25th February 2018
On the difficult days, when the world’s on your shoulders,
remember that diamonds are made under the weight of mountains.
Well I had a lovely morning yesterday, just about to finish
off my meeting when my boss walked in and gave me my diamond coach award for
2017, that’s my 5th, it can sit on the window sill with my Jean
Nidetch award and I can smile at it every morning. It was lovely to have members there to
celebrate with me, my bestie was there by coincidence too which was a bonus. It was the end to what had been an
interesting week of meetings.
As much as I love my job, I’m really looking forward to a
day off today, I have lunch planned with my besties, then an evening of relaxation
with my mom. I will do a couple of hours
housework before I go out, that’s enough adulating for one day though.
I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few weeks, I’ve
been working on getting my balance back, I can’t remember what I’ve actually
said in my blog and what I’ve not but my life has changed an awful lot over the
last year or so, I’ve gone from being a single lady who lives with her best
mate who’s her mom to being that moms full time carer and I’m absolutely okay
with that because I love her and I’m happy to do it. However, it’s all different, throw in
middle-aged hormones and peri-menopause and the fact that I’m losing my best
friend one day at a time and at times it can be a little overwhelming.
In my meeting this week we’ve talked about ‘self-support’
not just with losing weight but with life, when life’s easy – weight loss is
easy, when life’s hard or has its problems – weight loss isn’t so easy. Once
we’d talked about the obvious ways to support yourself, I mentioned knowing
when to ask for help. The thing with so many
of us is we just keep going, we keep saying ‘it’s okay - I’ve got this’ when
actually we haven’t, we’re struggling.
To make matters worse, we don’t just keep trying to stay on top of everything
we’ve got to do, we still offer to help others, oh yeah, “Hey, I’m drowning
over here, trying to stay on top of all my crap, but what about I take on some
of your crap too – what do you want me to do?”
Yep, we do that because we’re helpful human beings who want to do things
for others.
Because I’m an open book and I’ll tell anyone about me, I
told my members how I’ve been struggling and I’m lucky enough to work for a
company who support their employees with resources to help with life’s
challenges and to support our health and well-being. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was
going to use this resource, because I had realised I needed support of
some kind, so I called the helpline and asked for help. I had to answer some questions, the obvious
one that made me smile was do you drink?
Erm, yeah! How much do you
drink? My reply, ‘More than I should,
not as much as I’d like too!’, and the other one was along the lines of ‘are
you suicidal’ but more subtle in the wording, erm no I’m not because then I
wouldn’t be able to drink at all would I.
Anyway, the outcome was they said I was eligible for telephone
counselling, 6 sessions to be exact and I had the first one last Monday, with
my next tomorrow. Now I’ve never had
counselling before so didn’t know what to expect, but I needed to talk to
someone completely external to everything and process my thoughts so I was all
for it. I’ve had life coaching before
which was really good, but expensive and I know if I had to pay for counselling
that wouldn’t be cheap either so I’m grateful to my employers for this
service. One of the reasons why they’ve
made it into The Times Top 100 companies this week.
The first session gave me plenty to think about, I processed
quite a lot of stuff, obviously my situation with mom was one of the reasons I
needed to talk but one of the things reinforced was I am more than happy to be looking
after mom, something I do miss though is spontaneity, I’ve always been a spontaneous
person and my mom’s illness has taken that away from me. In the past, I’ve woken up at 4am on a Sunday
morning and thought, I could be in wales by 7, let’s go climb a mountain. I can’t do that now as I have to make sure
mom has her medication, etc etc. I miss
that spontaneity. Supporting myself in
this situation means working out what I can do, and what I can do is what I
have done, I’ve contacted my colleagues to see who can cover each of my
meetings at short notice if I need them covered. This gives me the option to say hey, can you
cover my meeting in the morning, I want to go climb a hill. Okay I may not make Wales, but the Wrekin is pretty
awesome too. That’s called a compromise.
Which brings me to the other realisation I’ve had this
week. I don’t like being a grown
up! Moms illness has meant I’ve had to
grow up another notch and it sucks. We
were always a tag team, I’d work, earn, cook, and shop and mom would clean and
do the washing. Now I have to do it all
and it sucks – being a grown up sucks!
Yep, I need to parent myself now and say Bev, you don’t have
to like doing it, you just gotta do it.
The washing up, the laundry, the hovering, the walking of the dog, other
grown-ups round the world have been doing it for a very long time and now it’s
your turn! Suck it up buttercup…
Meh! Wateva! It still
sucks!
I’m working a full time job, being a full time carer and
keeping house. There are plenty people
out there doing the same or similar, full time working moms, full time single
working moms and dads, so many people out there working hard and being a grown
up.
Over the last few days though, I’ve been reminded of how
precious time is and how much I will miss my mom when she’s gone so I want to
spend as much time with her and my friends as possible, and as much as I love
my work - my award yesterday is testament to that but more so than the award
were the members this week who actually came up to me at the end or messaged me
to say how this week’s meeting had helped them – I need to get the balance
between the two just right so that I can be the grown up that keeps on top of
the household tasks that do have to be done (I’m not talking about being super
clean, OCD household), enjoy my work and still have time for my friends, my family
but also for me – I love to be alone and do things on my own.
I’ve had to make a tough decision, I’m working too many
hours but I know it’s right for me and at the moment, I need to think about me
first, too many spinning plates and one of them is going to break if I don’t. As long as I can pay my bills, survive and
have a little left for niceness that’s all that’s important in my life right
now, I can’t buy time and that’s what I need most of all.
So today, I will be completely work free, enjoy the company
of two amazing ladies at lunchtime, enjoy a drink or two and come home and
chill with mom.
BeYOUtiful, remember to take care of you because you’re
important too and never be embarrassed to ask for help – no one has all the
answers, no one is strong all the time, no one needs to do it all alone. We’re all a little broken but that’s what
makes us so BeYOUtiful. xx
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