To the person who commented “oh wow, she can’t have any fun!” when I was explaining my daughter’s dietary restrictions, I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it but it really upset me to begin with. It’s been a long hard road of discovery, trial and error to get where we are today.
What you don’t know is that Ruby was actually born deficient in vital nutrients because I am unable to absorb them properly and we did not know this at the time I was pregnant. What you don’t know is that has a baby she suffered severe silent reflux and was in so much pain that she locked up all the muscles down her spine, and it would be like holding a plank of wood. For hours and hours on end. In between the constant crying and screaming. What you don’t know is that at one point during breastfeeding, I was eating basically only lettuce and avocado as every single other thing used to affect her through my milk and this went on for months. What you don’t know is that she was diagnosed last year with her sympathetic nervous system being locked in overdrive. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, the best way they described it to us was: imagine you’re in a forest and you come across a bear. Your heart starts pounding, your pupils dilate, your adrenalin kicks in. Well this is Ruby, 24/7 every day. Her body is being stopped from being able to unwind and shut down properly as she is constantly in a fight or flight response pattern and continually churning out adrenalin. Levels in her body are all over the place, things are up when they should be down, down when they should be up. At 4 years old, a child’s liver span should be approximately 4cm; hers was 8.5cm. This inability to shut down results in longer days and less sleep for days, weeks, months on end. Even when she is physically and mentally exhausted, her body produces MORE adrenalin as it goes into hyper survival mode – think that you’ve been in the forest with this bear for days now, but if you fall asleep if could eat you, so you must stay awake and alert. Until finally, even the super spike of adrenalin isn’t enough anymore and you crash, and crash hard. When Ruby crashes and finally sleeps and even has a sleep in, we all suffer the next day. She dropped all her naps from a super early age, it seems the writing was on the wall there all along. In addition to this, she was diagnosed with anxiety over lack of control and change. Which is exhausting in an adult and I should know as I also suffer from anxiety. But think how difficult that must be for a 4-5 year old, when they’re still learning how to recognise and control their feelings and emotions and fears. She has many amazing qualities and characteristics, and some that can be frustrating at times. She is quite the natural born leader (read: dominating/controlling) but this also stems from her need to have control over the situation in order to survive. As her parent, it is my job to help her to the best of my abilities and I will also seek to do the very best for my daughter. When all of this was diagnosed last year, I was devastated and feared for what kind of future she would have. I have a number of food intolerances and so I know firsthand how difficult it can be in society when you don’t follow the “norm”. We worked closely with her behavioural therapist, paediatric chiropractor, naturopath and kindy teachers to try and work out the best course of action to help my sweet little girl through all of this. Dairy is one of the hardest things for your body to try and break down and process, it requires a lot of energy from your body in order to do this. When you are not 100% well within your body, then it was recommended to not waste this precious energy that you could be channelling into healing yourself instead. In addition, dairy is one of the biggest triggers for anxiety. So we removed dairy from her diet. As a 4 year old, her favourite foods were cheese and milk, so it was a very difficult decision to make. Gluten can be highly inflammatory particularly when your body is in a constant heightened state. It is also a big trigger for behaviour issues, and I have been gluten intolerant for many years now and know the pain and discomfort that comes from trying to digest it. So on advice from our health professionals, we also removed gluten from her diet. We also made the decision upon advice to remove refined sugars, preservatives and additives. There are numerous studies and reports out there about the impacts of these on people and children, so I’m not going to go into it here. As difficult as it was to watch her get to the point she was at before we made these changes, in one way it was actually easier. As she was 4, she was old enough to understand and comprehend what was happening. Because her whole life, all she has known is that Mummy can’t eat those foods as they hurt her tummy. Well, I was then able to explain to her that like how they hurt my tummy, these foods hurt her body and we are trying to make her body better. They cause her to have tummy pain, and head pain, and feel the