I’m sat in a coffee shop, drinking coffee, enjoying my own head space and writing this letter to all of you. I’m hoping that I manage to deliver this in person to you, that I get out of the house despite the potential snow. At this point the forecasts still haven’t decided.

It’s very unusual that I get to sit quietly on my own anywhere so I am really enjoying this, but it has also given me space to do a lot of thinking and thinking has lead to me being concerned…I will explain this later.

This week has not been a good week for the family vehicles. Last letter I told you that my son’s sardine can had died of a brake cylinder problem. This week the head gasket on his tractor has gone and my car has two cracked wheel hubs (there’s some grim potholes on our Welsh hill) and its failed its MOT. I have to sit in the car park of the welders for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning while they jack up my car, take its wheels off, weld them, put them back on and then I drive on to our group. If I’m shivering you’ll know why. I think this maybe the moment to actually find my coat. I am really hoping nothing goes wrong and I can get to Berwyn in time.

The head gasket on the tractor is an easier job, my son tells me. Head gaskets for tractors only cost £7 and they are much easier to fix…he says. We will see!

This weekend is the start of lambing so I probably won’t see much of him, he’ll be busy, but if he does turn up back home at any point we will be able to smell when he’s arrived. Usually he smells pretty bad. He’s a farmer…they do. He works pretty full on. He works on a farm with dairy cows. He works on a farm processing logs and doing some work with sheep. He works on another farm with sheep. He has his own sheep. He smells. I do his washing…its grim, but I return it to okay. He has really good shower gel and he returns to smelling okay. But lambing!! 🤢 …..its such a grim smell I have to hold my nose to sort the washing and then it takes so many washes and so much washing powder to get it clean…so that’s my next few weeks.

Some of the readers of this letter will remember Lenny the Liability, my son’s rescue staffy that was a food thief of excellence. He sadly passed away and eventually my son got a new spaniel, Mali. She is the complete opposite of Lenny. She is a very pretty little girl who is so obedient and well-behaved (and an extreme magnet for mud!). She wouldn’t dream of behaving as bad as Lenny did and stealing food. Today she disgraced herself.

I went off to the utility room to sort out the next lot of washing. When I walked back into the kitchen there was Mali skipping round the kitchen with something in her mouth. She skidded to a halt, her eyes grew as big as saucers and she dropped whatever was in her mouth. Guilty! That’s what her whole body said as she ran and hid. The prize was an entire pack of cheese…untouched. The fridge was open…she’s never managed that before. You know that realisation when all the pieces of a puzzle fall together….there was a strange sound in the kitchen, Gwen (the big teddy bear of a retriever, also a greedyguts) was hiding behind the couch, the sound was a sort of gobbling, licking sort of noise, Gwen can open the fridge….GWEN!! Gwen had opened the fridge door, helped herself to an entire pack of butter and was eating it as fast as she could. Gwen was not sorry. Gwen was not ashamed. She was just upset that I had caught her before she managed to eat all the butter.

Once the butter was binned and the cheese was back in the fridge, no worse for its adventure, Gwen’s conscience caught up with her. She ran and grabbed her bunny and presented it to me to try to make it all better. Mali did moves that spaniels make when spaniels are trying to explain that they are really very sorry and won’t ever do this again

Right, my concern….

I know quite a few of you are getting ready to move on from Berwyn. For a few of you this is after long times away, but even for those of you who have been away a shorter time, any days away is a long time. I am praying for you, that you get out and you can live your best life, that you will be content and fulfilled. That you will be the sort of person you would like to be.

Out, whether its after a long or short time, is tough. It’s tougher than you would ever imagine. I spent two whole days looking for resources to help you….its grim. There is nothing. There is so little out there to help you prepare for how it will feel and I’m concerned. So, I’m going to give you the best of my ideas. I went back to work after 3 months when I had my first daughter. I loved my daughter and I loved being a mum, but I also really loved my job. Then stuff started going wrong. It became really clear that my eldest daughter was disabled and also that she had some big health problems and so I had to give up my job. I had 3 children and threw myself into being the best mum I could. I absolutely adored being a mum, but being the mum of a disabled child meant that I spent a lot of time at home, unable to leave home. I spent a huge amount of time dealing with tubes, syringes, drip stands…medical equipment that has the power to scare most people and I had to use it on my tiny, very loved daughter.

It’s quite lonely being that parent of a disabled child. People worry that ‘disabled’ is catching. They don’t know what to say to someone who is a half-dressed, half pyjama-ed ball of worry, who has spent the night on childrens ward, for the third week in a row. Only the strong stay friends with the mess that is disabled parenting.

When it became obvious that my daughter could manage a day with her carer and also that her life expectancy wasn’t great I decided that it was important for her, for me, for the rest of my family, to do something I wanted to do…so I applied to Berwyn, that took a whole load of courage. Then I had to go for an interview. And then turn up to work. I left society 17 years before. I didn’t have work clothes, I had disability-parent clothes…easy to wash blood & vomit out of, can sleep in on a camp bed on a hospital ward. I had a disability-parent haircut…can sleep on a hospital ward for 3 weeks and it still look almost okay. I was completely out of any idea of how to chat to normal people, dress, etc etc. I would sit in the car outside, trying to stop shaking and get the adrenaline up to go in and try to be ‘normal’.

I’m worried that this is going to be you…those of you who are getting out. The world will have changed and you will have changed too. I know you can get out and do well, but only with a mixture of adrenaline, courage and kindness to yourself. There will be moments when you need to push yourself and moments when you will need to not push yourself too hard, to take time to let yourself be peaceful. Take time to go for walks, be part of the outside world and be peaceful enough to enjoy it.

Back in 2020, during lockdown when everyone’s lives were shaken upside down, I started writing these Blitherings. I’m going to borrow a bit from one of the early letters as the best thing I can suggest to help you through..

“When my children were little, every night before bed, we used to do the ‘three good things’ together. After bath & pyjamas, they would have a last cup of tea (how British! always a cup of tea 😊) with me, in front of the fire, snuggled up on the sofa, and they had to think of three good things that had happened that day. My eldest daughter was often ill, as you know. My middle daughter had a period of being badly bullied. My son…well, he was usually cheerful….but whatever had happened in the day, no matter how bad the day was, we could always find 3 good things, even if it was just ‘that day is over, I’m going to bed, tomorrow is a new day’. Always there was something. We also found one thing that we were pleased with ourselves for, something we had done well. It makes a difference, practicing being happy and finding good things.

My 3 children are much more grown up than that now, they glide off to bed with a ‘seeya’, taking their dogs and their cup of tea (see, still British!) but I know that they still think like that…every so often, one of them will say something like ‘I got a good report in school today, that’s one of my three good things’, or ‘I felt well enough to take my dog to the field to play today, I think that’s a good thing’. So my challenge, even in these awful times, is for you each to think of your ‘three good things’ and for a bonus point, what you are proud of yourself for doing/ thinking /being that day. I will be doing it too!”

It isn’t all just my daftness, there are good psychological reasons behind this…honestly! So, those who aren’t leaving us can practice ‘3 good things’, those who are leaving, go well and I will be praying for you…and you can still be pestered with the Blitherings at lockdownletter.com on WordPress (no ‘s’ after letter, that address was already taken).

Blessings,

Elizabeth