Fell on Black Days

In 2014, Robin Williams died from suicide by hanging. Growing up watching his movies, laughing until I hurt, building so much of my sense of humour around his jokes and many personas, his death hit me hard. He was supposed to be the happiest person on the planet; a man who brought untold joy to millions of people across the world, of all ages. But privately, he was in pain, and one day that pain became too much for him to bear. The public outpourings of grief were many and varied, and for a short time, we talked about depression and suicide more openly, honestly, and healthily. 

Since then, many other notable and influential public figures have died. Some had tremendous influence over formative years in my life, and like Robin Williams, their passings hurt me profoundly. The world continues without them, the sun rises and sets, rain falls, flowers grow, time passes, and people fade from tangible existence into fond but sad memories. Some might say it’s silly to feel so afflicted by the death of someone famous, but I challenge anyone to get from one end of life to the other without feeling moved when someone they admire passes away. 

Art is a perilously undervalued resource, generally by people who are not artists themselves. Film, music, literature, theatre, poetry, paintings and more capture that essence of life that is lost in the daily grind. It’s where we romanticise otherwise mundane tasks, how we communicate abstract experiences like falling in love, what we use to expose our feelings when verbalising them is impossible. It can express extremes of emotion that frighten us - lust, fear, anger, sadness - and help us heal when those feelings cause harm to us and those around us. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve lain in bed or on the floor, feeling confused and overwhelmed by life, listening to music that enveloped me, protecting me from being overcome by those feelings, and offering clarity where my own words were inadequate. That music and the artists who produced it became important to me as dear friends; confidantes in whom I could put my absolute trust and with whom I could be unashamedly myself, never needing to hold back on whatever I was feeling in those moments. 

The immense healing power I found there helped me through some of the darkest times in my life, reclaiming my sense of self and confidence to carry on facing the world one day after another. That’s something that is overlooked when we talk about depression and suicide - it doesn’t go away. If you experience depression and suicidal tendencies at a young age, it leaves a long-lasting mark on your mental health - a sort of muscle memory, but for your brain. Recently, I learned that the term for this is “passive suicidal ideation” - distinct from active suicidal ideation, in that you don’t consciously wish to die, but will still find that suicidal thoughts will pop up, out of nowhere. Just as you might casually realise you quite fancy a certain sort of biscuit, I will suddenly realise that I’d like to not be alive, and then the moment passes and I resume whatever I was doing. Perhaps I will be in the shower, midway through shampooing my hair and mentally setting out my tasks for the day, when I pause and fleetingly consider how much I would like to simply stop existing, before recommencing the ritual of lather, rinse, repeat. Reluctantly, I have come to accept that this is part of my spectrum of thoughts processes now and that I don’t need to be alarmed by it as long as I pay careful attention to my general state of being.

At 9 o’clock this morning, I picked up my phone to read a news alert reporting the sudden death of Chris Cornell, and I won't pretend that I was anything less than devastated. As many people who were teenagers in the 1990s, his music had played a significant role in my formative years, and Soundgarden had been one of the bands I immersed myself in, letting the music wash over me, his iconic gutteral howl cleansing me of the disarray of feelings that had overwhelmed me in that moment, while the grunge-meets-blues tempo and haunting guitar riffs soothed my distressed soul. 

Throughout today, I have revisited those albums, cautiously allowing myself to remember how and why they mattered so much to me as a teenager, reveling in the time that has passed since, and the occasions too numerous to count where I’ve listened to the same music for the sheer enjoyment of its sound. Heartache tempered with immense gratitude at having been alive at the same time as such a phenomenal artist has taken those of us with a similar relationship to his music on a painful, cathartic journey today. And as new broke later in the day that his death had been ruled suicide by hanging, a deep and profound sadness gripped me somewhere deep inside my chest. 

When an artist you admire passes away, you mourn for the skill they will never again share with the world. Chris Cornell was a breathtaking musician, unparalleled vocalist, and groundbreaking songwriter, but beyond that, there are untold people tonight who are mourning not just for the music, but for the way it touched, or even saved their lives, and for the fact that we couldn’t repay that debt. Because we know those moments, where the world is too big, too dark, too scary - where you can’t bear it for another day, hour, or minute. We know the absolute anguish that smothers you, the blackness that consumes you. Losing someone who saved you without ever meeting you or saying a word directly to you, and losing them to the thing that you’ll always be fighting, breaks your heart.

