young people

Silence is Noisy

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

We’ve passed the seven month mark. Seven months since Mum died. I’m not sure when I’ll stop counting these milestones. Maybe it’ll happen when things get easier. I’m not sure it’s getting any easier yet, in some ways it’s getting harder. The day Mum died was hard, but every day since, there’s been a nagging voice in my head saying: “The longer she’s dead, the more she misses.”

I moved house again last week. A few months ago I had to move out of halls very quickly due to taking a Leave of Absence from uni, so I lodged with someone for a couple of months. But last week I moved out, into a flat which I’m sharing with a friend. I’ve also got a new job – I’m still waiting for a start date, but it’s another life change. They’re both really positive life changes, but changes nonetheless.

My Dad has been incredibly helpful in all this, as have a couple of friends. They’ve helped me make decisions, taught me valuable life lessons, and in Dad’s case, helped me move everything I own from one house to another.

I have noticed Mum’s absence, though. When you get a new job, one of the first things you usually do is tell your parents. When moving house, your parents (with any luck!) provide a vehicle of some kind and some extra arms and legs for carrying things up and down stairs. Mums, in particular, are good at remembering things you forget (such as cleaning products – a quick trip to the shop now means we have the best-stocked cleaning cupboard in York, but it’s something I hadn’t factored into the big move).

There wasn’t really anything that she would have done that didn’t get done anyway. In fact, I can’t think of anything in particular that would have been her ‘job’. At one point I did consider she may have helped me buy some new work clothes, but then I remembered she used to practically pay people to take me shopping, so maybe not!

A lack of significant ‘role’ for her doesn’t mean I’ve felt her absence any less, though. I didn’t miss her too much during the actual house-move (another pair of hands would have been useful but we can blame my brother’s man-flu for that!), but I missed her that first night. I don’t know why I missed her then – even if she was alive she’d have been at her house, not mine – but I did.

Before Mum died, I never knew how much space an absence could take up. I didn’t realise how noisy silence could be. I don’t really know how to describe it, and perhaps it’s something you never really come across until someone close to you dies, but absence can seep into every aspect of your life and can grow at an alarming rate.

It goes deeper than a simple nothing. “Nothing” can easily be masked by white noise; the radio, TV, a trip with some friends, tasteful home furnishings, or a chat on the phone. “Nothing” is easy to cover up. But absence is deeper. No amount of noise can stifle it, no amount of talking can deplete it, no amount of looking-after-yourself, being sociable or distracting yourself can make it go away. It demands to be noticed.

Time is moving forward, life is changing, and good things are happening. None of it makes the absence disappear, and sometimes it makes the absence even more noticeable, but it’s also essential. My life can’t remain in 2015, it can’t get stuck in a time when Mum was still alive – it’s got to carry on, and that means that I’ve got to keep on doing what I can to live in the present.

Regaining Okay

~ Naomi ~ 4 Comments

Today, everyone I started uni with three years ago will hand in their final essays (and then probably go off and celebrate with a suitable amount of alcohol followed by a few days/weeks of sleep).

Taking leave from uni in October was the right thing to do. I have no doubt about that. Not going back in January was undoubtedly also the right decision at the time (albeit one which I had slightly less control over).

It doesn’t stop it being odd, though. Last week my Facebook was filled with dissertation hand-ins and this week it’s full of final hand-ins and celebrations. It feels like more than seven months since I was one of them (a living, breathing, highly caffeinated student). It feels like a lifetime ago. A lot has happened and changed in the past seven months, but it’s not just that. I really underestimated how much I was in the uni bubble, and I really underestimated how quickly I would fall out of it and feel so out of it.

Life is bringing more changes for me at the moment. I’m moving out of the place I’ve been living for five months this weekend. I’m starting a new job in the next few weeks. I’ve just finished the course I’m doing at Mind. Lots of things are changing. It’s all positive change but change nonetheless. I’ve come a long way in the past few months, but there is a long, long way still to go. I’m not working on trying to get the ‘old me’ back any more. Too much has happened and changed, and I’ve changed with it, but I’m still working on getting to a place where I have more good days than bad days, a few less ‘grief attacks’, and hopefully a lot less anxiety (something which continues to rudely interrupt my life no matter how much I tell it I’d really quite like it to disappear).

