What happened? What were the events from 2012 – 2019 that led me to writing here? I’ve had a go weaving it all into this one blog, but it’s quite hard because there’s a lot of ground to cover. So, here goes…..

I was chatting with a well-being coach yesterday. A lovely woman I knew years ago, first personally, then when our paths crossed professionally.

But we hadn’t spoken for a good few decades, and while she knew that I’d had breast cancer, as we began talking, or rather I began talking, I realised I’d need to list the stuff. All the things – or rather the headlines – of the 2012 – 2019 years. The years I think about whenever I think about this life writing malarkey. Which is quite a lot at the moment.

Once I’d got through the timeline and the conversation opened up, we talked briefly about why I’m writing. She observed that I’d smoothly talked about each event, one after the other, one year after another. A little commentary or explanation thrown in but speaking quite quickly. Rushing my words. Wanting to get it over. Conscious that as I spoke about one event, the next one was already lining up to be brought into the conversation.

So, while a big part of writing about this period in my life is to have a version – my version – of the story down on paper. I also want to move beyond the ‘what’. I want to use the reflective practice that’s been lodged in my brain since I first heard about in around 2011 to explore the ‘so what’ and crucially, ‘now what’.

But to do that, I need to actually write down the ‘what’. I’ve done this in bits and pieces over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever written the timeline down. So, I figured that’s what I’d do, beginning in autumn 2012.

Autumn 2012: chronic fatigue and redundancy

We’re living in Bath, and I pick up a virus during the October half term, but I don’t recover. Chronic fatigue hits and I spend increasing amount of time sleeping, barely leaving my bedroom, let alone the house.

A few months into this and I’m diagnosed with ME/fibromyalgia. Around the same time Andy is made redundant and he juggles job hunting with looking after the children aged three, seven and nine, while I retreat from life.

January 2013: the lost year, Bournemouth, barely-functioning and mum’s cancer

Andy gets a job, which is great, but it’s in Bournemouth and our family life changes overnight. He leaves us on a Monday morning and drives to Bournemouth, living and working there til Friday afternoon when he comes home.

I’m at home trying to function, keeping the children fed and watered, getting them to school and nursery with the help of family and friends.

2013 is really the lost year. I can’t remember a huge amount about it other than I was barely functioning. And any functioning I was doing was thanks largely to friends, relatives and neighbours regularly feeding the children, having them round to play, adding them to their school run and generally stepping into in loco parentis mode.

Running alongside this – and this is where my memory is sketchy – is that mum’s cancer takes hold. She’d had a mole removed from her leg a few years earlier and had been under the care of a consultant ever since.

At some point in 2013 they discovered that the cancer had spread and was moving around her body in her lymphatic system.

She had surgery to remove lymph nodes and we shifted into new territory. She’d have an appointment with her consultant. I’d speak to her afterwards. I’d speak to my sister who went with her to the appointments and then I’d speak to my other sister and my brother, each conversation helping me to piece it all together.

There was a lot of talking and listening.

Alongside this, dad was needing increasing amounts of care at home, after having had a rocky period of ill health himself. TIAs, ongoing heart problems. He’d occasionally spend time in a care home, to give mum a break, respite. He went to a day centre, had a friend who’d take him to a weekly lunch club but by the end of the year, the situation was getting precarious as mum became less able to be his main carer.

As I sit here writing this, I’m incredibly aware that I really can’t remember anything about that year. Particularly around mum’s cancer. Or dad.

Spring 2014: cancer spreads, a friendship breakdown and a relocation to the seaside

We get to Easter, after a very low start to the year, and I take myself down to Bournemouth with the dog, the children safely stowed at my in-laws. I walk Bella along the prom, a beautiful sunny, blue sky, classic Spring autumn morning in Bournemouth. I sit to have a cup of tea, overlooking the sea and wonder why we’re breaking ourselves – Andy in Bournemouth, us in Bath. Barely functioning, no family life.

