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

Post. Partum.

Over the last few months I have given regular talks and interviews about postpartum psychosis as part of my mission to get the word out there about this illness. I was approached by a woman whose sister-in-law has recently been struck by it, and they are all still struggling to pick up the pieces that this explosive disease has left scattered throughout their lives.

As I listened and heard what they had been going through, and were still dealing with, I was reminded of the pain and fragility that this disease creates. One of the most fragile parts of recovery is when you are beginning to resemble yourself again, but are still feeling far from home. You are no longer inside a house that's on fire, trying to survive, you are no longer fighting the fire, trying to save what belongs to you. The fire is out, the fire engines have gone back to the station, and you are just left looking at the burnt embers that remain wondering what the hell happens next.

I can see my front door.

I am here.

I am home.

I'm desperate to get inside and don't want to go in.

I do.

Post. So much post. Of course. It's been weeks. 

It annoys me. Post didn't feature in my idealistic view of my home coming.

I feel out of control. Lost. Anxious.

I have my family.

I'm home.

I need to take this slow. 

I tell Albert we are home. His little eyes open. We place him in his rocker, in the room he was born in. He smiles. This wouldn't be as note worthy if he had smiled before, but he hadn't. This was his first smile. We burst out laughing.

We had made it. As a family.

I feel like I'm playing a role, going through the motions of normality to look like I know how it all works. I have a strong sense that I'm trying to play catch up with my self that didn't have psychosis. What would I be doing if I hadn't been psychotic? How would she behave in this situation? It was unsustainable and unnecessary. I had to just be what I was. Someone who was recovering from the equivalent of a devastating accident. There was no reason why I should be completely "better" and yet because I had no wounds I felt like a fraud. 

All of these emotions and feelings were very difficult to handle, but what they couldn't disrupt was the fact that I was home. That we had done it and no matter how uncomfortable the transition back to "reality" was I was going to keep leaning into that discomfort, and learn how to live again. 

It was rehabilitation that no-one knew was happening.
It was incredible.
It was a triumph.
It was brilliant.
It was horrible.

Love and mixed messages,
Mutha Courage X

Homeward Bound

I'm so bored of the whole process. I'm bored of recovery. I'm bored of medication. I'm bored of being told what I can and can't do and, you've guessed it, I'm bored about what feels like the longest wait EVER to get home. While I'm at it, I'm bored of being around other ill people, I'm bored of the classes, the food, the staff and my F@#*ing shower that still doesn't work. I'm so fucked off.  Sorry, here are the @#* to put in. I can't be arsed.

I try to reassure myself that anger and resentment are part of the process. That it means I'm coming back, that I'm returning. I am beginning to feel like I don't fit in here any more, which is difficult while I am, but possibly means I'm nearly ready to get out.

The drug levels are going down, the leave times are going up and still I'm caught in psychotic purgatory where I'm not at home anywhere. I just want to be in my house, with my belongings around me, with my clothes and shoes and post and my own space and cups without my name plastered all over them.

I'm ready to go home.

I'm also not ready at all.

I'm so scared.

I've been fighting so hard to get home for the last two months that I hadn't had a chance to think about what it would actually be like to go home, back to the scene of the crime where it all started. Where the unraveling began.

This was all home represented at the moment. I had become so engulfed in the horror of what had happened that I had forgotten that we were also going back to a place of unfathomable joy, empowerment, love and strength. The place where Albert swam into our lives and I would revisit the rooms where I lost and found myself completely. 

The plans were in place. The ward round had spoken. I was going home. We were going home. 

My dad had arranged to collect us and all my stuff, which had somehow managed to accumulate. That is the only issue about having a Primark near a psychiatric ward. The lure is too great, I was repeatedly drawn in like a crazed moth to a particularly cheap flame. 

Albert had grown, I had shrunk. We were both different people to the two that came through the unit doors all those weeks ago.

