Business Launch
Tuesday 19th September saw the official launch of Possibilities and Perspectives at the Depozitory in Ryde. Thank you to Jenna and Dawn for their amazing hosting skills. The idea of the evening was to spread the word of my new venture and talk a bit about my journey and what is next for me. There was a great turn out on a horrible windy and wet evening - thank you lovely people.
Feedback from attendees:
It is always so stirring when people stand up and share their very personal stories - you did this with great style and storytelling. It was a true honour to listen.
Life Coach
Honestly, it is so brilliant that you are taking this action and creating this service that is going to empower and change so many lives.
Specialist Teacher
Your story and strength is so inspiring.
Teacher
I am in awe of all your achievements, both personally and professionally. You are just the best role model.
Consultant Nurse - Child and Adult Mental Health
You rocked it. Loved the story and your why. Here’s to a fabulous successful future for you and P&P.
Chief People Officer
Get in touch to find out more.
ADHD – A Woman's Story
The day that Holly got her ADHD diagnosis was bittersweet to say the least. She was 28 years old and we were in the Psychiatrist's office together after an intensive assessment process that went from her early years right up to the present day. We had arrived at the place together after Holly had admitted being really struggling (not for the first time) with life in general and had returned to significant self-harming. This diagnosis has changed our outlook on life but would have been far more useful 15 years ago. I doubt very much that she would have been diagnosed before her teenage years. As her mother I felt both relief that we had finally got there and guilt that it had taken so long. As an educator all I could think was ‘how the F**K did I not put two and two together and make four’. And therein lies the problem for women with late diagnosis ADHD; all the health and education professionals involved with you over the years (and sometimes your own family) put two and two together and make five, six or even seven – but never four!
When I began teaching in 2000, ADHD was something that only boys were diagnosed with, and often it was thought that chaotic/negative parenting played a central role (nonsense of course!) These boys were often impulsive, loud and caused daily disruption in your class, and this is still very much how it presents in boys today. Thank god we are better educated now but I wonder how many girls in my classes were struggling with ADHD, but because it presents so differently in females are now only getting the support they need?
In Holly’s early life there were factors that would not have led you to an ADHD diagnosis initially; she had a traumatic birth which led to her being in NICU and the first nine years of her life was spent in a home where domestic violence and alcohol and drug abuse was the norm – something we have all taken a long time to process and accept.
As a baby she never slept for longer than two hours, night or day! I did not know whether I was coming or going for the first two years of her life. She slept with me every night and only managed one night in her cot, and she screamed herself to sleep whilst I cried (the health visitor said I had to be tough!) Incidentally, when her sister was born three years later, she slept through the night at ten days old. I had to keep checking that she was breathing!
Holly was a curious child, her speech was great and she read at an early age – her love of books came from her maternal Grandma. She loved to learn and could retain so many facts and figures about things that she was interested in – if she wasn’t interested, forget it! She liked to please at school and was compliant and followed the rules. At home, she was a live wire, she wanted to do everything. At one stage in her school life we were running her to events every night of the week and at weekends. She played football, cricket, netball and she was part of an athletics club and ran long distances competitively. She rode horses, and surfed and swam – in fact she swam the Solent! She still runs most days and has competed in marathons and triathlons. Once she began High School at 13, she joined the gym and went twice a day most days. She was also very academic and took her studies very seriously. It was also obvious that she struggled with relationships with others and her own view of herself. We really struggled to understand how her mind worked – not long ago she told me that her head was ‘so loud.’
During her teenage years Holly struggled with her mental health – she lost a lot of weight and was not eating anywhere near enough to fuel the daily exercise she was undertaking. She was diagnosed with Anorexia and referred to CAMHS. Over the years there have been many suggestions and diagnoses from various professionals – Anxiety, Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder and Anorexia have all been attached to Holly and all with different treatments including medication. None of these ever seemed to make things any more understandable or manageable for her or the rest of the family. Then it was time for university, and this is when she really began to unravel. Managing life was too difficult for her and she was completely overwhelmed all the time and like so many young women in her position she self-medicated with whatever helped her at the time. Believe it or not, despite how hard it was and still is, she has a nursing degree and is now training to be a doctor. Her resilience astounds me.
