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Wednesday 17 August 2016

The biggest threat to my sobriety... Becoming a parent!

I remember the day I found out I was pregnant like it was yesterday. I'd been excessively hungry for days, I had severe brain fog and everyone at work was giving me shit about probably being preggers! No chance... Or so I thought! My husband and I had been trying for a few years, and had done everything natural that we could to increase our chances, including getting sober. We had prepared ourselves for the fact it may not happen. We knew we were destined to be parents, but just weren't convinced it would happen naturally. We always said we would be more than happy adopting if we couldn't have our own. So on this particular day, I didn't allow myself to get excited, I put it to the back of my mind... However a few hours later curiosity got the better of me and I decided to pee on a spare stick I had in the cupboard from previous ill fated attempts. I'd already had two miscarriages, one when I was younger and one a few years earlier, and I'd had so many dissapointing negatives that I wasn't expecting much!

However, almost immediately I got a positive reading!! I screamed out to my husband to come and see, and we both jumped up and down hugging and crying!! However I still couldn't fully accept the good news so I insisted we go to the shops and buy another kit so I could do another test to make sure! Another positive!! Yay!!

We couldn't wait to tell everyone close to us, and to say everyone was overjoyed by the news is an understatement!! They were ecstatic!! Especially both our Mums who cried as soon as they found out!

Having two previous early miscarriages though always weighed heavily on my excitement levels, and our first ultrasound revealed I was only 5 weeks and the baby was still in the sack. A sick feeling remained in my stomach until the 12 week ultrasound where we were told everything was great and so far our baby was healthy and on track. I allowed myself to get excited for the first time! The sick feeling went away for a few weeks.... until the morning sickness started at least! 

Everything was going along smoothly until my blood pressure started to rise. But everything was still fine with the baby, and he started kicking away regularly. Until he stopped. And the sick feeling came back. After a full day of googling what could be wrong and following old wives tails to get him to move, my sister took me to emergency, where I was monitored for a few hours and lots of tests run. 

It was one of the scariest moments of my life when the nurse couldn't find a heartbeat. I'm sure many Mums have experienced that moment. Time slows down, sound disappears, and you feel like your going to faint.  Trying not to panic, I tried to point out where he could usually be found. 

Finally that familiar boom boom rang through my ears like the sweetest sound I'd ever heard. This wouldn't be the last close call, but it was by far the scariest. I was kept in a  couple of nights to monitor the baby as well as my blood pressure and protein levels... After this, overnight stays became regular until I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and kept in hospital for the foreseeable future. At 30 weeks they gave me steroids for the baby in case they had to deliver... I kept my legs closed tight and my will to keep incubating as long as possible was strong!

I spent 6 weeks in hospital.. My birthday, AFL grand final day, NRL grand final day... Until finally during Bathurst and after 8 hours of uneventful labour, an emergency c section was ordered. My pre eclampsia had progressed to danger zone, I was induced and my waters broken. Finally on the 12th of October 2014 at 8.40pm a bundle of joy was ripped from my womb and thrust upon my chest! He was perfect! And tiny! And screaming!

 I started vomiting green stuff which resembled mashed avocado and my blood pressure went through the roof. Bub and hub were whisked away as the surgeons threw my bits and pieces back in, sewed me up, and battled to get my blood pressure down urgently. 

While all of this was going on, hubby went with bub through all of his checks and up to the ward, where he waited hours to find out how I was. Finally he was allowed into recovery to see me... He was relieved to say the least, as was I! It was pretty touch and go for a while!

Finally at 3.30am I was allowed out of recovery and up to a birthing suite to meet my baby properly! I'd like to say it was instant love, but we were both pretty wary of eachother! 'What the fuck do I do now?' I thought to myself! Luckily he instinctively found a boob and fell asleep on me. I cried silently for half hour of so, trying not to wake my husband or baby. A mixture of relief, fear, exhaustion, elation all of a sudden overwhelmed me and I had no idea what to do. I was scared to sleep but was beyond exhausted. Nobody came to check if I had any clue what I was doing, and I fell into anxiety and overwhelm pretty quickly. About 5am he started screaming which woke hubby up and I was relieved to hand him over. He settled bub quickly, put him in his crib and he went straight to sleep. Relief again! I fell asleep mid conversation and woke again when the nurses came to move us to a room.

The whole day was a whirlwind of nurses, visitors, get up and try and walk, shower, learn to change a nappy, learn to hold its head so it doesn't pop off and roll away, breastfeed, breastfeed, breastfeed! Bottle feed as well, he's tiny and you have no milk! Keep breastfeeding! He needs colostrum!!! Screaming! Everyone seeing your boobs! BREASTFEED!!!!! 

