The Sacrifices We Make: A Mum Life Story

20/10/2019Jo Caddy

One of the greatest things I love about having a blog, is the opportunity to share other women’s stories. Stories of triumph, inspiration and life lessons. Whilst browsing through Quora I came across this story by Almondie Shampine, a single mum of 2 from New York, and I had to ask her if I could share it.

Almondie tells of her experience of being a working mum and how her perceptions and goals changed after her health took a turn for the worst. I was inspired by her story.

As a stay at home mum myself for nearly 16 years, I have often thought about what it would have been like to have been a full time worker instead and if that would have been the more noble of decisions. Recently I’ve been reminded that every life story is different and every person has a different calling and direction to fulfill. We can often overlook the benefits of the situation we find ourselves in and long for what we don’t have, not knowing that the situation we long for can often bring unforseen regrets that we would happily avoid if we could.

Almondie’s story is one of reflection. A story of how she may have done things differently if she had the chance to start again but also, of how she is now moving forward into a more balanced, contented life in hindsight of that realisation.

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The Sacrifices We Make

I’ve been a single Mom and sole income earner for 16 out of 17 years since I was 18 years old. I was always extremely ambitious and I’ve had a good 40 jobs, working in pretty much every field you can imagine. I typically always had 2–3 different jobs going on at the same time. This does not include my authoring, publishing, and the hundreds of writing/editing freelance and singing gigs I’ve performed. I’ve attended 14 colleges and collected quite a variety of degrees, diplomas, and certifications.

My children were raised by babysitters and childcare providers the first 11 years of their lives, of which one full-time job was needed just to pay for their childcare alone. My own mother was a workaholic and my four siblings were 4, 7, and 15 years younger than I, so the babysitters and childcare providers were random strangers with a high turnover rate. Not a very consistent and secure upbringing for young children, to say the least. Nor was it safe. Some of the providers were decent. Most were not.

By the time I was 25 years old, my daughter 3, and my son 5 1/2, I was putting in 100 plus hours a week, 7 days a week. Even when I was home from work, I was not there with my children, because I was tripling up on college classes, doing my freelancing, writing novels and continuing to try to get my books published, in addition to cooking and cleaning and trying to keep my home spotless, as was instilled in me by my mother as well. I remember my son being so needy for my attention that he and I came up with a plan where I would set my alarm every hour, and when that alarm went off, I would then spend 20 minutes doing whatever he wanted to do to try to keep him happy. But still that hour of letting me work was really hard on him. I remember working on a recorded speech for my public speaking class, and it took me 8 hours of re-recording, because my daughter would keep climbing up on my lap in the midst of me recording my speech and I would have to start all over again.

I told them repeatedly throughout the years (and told myself) that what I was doing was absolutely necessary. I would cry how hard and how unfair it was to have been left in the position of being a single mom and the sole income earner, with hardly any family support. I would convince myself I didn’t do anything wrong. After all, I’d been engaged to be married when my son’s father walked out a month before our wedding, and though years later my daughter came as a surprise, I was with the guy that I was going to spend the rest of my life with … until he determined he didn’t want to be a family guy. I didn’t choose this life. It was the hand I’d been dealt, and I was trying to do my absolute best by it.

Just because I was a single parent, it shouldn’t mean that my children should be raised on the system and that they should be more disadvantaged and have less things than other children in two-income or two-person homes. That is what I told myself. I’d tell my children, “I just need a couple more years. That’s why I’m tripling up on college courses. Once I get my degree, I’ll be able to get a higher-paying job and then only have to work one job, and then once I get my PH.D, I can set up an office right from home and work for myself as a Psychologist, and then I’ll be home with you guys all the time and we’ll have all the time in the world together.”

Two years later, I had over $20,000 to put down on a house so my kids could have their own bedrooms and never have to live in an apartment again where the downstairs neighbor is cooking meth or the next door neighbor is screaming bloody murder while getting the crap beat out of her, or I’m being placed in unsavory situations just to try to keep my kids from being without a place to sleep. We finally had a home, safety, security…as long as I could keep paying the thousand-dollar mortgage every month for the next 30 years.

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I’d graduated with near perfect scores, and had applied for a joint JD/PHD program and a scholarship, and I’d gotten 100 on my Civil Service Exam to work for the state with start-out salary at $43,000 a year, insurance, 401k, the works. Things were looking really good. My kids were happy and liked their new home and bedrooms, and I even got a few weeks home with them while waiting for the State job to start, where training would last a couple months 8–4 Monday through Friday and weekends free.

I’d always worked weekends. Always worked holidays. By the time I started the State job, my scholarship for SU came through. I was devastated that I didn’t get into the JD program, even though I’d taken the LSAT twice to achieve higher scores than average, which is what I got. Just average. Guess I’d just have to accept being only a Psychologist and not a Lawyer too.

That first month was like a dream come true. Home at 6 every night to actually be able to have sit-down dinners with my children, Friday family-fun nights, tuck them into bed and read bedtime stories and say our prayers together, and then I’d still have a good 3 or 4 hours to do my writing and keep submitting my novels to publishers before bed.

The second month, all I wanted to do was cry, because of how exhausted I was. From waking up, getting my daughter to school, the hour commute there, being in training for 8 hours, the two hour commute to pick up my son, making homemade meals, cleaning the house, getting the kids bathed and to bed, and hardly even being able to keep my eyes open thereafter during the week, to the weekends of 14-hour days with very active young ones that were constantly bored and wanted me to entertain them, having to make three meals a day and having to clean it up three times a day and constantly do dishes. It was crazy. I was going crazy.

I looked forward to the end of training where I would go back to working second shift and weekends, and I looked forward to beginning my graduate classes during the day when my kids were in school. Once training ended, I underestimated the overwhelming amount of mandated overtime every other day and consecutively on weekends that I’d be needed to work. 16-hour shifts and working both second and third shift and not getting out until 8 in the morning.

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What was the point of my children having a home and their own bedrooms if they had to sleep at a sitter’s house, where I wouldn’t even be able to get back in time to get my daughter to school? She was tardy 46 times in that year, and I began getting notices from the school threatening to take action. I moved in a friend who had two kids and had just lost his job, where his kids could have room and board in exchange for him taking care of mine when I was at work and getting my daughter to school on time.

SU came at me with concerns that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the workload of full-time college, a full-time job, and the mandatory field hours. The state job I’d gotten was in the mental health field and I assumed it would count as field hours. How could working in a State Psychiatric Center not count for field hours in mental health? That’s when one shoe dropped. It would not count as field hours and I would have to choose between my state job or my graduate degree or forfeit my scholarship and only attend college on a part-time basis.

I had to choose what was paying for my mortgage. The other shoe dropped when I helped my roommate get another job and encouraged him to find a girlfriend and I wound up with a note and him moving out, leaving me abruptly without a babysitter. Then my entire foundation collapsed when I wound up with a court petition seeking for me to have my son on weekends, whereas previously his father had him while I was working my 32-hour weekends, and the court ruled in his favor. I had to choose between my son and my job.

I chose my son, resigned from my position with the state, and being unemployed, I advertised for tenants to rent our home. My children and I were back to sleeping on friend’s couches or staying with the tenants. I had to start at the bottom again, but I couldn’t find a job that would pay more than 10 an hour, regardless of my degree, which wouldn’t allow me to financially survive while paying childcare costs.

Work-from-home jobs were becoming increasingly in demand at that point, so I determined I would go for it. I got a job working for Sprint with $9 an hour start-out-pay that only required I work one day on the weekend and I would be home, so I wouldn’t have to pay a sitter. That still being poverty-level, I was back on the system again with Medicaid and Snap benefits and back on the waiting list for Hud housing.

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The tenants wound up being awful and not making their payments, so I had to go through the process of evicting them, and that thousand-dollar mortgage continued to loom over my head. We returned to the house after evicting the tenants, who wound up stealing a lot of the furnishings that came with renting the house, including my table and couches.

$9 an hour was hardly enough to cover the mortgage and living costs, so I was the fastest-ever employee to get a supervisor role. $9.50! That’s all I got. 50c more an hour, which wasn’t specified when I did everything to be able to get the promotion. I was back to working 7 days a week again, and when I wasn’t working the job, I was scouring and applying for freelance work for extra money.

I remember my children knocking at the door to my office, continuously, asking if I was done working, wanting me to spend time with them. I remember getting so frustrated with them and crying because the requirement of my work-from-home job was to ensure there was no background noise, and my children would start running around and playing, or more often than not, fighting, and I was so paranoid of losing my job, so my agitation and frustration would come out on my children.

“Do you want me to lose this job? Do you want to lose this house again and your bedrooms? Do you want to be back out on the streets?” I’d cry at them. Only 6 and 8 1/2 years old and I demanded quiet during the 8 hours I was on the phone with escalation calls and ticked off customers.

I worked the at-home job a year and two months. Four of my family members died in that time. I wasn’t able to see my Poppy in the hospital before he passed because of work. Nor was I able to see my Aunt when she went into surgery for her cancer, which she died of soon thereafter, because she was in the same hospital as my 26-year-old brother whom had shattered his skull and was comatose, and I only had limited time to be by his side before I had to return to work. That almost got me fired because I had to take off work to go see him.