Holly is one of many young women who have been wrongly diagnosed for years. It is a sound argument that it is because we knew less about ADHD in women 10 or 15 years ago – but we know now and have to do better! For a start, waiting lists are so long on the NHS you may as well give up before you even start – we were lucky enough to have family support us to go through the assessment privately. However, this in itself comes with the fact that some people think that if you pay for a diagnosis then of course you will get it! (I don’t think any of us, including Holly, wanted her to have ADHD). Educators need training to recognise the signs of ADHD in girls so they won’t have to struggle for so long. Research now shows that if young people are safely medicated earlier on in life, they will be less likely to use drugs/alcohol/sex/crime to self-medicate – surely this is what we want for our young people?
Holly does take medication to help the symptoms of her ADHD – it took a while to get the dosage right and for her to accept the side-effects, which are not pleasant. She can choose when she can have a break from them and knows that they do not mix with alcohol – she hasn’t drunk for months. We have both been on a journey and have read lots of books together and researched how ADHD is different between males and females. As a mum, I hope that I understand her better and try very hard not to let things that would have annoyed me before worry me – like the inability to see any of the mess she creates around herself or the difficulties she has when plans change. I sincerely hope that she understands herself better and accepts that there are some things in life that she will always find hard. The one thing that the Psychiatrist said that has stuck with me, is that he was utterly amazed that Holly has succeeded with so many things in her life considering the significant impact ADHD has on people. (I do intend to follow up this blog with others about ADHD and how it presents in females, but if I continue writing now it will become the first chapter of a book and not a blog!)
I have written this with Holly’s blessing and I am hoping that she is also going to write a blog telling us all what it is like for her.
I am incredibly proud of how she has survived this journey and is now beginning to thrive – it has been a hard road for her and everyone that loves her and I am grateful to you all for showing her patience and understanding.
Incidentally, ADHD is thought to be genetic and the more I have learned about it and myself the more I believe that I too have ADHD. I have been referred for an assessment by my wonderful therapist but on the NHS – I am in no hurry as I have managed it for this long. People often comment on how alike Holly and I are in many ways, so ADHD will become something else that we share.
This blog was originally published and is available from those-that-can.com.
Possibilities and Perspectives
My little blog, How Headship Broke My Heart, was viewed over 400,000 times! It connected me with all sorts of wonderful people, and I even appeared on the local news! So, for anyone who is interested, here is an update from my current position in a brave new world.
As I write this, I am sitting on a blanket outside a beach hut close to where I live on the Isle of Wight. It is a Tuesday, term time and 2 o’clock. I am calm and I am breathing. It feels alien and amazing all at once. I am not in front of a screen (I am handwriting in a notebook), and my phone is on silent. I am calm and I am breathing. I do not have an emotionally dysregulated child (or two) with me, building Lego to calm down (neither do I feel the need to explain this to a member of staff who perceives this to be a reward!). I am calm and I am breathing. I am guessing that my blood pressure is fine, and I have a distinct and welcome lack of pains in my chest, head or arms and no sign of overwhelming feelings of anxiety. I am calm and I am breathing.
I am also very lucky.
It has been six months since the cardiac events that hospitalised me and scared myself and my family to distraction. Six months since I admitted to myself the impact that headship was having on my physical and mental health. I am still taking extensive amounts of medication daily and cannot do everything as ‘full on’ as I used to. I know I cannot go back to headship and stay well, and I am still waiting on a decision about ill health retirement (patience has never been a virtue of mine). On reflection though, I am not just lucky, I am lucky to be alive.
During the past few months, I have started to heal, and I have realised much about our education system and about myself. I maintain that the system is broken and serves neither pupils or school staff. It has slowly dawned on me that I am just one person, and that I cannot and should not do the job of five. And I finally recognise that I deserve a ‘good life’, but that doesn’t mean I can’t care and support others along the way.
Don’t get me wrong – I miss the school community deeply. It is a wonderful concoction of families and staff that I have invested my time and emotions in. I miss contact with the children, cuddles, jokes, comments about my outfits and, of course, the joy that good education brings them. I have learnt that I thrive on human contact and interactions and on some days I feel the loss of them.
However, there are many, many things that I do not miss. In pole position is jumping through hoops for an invisible inspectorate. Followed swiftly by the absolute ridiculousness of testing children for government league tables and allowing them to feel the pressure of these nonsense exams! After considerable rumination, I think that my third position would go to the daily difficult conversations and conflict that now makes up a large part of the headship role. I could go on…
For weeks after I was signed off, I didn’t know who I was – I had lost my sense of purpose. But over time I started to return to myself and remember who I was before I broke. I naturally have days when I am anxious about my heart health. I suffer with angina quite regularly and although I know how to treat it and what to avoid, sometimes I worry that the pain will turn into something more sinister. I have a wonderful therapist, who quickly identified that I have trouble slowing down and want everything done immediately (there has even been some discussion about ADHD – who would have known?). Her services are provided by the wonderful NHS, free of charge! And amazingly, my internal monologue telling me what a failure I am only pipes up occasionally and is no longer on a permanent loop!
