This morning it struck me that I haven’t wrote a blog for a while. I started these blogs to help me to feel heard, to help me to process and heal. To give me a voice when those I wanted to listen stopped listening.
This has been an incredibly empowering decision for me. My therapist is amazing. She completely understands my decision to stand by my Husband. I always walk away from our sessions feeling brave, feeling strong and hopeful. She gives me lots of praise and encouragement of how well I am doing. The single most helpful thing she has said to me is ‘Why don’t you write a blog?’
It’s when I am completely overwhelmed by my emotions that I write to make sense of them. Right now I don’t feel like that to be honest. I am under no illusion that I am ‘healed’ now or that I am through this storm as this whole journey is a rollercoaster.
The title of this blog ‘new normal’ is a term we’ve all heard banded about over the last couple of years, since Covid hit. I know it makes some people cringe. However it makes sense for me.
From the day of my husbands arrest in 2020, I hoped for and prayed for life to go back to the way it was. For it to be some sort of nightmare I would one day wake from.
After over a year and a half, I now know that is never going to happen.
My husband has been in Prison for almost 6 months now. I think I have accepted that I won’t wake up from this.
A few weeks ago when I was physically unwell and my hormones were also raging; I felt I was at breaking point / rock bottom. Since then I’ve been rebuilding myself both mentally and physically. That saying of when we reach rock bottom the only way it back up feels very relevant for me.
As my previous blogs talk so much about, I have lost so so many people since standing by my husband. I have been judged and labelled and written off. This shaming led me to feel overwhelming guilt and shame.
I now feel that I have processed this and I know I have not done anything wrong.
I told my therapist that I won’t be the same person who walks out of this storm who walked into it.
This is the biggest trauma of my life. There’s no 2 ways about it. However, I have built strength and resilience I didn’t know was possible. I have developed an even greater sense of empathy and compassion towards others than I’ve ever had.
I’ve dedicated the last 18/19 years to supporting those with multiple and complex needs. Predominantly mental health and addiction. Always being very respectful and empathic towards my clients.
Then going home to my very stable and level headed Husband.
Learning and understanding that my husband could completely fall apart like he did, I feel has helped me to understand people on a whole new level.
Throughout this journey I have become part of a community. A community of other non offending partners such as myself. I have learnt to understand them. I have also learnt to understand their Partners as I have my own.
I have concluded that, there’s no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Mental health doesn’t discriminate across age, gender, social or economic status. We as human beings are very complex. Good people can do back things.
I think it’s when we think we have it all figured out that life pulls the rug from underneath us. Screams at us to WAKE UP! Shoves our complacency up our arse.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is that there’s no profile of being a non offending partner or prisoners wife. I’ve met the most incredible women through this journey. So I’ve learnt that it’s not beyond me either.
I am slowly accepting that this is my ‘new normal’ and there’s something extraordinarily empowering in accepting that. It stops us from dwelling on what used to be. Things can happen in life, good and had that will change life as we know it forever.
We can’t keep on looking back. We can only move forward.
After the knock 
I find the term ‘new normal’ to be helpful as well. I think that this is a huge kind of grief and the acceptance of new normal is another stage in the process. It’s not linear of course but it’s another step toward normality, whatever that might now be, and it’s always a relief to have come through one of the storms that present along the way. We know there will be others but we do adjust. I accepted recently I will never own a home again (short of a miracle) and as hard as it was, I have accepted that and it’s been quite liberating in a way because I think it helps to look forwards and say whatever comes we will get through it. It doesn’t mean there won’t be bumps along the way but we know the route has changed on the journey & that’s ok xx
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Thank you lovely. I’m glad fou resonate with what I mean too. Throughout the worst parts of this journey there is an overwhelming sense of shock and grief as you say. We cannot quite believe that this is our life. Yet I guess the longer things go on the more it normalises for us.
A guy called on Friday trying to sell me a new digital package. Although it sounded good I just didn’t want to change anything. I’ve always feared complacency in life, staying in the same job for years, having the same hair style etc..yet the enforced changes in our life since the knock has made me crave some calm, some routine and normality.
To accept where you are and pause right there is ok. In fact it’s empowering.
I am so glad you’ve learnt acceptance too.
As for owning your own home, that’s been such a huge loss and in itself has come with a sense of bereavement.
Your acceptance shows how much you’re healing. đź’– Xxx
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I understand that. When things have changed so suddenly and vastly, we do begin to hang on to what is regular and routine. It does change every element of our thinking. You must do whatever you need to do to feel safe. You’re doing amazingly well X
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