The Liberation of Grief- different boats in the same storm

 

It is liberating to know what I am capable of. Certainly it has taken long tentative years of delicate investigation but I am now venturing into a new territory as a cycle mechanic. I truly don't know if I could have made this move if Ruby was still here but I doubt it. Her death has been enabling for me and for Claire who is now the manager of her team in the NHS service she has been working in for many years.

I am taking no serious financial risks in becoming a bicycle mechanic- the only expense has been tools and training, money I quickly returned- and the only other risks would have been to my pride, had I received no work or if I had been truly talentless, or risks to my family relationships as I have been taken away some evenings and most Saturdays, outside my usual 9-5 job.

I consistently weigh and consider the advantages of this extra work- my bank balance and my mental health, mainly- with the disadvantages- hours away from Tom and Claire. So far, almost all the time, the positives far outweight the negatives- some debts are being paid off, we spend a little less time worrying about money and, because my overall mental health has improved, there are huge benefits to our bonds as a family. Some weeks are different though. Some weeks the three of us need to close in a little, hunker down, turn our back a little to the outside and shield ourselves from, what exactly? The world, other people, difficult times? As those difficult weeks approach- an anniversary maybe, Father's Day, Ruby's birthday- I cut back on those extra work hours as a mechanic and spend as much time as is necessary at home, together. 

I am a nurse but I don't work on the frontline. I don't work in a hospital, I am not a surgeon, I am not a paramedic, I am not a nurse discussing (literally) life or death decisions each day. I have a specific and vocational qualification that, for the entire time that Covid has existed, has been utterly ineffective in contributing to its reduction or barely ameliorating any distress. For the first time in my professional life I felt useless. I have contributed 25 years of experience towards futhering my skills as a qualified nurse but, in the end, a tiny but highly transmissable virus was the identifying key to the potential futility of my career. 

It was clear to me, early on during initial lockdown in March this year, that my contribution could not be based on using my qualification but instead it would have to be personal and social. I felt a great weight of responsibility- we were all in the dead centre of a health pandemic and I was a health worker with no appropriate skills (I am, after all, a Mental Health nurse not an "Adult Nurse", the specific qualification that a nurse would have if they were to work in typical hospital ward for direct patient care). So what could I do? How do I help?

Since March, a typical week has consisted of home-schooling my son through the day and trying to squeeze in my own "working from home" as a nurse in the community. I would be with him from 7am until 9pm. I would be providing the education he needs through the day, the love he needs from me as his dad and some playful company as he can't see his friends. He is nine years old, an age that demands constant input for his psychological and neurological deveopment, an age where he is curious about the world and about Covid and needs food for his brain and for his body. He needs to be non-sedentary and needs good physical activity every day. I would have to provide this. Then I would, as almost always, prepare and cook dinner and hope that Claire could get away from work in time to have dinner together as a family. She often couldn't. There may be homework to do later on, maybe some work emails, some thoughts and discussions with Claire about her job and my job and some attempts to de-stress. There would often be tears and passionate ventilation about those pressures. I listened to Claire's stories about Covid and her nursing work for week after week, for months. This happened every day Monday to Friday, every week, for months. At weekends I grabbed a few hours to work at my new cycle mechanic business on Saturdays and to have a run on Sundays for an hour or two- my most valued time for self-care.

Now that Tom is back to school (for how long before another lockdown?) I can concentrate more on my nursing job. But the feeling remains- I continue to feel great responsibility to look after others- for Tom's childhood, for Claire because of the stress she is under, for my own clients and patients, for my relatives at distance in England, for the rest of the public. 

I have, in essence, been cocooning myself since March as my primary contribution to reducing the spread of Covid- this year I saw a friend for a walk in the hills once, I travelled to London once to see my relatives for five days, I went for bike ride once with another friend, and that has been the sum total of my personal interactions. I avoid all shops and contact with other people if I can in any way. I walk a wide circle around others on the street, I have been distant from friends and from family for reasons of safety. But it's difficult and it can be exhausting and it can get very lonely, month after month of month of deliberate diconnection from others.

