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After the #party’s over: #guilt #regret #acceptance

April 18, 2014 by helwild Leave a Comment

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So, the Moveable Feast of Eostre, the goddess of spring fertility, is upon us once again. It’s Easter. We have a full moon, rabbits & chickens, chocolate & sweet fruit buns with a cross baked into the top. For some religions, there are other, more sombre & deeply significant symbols associated with this part of our annual calendar. For most of us, there are 4 days off work, at a time of year when the moon is full, when the day & the night are almost of equal length, with the equinox falling just under 4 weeks before Eostre in 2014, on March 20th. The weather is generally pretty ‘liveable’, whatever hemisphere of this bounteous Earth we are living in.

The stage is set for a time of rest & relaxation, of time with family & friends, of contemplation, & of feasting. In our Northern hemisphere heritage & tradition, even though we are now living in the Southern hemisphere, the annual cycle away from the darkness & deprivation of winter means it’s time to make special purchases of foods that we normally reserve for special occasions: weddings, parties, birthdays, anniversaries. Some observe religious abstinence of some food for part of this time; but all spend at least part of this time feasting.

For about 38 years, our Easter has involved spending time with our extended family. In the early days, these Easter gatherings were held at our house in a small inland country town. We actually sent out invitations, & at first our brothers & sisters & our own parents came, bringing children, the occasional great grandparent, & the occasional dog. We needed caravans & tents for everyone to be able to sleep under cover, & occasionally the bathroom & septic tank struggled to cope. Luckily we were only a short walk from the Public utilities. The cousins bonded for life.

Later, once we acquired our scruffy little fibro beach shack, all the growing cousins brought friends; girlfriends, boyfriends. Meals were mostly eaten outside, huddled away from the sea breezes in a cold year, or gloriously somnolent in sunshine in a warm year. That’s the thing about Easter: it’s a Moveable Feast, so the weather can be like the end of summer; or it can be like the beginning of winter; or even both. We still needed a caravan or a tent some years, but bunks, sofa beds, mattresses on the floor, two showers & an outdoor hose, & two toilets helped a great deal. The septic tank needed regular emptying.

I remember a lot of laughter from those years. For most of those 38 years we were at the beach shack, & our time was taken up with sandcastles, swimming, searching rock pools for little crabs, midnight Jetty fishing excursions, sailing, rowing in a kayak or canoe. Food was abundant of course, as were leftovers. We played cards with gum nuts for stakes, Coon can, Pontoon, snap.

Nowadays our eldest daughter brings her family & we spend about 5 days at the shack. This year, because of the school holidays & other plans our family holiday ended on Good Friday. Traffic on the road to Adelaide was building up, & so they left before lunch today.

Our party this year included a full eclipse of the Moon, two red moons in a row, sunsets & dawns that were peacefully beautiful. Oh & the beginnings of a mouse plague. We swam in the sea, laughed, played games, built sandcastles & lego cities. We spotted our resident gecko, still skittering about inside the shack. We put down mouse bait, & threw out one little corpse. We enjoyed the fun of a 5 year old who wakes bursting with energy at 6.30 a.m. & wants to play baby pelicans (learning to fly & land) baby galahs, or baby seagulls. We enjoyed the seriousness of a tall 15 year old, who wants to share his thoughts & opinions about a myriad of topics. Both children are bursting with the joy of life.

Sure, we did enjoy some great, simple, homecooked meals. We didn’t buy takeaway. We didn’t eat chocolate. We didn’t have any chocolate with us. There are 3 people with diabetes in our party, & we aren’t that fussed about chocolate anymore. After the party’s over, what happens? There are the mechanics to be gone through: cleaning up, working out what to do with leftovers, perhaps extra sheets & towels to wash, if you’ve had house guests as we’ve had. But there is no time to waste on regret, guilt, or ‘shouldn’t haves’. The motto of ‘Acceptance‘, ‘going with the flow’, is the mantra that my daughter repeated many times over the past 5 days. ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’ in life, whether it’s about food, children’s behaviour, TV programmes, the timing of how a day runs on holiday. It’s OK to change your mind, & also to accept that in many cases whatever decision you make is just fine. Managing diabetes is organised, stressful. Reducing stress can be as simple as letting go of the ‘need’ to be the one who manages, who seeks to ensure that everything is covered. It’s actually OK for things on holiday to not be tightly planned & organised.

