💜💜💜Mommy's Mental Health - Chapter 33: A Guide to Falling Flat on Your Face💜💜💜

Ideal homemade office space

It takes some pretty impressive skill to lose two jobs in one year and most of your family, either through mortality or mental illness, or unresolved trauma. It's been a rough year. I'd love to title this chapter, a guide to surviving falling flat on your face several times, but I'm afraid it would be a farce.

Despite all the fairy lights and Christmas cheer, I still feel like I failed. Where I poured my heart out I was banished, where I worked my ass off I was unappreciated and where I set healthy boundaries I was stampeded.

I feel like I'm coming out of 2023 like I had my hand stuck in the wall socket, or like I put all my hopes, dreams and plans into the blender and then forgot to put the lid on and now there's just weird unidentifiable sticky stuff that stains all over my brain.

I moved my guitar and my office upstairs because the pain is really bad. My knee affected the sciatic nerve in my back, which means regular Voltaren injections (or suppositories 🥳🙈).

After my Dad's death, I just so badly wanted a family Christmas, and Matthew and I were overjoyed to fetch my mom from the airport. I hate it when she's in London over Christmas.

As usual, I murdered myself trying to make Christmas magical, and you know, despite everything, I have @zakludick and our beautiful children and even my mom to thank for really bringing the magic out. Even if it didn't last as long as I'd hoped, We had a beautiful family Christmas Eve.

Hand-made Christmas gift tags, hand-made reusable advent calendars, and a Christmas feast from heaven

By Christmas afternoon, we were having a full-blown family tiff and my mom's 11-day stay with us has been cut short as we take some space to heal.

Perhaps it was too much to ask of everyone... knowing how everyone is, and expecting them to change. I guess that's not fair either. Not on me, or the those I had expectations of.

In fact, I wrote a chapter about that a while ago.....

Mommy's Mental Health - Chapter 16: "Loving me for who I am" is a two-way street

Here I explore the idea that I can't run around getting upset with people for not accepting me for who I am if I cannot do the same. Like a toddler trying to squash the wrong shape into the Fisher Price toy. No matter how hard you try, the circle will not go into the star hole. It is what it is.

I am not, however, by any means, saying that one should accept abuse from family just because it's Christmas. I appreciate that we're all mature enough to take a step back and give each other space to breathe before we do any more damage to each other.

So as I recover from absolutely completely overdoing it and reinjuring my body (including bits I did not know I had) to pull together the perfect Christmas, It's got me wondering if I put too much pressure on everyone... including myself.

Was it too much to ask for differences to be put aside for the sake of spending time together? I don't think so, but I do feel oh so depleted and defeated.

Was it worth it for the kid's sake? ABSOLUTELY. And despite everything that went wrong, there was definitely magic on Christmas: and for that, I am grateful.

Now it's time to take a day or two, reestablish my priorities and goals, for my career, my music, and my children, and start planning for next year.

There is of course, also the long-term project of our wedding, which brings me great joy and distraction to plan without pressure. Nothing like looking at wedding dresses and fantasizing about venues and what what to make the little girl in me go squeeeeeeee!!!

But just for today? I'm going to eat cheese and trifle and stuff myself with ibuprofen until I explode or take a very long nap with the only creatures in the house that really get me 😂😂😹😹