My friendships have changed, too. A lot of people who I expected to stick around haven’t, but that’s okay. It’s life. Some things some people have said or done I’ve not agreed with, but I’ve also learned to stand up to that, and I’ve learned it’s okay to leave people at a point in your life. Not everybody has to make it to your future. I’m learning to trust some of my closer friends more, and to go to them when I need them, something which is really hard to do when one of the people you always thought would be around and be there for you dies.

I don’t regret taking time out from uni. It was the right decision. It has given me space, allowed me some time to breathe, and enabled me to meet some wonderful people who I can now call my friends. I’ve really settled into a new volunteering role (which I’m hoping to keep up alongside my new job), and I would never have found it had I not arrived on their doorstep five months ago and basically spilled my life story to them and asked them if they could help me.

Even with knowing it was the right decision, it is weird seeing everyone finish and I imagine it will be weird come graduation, too. There is also a nagging voice in my head telling me I should have stuck it out and ‘just done it’ (fun little words pop up like ‘failure’ and ‘weak’). I’m trying to ignore it, though. I know that’s not the case. I’ve continued to live, continued to get up every day and do things even when they scare me, I’ve continued to work on regaining ‘okay’.

6 Months

~ Naomi ~ 7 Comments

It’s 6 months today since Mum died. There aren’t really any words to put to it. It’s just a fact.

A lot has changed in the past 6 months. I live somewhere new, I’ve made new friends, I’ve lost a few friends, I stopped going to uni and started volunteering at a few places and doing a course at Mind, I started a new job, and I’m slowly trying to develop some sort of a social life.

There have been some great things and some not-so-great things.

I thought maybe I’d start to miss Mum a little less, but at the moment I seem to be missing her more and more. I’m not sure why, perhaps it’s the weather, who knows. 6 months-post death and people stop asking. Not a criticism on anyone, life moves on, people move on, and there’s not a lot you can update when it comes to grief (as opposed to illness where something happens all the time). Sometimes I just want a Mum hug though, they’re different to other hugs. It can feel like all I need is one hug and I’ll be on my way. I didn’t live with Mum in her final years so it’s not like I saw her every day, but we did text often and I knew where she was if I needed her – I suppose I always took that for granted. She wasn’t meant to die.

So 6 months have passed. Soon there will be another 6 months, and then another. I just hope that with each passing 6 months, things get a little easier.

Spotting the Gap

~ Naomi ~ 4 Comments

Today I went to the Central Leeds Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Event. It’s a very long name but was essentially a day in a room with a bunch of lovely people from around Yorkshire discussing children and young people’s mental health and the barrier to them accessing care. It was interesting and there were some (hopefully!) useful discussions. There were a lot of commissioners there too who seemed to want to listen to what young people were saying, so that’s always positive.

Halfway through the day we were left to our own devices to network. I met some lovely ladies from the charity ‘Just B‘. Just B are based in Harrogate and part of St Michael’s Hospice. They work with children and young people both before and after bereavement, and with adults post-bereavement (whether the bereavement itself was linked to the hospice or not). I had heard of them before but didn’t know a lot about them and certainly didn’t know they were linked to the hospice.

After we’d been speaking a little while, I brought up Mum (she often comes up in conversation, it usually goes something along the lines of ‘oh you live in York, are you at uni?’ ‘no, I was though’, ‘oh right did you graduate? what did you study?’ at which point I promptly forget that cancer/death/mum might make people feel uncomfortable and proceed to either have a great conversation, or a mini counselling session, or a mini counselling-someone-else session, or a very awkward end to a conversation and we all move on). Today it resulted in a great conversation.

I spoke to them about the gap in bereavement and terminal illness support for ‘young adults’. When you’re under 18 and there is a terminal illness in the family, the school, or a local charity often steps in and offers support. When you’re a ‘proper adult’, there is normally a friend who has been through something similar and can offer a shoulder. You’re also more likely to be settled somewhere and possibly have a job. When you’re over 18 but not really an adult, your friends are stumped, if you’re at uni they feel a bit stuck because it’s not something they often have to deal with, services often feel ‘too old’ and don’t seem to understand the complexity of being in your twenties (where you still really need your parents and more often than not are not settled in a stable living place and/or stable job). Young Adult Carers are available in some areas and they are absolutely brilliant, but there’s definitely a difference between having a chronically ill relative and a terminally ill relative.

At some point during this conversation, a commissioner came over and shared her story about her Mum dying at a young age.

