“Lizzie’s life hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Eighteen years ago, she made the difficult decision to leave London for Paris to escape her best friend’s fiancé, the man who’d attacked her and turned her world upside down. Secure in the belief that she and her daughter, Helena, are now safe from harm, Lizzie contemplates her future. But is the nightmare really over?

When the captivating Sky Donoghue comes along, pulling Helena into dangerous waters, Lizzie’s strength and judgement are put to the test. Just how far should she go to save her daughter? How far will she go to save herself?”

I’d had a lot of feedback that Swimming Upstream had left readers wanting to know more about some of the characters and although I’d never intended to sit down and write a series, it became clear to me soon after Swimming Upstream was published with Booktrope just under a year ago that I needed to tie up some loose ends. I wanted both books to be capable of being read as individual stand-alone stories, but I loved the characters in Swimming Upstream and it was great to have a chance to join them again for what turned out to be a real adventure for me and a chance to blend my love of women’s fiction with my interest in crime writing and psychological fiction (the story starts with Lizzie heading to court where she’s on trial for attempted murder!)

I really enjoyed writing Swimming Home and I’ve got to say that the story just came pouring out. I’ve had several people ask me how long it took me to write and the answer is that it really only took around three months in total, deducting the time that I also spent doing other work too. I’d spent some time thinking about the story and coming up with a well-defined plot beforehand, which helped.  Once I’d got the plot down on paper the story just flowed.

Swimming Upstream is published by Booktrope and available in both ebook and paperback at Amazon on the link below as well as by pre-order from your local bookshop.

 http://mybook.to/Swimming-Home-Upstream-Book-ebook

Finding out that my son was so severely disabled was without a doubt the most difficult challenge I’ve ever had to face.  The progress is so slow and the rewards are so few.  Imagine having a goal – losing weight for instance – which requires you to cut out all your favourite foods and run five miles every day. But every day when you get on the scales you are the same weight you were last week and the week before and the week before that. You can NEVER give up, stop running, lay down on the sofa and eat chocolate. You must keep on going day after day, week after week, month after month, even though there is little hope to give you the motivation you need. One day, you get on the scales and you’ve lost a pound. You are so happy, even though you know that this will probably be all you will lose for another few weeks, months or even years.

This is what it’s like being parents of learning disabled children. Hope is crushed on a daily basis by the reality of our children’s limitations. But we will never stop trying to help them learn, walk, talk or achieve their potential, whatever that might be. I could be sentimental and tell you that our children’s smiling faces are all we need to keep us going. On a good day, we feel that way. Of course we do. We love them and we wouldn’t be without them for the world. But any parent of a kid with special needs will tell you that more often we feel crushed by the weight of the responsibility, the exhaustion of the sleepless nights, the stress of the behaviour problems and the relentlessness of the constant supervision that’s required.

My J has taught me so much, though.  I’ve learned the value of those small steps, and the meaning of the words ‘charity begins at home’. When I qualified as a lawyer I had such high aspirations. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to travel to socially deprived or poverty-stricken countries for Oxfam or for Amnesty International, to work on big miscarriages of justice cases, or or to help the thousands of women who are the victims of regimes of inequality. But life got in the way. Having a disabled child has meant that I can no longer travel or sometimes even leave the house very easily. But I’ve learned the value of loving my neighbour, of donating to a project to help a child walk or a friend’s dog beat cancer, or of taking the time to talk to someone who’s lonely or who’s suffering mental distress (however challenging that might be) and trying to ease their pain.

I love people and I love writing about them – and that’s one thing I can do from home. I may not be able to save an innocent person from death or help the starving millions, but it makes me really happy when readers contact me to say that that my novel has resonated with them and has inspired them or made them feel less alone.

I’ve learned that there’s more than one way to leave your mark on the world. You may not get your name in the history books, but you’ll leave your footprint on someone’s heart.

