Hi, it’s been a while! My last blog was in March 2021. Lockdown number 3? 4? Those days feel a bit surreal to me now and I am not sure I’ve ever really taken stock of what exactly has changed in myself and others, but it feels big. There has been a shift and I see the effects manifest differently across generations. I see young people struggle with anxiety. I see older people with less confidence in getting out and about. I see children who missed most of the pre-school stage of life and their parents who missed the bonding that you do with others in the early years. Of course, for some, it isn’t ‘over.’

People with certain health conditions and vulnerabilities are still very careful to avoid catching any respiratory illnesses. People are excluded for other reasons such as poverty, lack of care workers to enable them and fewer funded opportunities in the community. Then, of course, there are some who will always be grieving loved ones, have symptoms of Long Covid and conditions exacerbated by how the NHS had to repurpose itself for years and may never recover. Our streets have changed too from the closure of businesses that could just not sustain themselves through the lockdowns and then the knock-on effect of the cost of living crisis that followed.

For a while, I was hopeful that once the whole of society had experienced worry, isolation and frustration in lockdown, it would make us have more empathy for those who are more familiar with it. To have less freedom and convenience in life, to experience a lack of resources or opportunities, to feel forgotten. I am also thinking about carers. The people who work in care have never really caught their breath or been rewarded, and sometimes have gone unacknowledged. For unpaid carers, who care for friends or relatives, there has been a withdrawal and decimation of already inadequate services. We are met with counter offers of resilience classes, wellbeing sessions, and online support groups which sometimes, in particular frames of mind, is more insulting and demoralising than being offered nothing at all.

And this is where I have been. This is where my energy has been spent. Advocating for myself and my family and for others. I watched the world move on without us. I felt othered. I felt excluded. I felt abandoned. And the feeling of abandonment for me, is key. Shortly after I published my last blog post, I asked for help. Tearfully and with a lump in my throat, I said I just wasn’t coping very well with all the demands on me as a parent carer and I felt desperate. And nothing happened.

And that is where my blog post (almost) ends, but actually, where my journey of the last two years begins.

It hasn’t all been difficult, there have been highlights like our son starting school and doing really well there, going abroad for therapy and sunshine, family trips, new milestones and achievements and some pretty hefty life changes.

I have learned an awful lot. About myself, my family and the formal and informal support systems around us. I have learned things that are useful to other familes, and parent carers, and women, like me that I now want to share. I realised that I had to find some even ground for our family to sit on for a while and then I could help others. And here I am. Ready to share – how I got support, how I found the nerve, how I didn’t give up, why there is so much more to do, why I am not scared and how I am so much more than ‘mum’ opposite ‘professionals’. I can teach them. I can use my experience to help make things better for others. I can be a part of change.