“You’re graceful and calm on top but underneath you’re paddling like mad”. It made sense. My therapist said she’d never met anyone like me before. My poker face had been mastered for a while but inside I felt so sick. Someone was screaming inside of me shouting for help but I honestly couldn’t tell anyone. Things ran through my mind that I felt so guilty to think.

Doing the form that tells the therapist your current state of mind was horrible. For people close to me to have seen what I wrote on that paper would have shocked them a lot. I ticked boxes that made me cry there & then.

To be so honest to someone I didn’t know, I think actually started me on the right track to recovery as such.

So many things came out about my struggle such as guilt that I wasn’t doing enough for Isobella, and with having a c-section I ended up disconnected from her for 3 weeks. It’s was so horrible. I felt so lost with her & that I didn’t know her. I think the fact that it was ‘she looks so much like daddy’ and ‘wow she’s very fair haired isn’t she’ and the best definitely was ‘wow she looks nothing like you!’

Well!! I’ll tell you what, I know she came out my tummy as I have the scar to prove it! Being able to vent and get so much off my chest made me realise that I actually did have a lot of issues that I needed help with.

I’d struggled with my older so called ‘brother’ completely taking me out of his life for no reason, stopping me from seeing my nieces and nephews. Rejection when you’re suffering with depression; he couldn’t have timed it worse.

Finally we came up with 3 things I needed from this CBT:

• Reassurance that I was a good mum
• To stop feeling guilty for everything
• Stop being a walkover!

It was strange having technically a stranger making me feel like I had the biggest arm around me & that maybe I could get out of this rut. I still couldn’t call anyone and say how much I was struggling. I cried every day and just wanted someone to ask me to talk so I could tell them how bad I’d got, thinking it was best that I wasn’t around. Being a burden. It’s hard to even write this down.

I knew that there was so much more to life that this horrible illness! Getting married, watching our beautiful daughter grow, knowing the sleepless nights would pass and that our lives together had only just started! So many positives blocked by black clouds.

This was the first step to making my life and my families life so much better.

I would always think about a song my Grandad loved as he passed when I was 6 months pregnant ‘Don’t worry about a thing, cuz every little thing is gonna be alright’. Amazing how much I’m hearing that song on the radio at the moment!