There was a mixed atmosphere in the ward as I left for my first home leave; happiness that I was on the next step out of there, sadness that we wouldn't be around for much longer, envy as other mothers at different stages looked on longingly, as I had once gazed at Lucky. I was becoming increasingly absent, my presence leaving ghostly trails of the madwoman that wouldn't be confined to the attic. 

It was the night before I left for home. It was just a couple of nights leave, but it was the biggest step into the known unknown I had ever taken. I had packed everything up in anticipation of leaving. I wanted it to feel like I was going home for good with just a few more overnight stays on the ward left. This was the home straight of a long lonely marathon. I couldn't see any finishing lines, but my faithful supporters were still cheering me on. I saw their faces in the darkness as I forced myself to sleep through the turbulence of my emotions.

Everything blurs past in the morning in a wave of busyness, appointments and checks, until the moment I am sitting in dad's truck. Ready to go. My two boys with me, just like when we made the longest journey into night. The hum of the ignition soothes us all. We've made it. We're here. It's a moment we weren't certain we'd see, that felt too far away to hope for just a couple of weeks ago. The radio blasts out and calms my fractious heart. We pull out of the hospital car park and a familiar tune begins to play. Homeward Bound.

I look out out of the window and experience the strangest mixture of safety and fear I've ever known. The soundtrack makes me feel fleetingly like I'm the off-beat lead in an indie film of my life. Although in that neatly packaged piece of storytelling this moment would probably be where the credits rolled. The end. Neat. Complete. I wish it was.

Homeward bound,

I wish I was,

Homeward bound,

Home where my thought's escaping,

Home where my music's playing,

Home where my love lies waiting

Silently for me.

Love and bridges over troubled waters,

Mutha Courage X

To Pimlico, to Pimlico, to Pimlico

I was desperate to get home. I longed for the comfort of my own surroundings and to be able to come and go as I pleased, without constant supervision, a chaperone, and time restrictions. At this stage in my recovery I wasn't sure if that was weeks or months away. I was caught in time. Frozen in my state of "unknowing". All I knew was that the next big step had arrived. I had overnight leave and I was going to make the most of it.

Just to give it some context, by making the most of it I mean enjoying a cosy night in with my family, not downing jägerbombs until dawn. I wouldn't like to see what a medication and shots cocktail would look like. I'm guessing it wouldn't be pretty. One thing that my psychosis taught me, and there were a staggering amount, was to savour and value the mundane, the everyday, even the down right boring. After experiencing hyper-reality, I realised that plain old reality is a beautiful place to be. 

Coming back to Earth after visiting planet Insania is a scary trip. It requires a very slow and steady approach. I had been desperate to get overnight leave and now that I had it, it was a prospect so daunting I was almost prepared to stay on the ward so that I didn't have to face it. It was an existential lurch and it felt deeply unsafe to my fragile psyche. Each of these hurdles to the finish line of normality seemed too high to jump.  I had to coach myself over each one. I had to believe I could, take off, and hope that a lagging back foot wouldn't trip me up. 
 
"I just need to get to Pimlico. I have to get to Pimlico. Will they give me overnight leave, because I can only use the flat in Pimlico this week" Pimlico dominated my thoughts and feelings. It was my Mecca, my Nirvana, and my Moscow. 

We were very very lucky to have a friend who had a flat there, who said we could stay there anytime in the week, as they were away. We didn't have anywhere else to do an overnight stay in London that could fit me, my husband, my mother-in-law and our baby boy, so it was Pimlico or bust.

I fought so hard for that leave. I knew that, in order for it to be granted, I had to demonstrate that I could take care of Albert overnight, even though I would have the help of my husband on leave. So for the week leading up to ward round I pushed through my very zombie-like state; I forced myself to stand to soothe him in the early hours, even though my legs were numbed, and I prepared bottles while the dressing gown of sedation hung heavy on my shoulders.