crazies (as she labelled it herself when she was 3 and she couldn’t stop doing something even though she knew not to as we had said so. “I don’t know why I did it again mummy when you said no, it was the crazies. When I feel the crazies, I just need to run or climb”), and they irritate her insides. It probably worked to our advantage that I was also unable to have those foods as she loves to be just like mummy, and so there was practically no resistance or fuss and she just rolled with it like a champ. As opposed to if we had made these changes when she was 2 and unable to comprehend the reasoning as well, she probably would have lost her little mind. She has only had a handful of moments where she has said to me that she wishes she could have what the other kids have, but for the most part she doesn’t care. I make everything for her that I possibly can, and have a small list of packet foods that she can eat with no issues. Whenever we go to parties, I always pre-check with the hosts about what food may be there, and I pack extras just in case including a small cake for her to have. She has cupcakes and ice blocks in the freezer at school for when someone is having a party so she doesn’t miss out. In some ways she has it easier than I ever did, as in this day and age it seems every second child has something connected to food. Her school is a nut free environment so they are taught from a young age to understand about food safety and contamination and the consequences. What you don’t know is that she has had the odd slip up with these dietary restrictions and we have all suffered the consequences of it. Like the day she had a mini candy cane that she had been given in a Christmas card and within 5 minutes it was like she was seriously on speed. Both my husband and I were speechless and it took all of my strength to not run away from her in the shopping centre as she was like a mini version of the Hulk. Then the come down was so sharp and severe, I felt like I should be checking her into a detox facility. When she had come down from the high, she said to us “I don’t like feeling like that, I never want to feel like that again. My tummy is very sore”. Or after we got back from Thailand and she couldn’t poo properly for 2 weeks while it all worked itself out of her poor little system. What you don’t know is that she will be on some supplements for the rest of her life due to her deficiencies, and a number of others for the short to medium term while we continue to work at getting her to feel better. If we don’t keep trying to treat this for her, it can lead to adrenal fatigue. Which in an adult is horrible, but in such a young child would be heartbreaking and perhaps would become irreversible. What you didn’t see is what happened when she first started prep this year. While all the other children were so exhausted they were falling asleep in the car on the way home, or at the dinner table, or crashing by 6pm. A side effect of her sympathetic nervous system issue is that when finds herself in a situation of stress or exhaustion, her body reacts by pumping MORE adrenalin through her like I explained above, but even more. So she wasn’t going to sleep until 10pm and waking before 5am EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. I was warned that this would most likely happen, but to see it in action and live it is a whole other thing. And what you don’t know is that I have second guessed every decision we’ve ever made when it comes to her health and happiness and I harbour great guilt over how things have panned out for her, stemming from being in my womb. There isn’t a day that goes by that I wish I could have done things differently or wonder what it may have been like. However we have lived and observed the positive changes it has made for her and therefore trust that we have made the right decision. So whilst I was upset at first by your offhand comment, I then realised that you probably don’t know what it’s like or the reasons why we need to do these things. And that’s the more concerning thing in my opinion. We should be talking about things like this more openly and having dialogs with each other in order to understand instead of just assuming. Perhaps next time you could ask me why she has these restrictions and I would be more than happy to explain the reasons why. Please note, that this is not a post to preach about any lifestyle choices that people make. We are all on our own journeys and we all walk our own paths. These are the decisions we have made for our daughter and our family, and so far they are working for us. This is also not intended to diminish childhood diseases or disabilities, and I am very aware that in the scheme of other children and families out there, we have things relatively easy. This is just our experience and journey.
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Today is my Mum’s anniversary of life. 8 years ago today was when she was found collapsed on the pavement out the front of her house and set about the actions that would begin to change our lives forever.