Technically,our party is over for this year. Last night I was woken from sleep at 1 a.m. by the sound of young girls laughing out the front. Now I hear the sound of other people’s holiday long weekend just starting. People have arrived, having made a long drive from somewhere. My elderly neighbour on one side is from the Adelaide Hills, & he is having a Prawn feast with his extended family, including a new great grandchild. His elderly red dog is resting outside in the shade. On the other side, the young family of the second son is cooking up a Sausage sizzle. Their dog is a middleaged lab, all protective when he needs to be, & all tail waggingly friendly when he doesn’t. Everywhere I hear children playing, birds calling, wind, the sound of the sea on the shore. Out the front, two little boys aged about 9 are walking past, wearing shorts & fleecy jackets.

We have decided to stay on a little. I have been very unwell, & am still moving more slowly than usual.There is a lot to do. We have no need to rush back to the city, where our daily lives are. And it’s still so beautiful here. Our original plan was to head back today, but slowly our plan evolved into a different one. Acceptance includes being flexible, open to what life brings.

happiness comes from letting go of guilt

carpe diem

Helen

Helen Wilde is a Senior Counsellor with Diabetes Counselling Online. She has been the parent of a person with diabetes since 1979, and has lived with Type 2 diabetes herself since 2001.

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#Moments of #wonderful

March 28, 2014 by helwild 3 Comments

Yesterday my littlest sister flew from Melbourne to Adelaide to visit our mother, who is 91 & living with dementia in a Nursing Home. We were fortunate to be able to catch up for lunch, together with two of our other sisters, a gorgeous niece & a precious 3 yr old great niece. We actually took some photos which I will post on our Dine In for Diabetes page, when I get the time! There were 3 pwd’s at the table. LOL.That was an explosion of wonderful!

My morning had already held some good moments. I learned a long time ago that there is wonderful in the minutiae, the small details of life; a rose, a bright morning, a child putting his hand in mine spontaneously. Yesterday morning was very special. Before meeting my sisters etc for lunch, I was able to represent Diabetes Counselling Online as a Volunteer at a meeting with Channel 9 Telethon.

There were about 50 of us visiting Channel 9, representing 21 Charities. First we had a tour of the News studio, where we were treated to an “insiders’ view’ behind the scenes of how the News & Weather are put together . Then we were informed in a very professional way of all the exciting opportunities in the year ahead for Volunteering & raising funds for our own Charities. It helped that I was able to park my car in leafy North Adelaide, a large leafy square away from the studios, so that I walked across wet spongy grass, amongst roses in bright Autumn sunshine to my meeting.

I picked one of those roses, such a metaphor for life, the thorny stem, the explosion of soft scented colour at the apex. I added it to the brown paper bag that held my sister’s birthday gifts.

At lunch, one of my sisters gave us all a wonderful experience. Before Christmas, which was the first one for years where we had not held a large family gathering, we had each handed over gifts to be passed on to the children in the family. Three of those gifts had lodged at Vivienne’s home since then. They were Ruby’s gifts. Each had been bought with love. And Ruby was at lunch! So we 3 great Aunts got to give Ruby her gifts personally. Each gift was opened & appreciated with great solemnity, awe, & happiness. Her little face beamed with the unexpected delight of it all. For the rest of the day, the hearts of us old great Aunts, Ruby’s Grandma, & Ruby’s Mum were warmed by her childish sense of wonder & joy.

We said our goodbyes & headed off to our afternoons, work, driving home, & my littlest sister to the Nursing Home. We all knew there would be difficulty & sadness involved in her visit, & wished her well & thanked her.

