10th -12th October 2026 Post Comment Love - World Mental Health Day

Welcome back to #PoCoLo with Stephanie from Bosworth.Life and I.

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I'll be catching up with reading your posts, sharing and commenting over the next few days. 

Sorry I'm late with posting this week. It's been a difficult week for us, marking the 2nd year since Stephanie died on Wednesday. It was also Peter's birthday on Tuesday and it's really hard knowing how to proceed.

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We went into Worcester after work on Tuesday for coffee and some shopping and had bought dinner to cook at home. We'd done the same the day before Stephanie died. The following day the bin lorry came and I went to work in a school, same as the year she died, but instead of leaving work at lunch time, collecting Peter and driving to the hospital in Gloucestershire, this year we went to the Cotswold Designer Village for a walk round and to have dinner out. Last year I'd taken the day off work and we'd driven to the Forest of the Dean to lay flowers where we'd planned to scatter her ashes, which we'd been denied.

We're at peace now, we've been accepting she died, but we're still stunned by the fact she died so suddenly.

I'm sharing this because it is World Mental Health Day and the best thing I've done to help me with my grief has been to keep on talking. Talking about Stephanie, talking about how I'm feeling, talking about what I'm missing and talking about how my future has changed without Stephanie and finding a new road to travel on.

This journey hasn't just been about me. It's been about our family, but I'm not here to tell their story, only my part of the story. Peter often says to me that there is a 'we' and an 'us' and that is a part we often share with family and with our friends, together and separately, but when I blog I tell only my side.

Everyone's starting point is different, everyone copes and deals with things in different ways and that is fine. I'm not just sharing my story here, I talk with friends, I listen and support with their grief, sometimes we're at the same point and it's just silence, sometimes one of us at peace and the other is angry and looking for answers. There are no answers, there is no cure, there is no point in time when suddenly it all becomes clear and better. It just all becomes different and you learn different ways to cope or to manage other peoples awkwardness or you accept people just don't know what to say and one of you walks away.

Or you just stop reading and scroll on past and that's ok too.

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Two years on without Stephanie

It's difficult to celebrate Stephanie's life.

It's difficult to mourn Stephanie

There are so few people to celebrate and mourn her life with.

You had to know Stephanie to understand her.

So many people understood her from knowing Peter and I.

So many people misunderstood her.

Tolerance, acceptance, part of the package.

Just Stephanie, part of our lives, part of our daily woes, our future, our worries.

Now gone, no warning, no life expectation, but would that have made it easier? Think before you ask us that again.

Has Stephanie's death made it easier for us? What part of anyone dying makes it easier for anyone?

Maybe you didn't want to change an adults nappy or feed someone or take them back to their supported living and feel guilty for not being able to meet their needs. Or maybe you felt guilty for not understanding what it was like to have a child like Stephanie, or maybe you didn't understand what it was like to have unconditional love and worry every single day for what the future held and have sleepless nights for budget cuts and worries about the care system and abuse and all those terrible documentaries you saw on Panorama and wonder ... no, you couldn't wonder, could you? You couldn't let your mind go there. And the children's residential school that you entrusted your non verbal child to that was investigated years later for abuse, no, just no.

So every day you worried and you worried about who was going to do all this worry when you were no longer here, fight for those budget cuts from health year on year, fight for those staff changes, would you have changed it?  could you have changed it? it was what it was. Stephanie was who she was and now she isn't here any more and we are still here, mourning her, missing her and our lives will never be the same again as our lives were shaped by who she was and without her there is this great big gap that just can never be filled.

It's not just Stephanie that's gone.

The Thames Path Challenge 50k Ultra - Not just 8k more than a marathon.

I didn't get much sleep and I had a 30 minute 2 mile walk to reach the start line in Fulham setting off at 7.30am on the Thames Path Challenge. But the day had started on a positive note. The day was for remembering Stephanie and whilst Peter and I were doing different things that day we were both doing something that we wanted to do to remember her by and on the anniversary in October we'll be doing something together that we would have usually done with Stephanie.

I met up with 2 guys and jogged the first 12 km with them almost to the rest stop. Unfortunately I was in the wrong trainers and off road, something I'd not prepared for and my feet were buggered. My ham strings and right knee were agony. I managed to rest, stretch, take fluids and carbs on board and set off again, but then my socks got wet, my knickers started to chafe and by 20km I was going to give up. 

I tried calling my friend who started this whole running thing off not even a year ago, but she was out with friends having brunch. So I just kept on going.

I stopped once to sort my socks.

Twice to sort my socks.

There were two further rest stops.

