Reaching Out - from 2007

How many of us are mentally ill? How can we gauge this? I found as I sat with the midwife yesterday for the first time this pregnancy she gave me a knowing look when she came to the box labelled 'Mental Health'. I haven't been prescribed allopathic medicine for my madness because I have found terrific results elsewhere, but I am certainly at times a firm candidate for treatment.

Crying, god knows why. Sometimes hiding this from people, other times not able to hide. Broken. Futureless. Stuck. And so let me use this.

I believe there are ways to move through severe depressions, raging lows, isolating floods of black treacle. I pick up tools every day and believe that I am guided to them; today I was desperately searching the book shelves in the library whilst keeping both eyes and full radar system tuned on my children, now 4 and 2, for a title that would reach out to me and offer acknowledgemnt of how hard parenthood is in Britain today, how stifling the calls of your offspring can be if you are unreceptive and inable to meet your own needs.

A voice, my intuition, whatever, told me to turn around and connect with the other mother there. Whist the subsequent exchange was not profound nor of great length, it made incredible sense to spend a moment with her rather than attempting satisfaction for my intellect.  Of course there is no book that could meet my every need in that moment. We all have those moments of despair and reaching out did the job today.

I made sure I was safe and not relying on my chosen recipient to hold me together, but nonetheless opening a little to indirectly acknowledge the depths of human experience. Our children had already done this by hugging each other in the beautiful way that children do, fairly oblivious to the restraints the rest of us can adhere to. I smiled at the other mum, a Chinese lady. So much is non-verbal. I believe that especially in these dark moments, however difficult it can be, by reaching out compassionately to someone else we are sending that message to ourselves too.

You are here. I am here. We are here.

I thank that stranger lady today for meeting me. And to her one year old for chatting away her favourite syllable at me. My day was still hard. Not because we lacked food or warmth or shelter but because all these things have become so accepted that my psyche is riddled with problems. I am starved of simplicity. And so I thank the footsteps I took and those souls who's hard work made my food and warmth possible.