In the early evening, I sent my littlest sister an SMS. I hoped she had a good flight, & that her visit had not been too hard. She responded: ‘There were moments of wonderful”. I knew exactly what she meant.

Two days before I had experienced some ‘moments of wonderful’ with Mum. I had rung before visiting, & Mum had spoken on the phone. She said she was fine, but was very annoyed about the weather, which was seasonably cool (it is autumn, after all). I said, yes, it is cool today, it might rain, & she replied, “I know, & I was going to play Tennis.” Mum uses a wheelchair &/or a wheelie walker to get around, her tennis days are at least 60 years behind her. But I loved her feisty response to the weather. I always dread speaking to Mum on the phone, she says, “I can’t hear you. I’m putting the phone down.” Which she does. Literally. Without hanging up. This phone call made me laugh out loud, although of course I sympathised about missing out on the Tennis, & said I’d be there to visit in half an hour.

My sister would have had some ‘moments of wonderful’ yesterday where Mum was affectionate & loving, where she appreciated that Kathryn was wheeling her about, trying to make her happy, & where she appreciated the long exhausting trip Kathryn was putting in just to visit Mum. There would also have been lots of difficult minutes & half hours, as Mum’s dementia means she can’t remember new things. Like being visited by her loving daughters. Or the conversation a moment ago where all her fears & concerns were explained & put to rest. That is a great sadness. So the metaphor of the rose fits a visit to Mum very well.

On two mornings this week I have had some tiny visitors to my garden, bringing me some tiny ‘moments of wonderful’. Little native birds, White Eyes, hanging upside down in the wild fennel I grow just for them. Apparently flowers & seeds are equally tasty. I can watch them through my bedroom window, lying in bed in the morning light.

Living with diabetes is never easy. We cannot forget about it, or ignore it: if we do so it is at our peril. The stress is very great. We have to be responsible, sensible, pro active. We can get so caught up in our problems, complexities, responsibilities that we forget to notice the ‘moments of wonderful’ that happen almost every day. It’s easy to focus on pain, on difficulty, on practicality; on guilt, on wanting; on dissatisfaction, anger, or resentment. The negatives clamour for our attention. By noticing the small ‘moments of wonderful’, we become intrinsically peaceful, more accepting, philosophical. We become Mindful, we remember to live in the moment. Those difficult things become easier to bear, to manage, to work through, to let go; or to change.

Helen Wilde

Helen is a Senior Counsellor with Diabetes Counselling Online, Teacher, and parent to someone living with Type 1 diabetes since 1979. She has been living with Type 2 diabetes herself since 2001.

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#Parenting a child with #diabetes #struggles & #rewards: owning your own #lifetime

March 20, 2014 by helwild 10 Comments

This is a blog I have wanted to write for some time. As the parent of a now grown up child with diabetes, I feel a ‘special’ bond with other parents. Because of this, I am one of the moderators of the Facebook Closed group Parents of kids with diabetes. Almost every day I read & respond to heroic, wonderful, ordinary, or desperate stories of parents, ordinary people, most of them with no prior knowledge or experience of life with diabetes. Some are the parents of newly diagnosed infants. Those of us diagnosed as adults, no matter what type of diabetes, we know the emotional rollercoaster that diagnosis brings. Imagine that diagnosis being pronounced on your baby or your child.

The journey of acceptance of the diagnosis of diabetes is often described as the journey of loss, a journey through the stages of mourning. Some people diagnosed, or some partners of people who are diagnosed, get ‘stuck’ in one of the very earliest of stages, Disbelief & or Denial. They may delay or refuse the suggested treatment or advice for management. They may hide their diagnosis from those around them. That stage is bypassed in a Blink for the parent whose child is diagnosed. From lasting perhaps years, this stage is reduced to a few moments, a few hours, a day, a couple of days. From then on, ‘Disbelief’ & ‘Denial’ do not exist. We leap straight to fear, panic, guilt; into anger, blame, shame. We also leap straight into fierce Warrior protector mode. For most of us, our fear has to be submerged into Action, Compliance, & Learning, all embedded in a fierce protective mode that overrides everything else. Our own sadness, mourning, self blame must be submerged under the need to be the responsible Parent, the one who will manage the journey of our precious child into adulthood with lifelong chronic disease. I imagine the journey is similar to that of any parent whose child is diagnosed with a chronic disease or condition.

