011 - Pit Pony Rowena Hicks - Classroom to Author

Today, we’re joined by Rowena Hicks, who dedicated over 30 years to her role as a Deputy Head Teacher and SENCO in the London-Kent area. Teaching was Rowena's life - it was her passion, her calling, and she gave it her all, right up until the moment her own health signalled it was time to step back.

Rowena opens up about the physical and emotional toll of being a people-pleaser in the world of education. From pushing through chronic stress to the realisation that her relentless work ethic was costing her health, Rowena shares her journey of self-discovery and recovery. 

She talks about the pivotal moment she took her doctor’s warning seriously, the challenges of redefining herself outside the classroom, and the newfound passion she’s poured into her second career as an author.

Tune in to hear Rowena’s inspiring path from burnout to balance, her take on the importance of self-worth, and the small, daily steps she’s taken to rebuild her life with intention and joy.

Notable links :

Rowena's website : https://www.rowenahicks.com/

Facebook group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/preventingteacherburnout

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

0:05  
Sharon, hello and welcome to the pit pony podcast with myself, Sharon Cawley and me Sarah Dunwood, in which we talk to teachers from all walks of life who exited the classroom from what they thought was a job for life, and thrived on the other side of teaching

0:25  
coming up in this episode. 

0:28  
So up to about just over two years ago, I was the deputy head. I was so happy. I loved my job. I was passionate. I threw every hour I possibly could into it. I'd trained Senkos, I'd done training and you name it. I just loved it. I loved having an impact on on the staff and the children and the families.

0:51  
Hello and welcome to another brilliant episode of The Pit pony podcast, an ordinary pit pony who found herself in life after teaching, and is going to share their thrival story with us. We've got Rowena Hicks brilliant, really pleased to have Rowena here with us today. She did 30 years, 30 years in the classroom and really extensive role, as you can imagine, over that period of time, Deputy Head Teacher has a Masters, a deputy head teacher, SENCO lead teacher, based in the London Kent area, primary maths, pe send all of them, As you would expect over three decades, definitely a lifer. Without a doubt, Rowena was in it for life.

1:48  
She knew nothing else, true pit pony, by the way, absolute, true pit pony. But came out at the age of 54

1:57  
not planned, not expected, 54 goals I'm out from my job for life. Welcome Rowena, what are you doing today? What's your job? 

2:11  
Hi, Sharon. It's great to be here. So now mostly I'm an author. 

2:16  
excellent, which is something we all have on our bucket list, to be able to say, I am an author, and not just, not just randomly, you know, each flourish and thrive, we're just really going to enjoy picking apart what you're doing now. But what, what we do with our guests, we take them right back to the circumstances in which they left and what a story that this is so welcome Rowena, and I'm going to ask you to start where you finished. 

2:47  
So up to about just over two years ago, I was the deputy head. I was so happy. I loved my job. I was passionate. I threw every hour I possibly could into it. I'd trained Senkos, I'd done training, and you name it, I just loved it, and loved having an impact on on the staff and the children and the families, and I started having some warning signs of odd feelings in my in my body and my bones, and headaches and sleeplessness and getting a bit crotchety at home, and my children started asking me if I was okay and perhaps I should change my job, because I wasn't having much time with them, basically. And I started going to see the doctor, who was a bit concerned. And then one morning, I ended up in an ambulance going to A and E with chest pain, and took a couple of weeks off, and they said, No, it wasn't a heart attack. No one told me anything about anything, so I just went straight back full in. And then a little bit later, I the chest pains got very seriously worse, and I I lost feeling in my arms. I lost vision in one eye. I wasn't sleeping. I was eating takeaways, you know, all the usual stuff. And I went to see the doctor, and he said, Rowena, we've done all these tests, and really, it's actually got to a point where you could die if you don't stop doing what you're doing.

4:18  
Wow. So physically, medically, there's nothing wrong with you apart from one thing, your job, yeah, I've been tested. I'm fitters and ox. 

4:30  
 They tested everything. 

4:32  
Did you go? Okay, doctor, I'll resign.

