How the silent scream was stilled (self harm part 2)

Reading Time: 10 mins

WARNING  -  This contains material that either could cause offense or be a trigger to someone who self harms.

I was recently contacted by author Tony White who is writing a book about suicide.  He wanted to ask me some questions about my experience of self harming*.

Here’s how it went:- (T = Tony, S = Sarah)

T = I am interested in why you self harmed. I understand that you felt under great pressure and that you found a solution to that was to self harm. Is this what you are saying? If it is why didn’t you use other stress reduction solutions that do not involve self harm?

S = I’ve never really thought about it from that angle.  My immediate thoughts on how other uni mates let off steam are that lots drank a lot of alcohol and a few took drugs.  I wasn’t one of the brightest one’s in my class by a long shot and had to work long hours just to keep up, let alone do well!  My lectures started at 9am finished at about 5pm and I’d start work at home about 7pm and often worked until midnight.  I did this Monday to Friday.  Saturday I’d work all day straight and on Sunday’s I’d go to church in the morning and work from 2-12 again.  I did this week in week out for the whole three years with very little time out from it. Even in holidays we’d have loads of work to do, the only real break I’d get is the summer holidays which I’d spend earning money to go towards the next year.

Where I’m going with this is that I didn’t have time to unwind and even if I had allowed myself the time I didn’t have the money to go drinking as my mates did.  I was brought up to be very frugal with my money – generous with what I had but careful also, so I managed to get through Uni without getting into debt.  Bare in mind they had tiny grants in ‘those days’ (which makes me feel ancient ), it was ’95 when I graduated and I lived off of £800 for a term, 11 weeks.  £500 went on rent, £200 on books and compulsory field trips (I studied Geology) which left me with about £10 a week to live on!  Hence I lived off of Tesco’s Value range along with the odd parcel of chocolate sent to me by my parents.  I was also a Mars bar addict and restraining myself managed to keep it down to one or two a day.  These certainly provided a small sense of relief for me, I’d use them as a reward system.

So stress relief that involved money or much time was out of the question for me.  I’m a bit of a ‘door slammer’ I think, if you know what I mean, and some of my stress relief involved throwing things, although the frugal, careful natured side of me wouldn’t allow myself to break things!  So I’d punch a wall or kick it to inflict that lashing out feeling on myself instead of other people or other things.

Having said all that it sounds like it was all so calculated – I can analyse it fairly well being able to look back and having grown up so much since then (I’m 36 now and stopped self harming when I was about 24), but at the time there wasn’t a calculated thought process that was going on in my head thinking “I’m really stressed how can I relieve it” it felt more like a raging river going on inside which exploded sometimes, but I didn’t want people to know how screwed up I felt on the inside – I was a minister’s daughter trying to keep up appearances, well to some extent as I was a biker in appearance too.  I bottled it up without realising what I was doing.

Another side to it is that my parents both have very calm exteriors to their characters, they don’t show much emotion, particularly my Dad.  He was brought up in the 2^nd WW and was very much of the ‘stiff upper lip’ generation who don’t show emotion.  I’m fairly sure I went through my teens not really knowing how to deal with extreme emotions be them good or bad, so the bad ones got ignored, shoved away until I couldn’t cope with them any more.  I guess I found devious ways of letting it out (I lied an awful lot to cover up the truth) and getting people’s empathy was a pleasant bonus.  In my mind the end justified the means.

T = Can you describe the type of self harming that you did , was there a ritual involved and so forth?

S = No there wasn’t a ritual that I followed, they were all separate events with sometimes weeks or a couple of months in between them as the stress built up.  I felt in a very particular kind of mind set each time though and one which I came to recognise over the years.  I didn’t self harm in the stereotypical way that one hears about these days, as I’ve said in my original post I’d never heard of the term or knew that anyone else did anything at all similar.  I certainly considered hurting myself with blades etc but always wussed out!  Now that I think about it punching or inflicting pain with a blunt tool such as a hair brush or edge or a piece of furniture was by far my preference.  This created bruising rather than cuts as I felt it easier to do to myself.  Twice I created a scene that appeared as though I’d passed out and made sure that I was found by someone.  This had a similarly good feeling as it caused people to be really concerned for myself and give me some attention.  Other times I created bruising and lied about how I had got them, pretending that I’d been beaten up or similar.