Then silence! Everyone has gone, and I'm alone with him. We are both still sceptical. I'm still exhausted. I try and sleep when he does. Scream!! He needs another feed... Shit nobody showed me how to make up the bottle. Press the buzzer for help... 'For god's sake put him on the boob!' Ok. 15 minutes later he's still crying and getting nothing. Shit nobody showed me how to use the pump! Press the buzzer for help... 'For god's sake it's not that hard!' Ok. 10 minutes later he's screaming harder, he got bugger all. Press the buzzer for help... 'For god's sake just make a bottle then!' Ok... But I don't know how. 'Where do I get everything? Where is the boiling water? How much do I make? My husband did it today, I didn't see what he did. 'Oh for god's sake!'

I'd never felt like more of a failure. I'm the worst mother on earth and it's barely been 24 hours... I need a drink! 'Where the hell did that thought come from?' I hadn't thought about drinking for quite a while and had been sober 3 years. 'Yep I absolutely need a drink!' Well that's not an option!

Finally bub went off to sleep with a full belly and I lay awake fantasising about drinking. I must of drifted off eventually, as I was awoken again by screaming and people shuffling around, another mum was moving in with me. I changed bub and made up his bottle, and tried the pump and breastfeeding again. Still terrified of the whole process. 'Shit babies are wriggly suckers!' Then an angel in the form of a nurse peeped around the curtain and said 'your nurse is on break, do you want me to take him to the nursery for you so you can get some real sleep?' How had I not heard about this before!!! Omg!!! Yes please!! 'I'll take him down for you then I'll pop back with your Endone' Oh my! Endone! 'Can I have two? I have lots of pain!' Bullshit! 'Of course!'

Fucking yes! Endone!

But I'll get to that next time!

Monday 8 August 2016

Step up or get the fuck out!

I was doing some calculations today and basic projections on my business, and I realised how foreign this was for me. I've never been a numbers person. It's been 3 and a half years since I stepped up and took control of my business. 3 and a half years since my business partner was diagnosed with aggressive stomach cancer and then passed away extremely quickly.
Shortly before her diagnosis I had been trying to negotiate with her to either buy my share of our company, let me buy her share or we sell up and go our separate ways. None of these options appealed to her, as it essentially meant that her income stream would be cut off. She didn't care that mine had been completely cut off for the previous year, that I'd been paying my home loan with credit cards and moving the debt between low interest cards as often as possible, we'd had to sell my husbands car, and had to put our house up for sale. Care factor from her was zero. Too bad.

It was around this time that I learned a few key things in life. 1- Your self worth doesnt have to be connected to your net worth (although at the time, both of mine were in the minuses!) 2- You can take all my money, my company, my car, my house... But you can't take my spirit, my creativity, my business brain or my drive... I could start another business and build it from scratch. So I did! I started a company with my sister selling training and renting out our training room! We sold our house, and the bit of profit I made, I invested... On myself and my husband. We trained and trained, did course after course, personal development, professional development. Learned everything we could get our brains around.

During the year I'd been pushed out of my business, I'd pretty much had a nervous breakdown. Flashbacks and nightmares had become a daily occurance, I was struggling to stay sober, I felt like a huge failure for allowing myself to be bullied out of my company, and was just generally feeling worthless. I had started studying my Diploma of Community Services which I'd put together in my training room (next to my companies offices) and was forced to see my business partner a couple of times a week while I was training. I was suffering from extreme anxiety and could barely leave the house. But somehow, I knew I was meant to be back running my business. I'd worked too hard to just walk away... Even though I felt I had no real options.

 Then on our last class before Christmas in 2012, my business partner told me to take the business, she had cancer and it was aggressive. My head was spinning, I didn't care about the company, I was worried about her, despite our issues, her health was the most important thing. At that point I didn't care if the company went under.

2 weeks later she called me into the hospital, she had given up, and didn't expect to live much longer. She gave me all the passwords, the bank account details etc and said, just keep going! She passed away a few days later.

Being thrown back in the deep end, I knew I had only two options... Sink or swim! So I doggy paddled the shit out of the next few years, barely keeping my head above water! A lot of the money I'd saved from selling my house was invested back into my company. I continued to invest in myself and spent money on business coaching, I learned to hustle, I learned to do every single aspect of my business myself, vowing never to rely on anyone, things I'd never even had access to before became my responsibility. I had amazing friends and family supporting me, helping me, backing me. But most importantly, I backed myself!

One of the biggest surprises I was left with was a huge couple of hundred thousand dollar tax bill! Talk about one of the biggest threats to my sobriety! I've never been so stressed in my life. I thought about a lot of things over that time, I considered suicide more than once, I considered drinking most days. Then I remembered why I was doing this. Why I had brought the company in the first place... My clients and staff! My main concern was always them. I had to claw my way back for them!