It was my trainer that vouched and fought for me that saved my job. I was not there when my brother died, and a few months later, my 52-year-old Dad wound up hospitalized and placed in a medical coma. I was so afraid that he would die and I wouldn’t be there, but I was more afraid of losing my job, so when the Doctor assured me that he wouldn’t die that evening, I rushed home to prepare for work the following morning. 20 minutes home, I got the call. ‘Your Dad just passed.’

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When I logged into work next, and my first call came in, a customer yelling about their bill and calling me worthless after I’d done everything in my power to get him credited $120, which was more than the maximum credit we could provide, I stopped being able to breathe, my mind fogged over and went blank, and I could no longer remember how to do anything while the customer kept yelling and degrading me. It was the first time I’d ever just hung up the phone. A few days later, I made arrangements for my children while waiting for the pills I’d OD’d on to end my life, because I couldn’t even manage to keep a job and provide for my children. At that moment, I felt like I’d failed everyone.

You see, during that same period of time when I’d gotten my scholarship and the State job, I’d already been through a number of specialists and Doctors throughout the years, as I’d been getting increasingly sick. Right before starting my state job, I was diagnosed with a debilitating illness that required treatment in order to keep it from getting worse. I had finally just gotten to the point of being able to work only one job, like I had promised my children all those years before. I had no intention of letting anything get in my way or letting anything stop me.

I denied the Doctor’s diagnosis and told him I wanted a second opinion. I just never went and got one at that time, so I remained untreated, and took the risk of my amnesia and blackouts getting worse and lasting for longer periods of time.

I went on FMLA from the Sprint job, while waiting for my memories to return. Each passing day, I remembered less and less, until I no longer even remembered how to log in to the system. Per my superiors and customer ratings, I’d been pretty tech-savvy and knew how to do just about anything with every type of cell phone out there. I’d gotten a high-paying freelance job to write up a manual on the new Galaxy that had just been released.

Those memories never did return to me. To this day, when you see me poking around my smart phone, I’m like a kindergartener learning how to use a phone for the first time. I’d sit in my office for hours, for days, on end, thinking that at any moment, it’d come back to me. It had to. My children’s financial well-being depended on it.

I finally went for the second opinion and the diagnosis was the same, as it was for the third opinion, and for the federal Doctor that then placed me on total disability. I remember her looking at me and shaking her head and saying, “I don’t even know how you managed to work the jobs that you did.” I don’t know why she said that or what she meant by it, but it was the only part of the evaluation that I could even remember.

Thereafter, I began treatment, ambitious and determined as I always was. They said it could take 10–15 years of consistent treatment to get me stabilized and functioning well enough to be okay. I figured if I doubled or tripled up on my treatment and learned how to treat myself the remainder of the time, I could fast-forward the whole process and be done with it and go back to being completely normal and a contributing member to society once again. I didn’t want to be on disability, not to mention, it couldn’t even cover one month’s mortgage, let alone all my other bills.

That first year, I spent more time being bedridden than out of it, but it humbled me to the core. In a way, it was like seeing my children for the first time. My daughter 7 and my son almost 10. Where was my 3-year-old? When did she grow up? Where was I? I couldn’t remember birthdays or holidays. Couldn’t remember holding her as a baby. My kids would say, “Mom, do you remember when …?” and I was hearing it for the first time, because no, I didn’t remember. I didn’t remember anything. I didn’t remember my own childhood. Could hardly remember much prior to being 28. I couldn’t even remember when my daughter took her first step or spoke for the first time. My kids had been raised by sitters. My babies were gone and I’d missed out on SO much.

I do remember how much it bothered my son when I forgot his birth year, and how much it bothered both of my children when I would cook something and they’d say, “Mom, you know I hate red sauce. I can’t stand sour cream.”

I’d smile and say, “Since when?”

“Since always, Mom. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

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While being extremely ill and having no option of being able to go back to work at that time, I got to know my children. I learned about their lives. They shared their memories with me that I didn’t have. I learned what they liked and what they didn’t like. Their favorite books and movies. Who their friends were. I tried to make up for as many memories and moments as I could, but it was all bittersweet, because I was a worker. It’s all I’d ever known and the only life I could remember. I struggled with severe depression. I needed to work. I felt worthless, without purpose or meaning, useless, a waste of human existence.

I hated being on disability. I hated telling people I was on disability, where they’d look me up and down and say, “You look fine to me. I forget things too. It’s normal.” I’d be called lazy. Told that I just didn’t want to work and wanted to live off the system. My self-esteem, self-confidence, self-efficacy, were in the negatives. Christmas was closing in and I was behind on my mortgage while trying to get a home loan modification. I had nothing to offer my children.

My amazing son said to me, “Mom, all I want for Christmas is the first published copy of The Modules, and I want it dedicated to me so I can show all my friends and teachers at school.” Alongside that, I’d gotten free scrap wood to be able to build things. I worked tirelessly, but for Christmas, my son had the one and only hardcover copy of the combined versions of The Reform and The Modules, dedicated to him, and I’d built my daughter a desk with family and growing-up photos laid out all along the top of it. Of course, only a few months hadn’t been enough time for me to publish the books, so my son’s copy was a pre-release.

Humility forgotten, I then went on to write 15 novels the next couple years, publishing 10 of them, and checking off my bucket list all the things I’d wanted to accomplish. I was finally living my dream – at least, another one of my many. Personally, I was thriving. My children supported me every step of the way. My daughter attended every event I had. My son read every book I published. I’ll never forget – at least I hope I won’t – this one event in particular where I didn’t have enough time to be able to pick my son up from his father’s after school for him to be able to go. He came hauling butt, red-faced, a huge grin on his face, into this room filled with strangers, calling out across the room, “Mom! Mom, I made it!” He had called every family member he could to beg for a ride to get to my event and made it 20 minutes before it ended. All to support Mom.

I wound up getting three months behind on my mortgage (Primarily because I was told I had to be three months behind to qualify for a home loan modification that would lower my mortgage), and then the bank just stopped accepting my payments, enabling them to foreclose on the property within a month if I didn’t pay them everything I owed. In addition, I was getting restless being at home all the time, and I wanted to go back to working in the outside world.

Disability allows a person to try to compensate their disability income with a little over a grand a month of supplemental income. I took the job that hired me the fastest, starting at the bottom once again, as a delivery driver this time. My daughter was 11, very emotionally mature, and independent, so I believed she was old enough to supervise herself without needing childcare and with me only working part time. Working part-time as a delivery driver with GPS to get me to-from where I needed to go if I couldn’t remember, alongside disability, should have been sufficient.

I should have been happy with that. Should have been okay with that. Should have remembered I was on disability for a reason. I didn’t remember. Within 6 months, I was working 6 days a week, training for management, and happily giving the middle finger to the Social Security Administration, telling them I was cured and healed and back to work full-time and I didn’t need them anymore.

My responsible 11-year-old daughter fed herself, showered herself, put herself to bed, got herself up for school, went to school, completed her homework, kept her grades up. She’d stay up later than she should have, waiting for me to come home, just so she could hug me and say goodnight. There were times we didn’t see each other for 2–3 days. There were times when I was at work, hanging out with my coworkers, when I would lose track of time, forget that she was waiting for me, and I wouldn’t remember until I was speeding down the road and running through the door and throwing all my things down – just to collapse to the floor and bawl my eyes out when she’d already gone to bed because I was too late.

While at work, I would be asked to work every holiday and I couldn’t see why not. Of course I’d work the holiday. I don’t have anything else going on. Only once driving home would I remember that I had children, and I’d smack myself up the head and feel like the worst mother in the world for scheduling to work a holiday, so I’d hurriedly make arrangements to celebrate the holiday on my day off of work. I’d walk through the door and see dishes piled up, my house unkept, four loads of dirty laundry stacked high. I’d look in the mirror and not even recognize myself. Take off my work hat. How long had I been wearing the same uniform? When did I shower last? And it was a total blank. I couldn’t remember.

I could have been showering twice a day, not remembering that I already showered, or not showering for a week thinking I’d just showered. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’d come home from work and check my email and see that I had a five-book contract with my publishing business. I’d check my calendar and find I had author events stacked up. A new release coming out. Promotions going on. I’d emailed the owner with a business proposition and had books coming in with a free-pizza coupon at the back of the book. I’d emailed the school superintendent with an order form for all these books with the free-pizza coupon to be provided to all the students in the school district where all proceeds would go to the school district for their fundraising needs. I remembered none of it.

Before I could even much figure anything out, it was my daughter’s 13th birthday. My son and I wrestled and his knee pressed on the wire of my bra while he was trying to hold me down, and the metal won out over the bone. I fractured one of my ribs. And for 3 days, I’d wake up, not remember, and go to work, and not understand why I was in so much pain. The third night, I was practically in tears and couldn’t finish my shift. I blamed myself for being a baby. The following day when I was due to work, we’d been dumped on with three feet of heavy snow. I couldn’t even lift the shovel. The pain was excruciating.

