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How To Rebuild A Life When Everything Changes With Jacqui Ponde
35 Plays9 days ago
In this episode, I’m joined by Jacqui Ponde, the voice behind Instagram account My Incomplete Wardrobe, who shares her life after a life-altering C4/5 spinal cord injury. A former primary school teacher, Jacqui’s life changed in an instant after a fall that left her paralysed from the neck down, forcing her to reimagine everything she thought she knew about identity, motherhood and purpose.
We talk about what it really means to lose the “before” version of yourself and the often unseen work of building a life again from scratch. Jacqui reflects on the power of community, from the army wife network that carried her family through crisis to the small, human moments of connection that can change a day, or even a life.
This is a conversation about resilience, yes, but also about loneliness, identity, and the unexpected beauty that can exist alongside loss.
Jacqui is committed to supporting charities that help people living with spinal cord injuries. If you’d like to support her work, you can find out more or donate at Spinal Injuries Association and Flying Scholarships for Disabled People, both of which provide vital support, community and opportunities for people rebuilding their lives after injury.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jackie and Her Inspirational Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back Connected with Eva. Today I'm joined by Jackie, the lovely voice behind the Instagram account, MyIncompleteWardrobe. Jackie is a motivational speaker, army wife and mom who shares her life and style after a spinal cord injury, inspiring thousands with her honesty and resilience.
00:00:19
Speaker
She's also passionate about supporting charities close to her heart, including Flying Scholarships for Disabled People and Spinal Injuries Association, both of which do incredible work supporting people with disabilities and spinal cord injuries.
00:00:36
Speaker
Well, welcome. So nice to have you on Connected. Thank you. Lovely to talk to you. We had a little phone call last week and I just felt so connected to your story and what you
Jackie's Spinal Injury: A Life-Altering Event
00:00:51
Speaker
do. And I wanted to ask you if you could share a little bit about your journey and perhaps how your life changed and your priorities and your view on things after your injury.
00:01:04
Speaker
I was a teacher for 16 years, a primary school teacher, and literally one day I tripped on a long pair of jeans from the top of the stairs, at fell top to bottom, and broke my neck.
00:01:21
Speaker
I sustained a C4 and 5 spinal cord injury. So essentially, i was laying at the bottom the stairs with my head back to front. I was instantly suffocating because my lungs were becoming paralyzed because of the extent of my spinal cord injury and I was instantly suffocating.
00:01:39
Speaker
paralyzed from the neck down.
Family and Community Support in Adversity
00:01:40
Speaker
I was very, very fortunate that through a series of you know events and very amazing medical people, they actually managed to keep me alive in that moment, which was, well, that's the biggest thing, I suppose, because if not, I wouldn't be here to tell the story.
00:01:56
Speaker
There was a certain element of fate in all of this. I was taken into hospital, essentially kept going, and then given a first operation where they essentially rebuilt my neck, put my neck back together with titanium.
00:02:11
Speaker
But it was very, very unlikely that I would ever walk again. And at the time, my children were age three and five. My husband, Alan, is, still is, and was in the Army.
00:02:23
Speaker
You know, we had a busy old life. We were both working full time, and it was all, yeah, a very, very unexpected turn of events. I suppose one thing at that point I should say is that when I tell people that, one thing that people always, always ask me is, you know, what was everyone thinking in that moment?
00:02:43
Speaker
Because obviously it was a devastating blow. i went from being, you know, fit as a flea, running in my spare time, even running half marathons and things like that, being very active person to suddenly literally having everything taken away from me.
00:02:58
Speaker
I've always wondered if part of the way we all cope with it was that the army helped. In fact, at the moment, my husband's just gone away for a whole year. And that seems really daunting to a lot of people. And I'm not saying it's easy, but we have such an amazing community of army wives that actually very quickly, he's only been gone a week, they keep it really in perspective.
00:03:22
Speaker
You know, we've all been in the same boat at one point or another. So rather than it being really awful and serious. The girls are all, they come and see you and they call you and we've got that real sisterhood.
00:03:38
Speaker
And it was exactly the same when I had the accident. The whole community came together. Everyone helped, everyone supported. We were inundated with support from people posted all over the place, you know, because that is the nature of the army, that we're always moving and moving and we serve at different times with different friends.
00:03:58
Speaker
while the husbands do and the wives keep each other company. So we were very lucky. And I think community played a massive part in how we coped with it as a family. And certainly that mindset of the army, because, you know, we'd been through, as families, Afghanistan and Iraq, had our husbands away, the children had their dads away, knowing friends who'd been injured or things like that.