The two ladies I spoke to were lovely and commented that until I mentioned it, they’d never thought of/seen that gap. They did say that they could completely see it, though, and that they had services available for that age (as they deal with both children and adults), but it just wasn’t something that they’d ever really seen as being a gap.

I shared my details with them (they might even be reading this post, I don’t know!), but it just hit home to me again that this gap is there and that there isn’t an easy solution for plugging it. Services aren’t often there, and even when they are there they aren’t necessarily ‘marketed’ to 18-30s. Grief is a personal thing at any age, but it’s definitely different to grieve for a parent at 21 compared to at 51.

It’s something I really want to look at. I want to create a space for people in a similar situation to myself (and Jenny, and Laura if you haven’t checked out their blogs you should!) to share their stories. To rant, to moan, to smile, to laugh, to get angry, to breathe and to ask advice. I want to find other young people in this situation and let them know that they are not alone and that life without their parent (or other close relative) can still be a life, even if it looks a bit different to how they imagined it would be. I want to share hope. There are lots of days when I feel hopeless, useless, angry, scared, lonely, happy, pretty much every emotion under the sun (frequently all of these in the space of 30 seconds), and I need people to know that it’s okay for that to happen.

It can be so lonely having a parent who’s ill and it can be so lonely having a parent who’s died. It’s hard to know if you’re making the right decisions (something I’ve often written about in this blog), when no decision seems like the ‘right’ one. It’s so hard to build your life back up when the world as you know it has changed forever. I’m lucky that I have some really good friends, but the mean age of my friends has probably gone up about ten or twenty years since Mum was diagnosed, and I’ve lost a fair number of friends along the way – and it’s not their fault or my fault, it just is.

I’m rambling now (and my brother isn’t editing this blog so apologies in advance!), but I can just see this gap glaring at me, and I don’t know how to fill it. I don’t even know how to make people realise it exists. But I want to, and I suppose the first step of anything is wanting to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who am I writing for?

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been struggling for inspiration these past few weeks.

I used to just sit down and write. While Mum was ill lots of things were happening so there was always something to write about. Then she died, there was a funeral, there was Christmas… always something to write about. But grief is boring, not a lot happens, it gets quite tedious.

Sometimes I have had inspiration but I’ve felt unable to write about it because it didn’t ‘fit’ with this blog. That inspiration then passes and once again I’m left mute.

I think I all too often forget why I’m writing and who I’m writing for. Initially I would just sit and write – a sort of catharsis – but as time went on and the blog grew, I began to feel more pressure to write ‘well’. Initially this lead to writing each post in word and copying them across (spelling and grammar have never been my strong point), then months ago, I started getting my brother to proof read things for me, and some blogs have more input from him than others.

More recently, though, I feel like I’ve lost my voice. I feel disconnected from my blog. I feel as though it’s run away from me and I’m left behind in the dust and I’m not quite sure how that’s happened. I think I need to stop worrying about what’s ‘right’ or what people want to read, and start just writing again.

Some of My Past Died With Mum

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

Grief is a strange (and on the whole, very boring) thing. We’re now entering month five of life without Mum and I was beginning to think maybe the surprises were running out. Apparently that’s not the case, though.

After getting in a conversation with someone yesterday and coming home and pondering, I was struck with the realisation that I can’t remember parts of my past. Not only can I not remember things, but I can’t think of anyone who would be able to remember them…

I’m not talking about major life-changing events like ‘which primary school did I go to’ or ‘what GCSEs did I choose’. Thankfully there are records for that. Also, I still have my Dad, and although his memory may not be as good as Mum’s was (which was scarily good), much of my past is still held in his memory.

However, this isn’t a foolproof set-up. When we were younger, my Dad worked away during the week. Mum worked long hours, too – but she saw us each night. There are a lot of the things that happened over that period that I can’t remember, but will have existed in Mum’s memory – and they will have died with Mum. Basic things like ‘what was my favourite badge to work on at Brownies?’ and ‘at what point did I realise English was anything but my favourite subject?’ I will probably never know.

There are other things that Dad will have known at the time but will not remember now. Things like the people I played with at school, my favourite subjects in Year 2, and my favourite item of clothing as a nine-year-old (although if I hunted round the photo archives for long enough, I could probably work that last one out).