Loads more opportunities to give up.

I cried.

I'm didn't even run it to raise funds, but I'm not shy asking for a donation if you've a pound or two to spare. Feel free to donate.

5km from the end. There was a woman on a bench. I'd seen her several times during the day. I asked her if she'd like someone to walk with to the end. She looked at me and then I said 'please walk with me, I'll not make it on my own' she laughed and we walked and marched the last 5km together, plus the extra 1km they didn't tell us about, hugged and went our separate ways.

Peter helped me into the car after taking a couple of photos and drove home into the night.

It was a struggle to get up the stairs. Sunday I couldn't get out of bed. Monday I was back in work, walking very slowly and couldn't go up or down stairs. Tuesday I couldn't sleep. Wednesday I was back in the gym and Thursday I couldn't stop eating. I still can't wear shoes. It's trainers, Birkenstocks or Crocs at the moment. The balls of my feet feel like they've been shredded, despite not having any blisters. 

Camel pack has been sterilised and is stored in the freezer as it's impossible to get it dry.

I pick an annual walk/challenge near to the anniversary of Stephanie's death October 2024. Stephanie was our daughter and she had profound multiple disabilities. The only thing she was capable of doing for herself 100% was walk. Once we'd put her shoes and socks on, ensured she was in a safe and secure area and monitored her 24/7, had moved all obstacles she had trip over, hurt herself on etc etc and outside the home were there to hold her hand.

The best bits of June 2026

In no particular order.

It's been a long month, a cold month and a hot month. It's been packed and full of travel, days out, my birthday and a trip to hospital.

Cat keeping cool but me hot.

At my cousin's wedding in Eastbourne.

The morning of the wedding on the front in Seaford.

My first time volunteering with junior parkrun at Chippenham Playing Fields in Monmouth.

Monmouth Carnival.

Beautiful flowers in the garden.

Our school stayed open in the heatwave, it was hard going, but numbers were low and there were a couple of fans, but absolutely no air conditioning.

Not as hot as car temps in Dubai, I used to finish teaching in Dubai I the summer and the car would record temps of 57c. Seat belt and buckle burning and steering wheel too hot touch.

Annual weekend in Paris with my friend.

Lots of lovely foods.

Coffee shop dates for one mostly this month.

Walks around Malvern.

Trip to the theatre "Abigail's Party'

Birthday cards and gifts, shared with Father's Day for the week.

A visit to the Three Counties.

A visit to Hidcote.

I don't care much for June, I'm glad it's gone along with all its dramas. I don't care much for July either. In fact I don't really care for much at all right now.

June reminds me of loss.

It was when we came back to the UK during covid. It's a trigger point of control and manipulation. It's the countdown of the last happy times spent with Stephanie. 

There is lots to be happy for and celebrate, it's difficult when it all intertwines and for now it is difficult to separate, it wasn't on the 4th of July when I started this post. But today the 6th when I'm finishing it up, it's hard, so I'll leave it up. Maybe tomorrow or even in an hours time, things will feel different, that grief.

Word of the week - Support

Two friends who supported me when Stephanie died experienced traumatic events this weeks and were worried about telling me in case I was triggered by their news. 

My PTSD wasn't triggered, that is under control now, but I was upset by the news, it was too close to home and I realised that for the first time in a long time I had to deal with the upset by myself, my support network to turn to wasn't available for me. 

I realised this week how much I've relied on my friends and how much I've shared with them, phoning, dropping in and how much much they've given to me, not just in time, but also how overwhelming it must have been for them to have done what they did for me.

The one friend is in the same situation again this week, supporting another friend through a traumatic event with the sudden death of her husband whilst they were holidaying together. Her husband having been at home on his own when he died. She had to arrange emergency flights home, and drive her back from the airport and get her friend home to her family. 

I met this friend the very night my father died suddenly, back in 2017. She was a neighbour of my parents. She stood with me at the end of the drive while I phoned my husband who was in our home in Dubai, to tell him what was happening, as the emergency services came out the house to break the news to me that my father had died. She was a total stranger that night. Then in 2024, she supported me through our daughter's death, through the funeral and is still supporting me now.

There have been so many other people that have offered us support and continue to do so. 

I've always been grateful and I've always been thankful and I know my time will come and I have already been the supportive person many times for various reasons and I hope everyone has known how much they've helped me through those dark times.

It can be a message, a virtual hug, a card dropped through the door, a random check in, an invite for coffee or even a 'I'm thinking of you' 

Right now I'm just messaging both my friends, I've dropped flowers and a card to one. I'm grateful that they both shared their news with me, I'm grateful that they were both concerned about me being triggered despite the trauma they are going through themselves. It's time to give back now and I'm grateful that I'm strong enough to so and grateful that I have such good supportive friends.