Just like those many years before, I stopped being able to breathe. My mind fogged over. All I could hear was shouting in my head over how worthless and useless I was. How it didn’t matter how much pain I was in or the circumstances, I needed to go to work. My kids’ financial well-being depended on it! I could feel everything fading away. All my memories. No, not again! Like a numb, emotionless robot, I picked up my phone and called my girlfriend manager whom had depended on me those years, while the owner had done nothing but screw me over every time he returned to the store, and I told her it was the end of the road.

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Those feelings of failure returned. For my children, I should have sucked it all up and just found a way to keep working. You don’t get paid if you don’t work. Broken bones, serious illnesses, hospitalizations, don’t matter. The bills don’t get paid if you don’t work. And those kids don’t get a home, a comfortable bed to sleep in, heat and electricity, or food to fill their stomachs, medical care and insurance, if those bills don’t get paid. It was another extremely tough year filled with illness, depression and self-loathing, but with it, my humility was returned to me once again.

My kids are now 17 and almost 15 years old. I imagine, I, like many parents, thought I would beat the odds and still be having fun game nights and slumber parties with my teens, instead of each of us cherishing our own space. I, like so many working people, thought I could somehow later make up for the lost time.

I was a workaholic. I am now a recovering workaholic. I was raised that work comes first above any and everything else, but not just any work. It had to be respectable work. A steady paycheck, so anything that did not bring in a steady paycheck was not respectable, including my writing.

Working from home, even if it did provide a steady paycheck, was not respectable. Medicaid or Snap benefits. Not respectable. Being disabled – a joke. (Just because you’re blind doesn’t mean you can’t work. You are completely capable of working a job that doesn’t require you to have to see anything -as an example). My daughter’s grandfather was diagnosed with cancer one year before his retirement. So affronted by the idea of being considered disabled or placed on disability before being ‘respectfully retired’ resulted in unnecessary hardship in addition to his cancer.

All I’d ever wanted was to be able to raise my own children, watch them grow, be there for every big and small thing in their lives. I resented every time the sitters would tell me about some priceless moment I missed out on. In the earlier years, I would have given anything to be home with them. I resented all the bosses and all the jobs that didn’t respect that I was a single parent. That would so frequently put me in the position of having to choose between my children or my job. I resented having to work one full-time job just to pay for childcare, and an additional job or two to still not even be able to make sufficient income to cover the bills. One paycheck was just to cover the gas money of the commute.

Years of savings would only account for another vehicle I would have to purchase to get back and forth from work. So, so, so many of these jobs would ask that you work 5–6 days a week without going over 32 hours to avoid offering health insurance. Not having a babysitter, not having a vehicle or transportation isn’t an excuse to not attend work. Everything I strove for was to get to a place where I could work for myself, make enough to provide my children the same type of life as those less disadvantaged, and be available for my children – while doing so in a ‘respectable fashion’ so as not to be judged or stereotyped.

Over time, it just became a way of life for me.

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I stay home now. I spend most of my days sitting at my kitchen table, staring at the wall, trying not to get caught up in any work or projects (key word is trying), so that the moment that one or the other of my teenagers come out of their room and take a break from their own things, I might be able to spend a little bit of time with them, know what’s going on in their lives, try to support and encourage them, even if all I get is 15 minutes in a day. It’s like Cat’s in the Cradle and the Silver Spoon. I have all the time to finally be there for them, but they rarely have time for me anymore.

The majority of the time I sit at my kitchen table, waiting to just have those few minutes to spend with my teenagers, I’m still being harassed for not working a ‘real’ job. Outside the house. Collecting a steady paycheck. Because that’s what ‘normal working people do’. Everything inside my being wants to go back out there and work and make something of myself and go further with my life. The only thing that keeps me staying at home and doing my work at the desk that is placed beside my kitchen table is wanting to make up to my children all the times I was never there because I was too busy working while they were being raised by three dozen other people and random strangers that were being paid to care for them.

I realized that there were a hundred other different choices I could have made. I could have easily gotten an at-home data entry job, or several of them, with my ability to type 120 words per minute. I could have been happy with selling my books and running my publishing business that allowed me to be at home with my children.

All those years, I convinced myself and my children that I couldn’t be available to them as a full-time mother until I achieved x, y, z. Now I know that it was all based on pride and me just trying to prove myself. It was me wanting to go after every dream I ever had personally, while also wanting to become something my parents would be proud of.

When it came to my children, it was complete selfishness. I always put my kids on the backburner in light of my own achievements and accomplishments, while justifying it all with being a single parent with no support while just trying to pay the bills. My kids could have run around with wild abandon and been happy if I’d just picked up that data entry job, or online support chat. But it was never good enough for me. I didn’t want to be downgraded to that. I was worth so much more than that, I thought.

I lived and accomplished every dream I ever had … at the expense of my children, and each and every outside job I ever had screwed me over, because I was constantly placed in the position of choosing between my job or myself and my children. Hence the 40 jobs.

I’m not the only one that has learned this lesson. That has neglected their home, partnerships, friends, children, for the sake of a job and thinking they’re going somewhere in life and have a purpose, and then their children grow to resent them, and they gradually lose all their friends, and they lose their partner or have no chance at finding one, because the job controls their life, and they endure the death of a multitude of family members that they can’t be there for less they risk losing their job. Doesn’t matter if it’s working for McDonalds or being a CEO of a company, they expect you to sign over your soul.

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If I had been a less prideful and selfish person caught up in everything I’d been raised to believe, I would have stayed at home with my children. I would have held them as much as possible. I would have been there for their every accomplishment. I would have praised and encouraged them to be the best they could be. I would have been there for every award they got. Instead of resenting my daughter for crawling up in my lap or resenting my son for all the attention he wanted, I would have held my daughter and played with my son without a 20-minute time limit.

If I knew what I know now, I would have accepted being on Hud housing and being on the system if it meant me being there to see my children grow up. If I knew what I know now, I would have listened to the doctors, and taken the time I had to make the most memorable experiences with my children. Something that they’d at least be able to remember even if I wouldn’t/won’t remember myself.

There’s nothing more humbling than recognizing that you missed out on the greatest parts of your life, and neglected all those extraordinary pieces, for a boss that never gave a care about your life, your home, your family, your situation, and only ever cared about you doing as you were told and being available and on call for every moment that they needed you. Their gain was money. Your sacrifice was partnership and family. But they wouldn’t blink an eye when it comes to cutting your hours or firing you if someone else comes along with more flexibility and availability and accepts lower wages. You’re easily replaceable. Family is not.

You can never make up for all the lost years spent catering to a system with promises of life, liberty, and happiness never kept, while striving towards a type of security that is nothing more than an illusion when all can be lost in a moment’s breath. At the end, it is all but the memories we hold dearly and those moments we cherish that make it worth it.

Nothing I ever did was worth the years I lost with my own children.

I only hope I can help and inspire others from making the same mistakes.

Almondie Shampine

After 17 years as a single working mum, Almondie Shampine now stays home in NY with her teens and their two animals and works a variety of jobs from her very own kitchen, from authoring her own novels, to freelance editing/writing, and operating FreeBird Express Publishing to assist other authors with their publication needs.

For young adults, she’s written The Modules Series beginning with The Reform, and The Schoolhouse Kids. For adults, she’s dabbled in Psychological thrillers and Inspirational works, such as Otherland, Glimpses, and Blind Fate. She also writes non-fiction articles on Quora relative to her work in the industry and other expert knowledge she’s picked up on throughout the course of life, such as mental health and parenting.

You can visit Almondie’s website at www.freebirdexpresspublishing.com or follow her blog at www.freebirdexpresspublishing.blogspot.com

If your on Quora, you’ll find her profile here https://www.quora.com/profile/Almondie-Shampine

And you’ll find her books for sale on Amazon HERE (Available in both paperback and e-book).

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My Mum Life Story: Part 3 – Depression and Divorce

26/09/2019Jo Caddy

This is probably going to be the most open and honest post I’ve ever written (so far) and probably the darkest. It covers a decade of my life that I practically pushed under the rug in order to move past. A lot of the details are foggy but the feelings and emotions and life lessons are all too vivid.

If you haven’t already read Part 1 & Part 2 of My Mum Life Story, feel free to do so now or simply read on.

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I Had No Clue

I remember sitting on the cold plastic chair in the hospital waiting room, resting the clipboard on my ever increasing baby bump, filling in the form about my mental health. I very vividly remember thinking “I’m not going to get postnatal depression, I’m going to be fine”. Now I’m not the most optimistic person in the world so it still shocks me when I remember this.

I have struggled with my emotions most of my life, feeling every little thing deeply and constantly criticizing myself when I don’t reach the impossibly high standards I set for myself. Add to this the fact that I’d had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since I was 7 and had been unable to work full-time hours because of it. Did I not realise that Motherhood was more than a full-time job? Had I not read about the effects of severe sleep deprivation? One would think I didn’t realise I was having twins, yes that’s right, not just one life-consuming addition to the family, but 2.

This must have been during the second trimester, that magical 3 month period where “the glow” is at its peak. The morning sickness had finally subsided, my energy levels had increased somewhat and my mood was elevated with joyful expectancy and a naive perception that the rest of the pregnancy would be just as enjoyable.

