September Adventures

Back to school time, and I'm now legally responsible for facilitating full time education for three. No feeling of panic this year, or urge to get out folders just to feel like I'm doing something. New posters for Autumn ideas and inspiration, though. And a gradual return to some kind of household order as my depression lifts (often a bit too much order and not enough playing-with-the-kids or being-gentle-to-myself, as I suffer from a case of All or Nothing Syndrome).

The start of the school year has felt really peaceful this time around. Our Summer is transitioning into Autumn calmly and smoothly. We are getting out of the house a bit more. Life has a familiar sense of flow, and I am no longer flailing desperately for breath.





Morgan has been getting out the pencils a lot in the two weeks since I tidied their shelves. She even initiated some copywork after Jenna had some poetry books out.






We caught up with some friends we haven't seen for a while, and took a nature walk. The children foraged, pretended to be zombies, climbed up and down the river banks, and poked a dead rabbit with sticks.






Some very friendly little birds chirped at us in town.


And Rowan made an apple pie all by herself, with apples from our tree.


Jenna and Morgan went on a first aid course. Rowan and Talia waited somewhat impatiently, and inspected the ambulances. We bought new pens (and cookies) on the way home.


We visited Ikea and built flatpack furniture at Ashleigh's house.




Wollaton Hall had a festival running, a new trail around the museum exhibits, and some wonderful tiny bug sculptures.




We have installed mods for Sims. Painted. Collected leaves and acorn caps and stones and feathers. Baked cupcakes. Read together. Played in the garden. Pulled out the encyclopedia to look for pictures of seals. Threaded beads, Made apple sauce. Had friends round to play. Made our own notebooks.

It was a good week. :)

Depression (for people who aren't actually depressed)

Just a couple of resources, links, articles, and ideas. I'm having a difficult time explaining that I'm not actually sad (or not always) and that platitudes aren't the same as support (or help) and that it's the simple little things that are so often eluding me in the grey fog. My words aren't sufficient, right now, I just end up sounding ungrateful or rude. Ack. Anyhow, I shall bring some more useful words to your attention:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html
"...trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back.  A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn't going to work."

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/depression-part-two.html
"And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared. "

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexisnedd/things-nobody-tells-you-about-being-depressed

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/01/30/6-things-to-say-to-someone-with-depression-or-whos-depressed/

http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/how-to-help-friend-with-depression-mental-illness

See, I even lack the energy to look around and see if there are any better links than the above, or seamlessly integrate them with my post. Just, yeah, all of that. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

(snippets of our normal)

Outside my window the grey sky is a blank slate, fresh from pouring heavy warm rain down upon us only moments ago. The hedge glistens with water droplets. Discarded clothes from the children's games lie damply on the muddy grass - more laundry for me! The contorted willow is finally (and blessedly) coming back into leaf after being heavily eaten by tiny green caterpillars this Summer.

I am thankful for the lightness creeping back, for surviving periods of depression, for that returning feeling that I *will* be OK at some point in the future.

In the kitchen there are stacks of soup bowls from lunch, and baking trays dusty from the scones we made and devoured this afternoon. We haven't had tea yet; rice and mushroom curry from the takeaway is the ultimate comfort-food plan when Martin gets home from helping a friend to shift a new armchair across town.

I am wearing a hippy top that doesn't really fit me all that well any more, dark red with a tiny yellow and magenta floral print. And the orange patchwork skirt. Amber beads. Hair pulled back, as it so often is. I'm thinking about cutting it again, or dyeing it bright red, or *something*.

I am creating gradient dyes, mainly, right now. Some for the shop, and some for the shawl I'll be working on this week. I have averaged almost one small project a day this week.

I am going to an Attachment Parenting family picnic tomorrow. And a birthday party on Sunday. I so want to return to the commune in Liverpool one weekend soon, and keep discovering that somehow I have forgotten other things which I agreed to months ago. (More apologies to the play dates we apparently forgot about this month. My mind is so scattered lately.)

I am reading The Cuckoo's Calling. (Or I will be, when I get chance to do more than pick it up and move it from room to room with me.)

I am hoping... well I would say I am hoping for an early night, but as we still haven't had anything to eat this evening and the children are making elaborate paper collages all over the floor...

One of my favourite things is the smell of rain in Summer. Rich and fresh at the same time.

Around the house:
I actually put away some clean laundry today. It has only been sitting lying around on chairs and dressers for about two weeks. I have strange nightmares about the laundry pile chasing me; I can't pretend that I'm not fully aware what these mean.

There is a doll crib in the living room, tied with large looping bands of thin elastic from my sewing box. A doll appears to have her leg suspended in this cat's cradle of white bows. Earlier this was part of a game of hospitals.

Two playstation controllers trail across the floor - between the game of hospitals and the cutting-of-paper, Jenna and a friend were playing Sonic. Jenna gives characters in video games voices, and keeps up a constant stream of their imagined conversations.

A peek into my day:

   Another Simple Woman's Daybook.
(New Tshirt from Teefury. New Gallifreyan artwork from Chronix Gallery.)

Seven Days of the Ups and Downs of Life

1. Jenna keeps making little journals for Talia
2. Eye-toy play in pjs
3. "I made myself a sleeping mask!"
4. Kid-made cheese and onion tart
5. Kerplunk
6. Stampy-inspired art by Morgan
7. Stacking things and piles of silks

The house is a mess, but the kids are busy and contented. Rowan is feeling really rough with an infection after scratching some of her eczema until it bled, but the lovely NHS nurse who saw us yesterday was so reassuring and kind and really calmed my anxiety. I am feeling very low, yet I am supported by friends near and far who are helping us get through. Still here! Our week has had its highs and lows, and mainly I am trying to simplify a bit - and basically working on putting one foot in front of the other.

Hobbits Play Date

(That's Talia's head in the corner, not my thumb. ;) )

It feels like a lot of work not to hide away and do nothing, but the Summer is still calling us! I did a quick silk workshop for Hobbits Playgroup, not many toddlers to play this week, but they made some pretty playsilks with food colouring. If I find the energy, I'll throw a tutorial together some day.

In some ways everything is a little lighter. I have been remembering to write a list of positive things every day, apart from that I am plodding on with ordinary attempts at getting to the bottom of laundry mountain... reading lots of stories to my book-obsessed Talia... hearing a fair bit of Stampy's commentary in the background as the bigger kids continue to enjoy all things Minecraft... sweeping popcorn and grit and sandwich crusts and little bits of paper off the kitchen floor... remembering to keep breathing.

The beautiful, the ordinary, the here, the light.

(The grey foxy dress is Rowan's favourite right now, can you tell?)

I haven't disappeared off the face of the Earth. The words are failing me. Or I am failing them. I have almost stopped writing. Almost stopped creating. Almost stopped reading. Floundering in a swamp of wordlessness and struggling to the surface to take breath after breath. They need me; I am needed. I have no time to go under. These moments with them count for something. They count for everything.

Every single moment. Every moment of light and laughter and love is a moment won back from the darkness of depression and anxiety. Every moment I can choose better than how I feel.

How pretentious does that sound? Hells, I can't... Broken words, coming out with such difficulty and not even... I wish I could craft this explanation into something redemptive and beautiful. This is why I am absent, fractured. The effort to wrap the words around it draws energy from the effort to stay present and make our lives something redemptive and beautiful. I won't pretend that it isn't so hard, right now. I've come out of this darkness before, though, and I will again. I am not giving in.