let my very own patterns of feeling injured in certain situations make me form the worst possible assumptions?

I’m feeling quite proud of myself for staying out of it this time, although I was emotionally exhausted, and there was a trigger that could have sent me over the edge.

I’m still exhausted, but stable exhausted.

Bits and pieces

I really don’t know what I want to write about today, I just know that I want to write. Life is so quiet at the moment, although it isn’t of course. There’s my cousin’s cancer diagnosis. My daughters ongoing struggle with mental health. Watching my eldest get seriously worried over school. Helping my youngest through his big worries. There’s work, and the battle for trust that one faces as a new senior employee. There’s my stubborn issues with getting enough sleep.

On the upside, my daughter is amazingly resilient and is learning how to recover, and how to navigate her mind, even when it is playing evil tricks on her. My youngest is learning that having tough conversations and setting up boundaries is a good thing. My eldest is learning to be brave and face difficulties upfront, before they become bigger than necessary. I’m learning to trust myself at work, and to ask for help if I need it. I’m learning to get physical issues I can’t quite understand checked out, and am trying to model more trust in doctors for the kids (I’d rather they go to the doctors office more often than necessary and being overly insistent than ending up with a serious diagnosis of an advanced stage of disease as young adults). I’m also learning to just do things – like going out for runs, yoga and other things that do me good – and ignoring the reasons my mind throws my way on why it would be ok to skip these things just this once. I’m hoping that will help me get to bed, but I’m still waiting for that to happen.

Actually, there is one thing I’m really proud of. I’ve started practising the cello again, every day. I hadn’t been playing for a long time, only picking it up for orchestra rehearsals and maybe the occasional practise session before a concert with the orchestra. Naturally, I was getting worse and worse, and more and more unhappy at orchestra rehearsals and concerts.

Then, an unthinkable thing happend. I had a rehearsal to go to, and Y had stayed the night. Usually, if I have something to do and the kids are around, he clears off quite soon after we get up, but that time, he stuck around. He also insisted that I warm up at least, before heading to the rehearsal. I was very reluctant, mainly because I was so embarrassed of how bad I sounded by then, after such a long time with no practise whatsoever. But I did, because he was right. And it was terrible, embarrassing, and humiliating. He didn’t say or do anything to make me feel this way; it was all me. Anyway, after the rehearsal I felt awful, and decided I would have to give up altogether. I wrote to Y about my plan. And instead of agreeing (which I thought he would – he is a musician himself, he knows I sounded like crap! Have I mentioned that I feel incredibly lucky to have this gem of a person in my life?), he suggested not waisting all the time I had invested up until now and simply starting to pick the instrument up every day. Just for scales. Just 10 minutes. Anything really, as long as it included playing a few notes every day.

I did exactly that, still embarrassed, but he made me feel a lot better about myself. It’s been just over two months, and I have 3 bars left of the prelude to the first cello suite by Bach, one of my favourite pieces. I listen to it when I get frightened, because it calms me down and keeps my mind engaged and distracted from whatever is frightening me. I’m not playing it perfectly, but I’ve heard it worse too. I’ve gone from one scale to 10 of the 14 major scales, and I’m doing finger work with the metronome, all the while sticking to 30 mins practise a day max, so that I don’t get overwhelmed. And I keep calling myself back from having expectations. Having growing expectations ruins days that aren’t as good as the previous day, and that happens often enough. So it’s important to start each session without any expectations, and with a clean slate. It’s the only way for me to keep frustration out of it, and therefore ban the risk of giving up quickly.

So, there you have it. That’s what I’m doing. Trying to overcome the negative self talk, essentially. Trying to develop the habit of keeping it at bay. And trying to help the kids do the same, from a much earlier age than I started at.

New Job, New Me

Literally. I’m being a different person than I was in my old job.

In my old job, my work was very much appreciated, but I had a defined play field. I was also never considered a leader figure, although I led quite a bit. But I lead gently… I’m not noisy about it.