Whilst I was the type of person to make plans ahead of time in order to get organised and prepared, I was also the type of person who lived in the “now”, thinking on and dealing with the present and all the emotions and feelings that came with that. So because I felt good in that moment, I couldn’t perceive that things could change, and so dramatically, nor that my experiences throughout the coming years would redefine the type of person I was.

Postnatal Depression

As you can imagine, incubating 2 babies was an exhausting task. My energy levels plummeted pretty fast in the 3rd trimester and by the time they were finally born at 37.5 weeks, I was completely over it.

The euphoria of having 2 gorgeous little people, that were part of me, my flesh and blood, with my brown hair and brown eyes, was blissful to say the least. I think my favourite times in life have been those precious few days I’ve spent in hospital getting to know my babies (spoiler alert, I have 5 now) but after coming home, reality hit harder than a freight train.

I struggled through the days, barely keeping my eyelids open and the nights were beyond horrible. For the first two weeks, while my husband was off work, he would help by changing one boy while I fed the other, but once he went back to work, I was on my own because “he” needed his sleep and apparently I did not. I would rush one baby through his feed while the other one was crying in his cot, but for some reason they both had a habit of falling asleep 5 minutes into a feed and I could not wake them. So I would put the first one down and grab the second one, change him and feed him.

Now, the boys were waking every hour and a half because if one woke up the other would also wake, plus since they were falling asleep 5 minutes into a feed, they would be hungry again not long after. I had had a c-section because twin 1 was breech, so getting up several times of a night was painful and difficult to say the least. After 6 weeks of 5-6 feeds every night, I was beyond tired and was feeling very defeated. The health nurse tried to teach me the twin feed, with one under each arm like little footballs, but every time I put one baby on, the other would slide off. She told me I had to keep them awake by tickling them or talking to them, but it never worked and the dynamics of trying to get two babies onto my lap (without tearing my c-section scar) when no one was around, was definitely a lesson in futility.

I became so overwhelmed and felt so completely useless that when someone suggested I try formula, I abandoned all dreams of exclusively breastfeeding (which I’d assumed would be the only way I could feel like a ‘real’ mum) and switched to bottles.

This made life a little easier, I had two bottles and two hands, life was sweet. They would drink the whole bottle and fall asleep for a few hours at least. Unfortunately since bottles aren’t warm on demand like booby milk, I would have to calmly handle the crying as I ran to the kitchen to heat the bottles, and as I changed two nappies and often outfits if they had leaked through. Calmly handling it, worked for a few weeks but as time dragged on my energy supply went beyond rock bottom and patience was something I could no longer find, no matter how hard I tried.

When they napped during the day, I was finding myself just enjoying the quiet and the alone time instead of catching up on sleep like I should have been, so by the time the boys were 4 months of age, I was completely exhausted and the strength it took to stay awake during the day was like trying to walk up hill on the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately I wasn’t blessed with good sleepers and every technique I tried for getting them to sleep through the night either didn’t work or required more commitment than I had the strength for (It would be at least 2 years before they would sleep through the night, and by this time I would be pregnant again and in my 3rd trimester).

I was so completely shattered that even thinking about facing another sleepless night made me cry, in fact everything made me cry. There was no energy left in my body, I felt weak, drained, dizzy, lethargic, disconnected and miserable. Little did I know at the time but apparently having children makes Chronic Fatigue worse, and I’d just had twins. My body was protesting, my mind was protesting and my emotions were all over the place. I couldn’t see any hope of things changing (because I was that ‘live in the now’ person) and I wasn’t looking forward to anything at all. The doctor diagnosed me with Postnatal Depression, assuring me that it would get better eventually. Little did he or I know that it was just the beginning of 8 long years of mental torture.

Depression is such a difficult thing to talk about. When your in the midst of it, it consumes you completely, the thoughts and feelings associated control your entire being, sucking the life out of you and causing you to feel like a stranger in your own skin, but when your well again (like now) it’s hard to remember what was so bad, why you let yourself get to that point and how you could have hated yourself so much. I get small reminders of it sometimes when my youngest are sick and not sleeping or when circumstances get beyond my coping abilities but something changed later in my life that brought me to a much better place. (I will talk about this in Part 4)

This is where it gets real, and deep and dark. It’s hard for me to talk about what my mind went through back then but I think it’s important to share the raw realities of depression, so others can understand they are not alone, that there are people who get it, who have been there and come out the other side, stronger and happier.

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Pressure Rising

Not quite sure where to start with this, there’s so much that contributes to depression, so many thoughts and feelings and circumstances. I was overwhelmed to say the least at having two babies at once and even though I had a lot of help from my mother, I felt alone in it when it came to my relationship with my husband. I felt he was unavailable physically and emotionally and I was left to try and deal with the mental load alone. I always managed to find a smile when the camera came out but underneath it all I was dying inside.

When the boys were just 17 months old, I fell pregnant again. We were surprised but excited, thinking how nice it would be to have a little girl. I was incredibly nervous as I was struggling to deal with the first two let alone another one and I was terrified at our first ultrasound that we’d discover a second set of twins. I was shamefully relieved to see just one little peanut on the ultrasound screen! Out of 5 children this would be my one and only little girl.

Taking care of twins whilst pregnant was difficult to say the least, as the Chronic Fatigue worsened again and I suffered a lot of pain in the last trimester. Thank God I had my Mother there to support me, in fact we were living in the same house with them at the time as we were building a house together. My parents were a great source of support, but the dynamics of two mums in the house caused tension every now and then and added to the stress and anxiety that I was feeling.

The doctor had put me on anti-depressants that I would later discover were actually causing more depression and prolonging my symptoms rather than helping them. Plus my doctor failed to inform me that they would cause mild withdrawals in my newborn which sent me into a whirlwind of Mum Guilt that took months to get over.

The birth of my daughter was an exhausting one. I decided to try a natural birth and was in labour for at least 15 hours and had 3 epidurals which didn’t work. I ended up losing a lot of blood and after the umbilical cord had been around her neck, my daughter was not breathing when she was born. It took them working on her with the oxygen mask for what seemed like hours (in reality it was more like a couple of minutes) before she started crying, and I can tell you there was no greater sound.

After being awake all night in labour with an hour of pushing, 3 failed epidurals, 3 tares, a 2 litre blood loss and a very stressful birth, I had to fight immensely hard to keep my eyes open so I could hold my baby and give her her first feed. I didn’t get to sleep until that night and then I was awake every 20 minutes because of the withdrawals that made her want to suckle constantly.

A difficult birth became a difficult recovery which would lead to two rounds of corrective surgery in the coming years. My daughter suffered reflux and feeding became a struggle that would force me to put her on formula at 3 months of age. I felt like I’d failed her somehow even though I knew it wasn’t my fault. I believed that breast feeding was best for my baby and wanted to continue it for at least a year this time, so there was a great deal of disappointment in that.

So with 3 children under the age of 3, I pushed through the extreme fatigue that came from none of my children being good sleepers (my boys gave up naps 2 months before my daughter was born) and the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that drained me of all energy and joy.

My Darkest Days

It wasn’t all bad, there were many happy moments. Watching my children play with each other and grow and learn was an amazing privilege that kept me going. It gave me a reason to keep getting up every morning despite how intensely difficult it was. They were my life, my breath, my very purpose. God had blessed me with their care and I’ve never felt any greater love on earth than that of my love for my children, but with that great blessing, came great responsibility and I felt the pressure like a rock under thousands of feet under the surface of the earth. I didn’t want to let anyone down but felt like that’s all I did.

I put my children first in every way possible, I came last in my own mind and felt it was selfish to think about my own needs. It was an enormous effort to get out of bed every day, but I did, because my kids relied on me. I built up this idea in my mind of the perfect mum and it looked nothing like me. I did the best I could every minute of the day but couldn’t reach this impossible standard I had set for myself, so mum guilt, frustration, anxiety and depression became my best friends. We spent every moment of the day together, we became inseparable for 8 long years.

I was tormented day and night with despair and hopelessness, believing it would never get any better, hating God for what I believed was his plan, to put me through hell, give me more than I could cope with, give me a condition that made me exhausted and unable to gain any energy, allow me to marry a man I had nothing in common with and who didn’t seem to love or understand me. The thoughts that tortured my mind every minute of the day, wouldn’t allow me to enjoy anything. I couldn’t feel happy, ever. Sometimes I just wanted to die. I hated myself for not being who I wanted to be, who I believed I should be and wished God would take me away from the world and the life that I really thought I hated.

I would get so frustrated with my inability to cope with the chaos of 3 little kids. I would try so hard to stay calm but would inevitably blow up, then hate myself for it and end up crying in the corner of my room, telling myself I was pathetic and useless and didn’t deserve children or even to live really. I was unhappy in so many ways. Unhappy with myself, unhappy with my marriage, unhappy with life at home, unhappy with not pursuing a career first before starting a family, unhappy with my relationship with God and unhappy that I was so unhappy. I was angry, so angry with my life and with myself because I wasn’t finding peace and happiness in all the blessings I had. My world just got darker and darker.