00:04:23
Speaker
You know, we'd got through a lot of adversity as an army community. We'd seen really, really tough times. Again, when I had the accident, we were quite good at getting on with it when tough times happened. And that really came into play in that moment, I think.
The Unique Bond of the Army Community
00:04:39
Speaker
When you mentioned community and how important it I go to this choir as every week. And it's a community choir, so you know there's no audition, you don't really need to be able to sing.
00:04:52
Speaker
And the power of that collective energy is something that I just observe and I'm so fascinated by because, like you say, community is so important and that kind of authentic community, you know, maybe not when you join like a class and you have the other people necessarily because that might be somewhat manufactured.
00:05:12
Speaker
We're talking about communities where you know you, help the other person and you genuinely connect and it's something that we're built as human beings to be a part of and experience and a lot of us unfortunately don't have that now you know when you go to school you're not told You know, build your community. You should go and like study so you can get a job when you grow up.
00:05:39
Speaker
That's kind of what's prioritized, I feel. I think it is. And I think where we're very lucky in the armed forces is that there is that underlying sense of community that is quite old fashioned in a way.
00:05:54
Speaker
that we are those people who know the other people that live in our street, you know, that will lend each other a cup of sugar or some milk, you know. i think community, it's still very much a significant part of that life that we live because we are away from family.
00:06:12
Speaker
Very few of us live near our parents or anything like that. You bring up children, you bring them up on your own. Well, you don't bring one on your own because you've got your army community around you. And I think that you that there's probably less of that in the modern world as we all become a bit more fragmented through all the other distractions.
00:06:31
Speaker
So we are probably quite unique, I think, and very lucky in that sense. You know, I have my daughter. When I gave birth to my daughter, Sadie, We were living in Germany.
00:06:41
Speaker
My husband was in Iraq in a war zone. And I left my two-year-old son with one neighbor and another one of the wives took me to hospital and I had my child, which sounds crazy.
00:06:54
Speaker
But I remember telling my, you know, or like some of my friends, my civilian friends back in the UK that this had happened. And people were just, gosh, that's awful.
00:07:05
Speaker
Poor you. But actually, you know, instead of my husband holding my hand, I had a dear friend holding my hand and she is now like the godmother to my daughter. Yeah, community is so important. I think we all realized that more in COVID as well, didn't we?
00:07:20
Speaker
When it was all taken away from us. And you say about your choir, and of course the Army wife choirs have become quite well known. I've never gone into that on the basis that, I'm sorry, I don't think anyone should hear me sing.
00:07:33
Speaker
Anything that involves connection with other people is a positive thing, for sure. And was a real saving grace for us at that point in our lives, for sure.
New Perspectives on Life Post-Injury
00:07:44
Speaker
And I think it's you know still a very important part of the lives for anyone in the armed forces, to be honest with you.
00:07:51
Speaker
it Did it kind of make it even more apparent how important your surroundings are? And ah also in a way that sometimes when we realize the importance of community, maybe our own purpose changes slightly. it shifts because a lot of the time purpose is created from a an individual perspective, right? We as individuals and our own thing that we have you know in life.
00:08:18
Speaker
our own thing, our own journey, our own path. It could be very much like that. So it maybe, and that's something that I'm thinking, tell me, did it kind of shift your purpose? I have a very interesting perspective on that.
00:08:32
Speaker
I think that as much as community, the connection I had with my family were really, really important. And very specifically my children as well, because like you say, we can all be quite driven by ourselves. But I think that when you're a parent as well, and I was lucky enough at the time to be a parent, I mean, some people would say, gosh, you know, people are horrified at the thought that when this happened to me, my children were three and five.
00:08:58
Speaker
But I think as a parent, you don't really have the luxury of focusing on yourself and your own path without actually focusing on those children as well.
00:09:09
Speaker
You know, obviously your husband or whatever if you're married, but really, you know, your children, you know, they're your dependents. They need you. So all I really thought in that moment when I had everything taken away from me is how was I going to support them through this?
00:09:28
Speaker
That it was all I really, really cared about. I knew what they were used to with me. They were used to this mom who used to go out running, a mom who was a teacher. I was a teacher in my son's school, so he used to sit there watching me do assemblies, poor thing.