Today I was reminded of all of this, as I typed numbers into excel spreadsheets, as I realised this month it's been 8 years since I purchased the company. We made a $140,000 loss in the first year. We've doubled our sales every year since I took it back over. I managed to pay off $70,000 in tax debt in just over 30 days this year... And I finally hit my elusive target number in sales last financial year!

Am I rich? Nope! Did we make a profit? Probably not! Do I love what I do? Absolutely! Do we make a difference in people's lives everyday! Hell yes! Are there days I want to give up, pack it all in, that the stress almost kills me? Yep! Am I proud of how far I've come? Fuckin A!

Some things almost kill us, some things make us stronger, some things are not optional... As my business coach said today in a video... GO HARD OR GO HOME!!!!!

STEP UP OR GET THE FUCK OUT!

Happy 8 year anniversary of owning a business to me! Thank you everyone who has supported me, challenged me, threatened me, screwed me over, and generally done anything to make me stronger in the long run!

Tuesday 26 July 2016

Catching Up- 4 years later!

I recently came across my blog when it came up in my 'memories' on Facebook. I couldn't believe 4 years had passed since I began using writing as a healing tool. At the time of starting, I was in a pretty dark place. I'd had kind of a 'mental breakdown' after a few triggering experiences, that took me back to some severe childhood and young adult traumas. To be honest, I was suffering pretty hard from PTSD. I'd been sober a year at that stage, and sobriety had uncovered quite a lot of shit I'd never dealt with. Sexual abuse, attempted kidnapping, assault, miscarriages, family trauma, redundancies, relationship breakdowns, lots of shit that people go through, but that I had kept dead and buried at the bottom of a bottle.

I'd coped pretty well up until then, storing my traumas in my body and out of my head. Once I made that real conscious decision to get (and stay!) sober... Then I had nowhere to hide.

I was metaphorically stripped naked and put under a microscope... Or so it felt

I spent a lot of time on self discovery, I'd always been into personal development and I used this as another tool to scrape the shit I'd been through from my psyche. I read, I wallowed in self pity, I spent a lot of time talking to family about what had happened to me, I read my police statements, I tried to pick at the scabs that my mind had created to heal me, scratch them bare, so I could heal them properly, my own way this time. The mind is a funny thing, it protects you from traumatic experiences, especially when your not ready or able to deal with them. I had blocked out a lot of trauma, and now that fragmented pieces were coming back, I wanted to flood my brain with absolute facts so that I could make sense of it all.

The funny thing about the brain, or life, or development in general though... Is that you can't just skip ahead! There is a process... And no matter how ready you think you are, whoever the hell is in charge, the universe, or whatever, has other ideas. Slow down and feel uncomfortable with the process!

And my fucking lord was it uncomfortable! Anxiety became my best friend and constant excuse! I was frozen by it. I could barely work, I lost my business, I withdrew from a lot of my closest friends, I rarely left the house... Certainly never alone. I was going crazy, I had no income, very little support and I was done. Broke. Broken.

Breakthroughs... You have to break before you can be fixed. And nobody can fix you... Other than you. I had a couple of breakthrough moments that were absolutely key in my recovery. 1- it's up to me. End of story! If I'm going to get my shit together, then I have to be accountable and do what it takes.  2- I had to address everything head on. 3- I've gone through this shit to help others... To heal I had to open up. Which is why I started writing

I tried lots of different techniques on myself. Talking therapy, literally just talking about my experiences and connecting dots and not being ashamed of anything I'd been through. Talking to my husband and often just being held. I tried systematic desensitisation, going near places that I previously couldn't go, talking about them, googling them, and one day I woke up and just knew I had to visit the place I was kidnapped and the place I was sexually assaulted. I just had to. The feeling was so strong I made my husband take the day off work and we drove to those places and I let myself cry. I went back to being 10 and back to 16, I imagined myself comforting myself at that age now, telling myself it was ok and wasn't my fault and that I'd be ok anyway! It was then that I knew, absolutely 100% that I had to help others in similar situations and that would be my great work in life.

So... Let's skip ahead a bit. Where am I now?
- Still married to my soul mate
- Still sober (5 years!)
- I took my business back
- I have a beautiful 21 month old baby boy
- Was forced to sell my house
- Moved back to my childhood home town
- Have spent the last 4 years learning everything I can about myself
- Studied studied studied
- Forgiven
- Spending as much time coaching & counselling others to deal with their trauma

I'm sure I'll eventually fill in the gaps and travel back and forth in time to explore the ups and downs... There have been many! Healing to me is a process and a never ending quest. Some days it's easy to stay sober, to keep on the right path... Other days I have to fight tooth and nail to not drink, to not take some pills, to not give in to the 'dark side'. It's a never ending quest... Constant and continuous improvement. And without the amazing people in my life, without love, without compassion, the battle would be so much harder.

Thanks for the catch up and for your never ending love and support!