the happy cactus

Look. I’m not gonna lie. These last six months have been a tad tumultuous and I have felt like I have been adrift at sea floating aimlessly on a huge wave of never-ending emotions. Each day brings a new assault of big feelings that sometimes gently cascade down my body and other days like a torrential waterfall pushing me to my limits. I am not used to this state of being. This state of uncertainty. This revolving door of highs and lows over a 24 hour period. I am not this person.

It was expected to unfurl at this time of my life. I had been on a collision course with this year for six years really, the trajectory written in my roadmap since 2017. When I look back, it was clearly documented and underlined in bold ink and dotted with pivotal moments in my career and my personal life. Some say it was inevitable and to dodge it would be like waking up and expecting the sun to not shine. On some molecular level, I knew. I knew I could not continue this way for much longer. When those sharp thoughts arose not so silently nudging me and whispering gently into my soul, I should have listened. Instead, I powered on because that is what you do. No time to ask for a time out, no time to even entertain that idea. I am a strong resilient woman who has conquered so many adversities and here I am standing on top of my struggles with a smile and a can-do attitude. My body, however, was beginning to show some resistance and a slow but steady journey of refusal to easily bounce back began. I was not so much aware but more like ‘oh, why am I holding onto this for longer than I should’ type of thinking.

During 2017, I had a ridiculous class that was way over laden with bad behaviour students, and that utterly broke me. There was a combination of factors and one major one was lack of support from admin and parents. I am a really good teacher; firm but fair and I had been already teaching for 10 years, so I had my fair share of challenging students; but never had I ever had so many in the one class. Mixed into bad behaviours were social and emotional challenges and boy oh boy, there were so damn many! By Term 2, I had morphed my teaching style into survival mode; like autopilot took over and an autonomy that I had not ever experienced. Every two to three weeks I would release my big emotions, frustrations, disappointments and despair through a torrential rainstorm of tears coupled with ‘why am I doing this’ moments, and once purged, I would engage my ever optimistic attitude and soldier on. By the time Term 4 had circled around, I realised my hair was beginning to fall out in clumps. I was not sleeping well, constantly fatigued, and I was in a permanent state of fight and flight, and I began to be triggered by the simplest of things like a door slamming, or I would flinch when a student would run past me. I was unable to stop crying sometimes and my appetite suffered. My empty shell just needed to make it to November as we were escaping to USA for a 5 week road trip with our kids. Suffice to say, I dragged myself over the finish line, with less hair and less weight. It didn’t register with me that my hair loss and appetite loss was a result of stress. I know right. How? Like how did you not know?

After our epic USA journey, I went and saw the doctor and asked about my hair loss and why I consistently feel like I had ingested too much coffee. I was told that I had adrenal fatigue and began my journey into peri-menopause because I was in a constant state of stress. My adrenal glands were utterly exhausted from being switched on for the entire year, which resulted in hair loss. Now, this was a massive shock to me. I thought I had my stress under control because most of the time I was numb to what was happening in the classroom so why was I in this stressed state of being? This unhealthy state of being. Apparently I was internalising my stress, burying it deep deep down and by acting like everything was peaches and cream, I was actually exacerbating my symptoms thus thrusting me into early peri-menopause. I was a complete mess.

When the following years’ school term came around and I went in to school to set up my classroom, I distinctly remember standing in the middle of the room and just silently crying while looked around the room for a good 20-30 mins. The tears just flooded down my cheeks; I was not sobbing but my emotions just flowed out my eyes. An overwhelming sense of dread and despair gripped my entire body and at one point I didn’t really realise I was actually crying. It was my body telling me through my tears and via the suffocating feeling of dread, that this was not a safe space and that I need to get out of here. Being unaware of why this visceral and tangible feeling was my body screaming to me. Back then, I was very naïve about body holding trauma and emotions hence why I didn’t make this connection which now seems impossible not to.

See, the thing about stress and not dealing with it, leads to sickness. It may not happen straight away but like me, I began that slow and painful death of pretending everything is awesome and yes I’m coping and no I don’t need help nor do I need a break because last time I asked for help, it didn’t come. I was irrevocably, devastatingly disappointed. I am an optimist and I can fix my own self because people let you down. During those times where I was crying in my classroom and feeling so trapped, I was told I would get support if I asked for it. That was in the beginning of 2017, however, when I did ring for support, it never turned up. I learnt in that moment, that I was completely alone. Nobody was coming to help me. At that stage, I was drowning and I had to be the one to drag myself upon the rocky shoreline. But my saving myself was not actually saving myself. I entered a dangerous area of delusional thinking where I was ok thank you very much. It didn’t matter that my hair was falling out, that I wasn’t sleeping a full nights rest, that my appetite diminished. If help was not coming, then I would show them that I was doing ok. I lathered myself in Anhydrous Lanolin and kept swimming through the void of hopelessness. It was a dark and desperate time.

Hindsight is a good tool. Looking back, I do not know how I survived. I look back on myself with compassion and empathy; I just want to go hug 2017 me and tell me it will all be ok and gently tell me to listen to my body. Over the next few years, I began to heal and to really look at what I was carrying and in what ways I could lighten my load. Then 2020 happened. Boom. Catastrophic and cataclysmic family malady occurred as a result of the pandemic and I donned my autopilot suit again, carrying my family, carrying my work peers and forgetting to externalise my stress. I just put all the stress into my knapsack and slung it onto my shoulders. In 2021, I realised I had swallowed all my stress and I was numbed to what had happened. I lost colours and the taste of food was gone. Good ole doctor informed me that my blood results were showing I was now in menopause due to the amount of stress I was under. Wow. Just wow.

I am here to tell you that life gets sticky, messy and downright crappy at times. Learn to work through your stress. Pull it out like a shoelace from your converse sneakers and unravel the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ am I stressed. Listen to your body clues. Actually listen. Really listen. Our body is designed to tell you what is happening from the inside; we just have to be still enough to hear her whispering. There are so many resources out there to help you identify and understand your body and how it holds stress, trauma, events, uncomfortableness. I finally sat and listened. I am not going to say it was too late, because we are where we are and no use in wishing and hoping it was different. It is what it is.

A book called The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk is a great resource that has helped me understand how our bodies hold trauma and stress. Highly recommend for a deeper understanding of how our bodies are the gatekeepers to communicating to us what we need. There are numerous free resources on YouTube, Instagram to name a few platforms.

From my experiences, I am learning to deal with stress, albeit I will always struggle with recognising when I am stressed. Being an optimist and seeing the positive in everything, I am not sure it hinders how I respond to my stress and even to stop and listen to my body clues is what I work on each day. We are a work in progress and remaining aware of your triggers is one step closer to healing. Life is always going to be a struggle and there will always be stress in some form; we are supposed to be gentle to ourselves and listen with compassion to what we actually need. Take time to meditate and breathe in and out slowly.

I turned 50 recently and I am adamant that I am entering my next 50 years listening intently to my body and what she needs (within reason). Holding space for who I have become and having compassion on the days where my sea of stability is flooded with a range of emotions has taught me patience, compassion and forgiveness.

I still carry my stress but now it’s not stuffed in a knapsack on my shoulders, rather it’s currently on an open platter for easy access to pick out what helps me or what hinders me.

It is a conscious choice and I choose what to carry.

Big love x