My Story

Who am I?

I retired after 23 years in the teaching profession and, except for two lots of maternity leave, I have worked full time for the majority of my career - frequently topping 70 hours in a week! Yes, teaching is not just 9-3.30! Juggling work, children, animals (we had way more than we have now, when our children were young), house, husband, extended family commitments and friends (who are they? We never had time to socialise!) and sleep (again, what is that?!), life began to take its toll. Being a naturally organised person, who likes to be in control, I finally began to sink. Breast cancer at aged 44 gave me a massive wake up call, and I reassessed my life!

Why do we Work?

There are many reasons why people work.. Alongside the obvious need for income to sustain a level of lifestyle, it provides many with a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, an opportunity to feel they are adding value, pursuing an interest and personal goals, contributing to something far greater than themselves. All of this is valid, and essential for one’s mental wellbeing. However, we are human. We cannot be amazing at everything. Many people find that the pursuit of all of the above, as valid as it is, can crate challenges in other areas of their lives, which are equally as important. Many name family time as one major area that suffers in the rat race! One of the reasons why we work is to provide for our family! Family, from which, paradoxically, time is taken, because we have to work, and use our spare (family) time to get all the other household jobs done. Something has to give.

What ‘Gave’ for Me?

I realised that I had spent all my ‘spare time’, just trying to keep my head above water with everything else in my life, and ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I have finished this job’ was a phrase frequently thrown at the children. Even when I was with them, I couldn’t completely relax, as everything else I had to do, if the following day, or week, was to run smoothly, was howling at me from within my mind. If only I had had someone then, who could step in and help me to organise myself to a point where the mundane household chores became less onerous! If only someone could appear once every few months, to help me declutter and reset, so I could carve out quality time for my kids when I wasn’t at work! If I could have achieved this, my head would have been calmer and stress levels lower. Every holiday was spent clearing the nuclear fallout at home from the term before, along with at least a week of illness, that I had staved off during the manic term-time frenzy! The term and the frenzy would then begin again, and I would realise I hadn’t actually lived in between! I had not recharged - or reset!

What did I do?

I resigned from teaching. It would be tough – not everyone can do this, but I was one of the lucky ones; with some essential cutbacks, we could just about survive without my salary. I knew my girls needed me, even if they didn’t think so themselves. They were 16 and 13 when I was diagnosed and at crucial points in their education and development - not that every point is not crucial, but they were well into the age where keeping an eye on their global wellbeing was much harder than it had been when they were younger. Gone were the days when I could just tuck them into bed at 7pm and know where they were - and a kiss from Mummy was no longer the cure all, for all problems! I needed to ensure I remained connected with them; this was something I could not do whilst my every waking moment was so absorbed in the lives and welfare of other people’s children. I wanted my family to thrive, not just survive!

Reflection

Once I resigned, I began to reflect. I reflected on the routine I used to have and realised that small changes could have cut out a lot of stress, given that we had to be out of the house before daylight each morning. There was also the evening stress of homework with tired children, whilst needing to cook, prepare clothes for the next day, eat, and get the washing through, so it could be hung out before bed.

Then, there was bath time and winddown time for the children, if they were to sleep at all, and trying my hardest to keep my eyes open whilst reading the bedtime story, knowing I still had three hours of marking and preparation to do for the next day. My main compromise was sleep! I survived on 5-6 hours a night. Something had to change! I reviewed the years through which I permanently felt I was not doing anything well, despite the way it may have looked to the outside world.

My intrinsic and unshakeable feelings of guilt, in all areas of my life, had been overwhelming. I wasn’t being the mother, daughter, wife, friend, teacher, home keeper I felt I should be, and wanted to be! These feelings of guilt were so engrained in the core of my being, they became a rigid part of my soul. I had forgotten how to exist, without guilt. I had fallen into the trap of believing that I would fail in all my roles in life.

Removing teaching from my life gave me room and time to breathe. I looked around me at the chaos - the clutter, the disorganisation, the build up of junk we never had the time to sort, the house maintenance we never had the time to address. We had become so used to living with it, we had stopped noticing it, but, all the time, I was being poisoned by the very existence of what had not been addressed; subconsciously, it was eating me alive.

I realised we had not had the time to press the reset button at any point in our married lives, meaning that we were slipping further and further behind, whilst we thought we were making progress. If I was to be the person I wanted to be, my day job, as it was at the time, had to end. My resignation was the beginning of my journey in putting my own oxygen mask on first!