Fear

Around 18 months ago I had noticed my daughter was wearing long sleeves in the warmer weather. A child who loved summer, a child who thrived in the outdoors was now covering up areas of her body.

This was an alarm bell. Was it a body image issue, I was unsure. The second alarm bell rang when I noticed Band-Aid wrappers scattered around the house and bloody tissues hidden around her bedroom.

I cannot recall the first time I seen the cuts on my daughter’s body, maybe I consciously choose not to remember this moment.

But I do recall the thoughts that ran through my mind alongside the deep realisation we were entering into serious territory.

Is this really happening? Was this a deliberate act, had my child self-harmed?

I acted immediately.

It is important to note; I took this very seriously and I still do.

I sat with her, and I asked my daughter calmly and directly, are you cutting yourself.

My daughter answered me honestly with a yes.

Now whilst my immediate thought was concern, and this may be controversial for some of you reading or following along. I will share with you the thoughts that ran through my mind as-the cutting became more frequent and progressed to common self-injury.

Rational or not my thoughts at times were, is this a trend for young people now? Because as great as mental health awareness is. Young people are very big now in self-diagnosing and fitting in with trends and themes.

I know this as I have seen this in my years of working with youth, woman, and children.

Themes that are harmful.

I share this with you as this is honest and truthful.

It is my truth.

I applied my mental health first aider knowledge and addressed what my daughter was using to self-injure.

Razor blades and sharpener blades.

We were always trained when someone is self-harming to never remove the object they are using as this leads to them experimenting with other ways to self-injure. Which can lead to further serious harm or serious injury.

We’re their times I hid razors blades and sharpened objects, absolutely.

Had I gone against my training at times? Yes, absolutely I had. Because the parent in me took over, the reality took over, the fear was crippling.

Once the fear and realisation became reality, that this was more serious than I was aware of.

More serious than I wanted to admit too.

More serious than I was prepared for as her mother.

I had to face the truth, that self-injury was now her coping mechanism.

I dove deeper into the reasonings behind my daughter’s self-harming.

Writing this now I realise I was in survival mode, trying to stay strong, holding on to hope. Hopeful that we would both make it through.

My daughter started to tell me she was being told to kill herself, not once, not twice - but daily.

Being told and encouraged by her peers, that she may as well just end it all.

Fear. Crippling, unimaginable fear.

We made the decision to provide as many resources to my daughter as possible, reading material, apps, phone numbers, all the above. GP appointments, mental health plan, psychologists, everything we could possibly get our hands on. (I will further delve into this space in future as it is a blog entry of its own).

School was getting worse in the yard, there were many contributing factors toward the next decision we chose as a family. We decided we would home school and place our focus on our daughter’s wellbeing and mental health.

Yes, we factored in the previous years of home schooling through COVID, yes, we considered the impact to limited social interactions with her peers.

The truth is her self-injury was becoming so recurrent we needed to focus on helping her make it through.

Was this all the right thing to do, were we making the best choices? I still cannot answer this, all I know is we were going to put her first and try to keep her from descending deeper, we were going to do what ever it took to keep our daughter alive.

What I will add is watching your child, your only child hysterically crying before going to school every morning breaks a part of you.

Learning the gravity of what your child is experiencing in the school yard as well as online and not being able to eradicate all of this destroys a part of you. To know your child is now hurting herself to manage her pain, is pure fear.

Despair, heartbreak and fear.