00:09:43
Speaker
I knew all of that was going to change. So I had to work out how this kind of new version of me could continue to help them move forward. And then what was very, very interesting about this is a couple of years later, two or three years after my accident, and after these sorts of accidents, you know, you have many, many ah um MRI scans and things after the event to check how everything's moving.
00:10:08
Speaker
And my surgeon said to me one day, have a look at this ah MRI scan. He said, and youki you get shown yours quite a lot, so you feel pretty sure you know what it looks like, right? He said, what can you tell me about this? And I said, well, it's my um MRI scan, isn't it? And he said, it isn't.
00:10:24
Speaker
It isn't your um MRI scan. It's somebody else's. He said, it's another woman, a very similar age to you. They had done the almost identical operation process.
00:10:35
Speaker
on her that they did to me eventually to get me walking again. And yet she doesn't walk and I do. And the only real difference other than a couple of years in our age was the fact that I had children and she didn't.
00:10:50
Speaker
And they always found that very, very fascinating. They were curious, the psychologists, was there something in that? And truthfully, I don't know the answer. Is there something deeply motivational about, for example, being a parent where you can't focus on your own journey? You've got to actually think about those children and what's involved that you can't get too lost in your own head or your own loss or your own fears, etc. You've just got to find a way through.
00:11:19
Speaker
Your children are your community, really, aren't they? Tell me a woman who's brought up children. Well, you go to the supermarket and you buy packet of yogurts. And one child doesn't like this flavor. One child doesn't that like like that flavor. Your husband doesn't like another flavor. You always ah you never never think, well, which flavor would I like to eat? You eat whatever's left.
00:11:40
Speaker
You know, i think that kind of really always has summed up parenting to me, that you're thinking about everybody else first. And I think that's a really motivating, driving force.
00:11:52
Speaker
Also, because i when I was in rehab, in spinal injury rehab, I was in there with a girl who was, I'd say about, she was probably quite a bit younger than me. I was 34 when I had my accident.
00:12:05
Speaker
I remember one day being in a therapy group. And we were all together and, you know, chatting and whatever, as you did and on certain subjects that we were given. And one of the young guys said, I feel really sorry for Jackie. He said, because I see her children coming to visit her, being taken away from her. Because when I was in hospital, i was in rehab for six months in Stoke Mandeville.
00:12:29
Speaker
Swine flu was on the ward. So the only way my children could see me was very, very intermittent. And only if my hospital bed could be wheeled out into a courtyard, And all of my breathing paraphernalia being connected and everything outside. And only then, if the weather was good enough, because I couldn't moderate my body temperature, so I wasn't able to do that then,
00:12:50
Speaker
they'd be able to come and visit me. And this young lad said, you know, I feel really sorry for Jackie. I feel most sorry for Jackie at all because she's got children. It's so hard to see them so upset. And this girl said, well, I don't feel most sorry for Jackie at all. She said, because she's, she said she's got her family.
00:13:08
Speaker
And she's got her husband and she's got her children. And some of us who are in this situation, we may never have that because who's going to want us like this? And I remember thinking that actually she had such a good point that I was actually in that room, probably the luckiest one because I had my family, I had my kids and it was going to be more challenging for them.
The Power of Shared Experiences and Friendship
00:13:34
Speaker
There's no doubt to meet people.
00:13:36
Speaker
when when you're in that situation. Again, i think the motivation of the people around you is very important. It's always kind of been a driving force for me in everything.
00:13:48
Speaker
Because I don't have children. I do want to have children, but I don't have them. And obviously, unless you have children, you don't know what it's going to be like. So I i don't even start to imagine because you can't I don't think you say children are the only driving force. I think that some of the work I've done with various charities for people who are injured since what's happened to me, you know, I've often met people without children. I think, you know, in some cases your your partner or just your friends. I mean, you know, not everyone's married, not everyone's got children.
00:14:21
Speaker
But I think coming back to what you were saying, it's finding that community, whatever that community is, and having those connections with other people. Because I think the biggest killer when accidents happen or life gets very, very dark, for whatever reason that might be, is being lonely.
00:14:41
Speaker
I agree. I mean, we want to belong to whether it's one person in a partnership or a community, we want to belong so much. And if there is maybe even trauma around us being lonely and unwanted and that we need to prove ourselves, then there is this big fear of being alone now in the future. For example, before I started the podcast and studied speaking so many amazing people like yourself, I felt so disconnected. I felt lonely. ah would just sometimes sit on my bed and be like, what if I die alone? Because loneliness is one of the biggest things
00:15:22
Speaker
fears of us human beings. Well, it is. I mean, there's a reason we all we still, all these years later, are still laughing about the Bridget Jones comment where she talks about the fact that she's going to be like eaten by Alsatians and no one's actually going to know.
