Sunday 10th February 2019

Anxiety, Panic, Stress, Worry hits the Britten house….

So lets start from the beginning….

I haven’t written since October last year as I’ve been a bit busy with the new job.  Needs must and all that – as I wrote in the last blog I needed to step up and help to get our finances straight and the only way to do this was to work more. Money worries were causing us so much stress and worry and I cannot just sit back and not help!

Hey, I like work, I’m a workaholic, easy I thought.  NOT! Not when you are me and not only start a new job, still work the old job, add in the bar work, take on some farm work (although this is recently), run a family and a home with 6 dogs, help support them all including my self employed husband build his business etc etc.  Oh, and try and cram in hospital appointments (for both myself and Lewis), relax time for myself and see my friends and family on my day off.  Not easy – relax and family time was loosing out.  Nothing is straightforward in my world – so much to cram in and not enough time as usual.

But, I have managed to last another year! Most memorable of the year was Nathan’s 18th birthday, Clover and Dill’s puppies and my most awful surgeries so far.  But we did it…..

We had a lovely christmas with the whole family….look at us all! Just getting this photo was hilarious!

And a great meal out in January to celebrate Lily and Kiri’s birthdays too…. love these lot so much…..

I’ve found it’s been a tough few months – I’ve worked hard to help get our finances in order.  Keeping busy helps take my mind off the pain but I’m ok. I’ve been helping Phil with his marketing and social media which has been great for his business and that’s building up which will then take the pressure off me – thank you all for your continued support.

Before I had cancer I would have just continued running on adrenaline and just work work work.  Tricky when I need to help support my family, pay the mortgage and bills, no good if my health goes bad again.  It’s always in the back of my mind whether stress and worry has contributed to me getting cancer.  Who knows? But I cannot sustain doing so much now.  My mind wants to but my body can’t and mustn’t.  Just can’t do it.  This is hard to accept but I can’t risk it. I need to look after myself much more now.

So what am I going to do about it eh??? Well I still need to work but we are going to have to get by on less cash.  Luckily my family like pasta! ha ha!

I decided to stop working at the pub on a regular basis – Lewis will take my Saturday shift and I give up the Friday evening – far too much to do a days work and then on for an evening shift.  But I will still cover shifts as and when needed to help out and cover when Lewis has his exams.  But nothing regular.

I take the difficult, and maybe stupid decision, to give up the stable new office job.  I’ve learnt new skills and I now understand behind the scenes at the college, met new lovely people, got used to working at Colchester, but missing the students terribly (and term time only working – yes I hate to admit it but my body needs that rest of school holidays!) So I am returning to Learning Support in a few weeks – what I love – still at Braintree and now at Colchester too.  I’ll be helping out in Media, English, Bricklaying and Sport – nice variety.

What else? I’m weaving willow at my friends farm – lots of you will have seen on facebook – please like our Earls Colne Farm page. I am enjoying this work so much – lots of fresh air, learning to weave living willow and I’m hoping to learn how to make fence panels soon. I love crafts!

But….

Best of all? We have a holiday to FLORIDA! I am beyond excited, I think we all are.  I will update on the next blog post on this.  But oh do we all need this holiday so much and it couldn’t have come at a better time!  This has been my target and focus to work towards – the end goal – it’s good to have something to aim for – holidays are great motivations!  We have all mucked in and saved up for this holiday together and we’ve done it!

But…. and there is always a but isn’t there!….

On Friday the school calls me (they have been amazing at Honywood supporting my family) to tell me that Freya needed picking up straight away – she’s really upset, had a terrible panic attack, which had left her shaken and feeling ill. Bless her.  She has been fine since my last surgery last summer – doing so well.  But I’ve not been about for her so much and things had built up for her.

I am at work.  So I call Phil (thank heaven for his self employment and flexible working now) to pick her up.  Meanwhile I video call her (while of course multitasking at my super busy last day at work in the office job) .  We talk, and message, she’s calmer and ok.  No trigger – just everything piling up and it’s just all too much for her – and don’t I know exactly how that feels!  Nothing specific, just everything.  She’s 13 – being a teenager is tough enough anyway.  I know I wouldn’t want to be 13 again!

So once home, we hug, we chat, and The Pig of Happiness comes out again (thank you Anne!).

I explain to her that most people feel like this a LOT of the time – it’s normal.  Some people have learnt to deal with everything better than others.  I’m still learning myself.  So for a young person it’s so much harder as they don’t have the life experiences. But what matters is how we cope and deal with it.

And this takes time to learn how to deal with this feeling and how to watch out for signs before she gets so bad again.