We decide in the space of a few days to relocate and move down to Bournemouth so that we can be together and live by the sea. It takes a few months to sell our house, find a new home and sort school places for the children but by autumn we’re back together under one roof, 5-minutes walk from the beach.

Mum has more surgery to remove more lymph nodes to try and keep the cancer at bay.

A significant friendship breaks down. There’s a lot of anger. It’s incredibly upsetting, and I can’t find a way through. It still haunts me. Less so these days, but it’s still a significant event in my adult life and this is the first time I’ve mentioned it in any of my writing.

Autumn 2014: breast cancer, a house move and mum starts to fade

My sister is diagnosed with breast cancer, and the conversations about mum’s cancer intensify. And it all feels very vague. I don’t really have a clear hold on her illness, what happened and when. It feels a lot like it crept up on us, by stealth. Silent.

Christmas 2014: grey and bleak end to the year

Christmas in Bournemouth, but the mood inside the house matches the uncharacteristic grey sky outside. My sister, post-surgery, part way through chemotherapy visits with her two daughters. My other sister comes to stay with mum. I think dad was in the care home and I don’t remember where Matthew was. This was the point where mum started fading. She was sleeping loads and had been on immunotherapy but was struggling with the side effects.

May 2015: Mum dies

August 2015: Grandma (mum’s mum) dies

September 2015: Dad dies

I can’t say anything else at this stage about 2015. Let’s just leave it there, with those three deaths. It’s a year I will return to.

2016: finding peace and getting back on my feet

This year was all about getting back on my feet. I started volunteering at my daughter’s primary school, reading with the children in reception. I became a reading coach for adults and by the end of the year had a job working as a part-time special educational needs teaching assistant.

This was against a backdrop of my brother relocating to Japan. My eldest sister, who had met her now husband just months before mum died, married him. Happy news.

Spring 2017: redundancy and saying goodbye to the sea

Andy is made redundant and starts job hunting. There is little in and around or commutable from Bournemouth and he ends up taking a short-term contract, working with an old contact and friend up in Yorkshire.

He drives up on a Sunday, works til Thursday and comes home. Not ideal for the long term and we decide to relocate to Yorkshire.

Bonkers? Maybe. But I don’t think we could see any other option at the time. Our eldest was heading into Y10 and GCSE territory, our middle child in Y8 and our youngest in primary. We either made the move there and then, or we spent two years living apart while the eldest completed his GCSEs. We decided to move.

September 2017: move to Yorkshire

We move into a rental in Ilkley and start house hunting. The rental isn’t a great set up for us, and our belongings are spread across packing boxes in Yorkshire – in storage and in the rental garage, as well as in our Bournemouth home. We try to settle the children into their new schools. It has its challenges.

Spring 2018: breast cancer

In April, I find a lump in my right breast and I’m diagnosed with ductal-invasive breast cancer. I start nine months of treatment: chemotherapy, surgery (twice) and twenty rounds of radiotherapy.

We also, eventually, sort out the house situation, and move into our now home in the July, partway through chemotherapy.

2019: another lost year

I start the year by finishing cancer treatment and slide into work. The work grows but I’m increasingly hitting the buffer: physically, emotionally and mentally. Overwhelmed with everything. Not just the cancer, but the relocation, the deaths, everything. Missing mum.

Andy is also made redundant and starts job hunting – again.

January 2020: new job and Maggie’s to the rescue

I limp through to 2020 and visit Maggie’s Cancer Centre starting the post-cancer ‘Where now’ course which finishes shortly before Covid strikes. Andy begins a new job in Manchester.

Honestly, this is the bare bones. As I jotted down each year and the headline events, I was aware of questions and emotions bubbling up. Some to the surface, that I haven’t included here but will noodle over the coming days.

I’ve written this off the cuff, not over thinking it. Just seeing what pops up. I’m certain that when or if my siblings or husband read it, they will have different recollections. But sitting here, right now, thinking back to those years. These are the events as I remember them.

Thanks for reading,

Harriet