These things are only skimming the surface of what I’ve been thinking over, but they are examples of items in my lost past. It’s really hard to explain how it feels to sit there and try and conjure up memories and have nobody there to fill in the blanks. In the past, if I wanted to know something I would just text Mum, but now I can see the memories but can’t reach them to make sense of them, and there is nobody there to help me do that. It’s incredibly frustrating and depending what it is, can be quite distressing.

As well as memories in their purest form, there are many things that I’m sure I remember ‘wrongly’, or remember correctly but with the eyes of a seven-year-old. Sometimes you just want someone else to offer some perspective on your memories, but when only two of you were involved in that memory and one of those people is dead, where does that leave you?

Even ‘taking a trip down memory lane’ is hard. At 18 I visited London with Mum for an awards evening, there are things we did on that trip and if I want to remember them I no longer have anyone to bounce those memories off. I can only remember it on my own. It’s so lonely.

It is really weird knowing that if I lose a memory, and only Mum would have remembered it, it is now a nothing. It’s a gap. I don’t know where it went or what it turned into but it’s not there anymore. It’s been replaced by space and silence. For the rest of my life, that gap will always be a gap; there will never again be a piece of memory that perfectly fits.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/grief-bereavement-memory_b_9507124.html

Marie Claire Article: My Life Was Perfect… Then My Mum Died

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

My life has always been set out in front of me. Nursery, primary school, secondary school, possible gap year, uni, have a job, get married, produce 2.5 children and buy some pets, then watch my children go through the same system I did while I excel in my job, bake cookies on weekends, and skip off into the sunset. A nice, neat, perfect little life.

I imagine that anyone else who has grown up in a middle class family will have had similar expectations. I know many people at my secondary school had a similar life plan – lots of students achieved 11 A*s at GCSE followed by 3 A*s at A-Level. BTechs weren’t even taught and the advice was generally to study the ‘better’ subjects; sciences and maths, avoiding the ‘doss’ subjects like Art or Product Design. Following a gap year, I trotted down the uni path like everyone else.

That was where things went a little ‘off-piste’. During my first year, my Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Even though Mum was ill and I visited her in hospital and things, I carried on with my studies. The amount of pressure I felt to carry on as ‘normal’ was immense. The pressure didn’t come from anyone else – everyone completely understood that things wouldn’t be ‘normal’. Instead, the pressure came from myself. I needed to fulfil the perfect blueprint that I’d always believed defined success.

With second year complete, I hobbled into third year. Mum was ill. She was dying. But little old me needed to fill this mould, so I continued to head to lectures when I could. My attendance was more sporadic than I’d have liked, and I visited Mum every night, but I kept smiling, kept attempting to read, kept trying to work out what the heck a p-value was and why it was relevant.

Then Mum died. Four days later I walked into a statistics lecture and sat ready to learn. I tried to do the maths whilst replying to texts about funeral arrangements. I was happy and ‘normal’. People commented on how ‘strong’ and ‘brave’ I was. Well done to me, big gold star for completely ignoring grief and pretending to be absolutely fine.

A week or so later, my attendance was occasional at best. People were talking about having a break and postponing graduation. I didn’t know what to do. I needed to ignore everything in my life and follow the rules and the path that have always been set out for me. I had uni telling me to consider time off, my Dad telling me that maybe after the funeral it would all be better – that my dissertation might be a ‘good distraction’. All I wanted was my Mum.

I ended up sat in front of my GP and asked her what to do. She told to take time out. So that’s what I did. I agreed to take a Leave of Absence from October to January, then complete the first term the following year and postpone graduation.

This train to ‘perfect middle class life’ was still heading to the same destination but via a different route. People understood that I needed some time; Dad thought I could work on my dissertation still while I was off, it was all good.

Then it came to coming back, and I still wasn’t ready. I was trying to work out how to live life without my Mum. I was trying to get my head around returning to studying, despite not having the concentration to read even a few pages of a book. I was trying to compute how I’d get to lectures when some days I was struggling to leave my room, or even shower. My support team felt I would do myself a disservice if I returned to uni in January, both in terms of my health and my grades. So that was that, more time out, no uni until October. No lectures, no workshops, no essays to write, none of it.

Fastforward a few months, and the train to ‘perfect middle class life’ is now so far gone I can’t see it. Making the decision not to return was one of the hardest choices I’ve ever had to make. The pressure to be ‘perfect’ and ‘invincible’ is strong.

