So I’ve entered the Virtual London Marathon which will take place on Sunday 03^rd October. I’m not aiming for a specific time, just completing the distance will be an achievement as I’ve only been running for 2 years. I know it will be tough but as I'm turning 50 this year, it's now or never !

So you might ask, why do I want to do this if I’m expecting it to be tough?

1.    I’m crazy enough.
2.    I’m stubborn enough.
3.    But the main reason is that I want to give back to the charity which have helped me during lockdown PMH (Parenting Mental Health).

Some of you know me very well, some of you will not as I don’t often share my personal struggles openly especially during tough times as it’s hard to talk about.  So let me tell you a little bit about it. 

My daughter Mathilde who is now 16 started developing high anxiety and panic attacks from the age of 12 to the point that she wouldn’t leave my side, getting her to go to school was so difficult, sometimes I had to literally drag her from under the bed and hand her over to the teacher before making my way to work. We tried CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy), counselling, NLP (neuro language
programming)…they did help a bit and for some short period of times.

When she got to 14, one day she came home and told me those words that no parent would ever want to hear: “Mum, this morning at the bus stop I thought about throwing myself under the bus because life is too hard for me and I don’t want to carry on”. I knew then that I had to do something different and try to get her more help as she also started self harming around that time. 

Her school and a few people  who I confided in were brilliant and very supportive. 6 months after that incident, Mathilde was diagnosed with High functioning Autism and separation anxiety. The diagnosis
helped us and explained a lot of her behaviours, the way she hates her routine being disturbed, the planning and explaining I’ve always had to do when going somewhere new…  She settled for a bit and we learnt more about autism and how to best manage to reduce her stress.

Unfortunately Covid and lockdown happened and her anxiety was so much worse once again and she felt even more depressed. This last bit took me a long time to accept that my teenage daughter was depressed, why, how, what did I do wrong? Thankfully one of the runners from my club got me in touch with his wife who was part of this group called PMH. The group really helped me to understand that it wasn’t my fault and I had to accept that this was our life now. 

In December we (Mathilde and me) finally accepted for her to start antidepressant after her breakdown, if it had been a broken leg I wouldn’t have hesitated in the treatment but this took us months to get there.

During the last few months, I’ve been on various online sessions with PMH from ‘Partnering and not parenting’ to ‘Creative connections’ counselling sessions which I love to do on my Saturday mornings. PMH have got various Facebook pages and people are so supportive of one another. I feel a lot calmer these days as PMH put a lot of emphasis on self-care which I’m not very good at but working on. So even though I know, my daughter and I still got a hell of a journey to go through now I know I’ve got people I can turn to as they are
going through the same.

Sorry for the long post and if you’ve read up to here, thank you and if any of you are going through something similar, please do not hesitate to reach out so I can put you in touch.

So if you have a few pennies to spare, I would really appreciate your
support so that PMH can carry on giving other parents their valuable support.

Thank you. Mu