T = How the actual relief came. Was it before, during or after the actual act of self harming? And was their thinking about the self harming going on in your head at that time of self harming and if so what was it?

S = When I was inflicting the bruising at first it hurt but after a few minutes it almost became easy as I guess I became used to the pain and managed to block it out.  This allowed me to continue inflicting this injury on myself long after I otherwise could have beared I think.  It felt good to actually hurt myself like that, in doing it I felt some form of relief, but with it came a huge chunk of guilt knowing that what I was doing wasn’t good, but the ‘need’ to do it was far stronger than any feelings that tried to make me feel bad about doing it.  Having created the injury I then liked telling people about it, lying all the time obviously, but their compassion made me feel good so the more people I told the better I felt about it.  I certainly don’t go by ‘the end justifies the means’ ideas at all on the whole but in this case that went out the window!  It was a completely cold calculated decision that I made each time.  I didn’t consider the long term effects of what all the deception was doing to me or others, or whether this was a long term solution, it just went round and round my own head as I didn’t let anyone in on any of it.  I’ve since found out that one of my best mates from that era was self harming too and equally keeping it to herself!  We were both equally amazed at each other – if only we’d been brave enough to talk about it to each other!

Other thinking going on in my head was finding a secure place to do it such as my bedroom or a quiet dark alley.  Before I begun hurting myself I’d maybe consider what I was going to do, how I was going to do it and what I was going to tell people had happened for maybe several days before I’d actually do it, other times it’d be just a few hours.  I also used circumstances that naturally happened and make it worse for maximum effect.

T = I assume you don’t self harm now, so what changed?

S = I described the basics of it in my original post.  From the moment that I told that friend about it, it was as though a 10 tonne weight was lifted from my shoulders, all the need to hide it had gone, I was now free to talk to people about it all.  Obviously that started slowly and only to the people closest to me at first, but it was the beginning of a big change in me that I can now look back on 10 years later and see the gradual change.  I was a very quiet, introvert who wouldn’t let anyone into their deepest darkest corners of personality.  But the day I opened up it was almost a physical thing not just a mental thing.  Once I’d  found how releasing it was to open up to other people – or at least people at my church who were older, mature Christians who I respected – I carried on doing so.  I don’t think this was necessarily a conscious decision at the time it just happened that way.  After all, I’d told them what I considered to be something about me that would justify them rejecting me as a weirdo and they all seemed to still like me and seemed to be really pleased that I’d told them.  They were all really supportive and encouraging.  I still found that I cried quite often at church for a few months after.   I think it was because I was opening my heart up to God too and a whole load of horrible stuff (all the lying, guilt etc) was gradually coming out and I knew I was being forgiven for all the stuff that I was saying sorry for.  In short I was gradually being cleaned up but on the inside, deep in my heart.  I realised that I was accepted by God and that He was really all that mattered as people all have different opinions so there would always be people who either got on well with me or didn’t like me for whatever reason but knowing that He intentionally made me the way I am, loves me just the way I am, that I don’t have to try to please Him or do anything to earn His favour has just released me to be the way I am – the real Me.  I’m still not a extrovert but I’m not shy any more, I have no problem with the way I am, the way I look or what other people think of me – if they don’t like it tough!