An anology (I think that’s the right word) is how it feels like you are on a downward spiral slide to the bottom of a steep dark hole – things pile up and down you go unless you can stop them.  I explained to her how she needs to learn how to help herself and ask for help as soon as things start to get difficult, as it’s so hard to climb back out of that hole if you’re right at the bottom and feeling so bad.  Sometimes it’s a gradual fall, sometimes, as I know all too well, you are pushed straight in with no warning and land with a horrible crash, head first at the bottom of the pit! That’s when something bad suddenly happens – like cancer! But with support – family, friends, fun stuff and one day at a time we don’t have to stay there – none of us!

There is so much help out there now – lots of talk about our mental health.  I know I’ve spoken about my crazy mind many times in this blog but everyone is different and my coping methods aren’t going to work for everyone.  But I do understand.  And she needed to remember she has so many people that want to help her.

So, we make spider diagrams to help with happiness and coping.  I am the queen of coping strategies aren’t I?  So I thought I’d share some of our points we made.

• Talk! It helps to talk – you then realise that so many people understand exactly how you feel to some degree – friends, family, even the dogs are great to talk to – great listeners too!
• Mindfullness! Yes we’ve all heard of it. But what is it?  I am the biggest worrier of all time, I’ve read lots of books to try and help myself, and I find that if I stop, make lists and think: “what is the worst that can happen or the chance of the worst happening” – put things in perspective, breath and work out how to deal with it.  I’m not perfect but I try my best. For Freya we look at downloading an app on her phone to help her too – CALM is a good one.
• Exercise! Release those feel good endorphins! Freya has been in her room a lot – it’s winter and she’s a teenager and has wifi!  But some exercise is good – walking with the dogs will be a good start – great for breathing in some fresh air to keep calm too!  Then we’ll move on to getting back swimming, gym and yoga together again. We are going to be doing lots of activities and walking on holiday so she’ll have a good start and before we know it will be spring! yay! love Springtime.
• Eat well! Freya, again like most teenagers has been eating rubbish – a lot! Not good for the mood swings, skin, energy levels anything.  Again, it’s that winter thing not helping.  So lets start with a bit more fruit or fresh juice, just add in some good stuff along with the chocolate ice cream and crisps! ha ha! Not too drastic to begin with, nice and gradual.
• Write and draw! She loves taking photos and drawing – she’s planning her new room design – a mood board of all the things she would like would be a good start.  Going forward, she could write down any worries or draw them in her art to express how she is feeling. Art therapy is great!
• Relax! Plenty of sleep (some earlier nights for Freya), but also plan some relaxing fun days – beauty therapies (we are starting with new eyelashes for our holiday and they look great – I feel like Daisy the cow – omg we love them, thanks Georgia!), shopping days, movie days – feel good movies with happy endings – plan lots of nice stuff with friends and family…..
• Friends and Family! (including the dogs!) – problems shared really do help – call on everyone around you.  Surround yourself with people that help you and not drain you.
• Listen to ABBA! We love a bit of Mamma Mia or the Greatest Showman in our house – in fact any uplifting music can help when you feel a bit fed up. Or just rock it out with some Rock! ha ha!

It’s a start – it’s good to have an action plan.  We’ll see how we go.  My new job will free me up some time to be around a bit more for her too – my family are everything to me.  It’s tough, she was only 9 when I was first diagnosed with cancer – she’s had so much to deal with so it’s not surprising it’s coming out now. It’s been hard for us all, but she’s our little one.

We lived next door to the Vicar of our village for many years – Viv!  In fact she was the first person other than myself, Phil and the midwife who met Freya when she was born at home! She had studied to be a Vicar later in life and I asked her one day what had made her decide to do this.  She told me that her husband had died young and she had the 2 children who were so little at the time.  She explained that she felt like everything was too much and she was literally hanging off a cliff by her fingernails and trying to claw her way back up – another analogy?  Anyway, she said she had this overwhelming feeling that she was being held up by a huge hand – God’s hand.  She believed in God and believed she could do it.  Then she knew she needed to help others back….. and she did! And she was wonderful at it!

I told Freya this little story to help her too as I think that if you believe in something higher out there, to help you through tough times, is good too.  For example I chat to my dad every day – in my head of course – he’s been gone for over 14 years and I am sure that he and the rest of my family are still there to help us.  It helps me to think that anyway.

Which brings me to this date – 10th February! Funny how dates coincide isn’t it – this was the date 4 years ago exactly that I was told the extent of the cancer – 4 years I’ve survived!  It was the day my lovely Auntie June died of cancer too.  A day none of us will ever forget.  We have been through so much.  But we also have a holiday soon and that makes everything ok. We need this as a family so much….

FLORIDA HERE WE COME!

And we are all going to be helping Freya to learn how to ride those waves life throws at us.  We are a team – we are a close family and we can continue to do this.  I think we’ve been riding a tsunami these last 4 years and it’s about climbing back onto that surf board and keeping afloat, and then surfing those waves…..