Spring is here!

But I’m still wintering…

Spring is coming: It’s here in the fleeting sunny days, the warmer air; washing almost dried by the end of a blustery day on the line. The few hours in the middle of the day that provide enough warmth to turn off the heating, the snowdrops trying to push through, the icy cold mostly replaced with a damp sense of growth.

It's here in me too.

I feel aligned with the seasons.

My hypnotherapist has dropped my appointments to fortnightly, so improved is my out loook.

The meds are starting to kick in.

I'm ready!

I wrote that intro a few weeks ago. Before our half-term holidays became awash with storm after storm, I can’t even remember the names now because so much has happened in the small space of time since. We had a trip down south to visit my stepdaughter, her boyfriend and their gorgeous doggos; the beauty of the home counties providing a welcome change of scenery for lengthy walks despite the inclement weather.

A short stay in Nottingham with my sister and Mum on the way back up north, including a brief catch-up with old friends in a busy playcentre (surprisingly tolerable!) and a few rainy days at home. We also had a nice trip out into Stockport centre which we have not done as a family for ages. We all had a lovely time making keyrings out of recycled plastic at the Merseyway Workshop and then lunch at the Produce Hall and a quick scout around the historic covered market, where I was royally fleeced by the charismatic purveyor of what turned out to be some rank coffee!

But I digress (me? I know!). Spring is in the air, and with it the constant threat of roulette weather. Sun, sleet, rain, snow, wind- all seasons in one day. You can never be sure what to wear because you can’t be prepared for all of these at once; whatever layers you choose are either too much or not enough. You never know when you’re going to get caught in a downpour…and the metaphor continues…

I’m adding to this piece this on Friday night. Next Tuesday (1st March) was supposed to be my first day back in work but a surprisingly traumatic therapy session on Wednesday has made it clear that I’m not quite there yet.

There is still so much work to do and I am only just getting to the crux of it.

I got caught out- basking in the warm sun, unprepared for the hail that hit me full in the face with the power and fury of a gale force wind behind it, leaving me shivering, scared and once again feeling very, very small.

Tender new growth caught in a late frost.

I have spent 6 weeks of this most recent round of therapy, and years before that trying to understand; circling the lion’s den. Feeling like I was battling with big stuff whilst barely scratching the surface, although that said- there has been a lot of big stuff. There is 35+ years’ worth of trauma, layered upon complex trauma. The very earliest ones (only recently even acknowledged as such) impacting every subsequent relationship and significant event in my life. A life created in the shadow of a survival response which has not served me for many years. Since having my children I have found various ways to try and re-tell my stories, surviving with varying degrees of success. But without properly understanding how to challenge the deepest, most embedded of my core beliefs, it was a mission doomed to failure; they were always there in the background waiting to trip me up.

Now, I have the professional guidance of a psychotherapist who I trust implicitly, the knowledge and understanding of my neurotype, months worth of training my brain to find the positives in even the worst of days, the additional thinking space that time away from work has given me and the emotional safety that comes from having friends who love me deeply and unconditionally, and allow me to be vulnerable without fear of rejection. From this place I have finally been able to reach into the deepest, darkest layers of hurt and instead of flinching away as I have in the past, I am bolstered by this team at my back: I am ready to face the lions.

I feel lucky to have been guided to this position by life, rather than pushed by it, although maybe the burnout was the final push once everything else was in place. Looking back over the past few years I can see how each important event has come together to bring me here. I felt like each thing was significant at the time (though it would not have been obvious to anyone else), I didn't know why. But now with hindsight, I can see why everything (in recent years) had to happen just as it has. Although it has been incredibly painful at times, it has also been magical and beautiful… and that's how I know that this is the right time to work through it all properly. Now that I have the necessary safety and support. No more layers of scar tissue- It's time to heal from the inside.

And so, with a heavy heart I requested an extension to my sick leave, another 2 weeks in the first (and I really do hope last) instance and promised myself, no more backing down. This time we see it through. My brain is finally healing from the damage inflicted upon it, and now it’s time for my inner child to heal too. Time to change those core beliefs.

It’s time for me to stop just Intellectualising it as a concept, and start embodying the belief; I am enough.

Some months ago, one of the aforementioned friends declared me to be perfect and I replied that nobody is perfect, but I am rethinking this stance. Maybe I am perfect. Maybe we are all perfect; perfectly imperfect and deserving of love just how we are.

Perfect or imperfect; we are all deserving of love.

As always, this piece has been written over a few sittings. I started in the middle of February, it is now March and officially (meteorological) springtime in the UK. I can’t help but find it ironic that I foretold this in my last post ‘Fighting Winter’. That as soon as I settled into finding comfort in the wintering, the damp birth of spring would be upon me. And so it was, that as soon as I reached a place of mental comfort (in the absence of the distractions of work and constant busy-ness, that the wintering of burnout had enforced) and excitedly prepared to spring into finding out what this ‘new’ life of mine could look like, I found myself retreating into the familiar chilly limbo of ‘what next?’ whilst I prepared to do battle with my longest standing enemy.

But this time I don’t feel the same level of discomfort.

Perhaps because it has become so familiar over these past few months.

Perhaps because it no longer feels like there is no end in sight; the thaw is still coming, just slower than expected.

Perhaps it’s because the alternative is to curl up and admit defeat; that I will always doubt the love that is shown to me because deep down I believe that I am undeserving of it.

Perhaps it is because I have let go of resistance, taken both hands and embraced the possibilities of a future bathed in love and light, that exist only because I have this time to properly set aside all that has weighed me down for so, so long.

And to know that I do deserve it.