So I have no need to hurt myself any more.  When I’m stressed about something I talk it through with my husband, Mum, sister or close friend before it becomes a big issue.  I look at the issue as objectively as I can, ask their opinions about it, weigh them up, ask God for His opinion on it and act from there.  If it’s something that needs resolving that can be then I act in the way that I consider best, but if it’s just one of those things that you’ve got to just grin and bear it knowing that there’s an end in sight then I just get on with it.  If I find that I’m still getting stressed I talk more about it, eat some chocolate, have a long bath, do some exercise – in fact anything rather than just sit and stew about it!

T = How old were you when you were doing such self harming?

S = The kind of self harming I have described was probably from mid teens to about 22 when I left Uni.  But I can see the early form of it from when I was a young child, maybe only 6-8 years old.  I soon realised that I could play on or exaggerate genuine injuries like cut knees etc. to get the maximum benefit of people’s sympathies.  I guess this is a really common thing among children but I think it only comes out of recognised genuine human needs that we all have like to feel loved, accepted, have attention etc. so the same thing can grow in any young person I imagine with similar needs that are felt to be lacking.  How we find ways of getting what we crave I imagine is as individual as we are.  Children who bully, or are really naughty I imagine are classic examples.

In delving into distant memories I’ve just remembered deliberately cutting my own knee in our back garden with a fragment of broken glass I found, so I guess I did use something sharp once but it did hurt to do it and it left a scar which I guess is why I didn’t follow that route too often!  Bruises and imaginary aches and pains heal up a lot easier and don’t leave a lasting mark!

T = Thanks for all that information it has been most helpful.  Good to hear that things have turned out better for you after having a difficult time in your teens and early twenties.

S = It’s been my pleasure Tony!  Once the book’s published do let me know and I can add a new post on the site about it.

* See comment on my post ‘The Silent Scream, can it be stilled?’

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You can get used to anything, so watch your habits carefully

Reading time: 4 mins

By Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian

Sarah’s recent post about self-harm moved me in ways that surprised me.  This is saying something, because I’m not easily surprised these days.  My own body does things that would surprise you, but I’ve gotten used to it.

You can get used to anything, believe me.

A stroll in the nation’s capitol

About 10 years ago I was walking down the street in Washington D.C. in the middle of a crowd.  Suddenly I punched myself in the face as hard as I could.  The people around me gasped.

They weren’t nearly as surprised as I was. It hurt like hell and scared me to death.  I had no idea what was going on.

Rewind

I was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome in 9^th grade.  My earliest symptoms arrived much earlier at the age of six.  After the diagnosis, the disorder was not much more than a nuisance—I’d blink my eyes a lot, clear my throat every few seconds, and just twitch a lot in general.

Tourette’s varies a lot from case to case, but essentially it makes you either:

1. move involuntarily
2. vocalize involuntarily

Up until that first crushing uppercut in D.C., it had just been another quirky thing about me.

Suddenly it was dangerous.

Symptoms

I didn’t stop hitting myself.  I also started screaming every 2-3 seconds with all the force possible.  I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop it.  One morning I looked down in the shower and saw a bulge the size of a tennis ball protruding from the crease of my hip.

That’s my intestine, I thought.  I was right.  All the screaming had caused a hernia.  Oh boy oh boy oh boy what now?

Broken noses and dislocated fingers popped up occasionally over the next ten years.  I watched all of this happening to my body, because of my brain.   But at the same time, it was like an out of body experience.  I would look at myself in the mirror and recognize my eyes, my shape, my structure—but not the things that were happening to me.

I wasn’t causing the symptoms.  I had no control over the vehicle that carries my brain around.

Onward

But you can get used to anything.  I did.  I got used to hurting myself and occasionally finding a workaround that helped, becoming a very happy person in the process.  We are resilient beings if we want to be.

There is a downside to our resilience, however.  Our actions and outlooks become habits.  My symptoms depressed me so I got in the routine of being depressed.  My self-consciousness made it hard to be in public, so I got used to being lonely.  I had no hope, and before long I was hopeless by habit.

Our bodies and our minds betray us all the time. That’s why life is difficult. But humans are unique in the animal kingdom because we can look at ourselves objectively.  You can step outside of yourself and correct what needs to be correcting.