We used to celebrate this day with great gusto and enthusiasm; a chance to revel in the marvel that is getting a second chance at life. To reminisce over how far she has come and toast (non-alcoholic of course) to many more anniversaries. I knew things were changing when she no longer seemed as enthusiastic about the date as she had once been. I visited Mum today and over coffee, I asked her if she knew what today was. She of course had no idea and so I reminded her that it was her anniversary of life and she just looked at me like I had grown two heads. I explained that today marked the date that her neighbours found her outside her house. She asked me to go on and explain more, and so I described in detail exactly what happened over the course of those months. Looks of horror, bewilderment, sadness, confusion all crossed her face. But small snippets have remain lodged in the untouched parts of her brain – like how she initially refused to go to hospital (true, stubborn as anything!), or how she used to put her bread aside for Ruby (not entirely true, Ruby wasn’t born yet but she was putting it aside for my daughter Talula. FYI, I don’t have a daughter called Talula. It was interesting trying to explain to her that she was putting her daily bread aside for somebody that didn’t exist. In the end I gave up and would thank her daily for the bread for Talula). I felt something stirring within me and without realising, I started opening up to her like I hadn’t in quite awhile. I told her how sad it made me that she never sought help for her demons and instead drunk herself into a nursing home. That it made me sad for Ruby that she was losing her early memories of Grandma and soon all she will know is Grandma at the nursing home. And that it made me sad that I was losing my mum. Me: Some days I just miss being able to talk to you, to turn to my mum about my problems. Mum: but you can still talk to me *starts to cry* Me: but I can’t really as the communication messages aren’t getting through properly. Which isn’t your fault, it’s the dementia, but it makes it difficult as the communications get interrupted. Mum: *smiles brightly* and then Rose started laughing and saying that I would be a great person to dance with as she’s about my age I think, and then we’re going to get some music… Me: >.< So clearly I didn’t get what I was hoping for out of today’s visit lol My mum has told me before about how she felt growing up in her older sister’s shadow. Back before my mum was born, her parents had to flee Lithuania due to the war. For reasons that are unclear, they left their daughter behind with relatives when they fled. They were never reunited again. My mother constantly lived with the implications of her mother’s guilt at having left her daughter behind. Anything my mum did or said would be met with “Your sister would never do/say/act like that”. Ultimately the shame and guilt overcame both my grandparents and they became chronic alcoholics. Before the drink could kill my grandmother, cancer did the job when my mum was only 12, and then my grandfather died when she was 24 from the effects of alcohol. The doctor had told him that if he had one more drink, that would be it. He did, and it was. Unfortunately, mum chose the same path as her parents. One of the only things mum remembers from when she was in hospital was an Irish doctor with a pink tie saying the same thing to her about having one more drink. It hurts my heart that their lives could’ve gone down an entirely different path if they had only sought help or at least opened up to someone. I understand back then it wasn’t the done thing nor were there many resources around back then, but it still makes me sad. I said to mum today that I wished so badly that she had continued to see her counsellor instead of instead turning to the bottle and pushing everything and everyone away. But how do you continue to fight for someone when they have given up? I’m sure you’re probably wondering why I keep going on about my mum, after all this is a running blog right? I’m sorry that I haven’t been doing much blogging about running as of late, but it’s a bit hard to blog about something that you can’t do due to being injured. However, this is connected to running for me as right now, my life is out of balance and I don’t know how to correct it. Running is my “me” time, my chance to fight my demons and put them in their place, my time to be with my thoughts without interruption. I can’t run and I feel lost. The thinking time isn’t the same, and no matter how hard I try and punch my boxing instructor, she’s a professional fighter and barely moves an inch when I connect so the satisfaction isn’t there. I tried to run again today after having 3 weeks off and it failed. I have been crying on and off all day over it, and like usual have picked apart every moment of it, agonising over what I did and what I could have done differently. I have been working so hard with my PT to strengthen the muscles around, and build up my core and I was so confident that I would be able to see some improvement. So when the pain started up again, I fell emotionally and I fell hard. I’m not typing this for sympathy and if it makes you uncomfortable to read it, I won’t be offended if you leave. But I refuse to keep my pain and my fears locked up inside me, as I have witnessed first hand what that does