With my new job, I’m entering the company as a leader. I’m expected to visibly lead, not the gentle, quite coaxing type of leading I’m used to. ‘We’re looking for your guidance here’, or ‘Please change whatever you like ; meetings, processes, structures – anything’ or the scariest of all – ‘your experience will really help us with this’

I don’t feel experienced, nor ready to guide a product I know very little about, built by a team I hardly know the names of. I’m seeing things that could be improved, but I don’t feel comfortable changing things without understanding why things are the way they are.

So I’m making an effort to be bold, believe in myself, and overcome my habit of moving slowly to begin with, observing more than I contribute, desperately trying to work out how things work in this new environment.

This is the most adult I’ve had to be in my whole life, I think…

Proud of Myself

A few weeks ago, a headhunter wrote me a well researched and friendly message on LinkedIn, which is a rare occurrence. This lady had obviously read my profile (!), understood details of my experience (no!) and matched it with her requirements very well (unbelievable!).

…just for reference – usually, these messages refer to some knowledge I had 10 years ago, at a totally wrong level of expertise, and asking for a profile that is miles away from anything my profile suggests I might be moderately good at. These headhunters sometimes receive rude answers from me, if I can be arsed.

Anyway, now I’m in the middle of the interview process, and I’m feeling so empowered and proud of where I have got to professionally. I don’t need this job. They need somebody like me to fill it though, and I am bringing so much to the table.

All those years of struggling to make myself heard and of asserting myself and my ideas were not for nothing, because now I actually know what I’m talking about. I’m confident, I know what works and what doesn’t, and I know what I’m good at, and what I need support with.

I’m not striving to paint a glittering picture of myself, because if they don’t want me, I don’t need them anyway. I’m being totally honest and transparent, and they’re liking what they’re seeing (… mostly hearing) a lot.

It’s an amazing experience because I’m not trying to sell myself. It’s the ultimate confidence boost and changes the nature of the conversations completely.

It also changes how I position myself at my current workplace. I can compare myself to colleagues of course, but then, everyone who knows details about a product you don’t know so much about sounds like a wizard, especially if they use big buzzy words and play all the big company games right. It’s not the same thing, because you’re always centered around real problems, competing for people or resources, or visibility to higher management. With the knowledge that my profile is more than good enough, I’m so much more confident. I’m not the junior just-slipped-into-this-job girl. I’m good, and I know it.

I’m beginning to understand why empowered women are “dangerous” 😉

The Power of Past Experiences

Sometimes, I write a message to Y and it doesn’t get through for a couple of hours. The simple reason is that he’s not got reception. I don’t mind him not being available 24/7 in the least. I’m not either.

All the same, every time it happens, I get nervous and stressed.

What if I said something that hurt him, without noticing, and now he’s disappeared? What if the same thing is happening, as it happened just a few years ago?

I learned back then that the first disappearance was the end of all things I had hoped for. After that, it was just a continuous back and forth of disappearing and reappearing. This blog is a result of the turmoil that I was thrown into. In hindsight, I know that there was nothing to hope for after that first time.

Even though I know that Y and I talk things out, that he is a gentle person and that he is reliable and trustworthy, the experience of those sudden disappearances is deeply etched into my soul. Before that happened, I would never have dreamed of somebody simply disappearing from an active conversation, and blocking all possibilities for communication out.

It came so suddenly and without warning, and because of that, it shook me greatly. Because of that, I am now fearing it from Y, whom I trust completely.

It’s odd, recognising the mechanism that makes me feel unsettled whenever a message doesn’t get through, but not being able to do anything about it.

Time and patience is the answer of course. Time and patience has taught me that Y is trustworthy and stable. Time will also teach me that he and most other people don’t simply disappear as soon as a minor problem arises.

Birthdays

Some dates stick for a very long time, and some not at all. My mind works that way. I can hardly remember my youngest’s birthdate – I always think it’s a day earlier than he was actually born (and he might well have been born then, had it not been for an argument with t because he “wasn’t ready”) – but the boyfriend of my teenage years? Infallible.

D’s birthday is also one that has stuck, and it was today. His birthday was always a day on which the lies were particularly thick, as he chose to spend them with his girlfriend while telling me some tall story about why spending it with me was not possible. How blind I was. How naïve.