4:36  
Okay. I didn't think you were going to say that one bit. So what did you do? Oh, I fought. I fought really hard. And then eventually he really did say, Look, this is a wake up call here. And so I went to speak to my boss and a couple of others at school and HR and, you know, and they all were saying, oh, Ro, just take a break and you'll be fine. We want you to come back. You know, I knew I was good. It. I loved it, and I was making a difference. But actually it was when the doctor said to me, you need to hear what I'm saying. Here you are at serious risk now, and that's what it took to make me say, okay, but the guilt and the shame and the horror of letting my team down was appalling. 

5:21  
You say at one point, there was a time you remember you were sitting in your car and you could not get out of your car. What did you mean by that you couldn't physically get out of your car? 

5:36  
So I followed my morning routine that day. I remember it crystal clear, and I got myself into the car, drove to work, and I remember even what parking slot I was I was in. I was so early. I was always one of the first in, and I was looking at the front door, and I was in floods of tears, just I didn't know what to do. I could not get my body to move to get out of that car. And I know that's not unheard of, with overwhelm, burnout, stress, anxiety. You know, I've heard other teachers who've who've had that, but I had never thought it would happen to me. I thought I was invincible, because I was helping everybody else, wasn't I? So it wasn't going to happen to me until that day, and this is where we go to this wonderful expression that we use all the time. And if we're not careful, it's going to become a label that we put on people, particularly teachers, that we throw out there, you know, like the word legend and I come and we devalue them over over a period of time, where we somebody brings you a cup of tea, you go, you legend, no, you're not. And one of the, one of the words and and labels that that we're overusing at the moment, but I listen to them all the time, is the expression people pleaser. Oh yeah, teachers tend to fall into that category of people pleasing. Now, would you say you were a people pleaser? I'd like to say I was a people pleaser, because I am working very, very hard to break that off me. But it's not just the people pleasing, because there's a need for affirmation in a lot of us because we don't feel good enough, and we feel that we're going to be caught out, you know, as a SENCO for however many years. And even I used to train Senkos on their NASCO course going back into work, and I used to think, oh, no, I don't know the answer to that. I've got to look like I do. And actually, teachers say exactly the saying that they they feel they're going to be found out because of this over conscientiousness, this inability to show any weakness or vulnerability, and unfortunately, it's incredibly common, because people, people pleasers, if we work around this a bit, Sarah, because we we spend a lot of time

8:01  
dealing with members from the life after teaching group who do this, they put their own needs so far down the list of significance. In order to avoid conflict, keep everybody okay, make sure it, you know, and obviously it's rooted in childhood and patterns of behavior from from the kind of like the family dynamic, possibly in which they were raised.

8:29  
A people pleaser, has no boundaries. And it comes down to that, that image, you know, when the plane's crashing and you sat next to your kids, and the masks drop down and you say, whose masks do you put on first?

8:45  
I'll put my kids on. No, you don't you put your own mask on first. Otherwise you can't help kids. So from what you've described, because we are pit ponies, with the work ethic of the pit pony, we just keep going and going and going.

9:03  
Sarah dunwood, you over the last probably four years,

9:09  
three years you have worked really hard on healthy boundaries. Do you recognize yourself particularly somebody as a SENCO? Were you a people pleaser? Yeah, yeah. And I think what I really recognize is that need for affirmation and that constant imposter syndrome, particularly if you can't pull the answer to something in that split second where somebody asks you.

9:38  
And I think that massively, that massively undermines your own confidence, and then you do more to keep going. Can I step in there? Because I think this lack of confidence is enormous. And actually, a teacher said to me this week that they got outstanding observations from all of the.

10:00  
SLT in their school, and yet they still didn't feel good enough. And I don't know what it is about school staff, but our confidence is is shot. And one of the things that I've looked into, particularly for me and the book I wrote and things, is around I know when I started a new school and I felt very uncomfortable with some of the values and some of the things I was being asked to do and the approach they were taking. But because I was then sort of locked in, I had to adjust myself to fit in with them, and that is an incredibly stressful place to be when your values don't align with the places that you were or with your boss, your team might even be some of your teammates, but actually it's looking at whether your values align as well, because otherwise that can lead to a lot of stress. And it's the ethos, isn't it? People don't say no in teaching, I talk about different generations as well, because we're Generation X, so our work ethic was, give me more. Give me more. Give me more. I'm strong. That's how I was raised. Taking time off is a weakness. The proudest thing my dad had when he retired from the prison service in about 1996