I tried so many medications, some made me feel suicidal, some made me feel jittery and weak and others made me feel completely numb, I could neither laugh nor cry, I hated this the most, not feeling at all. Eventually someone told me about a doctor in a private practice who was trialing an epilepsy drug with patients with depression so I decided to go and see her. She put me on the medication and it wasn’t long before I was feeling better. The antidepressants were not good for me and I truly don’t believe they are good for anyone. I believe they make depression symptoms worse, not better. This medication was so much better and helped me to be able see the bigger picture.

Whilst I improved, I wasn’t cured (not yet anyway). I could see things in a better light and could see where my problems were, but there were so many areas in my life that needed changing, one of them was my marriage. I tried to work on making my marriage better but felt after a while I was the only one trying to make it work. After a difficult recovery from a tonsillectomy my health declined again and I found I was getting a lot of pain in my joints and muscles. I developed a neuropathy that made my nerves hypersensitive and my scalp felt like it was alive with creepy crawly things. It was the most irritating, frustrating and painful thing I could imagine. Of course this didn’t help my outlook on life and depression began to steal my resolve once again.

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Divorce

In the midst of this I started doing some counselling and came to a decision about my marriage. I wanted out. I found myself hating him. We never talked anymore. I never felt we had any kind of friendship and I didn’t trust him. What he told me was not what he told others and he truly didn’t seem to care about what I was going through. Whether this was true or not, I don’t really know but I know that I felt like I’d made a mistake getting married so young and I was convinced that our relationship was the reason I was so depressed.

I had hated our marriage for a very long time but was taught growing up through the church that God hated divorce and I was under the wrong assumption that if I got divorced, I would go to hell. I tried for so long to make it work and to hang in there for the kids sake, but after hearing about other Christian’s who’d gotten divorced and moved on and reading some Christian literature about God’s grace after divorce, I decided it was what was best for me and (in my mind) him as well. It wasn’t until years later that I would discover the real reason our marriage failed (I will discuss this further in part 4).

So I moved out with the kids, into my parents house (the house we had all built together, before we asked to be bought out) with my husband telling me he would fight for our marriage (he never did) and I began a year of mentally bashing myself for failing to keep my family together. I thought I would be happier with a fresh start. I thought healing would begin immediately but I soon discovered that God was putting me through a gruelling process of refinement that would feel like punishment at the time but produce a shining diamond in the end.

It wasn’t long after we separated that my ex husband found someone else to date and I felt like I was right all along and I had meant nothing to him. I didn’t want him back but my feelings of worthlessness increased to the point that I began comfort eating. My weight increased as did the pain in my joints and muscles, I was always tired, always sad, always finding it difficult to keep up with the kids and wondering what the point to life was. Had God abandoned me? Did he hate me? Was he punishing me for my divorce and my inability to be the good person I wanted to be? Or was it me and my self hatred that was causing me to be in so much pain mentally and physically?

Declining Health

I was referred to a neurologist and a rheumatologist and diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Whilst it was a relief to finally know what was going on in my body, it was devastating to know that I had a condition there was no known cure for. They put me on very strong painkillers and anti-inflammatories but I found that this only increased my weight and made me feel even sleepier. I was now trapped in this cycle of treating the symptoms only to make the problem worse. I hated it and I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me. I never wanted my life to end more than I did at that time in my life. I stopped talking to God completely for a while because I was tired of asking him “why?” and not getting an answer. I was sure he’d stopped listening to me anyway and I felt like I probably deserved it.

Looking back now it was only the grace of God that got me through and kept me from turning to destructive habits and substances like so many people with depression can get caught up in. God was my rock, my foundation that kept me from self-destruction. Only my faith kept me alive and present so that my problems didn’t become my children’s problems.

It was whilst I was in the midst of the total despair and complete self loathing, that God brought along a friend who would introduce me onto the path that would eventually bring me back to him and allow him to transform me from a lowly, ugly caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly, flying free from oppression and darkness, taking me to a happier, lighter place of self discovery and purpose.

That, however is a story for Part 4.

There is so much more to my story than I can cover in just 4 parts but I will share bits and pieces throughout other articles in time. Some things have to stay private for a while, as for many reasons, now is not the time to share it, but one day it will all become part of my Life Story.

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I believe everyone has a story to tell and whether you believe it or not, your story could be an inspiration to many. Many who are on the verge of giving up completely or giving in to all the things that will lead them onto a path of self destruction. I know now there is hope, that nothing is ever pointless or useless. There is a purpose and a plan and a reason for every season under heaven.

Feel free to ask questions or leave comments in the comment section below. I love to hear from my readers.

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DANCING SHADOWS: A Short Story

17/08/2019Jo Caddy

Well it’s been a while since I’ve shared one of my own stories and I am hoping I’ve chosen the right one to publish. I wrote this short story last year for a competition with Odyssey house Victoria. The theme was ‘reflection’ and it had to mention alcohol or drugs in some way. Unfortunately I didn’t win, there were over 700 quality entries and this was only my 4 or 5th competition. I’ve edited it a little and feel it’s better now, but I’ll let you be the judge. Feel free to leave comments and helpful feedback in the comments below the post.

It’s a sad one, so have some tissues on the ready! Please be aware that there’s mention of the loss of a child so if this is a trigger for you, perhaps another story would be better 🙂

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Dancing Shadows

She stared fixedly at the beige jacquard wallpaper that clothed the far wall of her room. The subtlest of smile’s tugged at the faintly wrinkled corners of her mouth as she observed the sunlight dancing with the shadows of the tree branches in an exuberant waltz. She shut her eyes, listening to the sleepy rustling of leaves as the tall Eucalyptus trees swayed in the breeze just outside the French doors leading to the patio. If she relied on her senses of sight and hearing alone, she would imagine herself to be in a beautiful, magical place, but perception and reality danced in her mind to a more sombre tune than that of the light and shadows on her wall.

She thought about the relationship between the two contrasting elements. How completely different they were, opposite in fact. Neither could exist in the same space as the other, yet neither one could exist without the other. It occurred to her how similar this was to the overwhelming emotions that were happiness and sorrow. Did not the two consistently fail to co-exist in one’s heart and soul and was one not undefined without the other?

The drugs the nurses in their clinically white scrubs coerced her to consume every morning did little to change her perspective. The thoughts that haunted her mind before she arrived, were still alive and thriving, however the fierce emotions that kept company with them and screamed at her night and day, were now nothing more than a whisper and she often felt she was viewing her life from a distant point, as though outside of herself. She remembered happiness and sorrow like the loss of controlling relatives, with vague nostalgia but no real mournfulness to speak of.

Elaine, so adrift in her thoughts, hadn’t noticed the arrival of the young man sitting adjacent from her in the arm chair reserved for visitors. He sat patiently, his soft un-calloused hands with fingers intertwined, resting in his lap. He smiled widely at Elaine’s sudden perception of his presence, her blue eyes beaming with jubilation, furrowing at the corners as she returned the sentiment.

“Thomas” she declared, her heart warming at the sight of him “you snuck up on me again.” She giggled at his sneakiness, remembering what a playful child he’d been. His loving smile consumed his entire face, forcing his Emerald green eyes to close half-way. Elaine noticed he had matured since the last time he came. He had grown even more handsome and muscular. His broad shoulders sprung up and down as he chuckled at her bewilderment to see him and the apparent delight it gave her.

“Your always so far away, it’s not hard to come in unnoticed” he proclaimed leaning forward to impart an affectionate kiss on her wrinkled cheek. Falling back into the armchair, he swept aside the stray dark portion of hair that fell heavily in front of his eyes. He stared at her for a moment as though analysing her thoughts. He seemed reluctant to speak which Elaine found unnerving as he was generally the one person who spoke to her without reservation. “How are you?” He finally questioned her, concern forcing a wrinkle between his brows.

“The same as always Thomas, why do you ask?” her smile waned to an apprehensive frown and her heart quickened slightly. Why was he being so sober? It was unlike him. Their visits had always been full of laughter and lightness like a ray of sunshine on a gloomy day. No matter how much the drugs numbed her feelings, she could always find a glimmer of hope and joy in his company. Today seemed divergent though.

“Did you talk to the doctors this week?” he asked nervously, searching Elaine’s face for signs of surrender. He began rapidly tapping the arm of the chair with his right index finger. Elaine recognised the fear in his eyes and immediately desired to eliminate the burden from him, to encourage him that all was well.

“Yes, I did. It was time to at least answer some of their questions and let them know what was what” she answered steadfastly.

“They don’t want me to visit you anymore, do they?” He’d never been one to waste time with subtlety and today was no different. His directness was usually for Elaine’s benefit, to draw her out of her shell, but today it was evidence of his own apprehension.

“No, they don’t” she began sympathetically “but I told them they could keep their opinions to themselves as I have no intention of asking you to cease visitation. Your company is the only thing that keeps me going. I could not bear it if you went away.”