Since I was a teenager I have experience clinical depression and have been prone to such bleaknesses, complicated in the last seven years by the traumatic death of my daughter Ruby. Although I spend the vast majority of my life content and stable, appreciating my good fotune in many ways, it still takes daily effort to maintain my mental wellness. Daily, I have to spend time and work thinking in a very particular way and deliberately performing certain behaviours, putting myself into uncomfortable social situations for example, to steady my mental keel and to keep it stable. And I have chosen to purposely distance myself from much of my external world during times of Covid which has compounded the complexity of coping. Most people have found 2020 more stressful than many other years due to Covid. But this is just my year- we aren't all in the same boat, we are in different boats but in the same storm. 

Then Trump was kicked out of the White House and the world breathed a sigh of relief and everything felt brighter and more hopeful again. It is the news the word needed and is a return of all our potential. A lifeline has been thrown from each boat and I know we can be tethered again. 

This blog entry is about three seemingly disconnected ideas I wanted to write of- the liberating power of grief, the difficulties for me during times of Covid and of Joe Biden winning the US election- but, put together, give some indication as to how 2020 feels for me, unprecedented, variable, new. Covid makes almost everything a little more difficult- coping with grief, for example- but it is also a year when some self-reflections can have great weight- such as the liberating power of grief- and has been punctuated with occasional bursts of celebration such as the US election. As with managing grief, it appears that the primary skill I need to weather this difficult year is one of navigation. Like grief, it pays me not to ignore or circumvent my difficulties, but to navigate my boat through the storm. 

Things I Wish I Knew About Running Before I Started Running

-Don't warm up. Well, warm-up if that's what you are used to. But if it's all new to you it isn't absolutely necessary to waste 5-10 minutes stretching and jumping to get ready for running, particularly if time is precious. Instead, start running straight away but make it slow, slow, slow, to start with, gradually increasing your speed. Use those first 5 minutes of your running time as your warm-up.

-Don't run the whole run. Your run might include uphills and downhills and there are no laws to say you have to run the whole thing. Yes, you are going for "a run" but do what the mega-distance, ultra-runners do- walk on the uphills and run the rest. To assauge guilt call it a "power-walk" (walk a little bent over when going up steep hills and press down on your thighs with your hands as if you are using walking poles. This is usually when I pretend I am at the Winter Olympics and I am cross-country skiing with a rifle across my back).

-Don't over-prepare. It is easy to pack all your kit when preparing for a run, easy to say "I am doing this distance today so therefore I need this rucksack, bottle, waterproof, phone holder, energy bars, Snickers and kitchen sink". Run the distance you feel you can run, not the prescribed distance you have assumed because of your gear. If you go out for 5km but want to go further, go further. Don't let your kit- or lack of it- hold you back.

-Don't under-prepare. Obviously. At the least, if you are popping out for a quick blast, remember that you might end up doing triple that distance because you feel great half way through (and have the time). But you may need a little water.

-Always choose the route that has most trees and least traffic. These are the two priorities (and not, as some would have you believe, flatness, hills, prettiest view, by the sea, etc). Always worked me for anyway.

-Statistically, injuries are common but you might never get one. Most runners have an injury every year that stops them being active for weeks at a time. But I know runners who never have them and I have only had one running-related injury in eight years. This must mean that some runners out there are having lots of injuries and yet they keep on going. Gets in the blood, you see (this isn't strictly true about my injuries. I have had two- the first was when I started running using the "NHS Couch to 5K" podcast and twisted a knee. I was told it was simply due to poor technique and being very overweight so, for the next 6 weeks, I ate next to nothing, went to the gym every day to burn off calories, read everything I could about running "form" and then returned to the podcast 20kg lighter- this was extreme, I know, but worked for me. My second injury was getting broken glass in my foot when running without shoes which got infected for weeks). 

-Wear running shoes that work for you (or none), not what you are told to wear by shop workers trying to sell you something. I run either totally barefoot or, when it is very cold or when I am running off-road and need extra protection and traction, in very minimal shoes. Like many new runners I got a "gait analysis" from a specialist running shop when I started out because we are told it is what we are supposed to do. They filmed my legs on a treadmill, stating I was "over-pronating" and that the only thing that could possible help was parting with £150 to buy their special shoes for over-pronaters. I did the research myself and realised that not only did I not need £150 shoes, I needed no shoes at all. So I bought a thin pair of running sandals (basically a 4mm thin, foot-shaped sheet of rubber with a strap over the top) to protect me from the worst glass and sharp gravel around my town and I have been wearing them ever since. In eight years of running I have bought two pairs of "proper" Nike running shoes but they were so tall I couldn't feel anything through my feet (in shoe-parlance this is called "drop"- big trainers have a lot of drop ie. vertical distance between the ball of the foot and the heel) and they only lasted for 500 miles anyway- a few months. Minimal shoes/ no shoes are a more natural running style- this is how we have evolved, after all- and when we run without shoes we naturally fall into a good "form" (ie. our style of running). But it isn't for everyone. Minimal footwear encourages a form of landing on the ball of your foot which, although healthier for our bodies, takes effort and focus to learn (or "re-learn", really, as this is how we all ran as children and as we get older we forget this perfect running technique).