Photo: J walking down the road with the help of his little brother

Hazel’s physio fundraising page for Oscar:   http://www.justgiving.com/SCOTTTOWERS

My problem started after I had children. My son J, who has a severe learning disability, would wake after that first period of deep sleep. We all do this in fact, but whilst most of us barely remember doing so and will roll over and go back to sleep, it’s common for kids with a learning disability to figure that as they’ve woken, it’s time to get up. And that’s precisely what J did for 2 out of 3 nights of the week, eventually dropping off around 5 or 6 a.m. – if, indeed, at all. Now, even when J sleeps well I have fallen into the pattern of jumping at the slightest sound from the moment my deep sleep period is over and quite often even if there is no sound at all. I will then follow the pattern set for me by J and remain alert for most – if not the rest – of the night.

This early morning period appears to be the time when our subconscious reminds us of our deepest fears and concerns, the fear of not sleeping being one of them! I was chatting with my brother-in-law this weekend about this and he pointed out that in evolutionary terms we are programmed to be of low mood, anxious and on guard at that time of the morning as that’s the time when our ancestors were likely to have been most at risk of attack from a hungry mammal looking for its breakfast. My husband (who sleeps like a log, despite his protestations that he doesn’t) agrees and says that I sleep with “one eye open and one hand on my gun” (figuratively speaking, of course. I don’t actually own a gun!)

Sasha Stephens blows apart the common theory propagated by doctors that poor sleep is linked with depression and therefore that medication is the answer. Of course it can be, but it doesn’t mean that that is the root of the problem. I have to say that I agree. Ms Stephens is not a doctor, nor is her approach to insomnia cure scientific. But she is someone who knows absolutely everything there is to know about insomnia, having suffered chronically for over a decade and having researched and tried every remedy, pill or relaxation method on the market. She is now fiercely opposed to any method of promoting sleep that will provide an artificial crutch and decrease your confidence in your own ability to sleep. She advocates instead breaking the destructive patterns we have around sleep, listing 13 mistakes we make and making 12 “promises” that will cure your sleep problems for good.

If you want to know more about The Effortless Sleep Method check out Sasha Stephens’ websites www.sashastephens.com and www.effortless-sleep.com which are also full of helpful tips for a good night’s sleep.
 
UPDATE: THE CAUSE MIGHT BE PHYSIOLOGICAL! IF YOU CAN RELATE TO ANY OF THE ABOVE YOU MIGHT WANT TO ALSO READ THIS ARTICLE ABOUT THE LINK WITH NIGHT-TIME WAKING/WORRYING AND BLOOD SUGAR CRASHES:

http://www.naturalhealthadvisory.com/daily/natural-health-101/do-you-bolt-awake-at-3-a-m-low-blood-sugar-symptoms-may-be-to-blame/

Photo courtesy of David Castillo Dominici/freedigitalphotos.net

To be honest, Valentines Day means nothing to me. It used to when I was younger and single, in that I never got any cards. Valentines Day was just an annual reinforcement of my negative self-image that would sustain me for the year to come. The truth of the matter is that I wasn’t popular at school and even when I started to have boyfriends, none of them was ever really the hearts and flowers type. Later, during my many years as a single woman in my late twenties and early thirties, I didn’t get a single card. I learned not to expect one either. I just wasn’t the type of woman that had romantic men running after her. But it didn’t mean that I wasn’t loved.

If the prospect of Valentine’s Day traditionally fills you with dread and simply exacerbates feelings of loneliness, isolation or loss then you may find this blog post from Girl on a Wire as heartwarming as I did.

http://girlonawireblog.tumblr.com/post/76319682423/my-funny-valentines

I too wish to dedicate Valentines Day to all my lovely friends.

“Blue Skies, Broken Hearts” image Copyright © Brandon Weight

The tabloids would have us believe that lawyers are all fat cats and that legal aid lawyers are sitting around creaming off the legal aid budget at the expense of the taxpayer. The stark truth is that legal aid rates for criminal cases haven’t risen in 10 years and that many criminal defence advocates are working for less than £100 per day, with the more experienced lawyers now looking to leave the profession as proposals for further cuts mean that it’s no longer viable to run a legal aid firm.

