Chic Mama

I have been tagged by the gorgeous and very talented Dulwich Divorcee (did you know she has just had a book published) in the hand bag meme. I hope the contents of my bag aren't too recognisable....they are very boring. I was hoping to find something weird and wonderful in there to wow you all but no, it is all very very boring.

I bought this Chloe bag years ago in Selfridges, it was an impulse buy but one which I absolutely love. The leather is so so soft and you can't tell it is Chloe unless you look at the underneath where it is studded 'Chloe'. I love it.


And here are the messy contents- click on picture if you want a really good look!


So, I have hand cream everywhere...the car, next to my bed, in the kitchen drawers and in my bag. If you suffer with very dry sore hands you can't beat neutrogena hand cream.
-Kiehls lip balm- smells of vanilla, lovely!
-Kiehls lip gloss-I have several different colours.
-A diary, two notebooks for making notes of various sorts including ideas for blog posts
-My favourite Mac 'feel so fine' lipstick
-Ignatia- a homeopathic remedy that stops tears in their tracks!
-An Orla Kiely purse that I got given free after spending many many hundreds of pounds in their shop on a coat and bag many moons ago. I like it's simple design although it's not very organised for bank cards.
-Glass nail file- you can't beat them for filing nails!
-Chocolate- definitely not for me!
-A soya bean. No idea why there is a stray soya bean in my bag
-2 pence! what??Where are all the missing two pound coins? 2 p!!!??? :0(
-Rose quartz- to heal my heart
-Hematite- to make me feel stronger
-Rubbish, this was just a small example, I was too embarrassed to show you how many bits of paper and tissues I had floating in my bag

So, please indulge me, Dulwich Mum, Gigi, Eternally Distracted and The Divorcee Dares To Dream, I would love to know what is in your bag!!

We all need to be concerned. We are raising a generation of highly stressed children and if we're not careful this ticking time bomb is going to blow up in our faces when these children get older. Our children are expected to do so much and are under considerable pressure that it's no wonder that the number of children self harming has increased at an alarming rate. The UK has the highest number of self-harmers in Europe and apparently 24,000 teenagers are admitted to hospital every year here because of self-harming.
Self harming is not a new phenomenon it's just become 'trendy' thanks to media and social websites but the devastation it causes is horrendous. Although the reasons children self-harm is very complex, the government should be looking at ways to decrease our children's stress levels. For more information there is this excellent website.

In light of the startling recent media coverage on the increase in children self-harming I wanted to do a long overdue update on my worries about my children and obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. If you are a new reader or missed the original post, here it is again.

Since writing that post I met with a respected authority on the subject who talked about her own experiences with OCD. She also gave me a great little booklet that has recently been published for parents of children with OCD by the OCD-UK charity.
The recommended treatment for OCD in children is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT. This involves talking therapy and giving the child the necessary 'tools' to help them overcome the OCD. The counting that my seven year old was being distressed about was taking over her life, she was missing things we said, her short term memory was terrible and she would be vacantly staring into space a lot of the time. We tried CBT  with my daughter, she has had one session and the constant counting has reduced to virtually nil. She was talked through a forest, a little house that she can retreat to when she is bombarded with these numbers and she did some drawing therapy too to draw her little safe retreat thus reinforcing it into her memory to use in times of stress . I don't think this will be the end of it for her as it seems  this is the way she reacts to stress  but I think she feels better, and so do I, knowing that it is treatable and possible to overcome with a little work.

Forgive this muddle of words and skipping from here, there, everywhere.
Have I done a treading water post before? Probably..... and if not, why not? I am staying afloat but only just. I'm not sure I have ever been as low as I am at the moment. I swing from despair, disbelief and anger to sobbing quietly in the corner to try and avoid the children from noticing. Unfortunately they have, the baby asked me this morning as I lifted him out of the cot, "Are you better now Mummy?" What am I doing to them? What is this doing to them?

At the weekend I went out, quite a posh do. A very rare invitation now-days, I wonder why?  Even walking into this party is a blur, I had a drink and I can't remember the rest. All I know is I must have shown myself up and from a friend's texts this week there is concern. What the hell I did I don't know but I have been beating myself up about it ever since. I am ashamed I behaved that way. I can't even go out and have fun...this is seeping in everywhere.
I often wonder and question " Am I normal?" other people seem to get over break ups much more quickly but I am reminded by professionals that this isn't a normal scenario...most people don't quite have the battles I have had to face.
On one of my favourite blogs Family Affairs and Others this week though was this post.....at last someone has shown me that I am normal, I am grieving but I am also living daily in my own world war three through no fault of my own. So thank you L, I hope one day I can also post something like that which helps even one person know that they are not alone, not a freak!

I went to sleep sobbing last night after reading the latest 'nail in the coffin'. I woke this morning with that all too familiar feeling of dread, I can't help but think is this it? Is this what I spent eighteen years with this man for to be disregarded and insulted in this way. I'm sure I will blog about it in more detail another time and I am hoping he will not get away with it anyway but this man wants to give me nothing. For eighteen years I was told I was loved, that I was adored and now I am being treated with this contempt. I keep wondering what I can do to earn money, to be able to support my five children myself. I have no skills, to be honest, naively I didn't think it would matter......I put all my maternal skills into bringing up our children whilst supporting their father in building up his empire. Our empire, or so I thought. It seems now that I amount to nothing more than the unpaid nanny.

Then this morning I went to see my counsellor, I've no idea what she said or what we discussed to make this sudden sense of calm surround me. It may be gone later but I wanted to write while I feel this way. I am shaking as I type this, my stomach keeps clenching, I am freezing and shivering as I have been all week but I feel slightly stronger than I did last night. Last night when I was plotting ways I could escape for a few days. What I'd have to do to enable me stay in bed for a few days and not think!