-Run for great memories. You very quickly build up a memory cache of local short runs. This means that, although the long-term physical and psychological benefits of your running are constantly increasing, you have few interesting memories or exciting runs to recall. Run elsewhere, vary your streets, your paths, it is valuable to try new routes. All runs have value but the ones you will remember most are either beautiful, stressful or in new surroundings.  Some hints: notice your environment, get lost, don't measure, try random paths, be spontaneous.

-It is normal to get dirty, wet, messy, muddy, scratched, bruised, dusty, sticky and very smelly (or all of these on the best runs).You're running, it's all part of the fun, get used to it.

-Don't run to lose weight. Well, do run to lose weight for a while. But realise that, after the initial steep drop-off, your weight levels out pretty quick and plateaus. There are a thousand reasons to run but, to avoid dissapointment, weight-loss should not be one of the main ones.

-Have fun. This should be obvious but so much is made of the instrumental value of running in the media- how it helps our health, reduces certain cancers, reduces blood pressure and heart disease- that we are at risk of forgetting how enjoyabe it can be. OK, standing in the freezing heavy rain in a massive cow shit, lost in a field in the middle of nowhere and unable to see which way to go because the fog is so thick and icy isn't fun for everyone but it will make you laugh (I guarantee you). And cry. And you will remember it for ever. Every now and then, in the middle of a run, remind yourself how awesome you are for being able to do this amazing thing and then smile at the ridiculously simple autonomy of it all. 

-No pizza tastes as good as the pizza after a long run. See also: beer and cake. See also: wild berries in season in the middle of a run.

-You don't have to spend lots of money. But, of course, you can if it works for you. The cheapest shorts and t-shirts are generally fine. I have been told that you can never spend too much on a good sports bra. You don't need fancy materials and fancy gadgets to run well. At the least I would suggest to never wear cotton and, if you wear shoes, proper socks can make a difference. For chaffing/sore bits, rub on a little Vasoline/similar before the run (a little, don't slather it all over). Sudocream/similar is good for post-run sore bits. There have been times when having expensive gear and gadgets was my norm but I found these useful only to break through a mental barrier I may have been experiencing at the time eg. wanting to increase my distance for marathon training. You will quickly find out what works well for you.  Nowadays I run in very cheap t-shirts, 2-in-1 shorts (can be expensive but last forever) and have a sports watch with a phone built in so I can call for emergency back-up if I need to. On longer runs I take a drink, chocolate and headphones but not always.

-Take a phone. There is a rare possibility that your stomach will decide, mid-run, it wants to eject everything at either end of the tract. This is when you need to phone your nearest car-owning friend and get to a proper toilet ASAP. I have been running for eight years- a thousand runs or more- and this has happened to me only three times but I still carry a phone on every run. You have been warned. Regarding a phone see also: chest pains, sudden exhaustion, dehydration, getting lost, being very late.

-Look after your feet. You may not be into seaweed baths and exfoliating scrubs but your feet need TLC, they are your most valuable tool as a runner. Wash, dry, moisturise, massage, show them some love, they do a lot of work. Get checked by the podiatrist. Rest them well on the off days. Wear shoes that coset them, not squash them, when you are not running or, better yet, no shoes at all.

-You will never regret a run. On the days you don't want to run and you wonder whether you should force yourself remember that the worst part of your run is the first minute. After that you're always fine. You'll never finish a run and say "well, that was a waste of time, I wish I hadn't done that" even after runs that were a bit shit (this does ocassionally happen).

-Don't let the running industry convince you you need to compete in a race. Most runners try this at least once, most runners think they're silly, most runners will do them again because they think they are supposed to. To me, anything competitive is ridiculous, including running competitions. I don't get it. But then I don't really like running with anyone else (I have only run with other people three times- once with a friend who wanted to try it and never went back, once on a soulless "big-industry" 10k that left me feeling deflated and lastly during the Belfast Marathon in 2017 which I didn't really enjoy).