Chris Cornell, 1964 - 2017

• Samaritans (116 123) operates a 24-hour service available every day of the year. 
• Childline (0800 1111) runs a helpline for children and young people in the UK. Calls are free and the number won't show up on your phone bill.
• PAPYRUS (0800 068 41 41) is a voluntary organisation supporting teenagers and young adults who are feeling suicidal.

So no-one told you life was gonna be this way....

Friendships are strange things when you really think about it. How do you decide to align yourself with this person and not another? How many of us have friends that we've known since we were children, people we would trust with our deepest, darkest secrets or could turn to in a heartbeat over a crisis? Or people who feel they have no friends at all? Acquaintances, yes, but not friends. How do you even go about making friends as an adult?! You can't just walk up to someone in the street and say "hey! Wanna be my friend?". It works when you're 8 years old; not so much when you're 28.

What about when friendships turn sour? This week I reached five years since speaking to the person who, for 20 years, had been almost a sister to me. I don't want to dwell on the whys and wherefores of the relationship breaking down, but it occurred to me that five years on from when we stopped being friends, I still feel as raw and hurt as I did when it happened. Isn't that strange? I've gotten over romantic encounters more easily! Heck, one year after leaving my eldest son's father, I was free of any residual hurt or feelings towards him! A friendship breaking down feels somehow more.... I don't know. More something.

ETA: how's this for ironic. I write about this friendship for the first time, and as I log into Facebook for a cheeky break, wham! there's a load of photos of her with a mutual friend. Ha. 

The realisation that I miss this friendship so much got me thinking about what friends actually mean to each other. It's taken me a long time to let my guard down and really open up to other friends but I'm getting there. For a long time I kept the defences up just in case any one of those friendships broke down for whatever reason; I've deliberately distanced myself emotionally from new people and avoided investing too much in the hope that someone might want to be my friend. Don't get me wrong, I have friends! I'm not a loner at all. But it's that difference between having friends you would grab a coffee with and having friends who know you inside-out, with whom you can relax entirely and just be. That's what I miss; that closeness and familiarity. I see groups of friends who've known each other for years and I'm so envious, like I'm standing on the periphery silently howling "LIKE ME! BE MY FRIEND TOO!".

Maybe it's about time I get a grip and just start trusting people. I know some really amazing folk who are great to spend time with and I'm honoured to call my friends. I shall have a stern word with myself and stop pushing people away.

Wish me luck!

A rambly one from a sleepy parent

This is a really personal post... Not much in the way of impartial arguments here, but my brain feels very busy and I wanted to get it all out!

Having spent parts of today debating on a certain sleep specialist's Facebook page, I feel a little bit despondent. Is parenting supposed to be easy? I don't mean that it's supposed to be free from hard work (there's a reason they call it 'labour', right??) but is it supposed to be such a battle?

I keep reading statements about making parents "happier" and helping them find it all "easier", which seems to be a smokescreen for making a child less dependent on parents from as young an age as possible. I can see the appeal to be honest!
Society seems to have decided that life should be hedonistic where possible, that indulging your own desires on a daily or more long term basis is an achievable and aspirational goal, and surrendering yourself to parenting doesn't really go hand in hand with that. It's no wonder there's such demand for books that seem to enable this and that practices like attachment parenting are more marginalised. It makes me sad that I feel like the way I've parented has been so much more labour-intensive for me than it could have been if I'd followed various experts' regimes instead although I feel happier and more relaxed than I suspect I would have done had I gone against what felt instinctual to me.

Occasionally, I get into discussions with people about things I've done on my parenting journey like breastfeeding, baby led weaning, bed-sharing etc and there's a handful of key phrases that seem to crop up again and again.. "rod for your own back", "clingy baby", "just doing it for your own benefit" and so on, so forth. It's quite hurtful actually...

Why did I breastfeed? Initially because my best friend's mum (midwife and strong breastfeeding advocate) promised to be a flea in my ear until I understood why it was important, and then later because I'd gone on to do breastfeeding support training myself and learned an incredible amount of stuff about the physiology of breastmilk and breastfeeding and thought the whole thing was just too amazing to miss out on. If you've never had children or breastfeeding wasn't on your radar, you would be astonished to know how complex the science behind it is. There's SO much to know - you can do an entire diploma in Breastfeeding Counselling and still have stuff to learn!