The proposal that a single fixed fee be paid for a magistrates’ court case – regardless of whether the defendant pleads guilty or not guilty – is a barely concealed incentive for lawyers to put pressure on defendants to plead guilty, instead of testing the evidence against them. Running a trial will usually involve several weeks’ preparation and two or three days at court for an advocate – and yet the fee that’s proposed is the equivalent of two days’ work for a plasterer’s labourer on a building site.

As defence lawyers, it’s not just legal advice we give. We are trained to spot the vulnerable, to deal with the young, to assist those with mental health problems and learning difficulties and to secure them the help they need to be dealt with fairly during the investigation stage of the proceedings. My colleagues and I get out of bed and go to the police station in the middle of the night – sometimes spending several hours there, giving expert legal advice that could be life-altering for the person detained  – for less money than you’d pay an emergency plumber or a mechanic for an hour of their time during the day. And the proposal is that the fees are cut further this year, in stages, by a total of 15% .

We all know that this country is in financial difficulty. But ensuring that those who stand accused have a fair and just hearing is the cornerstone of a civilised society. The rule of law that has prevailed in this country for centuries can’t be allowed to be undermined so drastically because of the greed of a monied minority that brought our economy to the place it is now.

If you are as concerned as I am about these proposals you might like to sign this petition:

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-uk-government-save-legal-aid-to-protect-access-to-justice-for-all

Building resilience into your career isn’t just about strength, keeping going in the face of difficulty or refusing to give up when confronted with adversity. Holding on to a career goal that’s not deliverable, or going above and beyond in a job that isn’t giving anything back, will do nothing but sap your confidence. Sometimes it makes sense just to let go and move on.

Even the most resilient people have the ability to be flexible in their actions, thoughts and emotions, and adapt in the face of difficulty. Resilience involves knowing when to change direction; knowing when staying angry, defiant or resentful isn’t helping; and knowing that there are always other possibilities, and recognising when they appear.

Resilience is often seen as an innate quality – you either have it or you don’t. We can all think of people who seem to deal with whatever life throws at them, and others who seem to collapse when faced by difficulty. Does DNA make the difference?

The answer seems to be that your genetic makeup plays only a small part: what really makes a difference is the experience of facing adversity. A life without challenge, as attractive as it may seem, doesn’t prepare you for the bad times. If you are able to identify and access resources that will help, you’ll spend less time under stress.

Steven Southwick, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, and Dennis Charney, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, have recently published the results of 15 years of work on resilience, which identified factors that allow people to lead successful lives even when experiencing life or work stress.

Their work compared people who had developed depression under stress with those that did not, to try and discover what differentiated them. The answer lay not in their genetic makeup, but in behaviours which one group used, and the other did not.

1. Be optimistic, but accept reality. It’s sometimes difficult, but being able to acknowledge rather than deny your situation will help you to deal with it. Denying, blaming, avoiding or unrealistic hoping is wasted energy.
2. Recognise what you have control over, and what you don’t. People stress themselves by wanting to exert control in a situation where it is not possible to do so. By choosing how to act based on what you can change and what you cannot, you can regain a sense of agency.
3. Seek support. The Yale research found a strong relationship between the size of an individual’s social network and their ability to cope with stress. Talking with friends, or seeking out others who are in the same situation and can empathise, is important to recovery. Feeling supported triggers the release of oxytocin, a compound connected with social bonding, which counters the harmful effect of stress chemicals on the body.
4. Exercise. You usually don’t want to when you’re feeling stressed, but it acts to counter the effects of harmful stressor chemicals such as cortisol.
5. Sleep. A good night’s sleep can put the world into a different perspective. If you’re finding it hard to sleep, try exercise: it’s a natural way of inducing tiredness.
6. Eat well. When stressed, it’s easy to neglect your diet, or to turn to junk food as comfort. Eating well helps to boost the immune system, and can be a way of reminding yourself that you’re worth taking care of.
7. Learn about simple meditation techniques. Mindfulness is commonly used to help people deal with difficulty. It focuses on helping you to focus on the present moment – not what catastrophe may happen tomorrow, or what terrible thing happened yesterday, but what is happening right now. In the process, thoughts become less powerful and the body responds. Try an introductory class, or get books by Jon Kabat Zin, Mark Williams and Michael Chaskalson, which have simple mindfulness exercises that can be built into everyday life.
8. Take yourself away from the issue. There’s real value in staying connected to the parts of your life that you enjoy – the you that can enjoy dancing, having a laugh, being creative or watching a sport. It’s important to experience the pleasure that those other yous can offer, even while you are living with difficulty.
9. Create meaning. Getting through difficulty will be easier if you can create meaning from the experience.
10. Write about it. No one else needs to see it, but the act of writing down how you are feeling, thinking and behaving will help you change those thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Putting it out there allows you to look at it in a different way than when it is in your head, and to access new thoughts and feelings.

