This week, the second teaching block of my course came to an end with the submission of my assignment. At the same time, I transferred permanently from temporary compression wraps applied to my legs every 3-4 days by nurses to compression socks permanently worn by me. And so, life takes a couple of new turns.
I have also started the process of completing pension claimant documentation to allow me to fully retire in August, so another turn by then.
I continue, my involvement with primary healthcare services in the coming week with 2 further appointments, so not everything is changing, but there is definite movement by me towards firmly being in the older stage of life. We all move through the various stages of life. Sometimes we do so smoothly, and at other times, not so much, however we define them.
Until now, I have never really had a very smooth experience of moving from one stage to another, but this time, so far, it appears to be movement that is relatively smoothly. Maybe that is because I have seen it coming, or maybe because of a growth in health problems, or maybe because it will be characterised by a pension being the main source of income.
Previous passages have not had these characteristics, especially as many things remained the same, and most of us, when moving from one phase to another, were juggling education, work, family, relationships, changes in societal values and newer technology. But we were also having to deal with the physical and psychological changes involved in moving from one phase of life to another, whether that be puberty, adolescence, young adult, mid-life or older age. Each change comes with its own challenges.
It is not always possible to step back to reflect when we are in the midst of the turmoil of such changes, but if we do manage to do that, it helps enormously, because without the space and time to do that, we can end-up with challenges to our mental health, which can vary from mild to severe.
It is well-recognised that divorce (or relationships ending), redundancy, bereavement and moving house can be major stressors in our life, but so too are the changes that come with moving from one stage of life to another.
So, if we don’t have time to reflect or adjust, maybe we can take time to just recognise that we may need to apply a little self-care at those periods of change in our lives.
I am fortunate this time around from having the space and time to recognise the challenge. I hope that others will be able to do that, too, or at least recognise the impact that such change can have on our lives, and apply our individual solutions that help in managing such change.
We all continue to live in ‘interesting’ times, and continue to move from one end of the week to the other, as we will all do again in the next week.
Until then…
Fraser
April 2024