Introducing the Life Circle - who's joining me?

Image: Gregory Szarkiewicz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What with September being the start of the new school year, parents everywhere start making plans for what they are going to do this year now that their children are back in a daily routine. Personally, I'm taking a long hard look at myself. Why? Because this time last year, I wrote this post. And you know what? I feel pretty ashamed as a lot of those things I haven't really achieved. It's like I've been drifting, for months.

That's not entirely true, as things HAVE changed. I have a client for my business, who is very happy with the work I've been doing and has been gradually giving me more tasks to do. I've also potentially got another client or two who need help which I'm excited about, because I now believe I can make it work for us and it's work that is flexible, allowing me to work from home without needing childcare. I've been able to do lots of things where I'm not just someone's mummy - but then, that's mostly what this blog is about, even if I do blog about my family.

But the rest? I've let it slip. And it has to stop.

One in four women

What do you think that proportion relates to? It could be many things, couldn't it? In fact, I'm sure it is. Google it and I bet there are lots of answers. Sadly, the 1 in 4 women stat that I’m going to quote to you today is this: 1 in 4 women experiences domestic violence in their lives. That's twice as many women that suffer from breast cancer.

I am one of the “1 in 4s”. If you read this post that I wrote in April, you'd know that about me. I survived. I came through the other side. I did it on my own. Sometimes even now, I struggle with my self-esteem and I know that its root cause is almost certainly what happened to me, admittedly a long, long time ago. I wrote that post to help others going through domestic violence. Helping others is important to me because although 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence, they shouldn’t have to live with it.

Supporting role

I've been a rubbish tweeter to follow just recently. If you do follow me on Twitter, then right now, I apologise for most of the last week. I don't tend to blog about it a lot tho I did post this last week when I was feeling a bit rubbish but things got worse. I really don't know why - well, not fully. I was feeling under the weather anyway, but sometimes, social media just doesn't help. A lovely friend of mine tweeted at the end of last week that Twitter brings out the worst in her, and to some extent, I feel that has been true of me recently. If I'm feeling down, and tweet about it, the kind responses I get from the supportive people who I'm proud to call my Twitter friends just make me well up. I guess I realise I am not being totally kind to myself in those moments and people being kind to me just bring that into sharper contrast than usual.

I'm feeling better now although I still have my moments. Some of the intervening time has seen me pondering what it is that is wrong. I've come to a conclusion and it's an uncomfortable one for me to make. It's this - I don't have enough real support in my life.

That sounds shocking and it sounds like I'm critical of the support that I do have, but it's not. The real life support I have is great. However, my husband works shifts, and I'm not particularly close to immediate family. My inlaws provide support of the childcare sort, but what they can offer is severely limited by the fact that my father in law is still recovering from an operation at the moment, meaning they are less mobile and less able to look after the children. In the current situation, I feel I should hold back from asking them unless I desperately need it.

Photo credit: asifthebes

That, still, is not the crux of the problem. This time last year, when I first started this blog, I was still in the NCT years. Whatever people think of the organisation, my local branch was a great source of support to me. I regularly attended coffee mornings, which might sound horrendous to you but were really just a group of other mums that became my friends who all had children of similar ages, who you could chat to about things and let off steam. All our children knew each other and we just met in each other's houses or at playcentres in term time.

Now, however, I am really beyond the target audience of the regular activities they offer because Monkey and Missy Woo are at school now and I miss that. Some of them do invite me to turn up to theirs on coffee mornings but their main sessions clash with my classes at the gym, and selfish that I am, I like to keep those up as I am working towards a goal. I have been to the odd coffee morning without children and it's odd (although slightly nice that you have no children to pester you for another biscuit or that would decide to fight with the other children over who's playing with a particular toy!). I'm still in touch with some of those mums but things are different now.  And the gym? Not really a source of support. I turn up, do my class and go home again.

Support just doesn't seem to exist for parents of school children who are at home during the day - or if it does, it's very rare or limited. I do know some other parents at school but there is no regular place for us to meet and chat. By necessity, a lot of them are working, either full- or part-time. I need to work too but what is best for our family is a job that is flexible and allows me to be around for the children which means working from home where possible. I've started a business recently and already have a client but it means that the business will, by necessity, mean being quite remote from my clients a lot of the time.

