Author: Yelly

Taking each day one smile at a time!
Yelly Writes

Let’s talk!

Yelly

No really. Let’s talk.

Today is World Mental Health Day.

I’ve never shied away from talking about my mental health struggles and the journey I’ve been on – still on to be completely honest but I’m in a much better place now. But I think I’ve shied away from actually properly writing about it.

18 months ago, someone I worked with asked me if I was okay. I did what I usually do at the time and pasted the brightest smile on my face that I could and said that I was fine. It took that someone sitting me down and asking me if I was REALLY okay because, they said, they could see it in my eyes that I wasn’t okay and that my non-okayness was starting to reflect in my work. I’d been in difficult situations before and work was the balm to my soul. I could make work work for me. Work helped me cope. If my mental health was starting to affect the one thing that kept me sane and on an even keel, I had to finally admit that I wasn’t at all well. Whilst admitting you have a problem is a step in the right direction, it can also be a rabbit hole that you can go down and never come out of again. That someone talked to me about counseling, the resources that were available, and offered me the support that I didn’t know I desperately wanted. That person might have just saved my life. 

I did what helped me the most when things started to get on top of me. I read and I wrote. I read about my situation, what I felt I needed to figure out, what my options were. I went online, I read through things, I looked at my options, talked to people who’d gone through the same things. I made a pros and cons list. Then I chose a course of action. I got help. I talked to somebody. I talked to a lot of somebodies going through the same things I was going through, professionals who could help me figure out what course of action to take and sort out the spaghetti bowl of tangled thoughts and emotions in my head. It was a lot of work and it took a lot of tears and it got really, REALLY dark for a while. I’m in no means done with this journey, but now I am properly smiling again, from the heart. 

While I think my love for my family and my faith foundation is too established for me to feel so hopeless for me to consider unaliving myself, I did have thoughts and I knew exactly what I needed to do if I decided to actually do what to me would’ve been the unthinkable. But I think my colleague asking me about how I really was saved me from a downward spiral that I was trying to ignore. I believe that if they hadn’t asked the question, I would have ignored everything until it would’ve been quite difficult to extricate myself from the mental tangle I’d allowed myself to be ensnared in.

We need to be brave enough to ask after people around us. We need to learn that asking the difficult questions are important. We need to create safe spaces where people feel secure enough to make themselves vulnerable. We need to break the stigma and start the conversation about mental health. We might just save a life.

Please, please dear friends, make sure you make YOUR mental health a priority. Make sure you take time for yourself. Make sure you practice self-compassion. Kindness and compassion are important for humanity, but it is equally important that we are kind and compassionate to ourselves too.

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s okay to ask for help.

If you need it, the meds are there to help too.

Remember that addressing your mental health issues is a journey, you don’t heal instantly. Every step forward is a victory. Take the wins. If you get a setback (and believe me you will, because the work is a habit-setting exercise in the most basic of terms), don’t let it stop you; pause, breathe, find your bearings and find your path, then move forward.

Remember, YOU ARE WORTH IT.

If you need to talk, I’m here.

Helpful links:

Yelly Writes

Mea culpa

Yelly

Things you do, when you’re home, alone and recuperating from a bout of Covid, is listen to music…or at least I do! Possibly much to the chagrin of my neighbours, I blast my music out and occasionally warble out loud and pretend I can sing. One of my favourite songs is All Mine by Shedaisy

My favourite lyrics are:
My loss
My lonely
My mistake
Mine only
Mine all, mine all

This song used to fill me with a lot of regret and latent sadness. Because when I used to listen to the song, it just felt like I was accepting status quo and the blame for something that wasn’t entirely something I could control. It felt like I was paying lip service to myself, the people around me and the entire universe and saying “yep, it’s my fault!” because it was expected of me, and that I was going to be blamed for it anyway. I think my rebellious subconscious nature objected to this acquiesence and was trying to stage a strike against just accepting the blame completely and accepting the full weight of responsibility.