The staff could see my struggle. But they could see the effort, the will, and the desire I had to do all of my motherly nigh-time tasks despite the huge obstacles I faced. 

I struggled when I was on leave. How could anything live up to the image I'd created in my head? It was freedom and a step closer to home. But it was a home that wasn't mine, in a bed I didn't know, surrounded by things I didn't recognise. It made me feel further from home than ever. If I found this hard, how would I ever get back to my house, with my bed and my things?

I had to pause. To re-evaluate. To congratulate myself on this monumental and minuscule step. We cooked a meal and sat together in front of the tv. There was no negotiation with other patients about what to watch and it was delightful to have a meal that wasn't cooked in a plastic bag. This was all strangely normal. Here we all were together, and there was no-one calling time on visiting hours. I didn't have to hand Albert over to anyone apart from his dad, and I could be beside my husband tonight, all night, for the first time in weeks. 

We watched Frozen. We laughed, sang and held each other on the sofa. Tears silently fell down my cheeks as Let It Go blasted out of the speakers and I knew that that was what I needed to do.

Love and lovely boring little things,Mutha Courage x

Drug War

Every day that I was in the ward I was getting better. That meant that I was swimming closer to the surface, regaining consciousness. The better I got the harder I found recovery. I could see what had happened. The evidence was all around me. It was like being the lead detective in the murder case of myself.

I was still on a massive cocktail of drugs, but I was finding out that psychosis was not my ideal holiday destination. I started to hate and resent the medication. I resented how they made me feel, and I hated that I had to be on them. I knew they had bought me back to reality, but it was not the reality I wanted. It was a reality I had to try desperately hard not to fight.

I was in the midst of a drug war and my body was no man's land.

It's 10pm, I've just taken my medication and I can already feel the sedating effect moving down my limbs. I am holding my crying son, trying to soothe him so I know he is calm and happy before I have to leave him to go to bed. It's not going to happen. Again. Again I will have to leave him with staff, agitated and upset, reflecting my emotions as only a baby can. Again I will have to listen to him cry and not be able to go to him, and again I will wake up without him by my side.

I hate these drugs. I hate what they're doing to me and what they are turning me into. I don't care if they are what's helped me and what's helping me, they are ruining me. I can hardly speak, everything's numb and I feel like I'm locked into my body. My mind can't live here. I need them to sort out my levels. I'm not on the right levels. I can't live like this. I can't be this person. I can't be a mother. Not like this.

It would be weeks and weeks of ongoing reviews, level alterations, blood tests and ward rounds before my intake would be reduced to just one drug, rather than 3 or 4 and months of alarms going off every few hours to remind me to take them. 

I can honestly say that I've been miserable only a few times in my life, and this was the single most miserable time of them all. I felt like I was being punished for a crime that I hadn't committed. I was desperately trying to stay positive when everything around me felt soul crushingly bleak. 

I felt like I was walking a tightrope in wellies. I wasn't equipped for this. I knew I needed to get off the medication, but didn't know the full extent of what would happen to me if and when I did. I knew I had to trust the professionals around me, but I was sick of feeling like everyone else was in charge of me. I longed to be the boss of me again. I wanted to get out. Desperately. Painfully. I needed to get out, and although I didn't know it at the time, it was going to happen. Sooner that I knew.

Love and Lithium,

Mutha Courage X

Leave me alone

This week has been manic. I mean that in a metaphorical sense, not in a relapse kind of way. One of the ideas that psychosis gave me was stand-up comedy with my baby on board. This week that idea, borne from madness, was delivered.  Bring A Bottle, my comedy show for "people who happen to be parents", was born. It wasn't long before the local news and TV were interested, so Albert and I went from interview to interview, whilst trying to rehearse and fine tune the performance.

I watch the appearances. I see myself laughing and chatting with my little son attached to me by a sling carrier. I recognise that me. I am confident and self-possessed. It is very difficult to see myself like this and not remember a time, just a few months ago where I couldn't manage an hour from the safety of the ward. I had been given leave, but didn't know if I could.