But it’s easier not to

Self harm is not necessarily about cutting, punching, or physical injury that you inflict on yourself.  It is any self-destructive, negative behavior.  When these things become habits, the road back is long and hard…and it’s easier to stay at the bottom than climb the hill.

Don’t do it.  Fight the urge to crumble and coast.  Live to your potential and that becomes a habit as well.  Learn to fight and resist and you will become an expert at overcoming problems.

Things are never so bad that they can’t improve.

Be careful what you get used to.

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, kettlebells, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

The Silent Scream

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The Silent Scream, can it be stilled?

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The Silent Scream, can it be stilled?

Reading time: 10 mins (Contains no offensive material)

An Ideal Background?

Over the years I’ve changed alot.  People who have only known me since my children were born are often amazed when they find out that I used to be shy and unselfconfident.  Little did they know…

I was brought up in a very loving, secure, devout Christian household.  If you were to describe an ‘ideal’ upbringing, other than material wealth, we had it!  I was always well looked after and didn’t want for anything.  So what happened?

Nature or Nuture?

Well I think it’s called ‘life’, ‘the human race’, ‘teenage years’, ‘the world’, whatever you label it as it’s that something that my parents may have felt like they had very little control over.  Once I was out there in ‘the big wide world’, on my own, with all the influences pressing in on me that they didn’t want, I think that was wear the nasty bits began to creep in.  All those things that at the time may not seem to be a huge deal in their own right – the snide comments at school, the ‘catiness’ of peers, the pressure to look/dress/act a certain way from the media on all sides, all these things slowly but surely dragged me down.

I didn’t talk to my parents about that sort of stuff really but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything to do with how they brought me up as I consider them to have done a great job.

How did I feel?

At the time I wouldn’t have known how to voice what I was feeling inside.  I can only really do that on looking back.  I had no self esteem or self confidence.  I felt that I was insignificant, unworthy, unlovely.  That no bloke was ever going to love me just the way I was.  I thought that if they ever got near enough to know the real me they’d find out how boring, dull and uninteresting I was.

Comfortably Hidden

Even though I was clever I wasn’t ever near the top of the class, so I never spoke up as I was never going to get the answer right.  So I retreated into my little shell, that was comfortable, as long as only trustworthy friends ever got to see the real me.  As long as I didn’t have to speak up infront of anyone.  As long as I didn’t have to express my opinion.  As long as no one made me do anything that I might not be able to do or might look silly doing.

School Backfired

School could be torture.  I dreaded it some of the time.  Marks being read out in class -  I’d never be high up the list.  Having to read out loud in English lessons -  everyone hearing my voice and looking at me.  Walking down corridors -  I might bump into a bully.  Going into the toilets – prime place for being picked on.  PE – everyone would see I wasn’t very good at lots of it.  Gym class – I was terrible at all of it as I had no confidence in my body.  Getting changed after PE – we were forced to shower in front of each other “you’re all girls, you’ve all seen it before” we were told – I hadn’t, no one had ever seen me under my clothes and I’d certainly never seen other girls since I was very young!

Making a Mask

So I came out the other end of school, a gothic (emo), and soon after became a biker.  If you look like a biker you don’t get picked on so much out of school.  If you hang around biker pubs you meet guys who are seriously tough.  They really know how to look after themselves.  Kind of handy to know.  I didn’t consciously think this way at the time but looking back it was definitely a form of self defence.  And it worked.  But these days I can see through the masks.  I can see the pain behind them.  It’s not in everyone’s eyes but all too many times.  Often it can be well merited, that respect you give someone who looks ‘hard’ but sometimes it’s a well groomed front to hide the hurting little child inside.

