About Miss Olli
Despite the many rewards of caring, the path is also fraught with many tears of hopelessness, despair and frustration that you question your own ability to keep going.
Then you see the flicker of fear or love in their eyes - or
the radiant smiles of gratitude or joy - these fleeting moments in time are
what refuels your commitment and makes it possible to carry on. By taking one
day at a time and having faith in the knowledge that your smallest caring act
has a healing and positive impact in alleviating the fear, suffering or
loneliness of another is one of the most rewarding and satisfying gifts you can
give or receive. The biggest lesson that I am learning on this journey is that
love does not discriminate and is limitless in its its capacity to show
compassion. Love is an invisible but
real entity made up of compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, kindness, courage,
sacrifice and humility.
The beauty, power and courage of love has brought me to my knees with an overwhelming desire to comfort and 'be there'.
It is this all consuming love that makes it possible for me to carry on with my caregiver journey despite, sadly, knowing already how the story will end.
It would be safe to say that Miss Olli's is the result of 'carer's burnout' in combination with the isolation and punitive measures of Sydney's latest and lengthy Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.
Teaching myself to design with the help of Canva, to produce my first diary as well as learning how to set up a blog, with a lot of help from Google Blogger, has been great therapy in helping me combat feelings of isolation and loneliness made even worse by the current world pandemic with all its restrictions and lockdowns.
It caters to my curiosity, my creative side, my imaginative and intellectual side. Most of all it fills my passion to learn. I can do it all at home too.
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| Coverley |
Blogging is helping me to deal with the sadness that comes with accepting that I will never experience Coverley's wonderful love or embrace again. His presence used to uplift and encourage me daily.
I miss his wisdom, humour and encouragement. I miss that I can't bounce ideas off of him.
Miss Olli's Diaries and Journals might be the light at the end of the tunnel.
Just maybe I have found a purpose in a world bigger than dementia.
The years 2020 and 2021 have been dictated by the Covid-19
pandemic. The virus has led to us being either locked-down
in our homes or living under severe restrictions whereby our
movements and freedoms have been regulated and controlled by our State health and government officials.
For much of this time I have been prevented from or
restricted in visiting my partner, Coverley, in his secure dementia unit in a
New South Wales State Government run facility.
I have also been unable to visit
my grand-daughter, Olive, in Adelaide, South Australia during this time.
Olive was born in November 2020. I was able to be there for 2 weeks at the
time of her birth, during which time Adelaide went into a snap lock-down for a
few days followed by hospitals imposing visitor restrictions.
Olive weighed 2.1kg at birth due to being growth restricted
and having to be induced a few weeks early.
She was a very tiny, skinny and fragile little girl. She had feeding difficulties and it was a
struggle for her to put on weight, but she did manage to put on between 10 – 20
grams a day so that was promising.
After a week in hospital, she was allowed to go home. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic she got daily
visits from a community nurse to check on her weight and feeding. It wasn’t long though before Olive was
diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease.
This caused her a lot of distress which prevented her from
sleeping well and made gaining weight all that more challenging.
Her Mum, my daughter, and her Papa were very loving and
attentive parents but were extremely sleep deprived. I had to go back to Sydney before I was
either locked into South Australia or locked out of New South Wales. I also needed to get back to Sydney to see
how Coverley was doing. He still knew me
so as I was quite concerned that he was missing me.
I got to see Coverley for four days and then his Aged Care Centre
went into lockdown due to the Northern Beaches coronavirus outbreak. Like everyone, I felt that life was a yo-yo
of emotions and foiled plans.
I was able to go back to Adelaide to see Olive for a week at
the beginning of February 2021. I also
was able to visit again for a week at the beginning of April 2021 which
included Easter.
Then in June 2021, when I was planning another trip to visit
Olive, Sydney experienced another outbreak which was the very contagious Delta
variant. South Australia immediately
shut their borders to all of New South Wales.
This was the beginning of Sydney’s four-month lockdown.
I couldn’t visit Coverley in his Aged Care Facility even
though he is at end of life. I couldn’t
visit my first and only grand-child Olive, who was at the beginning of her
life. I was missing spending precious
time with Coverley - time that is lost forever due to the relentless ticking
down of the clock. I was not able to hug
or comfort him. In fact, I didn’t even
know if I would see him alive again.
I was missing out on Olive’s milestones and the cuddles that
all grand-parents crave. Her parents
were doing it alone without any family support to help them navigate their new
parenthood. Given that Olive was
initially struggling with weight gain and her debilitating gastro reflux, her
parents could have benefitted greatly from additional support, but the
restrictions and lock-downs imposed by our governments made that impossible.
Most people’s emotional and mental health suffered not from
Covid-19, but from the oppressed living environment imposed on us by our health
and government officials.
Families were separated.
Everyone suffered in some form.
Loved ones died alone. Businesses
collapsed and people’s jobs were lost.
There was and still is so much suffering worldwide.
Olive’s paternal grandparents, who live in Mexico, have
never met or hugged Olive.
Having decided to spend my lonely and long lock-down months in losing myself in creating my two designer diaries and developing a
website to blog and sell them, I then needed to come up with a name for my blog.
The pandemic has made it impossible for me to be able to
physically support my daughter and son-in-law with their first born child or to
be able to spend precious bonding time with my first and only grand-child,
Olive. I have called her Miss Ollie
since she was born because she is a real little Miss with attitude. Nearly 12 months on
and she is blossoming and has a giant personality. She is so very cute too – no bias here!
It only seemed natural to call my blog Miss Olli’s Diaries
and Journals. Miss Ollie as a domain
name was not available hence dropping the letter ‘e’ off of Ollie.
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| Miss Olli |
In a nutshell my blog is to honour Coverley by writing about his and my experiences with dementia.
My Carer’s 2022 Diary is to honour and encourage all caregivers.
My Optimist’s 2022 Laugh a Little Diary is in celebration of a freer and more hopeful 2022.
And my blog name is to honour my grand-daughter, Miss Ollie.
“Breathe in, breathe out. Without the fire, the phoenix never rises from the ashes. Let the fire scorch the skin and burn the soul, allowing yourself to absorb the pain and understand the sincerity of the pain. Breathe in, you are not the past, you are not the future; breathe out, you are simply each breath, the present moment. As you breathe in and breathe out, acknowledge all the trials you have overcome thus far, and that you can continue to overcome all else without doubt. Breathe in, breathe out.” - Forrest Curran, Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love
Wow!! Beautiful! Very encouraging xx
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