11:21  
he had 100% attendance record. So I watched a man going to work with broken ribs. Well, I watched a man leave me mum ill. You know, three of them all being sick and poorly, and he went into work because that's what you did that was considered successful, putting your own needs completely at the detriment of yourself

11:47  
absolutely and look at us as teachers, when, if we need to take a day off or a week off, or, you know, God forbid, longer the guilt and the appalling sense of letting your team down, which then means you can't heal, because we have this extraordinary view of ourselves as indispensable. Yes, it's a weird one, isn't it? It's a swing between

12:13  
imposter syndrome, I'm not good enough, but also I'm completely indispensable, and the whole thing will go to hell in a handcart if I'm not there. Well, which is it? Which is it? So you're in this position at the age of 54

12:28  
you're in a physically when somebody talks about planes in their arms, they've lost their eyesight, planes in the chest, pins and needles. This is not great,

12:39  
but somebody who's been a people pleaser all of their life, I suspect also, you had really tethered a great sense of your identity to being a teacher. So you go your resignation is accepted. And what tends to be the case at this stage is there is a really dark interim period before the fight back and Sarah, you will chip in here. Now you had what do you refer to it as, that period in your life when you were in this holding space, the Netflix crisps and sofa phase, because I didn't move from the sofa, literally for hours, sometimes, because it it was almost physically

13:27  
the mental pain, in terms of feeling so lost and discombobulated, translated into This physical inertia. It's like, I just can't do anything. It was debilitating.

13:46  
Did you? Did you experience anything like that? Rowena, well, this is where I'm a bit different. I think because the people pleaser in me and the the reaction to people seeing me as a failure or feeling or sort of, I'm not sure anyone told me I was weak, but some people around me said, Oh, that's a weakness to to crash out of work like that. And so that the response in me was this desperate sort of emptiness, if you like, an isolation, but

14:23  
yeah, at the same time, I needed to be doing something to prove to people that I still had some worth and that actually I wasn't a complete loser, and I I still, I still meant to somebody or something. So I straight away had to start something to prove that,

14:41  
isn't it interesting that they're both trauma responses, yeah, both trauma responses. So therefore, it's okay either one of those and, and I think that's what happens when we hemorrhage out and we come out because we've lost.

15:00  
Stole our islands of safety to structure the half terms. What we've also been lost, what's also been lost is being led by bells. We're told when we can go to the toilet. We're told what schemes of work we have to do when our lesson observations are we get a calendar that we sort of like do, a hybrid of what's the school the kids school calendar, my school calendar, and told where to be when my weekends and my time off. We've talked about this, this institutionalization of pit ponies and educational pit ponies. So actually, when that all stops, it is absolutely possible to do both, to sit on the city and go I cannot move, or to keep going and keep going and keep going. I've got to do this because it's not what we expected at 54

15:56  
that's absolutely not what you've had planned. There's no way that's in your life plan? Oh, gosh, no, I was so happy. I was loving what I was doing, and I was looking at what was next, and all sorts of options for me totally so it was completely sideswiped. So you start, what's your financial circumstances at this point? Do you need to be earning? Do you have to work. Where are you at? Financially, I was lucky, because I received some inheritance. So I lived from that mostly. I also, at that time, had a husband, which I no longer have. Hello, Carlo, you can all relate to that helps a little bit, but now I don't. So you start you start with you felt isolated from your friends to a certain extent, especially most of them in your phone have been teachers. You told me that you felt Depression had hit,

16:50  
and yeah, you're going out walking with a dog, kind of thing. Which dogs? I've got to be honest, animals are our salvations when we're at our lowest points. Oh, oh, shoot. I mean, my my daily walk with the dog probably held me together, along with the antidepressants. And I'm quite open about the fact I have antidepressants, because do you know what I see as a sign of strength, that I am doing my absolute best to get myself better, and I started therapy, right? Perfect. And Sarah can Shannon, again, these are the such, such commonalities. The first thing you did the doctor looked at the state of you, and what did the doctor prescribe for you? Sarah, put me on stronger antidepressants than than I'd been on previously. And and then I think I'm mirroring we're mirroring each other so much in terms of experience that

17:46  
I invested a lot of money that I have at the time in talking therapy and coaching to unpick all of that

17:59  
hurt and

18:02  
I felt like I've been cut adrift.