to a person. It doesn’t make me a lesser person that I can’t do it all alone and need help, nor does it make me weak to admit that I am struggling. I am one of the lucky ones in that I have a wonderful support network around me to help me through these times as well as finding an outlet in my writing. But not everyone is that lucky. I ask each of you, if someone you know doesn’t seem their usual self, please reach out to them and ask if they’re OK. Even if they say that they are, pride or fear may be stopping them from opening up, so just showing them that you care and you’re there for them maybe just the thing that they need to begin to turn the corner. It might be too late for my mum as the dementia begins to take more of a hold, but I won’t let it be too late for me. And lastly to my mum, Happy anniversary of life. I will continue to celebrate it with you, even when you no longer can. I love you. They say to become a mother is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. Which personally, is a quote I have come to believe and love over the years. What they don’t say is the immense and never ending guilt that also comes with the gig. Motherhood does not come easy for me, and despite what appearances may have you believe, Miss Ruby Pink Cat is not the perfect child nor was she when she was younger lol In an earlier blog I touched on the difficulties we faced with Ruby when she was a baby and suffering from undiagnosed silent reflux. To say that the first 6 months was close to hell on earth would unfortunately not be exaggerating. Before it was picked up, she would just cry and scream endlessly. Nothing would be able to stop her and everybody suffered. My wonderful mother-in-law and in-laws would often take her for a few hours in order to give me a break and it wasn’t until years later that I found out that they used to tag team with her in the back yard. Yes, my daughter would cry and scream so much that each of them would spend 10 minutes with her up the back of the yard so that everyone else in the house could have a break from the noise, before coming back into the house and swapping with someone else. It broke my heart at the time I found out, but I am so grateful that they actually did that without making me feel even more of a shit mum then I already was for not being able to cope with this child or be able to enjoy being a mother. She was the child that urban legends began from. You know, the friend of a friend who had a baby who screamed 17hrs straight? Yep, mine. Or your sister’s best friend’s neighbour who had a baby that was so stiff it used to plank when you would try to burp her. Yep, also mine. Or the story of the mum who broke down at playgroup while her boobs hung out of her top because of the screaming baby not wanting to feed. Guilty as charged. I still have a very vivid memory of a particularly bad day that I reached the end of everything I had. She hadn’t stopped all day and there was nothing I could do. I ended up yelling at her to STFU and dropped her quite roughly into bed from about 5cm above the mattress. I instantly burst into tears, ran from the room and sat there hysterically sobbing until we both passed out from sheer exhaustion. I woke up leaning against the front door, with my head in my hands, a very sniff neck and absolutely no freaking idea of the time or day. Disclaimer – please do not judge me, I know what I did was wrong, I still carry guilt 5yrs later and for the most part there does not seem to be any lasting damage to Miss Feisty Pants. As things started to ease in the reflux camp through treatment, new challenges came up again and again. I breastfed until she was 14 months and at one point all I was eating was basically lettuce and avocado as everything else seemed to go through my milk and upset her poor system. I was made to feel like I was doing a bad job as a mum by being made to go through weekly weigh ins as she didn’t seem to be growing quickly enough for their liking. Just FYI, she was born 46cm, I am 5’3” and my husband is 5’6”, she’s never going to be a big child people! If only I knew then what I know now, I would have told them to shove it up their arse. I am watching a friend go through a similar battle now and it breaks my heart as I can totally see myself where she is now and as much as I can say to her to ignore the haters and the people who say shit about stuff they have no clue about, its another thing when you’re living it and it’s your first child. In the past 14 months Ruby has been diagnosed with other medical conditions, all pieces of an overall bigger picture, a complicated puzzle of little interlinked pieces. Some of which stems from when she was in my tummy and was born deficient in certain things as I also do not absorb them properly but did not know this at the time. Talk about the ultimate mothers guilt right there! It has been a long and hard road to get her to the amazing little human she is today. There are supplements she will need to take for the rest of her life, and right now we follow very strict dietary rules until such time she is old enough to make those choices for herself and to handle the consequences. I often compensated for my guilt by giving her my everything, and as much as I possibly could. She wanted for nothing, and had our undivided attention and often dictated situations. Both my husband and I were from