He relaxed, alleviation relighting the joy on his expressive face “I’m so glad you said that, I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t come anymore, I’d be lost” his tone turned sorrowful and concern returned to his young face as he looked at Elaine, pleading to her with his eyes “I’d be all alone. You would never leave me alone would you, not ever again?” a single tear dropped from his lower eyelid and rushed down his pale cheek, resting motionless at the precipice of his jawline.

Elaine felt anguish return to her broken soul and she desperately needed him to know that nothing and no one could ever convince her to abandon him. “No, never” she passionately declared. She noticed that the light in the room was fading, the dancing shadows disappeared as clouds began to gather outside, camouflaging the sun. Footsteps and muffled voices could be heard at the end of the hallway, growing in volume as they approached the door to her room. Thomas slipped out the French doors just as the knob began to turn on the bedroom door and the nurse on duty entered, closely followed by Elaine’s 42-year old daughter, Ashley.

Ashley thanked the nurse who smiled in acknowledgement and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Ashley kissed her mother on the cheek, squeezing her arm affectionately and pulling closer the armchair Thomas had been sitting in moments before. Elaine noticed Ashley’s whiff of perfume was missing the usual underlying hint of whiskey.

“Hello Mother” her tone reflected despair at her mother’s unchanged disposition. “How are you today?”

“Fine dear”

“Has it been a good day?”

“Yes, Thomas came to visit so it can’t be bad, can it love?” She smiled knowingly at her daughter.

“No, I guess not.” Ashley replied matter of factly, rubbing her temple with her forefinger. Did you see the Doctors this week?”

“Yes dear, I spoke to them just like you asked.” She smiled and patted Ashley’s hand just like she used to do when Ashley was little and needed encouragement.

“Good, I’m glad. Did they say anything about your progress?”

“Yes, they said they had expected me to be a lot better by now, but I’m sure you know that already dear, as I’m sure you know they told me I should ask Thomas to stop coming to see me.”

“Yes Mother, I believe they are right. You have to let him go…I have.”

“Oh, but Ashley what happened wasn’t YOUR fault, was it?”

“It wasn’t YOUR fault either Mother, I really wish you’d believe that.” Her tone sounded desperate.

“But it was, I left him alone in the car while I went into the store. I shouldn’t have done that, even if it was just for a minute. He was only two, just a baby.” Elaine’s voice became shaky and she turned away from Ashley to stare out the window at the clouds moving quickly in the afternoon sky.

“He was asleep Mother, you thought it best not to wake him. How could you know someone would take him in that short time? I really feel his visits are hindering you from getting well.”

Elaine snapped her head back to glare at Ashley, frowning in disbelief “How can you say that about your own son?”

“He’s dead Mother” her graceful face contorted with agony at the memory and tears filled her eyes “you have to forgive yourself and let him go in peace. You have other children who need you, other grandchildren.”

Elaine’s gaze softened with empathy and she touched her daughters shoulder softly “You have your father love, and there are other grandparents. Thomas only has me now, that’s why I can’t ask him to go, I can’t leave him alone again, I wont.”

Tears spilled from Ashley’s eyes and she wept as her heart broke again at the realisation her Mother was never coming back to her. The pain was second only to the day her heart first broke, the day they pulled her son’s tiny limp body from the lake just outside of town. She kissed her mother gently on the forehead and left the room quietly.

Elaine watched as the clouds parted and the sun came into view again. She turned her eyes toward the far wall and smiled once again as the shadows and light resumed their passionate waltz. Like the light, her moments of joy where made beautiful because of the shadows, the shadows that were forever a part of her.

~ Jo Caddy

Thanks

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Stories

My Mum Life Story: PART 2 -Married Young and Multiple Birth.

06/08/2019Jo Caddy

Well, I’ve been procrastinating about this post for a while because let’s face it, talking about ourselves and those who are close to us is always a daunting if not terrifying concept. Telling the story of a total stranger is easy, I simply relay everything they have given me permission to relay, but writing about my own life means sifting through a thousand files, containing a thousand stories, with a million thoughts, feelings and revelations, in order to portray myself and my story in the most condensed, informative, interesting yet concise and compact way. It’s like being asked to pack your entire house into one little cardboard box, and putting a pretty label on it that reads ‘My Life’.

That’s why I decided to break My Story into parts. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, feel free to pause your reading here and catch-up on that first or you can go back to it at the end of this post. I’ve attempted to make each part a separate story so as not to leave anyone feeling like the new kid at school, desperately searching the room for someone that looks familiar.

I’m also painfully aware that a lot of the people in my life story will be reading these posts and so discretion and wisdom have been applied to the amount of detail I have been able to go into. Please feel free to post any comments or questions you have though, at the bottom of this post. I love to hear from my readers, no matter how short the comment, it’s what keeps me writing!

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Young and Naive

After completing a Certificate in Christian Broadcasting course with Fusion Australia in Poatina Tasmania at the age of 18, I was sent to Gippsland, Victoria as part of my placement. I had just spent 3 months in Tasmania away from my parents for the first time and thrived on it, but this was very very different.

In Poatina I had made several friends my age and been taken care of in a close community environment, in Gippsland I had a small group of people around me but not really any friends my own age or any age for that matter. We were expected to fend for ourselves and be grown up all of a sudden. Coming from quite a sheltered home life, where I’d completed all of high school via correspondence, I was not at all ready to be independent. While I enjoyed most of the new experiences, I became very lonely.

Now given the fact that I was painfully shy and hadn’t experienced the social integration and worldly wisdom that most teens gained from years of subjection to a higher education institution, that can only be likened to an overcrowded cage full of monkeys (or something like that), I hadn’t yet entered into every teenagers right of passage and had any kind of relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

68808684_503558970380273_1483878954153541632_n — A day of cross-country skiing in VIC, age 19

Due to the isolation of home schooling plus the teasing I had experienced in primary school (see Part 1) I could barely look at a boy without wanting to run and hide. That said, I desperately wanted to know what it felt like to be loved and have someone want to spend their time with me. So when, let’s call him John (name changed for privacy reasons) came along and paid attention to me, I felt helpless to resist.

Now I’d been told my whole life that as a Christian it was best to be with someone else who is also a Christian so that you can be travelling on the same path and have the same morals and values etc. Given the fact that I met John in a church, I automatically assumed he was a Christian but it became apparent after our first date that he was not. He was however searching for something and ended up giving his heart to God, three months after we began dating. Long story, condensed into a little package, we were engaged after 6 months and married after 11.

What Honeymoon Period?

Our relationship was rocky from the start, I was just 20 when we got married, he was 22. Neither of us really had a good sense of who we were, we both had insecurities that manifested as codependency and we struggled to have any kind of friendship. I rushed into a life long decision because I was lonely, insecure and I felt I needed someone to ‘complete me’. I knew the first night of our honeymoon that I had made a mistake and the entire week was a rollercoaster of emotions that left me feeling lost and alone.

He wasn’t a bad guy, he didn’t abuse me or mistreat me but through different events and incidents, I learnt not to trust him and I never truly felt that he loved me. Whether that was due to his actions or my insecurities, I am unsure, probably both. I didn’t realise it until years later but I was very depressed during our engagement and after our marriage and due to this plus my continuing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I struggled with full-time work and didn’t feel confident to go to Uni like I always thought I would.

After a brief discussion about starting a family, I decided I might as well have kids then, as my options were pretty limited in other areas. Looking back, I was not in the best season of my life to be making big decisions and ‘having nothing better to do’ was not the greatest reason to start a family, but that’s how it happened. (Don’t worry, I ended up with amazing children so it worked out in the end). Little did I know that this would be the beginning of the toughest season I have ever faced in my life but one that probably produced the greatest growth.

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Seeing double

It only took 4 months of trying and I was pregnant. Just a couple of weeks after discovering this exciting fact, I entered into the depths of morning sickness hell. I couldn’t eat without immediately projectile vomiting it back up, and the emptier my stomach got the sicker I would feel. The smell of just about everything caused me to gag.

I lived in a fog, bright lights hurt my eyes, I was so exhausted I would lie on the couch feeling useless and incompetent but as soon as I stood, my head would spin and all the contents of my stomach would attempt a speedy escape up my esophagus. I would plan my breakfast around what was easiest to throw back up, out my mouth and my nose mind you (I didn’t touch sultana bran or apple and blackcurrant juice for years afterward). I literally felt like a zombie and wanted to die. It was the longest 12 weeks of my life and at our 11 week ultrasound we discovered why.

“Do you see that” the ultrasound technician said as she pointed at two little blips on the screen “theres two”. We were shocked, my mum had said just a few weeks earlier “It could be twins, your grandfather was a twin”. I had ignorantly shaken my head and told her “It’s not twins, I’m sure its not” and of course my mum was right like we all know mums often are (wink wink, hi mum!). We were of course all thrilled, I was also terrified and with good reason, raising two newborn’s with depression and chronic fatigue was an extremely stressful and sometimes traumatic journey that was very painful at the time but very rewarding in the end.

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me pregnant with boys — About 34 weeks pregnant (excuse the face, the water was cold)

I enjoyed being pregnant and feeling my two little humans kicking and pushing each other around, that feeling of growing life inside of me is one privilege I feel very blessed to have experienced. I didn’t however enjoy the hoards of stretch marks, the reflux, the back pain, the incontinence, nor the breathlessness that came from having two babies crammed into one living space but seeing their precious tiny little faces at 37.5 weeks gestation was all worth the discomfort and pain of the previous 9 months.

