Lockdown Grief

  In this post I want to talk about love and the mental health stigma…. Two things that probably don’t naturally go together, but bear with me.    I’ve wanted to write this post for a while, but as I’ve found with all my posts so far, I don’t really have a choice about when I can write them. They come from nowhere, mainly when I’m unable to sleep, like now. It’s 525am and I’ve been lay here for an hour wide awake, but totally shattered, because yesterday evening the grief monster tackled me to the floor, once again and we had a little scrap. He won, again.    A few weeks, or months, I don’t know any more as time is going so fast, yet so slow at the same time….  I shared on my social media a video that Ben had sent me a couple of years ago.  In this video he was the most romantic, loving, thoughtful, amazing man that he was. It was a video he sent my friends and I when I was away, and it was him literally showing how much he loved me with his...

I’ve just hit the fifth month without Ben, and I’ll be honest, I thought by now I’d be a bit further on with my 'grief journey'…. When I’m fact, I’m probably right at the beginning. I’m writing this after two days of continuous crying, and when I say continuous, I mean probably three hours of one day when I wasn’t crying and an hour of the other day. I don’t think I’ve cried like that once in the whole five months since Ben has been gone. Grieving during lock down has been anything but normal. I’ve been distracted by this absolute craziness we’ve all been living for the past few months. I’ve been distracted by being a mum, teacher, caretaker, dinner lady.. And that’s just the kids.. I’m carer for my dad, who at times has found this extremely difficult. On days I can get up to 11 phone calls a day from him.. I’ve exercised every single weekday with my friend via FaceTime. I’ve not stopped…and I've also not worked, until last week when I made that step forward by ...

I wanted to start by thanking everybody who read the first post and for the wonderful response and outpouring of love and support which means so much to me. I never expected such a response and although this is cathartic for me, I also hope that it can help people both feeling like they want to end their life; and those people who have been affected by suicide. I have so many thoughts running around my head about what I want to share with you – I want my posts to be real, to make a difference and honour Ben’s wishes (above), which brings a real pressure with it. I also worry that it could have the opposite effect because this isn’t a good story – obviously because of the outcome; but more so because Ben did everything, and I mean everything in his power to fight; which is why I understand why he felt there was no other way. This doesn’t mean that it’s right – I can’t stress that enough. Every person’s story is different.   People have things that have happened i...

I have been known to blog every now and then but  ever in a million years did I imagine I would be doing a blog about losing the love of my life to suicide and the journey we took together before that fateful day... and the weeks/months following… but here we are. My good friend, suggested I do this, to help me and to help others. At first my reaction was that I haven’t got the energy, motivation or creative flair to do this right now – I’m lucky if I make it out of bed at all most days and even when I do, it's pretty much pointless as I can't bring myself to do anything - never mind write a blog…. but over the last couple of days, since Kev suggested it, I’ve noticed my thoughts wandering to what I could write if I did. So, I thought I would give it a go…. One of the reasons I want to do this, is because Ben and I had an  Instagram page  that we set up jointly about mental health and suicide prevention, which was an honest account of what it was like to live wi...