The year that is dying and fading from view

2015 is drawing to a close, so I felt it was time for the annual year-in-review post.

I really like doing these each year - it's not so much about other readers (although those are welcome, of course, otherwise I wouldn't be posting publicly) as it is about creating a record for my own family.

It's been a surprisingly meaningful exercise for us over time, to the point where I have saved the relevant pages and will turn them into a family photobook once I have a decade's worth. I've done one every year since 2010 - my previous

records are:
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014

So it is in this spirit that I turned my mind to thinking about 2015, the year that is soon to be leaving us.

Summing up 2015 in a single phrase is surprisingly difficult. It was a shape-shifter, with phases of good health, calm and great happiness interspersed with intervals of poor health, worry and rapid change.


No real traumas marred the year, which made a welcome change from 2014, which was a year of health crisis and overwhelming stress. It has felt like a good year for our family - a year of progress and changes, challenges and fun, anxiety and excitement.

For the sake of brevity, I've divided the year into highlights, lowlights, and changes. Some of the changes are also either a highlight or lowlight, unsurprisingly!

Highlights

1. Family holidays, birthdays, and special days
We had three small family holidays in 2015 - a week in Phillip Island in January, three days in Marysville / Lake Mountain in July, and five days in Daylesford and Bendigo in October.

None of these holidays were huge or expensive, but they all did us good, especially the October trip, from which we all returned very refreshed.

As well as our holidays, we had terrific celebrations of birthdays this year. The youngest, C, turned 6 in February and we had a superhero party at home for her, complete with Batman cake. My middle girl, E, turned 10 in May, and had a massive Harry Potter party at a local hall, with Golden Snitch cake and fully themed games, food and so on. The eldest turned 12 in August and decided on a swimming party at the local pool, with a TARDIS cake (which was ridiculously difficult to make but turned out great).

We also hosted a birthday BBQ in March for my husband, a birthday lunch in January for my MIL, and a dinner party in November for my Dad. The kids in particular attended many friends' parties and enjoyed them all.

Other special days included our family trip to Oz ComicCon in June - which was superb fun; Easter, which was great as alway;, and Halloween, for which we threw what turned out to be a massive kids' party. We hosted extended family Christmas last week, which was great, albeit exhausting.

My husband took the 10-year-old for a night at a fancy hotel (the Sofitel at Werribee Mansion) for her birthday in May, and he and I got away for a weekend on the Mornington Peninsula in November. So overall, it was a year full of special things and I have no complaints.

2. MoP and NaNoWriMo
Every January for the past four, I have participated in Month of Poetry, a challenge that involves writing a poem every day for the month. Some of the poems are specific responses to themes, styles or images set by the challenge organiser, while other days are "free writing" days.

I fulfilled the January challenge this year, and picked an organising theme of Women of the Old Testament to help shape my writing. Some of the poems were junk, of course, but a solid handful had real potential. (I've subsequently sold one for publication). MoP has become a signature theme of summer for me, and I can't imagine January without it.

In November, I attempted, and to my great satisfaction, completed, NaNoWriMo, the challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in length in one month.

I have done NaNo before - in 2010 and 2011 - and completed it both times, but on those occasions, I wrote middle-grade detective novels - fun, but not as challenging as what I tried this year, which was a science fiction / future verse novel.

The final product, which I called Theory of Mind, is not terrible. It needs a thorough edit, of course, but I'm proud it, and proud of myself for having done it in what transpired to be a very busy month. I'm going to try to do NaNo every year if I can; it is good for me, partially because it stretches me.

3. New kitchen
We finally bit the bullet in 2015 and got our kitchen redone. The old, brown, formica kitchen had been in place since the house was built in 1988 - 27 years ago - and it was showing its age in every creaky, barely-functional part.

Going with antique white cabinetry, a redesign of the pantry space, new good quality appliances and a caesar stone benchtop and wall splashbacks has created a room that we all love madly and makes our daily lives, as well as special meals, so much more enjoyable and practical. I won't lie, it wasn't cheap, but I honestly feel it was worth every cent.

4. Netball, music and swimming
The two older kids played netball this year, and really enjoyed themselves (so did we, attending their Saturday games).