18:05  
And even though I had really supportive family and all the rest of it around me, I had no sense of my own identity anymore. And had to, I had to come to that. And I think what therapy really helped with me is actually my identity wasn't a teacher

18:24  
got me back to you. I really want, yeah, excellent. So, Rowena, you You did CBT. Did you? Is that what I did? So the NHS gave me six sessions of CBT because of all but all the training I'd had at school, I ended up helping everybody in the group who was in such a terrible state, way more experienced, lovely people who were leading it and following a script, really, but yeah, one to one therapy was was better for me, the counseling. So we go back then to you've come out of this you you go into your therapy. What moves you to the area you're in now? What? What takes you from the teacher to somebody who's walking the dog, who's accessing therapies? Where do you then start to pull things together in the terms of Teach, flourish and thrive? Okay, well, that's quite simple, really, because it was a connection of two things. One was someone saying to me, why do you think anyone wants to listen to your opinion? Rowena, and that made me sit up and think, Whoa, hold on a minute. Are you been vatted anymore? I don't have a job, I don't have a title, I don't have an income. Do I have any value as me, but God downloaded. I don't know if there are Christians listening here, but God downloaded to me. I was on a Christian conference, and he just in a moment of quiet, he downloaded. He said, value yourself. Rowena, then you can value your team. And then I had seven comments.

20:00  
Years after that, which looked like seven chapters of a book. So I then decided that it was time for me to look at where my value comes from, which is not affirmation from everyone else. It is intrinsically. I have value because of who I am, and as do each one of us. And actually, all the research shows as well that until we really value ourselves, we can't value those around us, and we can't so what I was doing in school, I was giving out and valuing everybody, the children, the parents, the staff. It was my passion to be supporting everybody, because I didn't recognized I needed to value and look after myself. I then crouched and I wasn't as effective in doing what I was trying to do. So I put it into a book. Had a lot of fun writing the book brilliant, and we will get into that a bit more now. And I think it took me probably hemorrhaged out at the age of 41 went into survival mode because the kids were really young. But it was only coming out to the latter part of my 40s and my early 50s that I suddenly realized, once you know your self worth,

21:21  
you will never, ever allow anybody to make you feel the way you used to do. Now, finding your self worth isn't something that happens overnight. And when I had to go on a quest, and I always use the word quest, not journey, because we're not Americans, right? You know, we're very much 13th century. We're on a quest, right? I suddenly went on a quest to find how I find value in myself, how I put a price on what I bring to others. And very often the most valuable commodity we have is our time.

22:00  
How am I spending my time? And we'd link this very easily to the word self care.

22:07  
And if we're not careful, people tinker around the edges with self care, with face packs and nail extensions, and they think they've gone for a swim.

22:16  
What I did was I used the power of my phone to start learning and educating myself and watching TED Talks and signing up to five day challenges, and I repositioned myself in my world view, as somebody with value. And it's only when you can do that do you truly bring value to the people around you, because you've got it sorted. Burst, yeah, thank you. It's not easy. It's not easy, and it really isn't easy. And I think the message I would be saying to people here is, is, if you're resonating with any of this, it actually takes some hard work and some daily consistent habit changes and mindset changes and and actually, funnily enough, that's why I've just written my my second book, which comes out in November, which is called the burnout busting teachers journal, because it's daily, tiny weeny, habit changes and mindset changes because, you know, look at what's in your thought life. You know, our time, I agree, is our greatest commodity. But actually, if you don't take control of your thoughts, they're going to impact your actions. And you know, I've been out of teaching two and a bit years now, and I still fight that people pleasing sort of drive in me. I'm having still to work. I teach on it. I'm still learning and working on it. These take time. Of course they do. Of course they did, because we rewiring our brain, God knows how, many decades of limiting self belief, how we respond to things, a gut response going into planet, going into guilt. I love the book The Chimp Paradox. Sarah, done with through that one my way a couple of years ago, and I still couldn't get things sorted. But you mentioned something there. You talked about journaling. Now word journaling is concerned. I'm going to talk about that the same way I talked about people pleasing. Okay, if we're not careful again, it's going to become a misused, misunderstood, diluted,

