(content warning for bad mental health and suicide mention)
Hello internet, long time, no see
So… I had a covid breakdown. It was probably a long time coming really. Honestly I don’t think I ever really got over the mental health problems I developed in my youth, just got used to masking them better – cheers for that, late diagnosed autism!
So I had to take a break. Social media is a horrible cesspit of terrible feelings. Particularly when you struggle with feeling inadequate. I tried unfollowing everyone but that didn’t work. And even now when I have to look something up on Instagram I can feel a tightening in my chest, starting to make me feel horrible again.
I quit spoon carving for a while as well. I can probably count the number of spoons I’ve carved the last few years on my fingers. Ironically for someone who co-founded a project that primarily uses spoon carving to help with folks’ mental health, spoon carving is absolute horror to my own mental health. Too much baggage. And it is so second nature to me now it doesn’t distract my brain at all any more, it just distracts my hands, leaving my brain to ruminate.
The last big comission I completed for Fortnum & Mason came a full circle. I have a picture I use in one of my talks from when I first started to get seriously into spoon carving, in my teenage years, sat on my living room floor carving a spoon in front of my laptop, watching Glee!
Working on the comission I found that I could not sit and carve spoons to the sound of my own brain. I spent a lot of time on Rise Up & Carve – a lovely online carving group. And when there was nobody online to carve with and keep my brain company, I sat on my bathroom floor (tiles much more sweepable than carpet) with my laptop and my headphones. Anything to distract my brain.
So for probably over 5 years now I have only carved with other people at our Pathcarvers groups. I had to stop leading most of those too, we now have a lovely group of facilitators who took them over from me (thank you). The one I kept, and the thing that kept me going for a while there, is Martineau Gardens. What can I say about Martineau Gardens? They are everything to me. They run a Therapeutic Horticulture program through the week. And the gardens are open to the public for anyone to enjoy. They are right in the middle of busy Birmingham, but are a little oasis of calm. Usually when I wake up in the morning and I feel terrible I just want to stay in bed and avoid the world. When it’s a Martineau day I know that all I need to do is get myself to the gardens and everything will be ok. They are such a warm, kind, welcoming group of people. Being surrounded by nature, sat by a roaring fire, copious quantities of tea, lovely wholesome food, and the best company. How could you not feel better? I have always said that being there is better therapy for me than any of my actual therapy has been.
I wasn’t sure I would ever come back to carving, and I still don’t think I would want to make it my full time job again, but when Rob asked me if I would teach at Spoonfest again last year, I thought, you know what? I think I might just be able to do that. So I did, and it was lovely seeing old friends again, and being around people enthused about making. I nearly wrote a blog post after that… I might manage to dig it out and post it after this one. We will see.
I have drafted a lot of come-back posts over the years. For a while there were more suicide notes, but thankfully I never “published” any of those either! I haven’t written a suicide note for a while now though, and my last 2 draft blog posts have been actually on my website rather than scraps of paper or notes on my phone. So I think this might be the one that actually gets published. If I have managed to hit the button, and you have read this far, thanks for reading along..
So what has changed, to get to this point? Well, not much, and an awful lot, really. A lot of work on myself. A lot of fighting the mental health system to be treated (endless thank yous to my partner for that). A lot of trying of different medications. More recently, the things that have worked have been art psychotherapy – thank you Julia – which has been a really lovely gentle reintroduction to being creative again in a more positive way for me. And a PMDD diagnosis. It really is terrible how fucking hard it is to get taken seriously for “women’s problems”. I cannot tell you how many times and how many people I have been in tears to trying to explain how bad I feel around my period. Well I finally got through. After trying every type of hormonal contraception under the sun (none of it worked) I got referred to gynecology. Even there they wanted to dismiss me until my partner (a man) spoke up for me. And they gave me an injection to stop all of my hormones and put me into a chemical menopause and my world changed. Sure, I get a bit hot. But I have regained my life!
Spring is here too, which always makes everything feel better. Sitting in the sun listening to the birds sing energises me.
Next on my list is to start tackling my giant box of unfinished objects, or “UFOs” as my lovely friends who helped me dig my workshop out from under my depression/ADHD chaos mountain called them (thank you Jane and other friend who prefers not to be named – you know who you are). And I have another friend who I am hoping I can tempt out of photographer retirement to come and take some pictures with me..
I am going to try and be less perfectionist, and spend less time worrying that my work is not good enough – that I am not good enough. Which I am hoping will make it easier for me to create more and to share more.
Other life updates? I have been working in finance. I always joked that unlike most of the other folk who come to woodworking as a second career after having a midlife crisis and quitting their office job that they hated, as a 2nd gen woodworker for whom it is a first career, I would have my midlife crisis and quit woodworking for marketing. Well I didn’t quite make it to mid life (I hope) and it turns out that the thing I hate most about woodworking is the marketing. I love spreadsheets though. And there is actually a right and a wrong answer when it comes to adding up numbers. Which is much more pleasing to my autistic brain than the ambiguity of trying to be creative. Oh and it turns out that I struggled to self motivate when working for myself because I have ADHD. The doubly whammy, yay.. So having a job with clear set tasks and a time limit is a joy on so many levels. I currently work for another charity in Birmingham, The Old Print Works, where I had a workshop for a couple of years.
I have also been fostering cats and kittens
And dogs too. Meet the newest member of my family, foster-fail and professional bin thief Olly (for anyone who knows me, yes, this is the same name as my brother, I didn’t choose it, he came with it!)
And long term foster Shadow, who is adoptable from Hope For Podencos, although I am sure my partner will say please don’t because he wants to keep him
