So long. Farewell.

The adjustment to being back at home feels clumsy and difficult, but it is a glorious discomfort. I have the building blocks around me that I can build a life out of and I know that this is the dawn of a startling new era.

I go back and forth to Hackney another couple of times and every time I go I feel more like a transient lodger than a resident. I come in with one bag. I arrive at the latest moment and leave at the earliest opportunity.

The mood in the ward has altered. New patients are arriving. I see the fear and panic of these illnesses and it touches a nerve deep within me. I sense that terror and understood it physically. My bones remember and my body will never forget. I listen to the fast ramblings of a new mother that's just arrived and at once feel heartened at my recovery and shocked to the core at the horror of it all. 

The women around me have been a family. We have laughed, cried and argued over food together. The final night at the Hackney Holiday Home contains such a mixture of emotions it is a challenge to give voice to them. I could feel my lost self move around me. I saw her desperately ill. Starving hungry, hideously exhausted. I saw her say goodbye to her husband and son every night and cry silent tears of frustration at being held captive by the Thing. I saw her opening gradually, flower-like to staff, other patients and to the treatment. I saw her fight and work and battle with this tyrannical demon that had taken root in her soul.

I saw her seeing me.

I was all set and completely ready for the off. I had collected my bag of medication and had done all my final jobs. My electrical equipment had been gathered from the drawer in the office and it was time to go.

"Oh Jess" I heard one of the staff call out from behind me as I was walking towards the communal area to say my goodbyes. "One of these is for you".I was presented with a large fluffy white teddy bear. "They were from Mother's Day and you didn't get yours". This type of cuddly toy is not my kind of thing at all, but unexpectedly I was deeply moved by it. I looked down at this soft, kind faced bear and experienced a swell in the sea of my heart. Embroidered on the foot in small letters were the words "No. 1 Mum". It didn't matter that I knew everyone had got one of these gifts, or that each teddy had heralded it's owner as number 1, because it was true. We all were. We had all done everything we could in the face of extreme internal adversity. We had all accepted help. We were all focused on recovering. We were all number one to our babies.

I stood in that dining room, holding my bear by the arm, momentarily orphaned in time. Here I stood alone. With others around me. I looked at these women, I looked at the staff. I have never known gratitude to be so huge and yet so silent. I just said thanks so much. See ya. Knowing that I probably wouldn't. 

I walked out to the car, that was waiting in the same place we had been parked on the 15th February at 7am when I finally made it there. I saw myself being helped out of the car and led inside by three nurses to a place of safety. She looked at me as I drove away.

Love and nothing witty to say,Mutha Courage X

See You Next Tuesday

Being a resident of the "Hackney Holiday Home" was a massive privilege for me. I will never forget the overwhelming sensation of safety and peace I felt when I arrived there in the early hours of the morning on February 15th. It was a balm to my sore soul and gave me hope during that terribly frightening episode in my life.

I remember the sheer joy I felt at seeing an A4 sheet of paper attached to the back of my door with a timetable of activities that were on offer during the week. Yoga, baby massage, cookery, weaving, dance & movement therapy, relaxation and art classes. I seriously thought I'd won the psychosis lottery. Who knew there were this many perks? This wasn't a psychiatric ward, this was a holistic commune! Not only because of all of these brilliant workshops that would give me a reason to get up in the morning, but because I was NOT in Chelmsford. Phew.

To begin with I was utterly bewildered by life in the Mother & Baby unit. I had no idea how things worked and was intensely upset and distressed about the seeming complexity of its daily rhythms. Time there was divided into two main categories: medical and psychiatric, and the more holistic, alternative therapies. For some reason completely unknown to me, I was very suspicious and resistant to the medical treatment, but was much more happy to comply with talking, drawing and movement therapy. Having been a self-help junkie for over a decade I was completely into all of the classes. I can't think of many more things I'd like to do of an afternoon than being held in a giant blue cloth and given permission to be completely in touch with my feelings. For people walking in on a class like that it would probably look like I was in the throws of yet another manic episode, but let's be honest...it's a thin line, people.