24:22  
powerful thing that we can do journaling. It's not the Diary of Anne Frank, it's not just writing things. Journaling is a very, very specific skill, and it's a very specific therapeutic tool we can use. Imagine for a moment, Rowena, people don't know about journaling. Start us with the Idiots Guide to what is the therapeutic tool of journaling?

24:49  
Okay, well, there's lots of types of journaling, and everyone's got to find what fits for them. So I started years and years ago in the morning and an evening just talking to myself in my.

25:00  
Journal about where I'd been that day and how to recognize my thinking and what was annoying me and sitting with me and all that sort of thing. And then I started a bit of guided journaling. So this gives you prompts, and this is where I found real impact, because we don't have a lot of time as as teachers, so you need something short and to the point, and actually

25:25  
things like so in what helps me is things like, no, can I start my day with three things or three people that I'm grateful for? Because it immediately shifts your thinking. And if you're thinking, oh, like,

25:38  
how am I going to do it today, you're thinking, actually, I've got four amazing children, I've got a warm bed, and I know I can get out of work at five o'clock today. So you can, you can shift your thinking, or you can, it might say something like, what is the worst job on my to do list that I could do first today? So it's, it's giving you some clues as to how to have a successful day, and it's the guided sense of it. But in my journal, I also give quotes and research and that sort of thing to empower teachers to remember that if you're not looking after you. So for example, the research shows that if we don't take regular, even tiny breaks, then we're not as productive. In fact, it can impact us 40%

26:25  
so even taking a five minute lunch break and two minutes between classes or whenever you've got a gap, even that can increase your productivity. And yet we don't do it because we think we can't, actually we really can, if we're determined enough. And that leans in to the Netflix Chris and sofa. There's no way I could have burst through Sarah's doors in 2019, or whatever year it was, and gone. Come on, we've got this kid, you need those first even if I'm just doing this, it's enough.

27:08  
And I think it's really interesting, because there's a post in our group right the way back from from early doors that I'd started making a list every day, of three things that I was grateful for about not being in teaching anymore, and the list is ridiculous when I look at it now, things like being able to go to the toilet when I wanted to, being able to drink a full cup of tea, they're so low level, but actually they're so intrinsically important to being able to be healthy and and well. So I recognize that completely, because that massively helped me that when I had a wobble of maybe I should just go back into teaching, I would look at that list and go, No, this is what you are grateful for now,

28:02  
I would say that I gave an assistant head, a really outstanding teacher the week that it's really good for the first week of term, from my journal to trial it before it comes out, to give me some feedback. And she said, Oh, Ro, I don't know what to do, because I don't think I've got 30 seconds at the start and the end of the day to look at your journal, and I am so adopted myself. And she was in an absolute like, Oh no, this revelation. So she said, right, I'm going to change my day. So she just put in 30 seconds. And actually what came up in her day was that the prompt was, she had a very, very challenging year three class, and she said the prompt was, what is, what does my class need the most today? Or what do I need to offer them today the most? Something like that. When she sort of thought about this, and it was probably 1015, seconds, and she said, I just want them to be happy, because they were quite unruly, you know, start a term difficult. And she said, all I did all of that day and the rest of the week was try to make them happy. She said, we had the most amazing week. It just changed my thinking. But that was 15 seconds at the start of the day of her reflecting, because as teachers, we don't stop to reflect. We don't have a toolkit. No, I speak to so many teachers in crisis, and they're in they're in the grip of anxiety that that's the main it's not the depression. They've not gone into that sedentary, defeated. There's normally been a critical incident that they're responding to, support plan or suspension or something's happened and it's anxiety. And I'll say to them, right? What's your tool kit? What do you do for your mental health? Yeah, clueless. They start to make things up. The first thing they'll say is, well, I like to go for.