If you are still reading, well done – stay with me as this is the important part! During the healing process I have been blessed with two life affirming things – possibility and perspective. I have possibilities stretching out in front of me. I am training to be a performance coach (with NLP), and this is teaching me valuable lessons about life and how we approach it. I am excited/terrified about supporting others to gain clarity and reach their goals. My mind is working overtime, ideas jumping about. Could I write a book? Train others to coach or teach? Run a cake shop that sells books? Become an influencer? A stand-up comedian? A pub landlord? (Okay I agree not all of them are sensible ideas!) But it is time to set some new goals, use my skills in a different but not less important way and how blooming exciting is that?
As for perspective, it is a game changer! All of the terribly important things that kept me awake at night, that I wanted to do better – they are no longer important to me. I did my best and that was enough. When you are in the midst of a busy life, in stressful situations, your perspective can be lost, normally shortly after your sense of humour!
Perspective has made me look to the future. When you suffer trauma of any kind you need time to adjust (recognised by therapists now as Adjustment Disorder). Knowing that you have risked your health for your job brings both clarity and perspective.
It is an obvious thing to say, but it is something we forget. You have one life and how you shape it is in your hands…
This blog was originally published and is available from those-that-can.com.
How Headship Broke My Heart
Preface by Emma Kell
Presenting to large groups of people is (and arguably, should always be) nausea-inducingly terrifying. My secret trick is to start by focusing in on a handful of key people: the one who exudes kindness and nods from the moment you introduce yourself, the one with the stubbornly straight face who you aim to win around, and the shrewd one who exudes the kind of wisdom that says, ‘I won’t take any crap, but I’m listening…’. Two years ago, in the Isle of Wight, Sarah was the latter. She’s the kind of person who exudes moral purpose and high standards – who inspires you to be the best version of yourself you can be. She’s the kind of person you want to go to the pub with and put the world to rights. I’ve since had the privilege of getting to know Sarah. She’s the kind of leader who makes me want to relocate so I can work with her; the kind of leader who eschews fads and polarities and embraces what works for her school and her community. She’s fiercely loyal to her team, wickedly funny, entirely lacking in ego and unapologetically authentic in her words and deeds.
During the months when I first got to know her, the ‘scabby pigeon’ in the corner of the ceiling (you can’t take your eyes off it because it might sh*t on you at any moment) was Ofsted. Sarah was frequently gung-ho about them – it’s our school and we know our community best and we know we’re doing a great job – but as she watched colleagues beaten down by inspections and the chant of ‘not good enough’ became louder and louder amongst fellow school leader she cared so much about, Sarah’s anxiety levels rose.
Ofsted came and went, as they eventually do, and it actually wasn’t as bad as she might have imagined.
Then, less than a month later, I received this text from Sarah
So looks like I am poorly after all. Have been in hospital since yesterday at 6pm and they want to transfer me to Queen Alexander hospital in Portsmouth as I have had a heart attack!!! I'll have to bloody rest now won't I? xxx
Sarah’s no longer in headship. The decision was taken out of her hands. Here’s her story.
Back in the summer of 2022, I wrote a blog for Emma Kell all about the ‘Joy of Headship’. I meant every word and I was looking forward to my 13th year of headship. It is now April 2023 and I have not been able to work since 1st December, plus I have handed in my notice for the end of the academic year. I am only 52! I often sit and wonder how I got here and if I could have done things differently. I am yet to come up with a definitive answer.
Let me talk you through the events and see if we can draw some conclusions.
Firstly, I need to make it clear that I have always loved my stressful but rewarding job, but something shifted in me this year and I was unable to switch off. Is it possible to care too much? The school is a good school; our team has worked bloody hard to ensure this and we were happy to show it off. However, stories of awful inspections were filtering down to me - through social media and then from fellow heads who had very recently been visited. I began to worry about our outcome; we were due any day and those worries became huge anxieties that I carried with me at all times. I have a history of depression and high blood pressure and I sought medical support with them both through October - but I was ‘fine!’
Ofsted called and visited us on 15th and 16th November (the same days as Caversham Primary, Ruth Perry’s school, which is not lost on me!) It was as I had been warned, a very different experience to the previous two I had led. The inspector had her views on the school before entering the building and there was a distinct lack of professional discussion. We retained our ‘good’, with a warning that they will be back in two years to check the things that weren’t ‘good enough.’ The outcome is not important though, it is the stress of the build up and the actual process that needs to be examined urgently.