These days, I’m completely happy to raise my hand up and say “Yeah, I f*cked that one up – all on me!” because it is all on me. I have no one else to blame but myself. My personal landscape has changed and I am now in the driver’s seat of my life. Well, okay, the somnolent Christian in me knows that I’m not really in control because God has a plan. But I am allowed choices and the choices I make, while possibly crap and not in keeping with what He has planned, are my choices and I am actually prepared to face the consequences of those choices. Because the choices were mine, I was not coerced, gaslit, forced, or bullied into making those choices.

I know I need to gain a better grip on the steering wheel of my life and the intention is to do that. I know that the renovation isn’t going to be quick, because there are so many horrible habits I need to unlearn, so many learned responses I need to decondition and so many thoughts in my head I need to silence. I need to have better conversations with myself and I need to stop the self-sabotage. I need to stop hearing A’s voice naysaying in my head.

I am definitely a work in progress and in no way nearing completion. But at least I am not working towards a blueprint of me that I have control over.

Yelly Writes

Not running away to the circus

Yelly

So it’s possibly Day 2 or 3 of this Covid jag. To be fair, I’m not quite sure I wasn’t ill in Vienna. Quite a few of us were unwell during the trip. This would mean that this would probably be Day 8 or 9?

I’m quite sure this intense apathy is a symptom of Covid. Because to be completely honest, I couldn’t necessarily care less about anyone or anything at the moment. I’m just so very tired and just want to hibernate.

At the moment, I just want to shout to everyone – NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS.

Yelly Snaps

Nach Wien!

Yelly

So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.

Ijeoma Umebinyuo
@yellywelly

Going on a trip to see family!

Not sure what my connectivity will be (the last time I traveled I was on a different phone service provider!) but I have my camera and my phone. I’ve got my work laptop with me because the intention is, I’m going to work whilst over there.

Good plan! All fingers crossed that it all goes to plan!

Yelly Writes

I give it a year…

Yelly
Photo by @yellywelly

For most of us, we get stronger slowly, and then get weaker slowly, with our cycles sometimes in synchrony with the land’s health, though other times independent of its larger cycles…You find yourself as you have always been, square in the middle of the metamorphosis, constantly living and dying: becoming weaker in your strength, finally… ― Rick Bass

The passage of time is relative…sometimes it feels like a day is over in the blink of an eye…and then there are days when it feels like time is dragging its heels.

I started writing this post a year to the day that I left my old life in Harwich. At the time, I was marking the anniversary of the day my entire world shattered into a million tiny pieces (I ended up posting a completely different blog entry). I moved away from a life I thought was going to be my forever life because the person I thought was going to be my forever person decided that I no longer belonged in his reality. Whatever his reasons (I’m sure it will be something I did because it was always my fault), I knew that I was no longer welcome in that environment and that I needed to go (my ex-forever person even helped me find a place to move to, wasn’t that nice of him?). While it was very polite and adult, it was becoming a toxic environment with the potential of becoming a powder keg situation. It was healthier for us to be apart rather than together. At the time, I absorbed all the blame, and even managed to convince myself that it was because I was at fault. After a lot of pragmatic soul-searching, I’ve come to accept that while I am to blame for the disintegration of the relationship, the blame is not entirely mine. I’m telling it like it is without any intention of assigning blame. It takes two people to make and break a relationship. It isn’t always 50/50 because relationships will require sharing the burden of balance, and sometimes, sharing the burden of balance requires that you carry more than half the burden. I know now that my understanding of relationships and the kind of compromises one is required to make was so different from his. I think his understanding didn’t factor in the gray areas (or maybe it did – we didn’t have the important discussions because I don’t think he liked laying himself bare because it made him vulnerable. I’ve accepted that he was all about protecting himself above all else). And that’s okay.

Life has certainly changed for me.

My environment has changed. My relationship status has changed. My living arrangements have changed. My appearance has changed considerably. My routine and habits are changing. My mindset is adapting to the changes in my life. My life is in constant flux and the only constant in my life right now is the certainty that change is a constant companion until I am able to settle into a rhythm that fits the person I am growing into. I’ve accepted that I was in a state of arrested development (because I’d willingly given up my life in order to adjust to the demands of my relationship with the ex) and because I’m no longer in that relationship, it’s as if the pause button has been pressed again and my life is moving forward again. To be fair, it’s probably not an accurate description of how my life is moving because I think my life pivoted when I was in my relationship and now that I’m not in it anymore, it’s pivoted again.