00:15:37
Speaker
Because it actually resonated with so much many of us, didn't it? Because we've all thought it at one point or another. Whether that's when you're younger and you haven't met your person yet or you know i'm I turned 50 last year and I'm now, very sadly, but it's part of life, meeting, you know i have more and more friends who are you know getting divorced or separated or whatever and and starting on a new phase of their life on their own. And it's still that, it doesn't matter how old you are, it is. It's that kind of, who's actually going to care if I'm not around kind of thing, isn't it?
00:16:12
Speaker
My friend and I, I have a very, very special friend. And, you know, within a couple of years of meeting each other, we met and her son was killed in a car accident.
00:16:25
Speaker
And i mean, literally, obviously there is nothing worse than in this life that could happen than losing a child. And then I had my accident. And we met both met within a couple of years of this happening. And we're still the best of friends now.
00:16:41
Speaker
And we always used to say to each other, perhaps we should start our own podcast. And we said, well, what would we call it Because we always say that we think we've got a different perspective. Her and i through what we've been through, we've got quite a unique perspective, I think, on life in some ways.
00:16:57
Speaker
I often say to people, like I think I said this to you the other day, that, you know, I sometimes wish you could bottle a little bit of what it is to have it to lose everything. It gives you a very different perspective in life to have had everything taken away.
00:17:12
Speaker
and I think you look at things through a slightly different lens. And I don't think that that's always a bad thing, if you know what I mean. I think it can make you appreciate when it's good a bit more and without hopefully sounding too kind of preachy about that. But I do. i think it does. Because simple things that you didn't really notice before, you kind of notice and appreciate a lot more.
00:17:37
Speaker
So I had a benign tumor. It was a sudden diagnosis. It was like, oh no, we need to operate. And it was this three centimeter tumor behind my eye. And it was like so sudden.
00:17:48
Speaker
And I went to one doctor who was like, you need to do it now. Because of the shock, i I was like so, you know, panicked. And it was like, it was kind of a lot. But at the same time, maybe a few weeks into that,
00:18:03
Speaker
I remember, i vividly remember being the calmest I've ever been in my life. Like you were saying, when you have something, whatever it is, that's quite big, that happens, it puts a stop on all your ramblings in your mind. You know you stop caring about small things. You you stop caring.
00:18:25
Speaker
Or like, you know, does this look good or am I gonna get this one job? And like all these kinds of things that you worry about become secondary. Did they do the operation?
00:18:37
Speaker
so it's all good and all all fixed very quickly. But I remember i was so happy. After, right, after the shock kind of wore off, I was like, you know what?
00:18:49
Speaker
Wow. Like all these small things that I focus on, they don't matter. Also, you have this reflective realization. Why do I spend my entire life worrying about nonsense?
00:19:02
Speaker
When I was paralyzed after the accident, i I had a lot of time to think because I literally couldn't do anything for myself. I mean, i couldn't. I mean, nothing. I could do nothing for myself. I was completely paralyzed from the neck down.
00:19:17
Speaker
To be dependent on somebody else for absolutely everything was quite... It certainly made me become a bit more of a patient person, I think, because usually I was before that somebody who literally couldn't sit still for five minutes. You know, I was either at work running around after the kids or going out running.
00:19:35
Speaker
It was a humbling experience, I would say that much, for sure. Very humbling. And then to get that ability to be able to do things back again again, which again, I'm sure you must be able to relate to with what happened to you, because When you're in that fear moment of, God, this could go horribly wrong, and to come out the other side of it, there's a sense of, I think, appreciation, isn't there?
00:20:00
Speaker
Certainly, I had to appreciate things that are whole in a whole different way. Learning to do things again, everything for the first time, you know learning to write again. Even now, writing's quite a challenge for me because in my kind of I've still got the paralysis that's left in my right side.
00:20:16
Speaker
But yeah, those little things, all those little things, the appreciation of just before that, I could just write a letter. i mean, I was a teacher, for goodness sake. I used to teach children with their handwriting, you know, or just the simple daily tasks that you can do, like brushing your own teeth.
00:20:33
Speaker
Going to the loo, appreciating or learning to cook again, or just everything, doing everything in little adapted ways. It was, like you say, appreciating things that you didn't even notice in the first place because you just could do them.