A week prior to the inspection, my normally high blood pressure was even higher and I was prescribed extra medication to help bring it down. During the safeguarding ‘grilling’, my deputy and I watched my feet and ankles swell, reminiscent of Augustus Gloop! Another emergency GP phone call was made. By the end of the gruelling second day I was broken, I had barely slept and had been surviving on adrenalin only for 72 hours. The process was a constant battle, with my staff and I trying to prove how we knew the school was good and having the resilience to keep going. It was really tough - much tougher than it needed to be.
But hey Ofsted was done! I naively thought that once they had left the building I would feel joyous relief and be able to carry on where we left off. This time it was different. There were things that had been said, comments made in those two days that ate away at me. I had concerns about my brilliant staff and how they had coped; I felt like I hadn’t protected them enough. School life carried on, but it seemed to be even more stressful. We were dealing with some really challenging situations as all schools do and not enough time or money for staff to fulfil their roles effectively. For the first time in my role as headteacher, I felt that my staff were unhappy and wanted me to have all the answers - and I didn’t.
By the end of November, I was really struggling both mentally and physically. I decided to go on a school visit with my year 1 class and their wonderful, young teacher - I needed time out of my office and with some children (I barely remembered what they looked like). On the coach on the way home, I felt some mild chest pain and pins and needles in my left arm - I put it down to the fact that a little girl had fallen asleep on my arm!
The following day I had a particularly difficult meeting; I am normally really good at staying calm and seeing everyone's perspective - this meeting left me angry and frustrated (one of those where you sit in your office afterwards and cry angry tears!)
I called my GP the next day as I was feeling increasingly unwell and was told to go to A&E for an ECG, to be on the safe side. I really wasn’t sure where I would fit it into my day but I did manage to pop up at lunchtime, really not expecting what happened next. What followed was a period of morphine foggy conversations with different medical experts. I was admitted, discharged, admitted again and then told by a Cardiologist that I had experienced a string of cardiac events and that I was leading up to a huge heart attack - I know the clues were there but I was too busy and indispensable to listen to them. Did I mention that I am only 52?
I was then blue-lighted to the hovercraft, where I was stowed in the luggage bay with my own emergency team and taken to QA hospital in Portsmouth, it would have been exciting if I wasn’t so terrified! I then had a few days of bed rest and extensive investigations. I was finally discharged with a diagnosis of Acute Coronary Syndrome and more medication than my 81-year-old father has to take daily.
I am not recovered, physically or mentally, but I am getting there. I am attending Cardiac Rehabilitation (I am the youngest there), accessing mental health services and in a few days time will be travelling to London for a specialist cardiac MRI to see the scale of any damage done to my heart.
Do you know, I think I have read the Ofsted report a handful of times; it is so insignificant to me now. We really are replaceable at work - my school has continued without my presence.
My amazing GP is helping me to claim for ill health retirement from Teachers Pensions, this has been almost as stressful as the build up to an inspection and nowhere near sorted. It is a difficult process and you need to have your wits about you. My blood pressure is now deemed to be treatment resistant hypertension (I take four different medications all with different side effects for this alone) and I have a diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome, as well as depression and anxiety. However, if an Occupational Health expert decides that I will be fit for work again before pensionable age, I will not qualify for even the first tier of ill health retirement. The first report they wrote was so factually incorrect and badly written that I had to make a complaint to get an apology and a rewritten report. The doctor who saw me over Zoom for twenty minutes described in the report that I had a physical reaction to the ‘perceived stress’ of my job. In a time when colleague heads have taken their own lives I would like to think that other professionals would acknowledge our stress as very real. In our interview I was asked; if the governors could remove Ofsted inspections, a lack of budget, challenging families and leading a team of staff, did I think I would be able to do my job? Oh the irony!
So what do you think? Can we make any connections between my health and my role as Headteacher? I don’t think it needs to be spelt out, does it?
Schools need and value a system of accountability, but the current system is toxic. Education in this country is broken, we are undervalued and our concerns are dismissed - remember we are the sector that stayed at home during the pandemic. There will be no experienced headteachers left if this continues. Sadly, despite all the amazing things I have achieved in my career, I have been left with an overwhelming feeling that I have failed. No job should put your body under so much stress that it drastically affects, not just your quality, but the length of your life.
Change must happen!
This blog was originally published and is available from those-that-can.com.