It took a while for me to even have the foggiest clue what was going on in my new clinically enhanced home. I had so much to learn. There were so many timings to remember and rules to follow. All of my cups and plates had my name on them. Believe me when I say that giving me a labelling machine when I was psychotic was a brave decision on the part of the nurses. You had to order your food at certain times; eat at certain times and in certain places. Visitors were not allowed in the kitchen, which sucked big style because no-one could ever make me a cup of tea AND I had to wash up! I was told recently that I used to insist visitors brought me tea from Costa when they came, so I didn't have to clean up after anyone, including myself. I wish I could be as demanding in normal life. Babies weren't allowed in the Kitchen or Milk Kitchen either, which made carrying your child in a sling pretty tricky. It becomes a real palaver if you realise you've forgotten to butter your toast or milk your bran flakes, which is easier than you might think when you're on a massive cocktail of anti-psychotics and mood stabilisers. You only hope that you don't come out of the kitchen one day with a baby covered in butter and a sling full of bran flakes.

At one point I had so many alarms on my phone I no longer had a clue what they were reminding me of. Wake up, meds, food, class, visiting times, baby feed, meds, food, medical observation, baby feed, class, meeting with psychiatrist, meds, food, visitor leaving time, meds. This was my new reality, my new life.

Part of this new life was a weekly visit to "Ward Round". This happened every week, in my case, every Tuesday. It was one of strangest, most surreal and intimidating experience I may ever have. During that first ward round I was heavily medicated, still extremely ill, paranoid, emotionally volatile and couldn't retain or process information. I think we can all agree, not the best set-up for a meeting about the intricacies of your own mental health.

In some ways I'd love to be able to tell you what happened in my first ward round. I can't. My mind was not functioning in any linear or rational way. nothing was being processed how I would normally. I was in utter chaos. It wouldn't be until my 6th or 7th ward round that I would begin to understand what had happened to me, was happening to me and what would happen to me. What I do have are several very powerful sense memories, of how I felt and what it was like from where I was standing.

The door shuts behind me. Bang. Silence. Eyes looking at me. Not one pair, not two, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. All these people staring at me. I take a seat. I am at the head of this table. I am off my head at the top of this table. The formality. Why are they speaking to me like this? They introduce themselves and their role. Why? I know who they are...Dr M, Ed the Head, Helen of Troy, Mother Mary...I don't understand the words that are being said. I don't know the names of these drugs. Write them down, write them all down, I must write them or all will be lost. Everything will be lost. You haven't been responding to...change of medication...benefits...help...recovery...unfortunately. It. Means. You. Will. No. Longer. Be. Able. To. Breastfeed your son. 








I cry for 11 seconds. Fully. Powerfully. Then turned to my husband and said "Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't"

To give that phrase some context. My husband and I use this mantra in our life whenever anything happens that we could see as "good" or "bad". When something we perceive as "bad" happens we say "maybe it is, maybe it isn't". This allows you to remove the judgement from it. We never know what will come of what we experience. We can't foresee how we will use what happens to us in our lives. It helped me so much to remove resistance and judgement from what was happening to me, not by forcing it out or blocking it, but by allowing it to be what it was. Whenever I resisted my situation I felt deep pain and sadness, whenever I allowed it to be what it was it gave me a sense of calm. We just don't know where life will lead us, but even in my darkest times I remembered "maybe it is, maybe it isn't".

After you have discussed your prognosis, medication, thoughts, feelings and recovery with these professionals, made up of consultant psychiatrists, psychiatric doctors, psychiatric nurses, nursery nurses, psychologists, student nurses and social workers, it was time to return to the ward and resume your day. But not before I had left with the last word. From that very first, massively scary and hugely intimidating ward round, to the penultimate one before I was discharged I would always take in each person around that table, just before I left the room and say with a cheeky smile "See You Next Tuesday"

Love and buttered babies,

Mutha Courage X

A Thing Possessed

I thought you were going to look after me. I thought I was meant to be safe here and fed and cared for and allowed to rest. Stop coming in here trying to give me medication like I'm in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I mean, do you really have to bring in drugs on those cardboard trays and put them in those little white cups? I'm an informal patient, that means I don't have to take anything I don't want to, right? Right? Am I RIGHT? Stop bringing in doctors and medicine and instructions, I can't think straight. I won't take anything until I understand what it will do to me and to my baby and I can't think straight until I have had some sleep. Is the problem that you think I can't sleep without them? I can. I can sleep on my own, naturally. Just give me some space and let me show you. I birthed my son without any drugs, so if you just let me use my relaxation techniques I can show you. I'll show you now.