One of the differences lies in the management. Daily, a parent must monitor & restrict or ‘manage’ the food intake of their child. When birthday parties or celebratory occasions come up, the decisions about how to manage party food become an obsession. We handle insulin, a powerful hormone with great responsibilities attached, several times a day. We check glucose levels, ketones. We must ensure that we never run out of any supplies. We make & keep appointments with a range of HCP’s. We keep records, or trust our children to. We learn jargon. We FB, we Tweet, we SoMe. We must budget to afford all this, & although thankfully in Australia parents do receive some government assistance with costs whilst their children are under 16, in some countries this is a crushing, unsustainable burden. Our sleep is interrupted, sometimes many times a night, for the duration of the time our child with diabetes lives under our roof; and in the case of our daughters, possibly again when (if) (joyfully; & scarily) pregnancy occurs. We become master mathematicians & pseudo nurses & endocrinologists, calculating complex equations several times a day, carbs, insulin, bgl ratios.

Another difference between being diagnosed yourself & having your child diagnosed is the type & level of Guilt & Self Blame that occurs. For ourselves, it becomes tied up in not talking about our diabetes, in hiding it so that we check our bgl’s or inject our insulin or take our oral medication very privately. We may even not do these things at all if a social occasion comes up. When it’s your child, ‘compliance’ is not an issue. We follow our instructions to the letter, to the minute. We advocate, we speak out, we question, we seek knowledge, advice, support. We talk to teachers, schools, principals, classrooms full of children. For many parents, their Guilt & Self Blame becomes lifelong, but is submerged into supporting a search for a cure. This is absolutely normal. It gives Hope, which is so wonderful. However, for some people supporting a cause such as this can become obsessive, preventing Acceptance, & interfering with normal life, & just getting on with managing the diabetes as best as possible.

It can seem impossible to set aside time for managing to care for ourselves. We can feel as though we are too tired, too busy, too responsible to take some time out just to be ourselves, just to breathe & enjoy our lives. We feel driven to Act, to do. The younger the child, & the more young siblings there are, the more difficult this becomes. Many parents are fortunate in having the practical support of a partner, grandparents, their own siblings. Others have friends in the ‘real’ world as well as in the virtual world. You may have access to good Child Care, where people are already trained or are open to be trained in managing your child’s health condition. It is hard to accept that it is not selfish to use such practical help to simply ‘take a sanity break’. However, doing so can actually be a wise management strategy. By allowing someone else to take care of our child with diabetes for a half a day, a day, a ‘sleepover’, a weekend; we are teaching everyone concerned that if for some reason we are unavailable, they can manage, & manage well. We’re teaching our child that there are safe people & places in the world, & as they get older, that they are clever, brave, strong; and normal. They can be away from us, & we can be away from them. We will come back, & we will all be OK. And we’re teaching ourselves that our lives exist outside our Parenting role, a role which changes over time for everyone, regardless of any health condition of their child.

What activities do you currently do that are solely for yourself? Do you walk, run, climb, meet a friend, visit a library, play a sport, go to the gym, sew, go to the cinema, study, paint, garden, play with animals, swim, do yoga, ski, ride a motorbike or bicycle, box, write a diary or blog? What have you stopped doing that you would like to go back to? What have you always wanted to do or try that you have not yet tried? Do you know how to practice relaxation, controlled breathing, or any stress relief practices?

Always remember, you are a Parent of a child, & you are a Person. These roles do not exclude or preclude each other. Your life is yours, you own it. We have a short time on this earth, & our time is Now.