And what of tweeting and blogging? I've made some lovely supportive friends through doing both, and I'm very proud they consider me their friend too. I've been lucky enough to meet some of them in real life. They are there for me and I hope I'm there for them. But geography gets in the way as there's no-one nearby I can turn to and say "fancy a coffee?" at a moment's notice and meet for a chat. And, at times, when I've been busy toiling away on this blog, I jump back into twitter, only to end up feeling like I've turned up sober to a party late, everyone else is a little tipsy and having a great time and barely noticed I'm there. Then, more so than ever, I feel like the odd one out, a bit invisible and not sure how to join in the fun.

Although I'm feeling better now, I don't really know if there is a solution to the situation that I'm in to stop it happening again. My sounding boards aren't there. Sometimes, we all need someone that we can meet for coffee, let off steam, and share things. Much as I love my Twitter friends, and the comments from the lovely people that read my blog (ie you), I've decided the support I need most needs to be around me. And it's not there. I feel slightly sad about that.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. Have you felt the same as me? Do you feel the same as me? Have you found the answer, and if so, what is it? 

Finally, I really do appreciate the support I get from everyone here and on Twitter. Some people have gone out of their way to support me this week and make sure that I'm OK. They know who they are, and I've said thank you to them all, but thanks again. If nothing else, social media HAS enriched my life.

I just want you all to move down the road so I can visit for a hug sometimes. I can make cake. Deal?

How do you perceive me? Roll up for the One Word Meme

Another week, another tag... Lynne at honiebuk - who is also a real life NCT friend who I've known for four years - tagged me in this fantastic meme. For a change, this involves me getting you to do the hard work here. Basically, you have to sum me up in one word. The originator of this meme, Michelle from Mummy From The Heart, explains it thus:

This got me thinking about an email I received a few years back, one of those circular things that I normally hate but this one I loved and have never forgotten.  It was about the power of positive affirmations and how knowing what positive things others think of you can boost your own self-esteem.  It talked of an inspirational teacher who got all her children to write one positive word down to describe the other children in the class and then they had to hand them in.  The teacher then collated all the positive words for each child into a special sheet for them and handed it to them to read and keep.  They learnt that their peers saw them in ways they had never imagined and it had an immense effect on them.  The story goes that one of them died and a number of them attended the funeral and it was found that they all still had their lists 20 or so years later as they had been really touched by this loving gesture.  Did this really happen?  Who knows, but I love the sentiment of this story and therefore it does not matter to me if it was real.

Well, what about if us bloggers and virtual friends did something similar?  How marvellous would we all feel to learn these new facets of ourselves that we did not know existed.  Someone may say I am inspirational (another one I have heard about myself a few times recently) and me being me I would say ‘no not me’ but what have I done there?  Rubbished their opinion and that is not right, only they know if I have actually inspired them to do something.  If people are kind enough to give us a compliment we should be gracious enough to accept it…. and why not go one step further and actually go out and ask for it?

Well that is what I want us all to do.  I am creating a meme, called the 1 Word Meme and I would love for every one of us to be able to collate all the positive words left by our real life friends, virtual friends and fellow bloggers so that we each have a sheet of positive affirmations to treasure and boost our self-esteem.

We do spend our lives listening to our critical inner voices, which are sometimes so loud that it drowns out positive words from others. I'm not bad at accepting compliments, I think, but does it shut my critical inner voice up? Does it heck! The feelgood factor from having nice words from others lasts about as long as my cup of tea stays hot. Which is not very long, given that I drink a lot of cold tea.

So, now it's your turn. How would you sum me up in one word? Bit of a tall order, that one, given that I can't do it. But still - come up with that word and leave a comment below. And I promise - I'll try to make the feelgood factor last beyond my next cuppa.

As this is a meme, it is only right and proper I wave my tagging wand over a few other lovely bloggers to take it forward to have people say nice things about them too. They are:

Sarah from Happy Mum, Happy Child, Happy Life!
Sharron from Chocolate Is Therapy
Jane from Never Plain Jane
Deb from One Rubber Band
Sally from Who's the Mummy?
and Garry from The Blog Up North

(The badge code can be grabbed from Michelle's original post)

Onwards and upwards, folks. Don't forget to get to it in the comments below. Do your worst, eh?

My news (or what I was going to blog last night before sleep took hold of me)

I took my first radical step a few days ago. I stood down from my main volunteer role and it feels like a weight has been lifted.

I was the Regional Coordinator for the NCT in the North West. It was a role I had taken on by default, in the absence of anyone else and initially, I was just helping organise a training day for volunteers but I ended up taking on the whole role. It hadn't meant to be that way as I had wanted to stick to helping other branch treasurers, sharing the experience I had picked up doing the same role in my own branch.

