…ME please!

If you know me, or you don’t but are one of the few strangers that follow my blog any way, you’ll know that my brother unexpectedly died in July last year and that since then I’ve written a grand total of two articles for LMP. The truth is, I’ve written many more in my head but the motivation and confidence to transfer them to screen has been somewhat lacking as I’ve been dealing with the life changing devastation that grief brings. This article, however, has been brewing for some time and it seems I am finally ready to interact with the World again.

So: “Hi, long time no speak!”

I’ve talked previously about the language of grief and over the last eight months there has been one statement that has played on repeat: “Be kind to yourself!”. On one hand I love it and on the other I have come to loathe it because, whilst I appreciate the intent behind it, and whole heartedly back the sentiment, I’ve often felt it weigh me down and have been left trying to figure out what it actually means.

Firstly, the instructional nature of the phrase presents an insinuation that I’m not being kind to myself or that I’m not usually kind to myself?! Judgemental, much?! If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll hopefully understand that my whole ‘know yourself, be yourself’ mantra is really built on being kind to yourself so the suggestion that I only need to start doing that when something bad happens, is mildly offensive to me. The fact is, we should be encouraging each other all the time to put kindness to ourselves first.

In reality though, there are peak times for when the phrase is used – usually in moments of obvious emotion, usually when I look and/or feel utter rubbish, usually when I appear to be not ok. The irony for me with this is that it is usually in those moments that I am, in fact, being kind to myself. Allowing my emotions to overflow and not feel pressured to hold them back; acknowledging to myself that I just don’t have the energy to even try to look ‘nice’ today and that it’s ok to show the world how I feel through how I look; and being open and honest with the very person who sees that and concludes our conversation with “don’t forget to be kind to yourself!” Oh but I am. If in that moment my focus was on anyone else but myself then I would be considerate enough not to talk at you for a longer than is a socially acceptable time. I would be thoughtful enough not to put you through the embarrassment that is watching someone wipe their tears and nose on their sleeve because their only accessible tissue is too drenched for use. And I would answer “fine thank you” when you asked me how I was doing. Because as Mr Particular once told me: sometimes that’s the right thing to do.

Allow me to digress with a story in order to provide some context behind that particular piece of wise advice: it was five days after my brother died and our evening started with a trip to a pop-up summer bar in the centre of town, in an attempt to do something ‘fun’ with the Little Misses to interrupt the trauma we had found ourselves living in. When I placed my order for a marshmallow cider, what I failed to recall at that moment, was that I hadn’t eaten for precisely five days…

We had gone in to town to take the little misses to their dance lesson and I had vowed to also go shopping for bras and sandals for my Mum. My Mum hates shopping at the best of times, so you can imagine how she felt about it five days after the unexpected death of her son. Shopping loving daughter to the rescue… I’ll sort you out Mum! This was noble in theory but when Mr Particular walked the girls up to their dance lesson, leaving me to my shopping trip, he also failed to recognise that the only substance in my body was now a pint of fairly weird tasting cider. Grief brain (it’s a thing, I promise) alone stripped me of all decision making abilities and I can categorically confirm that tipsy grief brain does not help this issue! Mr Particular found me twenty minutes later, wandering aimlessly and blankly around Marks & Spencers bra department with five pairs of sandals and what I think I recall was one animal print bra. “That’s not Mum’s style!” he declared, proceeding to steer me through the aisles piling bras into my arms. We headed to the tills and I piled our loot on to the counter for the young girl unlucky enough to be serving us to start scanning. Then came the question: “Are you having a good day?” A huge part of my brain screamed “just say yes!” but the bigger part of my emotions quickly convinced me it would be offensive to my brother to lie, so out of my mouth came, “not really, my brother died five days ago.”

“Sometimes it’s ok to just say yes” said Mr Particular as we walked away from the traumatised young lady.

I was being honest. I was being true to how I felt. Hey, I was being kind to myself in not conceding to socially acceptable norms! I was certainly not being kind to the young girl on the receiving end, barely out of school and facing a response I’m pretty certain her M&S till training did not prepare her for!

So when we tell someone to be kind to themselves is it really just a phrase we churn out because we don’t know what else to do or say? I think so. I think so because I’ve experienced people who don’t know exactly what to say or do but rather than put that back on me, they do something about it instead. Generally, the people telling me to ‘be kind to myself’ are the ones passing me on the school run or the ones doing quick check ins. They’re not the friend that left tea and coffee on our door handle so that we always had the essentials. They’re not the friend that went out of her way to cycle past my door just to give me a hug and then cycle off again. They’re not the friend that came to my house to clean it. They’re not the friend that text and called almost every day to say she was thinking about me. They’re not the friend that would instruct me what time to be ready because she was taking me out for a walk. They’re not the cousins that sent thoughtful gifts to remind me they were still sharing our pain, even though we’re miles apart. They’re not the husband who reduced his expectations of me, quietly emptying the dishwasher I’d forgotten about and putting food in front of me even though he knew I might not eat it. They’re not the parents wanting to check I’m ok when they have their own debilitating grief to face.

The friends who really care about me, at whatever cost to themselves, are the ones who recognised my inability to make decisions and my inability to handle every day tasks and so plugged those gaps. As awkward as I know that was for them sometimes. As much as that put them out. And as hard as that was to see their friend falling apart. They didn’t just tell me to be kind to myself. They were kind to me. When they recognised the moments I was putting too much pressure on myself or beating myself up, they may have used those words and the may have reminded me to give myself a break… but they did it whilst walking by my side and reminding me who I am and what’s important to me.

Because that’s really what we mean by ‘be kind to yourself’ isn’t it? It’s about prioritising the things that are most important to us, to the detriment of all else. It means watching Netflix for a whole day because your brain needs to escape the raw cruelty of real life for a moment. It means saying no when someone asks you to do them a favour, not because you don’t care but because it’s just one thing too many at the moment. It’s about listening when your true friends do say it because they’re reminding you who you are. They are reminding you that you know yourself and need to keep being yourself… always.

In short, be kind to me and you might find I’ll be kind to myself!

Nice to be back… being me,