Can we talk about: Hopes & Fears

Can we talk about hopes and fears?

It has been a while dear reader. I have missed the blog. Starting back today I wanted explain a little bit about why  I have been a little quiet on the writing front and it has a lot to do with hopes and fears. It is a given that all of us will experience hopes and fears as we go through life and we are fairly unlikely to experience them at the same time. Where they are at opposite ends of a spectrum, they both have the ability to motivate growth in their own way. Fear is often reactionary and helps us focus all of our flee or fight energy/attention on a particular situation. Whereas hope motivates us to move forward and is more of a decision.

Hope and dreams have always been part of my life. I was never one of those girls who dreamed of her ideal wedding, marrying a prince or having a certain job ….. but I still had many hopes. It wasn’t until I got a bit older that fear started to play its part. The fear of not being able to achieve what I hoped and dreamed for.  Nowadays, as a mum of two pretty awesome little folks many of my hopes involve my kids and also many of my fears. My fears surrounding them are way harder to work with than any about myself!!!! Traditionally I have always been able to be fairly optimistic about most things and much to my ex- husband’s annoyance would try and look for the positives in most situations.  I always used writing on Fifi Friendly as my release. It was a place I could come and talk about stuff regardless of anything else going on in my life. However this last year has been the toughest test of my positivity.

My family spent a lot of 2016 in limbo filled with fear. All we could do was react. We had hope that my youngest would be released from the cycle of emergency admissions every 3 weeks, but at the same time we were crippled by the fear of this relentless cycle and never knowing when we would be hit next.  As it became harder to plan life around this, it became harder to see hope any further than a day at a time. We could not control the situation and just putting one foot in front of the next was hard to do some days. In fact some days we felt numb and just went through the motions and felt relief when we made it to the end of the day with all of us at home together. Sometimes it was actually easier to shut off how difficult it was rather than taking stock of what could come next. Trying to explain to others the situation often proved hard too

I often spoke about getting “the fear” on the run up to an admission.  I can’t really describe it apart from that I would get this sick feeling in my gut that she would be ill. Her dad described them as my “witchy vibes” and they were always on point! Often at that point she would be not showing any symptoms and I would hate not knowing what was coming exactly and how severe it would be this time. When we don’t know what lies ahead we can feel overridden by hopes and fears.

At the end of 2016 we were given some fresh optimism and we started to feel some true hope again. We had come out the other side of emotionally and physically draining period of time for our whole family and for the first time in a long time we could take a breath. Not a just shallow one that would keep us afloat but a deep breath that allowed a long overdue sigh of relief to be exhaled. As each day passed we started to feel the fear a little less.  We spent 6 months beginning to feel like ourselves again and eventually the balance between hope and fear was redressed. I began to feel back to my optimistic self. 2017 saw a new chapter begin, a new hope

At the start of this summer fear was no longer dominating our decisions and we started to be able to make future family and personal plans that were realistic and doable. Woo hoo ….. It felt so good. Almost too good. We felt back on our feet properly when the emergency admissions started again. Like a punch in the stomach! This time, for the first time “the fear” hadn’t given me the same warning. Now fear is back bigger than ever and it feels fairly horrible. It is hard to keep the hope flowing for others around you when you are dominated by fear too. But, as Nelson Mandela once said ” May your choices reflect your hopes and not your fears”.

Where I know there are some limitations to what is achievable right now, it is really important that we can keep the hope going. Hope, like a smile is a wonderfully infectious energy. Hope helps you take back some control in situations that you feel you have no control. I hope that fear will not play the controlling factor over the next few months. I hope that regardless if it gets scary or relentless again our hope will always be stronger than our fear.

Once you choose hope anything is possible.

 

Fifi

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