-Time running alone is never wasted time. 

-You will say "bonking" without irony.

-You are going to hurt. Not a lot but you will have aches when running and aches after a run and aches the next day. But that's OK, it's normal. And the aches you have the next day are aches you have only after completing the amazing endeavour of going for a run. This is the "good ache" and is to be coveted. Advanced runners have the good ache for days (because they initially ran so hard) and then go for a run to loosen themselves up and get rid of the ache thereby perpetuating the ache for ever (proper hardcore runners actually use a run as therapy- to flex their stiffening back, say, or loosen a sore knee). 

-You will be told you are not "supposed to" go for a run at certain times- after food, late at night, when you have a cold, after a glass of wine, and so on. This is all nonsense. If you want to run, run. Just use a bit of common sense (for example, know that resting is recovery, not laziness). People who tell you when you are not "supposed to" run have usually never run the length of themselves. 

-Smile and/or wave at other runners. If you can run you are a runner and if you see someone running, you are in the same club. In fact, it is worth smiling even when no-one else is there. And it is worth having a motivational mantra- mine is "easy, light, smooth" and "I don't want to have diabetes".

-It doesn't get easier, you just get faster. And more capable at longer distances. 

-Running is not an anti-depressant (anti-depressants are anti-depressants and nothing else is) but it really damn helps. When you are happy you run better. When you run well you get happier. 

Corona- A New Navigation

Like the grieving ones left behind after bereavement, life will never be the same after corona virus. There cannot be a return to how things used to be. We are being forced into a position of negotiation and of navigation- our "new normal". New deals must be struck, new balances checked, new positions considered. As has been pithily but accurately stated before (including by me) you cannot skirt around grief, you have to go through it. And if you have to go through it then the primary skill you learn very quickly is that of navigation. This is what many of us now have to do- navigate this new territory. 

What line shall we choose? Do you tip-toe with anxious but delicate precision on your new path or do you race onwards aimed at the horizon? Does every new social interaction carry equal weight of consideration or can you rely on reactivity over reflection? Each day, week, month, what matters? What matters to me? To others? 

If there is a silver lining to this corona-cloud it may be that some of us can learn to connect with increased sensitivity to the needs of others. To empathise well, mental health professionals must not only imagine themselves in someone else's situation but must also practice imagining the emotions of the other person in their own position. One method to increase empathy, that anyone can do, is to identify a time you may have felt similarly to the other person, although not necesarily the same (they might be grieving a relative, you may have lost a much-loved pet, for example) and extrapolate from there, increasing and deliberately complicating your potential feelings. We would do well to use this current time of disconnection and of loneliness to extrapolate from those emotions which will help us empathise with others who have experienced loss, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues that affect most of us at some time in their lives. You may not know the grief I feel after losing my daughter seven years ago, for example, but you may know how it feels to be unable to communicate freely with friends and loved ones, how it feels to be unable to go out, how it feels to be less useful and productive than usual, and so on. 

I have read that soldiers on the front line of war can simultaneously feel boredom and horror. To experience long periods of nothing at the same time as thoughts of impending annilation raise levels of a anxiety and hyper-vigilance, a sense of continual alertness. I have experienced a similar dichotomy over the last four months- a persistent stillness (where what happens next is that nothing happens) at same time as thoughts of fear and chaos. This is due to a combined lack of professional productivity (I am, as a community-based nurse, working from home during these times but I am combining this with home-schooling my son) and of waiting for Covid-19 to directly affect me and those I love. I have also started a new part-time career as a bicycle mechanic with all the concerns this causes- primarily, will I get customers and will their bikes be safely fixed. 

A persistently raised level of anxiety with little respite, and the feeling that "something is just about to happen", is emotionaly exhausting. A recognition of these simultaneous emotions- that there is nothing there and that there might be something awful there too- can break that cycle so we can distance ourselves, using reason and facts, from the destructive effects of hyper-vigilance. If we say "I know I am doing this, I know why I am doing this" we gain greater control of the related emotions and often see a reduction in our anxiety and stress. 

For me there are pramatic considerations too. How alone do I want to be? How will my job look now, as a community nurse? How will I get to see my family in England? How will my son's schooling work? What about shopping? Going out for walks? For runs?