My youngest's weekly swimming lessons have improved her skills but also proven a time of family relaxation, as we usually all go and the big kids and their dad have a play / lap swim.

My eldest's guitar playing has really stepped up in 2015, with her now being at the stage where true "jamming" is possible. She's keen to keep learning next year.

5. Time with friends
I am blessed in my life to have some really great friends. 2015 was a year where I got to see more of them than I have been able to in the past few years, and it was truly a good thing.

Lowlights

1. Ongoing (and some new) health concerns for various members of the family
My health continued to be variable across the year, with two new diagnoses (of Hashimoto's Disease and a heart arrhythmia) and periods of extreme fatigue.

I was never as sick as in the terrible last quarter of 2014, thankfully, but there were a few hairy moments.

Two of my three girls have also had some ongoing health niggles, which we are looking into now. I don't believe they will end up being serious, but there is no doubt it is a worry from time to time.

2. Employment and school stress
I found work very stressful in the first half of 2015 (before I made the big change discussed below!) and that definitely had an impact on our family life. I do have a tendency to take work problems more to heart than I should, and the instability of my employing organisation was very hard on me.

Moreover, my youngest went through a prolonged period of school refusal that baffled and troubled us; although I think it was starting to settle down, it never got fully resolved, and it put a strain on all of us.

3. Behavioural stuff
I don't want to say too much here about this, but let's just say, the year wasn't always the easiest under this heading. We're all working on strategies and techniques to enable us to cope, and relate more positively to each other.

Changes

1. Leaving my job and returning to freelancing
One of the significant changes this year was my decision to leave my salaried job at the end of June and return to operating as a freelance contractor.

I had no idea, when I took this plunge, whether I would get much (or any) work, but I knew something had to change. I was burnt out, and stressed out, where I was.

Moving back to freelancing, working mostly from home, has been absolutely the best decision I made this year. I am happier, my life is better balanced, my family gets more of me, and I have been lucky enough to get plenty of work so financially we have not lost out.

The two years I spent at the job I left in June were not wasted years, but they were costly ones, in terms of my health and equilibrium. They did teach me this - freelancing, as long as I can sustain enough work, is the best fit for me, with my health, personality, family and circumstances.

2. Eldest daughter finishing primary school and preparing to enter high school

My first baby girl did her final year of primary school in 2015. Watching her grow into herself as one of the school "big kids" and engage in leadership and extension activities was wonderful and poignant for me.

Her graduation from the school that has nurtured her since she was 5 years old was an occasion for joy and tears together. She's raring to go with high school, and I'm excited for her to see how the next phase unfolds, but there's a touch of melancholy in it all the same, seeing your baby grow up.


So, overall, 2015 was a good year. Not a year without challenges, but a year rich in memories and good change, change that has helped us all to move through and move on. For 2016, I'm hoping for:

- a good start to high school for daughter 1
- a great Grade 6 to finish primary school for daughter 2
- at least two enjoyable and memorable family holidays
- expansion of my creative writing, especially my poetic practice
- an even better and more stable year in health terms
- a good, varied year in my freelance business, with enough work to pay the bills
- a year of deepening our family bonds and relationships with friends

If I can realise those goals, then 2016 will be a wonderful year indeed.

On knowing you're done

I woke up at 5:30pm from an almost 2-hour nap, one induced by a crashing fatigue, and here's the really important part - one that my three children allowed to happen by peacefully going about their separate business for that whole length of time.

The crashing fatigue itself was an indicator that at least one of my chronic conditions is playing me up (probably the hormonal one, given recent changes to medication). The best way to manage these crashes - where I go, over the space of five minutes, from normality to utter exhaustion so profound I can barely raise an arm and walking is actively painful - is to lie down. Sleep is best, but if it's not possible, *sometimes* quiet immobilized rest will do the job, although it usually takes longer to work.

The crash happened when I was sitting in the car waiting for the kids to come out of school. When they piled in, all full of stories about their day, I listened, made appropriate comments, and then said: "Girls, I'm really tired. I want to lie down for a rest when we get home. Will that be OK?"