The Warning Signs

I realised very young that if you get hurt then you get a loving person come and give you lots of cuddles and you soon feel better again.  I think out of this I started to use opportunities to my advantage.  I can distinctly remember having accidently cut my hand whilst playing in the garden and deliberately making it worse with a sharp stone – so that it bled – so that I got a plaster – so that I got more cuddles.

Attention seeking?

I wanted to describe ‘more cuddles’ as ‘attention’ just then, but the word ‘attention’ conjurs up images of someone enjoying the attention, of being the life and soul of the party, and that’s a million miles from what it was about for me.  That was the last thing I ever wanted.  At parties I’d ‘people watch’ from a ‘safe’ place, some quiet corner.  Anything that caused people to look at me sent me running for cover, like a beetle when you pick up a stone.

Self  Harming

I started to deliberately injure myself when I was in my mid teens.  The odd accident here and there got me the reputation of being a bit clumsy.  If I had a genuine accident I often took the chance to exaggerate it.  One thing I have noticed is that lots of children love to show off their ‘wounds’ when they’ve had a genuine accident, you know the dozens of cut knees and banged heads, however as I got older probably into my teens this attitude changed in me to one more of shame as I knew I was lying about it and even though I ‘needed’ the sympathy that I got when ‘showing off’ my wound it tore me up inside at the same time as I felt racked with guilt.

How often?

This varied during my growing up.  During most of my teens it wasn’t often maybe only once every few months, didn’t want to raise suspicions!  When it came to my last year of Uni it really reared it’s ugly head as an addiction, one that came with an almost unbearable amount of emotion.  I was so stressed out because of the pressure of my studies that I was thinking up ways to harm myself, but I couldn’t face the thought of someone else finding out that I had actually done this to myself.

I was the only one

A huge factor to bear in mind at this point is that I’d never heard the term ‘self harm’ or ‘self injury’ ever before.  I thought I was the only person in the world holding up this front of a nice, hard working, Christian student, who was diligent, kind and caring, meanwhile behind the scenes there was a whole other side to me that was heavily addicted to self harm and lying to hide it, out of control (on the inside), on the edge of coping with life a lot of the time and not a soul on the planet knew except me – I didn’t for one moment think there was anyone else in the whole world who was like me.  In one sense, obviously that is true – we’re all unique and have different experiences and different ways of dealing with things, but equally I now know there are probably thousands of others out there raging a war with themselves and others on the inside.  Screaming internally, silent externally.

So how did this begin to change?

After I graduated much of the pressure was immediately lifted and I didn’t feel the need to harm so much, but it was still very much there as a part of me.

I was still going to church every week but hadn’t felt ‘into it’ for years.  I knew it was the way to go long term – most grown ups I knew at church seemed very stable, down to earth sort of people, enjoying life, knowing where they were going with life – unlike me.

One day in church whilst the singing was going on I felt myself begin to well up.  How embarrassing!  I didn’t even know what I was feeling upset about!  Unable to control this annoying flow of tears I legged it out to the kitchen and let go.  I cried and cried…still not knowing what I was sad about.  At this point I still hadn’t been able to understand what was going on inside me let alone realise that I needed help with sorting it out.

An Arm

Suddenly I realised there was someone next to me and a gentle arm was round my shoulders.  It was a friend who I didn’t know too well.  She’d come out to see if I was ok.  I knew right there and then what I was crying about.  I knew that I had to tell her.  I knew it was time to get this skeleton out of my closet.  But to explain?  She’d have thought I was a loon! But gradually over a period of 20 maybe 30 minutes I began to say words that I never dreamed of saying before.  I found myself able to describe a tiny bit of what I’d been doing.  Once I’d described a tiny bit, that was all I could bear her knowing at the time, so that I could see her reaction, she said gently “oh like self harming?” WHAT??!!  There was a name for what I was doing?!  Other people did the same sort of thing?!  I wasn’t the only one?!  This was like an atom bomb in my life.  How was I the only one to not have heard about this before?!