Word of the Week - Joining in and improving my mental health.

I don't like joining in with things. So I've picked Joining as my word of the week.

I do a lot of things but I'm not a fan of joining in with things. I get apprehensive about joining in with groups of people and activities that are already established.

I've got a lot of friends but not many live locally, not many have the same interests as me and not many are available with family commitments to come with me to join in. A low of my friends who live locally are a lot younger than me and therefore have families at home and a lot more commitments after work, dinners to cook, homework to do and activities to ferry their kids to and from, so it's harder to join in with activities on a regular basis.

I'm also not good at commitment. Yes, I managed to train and run a marathon, but it was a short term goal with very little thought and planning and with running I could just come home from work, get changed and go out the door for a run. I didn't have to think about anyone else. Peter was 100% behind me with it.

I'm not a fan of having to be a certain place at a certain time either. It's something I've been struggling with since Stephanie died, getting out the house somedays is still hard for me. I like routine, knowing what I'm doing, but I like to be in control of me, not dictated to by timeframes. I can just about manage getting to work. But give me a doctor's appointment or a coffee date, a parkrun or even a beloved football match and I can struggle to get out the door. I'm frightened something terrible will go wrong. Once I've left the house, I'm ok, but getting out the door is hard, so often once I've gone out, if I've got an appointment, like the Dr's at 6pm , I stay out after work at 4pm and go for a coffee, so I don't have to come home and start the issue with going out again. I even changed my nail bar to a sit and wait to bypass this.

I joined the local gym in November at £32.95 a month for 12 months so I could run during the winter months, but I didn't get on with the running machine and I just ran in the wind, rain, cold and the dark.

I've been a total of 13 times since joining. I could've donated that money to the charity instead. I've got 6 months left on the membership and discovered last week that there are free classes I could've been going to that would've supported my running and I was entitled to a 1 hour introduction session and a training plan to help me reach my goal.

So why didn't I know about that at the time? Because it's all on the app. I'm computer savvy, I do online banking, I run my own blog and website. I'm on tiktok with views into tens of thousands on a couple of posts. 

I told them when I joined what I wanted from the gym. I did have an introduction and said I'd never been a member of a gym before other than one where I just used the pool and sauna (there's no pool here) Said I hadn't been to an exercise class since Step aerobics in the late 80's and had no idea how to use the gym equipment.

I was shown how three pieces of equipment worked, the running and rowing machine and cross trainer and was told if I wanted to know how anything else worked to just ask.

I did ask a few weeks later when my shoulders and thighs hurt from running and was told to do 3 reps of certain exercises, but not how many per week.

So I just stopped going. I work on the theory of 'how do I know what I need to know, if I don't know, what I don't know?'

So this weekend whilst exploring the app to find out if there was anything else I could do. I booked a Legs, Bums and Tums session for Monday night at 7pm.

I arrived 15 mins early and everyone was there with a mat, bar bells and dumbbells, all chatting and friendly. I said hi and said I was new and a woman said 'grab a mat and find a space' and yep I ended up right at the front, with the mirror, with everyone behind me, looking straight ahead and I wanted to bolt.

The instructor was friendly. I told him I've never been to a class before, ever and he said it was ok, he was covering for someone else and was new here himself. He grabbed everything I needed and said just follow him and everyone else and he'd help me out as we went along.

And true to his word, he did. Everyone worked at their own speed through the routine he'd written up on the board. It was a bit of a competition with a few and it took me one rep to work out what I was doing and get my coordination going before I fell into routine and I really enjoyed it.

On Tuesday morning I could hardly walk.

Tuesday evening I went along to the spin class at 6pm, I fell off the bike. I'm not very coordinated and we had to go from sitting to standing and back to sitting. 

On Wednesday morning going downstairs was a major issue, it really hurt. I had less issues after running the marathon.

On Wednesday evening I went for a pump session at 6pm, this one worked the upper body as well and on the Thursday I felt so much better.

For all 3 sessions, I came home from work first, got changed and went back out for them, 15 mins before the class started.

I can book online. The classes run for 45 mins. The gym is at the retail park. I can take part at my own speed, be part of the group if I want, ignore those who are competing with themselves or others.

I've been enjoying the running, it's been good for my mental health, it's been good for the grief. It's been good for my physically.

Do you like joining in with things?

I joined in, but I ran alone. it's how I prefer to be.