Life throws us all challenges when we least expect them, just when we think we have found our way and the pathway seems clear, the unexpected throws us off course.
Recently I found myself welcoming in more glimmers and beauty of imperfection, beginning to almost ‘forget’ the trauma that I have carried around for as long as I remember. Noticing nature, enjoying good food without the feeling of nausea, savouring a glass of wine, without needing another, sharing banter with friends and laughing at comical moments that would have passed me by over the previous years.
I was sat with my team, laughing and planning for the future of the business (that is my passion and my pride and joy), when my phone rang. I ignored it, which previously I wouldn’t have been confident enough to do, knowing it would bring traumatic news. It rang again, on a different platform, then again … so I picked it up, apologising to my team that I felt I needed to take the call.
And there we were again, back in the trauma. Back in the familiar conversations.
My beautiful, adult child was in hospital, having attempted to take their life.
And there it was… the feeling of my heart exploding through my chest, the coldness enveloping my feet, my hands shaking, my head fighting to stop the jittering of my voice and struggling to withhold the tears whilst I was on my phone. But, this time, I beckoned my colleague and without questioning, they held me, as I sobbed internally and continued to hold me tight through the call. The call that I thought was in the past, the call I believed wasn’t meant to be part of my present.
For one, interminable moment I was back, the hope fell away, the guilt swept back in, the need to fix was overwhelming. But it was a moment, a fleeting moment, because I was held and that stopped me from free falling into the pit of despair and I heard myself utter the words, ‘how can I support you?’ ‘what would you like me to do’
And there it was, the change, the flip, no resistance this time, to letting me in. I heard different words this time, ‘Please can you come and see me, sit with me, talk to me.’
My body still shaking, my colleague and dear friend told me that they would drive me, keeping me safe and we dropped everything and headed to the hospital. The place where too many times I have expected to leave with a corpse. But this time, my body still holding the trauma was jittering, but inside I felt the hope and the strength of all I have learnt in the past few years. All the conversations of support to others, all the shared experiences supported me to believe that I’d ‘got this’. That I wasn’t a bad mum, that this wasn’t my fault and that my child had been hit by challenges that felt insurmountable and in that moment they felt they couldn’t face life as it was and their overwhelming emotions led to a moment of impulse with a near life-threatening outcome. But something inside them had reached out, the realisation that although they didn’t want to live, they certainly didn’t want to die. Something inside them recognising they are 2 very different things.
So there we were, sat in familiar surroundings, in the sterile environment with the incessant beeping, the smell of canteen food, the hospital gown. And they looked so small, so young and let me embrace them with a hug that I have never needed so much in all my life.
We can do this, we will get through this together. I will be there when they need me and in the meantime, I will be alongside them, waiting in the wings. I of course will have moments of overwhelming grief and the tears will flood from my eyes at the most inconvenient of times. But, I will survive, they will survive and together we will navigate the path to the beauty of imperfection and together we will embrace life and continue to grow and believe in the hope that brought us through that day and will carry us forward to a slightly different, unexpected path of this journey of life. A life that is precious and a life that is worth living, even when the hardest of challenges continue to land in our pathway. We will find ways to navigate them, not going over them or around them, but fighting our way through them, with all the ugliness, stumbling, falling, sometimes clawing our way through, clinging on by our fingernails yet finding the beauty and wonder beyond it.
We’ve got this!
With special thanks to all those who have inspired me, held me and supported me over the past few days, helping me find the strength to write again, hoping that when you read this, you will know that I am holding the hope for you, even though you may not be ready to hold it yourself.