I’m happy that now, I can send a little birthday wish without giving it too much thought. It’s just a birthday wish to somebody who’s birthday is stuck in my memory. The only thing that is different is that I don’t ask about special birthday plans, because I wouldn’t believe the answer anyway.

Weird

I’m spending a lot of time on Duolingo at the moment, seeing whether I can come to grips with yet another language. Yep, Y’s language. It’s a language I had a (relatively unsuccessful) go at in my early 20s, so now it’s time to see whether I can actually learn it, just for the fun of it.

It feels a bit weird, as if I was repeating something I had better not repeat. I keep telling myself that this is different – I’m not learning it to be able to converse with the man’s child, of other family members. I’m not learning it because I want to be able to spend a lot of time in his country. I’m learning it because I’ve wanted to learn the language for a long time, I’m curious to see whether I can, and because when I feel confident enough, I shall have an awesome person at hand to ask silly questions, who I know has a good linguistic understanding and will be able to explain stuff to me.

So it’s different, but still feels very similar.

Of course I haven’t told Y yet. I first needed to prove to myself that I can make it beyond “hello, my name is Duo. I am an owl. How are you?”. I’ve done that now, but I can still only say things about cats drinking milk at the castle and owls coming in the house. Well, something like that. I don’t feel as if I can say anything useful yet. So it remains my little secret for now, just like it did then, until I feel comfortable.

Thank goodness I am sure that this time around, learning a language won’t lead to accusations of “being with somebody else”. Y and I are stable in that way.

Incidentally, Duolingo showed me D’s profile, and his abandoned attempt to use it to learn German. He follows one person, somebody with my name, with only one letter spelled differently. I would have been quite touched back then, if it had been me he was following. I suppose I am touched now, retrospectively.

98 Years of Memories

My grandfather, a teacher and later headmaster, is remembered for being kind, fair, and calm, a brilliant and invested teacher, educated, interested, and humble. He was much respected for his ability to remember his former pupils names and family histories, decades after they had left school and he had retired.

His former pupils tell stories of him driving them to school if they lived nearby, and giving them private tuition if they were struggling.

So many people have come forward with stories of how he was their best teacher, or how they associate happy childhood memories with him.

On top of that, he was a caring husband, caring for his wife until he physically no longer could be. She had Alzheimer’s, became more and more immobile and hardly knew who he was. And yet he dressed her, washed her, fed her etc without complaint. Later, when she was in a nursing home and mostly bedridden, he would visit her every day without fail, and during his visits, brought joy to the other residents too, by reading poetry, playing the flute, singing, and generally being a positive and witty presence.

But he didn’t stop there. He never forgot about himself, either. He was a supportive and progressive husband (my granny worked as a teacher too, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. He shared the housework with her, spending a lot of time in the kitchen cooking, preserving and baking the most delicious cakes. That’s a lot more progressive than many men are today…). With this, life was always full, but he never forgot to develop himself. He learned French, a bit of German, and much later on started learning Latin. He was interested in music, he sang in a gorgeous baritone, and played the clarinet and later had a go at the flute. But first and foremost, he was an artist. Before he had children, he went to art school in the evenings, and learnt from people like Sir Arnold R.A., who went on to design the Queen’s portrait which is used on coins and stamps. While his children were young, he naturally had less time for art, limiting himself to a couple of pictures a year, but picked up again after retirement. He even had a picture selected for an exhibition in Bristol, as well as selling the odd one here and there. He never settled, but was always reaching for something new with enthusiasm and true wonder.

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For me, he was always a kind and steady influence. He had thoughtful words for every hardship, and would always be welcoming of I turned up, with kids or without. He was involved with my kids too – he had a very clear picture of who each one was, although he only saw them every few years. He was concerned about their schooling, and relieved when they started going to school. He was delighted with my eldest for his ernest interest and manners, and looked forward to my daughter one day “doing something extraordinary”, which he wished to be a witness of.

He told me over and over again that I am an extraordinary woman – a mother, holding a challenging job in one field having studied a different field, and a performing musician. He told me, again and again, to hold my head high, and to just carry on what I was doing, because I was doing it right.

Life is wonderful, he used to say. He would say this through out the day, and always when it was time to say goodbye.

I think I have just realised who my role model is.