I am neither gregarious nor particularly sociable. I am a good listener, a useful quality as a mental health nurse and fine for one-to-one meetings with friends, but I get over-awed easily in a group and can be too sensitive to noise and voices. Most people don't have to think too hard about their friendships, it is easy and "natural" to them, they "just do it" but I feel very different. I have to put in great effort to make friends (although I am usually glad when I have them) and to keep them. But this means, for the future, navigating another new channel- relationships. What sort of friend do I want to be now? What friends do I want now? I may feel as if I have to start all over again with old friendships. Do I want to? What do I get out of my friendships and what do my friends get out of being friends with me?

I am 47 and I have been working in the area of mental health for 25 years. I am not a good nurse but I am skilled in this specialist area. I have improved, and saved, many lives through psychological and social interventions, I am confident in my abilities and have a broad range of professional experiences having worked in the NHS, in charities, in different cities, different teams, in different sectors varying from psychiatric intensive care inpatient settings to community-based teams with homeless people who have complex needs. But I want to be a bicycle mechanic. 

I am not really sure how this happened. My dad reminds me that, when I was a teenager,  I told him I wanted a life of two careers, changing my job in my 40's, but the truth is that I don't want to get old knowing that I have other passions that were not professionally fulfilled. I love bicycles and I have slowly been pulled towards them over the years with increasing strength, culminating in a (for me, huge, leaping) move to train as a bike mechanic early this year with a direct wish for a career change. This has coincided with the existence of covid-19 and the world's new love of cycling. I am not fatalist but if I was I would assume a lack of coincidence here.

So, a new navigation- what do I want my job to be from now on? How strong is the pull away from my career of decades, the one which I know, which I am good at, the one that would, on days I am confident, be worse off without me? How strong is the pull towards my career as a mechanic? How strongly do I believe all the wisdom shared by people on their death-bed, sharing their reflections on their lives, who very frequently regret working too much for too long in a job they didn't love, who regret not following their heart's wishes when they were young? 

There will be no return to how things were. So what do we do? 

Trees that we are

We have been through the worst but here we are.
Remaining unwavering and radiant, the object of envy,
we have been through the best and here we are-
trees, standing apart but under the same swaying canopy.
Our roots have grown coupled,
exchanging and sustaining, our tendrils bound
but separate. Breathing ethers,
swapping nutrients underground.
We warn each other of insect attacks and burrowing grubs,
of sharp beaks and drought.
Of fallow times and fires and of shelters built by Scouts,
and of fallen neighbours' weight.
Seasons change, time will pass, everything will pass,
but not you.
My youth and my buds, the seeds I should miss,
but I don't, for you.

As storms whip and bend inflexible friends,
and peeling bark and cracking branches drop to the forest floor,
as every shade of green swirls and circles,
we are tethered to each other, to the earth, moored.
It takes fellows to make a tree grow, they say,
no tree flowers alone, they say,
a tree breathes and shares and signals, they say.
Its rips and traumas reinforce and reassure
its solidity and its mass and its yielding
heft that surrenders to being weathered
and fatigued but remains cathedral in stature,
a sanctuary, a shelter, protection.

We bloom and we thrive together,
our wellspring mingling,
unsingling, united. Being
impermanent, fated to decay,
means we foster our growth,
and create our future.
I now know how to think,
with you I am home.

