Imperfect kindness

As I sit here and write this, I am 16 weeks and five days pregnant (apparently). And whilst this is definitely a season of great joy and immense gratitude, it would be insincere of me to say it is all happy days and bathing in the glory of partnering with the Creator to create.

I’m actually really scared.

For those who aren’t aware, I have been pregnant twice before.

My first baby passed to the other side of the veil when I was 13 weeks pregnant, and I look forward to the day where we are reunited with our first fruit, already on the other side of eternity.

And our second, is the beautiful Esme Kai, three years old and full of more life than I thought was possible! But that loss, and the prevailing Covid years, mixed with more loss and even more isolation, led to an immense mental breakdown for me when Ez was born. I was diagnosed with postnatal psychosis, a season of life that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And to spare the gnarly details, I was very very unwell for an extended period of time.

I write about this now, because I met with a mental health practitioner last week. She has been sewn into my pregnancy journey this time by my wonderful midwife team, to assess my risk of having another psychotic episode, and to create a web of care around me, to make sure it doesn’t get that bad again.

Now I am positive we, as a species, have no idea what is actually happening when we suffer any kind of mental breakdown. There are many people, much smarter than me trying to figure it out, but whether it is physical, spiritual, evil or ordained, there are so many people struggling with some kind of internal burn out, that I want to take this moment to explain, what I shared with her, when asked how I survived, and how I got better.

It wasn’t a specific cocktail of drugs, it wasn’t a stint in a psychiatric unit, it didn’t involve extreme CBT or the perfect therapist, and God most definitely did not heal me in an instant. It was very simple, and very free, and very accessible. 

It was the enduring strength of the relationships around me.

I came away from talking to my mental health nurse that day, and I had a sudden guilty worry that I hadn’t told her that God healed me, after I had told her in depth how I had recovered.

And I felt God say, ‘But I didn’t. Not in the way you want to say. I was present in the strength of the unity of the community around you.’

And He was.

That was the modern-day miracle.

That in this individualistic, self-centred, terrified-of-deep-vulnerability, society that we live in, it was an absolute miracle that those closest to me already knew me well enough and trusted the process and path of recovery that God lay before them, to jump into it with me.

Again, I will spare the details of what that looked like on the daily, or else this singular blog post could evolve into a published work, for the length of the word count alone!

But their care was intimate, and kind, and I was torn apart and rebuilt with the depth of the vulnerability I had to share. Yet week by week, they were able to weed out the lies, and whisper back truths to my broken heart, until I started to see light and colour again. Learning in the process, that when everywhere around us we are told to follow our heart, sometimes, we don’t actually know. But the One who made us does.

I am well aware that my story is somewhat unique. To grow up in a God-fearing, deeply loving, (but very much imperfect), household, with a family and husband that are so supportive it cured the seemingly incurable. And I know this, because whenever I have shared my story of that time, I am consistently met with stories of the hurt that people carry from others who didn’t turn up for them, and even worse, kicked them when they were down. It breaks my heart. There is a quote from Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book, ‘The Body Keeps The Score’, where he shares that over the years of his extensive studies, he has come to believe that “our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another.” In other words, “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” (Proverbs 16:24)

We are completely capable as a people of loving and healing each other through our words, actions and prayers. And they really don’t have to be grand acts. In the very worst of days for me, a random friend dropped by a bag of clementines, just because he was thinking about us. And I think about that pretty frequently, even now, years later. He had no words, no wisdom, no fix, and I don’t even really like clementines, but the simple act of being in his thoughts helped. Really helped.

I have come to understand that while there is such a thing as death by a thousand papercuts, there is also such a thing as resurrection by a thousand acts of imperfect kindness.