Remain in Light. Talking Heads

carpe diem

Helen Wilde

Helen is a Senior Counsellor with Diabetes Counselling online, a Teacher, & the Parent of a person living with Type 1 diabetes since 1979. She has lived with Type 2 diabetes herself since 2001.

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It’s not easy to be me- journeying to the #self: how #melancholy is part of #happiness

March 13, 2014 by helwild 2 Comments

Our inalienable rights are ‘Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness’- nothing in there about Health, or Wellness, right?

I was counselling someone today, someone who is actually older than I am, despite me having just had a birthday & feeling extremely ‘senior’ as a result. LOL! I had something of a ‘light bulb’ moment. I thought, it’s not depression that I live with, it’s melancholy. And is that such a bad thing? Once you realise your own mortality, which for many people is actually before the age of 10, isn’t melancholy part of the background to our lives? It’s not a word that is used or celebrated nowadays, it could even be called ‘unfashionable’ to acknowledge melancholy. It seems that you have to be always ‘happy’ to be considered ‘normal’: if you’re not obviously happy, then you must be ‘depressed’. I don’t believe that’s true.

Although melancholy gets a bad press sometimes, being equated with deep depression, it has also a more poetic & lighter side. Many poets, composers, artists, writers from various cultures have felt melancholy. ‘Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness’ by Italo Calvino ‘There is no such thing as happiness, only lesser shades of melancholy.’ Robert Burton. ‘Sweet bird, that shun the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy!’ John Milton and ‘There is no coming to consciousness without pain.’ Carl Jung. When you can acknowledge that it’s actually OK to be sad, not permanently deliriously happy, to be in fact somewhat melancholy, you can accept your state of being & find that ‘happiness’ & ‘beauty’ can encompass melancholy. ‘I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.’ Dianne Ackerman

Of course that melancholy can be a spiderweb, it can creep into everything, it still takes work to maintain calm in the midst of chaos: to maintain serenity, joy. The tools of mental wellness remain the same. We are all living with diabetes. Now that’s just not fair. It basically sucks. At the same time, many of us are trying so hard to ‘live our lives to the full’, whatever that may mean. Whether it’s helping others, striving for a physical ‘high’ that will reward us, striving to be successful in a career, or in love, earning more money to purchase whatever it seems we want; our time is busy busy busy. Multi tasking is a way of life. We are attached to screens for much of our waking time. We are ‘communicating’ with more people than ever before in the history of the world. We need to take ‘down time’, & to use that time to be present in the real world. This might be as simple as exchanging our gym session for exercise outdoors, appreciating the world as it passes us by. It might be turning off screens for a 2 hour waking period every day: or for an entire day a week, & focussing on the people we are with & the world around us. Or to be alone. It might be remembering we have more than 3 senses: more than our eyes, ears & fingers. It might be reminding ourselves that we are more than our diabetes, or our child’s diabetes, that we still have other interests, & other people in our lives. It might be focussing on Breathing, on silence, on music: on watching your child sleep. It might be preparing and eating a meal with pleasure, not guilt, sharing our pleasure with others, not with self judgement or self criticism. It might be that we need to give ourselves a break, to celebrate how hard we are trying, to let go of guilt or shame. We need to use that wise voice in our head to counsel ourselves as we would another, to be kind to ourselves as to another, to say, ‘It’s OK, nobody’s perfect, you’re doing OK’.

It can be hard being Superman, or Superwoman. Even Superman feels melancholy sometimes.

Helen Wilde

Helen is a Senior Counsellor with Diabetes Counselling Online, Teacher, parent of a person living with Type 1 diabetes since 1979, & living with Type 2 diabetes herself since 2002.

You may find it helpful to talk with one of our team by visiting http://www.diabetescounselling.com.au/welcome/our-team-counsellors-ambassadors/

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Keeping still: scarcely breathing: & hanging on

February 21, 2014 by helwild 2 Comments

Last weekend I was tired. I didn’t turn my computer on from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon.