Albert is attached to me by a carrier sling. The air hits my face, followed by the noise of all the traffic, followed by the movement of all the people walking by. I am scared by the faces I see coming towards me and that pass me. I am desperately trying to process everything. It feels like there is too much space around me. I have longed for this freedom and now I feel intoxicated by its size. I feel small, tiny. I don't feel brave enough to exist in this huge world. I want home and I don't even know what home is. I don't want to be on the ward, but the streets are too busy and I am intimidated by their pace. 

We find a cafe. It is friendly and small. It is a den. I can rest here for a while from the mayhem outside. I don't really remember how to do this. What are the rules? How do we order? How do I choose? I don't want to interact, but I know I need to. They all know. They all know I'm from the ward. They know.

We take more of a walk when we've had our drinks. There's a small market selling local foods and products. The panic is rising in me. The people, the smells, the sounds, the chatter, the ground, the sky, everything is closing around me and I feel a powerful sense of danger that isn't really there. I need to get away. Get out. Get in. I don't know, just get away. How will I ever be normal again?

This isn't me. I can't stay like this. I can't be like this. Who am I now? What has this illness left me with?

I pull my son closer to my chest. He is sleeping soundly. Knowing that he is safe, and protected. I long to feel that. I hold my husband's hand so tight. I need him to lead me back to the ward. I need to be surrounded by familiarity. I need the doors locked. 

I realise how agonisingly slow this recovery will be for me. I know I will have to work hard every time I go on leave, so that I can rebuild the broken city of myself. 

But that evening, I just want everyone to leave me alone.

Independent Mutha

We have been waiting for the article to come out for the last couple of months. I kept telling myself it would come out at the right time. 

It did.

It came out when I needed strength the most. I was back at the scene of the crime last week. I was back on the Children's ward where The Thing took hold. I was back in the corridors where my mind unraveled. I was re-walking the path of hell.

I was at the hospital for routine check-ups for the little man, who was yet again proving to be a complete source of bravery and joy, whilst having several different canulas inserted in various areas of his chubby anatomy. We were waiting for his dose of radioactive fluid to work its way through his body for a kidney scan and we found ourselves with an hour to kill.

Right, well...we'd better go and get a copy of the paper we're in. Obviously by a copy, I mean five. I've been wanting to go and thank the nurses on the Buxton Ward for some time, but have resisted because of not knowing what to do or say and being unsure how revisiting that place would affect me. Somehow I felt a box of Green & Blacks didn't convey the deepest gratitude a human heart can bestow on the compassion and unflinching kindness of strangers. I also wasn't sure what to say: "Hi, remember me? I was the one that screamed in your face while I was sitting in a bath covered in wet towels". I felt that taking a copy of the article would be an easier way to reintroduce myself. Introduce Me. The Me they had never met.

I sensed my breath deepening, my heart becoming more like a restless animal in a cage, it wanted to escape out of my chest. I stalked the corridor leading up to the children's ward with a strange sense of familiarity and fear, I felt I had never been there and yet I had. My body remembered.  My muscles started becoming twitchy underneath my clothes; they knew I had been in danger here. The adrenalin was pumping, supplying my limbs with fuel to run. I prepare to walk through the double doors. I don't know what or who I will recognise, I don't know who will recognise me.

The biggest shock that smacks me straight away is how small and safe the ward looks. It chokes me and sends a shockwave all the way through my body. Psychosis had created a labyrinth, where I now saw a corridor. The Thing had made the walls terrifyingly big and the layout fitfully confusing. I was so lost here. I was so scared. Now I saw its simplicity, the playful cartoon characters that line the walls, the friendly faces, the fish tank.

Then I see it. 
My cell. My prison. My torture site. My hotel room. My holiday stay. My interrogation room.

