The Open-Toed Sandal Approach.

A journey to self-heal

I won a giveaway competition during Mental Health Awareness week for a copy of All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennet and a self-heal t-shirt from Howard, at Howbotanics. It has got me thinking about my own journey to recovery and healing and a comment made by a consultant rheumatologist twelve years ago, who, with a large degree of scorn asked, ‘Oh, so you want to take the open-toed sandal approach?’

I was off work, on the sick, from my job at a special school, where I taught pupils with profound and multiple and severe learning difficulties. This was the second bout of long-term sick leave. I’d already had months off, and on my return, following advice from Occupational Health, was moved from the class of nursery-age children, and sent to teach the sixth form. Less bending, less sitting on tiny chairs and physically less demanding, or so we thought.

Without any accredited programme of study, I set about writing a three-year rolling curriculum, based on the national vocational diplomas of the time. I got my Arts Award training to accredit the Creative and Media Diploma, and my John Muir Award to accredit the Environmental and Land-based Diploma, and we won an award for our organic vegetable garden with its plastic bottle greenhouse. I loved my job. I used the senses to bring the world alive to those who couldn’t explore it for themselves. I wrote sensory dramas to help pupils experience stories and times from history. My retelling of The Odyssey was fabulous: we jumped on the ship in between islands to Rod Stewart’s ‘We Are Sailing’, tossing seaweed and water around. On the island with Cyclops, we danced to German Techno with UV torches and fluorescent one-eyed masks. When we met Calypso, we danced to Toots and the Maytals, Pressure Drop.

However, the pressure did drop. Just before I was about to start teaching the Sport and Active Leisure Diploma. I was forced to go on the sick again with chronic back pain and sciatica. I found walking even the shortest distance excruciating, sitting, nigh on impossible, certainly not on both butt cheeks, standing even worse, lying down was no better. I did not know where to put myself.

Then the shit really hit the fan. Despite the pain and feeling very unwell, I travelled down to an Open Day at the University of the West of England, in Bristol with my daughter. The evening before I noticed my fingers swelling up Like Wall’s sausages and in the morning, I couldn’t move my arms behind my back to do up my bra. Not wanting to make a fuss, I hobbled to the campus, but as the day went on it was clear something was very wrong. The tutor who showed us around asked if I was, okay.

‘No, I don’t think I am,’ I said, ‘I think I need to go to hospital.’

A taxi was called, and off I went. By this time, I couldn’t move my arms at all, and the doctor had to help me get undressed. I had pain everywhere. Tests were run, but they couldn’t find anything specifically wrong. I flew home back up to Newcastle with some difficulty but made it home.

The GP said my inflammatory markers were sky-high and put me on Amitriptyline for the nerve pain. Although this put me in a zombie-like state it did mean I could sleep. I slept ‘til lunchtime most days. However, that didn’t stop the pain and my inflammatory markers were still very high. I got very depressed. The GP upped the dose, then upped it again. I was still in pain. He then added Gabapentin to the mix. When that didn’t work, he sent me to see a consultant rheumatologist who could find no reason for the pain which flashed around my body like a silver ball in a pinball machine, or why my inflammatory markers were so high. The consultant did not know what was wrong but decided to try me on Sulfasalazine. He explained that I’d need regular blood tests, which could cause kidney problems and weight gain.

‘Enough!’ I said.  I was not going to be taking another drug, one which could cause more problems if they didn’t know what was wrong. I knew what was wrong. I’d lost the plot. I needed a total lifestyle change. I needed to leave my job.

‘Oh, so you want to take the open-toed sandal approach, do you?’

‘Yes, I do.’ I stood firm.

‘Oh, you’ll be back in six months begging me for the tablets’ he said.

Readers, I am so glad I took the open-toed sandal approach. I found a wonderful acupuncturist, who encouraged me to put the noxious medication in a bin. With weekly acupuncture, I started to walk, and gradually increased the distance until my daughter and I walked two marathon distances in two consecutive years around the streets of Edinburgh in pink decorated bras with WalktheWalk breast cancer research charity. I also took a good hard look at my lifestyle, cut the stress, left my teaching job, and gave up hard partying and drinking. I was completely alcohol-free for a year. I have never looked back. I also got therapy. Lots of it. After twelve weeks of Cognitive Analytic Therapy, I was lucky enough to hook up with a retired psychotherapist, a member of the community choir which I had joined, who took me under her wing and didn’t charge me a penny. I saw her weekly for two years.

To give me something to do as I worked on my health, I started blogging about what I knew and loved, gardening, growing food and seasonal eating. I wrote about sustainable living and going gently in the world. The Bridge Cottage Way is still going, ten years on.

Sign up to The Bridge Cottage Way Substack (four posts a year on the Spring and Autumn Equinox, Summer and Winter Solstice)

It was through The Bridge Cottage Way started my own business, The Woolly Pedlar, making clothing and soft furnishings from recycled knitwear, but that’s another story for another day. Seven years later, I gave up woolly pedlaring and went to uni to do what I’ve wanted to do all my life and learn more of the craft of writing. I promised myself that by the time I was sixty, I’d ‘be a writer’. In 2019 I graduated with a MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University.

Now my debut novel, The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn is written and will be published by the Book Guild on 28^th October 2023, though pre-orders are open now. I still get the odd twinge from sciatica, can’t sleep on my left side; I don’t run or do anything that involves impact, but I love to wild swim and walk. I’m still a work in progress, and we’ve hardly begun to talk about mental health. There are enough stories to fill a whole book, and maybe one day I’ll write my memoir, but today, prompted by my exciting win of a self-heal t-shirt and Vik’s book, I wanted to share a fragment of my own journey to self-heal and why, although I appreciate this route isn’t for everyone, I am so damned glad I took the open-toed sandal approach.

Thank you Vik and Howard for the wonderful t-shirt and book.

Pre-order The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn from The Book Guild.
or from wherever you get your books. ISBN: 9781915853448