I feel like I should show the world that cancer took Mum but won’t take me. I feel that I should just ‘get on’ with life and build myself up, bit by bit, to create this ‘perfect’ life that has always been set out for me.

My fear of failure is something I fight against every single day. To look perfect, study perfectly and have the perfect social life. But sometimes, carrying on isn’t brave – breaking that ‘perfect’ mould is. It would have been easy to stay at uni and keep attempting to go to lectures. It would have been easy to cobble together some words and hand in sub-par work. It would have been easy to break myself in order to finish my degree ‘on time’.

Taking leave means that I’ve had to find a new place to live and find something to fill my days with. It means that I’m going to return to new classes with people I don’t know. Perhaps the hardest thing about it, though, is that I have to admit to myself and the world that I’m not okay. That life has got in the way of this path I’ve always thought I had to follow. I have to face up to not just my grief, but also to the effects of seeing Mum’s health slowly decline.

I have to admit I’m not ‘perfect’ and work on myself, and admitting to that is probably one of the hardest and bravest things I have ever had to do.

Read more about Marie Claire’s #BREAKFREE from Fear campaign.

Featured: http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/552018/how-to-cope-when-a-parent-dies.html

Two Very Different Moves

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

I started planning moving away to university months before it happened. After sixth form, I took a gap year, so by the spring before I went to uni, I knew for certain which university I would be going to and what I would be studying. My birthday is in March and I’d asked for ‘bits for uni’. Mum and I spent the day in York shopping for bedding, pans, and decorative bits and bobs. I remember it as such a lovely day; proper mum-and-daughter time. It was filled with excitement of new adventures to come. She’d just been given the cancer ‘all-clear’, and things were really looking up.

When the time come to move to uni, my whole family came (it was a bit of an event). Mum had bought me a big tub of chocolates to share with others on my floor (after all, chocolate is a fairly sturdy base for friendship). It was an emotional but exciting and happy time.

I moved again this weekend. My first ‘proper’ move since I first moved to halls – I’ve moved between home and uni since then, but only to and from halls so it never felt very different from that first time. But this time, I moved out of halls and into a real house.

I’ve had to move out of halls because I’m not returning to uni this January. I felt the need to remain around my friends and support networks, so I needed to find a place to live fairly quickly (or sofa hop for a bit, but that didn’t really appeal). Thankfully, with the help of a local youth charity, I found a place very quickly, living with a lovely lady and her two cats.

I’d been thinking about Mum a bit less recently, but over the last week I’ve been missing her more again. I always low-level miss her, but it had been getting a little easier and memories of ‘well Mum’ had begun to replace some of the ‘sick Mum’ memories. Seriously missing Mum returned though, and with it came ‘grief attacks’ and many moments where it felt like every part of my body was breaking, all at once.

When I ordered new bedding (my new place has a bigger bed), it reminded me of that day I spent with Mum in York. A happy memory, but a memory nonetheless, one that can never be repeated. Packing up my things, I relived moments that have happened in that room. It was my home, my safe place, throughout Mum’s illness. When I returned from hospital the night before she slipped into a coma, that was where I landed. When my friend came to see me and started to cry, it was that room. The walls of that room have seen more than a student room should ever have to see. It was the place I ran to when I heard that Mum had died.

On Saturday, the three month anniversary of Mum’s death, I shut the door on that room for the final time. My very kind new landlady helped me move out. Dad will see my new place at some point, but Mum never will. She will never see my new room, never meet the person I’m living with. She’ll never see me grow and learn and laugh and cry and that breaks me. So many times in the last few weeks all I have wanted is a hug from her. A bit of reassurance that I’m doing okay and that the decisions that I’m making are not ‘wrong’ ones.

Living somewhere new is a new start. It’s a chance to move on from Mum’s illness and death. A chance to start piecing my life back together, to build it back up again. I wish it were that simple though…I still jump when the phone rings, and cry-laugh when I’m reminded of a Mum quirk. Mum is all around my room, in photos, in the plaque she bought me last Christmas, and in the books that stand on my drawers. Mum will be brought up in job applications when it comes to explaining why I’m not studying right now, her name will stick in my throat every time a friend or family member of my housemate visits and asks what I’m doing at the moment. It’s not as simple as ‘not being affected by cancer anymore’ because we still are – I still am – and probably always will be in some way. That said, I can choose to let it define me, or I can choose to move on and begin to build a new life. I hope that by moving, that is what I’m beginning to do.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/two-very-different-moves_b_9087128.html

Campus Society Article: What it’s like caring for a terminally ill parent when you’re at university.