I showed them alright. I showed them that I could sleep for a whole 8 minutes without medical intervention. That was how in charge of this illness I was. It was a few hours after this that I was put on a section 5(2) which means I was being sectioned for 72 hours. I was no longer in a position to make my own decisions. I was a danger to myself.

I was shocked at how quickly the "Hackney Holiday Home" became a horror home, but before that transformation begun I had momentary respite. It was the deepest peace I have ever felt. When I first arrived I was given an hour or two alone in my room with my husband and my son. Once again I made sure they were both comfortable and sleeping and took several photos to document that my boys were doing well, and then frantically reached out to the real world. I sent messages to my loved ones like a thing possessed, desperately wanting to leave a trail; messages that could trace people back to this moment where I was still alive: where "I" still existed. I sent out messages to the only people in the world that knew what was happening:

"I am safe. We are in our room at the "Hackney Holiday Home" I don't know where that is exactly, because...well...as you can imagine, I've had a pretty tough week (to put it mildly). There is lots of lovely rest and recovery going on here. My boys are both sleeping. I want you all to know that I love you & I need each & every one of you that knows. There are 10 of us in the world, apart from all the incredible NHS staff, that helped me walk through hell to freedom"

There was a tranquility, a peace, and a clarity that I experienced in the silence of those couple of hours. I remember sitting on the big red chair in my room, feeling like Alice after she'd swallowed a "drink me" bottle. I felt so small and yet so safe. I had made it here. It had taken almost everything I had, but I'd done it. My heart swelled with a powerful understanding of what it was to be alive; to be a woman, a wife, a mother. 

Not only was I those, I was my husband, I was my son, I was all of creation. I was everything and nothing. I felt utterly insignificant and truly vital simultaneously. My identity had been shaken so deeply that I didn't know what "I" even meant. Was it me doing and saying these ridiculous and profound things? What was "me"? I couldn't take anything for granted any more. It was a moment to moment existence. I was surviving. Just.

It's easy to have the illusion at this point that I was a woman capable of understanding and communication. The reality was that I had, by this stage, virtually lost my ability to speak; my throat was scratched red raw, my speech was so pressured and full of Tourette's that getting through a sentence was agony. I had developed an intricate sign language in the vain attempt to keep myself calm, to reduce the terrifying stress and physical exhaustion my spasms would induce. These spasms would surge through my body if anyone said the wrong thing, and by this stage people only knew what the "wrong" thing was after it was said. 

After my sacred couple of hours left to myself in my room, two doctors came in to talk to me and assess my situation. Needless to say my "situation" was painfully clear, as 15 minutes later I was chasing them out of my room screaming at them to leave me alone. As I charged out of my room, running after these doctors four or five nurses all leapt in on me. I was being restrained. 

I was a mad woman.

I knew from this moment that there were very real consequences to my actions. I was involved in a very very serious business. All I felt was that no-one was listening to me. That feeling of being restrained is one that shocked me to my core. This was me. I didn't do things like this. But I did. I was. I was doing them. This is me. This is my reality. I am the me I'd never met. The me I didn't expect to ever meet.

Things went downhill. Fast. I almost can't bring myself to share what it was like to go through that next 72 hours. I did things that I'm ashamed of. No matter how many times people tell me that it was the illness and not me, I can't and may never accept that. I know it on an intellectual level, but it is very complex to disentangle yourself from your behaviours in psychosis because they come through you, and you are used as the messenger for its powerful and twisted message. One nurse said to me, "Think about whether you want to do that, think about when you have recovered." That was the most helpful and hardest thing I heard in those turbulent hours. It knifed me to know that I was ill, dangerously ill, but it soothed my soul to hear that word...recovery. It echoed around the vacant corners of my sanity and rested deep in my heart. I was ill. I would get better. I would recover.

But this was just day one.