Nuclear Fall Out

Having done the hardest thing EVER in my life to that point – speak honestly about harming myself – I found that I felt like a 10 tonne weight had been lifted from my heart.  I cried buckets more over several days as I told my long suffering boyfriend (we’ve now been together 15 years, and married for 7 of them).  Having given me a chance to say my part, he said “oh that’s ok you are human after all!” – up until that point he had thought I was an all round nice person – he was relieved that I wasn’t perfect – I laughed and then cried (again) but this time with relief – it SO wasn’t the reaction I’d expected, I had wondered if he’d run a mile.

The Parents

But then….hardest of all telling my parents….

What can I say – that had to be the most painful bit of all – all the lying, all the shame.  At first they thought they were to blame – that hurt like stink – no it was just all messed up me’s fault – I’d so hurt them in process of everything.  Mercifully my parent are awesome and love me unconditionally, something I am forever grateful for.  And they’ve given me an inheritence so much more eternally valuable than anything money could buy.

They’ve shown me the way to the foot of a cross where my Lord died for me to take away all my wrongs, and will never stop loving me. He’s picked me up in His strong arms, washed away all the bad stuff, given me a new start, has held my hand all the way and will never let go.

A Bright Future

Since that day I can honestly say that I’m free.  Not once have I been tempted to hurt myself again.  I have found that talking is great fun!  Now you can’t shut me up!  I say that I’m making up for lost time – 15 years of hardly talking to anyone (except mates about boys of course ) is a long time to bottle things up!

I’ve changed dramatically since that evening in the kitchen.  I’m rejecting my tomboy’ish looks, realising that it was part of the same package (but that’s another post!).  I rarely wear biker gear much any more.  I wear bright colours now.  I’ve had my colours done.  I now wear makeup.  I’m embracing the femine side of me – didn’t think there was much of one before!  I’ve had a perm – most shocking of all to those who know me well – as I considered curls as being ‘girly’, now I love my curls

There’s a change going on still deep inside, it’s a cool one.  It’s been a very painful ride in the past, but ‘the old has gone and the new has come’.  The new is confident, brave, genuine, honest, hard working, diligent, trusts God in everything and for everything, has her feet firmly on The Rock where life and everything it throws at you can’t shake you.

To be continued…one day…

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What Now?

This has been my hardest ever post to write to date, I certainly needed the tissues, but I wrote it hoping that it would bring some kind of hope or meaning to someone out there reading it.

If it’s touched you in anyway I would appreciate you commenting below but if you don’t want to ‘go public’ feel free to email me instead on Sarah@SarahsFleeces.co.uk.

Read the follow on post about one man’s struggle with Tourette’s Syndrome titled ” You can get used to anything, so watch your habits carefully” by my guest blogger Josh Hanagarne of  The World’s Strongest Librarian.

If you’re believing the lie that someone who self harms can’t ever get anywhere in life then check out my web site – I now run my own successful on line business

Thanks for reading.

New site gone live! www.SarahsFleeces.co.uk

It’s so exciting, my new site www.SarahsFleeces.co.uk has finally gone live after months of preparation!

It’s all deliberately styled in a fairly neat and minimalistic type fashion as I’m not keen on sites where there’s so much to look at you don’t really know where to start and it’s tricky to find the information you’re after quickly.
So it’s simple but effective, with a set of links along the top that take you to all the main pages such as FAQs and Satisfied Customers, then there’s a list of all current products down the left hand side which when you click on any one of them will take you to the next page down that displays a selection of products within that category to choose from.

Having selected one of these you are taken to the product page. This displays a thumbnail sized picture of the product. If you click on this a large picture is displayed for you to have a closer look at. Next to the thumbnail picture is some text describing the product and below this are any options that are available to select from when ordering your product such as colour and size.

Having selected your product options you click on the ‘add to basket’ button and you are taken to your secure Paypal basket. This confirms the details of your order and you can continue with your payment from there or go and shop some more.