Charity Work and Mental Health Advocacy
00:20:49
Speaker
Or even the things that you moaned about being able to do you'd suddenly give anything to be able to do again, you know? Rehab was definitely an interesting experience. definitely It definitely ah taught me a lot about myself, for sure.
00:21:03
Speaker
And what started your journey with the charities you work with? The truth of it is, and I say to people who are injured this a lot, the hardest part of these sorts of situations is actually when you get home.
00:21:19
Speaker
You think it's during the big early stages when you have these accidents. Like in my case as well, I had two major operations. And in my second operation, there was a situation where i may not have come out of it.
00:21:32
Speaker
The risk was extremely high, but which was the operation to get me walking again, where they grafted the bone, this time out of the front of my neck. And they removed the discs from C4 and 5.
00:21:46
Speaker
And then they rebuilt my neck with a bone graft from my hip. So that's how over the following couple of years, bit by bit by bit, it was like I almost like defrosted really and kind of came out of this frozen state. That's the only way I can describe it to you.
00:22:01
Speaker
But you've got a huge, incredible teams around you at that point. You know, you've got your nursing team, you've got your physios, you've got your psychologists, you've got your volunteer workers, even down to the person who you get used to and you get to know the person who brings you a cup of tea every day.
00:22:20
Speaker
People feeding you. in You're surrounded by people. And then comes the day that you've longed for. And, you know, in my case, six months. like All I wanted every single day was to get home to my husband and children.
00:22:34
Speaker
Though I knew that rehab and learning to live in this new way was what I needed to do first. But that day comes and that you think it's what you've been waiting for and it's the point you're desperate to get to, but it's but probably then the hardest, hardest stage because then reality kicks in.
00:22:53
Speaker
All that support system's gone and all of a sudden you are at home going, shit, this is actually real. Now what happens?
00:23:03
Speaker
When I last left this house, I was a full-time teacher. I was an active mum who could do everything for myself. And now I've come home to live. I'm still in the same house. I can't do anything for myself. I can't cook.
00:23:16
Speaker
I can't really walk. I was still like relying on my wheelchair. I came home to a whole different life. And that's the challenging part. So quite quickly, I realized how important it was that I kind of tried to give something back.
00:23:31
Speaker
to people so that they weren't kind of stuck in their homes. And I knew that if that's how I was feeling, and I was one of the lucky ones with all my army community around me, God knows, imagine what it was like if you went home to a house on your own. And I was in rehab with people who were did have to do that.
00:23:49
Speaker
I was in rehab with people who whose husbands had left them because they couldn't cope with the new person. I think that's what inspired me, this sense of deep loss. I was wasn't going to be well enough to be a teacher anymore. I didn't recognize myself as the person I was before.
00:24:07
Speaker
You know, my son one day, i remember him saying to me, getting really upset with me and crying. George was five at the time and saying, you're not the same mummy you used to be. You can't do anything anymore. And I really, oh I hate you and all of this. and And then the next thing he'd taken my wheelchair out, was riding up and down the hill outside, it you know,
00:24:26
Speaker
children, they're quite resilient. But it made me realize that there was something in this this sense of loss, like I needed to help other people to get through it by connecting people. And so I started speaking to people at the Spinal Injuries Association, and I realized that what they provided was mentoring people.
00:24:46
Speaker
And counseling services for people afterwards, after the event of all this happening. And though I didn't feel i needed it myself because of the amount of interactions I had with other people, from that point onwards, I started fundraising for them in earnest and so did my family.
00:25:04
Speaker
Really, what we like to support more than anything every year is the mental health side of things and making sure that people aren't on their own when they go home. and Because there is a high suicide rate in that community.
00:25:17
Speaker
Because as you can imagine, it's hell of a shock to the system. So if fundraising began in earnest. In the beginning, I used to get the wives to, i used to take in all their clothes.
00:25:29
Speaker
fact, I've kind of gone full circle because I do that again now. I basically used to set up my house as a shop and they'd all come in. I'd put a big glass bowl in the middle of the table and I would say, take whatever you want, like literally go shopping for free and then put a donation to the charity in the bowl.
00:25:46
Speaker
And quite quickly, we started to raise thousands of pounds by doing that. And then, I mean, I've done all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Walked three marathons along the coastal paths of Dorset and so on and so forth with the Army Wives, you know, supporting all of these things. Last five years, I think we've done a charity on Instagram, a sort of a big raffle involving lots of small businesses.
