Conquering my fears!

As I was driving to work yesterday I felt a clunk on the roof and then watched as a bright green conker pod bounced off the car and into the road next to me. Unfortunately also into the path of an oncoming car, so that was the last I saw of that particular conker.

But it got me thinking about this time last year. Lily had just started school and was keen to contribute to the autumn display table in her classroom. Not content with the pitiful collection of crumpled brown leaves we managed to salvage from our back garden, I agreed to try and find a conker tree for her.

If you’re new to an area and didn’t grow up there – you’re unlikely to know off hand where the nearest conker tree is. Add to this the fact that I was newly emerging from my complete meltdown from postnatal depression, and you can imagine I was not in the mood for setting off on jolly jaunts around the town looking for trees laden down with conkers. So I half-heartedly hid in the security zone of the car and drove up and down our local streets looking for clusters of small boys picking things up off the ground (much easier to spot them than looking for the conkers themselves).

It didn’t take me long. I located a suitable spot half way between our house and the school gates. Perfect if we were walking to school. Only it was a little over a mile to walk and I was practically living like a hermit at the time, managing to drag myself into the car to get Lily to school each day, but not daring to actually face the world without that metal security blanket of car to protect me. But my CPN was working hard at convincing me to try out new things, and she thought walking to school would be perfect. It would get me out of the house, into the fresh air, give me some exercise and force me to face being in amongst people again.

Those school walks this time last year were a nightmare. I still remember the pain I used to get in my neck and the headache I’d nurse for hours afterwards, because I had been so tense for the whole journey. It is a busy road most of the way, and Lily being a chatterbox and only half my height, would try and shout at me all the way along to be heard above the traffic. The traffic would scare me, I had to lean over to hear Lily, I worried I couldn’t hear her, I worried she'd hurt herself on the prickly conker pods, I worried we were going to be late…I worried about everything!

Then the CPN gave me some little tricks to help avoid my panic attacks. She suggested we count cars or puddles or flowers. So this gave me a distraction and I’d cling onto it like a dog with a bone, and I’d still be counting red cars way after Lily had grown bored of the game, and still be making a mental note of puddles on the way home. But it got me through.

So this morning it was my turn to do the school run, and I decided it was time to lay old ghosts to rest and see if I could actually enjoy the school walk this year. So out came the buggy (to drop Poppy at nursery) and the car stayed on the drive. The sun was in the sky, there was birdsong on the air and I had a spring in my step as Lily skipped along beside me, excited at the prospect of finding this year’s first conkers.

And do you know what? This time they both shouted at me to be heard above the traffic all the way there, I couldn’t hear a word of what either of them were saying, and by the time we finished scrabbling around looking for the early autumnal offerings, we were most definitely going to be late for school. I didn’t count one car, have no idea how many puddles we passed, and I was still smiling after the bell had rung, Lily was settled in her seat and I was on my way back home...

Isn’t life on Prozac great..!!

Daisy x :)