In 2003 I had my first c-section at 23 years of age, as twin 1 was breech and after my water broke at 2am, my twin boys were born at 4.45am and 4.47am. One was born screaming (he’s the one who lost his amniotic fluid) and the other was born sleeping, they had to break him out of his cocoon). I cried at the sound of their little screams and was in absolute awe of their tiny little bodies that kept curling up in the fetal position and the tiny little squeaks that came out of them, like little kittens crying for their milk.

The whole family was instantly in love but it took me a few days to bond with them as I had to divide my time between them both. This would be the beginning of at least 4 years of sleep deprivation that would ultimately lead me to a prolonged season in a very dark place, but that’s a story for Part 3.

Read the next chapter – My Mum Life Story: PART 3 – Depression & Divorce

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Thank you for reading more of my story and please stay tuned for the next installment in a few weeks time, it does have a happy ending and I pray you all find some encouragement through it and enjoy finding out more about me and my journey and why I write this blog, in the hopes of encouraging and empowering women to believe in themselves and what they can do.

If you have a story to tell and would like it featured on this blog, please visit our submissions page for more info or email us at mumlifestories@gmail.com

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Now You See Me: A Short Story

02/08/2019Jo Caddy

We’d like to thank Alison Drury of the UK for her short story submission entitled ‘Now You See Me…’. This story is based on true events and has been accepted for an anthology by the Open University Write Club, called ‘Generations” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Generations’, copies of the anthology are available on ebook or in paperback through Generations” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Amazon.

Alison is studying for a BA(Hons) degree in English Literature and Creative Writing with the Open University. She has lived in Kent’s Garden of England for more than forty years and knows that everything comes to those who want it badly enough. A daughter, Mother, professional plate-spinner and writer, she believes now is her time to dance.

Alison’s descriptive prose paints a relatable picture in this beautifully written, true-to-life story about the ravaging affects time can have on the mind of an ageing Mother.

Now You See Me…

‘Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.’
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Outside, here in the garden, the fresh air has blown away the cobwebs and the sunshine has fused her neural wiring. Pulling up the roots, teasing apart the strangled knots, picking up the windfalls and turning over and over the soil that clouds the water. I stand there, at the top of the path, watching. She hasn’t seen me yet. I don’t want to jinx this moment where, in this one place, her world makes sense. She’s tiny now, with the tenacity and strength of a little sparrow.

I’ve seen her doing this same activity, in this same garden, year after year and I’m reminded of when we first came here. They say your earliest memories tend to be few and traumatic – you rarely remember the more numerous happier times.

So then, why is my earliest memory of me sitting on my Father’s knee in the lounge of our brand-new house? It was so new there wasn’t even carpet on the floor. The earthy sweet scent of his pipe tobacco lingers, like dried hay, blended with the fresh sawdust left by the builders and the wooden tea chests stacked in the corner of every room. This smell, and the noise. We were one of the first families to move in and the estate was still a building site. Between eight in the morning and four in the afternoon the thunderous hammering and drilling was unrelenting – for months. But after a while it was only noticeable by the intense silence once the workmen had left for the day; the eerie, un-echoing sound like when everything is muffled by a blanket of snow or water or ash.

Time distorts memory.

It was unusual he was home before my bedtime; work or sport generally kept him out till late. I hung on, to him and his words. I devoured his stories as we snuggled in the high-backed winged armchair in front of the electric fire. His bristly whiskers tickled my cheek and my skinny spaghetti legs, in their knee-length white socks, draped over his lap. That’s all I can remember. There are photographs, of course, of other times, but they’re not memories – they have no lingering aroma nor give out any tingling pops of electricity. Nobody shared that moment except him and me. I was four years old, and a few months later he was gone – my Mother was a widow at thirty-two.

It wasn’t until I was thirty-two, also with a child of four, when the grief brought me up short, like I was trapped momentarily in a turnstile on the London underground. I remember it vividly. I tried to imagine how that situation had been for my Mother. One of those things that can never be prepared for, like losing a limb or a sense. My Mother had been amazingly pragmatic; no histrionics, or wallowing in self-pity. She just quietly shut that door and walked through the next one, and the next one and the next – throughout various episodes of her life.

Her ‘episodes’ read like a soap opera and are equally numerous, funny and tragic. Over eighty-three years she has had her appendix out, a baby out, her womb out, wisdom teeth out, nose, wrist, bladder and bowel repaired, and now sports a titanium knee. She has lost an eye, two husbands, two dogs, two guinea pigs, three cats and a rabbit. She has swum for Sheffield, travelled the world, para-glided in Florida and, water-skied in Corfu. Even now she swims, drives and dances and the garden remains a constant where she still digs her potatoes. It has grown and flourished, changing with the seasons; the Wendy House is now a hot house for her tomatoes, the swing has been replaced with a Victoria Plum, and the exotics have been composted and replanted with root vegetables and raspberry canes. I think back to the time I first noticed the brick path becoming disjointed and furred over with moss, and the pond-life increasingly trapped in algae-infested stagnation. The bugs were sneaking in, burrowing and eating away the goodness, stealing her words: there was the gentleman friend who, ‘poor thing’, was in hospital having a ‘hysterectomy’; she excitedly told us how she had packed all the ‘furniture’ into her suitcase for the Retirement Group charabanc to North Wales. Her confusion at the drop in visiting birds – probably due to the fish food in the bird feeder – and her muddled days as she found nobody at the Doctor’s surgery on a Sunday.

We had time.

The tests called on her artistic skills but she was better at drawing water to feed the flowers, than five past five on a clock-face. She would curse at the bindweed, anchoring her peonies, but could only identify an anchor on the Doctor’s sheet as ‘that thing that stops a boat from floating away’. In another picture, she knew it was a musical instrument, miming how it should be played, like Lisa from The Simpsons. When asked, she thought it was Tuesday (‘or was it Thursday’), and recalled the Prime Minister’s name was David ‘something’ – he had the same name as her childhood sweetheart. The amber warnings of bleak times ahead led to sandbags and countermeasures at the ready. The boost from the medication was like the heater in the hot house or weed killer in the rain; the memories blossomed and the woolliness evaporated. The side-effects, however, were impatience and sheer bloody-mindedness. These would, of course, have been perfectly harmless if they’d helped in solving Sudoku, or deciphering the bus timetable. However, it’s a different story when they stimulate super powers to ascend into the loft to sort through the ‘keep list’, or climb out of the window to prune next door’s hedge, because the side gate was rusted shut.

It was early enough in the diagnosis that she understood the concept that things die eventually: branches fall from the old apple tree, and leaves become brittle and shatter. She accepted the fact that a certain amount of chemical fertiliser could help, but it couldn’t prevent the inevitable. She was driven to do anything that would enable her to remain in her house with her beloved garden; ‘the only place I can think straight because of my bloody brain.’

I quietly slip inside to put the kettle on and glance at the charging unit for her shiny new pendant blinking expectantly. I smile as I think back to the reason for inviting ‘Big Brother’ to be her chaperone; like the time she disappeared without leaving a ’flight plan’ having taken the scenic route across the fields to the church, the precariously rigged steps to facilitate the hedge-pruning incident when she could have been trapped in the passageway for days. This had been an exercise in patience; not for her, but for us. She had been more than willing to have it but couldn’t quite grasp that (a) she needed to wear it at-all-times, and (b) it needed to sit in its cradle occasionally to recharge the battery. Her trajectory of understanding is precariously heading for an escarpment but we are holding her hand every step of the way, encouraging her to seek new and easier paths through the increasingly befogged jungle. As I look around the house, our way-markers are everywhere; the sprinkling of pink and yellow Post-it Notes, like long-blooming perennials, written with instructions and diagrams on how to use the washing machine, how to switch from the radio to the record player, when to take her pills, and how to reinvigorate ‘Big Brother’.

We have time.

The house is clean and tidy and her slippers sit waiting to be exchanged on newspaper by the door. Her lunch is prepared on the side and her diary is full of appointments and social engagements.

I walk down the garden and surprise her with a cup of tea. We sit on the bench, her little legs swinging like a child’s in her red wellies, and admire the trench she has prepared for the potatoes.

‘I’ve been thinking Mum, if you want to go on the next trip, perhaps I’ll come with you.’

‘What trip pet?’

‘The next trip with your retirement group, the Turkey & Tinsel to the Isle of Wight in November.’

She wiped away the constant tear from her unseeing eye. ‘Oh darling, are you sure? That would be incurable, I’d love you to come.’ Leaning in conspiratorially, ‘Jane said she didn’t think I should sign up for it. I think I was an annoying whatsit in Wales and she got a bit stressed.’

‘I know, she told me.’

‘It wasn’t fair! My room was miles from anyone else’s and I kept getting lost. I couldn’t sleep, thought I’d miss breakfast.’

‘Shhhh! Also, you can’t just go wandering off without telling anyone.’