00:26:12
Speaker
who have always supported all of our efforts. So we raise a lot of money every single year. We're very specific about what we're raising the money for. It's to support mental health, it's support counselling, to support community groups as well and make sure that they can happen for these charities.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah, which kind of is exactly how we started our conversation in the first place, isn't it? Community. We got connected, yes. Exactly, we did.
00:26:40
Speaker
I have a lot of injured people reaching out to me and saying that, for example, they weren't aware that that service was available to them. Each year we share our story, our family story, and I'm always inundated with messages from families, husbands or wives, sometimes the children of injured people, saying how much comfort they've taken listening to our journey. Because I think that's another massive important thing in life, in sharing our stories, whatever those stories might be.
00:27:16
Speaker
be it accidents, be it health conditions, you know, people with cancers or whatever it is. And even if it's not even something that dramatic, but if you've got a niche story to tell, that is one of the greatest comforts in life that any of us can be found in those shared stories.
00:27:35
Speaker
I know it works. It works, that contact and communication with people, because then I'll have people come back to me
Authentic Connections in a Digital World
00:27:43
Speaker
afterwards. In fact I've got one lady I see up in London most years.
00:27:47
Speaker
We met because she followed my story on Instagram and she went through something similar herself. And so we follow each other's kind of journeys and check in and see how each other are doing.
00:27:59
Speaker
That's really important. It probably has something to do with the fact that when you recognize something meaningful or something that's deep or something that you know actually means something and comes from an authentic place, you feel really connected and pulled towards it.
00:28:20
Speaker
I agree. i think um I'm going to sound really old here, which you know I am getting older, although I'm grateful for that, obviously. I think there's a lot of content available to people these days in any subject matter that is just being manufactured at really high speed.
00:28:40
Speaker
And I think that there is still such a value. Because let's face it, if you can Google anything, you can get anything you like, can get a video of whatever you like on YouTube.
00:28:52
Speaker
You know, what back when I had my accident, I look at some of these people now, you know, online, I think, wow, amazing. If I had something like that to tap into when I'd had my accident 16 years ago, it would have been absolutely invaluable.
00:29:08
Speaker
But I also think that the world's gone slightly mad. Not all of this content is always that authentic or a lot of this with sponsorships and everything else has become a bit of a commodity.
00:29:19
Speaker
So I think there's something very, very valuable in keeping those very basic human connections and being able to actually You know, if you see that your neighbor or whatever is going through something, going and having a cup of tea with them, you know, that thing that our kind of grandparents used to do like people did more when we were kids. But I think everything's become so almost like 2D really online.
00:29:45
Speaker
I just think there's still, and like I say, I am going sound very, very old here, such a lot to be said for that authenticity and just checking in on people in real time as real people.
00:29:57
Speaker
I don't think there's any replacement whatsoever for just having that real person pick up the phone or knock on your door or check in on you. When I'm thinking about kind of interactions that happen kind of on a day-to-day basis, what you're saying rings truth because sometimes you send stories to people on the internet or GIFs or things like that, and that will be your interactions with other people, right?
00:30:30
Speaker
Or... anything that's kind of not really about the person. Well, you know, I saw something, here it is. I was thinking about the importance of actually messaging someone and being like, hey, how are you? Or let's meet for a coffee and have a chat.
00:30:44
Speaker
We are getting back to that kind of communication, but there has to be the awareness that sometimes interactions can be quite superficial. So you have to really make the effort to connect to the person again and You know, like I said, have tea with someone, right?
00:31:02
Speaker
You know, it's true because if you actually think about it, we're all guilty of it these days. You know, it's so easy to text somebody and then, right, that's done, done that. It's still very different to somebody can write you the nicest message in the world. You know, it's lovely.
00:31:19
Speaker
But if you're sat at home and you read that and you're not going to speak to another single person all day, it's still no substitute for an actual interaction with a human. It's not the same.
00:31:31
Speaker
It really isn't. And I remember coming home after my accident, just feeling extremely lonely. You know, my husband had gone back to work. My children had gone back to school and nursery. And then there was just me.
00:31:43
Speaker
You know, I couldn't walk. I couldn't drive. So i was literally just sat there waiting for somebody to pick up a phone and give me a call. And I still remember to this day, my friend knocking on the door,
00:31:58
Speaker
And I had a helper at the time because obviously I couldn't really do very much myself at all, who kind of looked after me when my husband was out. She let Erin open the door and she came in and said, right, let's get you sorted out. I'm going to put you in the car and I'm going to take you out for a cup of tea. Well, I still remember that to this day.