Loneliness in times of Covid-19

I regularly remind myself how privileged I am. Almost daily I thank pure, simple luck- because meritocracy has very little to do with it- that I am healthy, have clean water, available food and a roof over my head. I also thank pure, simple luck that I have advantages as a middle-aged, white, male. I am very aware of the entitlements this affords me and try to use my position to help others when I can.
But these are comparisons with other people. And they can be shallow. My experience is my experience and my subjective feelings are deep and affecting. Irrresepctive of my luck at having food or shelter or clean water, if I am lonely then I am lonely, if I am sad then I am sad. And the experience of others doesn't come into it. I am also astutely aware, from personal as well as evidence-based professional experience, that having had previous mental health issues such as traumatic grief or social anxiety would place me at higher risk of feeling lonely and isolated and at increased risk of those mental health issues returning.
I have felt lonely, on and off, for much of my life. This has occasionally dovetailed into bouts of depression. I have had friends of course and have not spent much time alone although I have always enjoyed my own company- many years playing alone with Lego as my personality was growing as a child meant that my own company holds no fear for me, I enjoy being by myself. But lonliness is different.
Loneliness is an emotional disconnection from others as oppossed to being alone, the physical distancing from others. We can feel lonely even when we are around other people (my life-long Achilles heal), even around the people we are supposed to feel closest to and most supported by. We can feel lonely in a crowd, at work, when sitting at the dinner table with our loved and loving family and among our closest friends.
This is how the Corona virus lockdown has affected me so far- the loneliness. I can manage not seeing adults for days at a time, I can manage (with difficulty) being away from feeling useful at work, I can manage (also with some difficulty and not without guilt) "working" from home and feeling professionally unproductive, I can manage most new stressors that the lockdown proves to me.
But the disconnectedness I feel is not the distancing I am in control of. It has not been my choice to create space in my relationships, it isn't my choice to stand metres away from strangers and act as if a deadly virus is present in the very air surrounding them, it isn't my choice to stop hugging my friends. The forced imposition, reinforced with vague ideas of being a pariah, have echoes of when Ruby died nearly seven years ago (few people really understand how it feels to lose their child hence the feelings of being an outcast)- the social isolaton and the disconnect was strong and deep, then as it is now. At that time, as now, there was a persistent feeling that nothing is happening but that something is about to happen (and never does). Like soldiers in a trench I waited, and I wait, and nothing happens. I don't really know what I am waiting for but I know I need to wait- what else am I going to do?
To feel lonely is to feel a particularly odd type of "aloneness". To feel on your own when you are walking among crowds of people or when you are chatting over dinner with your family or when you are at the office, talking to colleagues and working through problems, has an inhuman air, an unfamiliarity with normal human interaction. There is not only psychic space between you and others but also the feeling that you are not of their kind, that your language is different, that your history and culture cannot be understood, that although your planet is shared you are an alien. Feeling lonely is not to feel misunderstood but to feel that you cannot be understood.
I am busy all day, every day. I am home-schooling my son which, according to other parents, takes between no time at all because their children refuse to be any part of it and many hours a day. Tom and I spend up to five hours a day on this, including breaks and play. In the afternoon we usually include, at Tom's insistence, a walk of eight to twelve kilometeres along the sea or around the surrounding streets and hills. In between Tom's schooling I fit in work emails and phone calls and I attend my office each Friday for an unrelentingly busy day assisting people in crisis after crisis. Also during the day, and some evenings, I try to focus on some bicycle repair work (I recently reached an ambition of qualifying as a bicycle mechanic and was trying to drum up work before the virus hit. My yearly plan, such as it is, was to be a mechanic working from home part-time and also work part-time as a nurse, my career of over twenty years). Claire, my wife, works full-time as the manager of a local Community Mental Health Team for the NHS and she works late every day, every week. There are relatives and friends to keep and eye on, our weekends are precious and we fill them with time together.
I have almost no time to myself. This contributes to feeling lonely, as I am sure it would for many people with little space for themselves, in a similar way to feelings of loneliness resulting from being alone and without company. So what am I to do?

I am formulating a plan. To help reduce my lonliness I will try to:

-Have more time to myself but, crucially, at my control to do as I wish. In all honesty this will probably involve simply sitting around reading a book but that's OK too- that's my decision, that's my book, that's me being in control of my actions.
-Cycle and run regularly. For many parents, the "lockdown" isn't the free time to catch up on box sets and piles of books that some other people are doing- there simply isn't time- and I am not cycling on my commute as I used to three days a week. I need to set time aside to do this (I jumped out of bed early today to get in a cycling sprint before Claire needed to leave for work).
-Read more.
-Focus on letting go of things that are out of my control.Considering my profession and the years of experience I have working in the mental health field I would often consider the profound importance of recognising what is, and isn't, in our individual control. To disregard our chains and to master autonomy is one key to a good life.
-Keep an eye on problems I have had in the past- grief, depression, social anxiety- and make some changes to my thoughts and behaviours if needs be.
-Regularly remind myself, until I believe it, that I am contributing to Tom's education and development and that being a teacher to him here at home is, in a tangible sense, instrumental to the shortening of this crisis. It is common to feel that we do not contribute during a crisis, whether relating to Corona virus, a car accident, ill-heath or otherwise, but on closer inspection this is often far from the truth. The most useful people to have around you when in crisis- and through my work I have seen numerous overdoses, victims of violence, cardiac arrests and potentially traumatic crises- are the least dramatic people, those who stop, think and act (instead of reacting in the immediate) and people whose behaviour is guided by reason and evidence, not Facebook or wilful ignorance and superstition. Those quiet, calm people standing to one side without interuption, the ones who wait for you to catch their eye for assistance and who keep peripheral stimulus to a minimum, the ones who calm the neighbours- they are the ones you want by your side. I have to regularly remind myself that to keep Tom educated, calm, stimulated and secure is pragmatic and most helpful for him and others.