Love and Fuck off Tourettes,
Mutha Courage x 

A Place of Safety

It was a journey that should take two and a half hours. Even less, given that we were travelling in the early hours of the morning. Five hours in, and we were still very far from a place of safety. The three adults in that car with me were becoming increasingly hounded and verbally battered. They were effectively my hostages, while I was convinced they were my captors. My tiny newborn baby slept. He couldn't have done anything else that I needed more.

After countless stops already, I see a petrol station. "Pull over. Pull over. I need some soothers for my throat, it's red raw." It was true. It was. I did need them, but this was yet another stalling device that psychosis was cultivating to put me closer and closer to danger and trouble. 

It was at this stage that I started developing the frequent habit of threatening people with all kinds of legal action for disregard of my human rights and of treating me improperly. This petrol station was just a few miles away from my Mum's house and I was desperately trying to bargain with Hero and Shadow from the crisis team that if I could just stop off there and have a shower and some sleep, that everything would be so much better and so much more pleasant for all of us. They had kept saying that it was their duty to get me to a "place of safety" and, as far as I was concerned, places didn't come safer than my Mum's house. Even weeks into my recovery I still couldn't see why we couldn't have done that. 

The truth was that every minute that I prolonged the process of getting to a psychiatric ward I was making things much much worse for myself. This is not an illness with patience or understanding. It is rampant and destructive, flattening anything in its path, including its victim, like a bulldozer over a field of poppies. If I had gone to my Mum's I wouldn't have slept; I hadn't really slept in 11 days and being there wouldn't have changed that. I wouldn't have washed. I had had countless opportunities to do both for the last 36 hours, but couldn't do it. The Thing didn't want to just destroy my sanity and normality it wanted to degrade me and shame me, so that I would never be able to stand up to it.

It was at that petrol station in the early hours after Valentine's Day, that love saved me once again.

I'm in the back of the car with my husband in the middle seat and our son in his car seat next to him. I am getting more and more upset, angry, agitated, confused, guilty, ashamed. I'm getting louder and louder, my body is spasming and contorting, I'm feeling out of control; the car is a cage and I am a wild animal, too big for this claustrophobic and confined space. My limbs are thrashing, my hands are claw-like, I'm squawking and shaking and I lash out. I'm crying and shouting and threatening and warning my husband that I am going to hit him, punch him in the face if he doesn't get out of the car. The tears I am crying are coming deep from within. Why am I saying this to the man I love? To the man I shared vows of deep connection and joy with? The man who has been by my side through everything; the birth of our son just days ago and all of this. He is removed from the car. I see him through the glass of the petrol station. This fine, tall figure of a man looks broken. His head is no longer proudly perched on his strong shoulders: he has sunk. I continue to talk feverishly to Shadow, the woman of the team, who says little in return, while Hero goes in to see my husband. 

Little did I know that my husband was doing far more than buying me some soothers. He was fighting for my life. He was fighting to stop the police being called, to stop me being sectioned and placed in an acute psychiatric ward and more than all that he was fighting to keep me with my son. The crisis team were running out of options and one more distraction or stop from me on the journey and I would give them no choice but to call the police and have me sectioned. My condition was escalating and I was becoming a danger to myself and the people around me.

I can't remember the words my husband said to me when he got back in that car, but I remember that he whispered them straight into my heart. He said them with an intensity and love that The Thing couldn't hear, but that the Me cowering inside me absolutely did. I knew I was in a very very precarious position. I knew that I was running out of chances, and I knew that the alternatives of me walking into the 'Hackney Holiday Home' of my own free will as an informal patient looked desperately different from what I wanted. 

My husband held me and we whispered to each other for the rest of the journey. I didn't trust anyone but him right now, not even myself, but I knew that in this moment my only real place of safety was him and I was going to fight with every part of my being to keep me with my son, and to avoid the atrocities that I could see in my mind's eye if I lost this intense and terrifying battle.

We arrived at the unit in the early morning. I was escorted out of the car by three psychiatric nurses that I called my "Three Graces". They were angelic to me. I had become a small, bird-like woman. Fragile and weak, making my way into my new nest. I felt peace. I had made it. I asked if they would look after me and give me food and sleep and a bath. They spoke with a reassurance and compassion the like of which I may never know again. I knew I had walked through hell, but this was no time to take off my shoes. The Thing did not take kindly to my defiance.

