I went to see Ant Middleton on his ‘Mind Over Muscle’ tour a few months ago, but didn’t have any idea how relevant it would be for me. November has been tough. Really, really tough. It wasn’t one thing in particular but the combination of a variety of things. My job has been incredibly stressful and the pressure felt immense. My youngest child’s behaviour has continued to deteriorate and I’ve just felt at a loss. She’s now been referred to CAMHs (child and adolescent mental health services). Every day is a struggle at the moment. Our house is on the market but hasn’t sold – we’re in limbo and it’s not nice. Other family stuff has weighed on my mind too. I could go on. It just felt like I was sinking in s**t.
I work incredibly hard to remain physically fit but quite frankly this was useless to me because I was not mentally resilient. I drove home one day a few weeks ago and wondered what would happen if I crashed my car. Maybe I’d be injured enough that I wouldn’t have to go to work?! For a split second it seemed appealing. So by the time I got home I knew that I wasn’t ok. I was unravelling. A few days later I went to the doctor with my concerns about my youngest daughter but she saw through me and suggested that perhaps I wasn’t ok. I wasn’t.
Thanks to wonderful people around me and a much needed boost at work, I feel like I’ve turned a corner. But exercise and healthy food have fallen by the wayside. I had so much I wanted to talk about in this blog – funny stuff, not just this. But I’m tired. Really, really tired. So December is my opportunity to get back on the healthy wagon, but that also means looking after my mental wellbeing and not just my physical one. It’s been really apparent that I wasn’t resilient enough or prepared for when things were difficult and actually in the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t dealing with anything awful. It was just the stress of being a teacher and a mother. Those are difficulties I will continue to face, so I need to get mentally tough.
I’m a work in progress but I am also pretty determined when I set my mind to something. It’s so important to me that I set a good example to my children. I cannot crumble because they need me. So I’m rolling up my sleeves ready to take on December!