If I was a slightly different person, or in different social circumstances, I might also:

-Mention how I feel to other people. Everyone has their story and can share useful, supportive advice (this is not a cliche- EVERYONE has their own ideas and positive behaviours to share)
-Try to connect with others, preferably new people via existing friends or the online community through mental heath apps or websites connected to my interests.
-Cull my social media of people and sites that are not only knowingly detrimental to my mental health but are also not entirely positive and supportive (I regularly do this anyway and strongy recommend it)
-Be active, preferably outside, be among trees and natural places. Practice good sleep preparation. Reduce my alcohol (I don't drink for this exact reason).
-Online or telephone therapy, preferably Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which is not only extremely successful but lends itself well to telephone contact.
-Do more things I enjoy. I may use this time in lockdown to watch all those old Japanese samurai movies, romcoms and classic horror films I've been promising myself over the years. Also, see: pile of unread novels including a J.G.Ballard 3000-page collection of short stories, Margaret Atwood trilogies, eight new first-time writers and 20 unread poetry collections.
-Try other creative activities. I don't often feel as if I have time to try embroidery, or ceramics, or making masks, or making brooches and jewellery. But I would love to try.
-Plan. I find routine equally essential and boring but, if I was only a slightly different person, it is likely I would find solace in sameness and that I would appreciate a known plan for each day, week and month.
-Try to be good to myself. Be calm, take my time, consider being the person I would want to be friends with.

The Forest

I inhale and I am charged
By the woods breathing on me,
And by the trees allowing me
Their carapace,
As if I were a shield bug chasing caterpillars,
Scuttling in leaf-litter and
Mountaineering the oak roots and
Hilly seed pods
As I chase my youth.

I hover and glide like a Stag beetle
Buoyed by hot asphalt and
A thousand greens.
The forest brings me to it,
Assimilating my salty mass
With sodden lichen and the swish
Of enveloping arms, a sure embrace
Which I let take me.

My breathing slows
And my pace slows
And I slowly close
My eyes and detect the forests'
Weight swathe me.
The birds are indisputabley seductive
And there is no wrong in the world.

The World Inside Wants None of This

They say you grieve because you loved,
Well I am grieving my streets and my trees.
I am craving the swish of the too-tall gumtree,
And the roughness of the rusted seaside handrail.
The electrical box and its' danger of death,
The weak Americano slurped with seagulls.
I miss the stench of cowshit
And the electric jolt of cornflowers.
I miss the threat of hail
And the March freshness needling my face.
I want to see if the lawn at number 37 is snooker tabled,
And the hedge at 72 is at ninety degrees.

Waiting is work and work's goals ridicule me,
and the intrinsic enoughness of play eludes me.
I have a limbic anxiety-
A predator is on the prowl,
Maybe watching, maybe not,
Maybe there, waiting for the right time to pounce, or not.
I am grieving how I used to play with time-
Let it flow and it will pass,
Or impede its' progress and ripples
Would reverberate an impression.
Or I could agree a target and fire an arrow,
I held sway, time was mine.
The world outside is over there
And the world inside wants none of this right now.

Hibernating in Spring

Yesterday I ran and I walked and I tired myself. I slept deeply and woke with this poem in my thoughts.

Hibernating in Spring

It is usually snow that deadens sound

But can’t muffle underground potential. 

It is usually that winter ice causes a pause and provides  

A brace for precarious bursts of Spring newness. 

That time of frost indelibly contributes

To nature’s continual impermanence,

I find those changes reassuring-

It is usually winter that roots me,

That compels me to simplify and prioritise,

To slow down, to notice, to depend. 

Winters’ chilly dormancy is when I am 

Supposed to reclaim nature’s enduring control,

When its indifference tricks me into thinking

I am in charge, I’ve got this. 

It isn’t that the quiet are reflecting

It is that quietness is reflection.

To wait is to anticipate,

To do nothing is to do something.

To start with, nothing happens,

And I am hibernating in Spring.