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

I remember the day Mum stopped being able to walk. I had to help her from her bed to her chair and wheel her to the bathroom. She could still wash herself at that point and once she’d finished I wheeled her back, found her medication and fixed her some lunch. I remember it so clearly because it was the last time I had some quality time alone with her.

I didn’t know that I was a carer until I’d been caring for over a year. Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer during my second term of university. She died at the start of my final year.  I knew that none of my friends had a terminally ill parent, but that was about as far as my thinking went. It was only when I met someone from the charity York Carers who started asking me questions like “Do you worry about your Mum when you’re in lectures?” that I began to realise how different my student life was compared to my peers.

I didn’t think I was a carer because I still lived at university.  I hadn’t realised that a lot of things I did were things that my friends didn’t do. Like going home more a lot more often and checking in on my family every day. When going home, most of my friends would be waited on hand and foot, but even though I did still take my washing home (so much cheaper than on campus), I normally did it myself, and often ended up cleaning and cooking a fair bit too. I also didn’t appreciate the toll of emotionally supporting my family and worrying about not just Mum, but also about my Dad and brothers and how they were coping.

My caring responsibilities started slowly and increased steadily by the time Mum died, I hardly realised how far my life had shifted from that of a normal student. To begin with, it was just a matter of visiting home more often to see her. But over the course of Mum’s illness I’ve had to do many more things including visiting her in hospital, helping her drink, fetching her medication, and moving her around the house.

When she was in hospital, I occasionally missed lectures and in my second year I had to postpone my summer exam to give me enough time to catch up on all the work. I’m the eldest of three children, and the only girl, so I definitely felt some responsibility for managing the house while Dad was in hospital, transporting Mum’s family, or working.

Perhaps the biggest area of my uni life being a carer impacted was my social life. I could never commit to anything too far in advance for fear of letting people down and when I was at uni I often spent time catching up on work instead of being out with my friends. To begin with my friends were amazing. I lived in halls and we’d often crash each other’s rooms. I remember one friend arriving in my room with chocolate fingers and a film one night when I was having a particularly bad day. But in second year, as we moved out of halls and I had to go home more often, it became harder to keep those friendships up. The more time I spent at home or in hospital, the more distant I felt from uni and my friends there. I drifted from them as their lives moved on and mine stayed stuck in cancer-land. It wasn’t their fault, and whenever I do contact them or see them around they’re really supportive and still invite me to things. It’s just how it was.

Other young adult carers have shared similar experiences. Through the power of Twitter, I found two other carers with stories a bit like mine. Maariyah, a first year student at the University of Portsmouth, has been caring for her Mum for years and like me didn’t realise she was a carer for a long time, “I didn’t actually realise I was a carer until I got older and realised my role” she told me. Jane, a master’s student, has been caring for her sister for most of her life and now cares for both of her parents, too. Both Maariyah and Jane live at home and travel into university for their lectures, which in itself gives them a very different university experience from their friends, but one I instantly
recognised.

Bethany, a first year student at the University of Bedfordshire, has cared for her Mum from a young age. She lives at uni too but, like I did, travels home often.

Both Jane and Bethany mentioned how difficult it could be to socialise. Having less time to see their friends might be an obvious one, but they also spoke about not wanting to cancel plans at short notice, letting their friends down, and Bethany said “because  of my caring role I don’t like to go out much and haven’t found the confidence to have a social life at uni.”

Thankfully, all three carers receive support from their local carers organisations and Jane is also supported by her personal tutor and a lecturer. Talking about her lecturer she says “she’s been a star, I honestly believe that without her I would’ve definitely dropped out of uni. She’s been my rock throughout the last few years, she’s always there for me both academically and personally.” These supports are lifelines. Helping carers to manage the various strains on their time and providing them with occasional light relief. I can relate to this, I’ve been incredibly well supported by both my academic supervisor and my college welfare team who have constantly gone out of their way to help me out. Once I discovered I was a carer and found York Carers, I began to receive support from them too which has been invaluable.

