And painting

 

Garden

Our garden

2021

       June 2018 when we moved in

Beautiful nature

 

Step by step towards the light

 

The Light and Hope

 

Painting

 Paintings from the last week

Reflections on being carer

 As I prepare presentation about our Staff Carers Network group for tomorrows online Caring Together summit for different NHS organisation, I reflect on my life as a carer, as well as on conversations I had with people I met, stories I heard... 

I have been inspired by many people I met... 

I am thankful for all whom I met through different networks, many very special people from very diverse walks of life....

My story is about being a carer and about loosing and finding connections. 

I have been in number of caring roles: as young university student and newly qualified Child Psychologist caring for Grandma with dementia, blind and bedbound, later caring for another Grandma suffering from dementia. I was caring and supporting my Dad while he was very ill on intensive care unit. From family caring roles I moved to work/community caring roles, working with adults with LD in Canada and UK, working as TA, as Suport Worker, as Assistant Psychologist.

 Becoming Mum to autistic child brought new challenges and new gifts. Over the number of years I encountered both special moments of joy as well as pain and faced my own vulnerability through deterioration of my physical health and discovering my own neurodiversity. 

My career choices reflected the primary focus on family and care as well as juggling my own “spoons”, my disabilities and long term health conditions. 

spoon-theory-chronic-illness-explained

I was looking for creative ways to use my transferable skills and gifts, but it was not easy and I often felt lonely and disconnected, especially during Covid Pandemic. 

At the beginning of Covid I was identified as Clinically Extremely Vulnerable due to the range of my health conditions and was asked to shield. My world that already seemed very limited first shrank completely… 

However as I started to attend weekly online Shielding Forum group, organized by our HR, I began to connect with people from variety of profession and wide range of Bands, from bottom to the top of NHS Hierarchy. 

We were coming to our online group to share our experience of either shielding ourselves or being a carer for family member who had been shielding. I felt sense of connection, mutual peer support and I felt that people from HR actually listened to us when they visited forum to hear our views. I felt encouraged and empowered and began to see new openings, new possibilities to use my skills, my passion, my enthusiasm for networking,  researching, empowering people to discover beauty in them  - values that were always important to me, values that brought me to work and live in England in community with people with LD 25 years ago. 

I became actively involved in launching our trusts Disability SNG and in introduction of Workplace Adjustment and Wellbeing Passport. I became involved  in LGBT SNG and in admin side of Rainbow Badge training and I was involved in supporting BAME staff members in network and preparing Annual conference. Working from home, while shielding, learning to use MS  Teams for virtual meetings, networking, storing and sharing resources opened very new possibilities for me – especially with the permission to work flexibly around my disabilities and around my caring responsibilities. 

I kept saying to people who started Shielding forum that attending the forum became a time of personal transformation for me – I rediscovered who I was and that there was place for me in our organization to be involved and share my skills and my enthusiasm, my lived experience. 

As I became more and more involved in 4 staff network groups I realized that there were staff who were carers like me, balancing work and care but there was not a one specific network, peer support group for staff who are carers…. 

I met staff carers in Shielding forum, which was temporary group and in Disability SNG, when staff were both disabled and carers, I met staff carers in BAME, now Ethnically diverse SNG…. But not having one specific group for staff who are carers really bothered me and I wrote emails to our leadership team asking for support to begin Staff Carers Network. Our leadership team gave me support  to begin our new Staff Carers Network group…..

I share painting about Connections and Viewpoints I created in September 2021 and that expressed in creative way my sense of lost and found connections through Covid, online working, working from home….

Learning to fly

 Learning to fly

on the journey towards the freedom

growing the Tree of Life

deep within

with hope

Breaking through

Breaking through

With persistence  

In hope

for

Some New openings

And

The journey continues

Here

Now

And Beyond

Fragility and Hope

 I had been living, working, juggling spoons of my disabilities and caring responsibilities, job and life insecurities, working on zero hours contract, renting house, dreaming about buying house where I can plant my trees, I celebrated my 51st birthday while embracing many unknowns... 

Being creative, painting always helps me to process the intensity of life. 

Here is a painting I created late last night, reflecting on fragility, vulnerability as well as reflecting on hope, resilience and meaning of being here and now, being truly myself and embracing, accepting myself for who I am....   

I came to the UK 25 years ago with many hopes and dreams, to live and work in LArche https://www.larchelondon.org.uk/community, leaving behind succesful and stable work role as Child Psychologist....  

25 years later, I am here and now, facing many challenges, but living in hope and trusting that in some creative ways I live the values deeply embedded in my heart, values that brought me here years ago.....

Creativity and gardening and painting

 I had been painting the theme of growth and new life - inspired by my garden project, my garden office, my place for quiet reflections in company of our little rescue dog Saffron. I am thankful for every new day. 

Garden

My Addisons Disease brings many challenges. I need to make sure I find some time and space rest in between busy life things. And garden and gardening really helps me. 

Our tiny garden, in house we are renting, had became my special place to rest, to work.

 During shielding in 2020 I began my journey as gardener beginner. And I love to sit in our little garden with cup of tea or coffee and with my Ipad and paint while listening to the birds and while our rescue dog sunbathes :)

Rainbow themed paintings for Pride

 Painting rainbows