the school of pick-your-battles and so it was often easier if we said A then B and she said no, B first, we would be like meh whatever she’s doing both so who cares. Not the greatest system when your daughter is then diagnosed with anxiety over lack of control and change, and therefore develops a learned behaviour of dictating EVERY situation as a coping mechanism. We would watch her telling everyone what was going to happen and who was doing what, and usually they would all do it. She has already told her best friend Luka that they’re getting married and has the wedding all planned out, every little detail, and he has responded each time with “ok”. Cute at 4 and 5, however not as cute the older she gets. It’s been a long hard battle to get where we are today and I am sure it is not over, and probably never will be. There will be always something to be guilty over and to worry about for as long as I am her mum. I’ve lost count of the times my plans have changed or been cancelled for my daughter. The amount of pilates sessions I’ve missed or long runs that never happened because of the guilt I felt for leaving. Sometimes imagined, sometimes real by the utter sadness and despair in her voice and face as she clinged to me, begging me not to leave her (This particular behaviour has been occurring more so for the last 6 months, and 9 times out of 10 it is directed at me and not Daddy as she is so much more emotionally dependent on me then him. It is exhausting.) But as much as we tend to bring this guilt on ourselves, meaning that we are usually our harshest critics and to everyone else you’re doing a bang up job, what is not OK is the mother’s guilt that is forced upon us from other people. Like the looks you get when your toddler is screaming full pitch in the store and you're trying to continue to do your grocery shop because what they don't realise is that you have zero food in the house and this new delightful behaviour the toddler has learned has limited your capacity to leave the house for 6 days straight and you have since developed a tic in your left eye. Or when you are forced to call in sick to work because your child is sick and are made to feel like shit from the person on the other end of the phone AND when you get back into work the next day. Let me preface this by saying my current team and management are amazeballs and I have never felt like this from them. But in general, mother’s guilt is rife in the workforce. Now I’m sure we all know those people who rort the system and ruin it for the rest of us. I once knew a couple who both worked in the organisation that I did at a time when we had unlimited carers leave. Each week one of them would be off for at least 1-2 days per week caring for their kids. Until it was discovered that they didn’t actually have regular care arrangements for their kids and were using the time off on carer’s leave to actually just babysit their own kids this way instead of paying for childcare. #notcool But the majority of parents are not arseholes that abuse the system and will only take time off for our kids because it is actually needed. We feel shit about having to work and put out kids in care already as it is, do we really need the looks and eye rolls that come with calling in sick?? A good friend of mine experienced this recently when she had to take time off work. Since then it’s become like a petty high school in her office, with cold shoulders and hushed whispers by the bucketful. Seriously, grow the fuck up. This is 2016, and equality for all should include not being made to feel like a lesser employee because you happen to have produced an offspring who now has a contagious infection and for the good of the rest of the kids they come into contact with, should be kept home. Nor does that make you any less capable of performing your job when you are there or automatically make you someone who abuses the system. We should be supporting and empowering our fellow working parents as god knows how extremely difficult it is to wear all the different hats you need as a parent and still come out with pretty alright kids and your sanity (mostly) intact. Which I will need to remember myself the next time I have to pry my daughter from my legs as I head out for a much needed run (WHEN I can run again, T minus 14 days. But I’m totes not counting ok). She will be fine with Daddy for an hour, I am not a bad mum for wanting to run and better myself, she will not die from loneliness if I leave (her words, not mine. I told you, master manipulator that one!), everyone is happier and better off if Mummy gets to run. So to all the mothers out there on this special day of celebrating mothers and all that they do – you are awesome, you are amazing, you can do anything because you are Mums. You may not feel like you’ve got your shit together, or that you can’t do this and it doesn’t feel natural like movies would have you believe , but you can. And you are. And you will. Because for every bit of guilt you have about what you did or didn’t do, or may or may not do, there is a little tiny human that thinks you are the bees knees and the Queen of their universe. Happy Mother’s Day xoxo Do you ever have days where you just want to run away, or pull the doona up over your head and pretend you’re not there? I’ve been having these days but for weeks now. It’s like Groundhog Day in hell.