Payment is via PayPal for security and convenience. You can pay with your PayPal account or with a debit or credit card.

At the end of the process you are returned to SarahsFleeces.co.uk where you may continue browsing.

If any you unearth something that you think I might have over looked please let me know

Happy shopping and happy keeping warm

Aquiring new equipment

Well this week’s been a lot calmer and less of an emotional roller coaster than last week.

However it’s still been exciting!

A friend recommended that I buy a special kind of sewing machine called an ‘Overlocker’. Basically it sews a special kind of stitch that normal sewing machines don’t do. This stitch is the one that you find on a tshirt (for example) down the seam that runs from under your arm down to your waist.

This would create a much more professional look to my garments.

One big downside to these machines is their cost – I’m looking at £500 minimum for a brand new one, and second hand they start at about £150!

Still I’m not put off by these sort of things and made a huge stab in the dark by posting on my local Freecycle group asking if anyone had an old industrial sewing machine or overlocker that they didn’t want any more or that I could buy off of them – definitely a huge long shot, but hey if you don’t ask you don’t get do you?! Well a day later I got an email offering an industrial overlocker for free!!!! I nearly fell off my chair!

So a week later it’s safely in my hallway without a ‘home’ as such, as it comes on a big table with a big motor underneath it! It’s a ancient beast but it’s from the age when things were built to last, and last it most certainly has. Only one small down side it’s missing a couple of pieces that would make it an even better machine but hey I’m not complaining! So if anyone knows where you can get hold of ancient ‘Willcox & Gibbs’ overlocker parts let me know And yes I have hunted for hours on the net already! And no I’m not giving up that easily so will continue hunting for a long time yet.

So this week will involve me making technical drawings of my newly aquired machine as it has three different threads going all over the place – it’s not easy to thread so I need to make sure that I know how to do it and where they all go exactly.

Once that’s done I can start ‘playing’ with it properly and testing it out with some thread and my fleece. Once I’m confident with that I can begin making new fleece items with overlocked seams

What no blog posts!

Well this week didn’t go quite as I expected it to as my close friend’s husband suddenly passed away. It’s been a really tough week, with all that are close reeling with shock and grief.

As from today I’m going to post once a week roughly and make each post that bit longer as there’s not so many things changing in the day to day life of the business to make them worth writing about on a daily basis now that I’ve caught up with the history of the business so far – and I don’t want to drift into the realms of boring you all! So I’m going to write more like a weekly summary. Hopefully there’ll be interesting content in these as I’ll have more detailed stuff to write about.

They’re also going to get more about how I’m thinking and feeling so that it’s not just ‘clinical’ stuff about business only.

So this week I’ve not got nearly so much work done as I usually would but that highlighted two very important issues for me. The negative side, that it’s crucial as the business gets bigger to build up reliable employees around me so that in situations like this week, things don’t get left undone – can’t have that! The next thing, and a much deeper ‘life and happiness’ type of issue, is that it was SO releasing to just to say “yes I’ll be there” and be able to drop everything and run to be there for what matters most in my life – friends and family, those I love, not material things – you can replace money and material possessions but you can’t replace people. It’s made me realise even more than I did before that it’s really important to get your priorities in life clear – if your loved ones are the most important thing to you, make sure that they know that regularly.

