The Exhaustion behind Resilience

Something you learn as a medical parent is that you have reserves of strength you never imagined existed. Resilience however is something that you develop as you walk this journey with your child. People will comment on it, on how strong you have to be and how resilient parents like you are but they don’t necessarily see what it costs us to be this strong or to show such resilience.

Throughout this year, along with millions of others, I have battled to hold on to the threads of my mental health. The constant fighting for support, battling for the simplest of things that our children need and facing constant roadblocks with various departments not communicating with each other may teach us how much strength we have, but it also erodes our mental health and leaves us stressed, struggling to hold down jobs and genuinely desperate.

In the last month alone, I have continued working while my son was seriously ill in hospital while battling our Council who have failed to sort out adequate school transport for him since April and being led on a merry dance by a well-known company who supply medical equipment who despite knowing since August that the Dudes mobile hoist could not be repaired waited until late November to admit this.

I am the first to acknowledge that to juggle all this takes strength and resilience.. and I am not alone.

Thousands of other SN and medical parents are juggling the same overwhelming load on a daily basis, many are going through far more than my family, and even more would give anything to be still fighting those battles because it would mean their children are still with them.

I do not want to fight all the time. I do not want to be this resilient, or to have to be this strong. I want nothing more than to be able to care for my family, to do the job I love and to be the best Mum I can be to my wonderful, courageous son. All we ask as parents of these children is that those in charge of the services they need do their jobs correctly and in a timely manner. Time is not something we can waste because it is not something our children have on their side. And that is why we are so strong – our children need us to be.