They all agreed it would be, and so, we got home, I gave them snacks, they set themselves up doing three individual activities on computers, TV and with a book, and I lay on the couch, snuggled up to a heat pack, prepared for a sleepy rest ... and fell fast asleep, only to waken much later when one of the kids called out to another.

Aside from being slobberingly grateful for the sleep, it made me realise just how done I really am with the baby and toddler stage of parenting. Such a thing would be literally inconceivable - negligent and dangerous - with tiny ones, no matter how shattered the parent is. Unless the kids / babes are napping too, daytime sleep is next to impossible when you have preschool-aged children at home and you are the only adult on duty.

I actually feel a bit sick thinking about how I would (or, more likely, would not) manage the demands of my various health problems, including my anxiety, and my professional life, if I was caring for an infant or a toddler right now. I think I wouldn't cope very well at all. I think it would be harder even than I imagine.

I love my three children fiercely, and I really loved their baby stage, and even their toddler years (well, mostly). If I had not had to have three caesareans, making a fourth pregnancy medically inadvisable, I would've liked to have had four kids, and would've probably had another close in age to my thirdborn.

But being 42, being prone to extreme fatigue snaps from at least two of my underlying chronic conditions, being at the stage where I am getting more serious about my poetry and also trying to build a viable freelance business, being ready and needing to start reinvesting more time and energy into my relationship with my partner, being called upon to do more and more in the community, being available to my kids as they grow and their problems become more complex ...

Well, for me, all of that is incompatible with the total immersion that is life with a newborn. It was a beautiful stage, but one I don't want to, can't, go back to. I know I'm done.

This is post 27 in NaBloPoMo. 27 down, 3 to go!

On being vulnerable, and letting people in

I made a conscious decision a number of weeks ago, when my anxiety and panic disorder was first officially diagnosed, that I was going to be open and non-secretive about my condition.

I don't mean, by this, that I go around with a big sign on my chest saying "Hi! I'm Kathy McOddBrain!" I do mean that when colleagues, friends and family ask me how I am - I tell them. When they ask about the illnesses that have led to me moving to part-time at work, or withdrawing from many activities, or losing weight or looking strained - I tell them. I tell them about the post-viral fatigue / CFS, yes, but I also tell them about the chronic insomnia, the panic attacks, and the anxiety. I tell them it's been hard, and is being hard. I tell them I am struggling.

I made this decision knowing that it might cause some people to withdraw from me, and that it constitutes a breach of the fourth wall in the professional sphere, where there is often an expectation that people's ... peopleness ... gets left at the door. I made this decision knowing that there is a stigma around mental illness, that I was inviting into the way others judge me. I made this decision knowing that I was choosing to make myself vulnerable, to let people see the scale and scope of my journey with this thing. Losing love may be like a window in the heart, where everybody sees you're blown apart, and everybody feels the wind blow (to paraphrase Paul Simon) - but so is mental illness, when you choose to share it.

And here is the thing. This has been risky, yes, but it has also been absolutely the right thing for me, in my circumstances, and with my personality. Not speaking is toxic for me. Holding things inside is dangerous. Pretending I am OK when I am not is stressful. I am a person who is open to the world and open to other people - I always have been - and to close down when in pain would be alien to me, would hurt me more.

I have been amazed, humbled, uplifted by the response I have had from choosing to walk this path in the sunlight rather than in shadow. The care, the concern, the practical love, of so many friends and colleagues has been overwhelming. When I need to cry (which is often), I have always found someone there to hand me a tissue or hold me gently. When I battle panic, I have been lifted by the presence, the words, the care of those around me. When I need to go away for a while, this has been accepted and not questioned, even when it's been inconvenient, even when it's been sudden.

But actually, the real reason I know beyond doubt that being open is right for me is because in being open, in making myself vulnerable, in showing where I'm blown apart - something in that has allowed other people to be vulnerable in return, to speak of their own struggles and find some comfort in it. I am not exaggerating even a little when I say that 20 different people have confided in me about their own mental health issues, about dark times they have had or in some cases are having, about the places in the heart where the wind blows through. I have held people as they've cried, just as I've been held; I have connected, and if the thread of connection is a dark one, it's nonetheless real for that.