Carole Pemberton is an executive coach and member of the Career Savvy Women team (http://www.careersavvywomen.com). She has a particular interest in coaching to help rebuild resilience. You can also find her at http://www.carolepemberton.co.uk

Lisa, like me, is fed up of the endless surveys which conclude, variously, that either working mums or stay-at-home mums are the happiest and the least depressed. Given that the surveys conclude differently each time, depending on who is conducting them, it seems pretty obvious that we can’t draw any real conclusions from them. And what is the point in them anyway?  Not only is the decision to return to work often governed by economic factors which are beyond the control of many women and their families, it’s also the case that a huge number of women, just like their male counterparts, gain a great deal of satisfaction and fulfilment from a stimulating career and wouldn’t have it any other way. Equally, I know many women who find raising children full-time the most fulfilling and interesting career they could possibly have.

As Lisa Belkin comments: “In an ideal world, there would be fewer studies about relative happiness and more about what could be done to maximize happiness for both “camps.” Studies of how to provide more mental-health treatment for poorer women, who are more likely to be part of the depressed stay-at-home cohort. How to improve the availability of child care for women who would like to work but can’t find safe affordable placement for their children. How to increase flexibility in the workplace, so that the choice isn’t keep the job or be home for dinner.”

Interestingly, the most recent survey that I came across which concluded that women who stayed at home were happier than working mothers also concluded that married couples are happier than co-habitees and single people, which does make me wonder what’s really the issue here and whose issue it is.  Is it really the case that women are so insecure about their parenting choices that they have to convince others round to their way of thinking? Or is it perhaps bigger than that – are we all being manipulated? Is it perhaps a right wing versus left wing debate, maybe, or an argument between the old school of society and those that are more progressive – with women as the guilt-ridden pawns in the middle?  Who on earth decided that it was a battle to be won, one way or the other? And why aren’t men who are parents part of the debate?

I find it hard to comprehend why we, as women, should need to keep on justifying our life choices – to each other or to anyone else. Why not leave women to their life choices, just as men have theirs? Those children who grow up in families with a mother who is always present will have a different experience of growing up to those children who have spent time in childcare with other children. But providing the quality of the parenting and the childcare respectively is good enough, where’s the problem? Aren’t all our experiences of growing up different? Aren’t we richer as human beings for that? Surely the best lesson that we can teach the next generation, by our own example, is how to be happy in life by doing what we love – and that we deserve to be happy. Each and every one of us. After all, can any job be more important than that?

Both my friend and I lost a parent at a young age but we also had to deal with other issues – issues that traumatized us and affected the way we related to the world as children and – as an extension of that – affected our relationship with our growing selves.  We adapted and adjusted our personalities to fit with our situation and parts of our true selves were lost in the process.

One of the common consequences of this kind of “splitting off” of a part of yourself is depression. I have been fortunate in that I have never really suffered (at least not long-term) with this illness but I know many people that have, and instead of looking in at it from the outside as many do and wondering what it’s all about, I have always felt close to sufferers and felt that “there but for the grace of God go I”.