Love and throat sweets,
Mutha Courage x

Pulling the Rug from Under Me

After 12 exhausting hours of trying to get out of the hospital, I knew that it was going to take a Herculean effort for me to get through those doors and into the car that was patiently waiting to take me to a place of safety. I'd renamed my destination as the "Hackney Holiday Home", so that I could tell myself it was a friendly place rather than a horrifying mental institution. Even my husband, who had seen me run the last few hundred yards of the marathon just months before, didn't think I would be leaving the hospital conscious. Such was the magnitude of what he was seeing happen to me.

I demand a KFC and I'm not leaving until I've had one. We are all exhausted and hungry and I am not taking my 7 day old son on a 3 hour car journey until I have at least had a hot meal. To my intense surprise a KFC soon arrived on the ward. It was yet another meal I would just look at and let go cold, but that wasn't the point. My husband had eaten. My mother-in-law had eaten and I could only get out if my team was strong and, to my psychosis-addled brain, KFC was the answer.

At 2am I will walk out of this hospital and you will all be with me. Do you believe I can do it? Yes. That's not strong enough, do you believe I can do it? YES. That's better. Do you believe? Do You? Do YOU? I needed their responses to fit exactly into my jigsaw. I saw their puzzled faces and demanded they try a new piece, but what I didn't realise was, I was the only one that could see the lid. My team was 5 and a tiny one strong. Two members of the crisis team (Shadow and Hero - they all had special names) my husband, my mother-in-law, my minuscule son and Me. The Me that I had unflinching belief in, the Me that had birthed my son naturally just a few days ago, the Me that ran marathons and did Edinburgh shows, the Me I was terrified I had lost forever.

I coached the team for well over an hour on the minutiae of how we would leave the hospital. It was my walk to freedom and it needed to be exactly right or The Thing would be there to trip me up. I was psyching myself up. I knew that I had something very powerful deep within that could do this and there couldn't be a scrap of doubt from anyone around me that it was absolutely possible.

When the moment came I had the wall of white light taken down from the ward and placed around me. I took pictures of the room and the clock as mementoes of when I took my first stand against this demon I was doing battle with. I had the team ready. I flung the hospital curtain open, shouted "I'm not afraid of you" at The Thing and took the first step of a much longer journey to come.

Out of my pocket blasted Imelda May's "Pulling the Rug From Under Me" and as its powerful rockabilly beats filled my heart, I marched out of that ward. My team just one step behind. This was the biggest feat of imagination over mental tyranny I'd ever attempted, as I insisted that everyone walked out behind me as if we were all in Reservoir Dogs. I even had to stop half way to let Hero know that he was walking all wrong and needed to get his groove on. Not only that, but the 2nd track on the album had started to play and as it was called  "Psycho" I thought it was best to replay the first one. It definitely did not look like a group of people that had been struggling for hours to make it out of a door. Well, in my head anyway, we looked like superheroes. 

I remember walking past a receptionist and breezily saying "We're just leaving, bye". It was such a monumental step towards safety. Hell had had locked gates up until this point, but it looked like I may have seen an opening and I was running for it. I was doing this of my own free will. The first step I took into the night air was the most exhilarating and powerful breath I have ever taken. The coldness shocked the deepest point of my lungs and I felt alive. More alive than I knew a human being could feel. As the full moon shone down on me I let out a howl of euphoria. We had done it. I had done it. The psychic energy that was now coursing through my veins meant that I had to dance, dance, dance and not stop. The charleston was my dance of choice. 

I had shut three of the four car doors with everyone going on the journey seated inside, and it only remained for me to say goodbye to my mother-in-law and get in that car. I'm crying as I write this because I can remember how that moment of saying goodbye felt to me; like all things in the history of the universe: hope and fear, love and deep gratitude, pain and loss, elation and guilt, frustration and connection. I was safe, and yet so far from safety I feared that after that goodbye I may never make it to hello again.

As my car door slammed shut with me ensconced in the car, I laughed at The Thing. I laughed that this time it had picked the wrong person to mess with. We headed out of the car park and onto the road. Unfortunately, outside the car The Thing was laughing harder. What I thought was my door shutting was actually him slamming the gates of Hell, and I was still very much inside.

Love and chicken fillet burgers,
Mutha Courage X