Wednesday 24 May 2017

Manchester bombing: the use and abuse of personal testimony?

Photo credit
The power of personal testimony was every where yesterday.

Radio 4 is effectively audio wallpaper in our house but throughout the day the voices of those who had been at the Ariana Grande concert or picking up their kids from it stopped me in my tracks.

Emotion surged through my body like an energy with no outlet for expression other than to prickle into a few hot tears.

Conflicted

But as is often the way with these kind of terrible events I felt hugely conflicted about the era of 24 hour news that we live in. Even the journalist on the radio sounded shell shocked yesterday morning as he said, ‘it’s hard to believe that this terrible event took place less than ten and a half hours ago.’

And here’s the thing. If it’s hard to believe for the journalists, if it’s hard to bear for those of us listening to the radio, watching the news, scrolling our twitter feeds, how much harder must it be for the people involved, the children, teenagers and families?

Is it therefore okay that almost as soon as it had happened reporters at the scene were interviewing the victims as they emerged from the arena?

Is it okay that adults and children who most definitely have not had time to process the experience are interviewed, albeit by sympathetic reporters?


News agenda

During our Journalism Masters programme at UWE we used to have weekly ‘news days’. We operated like any newsroom in the country, we came in with story ideas, the editorial meeting was held, decisions made about the days news agenda and we were each assigned roles.

On one of these occasions, two of our class were sent out to get footage for a story about a mugging that had taken place. They were encouraged to find the address of the elderly lady who had been attacked, go to her home and ‘doorstep’ her for an interview. As I remember it was known that she had said she was not interested in talking to the media, hence we couldn’t phone ahead to set up an interview.

Being good students the girls set off to do as they were told. And being good would-be journalists they got the footage. But none of us felt okay about it and over the next few days we raised our concerns (via our Media, law and ethics tutor) about the rightness of this action.

During the group meeting that was held at the end of our next news day we were encouraged to talk about how we felt. Our course tutors were both former journalists and editors who had worked for the BBC and ITV.

As good journalists they listened well. As good journalists they gently explained, ‘this is the job, whether you like it or not.’ As good human beings they shared the rationale that they had internalised over the years, no doubt as part of their own coping mechanisms. ‘The thing is,’ they explained, ‘it’s actually really helpful for people to talk, for people to tell their stories. It helps them heal.’

Storytelling as healing

I’m big on storytelling, I’m big on storytelling as part of the healing process. After the death of my dad and then years later after the death of my mum I know from personal experience that strange, pressing need to keep retelling the story. I know too how hard it can be to feel okay about the need to retell the story.

I also know that in the days immediately following the death of my father my journal falls strangely silent on the subject. There are no words to begin with.

I’m no expert on trauma and grief but I believe when those first words come out the kind of environment they emerge into is incredibly important.

Now the BBC and other news agencies may well have support teams in place to help the people they have interviewed afterwards, and I understand that Manchester as a city is doing its utmost to provide the survivors with all the help and support they possibly can.

So hopefully these children, teenagers, mums, dads, friends and family will have all the comfort and aid they need to help them in these first few days of staggering unreality.

My even bigger hope is that support remains in place in the weeks, months and years to come, long after the news agenda has moved on and the media machine has forgotten those voices. I really hope those people have someone to turn to then, someone who is still willing to listen to their story and to do so without any agenda beyond respect, care and love for the people who are talking to them.

Manchester, Ariana Grande, Manchester bombing, concert, grief, trauma, interview, #ManchesterBombing

Tuesday 23 May 2017

What is it like to be a new mum?


Me and A - 3 days old #nofilter
Nothing can prepare you for it. I remember attending the last NCT class with three of us huddled round before the start of the session saying, 'You don't have time to shower? Really? I just can't believe that'

But you don't! Or at least you do but you're very quick about it and you're dependant on a) your baby being asleep (on someone else...) and b) a partner/parent/friend/helper to keep a watchful eye on said baby and bang on the door at the first sign of her/him needing anything.

I wrote a few blogs a while back for Mrs Mummypenny's website (which I've included links to below). The skeleton ideas for these blogs were scribbled on bits of paper, at the back of a notebook in which I was meticulously tracking feeding and sleep times. They were written often in the darkest hours of a winters day that had slipped into a long winters night on the rolling circuit that was breastfeeding my baby.

A routine of napping...

It wasn't until I emerged blinking into the bright white days of January, when I'd managed (much to my own disbelief!) to settle A into a routine of napping 2 - 3 times per day (she was still NOT going to bed till 11pm mind for her night time sleep!) that I could finally dig out these worn bits of paper, decipher the words and form them into posts.

Reading back over them now, I'm glad I did because already those days have fallen away into the recesses of a nostalgic winter past; they've become golden days and nights, cosied up in our little nest, lit and warmed by the glow from the wood burner.

Though I remember the not knowing, the worry and the concern about keeping this gorgeous bundle of snuggly inquisitiveness alive, it's indistinct and I suspect that had I not scribbled those odd chaotic words down at the time I would not now be able to recall much of what I'm suggesting in these posts.

Rollercoaster ride

So what is it like to be a new mum? I think only new mums really know! You have to be on the rollercoaster ride of exquisite highs and soul searching lows to really answer that question. But here are some things I thought every new mum (and dad) should know when I was in that particular part of the funfair that is parenthood....

Happy reading, happy parenting and let me know if you find any of these useful!

7 things I wish someone had told me before giving birth

Your 8 point survival guide to breastfeeding

5 things every dad needs to know before the birth of their child

What really changes when you have a 3 month old baby

#amblogging, #amwriting, #baby #motherhood #motherhoodunplugged #newmum #advice

Sunday 7 May 2017

How being a mum takes you to the borderlands of sanity...And that's okay!