00:32:17
Speaker
Because I think it took a lot of guts to do that because to get me into a car at that point was not an easy thing to do. To be grappling with, ah you know, your walking aids and all of this and that, it was, you know, took an effort on her part. But yeah, I still remember that 16 years later because the difference was that day, a human being turned up and got me out the house.
00:32:41
Speaker
I hope all that sort of stuff doesn't disappear. Well, because we are also online, if you know what I mean. I do actually believe that this is happening more now, actually, because of how much there is online, because of people realizing they crave that one-to-one contact.
00:33:01
Speaker
So I do believe, and I've spoken to people who've said the same thing, that the future in that kind of way, it's actually hopeful because the more there is in the digital world, the more you want to connect.
00:33:16
Speaker
In the real world. Yes, exactly. And I see that even for myself. I mean, when I was little, there was nothing digital. And then when you left A little bit in the digital world. After a while, you realize that you want to go back to that.
00:33:33
Speaker
You want to see people and you know switch off your phone sometimes and just be in the moment surrounded by people because you realize that's actually what our soul craves.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yes, I think it really does. I think, you know, as I say, I think that's why we all found it so very difficult during COVID. Because we've realized that what a human element of ourselves that that actually is.
00:34:01
Speaker
i mean, I wasn't speaking to anyone. I was in Portugal at the time. And then I was in London for a job and I was heading to the airport, but the train got canceled. So, you know, everyone goes on the road and like they're trying to get on a bus or whatever. And then someone called me and said, oh, let's get this taxi together. but These like four people, we will all share it to the airport.
00:34:27
Speaker
And for some reason, we were all the same ages, very randomly. And for the entire journey, which was an hour, an hour and something. We were just chatting and connecting.
00:34:39
Speaker
And I had been so starved because it was obviously lockdown. I was starved for human connection. So I felt so rejuvenated and energized and happy.
00:34:51
Speaker
i mean, obviously, immediately after, i thought, actually, I'm not an introvert at all. I'm like the biggest extrovert, which is also not true necessarily, but you just need human contact.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah. You do. We all do. We absolutely all do. You know, I look back on that New Year's Eve of COVID and I remember hearing something outside our front door. And my husband and we would always have, you know, we're army. We have big parties and things at Christmas with all of our friends and neighbors and on on the army patch. But of course, that year there was nothing happening. And I remember thinking, oh,
00:35:28
Speaker
Everything feels so empty and so quiet. And there was noise outside and stood at a distance away from us. It was one of our friends and his wife stood there with some lights around him. And he they had a bottle of champagne and they were toasting the new year to us. Like even from that distance, I remember feeling that amazing...
00:35:50
Speaker
pure delight of seeing other people and being with other people. And even though, you know, they were over there and we were over here, we shared that moment that was so special because it was real people in that moment.
00:36:04
Speaker
I know that. I feel like that time showed everyone that you need contact, you know, you can't, even that message, you know, you need more than a message actually. So message is nice when someone genuinely wants to know what's happening.
00:36:18
Speaker
and letters as well. i mean, now i'm really sadly old. But receiving a letter or receiving a card, I think it's very, very special. Actually, I was with a friend recently and she said to me, I've told my children, she said, and her children are grown up like mine.
00:36:37
Speaker
And she said, I've told them, it's lovely that if they send me flowers, for example, she said on Mother's Day, but she what I want more than ever is a card. I want them to have written something. I want them to have put pen to paper and I want to know that they took the time to think about those words.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I get that, I really do. I think it's still one of the great joys for everybody to actually receive something in the post that is written. I keep hinting to people, you know, I really like cards and I send them to people, but I stopped getting them myself, which is such a shame. You should do what my friend Sophie told me she did the other day, which was actually give her son a stamp so that he had no excuse whatsoever not to write to her. She said, I just thought, I'll just make sure he's got that on his person so that he can always write to his mum.
00:37:32
Speaker
And I thought that was a great idea. The cards are lovely. I used to collect them, actually. Unfortunately, i lost my collection, but they mean so much.
00:37:43
Speaker
There is like so much emotion in them. I have a friend of mine from high school. I went to see her years later, and she took out a letter that I'd sent her when I was 15, and it was in German because I'd moved schools.
00:38:00
Speaker
And I was studying German now, and I decided that I'm going to write a letter to her in German, even though it she doesn't speak German. And she was like, do you remember this? It was such a good bonding thing as well, and for such a lovely memory. it's because there was that physical connecting thing between us, right?