As you would know now from following my page that I am currently on a running hiatus in order to recover from my latest injury. I attempted to run last weekend and that failed after 1.7km. I am frustrated, miserable, angry at the world and exhausted. What you may not know however, is everything else that is happening behind the scenes in the world of Real Girl Runner. I am a mum to Ruby Pink Cat, I work full time, I operate a business at home, I mainly run the house as my husband does long hours at work, I am the one that is responsible for our dog Sally. And I am the enduring guardian for my 61-year-old mother who has early onset dementia. My mum’s health has been declining for a number of years, the consequences to a hard life and long battle with alcohol. Although she seemed to think she had it all together and it wasn’t affecting her health, it all came to a head 6 months before my wedding in 2008 when she was found, collapsed on the side walk out the front of her house. Within 2 days, she had been in 3 different hospitals, ICU, an isolation room until finally they pulled us aside into one of those scary little rooms where they only deliver bad news. There’s nothing more they could do for her, she was in a coma and now we just had to wait. Either she started to respond and pull through or she didn’t. She was diagnosed with multiple acute organ failure. For 48 hours I sat there, 10+ hours a day, just waiting. Finally she started to show signs of improvement but she wasn’t out of the wood yet. She ended up being in intensive care for 3 weeks, unresponsive to the outside world. With nothing else to do, I sat there making my wedding invitations and getting to know the nurses and all of Mum’s machines. She was then moved to a high dependency ward when she started coming out of her fog and then another 2 weeks she was home. The doctors said that if she had even another drop of alcohol, the onset of her decline would be so quick that she wouldn’t even make it to her local hospital in time. With only months to go before I got married, when I should have been worrying about what food to serve or what music we would have, I was on high stress alert every single time my phone rang – expecting it to be someone saying they had found mum. She had tried rehab many times and failed, so why would this time be any different. Strangely it seems that when she collapsed, the part of her brain that controlled the drinking died off. She never touched another drop. Not through any effort on her behalf, but as though she never ever did. It was gone. But unfortunately the damage was already done, in the worst possible way. A few years ago, I noticed Mum seemed to be getting little things mixed up, like she would drop words out of sentences in her emails to me, or ask me the same question twice. She lived by herself but seemed to be OK whenever I visited so I put it down to being paranoid. Her doctor had her on so many different types of medications that he referred her to a psychiatrist with the view of trying to reduce them. The psychiatrist started speaking to her and instantly called me on the phone, concerned with her cognitive functions and wanting to do some intense testing. The results of the testing concluded she had severe damage on her frontal side lobes, which control cognitive functions and short-term memories. We were referred to a geriatric psychologist who diagnosed her with Korsekoff’s syndrome – alcohol related dementia. She was just in the early stages at that point and still able to function at home as long-term memory was fine and everything around her was familiar. She was 58. In early 2014, I noticed her declining slightly and started to make enquiries about trying to get an Aged Care Assessment (ACAT) done, which is almost impossible for someone under 65. But she was still able to drive herself around and go shopping etc., so maybe she wasn’t that bad. She was adamant that she would not go into a home so I left it at that for the moment. In June 2014, I got a call from Coolangatta Police to say they had found Mum on the side of the road as her car had stopped working on a dangerous road and if she tried to move it herself she would either go into opposite traffic or off a cliff. They were concerned that she was a bit disoriented, in her nightie and fumbling on words. I went down to get her and she didn’t seem herself. We moved her car and went to go get some money out for her but she couldn’t remember her pin. I arranged for her car to be taken to her mechanics and then told her I would call her again the next day. She was due to go on a bus outing the next day but they called me to say she didn’t seem like herself and to get her to the hospital. Turns out she had had a stroke. In the hospital, they stripped her down to change her and I burst into tears. In front of me was not my mum, but someone who looked like one of those starving children you see on TV – nothing but bones and skin with a massive swollen belly. She was severely malnutritioned, dehydrated and her blood work was all over the place. She had a massive gash on her back that she couldn’t remember how it happened. She had been forgetting to eat and take her medication. The stroke had kicked her dementia into the next phase. The hospital advised that she would not be allowed to go home and so the merry-go-round of trying to find a home for my mother began. I should point out at this time that I am it when it comes to my mum. Both her parents passed away when she was younger and I have no other relatives or siblings. So this was all on me – every decision, every meeting with health care professionals, every signature, was all me. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was listen to my own mother alternate between begging me to kill her and then asking me to take her shitty underwear home to wash after another accident. We eventually found a lovely place for her in Tallebudgera, and after a period of adjustment she seems to have settled in OK. She is still in the early stages so she’s completely aware of her surroundings and the fact that she’s the youngest person by far surrounded by old people. Which I can imagine can be quite depressing. Just recently, she has started to deteriorate into the next phase of her dementia. The questions are becoming more repetitive, she doesn’t always listen to what is being said, and her personality is showing signs of changing. As I am the only one, it is all on me. To manage her finances, to visit as regularly as I can, to protect my daughter from bearing the brunt of Grandma changing. I am exhausted and I got to breaking point. We have started fighting lately, but it is even more difficult fighting with someone with dementia, as after the fight ends she forgets and goes back to feeling fine, whereas I am left seething or upset and can’t do anything about it. I can’t have it out with her, as she zones out from listening or has no idea what I’m talking about. After 9 months of managing well without my psychologist, I finally admitted I needed help and went back to her again this week. I am struggling with this permanent feeling of grief I have, grieving for the mum I used to have and finding myself resenting the person she has become. I am angry that she did this to herself and that I don’t have a choice but to keep living this life. My psychologist was wonderful. She explained I do have a choice. Both choices are pretty shit she acknowledged but I do have a choice. I can choose to not go back and see her and leave someone else to manage her money. But the consequences of that choice I can’t bear to deal with as she is still my mum and I love her and couldn’t deal with abandoning her. But it was so refreshing to have her put it like that though, in order for me to be able to take ownership of the situation instead of feeling like I was helpless. It’s still shit, and will only get worse as she declines further, but it is my choice to continue going through with it. The problem I find myself in at the moment though, is that running has always been my stress relief and my way to balance everything out in my life. With no running comes increased stress and anxiety and a very unhappy Rhiannon (and the rest of my house suffers too). I have put my business to one side as I just don’t have the motivation, I have put on weight from not enough exercise and portion control, I am pushing my family away and I am angry at the world. But then I thought about what my psychologist said and realised that I could apply it here too. I am CHOOSING not to run in order to recover properly from ITB and be able to still train and run my ultras later this year. Last year, I chose to run injured, I could choose that again now. However, like with my mum, the consequences of running injured right now far outweigh the perceived benefits that I may get in the short term. So, whenever I start to feel angry, upset, frustrated, jealous, or miserable about my current running ban, I am reminding myself that this is my choice. I am choosing to instead build up my strength training in the mean time and take the time I need in order to completely recover, so that when the time is right to start running and training again I will be able to come back fitter and stronger then before. That’s not to say that I don’t still have moments, but it’s making this hiatus a bit easier to deal with. My family are also happier with my changed frame of mind (though I am still insanely jealous of my never-get-injured husband and may have called him a jerk today when he left for a run). |
AuthorHi, I'm Rhiannon and welcome to my blog. I'm not an elite athlete and I may never win any races, but I'm a "real" runner, juggling work, family and life to achieve my running goals. Archives
October 2020
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REAL GIRL RUNNER | My Blog |