I once heard a quote that went “children spell love ‘T.I.M.E’ and I suspect most people do. If you love someone make sure that you don’t put other less important things before them as a rule – I know we all have to make execptions in emergencies but other than that I go by the rule “Let my ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and my ‘no’ be ‘no’”. To me that means that if my children ask me for something and having considered it I say ‘no’ they know that that really does mean ‘no’, that I’m not going to bow to any kind of pressure that they may decide to put on me. Also if I’m not sure if I can say ‘yes’ I say “we’ll see” and then when the point comes when a definite decision can be made I’ll then say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Once I’ve said ‘yes’ they know that whatever they’ve asked for they’re definitely going to get, short of an emergency or something out of my control happening. If I’ve said that at such and such a time we will do this or go there, they know that’s going to happen. I’m not going to forget or change my mind. I find applying this principle to every part of life means that as people get to know me they know the same as my children do – if I say I’m going to meet them at such and such a time I’ll be there, if I’m going to give/lend them something that I will. I like to think it means I’m reliable, honest and trustworthy to the best of my ability. This means that I’m now very diligent in keeping a diary with me most of the time so that I don’t either double book an appointment or forget something. It means I write ‘To do’ lists so that the big things and the little don’t get forgotten about. I still find flaws in my methods every so often, and when I do I try to analyse why it happened and see if there’s anything I can do to change how I do things to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. I use the principles on this fab site www.flylady.net. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but they suit me brilliantly and if I follow them they work really well most of the time – I can highly recommend them

Anyway, back to work stuff, I’m working on my ‘Terms and Conditions’ page and implementing a system so that I can offer p&p to Europe, the US and Australasia, once that’s done it should be ‘going live’ time!

Bye for now, have a good week and keep in touch

Business Plans

I’ve been writing my business plan for a couple of weeks now.

I’ve analysed my prices and what I can afford to pay other sewers to make items for me as piece work. I’ve worked out how much I’m going to charge for each item based on the price of 1 metre of fleece and how many items I can get out of 1 metre. Then I’ve taken into account other expenses such as thread, zips and buttons, p&p etc.

I’ve looked into who my ‘target markets’ are ie. who’s likely to want to buy my products. I’ve then looked into how I get my products known to them. I’ve written down various action plans to detail what, when and how I advertise to these people and have guesstimated how many people will respond and what an average order price might be.

Next I’ve got to go through my spreadsheet of accounts. I’ve kept detailed records of all orders, incomes and expenditures and these need making into a table showing a monthly breakdown. This will show trends in money coming in and going out. From this table I should be able to predict to a certain extent what will happen in the next year. These details all help me work out where I’m going and how I’m going to get there.

It’s working really well in my case as I’ve got loads of products, all of which potentially have different target markets and at this point in the business I can’t attempt to reach all of them at the same time – after all there’s only so many hours in a day! So I’ve picked two products that I reckon will sell best and have analysed these markets and advertising opportunities. So I shall follow this plan as far as I can.

The key to a business plan is to see it as a living document – one that’s never 100% static as once you’ve completed one bit of the plan you then need to write the next stage and then the next and so on. As a larger business one may need to edit it once a year or every 6 months or something, but also you should keep it around all the time for reference to remind yourself of your targets and keep you on track. So many things seem to press in on us from all sides, be it tv adverts, emails, friends, all trying to get our attention, get us to buy something, go somewhere or do something, unless we know where we’re going it’s easy to get side tracked and lose site of where we’re meant to be going. If you don’t aim at something you’re not going to hit it – a quote I heard years ago as a teenager – it’s helped keep me focussed for years

Saturday’s Fete

Where I live there seemed to be a summer fete almost everywhere you looked on Saturday! This school and that church – everywhere! I hope no one got ill from the heat as it was pretty hot to say the least, but it was lovely!

You might ask why I had a stall selling fleece things on such a hot summer’s day, well mainly for getting my products out there and known about my all the mums. After all how can people buy things that they don’t know exist?!

So lots of people stopped and admired and plenty wanted me to remind them in the autumn to buy a set of all in one pyjamas – grown up sized ones, not for their kids! Although I expect once they’ve seen what mummy’s got hopefully they’ll all want one lol!

So even though it wasn’t great for sales it was still really nice getting lots of positive feedback from people and talking about the different products loads, as even though I’ve got more ideas than I can make at the moment other people have great ideas too and can be a great source of inspiration, ideas and solutions to problems I’ve got with making something. I think it’s what sales people call ‘networking’ – it’s what I call having a chat with my mates Happy chatting