00:38:17
Speaker
There is something lovely about finding old cards and letters and reading I've always kept them from things like, you know, when we've had dinner parties over the years and people write to you afterwards and reminisce about a funny story that happened that night and then to find them and read through them years later.
00:38:34
Speaker
Like after my accident, i so many people from all over the world, you know, family, friends, army friends wrote to me. And I've always kept every single one of those letters because I think what could be more motivational than all those words in all of those things?
Finding Joy in Everyday Life
00:38:51
Speaker
I don't think I'll ever want for a little bit of inspiration if I'm feeling a bit down. You know what i mean? want to ask you, and I feel like that's a nice conclusion to our conversation as well. What would you tell someone who's feeling down and, you know, who's Perhaps they don't know why they want to be in life or for whatever reason they are quite unhappy in the situation or a lower emotional state and they need that little bit of positivity and help.
00:39:26
Speaker
I would always say to people, really, and I laugh with people that obviously in my world of spinal cord injury, but obviously metaphorically speaking, To put one foot in front of the other each day in some capacity and just try to find one small thing that you can find some joy Because I think when you're feeling like that, the worst thing we can do for ourselves is set ourselves insurmountable sort of targets.
00:39:56
Speaker
And I think the most insurmountable target is often trying to be the person we were before. Be that trying to be the person before the accident or trying to be the person before the illness or trying to be the person before you that you were before you lost your job or whatever, fill in that you know any scenario to that.
00:40:15
Speaker
I think that that is the most soul-destroying thing that we can do to ourselves as humans is two hanker after what we had before that moment of change, especially because usually that's happened through reasons out of our control.
00:40:32
Speaker
And also because in most case scenarios or in many scenarios, certainly like my scenario, I was never going to get that back again. I was never going to be the person I was before that day of the accident.
00:40:45
Speaker
It changed my life absolutely forever. And I think that a huge milestone in feeling better is the moment when you can let go of that desperate hankering after the before.
00:41:03
Speaker
I think I would advise people If today is hard, find one small thing that you can find some joy in today. It might be, like i say, a decent cup of tea.
00:41:16
Speaker
It might be as simple as, you know, watching an episode of your favorite show, but whatever it is, finding something in that day, you can take as a win and then do it again tomorrow.
00:41:29
Speaker
In that way, You just keep going. It's a bit, you know, the other day when my husband obviously left and he went away for a year, my army wives, they all came into the into play and were saying to me, you know, you've got day one over on to day two.
00:41:46
Speaker
And in a way, that's how we deal with it in the army, you know, and we have as wives, you just literally, let's get today under our belt and then deal with tomorrow.
00:41:57
Speaker
And I've definitely applied that. As I said to you at the very start, I think that's been enormously helpful in helping me to cope with something that was was as catastrophic as my accident. You know, a spinal cord injury like this, it will affect me for the rest of my life. I mean, you know, obviously my entire neck's been rebuilt one way or another.
00:42:17
Speaker
suffer from a great deal of paralysis, all of the other health complications, all the bladder and bowel issues that you might expect somebody in a wheelchair to live with. It's another thing that I speak a lot about with the charities is the whole bladder and bowels and all of the sagas, you know, of that part of spinal cord injury, the embarrassing bits.
00:42:39
Speaker
But all you can is keep going and hope that, you know, trust the universe that something will fall into place.
00:42:50
Speaker
And I always sort of like to encourage people as well. I can certainly say from my own experience, I loved teaching. I loved it so much. It was all I ever wanted to do and I loved my job.
00:43:03
Speaker
So it broke my heart that I was never well enough to go back to being a teacher. But I've done some of the most incredible things now. you know I've learned to fly small airplanes with one of the charities that I now I now support, in fact, I'm going up to RAF Cranwell in a few days' time to go and help select the new candidates for that charity, Flying Scholarships for Disabled People.
00:43:30
Speaker
I never would have done that if this hadn't happened to me. Our little army wife th thrift shop that that's now grown arms and legs called Sustainable Style Boutique. I never would have been doing that if that hadn't have happened. So I just think you've got to trust.
00:43:43
Speaker
I see things as a chapter. that's the end of one chapter and try to be excited for what the next chapter might bring. You're not going to feel excited every day. And there are days when you think, good grief, this is the worst thing ever.
00:43:57
Speaker
How the hell am I going to get through tomorrow? But you will. You will. Just one day at a time.