I've been doing the job for two years. Some of it was hard work, some of it was a doddle. I became part of a fantastic, if disparate, group of ladies who do the same role in other parts of the UK. We regularly swap emails and occasionally met up at quarterly meetings; something not so easy for me due to the distance and the difficulties of arranging childcare if my husband was working the weekend (and there's a 50:50 chance of that).

I experienced some great highs and some awful lows. My high was organising a training day which was attended by over 40 people in March. We'd never had that many people turn up to such an event. Forty fantastic volunteers giving up their Saturday; barely a negative comment and lots of positive ones about how well it was organised and how much people had got out of it. My low point saw me in floods of tears over an email I received, which berated me and everything I stood for. Luckily, that low was a one off; it was soon dealt with and forgotten.

The problem is, as I've blogged before, I'm moving on now. I hinted at it, but didn't directly mention that I was thinking of giving it up. But it was becoming too much effort, and I have a growing interest in doing other things, like this. Tasks I was supposed to be doing were being left. My enthusiasm to get them done was waning.

And yet I felt guilt. I'd taken on the role because there was no-one else doing it, and hadn't been for some time. There wasn't anyone else coming forward to help me that could take my place. However, I knew from my experience as a volunteer, that guilt alone is not a good enough reason to stay, and that it is the wrong thing to do - to keep doing something that you're not paid to do, to which you are no longer fully committed. Far better to create a vacancy - because others will step in and cover - than to mess it up royally by being half-arsed.

I have always known that the treasury work is my strength. In NCT circles, I am famous for it, strange as that may seem. A lot of it is about how to use an accounting application, which I've used for years now, and I worked for several years supporting accounts systems. Some of it is training - again, something I have done in my working life. Some of it is just common sense, although you wouldn't believe that sometimes. I can help other people in other branches quite easily, without thinking too hard about it. In other words, I can still make a difference without putting in too much effort. That sounds perfect to me! I decided I would ask to step back and just do that.

It didn't make the process of resigning any easier. I had let it drag for a while. I attended a training weekend last month, which was enjoyable and useful but at the end of the first day, I was returning to my room feeling very emotional without knowing why. I got back to my room, lay on the bed, and just cried. I knew at that point that stepping back was inevitable; it was just a matter of when.

I finally decided to do it this weekend. I had wondered if I should stay for a few months, hope to find a successor and hand over to them neatly. I don't like leaving people in the lurch. The risk was that I would let it drag even further. I arranged another training day and I couldn't attend for childcare reasons. I could have booked a babysitter but it was all day and I wasn't comfortable with that, as it would have had to be a stranger. I lay in bed one morning thinking about when I should go when I realised that there was no point in delaying any further. I was making a hash of it now, so why stay?

I got up and I composed the email. I had tears in my eyes as I typed the words. It isn't a full resignation - because I offered to do the treasury work. Other parts of the North don't have any extra help with their accounts and so I can reach further than my own region. I said that in my email; that I still want to help with that, because that is what I'm good at. I told myself I wasn't completely walking away whilst I was writing it. I delayed hitting send, using Twitter as a distraction for a while until I could delay no further. The moment of truth. I cried. Whether it was with relief or with sadness, I don't really know.

I got a reply back the same evening and I even delayed reading that too, but the reply was polite and positive, if regretful at my decision. It asked if anything could be done or could have been done differently, but the answer is no. It's not that the role is horrible, it's just that it's no longer for me. My offer of helping with treasury stuff has been accepted and after a chat on the phone with someone yesterday, I've handed over pretty much everything else I had on my plate. I'm still helping my local branch too - although I am naturally moving away from that now that the children are at school and I don't regularly go to activities. The relief is enormous but I'm still feeling emotional about it all. To blog about it last night would have been a step too far and even writing this today has been hard.

It's been fun and I had a ball at times. It wound me up at others, and it made me cry just once - except for the process of making the decision to step back, which has been one of the hardest things ever. I achieved some things of which I will be forever proud. I will miss being part of the fab team that is Karen, Helen, Joanne, Elaine, Geraldine, Miriam, Lonnie, Claire and Hayley (and just recently, Caitlin) but for now, I am still allowed to play alongside them. If you read this, ladies, thanks for the support and the laughs (and late night wine-fuelled chats at conferences). If truth be known, I still feel guilty about going now, but I know that that will pass.

As one door closes, another should open, right? Let's see where this one leads.