In the past few days the British media has been full of stories about British actor and comedian Stephen Fry, whose well-publicised battle with bipolar disorder culminated in a suicide bid last week. I was pleased to see that the media reported this with sensitivity and that it did much to raise awareness of this debilitating disease. One of the things that is so misunderstood is what such fortunate and famous people such as Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax and Robbie Williams – people who would appear to have everything going for them – have to feel miserable about. One of the myths about depression is that there has to be a reason for feeling down. There doesn’t.  At least not a tangible one – one to do with material success, having loved ones, fame or fortune. And that’s the point.  Because if it was as simple as that you’d be able to do something about it. For many it’s a clinical disease which is triggered by hormonal changes in the body and/or brain chemistry.

For many more people, though, the disease will have its roots in something that has happened in the past, and treatment of the symptoms with drugs alone will not eliminate the cause. That’s where counselling comes in, and this is a treatment that continues to be overlooked and under-funded in Britain, with waiting lists of up to a year on the NHS.

This is tragic. Because I truly believe that, with help, it’s possible to recover from a difficult or traumatic childhood or traumatic event that has left you scarred. I know, because I’ve done it. It takes time and effort and courage and it doesn’t happen overnight.  But for me, it was well worth the time, the pain and the effort that I invested.

I mentioned in my latest blog post – How to be Happy Alone – that as part of my “recovery” I had also read a lot of self-help books and one of my readers asked what they were. So here are just some of the books that I can think of that have helped and inspired me over the years:

Toxic Parents – Susan Forward

Feel the Fear and do it Anyway – Susan Jeffers

The Consolations of Philosophy – Alain de Botton

Women Who Love too Much – Robin Norwood

The Cinderella Complex – Colette Dowling

The Road Less Travelled – M. Scott Peck

The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

Families and How to Survive Them – John Cleese and Robin Skinner

Life and How to Survive it – John Cleese and Robin Skinner

If anyone has read any other inspirational or enlightening books then I would love to have your recommendations.

This made me smile – I was single at the time. But seriously, what is it about being single that we find so hard?  Is it just the loneliness? The pain of the last break-up? Or is it the stigma that seems to attach to being single – whether from society or from ourselves. Have you ever felt that if you’re not in a relationship, you must be unlovable? I know that I felt that when my long-term relationship ended. And yet, it hadn’t ended because I was intrinsically flawed. It ended because I had begun to recognise that something was missing in the relationship. And that something was me. Myself. My self.

Suddenly, overnight, I had the freedom to do what I wanted and to choose my own direction in life. And yet being alone made me extremely insecure. I was lonely. Desperately so. I wanted a man in my life. But I also realised that the fact that I needed a relationship so badly was precisely the reason why I couldn’t be in one for a while. Deep down I knew that that feeling of being loved was something I had to cultivate within myself.

In order to achieve that, these are the things I did:

1. I pursued the things I loved doing. My relationship with my ex had absorbed so much of my time (and even a chunk of my personality) that I struggled at first to recognise exactly what those things were. But when I thought back to my childhood and the things I had loved then, I soon reconnected…I walked, I swam, I sang, I started writing in a diary and found I enjoyed it. I worked hard at my career (I was in the publishing industry at the time) and before long I wrote the first draft of my novel “Swimming Upstream”. I also realised that I was interested in the law and in particular in human rights and I began to take evening classes and eventually began training as a lawyer. It was when I was writing, reading and learning something new that I felt the most inspired and least in need of a romantic relationship.

2. I made friends. Good ones. I invested time and energy in platonic relationships. I spent time walking and talking and having fun with my female friends (and one very good male friend). I nurtured those friendships and they in turn nurtured me.

3. I got in touch with my spiritual side. I have never been able to quiet my active brain long enough to meditate (I know, I know! Anyone can do it if they try hard enough. That’s something I still want to try and learn) but I read loads of inspirational and self-help books and became a good friend to myself. I also had some counselling to deal with the traumatic events I had experienced as a child.