Today is the final day in the UK’s first Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, which has been running all week to coincide with International Maternal Mental Health Day on 3 May.

As a new mum, maternal mental health is something that I feel pretty passionate about.

I suspect that like me you initially think 'post-natal depression' when you hear the words 'maternal mental health' and absolutely post-natal depression is an incredibly important subject and something that should be discussed and supported more widely.

But that's not what I want to talk about here.

Darker places


You see being a mum is tougher mentally in ways that fall outside of post-natal depression. My experience of being a mum, for example, has taken me to darker places mentally than I had ever expected.

It's not post-natal depression and it's not talked about.

My daughter has just turned 7 months old. She is characterful, charming, curious, engaged and engaging, thoughtful and full of smiles and laughter (mostly!). She's desperate to get moving so all her limbs are in motion pretty much all of the time. Exploring the world with her, learning her as she learns me and learns herself has so far been the most fascinating, life-altering, heart-burstingly glorious time.

I'm lucky because that has been the main part of the story I have to tell about becoming a mum. But it's not the whole story. It has been hard too.

It's harder now in fact for me, 7 months down the line, than ever it was when she was a newborn. That's been a huge surprise to me, as I was expecting to be totally rocking the 'I got this' momma attitude by now, but I don't feel like that at all.

In reality I have, to coin a phrase, 'lost my s#*!' in terms of feeling on the edge of sanity more in the last couple of weeks than at any other time in her life. And it's scary to feel like that, really scary.

At the root of it all I believe is that sleep deprivation robs me of a reasonable grip on perspective. So I should sleep more, I get that. But even mums of newborns will tell you it's hard to 'sleep when the baby sleeps'. At this stage in the game, 7 months in, it just feels a weird ass mix of slovenly and as though I have in some senses 'failed' if I do ever capitulate and crawl into bed to sleep whilst she sleeps.

There is so much else to do after all.

Overwhelm


Here is what I believe is the second root of the problem, the 'overwhelm' of motherhood where our expectations of what we can and should be doing play out against a background of days where you are as blind as your partner and those around you to ALL the stuff you are doing. Take Wednesday for example. If you were to ask me what I did I would say I took A to get weighed at the Health Visitor clinic in the morning and then later I took myself for a doctors appointment (with A obviously!).

This clearly misses off the getting us both up and ready. It misses the breastfeeding and the preparation of finger foods; it misses the time spent allowing A to play with and explore breakfast ('food is fun until you're one'....), repeated again at lunch and oh yes again at tea time. It misses cleaning the bathrooms and making up the bed in the spare room for the guests we had coming that night, it misses washing, drying and folding her clothes, it misses preparing a roast dinner later on that evening and it misses, in an enormous way, that all of this was done against the backdrop of feeling and being quite ill (nb 'and then later I took myself for a doctors appointment').

But the first version is the one that I remember, the one that I repeat when my other half gets home and asks what I did today. I did two things, I say. Three if you include 'keep the baby alive', I might jokingly add (yes jokingly...).

And at my back I always hear the list of things I didn't get to. So the mismatch between what I expect to be able to do and what I can do is pretty significant.

The third root is actually there's an enormous amount of stuff going on in terms of my own identity, which has changed significantly and which continues to change as we're now figuring out return to work, childcare, being able to pay the mortgage against that balance of being paid and paying out for someone else to look after my daughter. There's my identity as person who reads and writes but who can no longer stay awake long enough when she goes to bed to do the former, nor get up early enough before my daughter wakes to the latter.

And finally there's the change to the relationship with the man I love, the father of my daughter. He experiences freedoms it's hard not to resent (he can go to the pub straight from work or plan a weekend stag do away from home without having to figure out the logistics of what do to about A) and experiences pressures it's easy for me to overlook (the responsibility of being the main breadwinner, the increased importance of doing well at work because of this, the need and desire to still be the person who can work late/go out with his mates as well as be the dad, husband, lover).

We're having to constantly redefine who we are and to do that against a backdrop of perspectiveless, sleep deprived me, whose confidence and happiness can teeter on the head of pin.

Not the only mum...


Most of the time I know I'm not the only mum whose baby isn't yet sleeping through the night. Much of the time I can even accept that this is just for now, just for such a short period of time that will pass quicker than a fleeting season. I can acknowledge and recognise that the weaning process is actually going pretty well, that health and happiness abounds and the wealth stuff will get figured out in time.

More often than not I can see that the beauty in our family life, that this extraordinary expansion of love and adventure and joy far exceeds the momentary frustrations of finding myself in an unexpectedly gendered cage or my fears of not being a good enough mum or a sane enough wife to deserve to be loved. But on those dark days, in those darker hours, when perspective is as absent as sleep, I stare down a deep dark hole, heart heavy, head hot and throbbing, throat sore from shouting or sobbing and I think this, this is not written about.

At those times I feel alone, but as my other half points out with what feels like a never-ending supply of patience, 'do you think you're the first mum to ever feel like this?'.

These are only tiny, fractional points in time. As my sister, friends, coach and wider family remind me, the answer is not to do more, but to do less, self-nourish. Self-nourishment for me is drinking tea, having a bath, reading a book. It's going for a walk in the woods with A, or planting out sunflower seedings in the finally warming up May sunshine.

I don't know if this article will get to or speak to any momma's who feel or have felt dark and  like they are only just holding on but if it does then all I would say is to pass on this nugget of kindness given me by my tribe - let other people help, they really really want to. Other people can give you the space, the time, to take a deep breath, to self-nourish, to take a second to look after yourself, so that you can get on with the big business of looking after your family. Oh and sleep, whenever, however you can!

#blog #blogger #whilemybabysleeps #amwriting #ConnectTheDots #MMH #mentalhealthawareness