Celebrating 70

It's not often that I share photos of me so the last post was a bit of an aberration.  And now there's another post!  What has the world come to!  Mind you only one of me this time.

But I am so very blessed.

A very dear friend, Vicky, said she and her husband Steve, wanted to host a birthday lunch for me on the day after my birthday.   And what a lunch party it was!

I am blessed to have such friends.

Vicky arrange all the invitations, the food and drink.

She roped in other people to help with the catering.  I don't know who did what, but thank you.  I know that Ange went to great lengths to make me a cake with my favourite colour - turquoise - and my favourite chocolate - Cadbury's.

My friends came and blessed me with cards, presents and conversation.  The weather was kind too.

Lots of questions had been asked about my favourite foods and I mention Vicky's chocolate bread & butter pudding. And here it is.  It was totally yummy.

Rosie and Ditch came from London especially to celebrate with me AND made a Florida Salad.  Thank you both.

After a sumptuous lunch, I cut the cake.  It was superb.

And if that wasn't enough blessings, Vicky had arranged for these two to Facetime.

They had stayed up until way past midnight to make the call.  Above and beyond, wouldn't you say!

What a fabulous afternoon to be blessed in such a way by friends and family.  Thank you all.

And you know I can't resist a bit of rust!!!  There was a fire bowl on the patio and there was rust!

How could I resist?

I nearly forgot!  Another blessing!  Several of my friends donated to a Birthday Fundraiser I put on Facebook to raise money for Once, We Were Soldiers.  Thank you to all who donated.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

More Talk and a free class

Thank you for all the comments from last week's post Time to Talk.  This is another long, wordy post.

I wrote the original of this blog post as an email to some friends in September 2013 while I was suffering from depression.   I am sharing it now to further our discussion about mental health.  And also to help those of you who don't have problems to recognise when your friend or colleague is having a problem.

September 2013
It is very difficult for me to even write this. I'm not terribly keen on making myself vulnerable and admit that I need help.

I am currently very depressed and feeling like I want to cry – but daren’t in case I can’t stop. I've just done a questionnaire on a website and probably answered 95% of the questions as being depressed.

I'm very good at giving the appearance of being altogether, having my life altogether and being strong. I am very independent and rarely ask for help.

I just need to explain to you what's been going on. I have in the past been diagnosed with clinical depression and so over the years I’ve always known when it was creeping up on me and I've been able to take avoiding action. But this time it has crept up on me without me noticing because I was keeping myself busy. A lot of it stems from the whole of the last 12 months with my dad being ill and living partly in Solihull, partly in Pembrokeshire and then sitting with him while he died. Then keeping myself really busy by clearing out the house and still living partly here and partly there. This has meant with the sale of the house every little thing that pops up to stop the signing of the contract seems to be a major issue for me and I'm not dealing with it very well.

I can probably trace it all back to January 2006 when Andy left home and left the country and I didn't allow myself to cry. Somebody had said to me that him leaving home would be like a bereavement and I thought that this comment was really silly & spent the year saying well everybody's children leave home, lots of children go off to college and lots of people's children emigrate so I didn't allow myself to grieve in that sense.

In 2007 when my mother died I think I cried for about three minutes but really more from the shock of seeing someone die and so I continued on my merry little way.

Then there was the issue of the ending of King’s Church, which I have dealt with in terms of forgiveness and other things like that, but didn't allow myself to grieve about the loss of something that I'd invested 13 or more years in my life into. (I had been the church administrator.)

I very much like to be in control of things, to know exactly what's happening and how things going to pan out. In the last 12 months obviously that's not been the case. I never know whether I will be at church, or at group, not knowing whether I would be in Solihull or whether I’d be in Pembrokeshire. I've really felt that my life was totally out of my control and this obviously added to the stress.

As you know I haven't been sleeping well and the noise in my ears is quite appalling & have really struggled with the fact that despite lots of prayer that God hasn't done anything about that.

I’m currently feeling stuck as though if I make any movement I will fall into the abyss – in order to write this I had to start by dictating it on my iPad. The inability to start something is really trying!

It’s easier to borrow the words from the website I was on to describe how I am.
• I am low-spirited for much of the time, every day
• I feel restless and agitated
• I get tearful easily
• I feel numb, empty and full of despair
• I am unusually irritable or impatient
• I find no pleasure in life or things I usually enjoy
• I feel helpless
• I’m not doing activities I usually enjoy
• I am having difficulty remembering things
• I find it hard to concentrate or make decisions
• I blame myself a lot and feel guilty about things
• I am having a lot of negative thoughts
• The future seems bleak
• I have difficulty sleeping
• I feel tired and have no energy
• I have physical aches and pains with no obvious physical cause
• I am moving very slowly


I have been told I should allow myself to grieve and that my emotional ‘tank’ is on empty and I need to give myself time and activities to refill it. So I would appreciate your support as I deal with all of this.

Thank you.

****************************

You may find this video useful to watch if you want to help people: The Power of Empathy

February 2018
My friends did support me and I'm pleased to say that I overcame.  In 2014 I was asked to construct a class for an online class called MADE.   I accepted and called it Redefining Normal. Using a Brené Brown quote: 'grief is the absence of normal' as a starting point the class explores the things that naturally occur in life - children leaving home, parents dying, job events, retirement - the things that happen to almost all of us. The class investigates what is our normal and how we deal with a new normal.

I am offering this class for free.  Click on this link: Redefining Normal to get to the class.

Thanks for reading all of this and thank you for joining me today.
Bernice