She flung her arms up in exasperation, spilling her tea, ‘I only went for a walk for heaven’s sake, I couldn’t bear being cooped up inside. And anyway, I couldn’t find anyone to tell.’

I stilled her hands and saved the tea, ‘Well, we can do our own thing, we can be rebels together, and they won’t have to worry.’

I want more time.

A mother-daughter relationship is like a cat’s cradle: the care threaded around our fingers, controlled by one, and then passed to the other in varying sequences. Like the convolvulus, strangling her herbaceous peonies, my Mother’s changing character needs liberating and befriending. Letting go of that other person is hard for both of us but, hands clasped, another door awaits and we step through it together.

~ Alison Drury

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COMPARISON IS THE DEATH OF JOY: A Mum Life Success Story

30/07/2019Jo Caddy

“Comparison is the death of Joy, it’s the death of Momentum”

I love the spin Natasha has put on this famous Mark Twain quote. How many of us have spent some, if not most of our lives comparing some or all parts of ourselves to those around us? How much of our time do we waste thinking we are not as good as, attractive as, smart as, or rich as this person or that person? How much has it affected the way we see ourselves? The way we feel about ourselves, and our ability to move forward and become truly happy within ourselves?

Natasha Day from Ottawa, Canada, knows all too well the negative impact comparison can have on someone’s self esteem and confidence, but after a harrowing birth experience that left her weak and mentally exhausted, she made a decision to make her health her number one priority. The result had an amazing impact on not just Natasha, but her entire family and other women in her community. She found the ability to push past fear and doubt to move forward and find self acceptance, confidence and empowerment!

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A Destructive Cycle

Natasha says “I had struggled with weight and hormones my whole life, I felt like I’d been on a diet since I was 13 and I’d tried everything out there. I always had a very negative body image, no confidence and was never happy in my own skin. I always thought I should be more like everyone else.” These were the thoughts that harassed Natasha’s mind on a daily basis and fuelled her already unhealthy relationship with food.

She would comfort eat, using food to try and deter the anxiety and fear that would inevitably come, avoiding activities and social events where she might have to dress up or be around others who seemed to have it all together. It was a full circle of self destruction that began with a negative body image, resulting in emotional eating, which only led to increased weight gain and more self loathing. It was this cycle that she would eventually be brave enough to break.

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A High Risk Pregnancy

After struggling to get pregnant, Natasha was put on fertility treatments which increased her weight gain but meant she was expecting by early 2016. As she was at risk of pre-term labour, she had to continue on progesterone throughout the entire pregnancy. These extra hormones, plus her unhealthy relationship with food and the fact that she couldn’t exercise due to being high risk, meant she packed on a total of 90 pounds throughout the pregnancy, bringing her to an overwhelming total of 350 pounds.

Just before her due date, Natasha knew something was wrong when she felt her baby had stopped moving. “We went to Emergency and I had to fight to be taken seriously” she says “They didn’t though, and I was sent home. Then it happened again and eventually they listened and I had an emergency c-section because my baby was obviously in distress. After the op, they told me that Nora’s umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck 4 times. They’d never seen one wrapped so tightly before. If I had tried to give birth my daughter would have died.”

The complications didn’t end there and what happened next became the tipping point for a massive change in Natasha’s life and the life of her family.

The Tipping Point

After Natasha was discharged and sent home, she became increasingly out of breath. She was told that it was normal and would correct itself in time. As she herself had worked in a hospital, in surgery etc, she knew that the level of breathlessness she was experiencing was anything but normal. She decided however to be patient and do what they told her, but after 3 days it was so intense she couldn’t walk and talk at the same time.

“I went back to the hospital emergency and had to fight again for them to assess me. They sent me for an outpatient clot scan that was negative and sent me home. I went to bed that night, and in the morning got up to go to the bathroom and my incision opened right up. I had infection all over me and all over the ground. I was rushed back into hospital, and not only did I have an infection but a massive hematoma and a heart issue that was undiagnosed. I spent a week in the hospital on IV medication and was discharged with 5 weeks of oral antibiotics which I had to switch weekly because my body was getting resistant to them.” For 12 weeks Natasha wasn’t able to do a lot, no exercise or much movement at all.

On top of all that, she struggled with breastfeeding. She hadn’t received the normal release of hormones (due to her low progesterone levels) and felt like she didn’t bond with Nora the way she should have. Nora had been taken away for the first 3 hours after birth and when she did see her, Natasha couldn’t hold her for a long time because her arms were weak.

Add to all this an angry colicky baby and it was little wonder Postpartum depression became the new norm. Natasha experienced a devastating lack of attachment to her newborn, feeling like her baby wasn’t really hers, like she was just babysitting and waiting for the arrival of her real parents.

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A Life Changing Decision

When coaching came along it was the most inconvenient time of her life but she could feel herself slipping away, like a stranger in her own body. Before having a child she was powerlifting at the gym but afterwards she could barely walk to the bathroom.

Natasha had spent 8 years in school to become a Speech and Language Pathologist before her pregnancy, which meant she had a lot of school loans that needed to be paid. So on top of needing a change in her health, she needed to help with the family finances in order to pay off the massive debt.

When Nora was 12 weeks old, Natasha decided that for herself and her daughter she needed to stop the cycle of depression, anxiety and fear that caused her to hide from the world and not live her life to the fullest. She wanted to be an example to her daughter, of how to love herself, her body and her strength and to become the best version of herself that she could be. After a lot of skepticism about whether it would work or not, she finally reached out to the coach she’d been following on Facebook for quite some time and told her she was ready.

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She joined a 21 day fitness challenge and an accountability group and absolutely loved it. She didn’t have to leave the house, go to the gym and deal with leaving her screaming colicky baby in the daycare, etc, she could do it all from home. “I followed the meal plans to the T, I plugged into the support and the group and the cool thing is I’d tried this kind of home workout thing in the past and it never worked for me. The difference was I really connected with my coach and the group was super supportive. So I showed up every damn day and my coach asked me to start coaching and I resisted her for a long time, I think it was 6 – 8 months.”

In January 2017 she jumped into coaching. She had lost 30 pounds or so with her coach but she still had no self confidence, was not a fitness expert, or nutrition expert and wondered if anyone would listen to her as she was not at her ideal weight. She reasoned however that being a coach would give her accountability. As she would be going back to work she worried that she would slip into old habits if she didn’t make her health a priority. Coaching meant that she had to show up every day, sharing her story, her journey. It kept her accountable until she had developed the habits, the lifestyle that would eventually help her motivate other women onto the same journey.

In just one year, Natasha has lost 115 pounds and 80 inches. The mental impact however has been the most amazing part of the transformation. She doesn’t believe she would have achieved that without coaching. “90% of coaching” she says “is about the mental and emotional side of things that makes you feel differently about yourself, so you can have the drive to push forward and lose the weight.”

She is now back to working full-time and coaching part-time but earns up to $1500 a month with the coaching, which has led to her being able to help her family pay off the huge school debt. It’s given her confidence, not just in her body as she is still working toward her ideal weight, but in her abilities to move forward. She now has two passions. Her full time job and her part time coaching role. Helping others develop confidence and self esteem by getting fit and healthy.

Coaching

What she loves most about coaching is that it hasn’t only changed her life, but the life of others. Her husband Richard has also had an amazing transformation, losing over 50 pounds, and after talking to many other women who had felt the same way about themselves as she had, she decided to start a movement called ‘The Empowerment Project” (search #TheEmpowermentProject on Instagram) to empower and support women toward self love and becoming the best versions of themselves. Natasha tells us that it has given her great joy to be a part of others journey’s to self discovery.

As a coach, Natasha Partners with a company called ‘BeachBody’. Their programmes are created by super trainers, with an accompanying nutrition plan created by nutritionists and dieticians. What they do is connect with people, learn about their struggles, goals and the obstacles holding them back and pair them with a programme that is the best fit for them. “We don’t stop there, we work with them, offering a group, a community, sharing workouts, meal plans and the hardships holding them back, etc. We cheerlead and support each other, become a family, a support system.”

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Natasha tells us that being a part of coaching ‘fuels her soul and sets her on fire.’ She now has an entire team that she coaches and mentors who are called ‘The Empowerment Project Team’. Her goal is to empower as many women as possible to be healthy and strong and to love the body they are in and to be that empowerment and encouragement behind them. If you’d like to be a part of Natasha’s journey, or find out more about the project, simply follow her on Instagram at @natasha.s.day or friend her on Facebook on her personal page or her business page.

Read more Mum Life Success Stories here, or If you felt inspired by this story and would like to help inspire others with your story, please contact us at mumlifestories@gmail.com or fill in the form on our Mum Life Stories T & C’s page so we can talk about featuring you on this blog.

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The Sacrifices We Make

Almondie Shampine

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I Had No Clue

Postnatal Depression

Pressure Rising

My Darkest Days

Divorce

Declining Health

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Dancing Shadows

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Stories

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Young and Naive

What Honeymoon Period?

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Seeing double

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Now You See Me…

More stories

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A Destructive Cycle

A High Risk Pregnancy

The Tipping Point

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A Life Changing Decision

Coaching

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