I visited Mum in the Nursing Home on Friday afternoon, & had dinner with my sister on Friday night, & we made a YouTube video for ‘Dine In’. On Saturday I had Brunch with my 4 sisters, always a lovely, laughing, chatty time: even better because we went to my lovely nephew’s cafe.. I had a Dr’s appointment Monday morning + the plumber came Monday & Tuesday, & on Wednesday morning I had fasting blood tests at the IMVS. We babysit Tuesdays & Wednesdays every week. In between I worked.

On Thursday I went back to bed after breakfast. This is something I almost never do. I usually have an obligation to someone to motivate me to get ready for the day & move into it. I was feeling really tired, almost exhausted. We have had such horrible weather events lately, & I have been as busy as I usually am, or even busier.

After I had stayed there for about 20 minutes, not sleeping, I recognised the state of almost trance that I was moving into. I call it my ‘nearly dead’ state of being. My first memory of entering this state was when I was a child. I have 4 sisters, two of them came along by the time I was 3 years old. So my life has never been solitary. When I was 10, sister 3 came along, & at 14, sister 4. By then we lived in quite a large house. But before I was 10 years old, my first 2 sisters & I always shared a room. The last of these rooms was tiny, so small that our 3 beds touched each other. Being in the days before TV & computers or the Internet, our playtime was rich with activity & imagination. We loved to play hide & seek of course, & sometimes talked our big hearty laughing Dad into playing too. There were few real hiding places in our tiny maisonette, & I remember my first very successful hiding place (to my mind) was actually under the bedcovers of my bed. The bedspring sagged, & as I was a skinny kid, if I lay extremely flat & kept very very still, scarcely breathing, it took a long time to be found. Or it seemed long. Of course the emotion of excitement had to be kept in check, & it was usually my giggles that meant I was found.

Keeping still...& giggling — Keeping still…& giggling

The next stage of experiencing this state of being ‘nearly dead’ was not nearly so much fun. I was 24 years old, & I was trying desperately hard to hang on to a pregnancy. I was admitted to the women’s ward of a country hospital, & told to ‘keep as still as you can’. This I did, for 10 days. I lay flat. I scarcely moved. I scarcely breathed. To pass the long hours I played patience, over & over again, moving only my hands.

I lost the baby. Then, I had to learn to stand, to walk, to breathe deeply, to return to my life, my work, & my 4 year old child. My body almost physically shut down over those 10 days. My muscles began to waste. My sadness seemed unbearable. I did walk. I went outside. I was dizzy. I stood in sunshine. I felt the air. I hugged a tree. It was strong, cool, detached, impersonal: it cared nothing for me, it just was. I breathed. And I cried.

Yesterday morning I felt this state beginning to take hold. Flatness, stillness, nothingness. I said to my husband, I might just stay here & lie flat & keep still until I die. He asked me why: & I realised I didn’t have a reason. My life is good. Sure there are some very sad things in it, there are some difficulties in it. But mostly it’s just a life, like any other. It’s up to me to Move, to Breathe, to be happy, to hang on…I got up, put my shoes on, went for a walk around the block. On the way I paused at a demolition site, where 6 burly men were pulling a house down. They had trucks, machines, skips. They were stopped, waiting for someone to come & close the huge water leak that was fountaining from the water pipe they had clearly just fractured. They were laughing & talking, enjoying their day: no guilt, no regret. I asked if I could take a cutting from the pink frangipanni tree they had already started to tear out. They gave me advice on how to strike it, & then happily broke the other half of the tree down for me. I carried it home triumphant, envisaging the flowers I might have next year.

just be..breathe in, breathe out, move..

Helen

Helen Wilde is a Teacher & a Senior Counsellor with Diabetes Counselling Online. She is the parent of someone with Type 1 diabetes and has been living with Type 2 diabetes herself since 2001.

If you sometimes feel you would like to talk with someone, maybe from our Team, you can do so via the Registration form here: http://www.diabetescounselling.com.au/counselling-request/

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