Now I see it for what it is. A small hospital room. A light, safe room, with fish stickers decorating the windows. Were there windows!? That room was transformed by my mind on an hourly basis. I swung from being prisoner to captor repeatedly. 

Going back there was cathartic and heart-breaking. No-one was working there that knew me that day. I left a paper for those that would remember. My psychosis stutter threatened to surface, but I breathed through it and mastered my recent panic. I was reminded in that moment how far I had come and that recovery was still an ongoing process. 

The response to the article has been wonderful. So many people are saying that the illness needs more visibility. It does. That we need to talk about mental illness more. We do. And that we need people to share their stories of Postpartum psychosis. I will. But right now what I want to say is Thank You. This time, it's not to everyone that helped me, which is a vast and powerful list of incredible people, but this time I want to say Thank You to my psychosis.

Thank You that you picked me, so that I can speak out and share my experiences.

Thank You for showing me the depth of strength I have as a woman and as a Mother.

Thank You for everything I have learnt about gratitude, presence, connection, honesty, talking and accepting help.

Thank You for giving me my family back in a very real way.

Thank you for that time you made me feel like the Buddha. That was awesome.

Love and big bellies,
Mutha Courage X


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/postpartum-psychosis-how-jessica-pidsley-was-driven-to-the-edge-by-the-rare-illness-9689662.html

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

Mirror Mirror

One of the strangest things about being on a psychiatric ward and gradually recovering is that as the mist begins to disperse you start to understand where you are and what's happening. It's at that time you wonder if you might actually rather continue living in crazy ignorance. I remember the first time I realised that staff were observing other patients and that, therefore, staff were observing me. I felt uncomfortable and agitated by the idea, like I was in a strange surveillance prison where everything I said and did was being charted and recorded. It didn't feel like it was to help me at that time: it felt like it was to catch me out and get me into trouble.

I dreaded to think how long I would have to live here. Whenever there was talk of timescales I would panic and become distressed. My resistance made my experience so much more painful. I knew I needed to surrender and concentrate on getting better for my family and for me. I would work hard every day to confront this illness head on and I would not give in. The not knowing was terrifyingly troubling, but I calmed myself with the thought that all any of us have is now. We can't predict what is coming or what will be. All that we know is it will be. What it will be.

Whenever I felt my speech becoming more pressured, my thoughts racing, or my Tourettes bursting out I would lean into that discomfort. I would know that my illness hated me getting better and would attack me more when it saw that I was.

During my psychosis I had to write down every single person's name I came into contact with. Missing one was not an option. Neither was not remembering who someone was. To make this process easier I gave everyone code names. There was Helen of Troy, Happy Hat, Shadow, Star, Ed the Head and Mirror to name just a few. There is a story behind each person's nickname and why it was chosen for them, but the one that had a massive impact on me was Mirror. She gave me the biggest problem of all and consequently helped me the most.

Having been a self-help junkie for years, I was no stranger to the idea that what we dislike or find problematic in other people is often what we struggle with or fear in ourselves. For some reason, as soon as I met Mirror there was a clash. All of my symptoms got worse when I was in her presence. We had big arguments. Well, I would shout at her and she would tell me it was unacceptable.

She was clear. I was unraveled.
She was calm. I was frenetic.
She was precise. I was a mess.

She pissed me right off. I knew I needed to spend as much time as I could with her. She was vital to my recovery.

I told her that she was the mirror in which I saw myself reflected. What made me angry in her company was the fact that she had the qualities I had loved in my old self but feared I had completely lost. I knew The Thing didn't want me to make progress, so it took my disorder up a level whenever she was near.

No matter how hard it was, or how exhausted I was after our interactions, I knew that I would only see myself again if I kept looking in the Mirror. When there was psycho backlash I knew I was on the right path. I knew that the more I looked at myself, and the harder I gazed into the reflection of who I had become, the weaker The Thing became and the closer I came to recognising my own reflection again.

Love and (hopefully not) 7 years bad luck,
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