I am very aware of the privilege I have that allows me to choose to be vulnerable and open. I'm white, educated and articulate, employed by an organisation with strong anti-discrimination policies, middle-aged, in a stable relationship with a supportive husband and family. I'm not addicted to anything, including alcohol. I don't need to fear that showing my cracks will result in losing my job or losing my children, being treated against my will, being sub-humanised. For so many people struggling with these issues, the parameters of their lives make disclosure dangerous, and that is so wrong and so sad.

Because, for me, letting people in has been THE factor in continuing to keep going, in trying to wrangle my odd brain into some semblance of peace. Being surrounded by people who see me and see the mess and choose to be with me anyway; people to whom I am drawn closer because my own vulnerability has made me a safe pair of hands for their pain - well, that is everything.

Purple Party, Tonsillitis, Juggling and All that Jazz

Yesterday was my firstborn's 10th birthday party. Her actual birthday was Thursday, and she'd decided months ago that she wanted to have a purple-themed party and to invite lots of friends, aware that I have decreed that 10 is the last year of large parties until 16. (I have given all my kids a biggish party every year, so I think it's reasonable to have a pause from 10 to 16. They can take a couple of friends to the movies or something in those years, but a break from large parties is definitely in order).

Preparing for the Purple Party was always going to be complicated, compared with previous years, by the fact that I am now working fulltime, and in fact have only been in my job two weeks. I expected that, but what I didn't count on was:

1. Husband having flu last week, and its aftermath this week;
2. Youngest having a heavy cold for the front end of the week;
3. Getting sick myself on Thursday; and, most challengingly,
4. My middle girl going down like a ton of bricks last Sunday with severe tonsillitis, and being worryingly ill all week.

The 8 year old, E, really scared us this week - on penicillin since Sunday, by Friday morning she really wasn't showing any improvement, and had stopped eating altogether and mostly stopped drinking too. My Mum had come over to care for her on Monday, husband worked at home Tuesday and has Wednesdays off, and I worked at home both my usual Thursday and half of Friday (I took Friday afternoon as sick leave, as I was by that time quite ill myself).

I ended up taking E back to the doctor on Friday afternoon, and he switched her to a different antibiotic, and ruled that she needed serious rehydration. The turnaround, just 4 hours after the first dose of Augmentin and two glasses of Hydralite, was astonishing. No longer unresponsive, she started sitting up, nibbling at crackers, and demanding things of her sisters. The relief was enormous.

So by the time A's party rolled around yesterday, I was neither as mentally nor as physically prepared as I wanted to be, but somehow, it all mostly came together, with a bit of help from my family and friends.

I leaned heavily on the power of community this time, to get through and get it all done. My friend J sourced purple fruit for me and came early to make fairy bread; my Mum baked slices and my Dad painted a Flying Purple People Eater for us, and they both worked tirelessly in the kitchen during the party and cleaning up afterwards; my brother and his girlfriend supervised party games.

Another family friend helped hang the piniata; and earlier, my wunderkind cake friend, K, worked with A to decorate the three-layer purple cake. (I had pre-baked and frozen the layers last weekend when I wasn't sick, which, with hindsight, turned out to be an awesome piece of forward planning).

And even though there wasn't as much homemade food as usual - cupcakes, birthday cake, purple jellies and Mum's slices were about it - the supermarket provided handsomely, and the kids scoffed fruit, fairy bread, potato gems, sausage rolls and party pies, lollies, franks and chips & beetroot dip quite happily. It might not have been as tightly organised as usual, but the purple balloons, purple table covers and purple guests provided a jaunty feel. The games were simple, but Musical Statues, Pin the Horn on the Flying Purple People Eater, Chocolate Surgery and the piniata were all enjoyed by the kids.

The best parts, though, were that the 8 year old was able to come and mostly enjoy herself (although, of course, was very fatigued by the end) and that the 10 year old was thrilled with it, declaring it was *just* the party she wanted. I may feel like I've run a marathon in thongs today, as the adrenalin recedes and my virus advances, but I'm glad we pushed through and made it happen.