It is estimated that there are 290,369 carers in the UK aged 16-24 but the true number is unknown because so many young adult carers may not even recognise themselves to have a caring role. Out of those who identify themselves as a young adult carer, 25% won’t tell their college or university about their caring role. It isn’t quite clear why but often it can be because they don’t know the support that could be available to them, or they are worried about the reaction of their tutors. Under the Care Act, 2014, every carer is entitled to support to help them to carry on with their life. This includes the right for every carer to receive a carer’s assessment, assessing the needs of themselves and their family to make sure that they receive the support they deserve, such as help with the caring itself, assistance with travel costs, or enabling the carer to have some time away from their caring role so that they can do something else for a while.

Despite the difficulties caring can throw up, most of us wouldn’t want our responsibilities taken away. I got a sense of pride from caring, I love my families, and would rather care for them myself than have a relative stranger do it. Being a carer, I learned a lot. I learned about the issues facing a person with limited mobility, both in their house and when trying to get out and about. I discovered how non-wheelchair-friendly many places are and found a new appreciation for anyone wheelchair-bound. I learned how to support a disabled person around their home – and about the various gadgets available to help with that. I also learned things about myself, mainly that I’m more resilient than I ever thought possible.

Every carer needs support. There’s no reason that being a carer should stop you from attending university or college, if you want to. If you think you might be entitled to carer support, go to carers.org to find your nearest carers centre.

This article originally appeared on Dorms, the online magazine of Campus Society, check it out here.

So Many Charities, So Little Money.

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Every time I watch TV at the moment, I see an advert asking me to give money to save some animals. Listening to Spotify, I often hear someone asking me to give money to bring music to war-torn countries. Cycling down the road, I see billboards asking me to give money to feed starving children.

It’s the time of year where charities everywhere are ploughing their marketing budgets into as many adverts as they can muster, over as many different media platforms as possible. There’s an advert at every turn and you simply can’t escape them. They’re counting on your Christmas cheer, hoping that once you’ve had a little too much brandy and one too many mince pies, you might be feeling jovial enough to throw some pennies their way.

Donating is really important. Charities need money to run, and I don’t know how much of their annual income they generate at Christmas but I would guess it’s a fair sum. I really do think it’s great that people are giving to charities, and it is vital that they receive money to carry out their work.

However, what happens when you just don’t have the money to give? Life can be expensive at the best of times but Christmas is notoriously expensive. Whether you’re hosting a big family Christmas, travelling to see friends and relatives, or just having a quiet one at home – there’s no denying that it’s probably the most expensive time of year.

Like many people, I can relate to this. Our family are by no means deprived, but my bank account is definitely crying a little as a result of Christmas shopping. I hate seeing these adverts knowing that I can’t give them money. It can make me feel incredibly guilty and I know I’m not the only one in this position because others have mentioned it to me, too.

One thing you could give, if you don’t have spare cash floating about, is time. Time is so valuable and so precious. With Mum dying this year, I have learned to appreciate time in a way that I never have done before. I remember having a conversation with Mum around the start of uni when I was racking up the volunteering hours like nobody’s business. It started with a chat about how much I should donate to charity each month and we ended up chatting about other ways to help charities. We concluded that I might not give much money right now, and donate my time instead (I had spare time but not really any spare money at the time). Then when I’m older and employed in a more stable job, I’d be likely to have spare money but not so much spare time, so at that point I might give more money but not give as much time.

BBC Radio 1 are currently running a campaign called #1MillionHours. They’re trying to encourage young people to pledge their time to Cancer Research UK, Barnardos, Age UK and/or Oxfam. You can also pledge your time to another charity, then tweet them using the hashtag #1millionhours to make sure your hours are added to the campaign. They want to get 1 million hours of volunteering pledged which will then be carried out over the course of 2016.

Personally, I’ve pledged to Cancer Research UK. If volunteering for them means I can help them to raise money which supports their research, then I’m up for it. Their research could make sure that another 21 year old in 5 years time isn’t facing a Christmas without their Mum. (Side note: I’ve also started putting together a Race for Life team in Mum’s memory and you should absolutely do that if you’re able to – it’s so much fun, especially the Pretty Muddy ones!).

My challenge to you this Christmas is that if you’re like me and have the time but not much money, rather than seeing these adverts and feeling guilty that you can’t help, or just brushing them off: pledge some hours to them. Join #1millionhours, and give the gift of time to those that need it most.