4. I travelled. I went to new places. Again, travel and exploration was something that had excited me as a child. Not only had I pored over maps and looked forward to our first family holiday abroad, I could get inspired about walking a different route to school!

5. I concentrated a little less on looking good and more on feeling good – from the inside. I had an interest in nutrition – inherited from my mother – and made time each day to nourish my body (as well as my soul!) with big salads, soya products, fish and food supplements. I also gave up smoking during that time, and that contributed to my new sense of self-worth.

When I met the man who is now my husband I had been on my own (give or take the odd hopeless bout of dating) for seven years. But I was happy. Truly happy. I was well on the way to becoming a lawyer and I had got some positive feedback from a literary agent on the first draft of my novel Swimming Upstream. I was no longer looking for love as the solution to everlasting happiness. In short, I was the cake.  My husband was just the icing.

I’m no stranger to waking in the middle of the night and checking in with myself to see if there is anything I need to worry about. Once I’ve found something, I can be like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go until I’ve worried for at least a couple of hours. That said, I’m nothing if not resourceful and I was pleased to discover when I checked out “The Worry Cure” by Dr Robert Leahy recently that some of the coping strategies he recommends are ones that I’d already developed for myself.

One popular, recognised and apparently successful method of dealing with anxiety is the “wristband” technique. (You put an elastic band on your wrist, ping it and yell “Stop!” at yourself when your worry starts to manifest). It’s designed to bring you back to reality and get you “out of your head”. This seems like a good idea if you know that you are worrying about nothing and can literally make yourself “snap out of it”. However, pushing your problems to one side is not always the right thing to do.

Dr Leahy recommends instead that you first identify whether you are worrying about something “real” (i.e. something that is an actual threat or problem that needs solving) or simply “ruminating”, i.e. turning something abstract and probably unsolvable over and over in your mind. If it’s something real (money or health worries, perhaps, or problems at work) then you need to come up with strategies to solve them.  I have found that if my worry is founded on something real, my transition back to a peaceful sleep is usually precipitated by keeping a notepad by my bed and listing potential solutions. I will usually find an answer, get some sleep and act on it the very next day.

But is our worry well-founded and can we do anything about it? Or are we “ruminating” as Dr Leahy calls it? By this, he means chewing over and over a thought that we can’t accept, or dwelling on unanswerable questions, for instance “Why is life so unfair?”, “What did that person mean when they said that to me today?” or “Did I come across as rude/boring/stupid/uninteresting at that party?” Dr Leahy describes ways to combat this, stating that even if you could find a complete explanation for another person’s unfair behaviour towards you, or an answer to the impact of your behaviour on others, you would be no better off.  His principles are based on changing your core beliefs and the negative thoughts that stem from them.

An approach I like is that recommended by The Barefoot Doctor (a well-known practitioner and teacher of Taoism) in his “Handbook for the Urban Warrior”. He states that worrying is nothing more than a conditioned, knee-jerk reaction to the life choices that present themselves to all of us.  He likens life to an interactive game whereby you can press the “worrier” or the “warrior” button to decide how you want to experience it, i.e nervously and anxiously or feeling relaxed and confident. The outcome, he says, will remain the same either way! He says,“The process of attaining zero worry status takes between approximately two nano-seconds and forty-six years to complete, depending on how many times you forget.”

Hmmm. Well, that’s another thing. I’m somewhat forgetful too….

UPDATE: THE CAUSE MIGHT BE PHYSIOLOGICAL! IF YOU CAN RELATE TO ANY OF THE ABOVE YOU MIGHT WANT TO ALSO READ THIS ARTICLE ABOUT THE LINK WITH NIGHT-TIME WAKING/WORRYING AND BLOOD SUGAR CRASHES:

http://www.naturalhealthadvisory.com/daily/natural-health-101/do-you-bolt-awake-at-3-a-m-low-blood-sugar-symptoms-may-be-to-blame/