My life is pivoting again.

it certainly makes me wonder what my life will look like next year.

It’s a scary but exciting prospect!

Yelly Writes

Sitting well

Yelly
@yellywelly

“Sometimes in life we need to sit with things for a minute, maybe on the fringe of things, not only to savor the wealth of the moment, but take a moment to figure out how to respectfully engage it.”

Craig D. Lounsbrough
Yelly Writes

Movie Quote – Must Love Dogs

Yelly

I’ve always laughed at this quote from Must Love Dogs. Lately it’s resonated for a different reason. Because I’ve actually found myself eating chicken over the sink! Ah the glamourous stylings of living alone!

@yellywelly

I remembered the quote today because of a documentary I watched on Netflix – Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food. It’s just underlined the importance of food safety and being clean in the kitchen. If anything, I’m particularly thankful for my ex’s hyper-vigilance about being desperately clean when working with raw meats in the kitchen, in particular, chicken. I’m particularly fussy about washing fruit and veg, but I think being particularly aware about cross-contamination when dealing food has kept me safe in terms of food poisoning. That’s probably a whole other post in itself.

What are your food/produce washing habits like?

Yelly Writes

Gray day, local colour – God’s Own Junkyard

Yelly

Today was a bit of a washout in terms of weather situations. I was hoping for better weather because I had my niece and nephew over to visit me. I wanted to take them around The Stow because I thought there were interesting things to see around where I live…also I wanted to cheer them up a little bit. But Mother Nature had other ideas.

We had a bit of a soggy walk to God’s Own Junkyard but I hoped it was interesting enough for them. I’ve been to GOJ several times now, it just being around the corner from me but I’m always so surprised at how close it really is.

@yellywelly

God’s Own Junkyard is a collection of new, used, salvaged, and reclaimed neon signs that would look so very comfortable in movie sets and fairgrounds. I do like having a bit of a wander because every time I go, there’s always something new to see. I always say it’s a welcome and gloriously riotous assault on the senses and I thoroughly recommend going and having a look at the lights. There’s a little bit of everyone for everyone – cute, staid, functional, sexy, pious, naughty, kinky an downright raunchy.

If anything, once you’re done, you can head to the lovely cafe and have a drink (tea, coffee, soda, cocktail or cocktail – the menu is quite good!) and a bite to eat if you fancy it.

It’s free to visit and I think it’s certainly worth a visit but note that because of the content and subject of some of the signs, parents are warned that there will be potentially awkward conversations with the little ones. Younger audiences will need a responsible adult to accompany them around. Also, pictures from mobile phones are encouraged but bigger cameras are very much discouraged. But visit! It’s an experience worth having!

God’s Own Junkyard is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays and is at the Ravenswood Industrial Estate, Shernhall Street, London, E17 9H. Remember to check the GOJ website for information on open dates and special events as they can be closed when things are happening.

Yelly Writes

TV quotes – Sweet Magnolias

Yelly

I love a TV binge and I’ve just finished the last installment of Sweet Magnolias. I always feel like I watch too much TV because as soon as I finish a series I go “Now what?”

I enjoyed Sweet Magnolias because it was based on a series of books by Sherryl Woods, who was an author I read when I was in college (university for everyone in the UK). I used to devour romance novels and Sherryl Woods was one of my favourite authors (together with Sandra Brown, Julia Quinn, Judith McNaught, Teresa Medeiros…I could name so many more, to be completely honest!). I sometimes think my hopelessly unrealistic romantic tendencies can be traced to my romance novel addiction!

I posted this quote on my Instagram (follow me? I’m @yellywelly on most socials!) stories a few days ago because it struck a chord. I’m finding that a lot of things strike chords in me these days. Maybe because I’ve stopped ignoring the things that resonate. Or maybe because I’ve become decidedly sappy these days!

I’m waiting for the next few Virgin River episodes to drop (I think they’re meant to start airing on Netflix in the fall)…what’s on your watch list? Recommendations VERY welcome!