Why did I go with baby led weaning? I didn't with my first child. I went with what the jars in the supermarket said (suitable from 4 months), what I read on parenting forums and what I thought I knew from anecdotes handed down from peers. I spoonfed him mush from jars at first, then progressed to chunkier mush and eventually to smaller portions of my food. I HATED every moment of it. Messy, expensive, and eventually I started to read journal articles suggesting that it actually hadn't been the best decision for his health. Even worse, I'd made that decision without properly researching it. Cue the mummy guilt! With my second child, I felt a little better informed, was resolved to wait until he was six months old and then found that the little bugger wasn't interested in food anyway. One day, when he was almost 7 months old, he lunged at my plate of Sunday roast, grabbed a potato and scoffed the whole thing. From that point I just gave him bits and pieces that he could grab at himself and let him get on with it. A couple of years later, I found out that this is apparently called Baby Led Weaning. Ok, cool.

And then the doozy... Why did I share a bed with my babies?
This is the topic behind the controversy on Facebook today. I, along with a large number of parents, let my baby sleep in bed with me habitually, deliberately and for a long time (about a year on average). Why??  Because I like to sleep. I really, really like to sleep. And babies don't sleep a lot. Tiny babies have no concept of day or night. Me pleading with my 2 week old son that "it's night time, LOOK (turns towards window to show him the black of night!), why won't you SLEEEEEEP??" was completely pointless, very demoralising. Breastfeeding releases all sorts of hormones, and at night it releases hormones that make me and the baby sleepy. BRILLIANT. Unless you're sitting up in bed to feed, or on a sofa. I will confess now that I dozed off during one of these feeds and baby L slipped out of my arms and into my lap. I awoke in a split second but it absolutely terrified me. So what did I do? Well I got OUT of the bed of course, and I woke myself up, got myself a hot drink, put the tv on and made sure I couldn't fall asleep again. But I LIKE SLEEP. At 2am, my body wants me to be sleeping. A couple of days later, my friend's mum came to visit and I broke down about how tired I was. She then proceeded to show me something that changed my life and saved my sanity - how to breastfeed whilst lying down. She gave me a leaflet about how to make my bed a safe place for the baby, things I must avoid doing in order to keep it safe and how to get comfy and get him fed. He and I both nodded off and that night I had the most incredible night's sleep of my whole life. It was magical. I slept, he slept, I fed him dreamily throughout the night and 5 months later we were still doing the same thing. So when my second son was born, there was no question about how I'd handle the nights, and away we went. When my daughter was born, the same thing applied. Seven years and 3 children later, I can thankfully look back and say I have very limited first hand experience of the 'being up all night with the baby' or the 'dreaded night feeds'.

Has it been easy, any of this stuff? I suppose it depends on how you define 'easy'... It's been a challenge to get comfy at night sometimes with 3 people snoozing in one double bed. If I want to buy new tops I have to make sure I can breastfeed in them comfortably. I get a little too anxious about the idea of anyone criticising me for breastfeeding in public. I gave up asking my doctor for advice about breastfeeding related problems when it became evident that I knew far more about the physiology of breasts than any of them did. I've been on the receiving end of some pretty sharp insults and derogatory comments because I am outspoken about my love of breastfeeding - which apparently makes me "militant". I've had to justify why I didn't want to give my babies a bottle of formula at night "to make them sleep longer" and then field remarks about making a rod for my own back, or how I'm just breastfeeding because it makes ME feel good.

BUT... everything I've done has gone along with my instinct on what approach to parenting would make me happier, what felt closest to my biological imperative as a mammalian mother rearing her offspring. I tell myself to imagine what I would do if I was stranded on an island with just my baby. No television, media, peer pressure, employment concerns, or self-proclaimed baby experts to invade my parenting. If my baby cried, would I leave him to learn to settle himself without my reassurance? Doubtful. If he was hungry, would I deny him food until he had completed an acceptable length of time since his last feed? I can't imagine why... When it came to bedtime, would I put him in a separate bit of the cave (my island is quite accommodating!) or snuggle him up to me to keep warm? Using that analogy, I feel confident that the choices I've made have been the right ones for me and my children, and using the journal articles I've read, I also feel confident that I haven't done anything detrimental to their health in the short or long term. That's satisfactory to me, and yet society persists in telling me I could have made it easier for myself. Funny eh.

At some point soon, I want to write a post about parenting and babies from an anthropological perspective and look at how we've culturally constructed the whole concept. I promise that one will be less of a personal ramble and more of a balanced, evidence-based piece!