30:00  
What that ain't a toolkit. That's a given. What is your toolkit? And teachers do not have it for their mental health. We need to have this in teacher training, really a toolkit for for school staff, because actually, once your brain gets to that place where you're in that level of anxiety and fight flight, your brain is so fizzy, and teachers have described it well, I can describe it about myself. I couldn't think. I couldn't make a decision. That was one of my biggest problems. I couldn't even make a decision to stop my job, because by that point, I was well gone, and so I was listening to these opinions of everybody else, and I couldn't I lost sight of what was best for me and my children and and a toolkit is absolutely critical to put it together, but to put it together gently and for ourselves and in a way that suits us and serves us, rather than a big whoosh of, Oh, I've got to change all of this in the next week. That's not going to work. But imagine if it was school culture.

31:02  
Imagine if it was the culture within a school where you were almost at the point with God, I've got to take my five minutes journaling time, because if I don't, my head's not going to be happy with me if I don't take this time out for myself. Now this isn't, this isn't who we are as a school, because what they do is they cram stuff like this into an inset day on the sixth of September, tick the box that they've done it, but then they don't embed it, so you have a journal, okay, that you have produced. Now I'm just going to walk you back a step. Now, as an English teacher, you said to me, I'm an author. Well, I I'll tell you now, in a full and frank disclosure, I'm always jealous of people who've written a book, because that should have been me, right? So as pleased as I am for you, the green eyed monster kicks him, and now you're talking about publishing a journal. Just imagine for a minute somebody's listening to this and they want to publish a book. How do you actually go about

32:05  
taking ideas from your head and publishing a book in the 21st century? Give us some golden nuggets. It's a great question. So I just started blurbing out stories, really. And some of the key tips that I I think one of the the main reasons I wrote it actually, well, a, it was for me for therapy, probably. But B, I wanted to impact someone like a teaching assistant I spoke to one day in the year before I left, and I went and said to her, Julie, what is the thing that I do that helps you the most. And she said, Oh, it's easy to answer that row. She said, It's when you come around in the morning and you say, how are you? And I said, Well, everyone does that, don't they? She said, No, people aren't want to know how's your work going, and are you on top of your work, and what's going well in the classroom? And she said, Ro, you asked how and am I? So what I wanted to do is share stories like that to try and impact leaders and other school staff to remember to look after each other, not just to look after yourself, because actually, in giving out to others, you feed yourself. So I started writing stories, and then I got a little bit lost, so I went online and found a company. I don't know if you want me to say the company name on here, punchy books. And this guy does a course on how to read, how to write a book, and he gives all the sort of criteria. I have to say it was useful, bits of it, but what was really useful is I met another lady who was doing the same course, and we sort of slightly got a bit lost in course and pushed it aside. But every week, we would meet for an hour on Zoom, and we'd say, right, I've read your chapter one. This is the feedback. I've read your chapter two. This is the feedback. So we wrote our books together, so if you can find someone to write with, and I'm thinking of writing another book. So if anyone wants to join up, we could certainly do that. Maybe we have a we have a leave the classroom and thrive author group.

34:11  
That'd be so fun, because it is really empowering to write. And actually, you know, I know there's lots of teachers out there who've got amazing ideas and lots of novels in their brains, but it is about sitting down and being really structured. And the best advice I was ever given was go, if possible, same time every day, let's say for an hour or two. Put the same music, calm music on, get the same mug with the same drink. And your brain after a while fits in to the idea that, Oh, it's writing time now. Really helpful. Wow. Accountability partner, perfect. We all like that, and that would possibly work. Sarah within the nd community for body doubling, if, if, what? What was it? Body doubling is.

35:00  
Very, very important, isn't it? What is that exactly? So it's the it's the idea that if I take myself right the way back, that I can't work in a completely silent environment, if there's no one there, I can work in a silent environment if there's somebody physically there that I don't engage with. So I would used to take myself off to a coffee shop, put my noise canceling earphones in so I couldn't hear anything. But there were other people around which, which just kind of allowed me to focus, to force them out of my it's a very weird thing to explain, but it's just having the presence of somebody else so, so I've done it on zoom with people that we just have our cameras on, we're muted, we're getting on with our own thing, but just having that person there kind of helps with focus. I don't know how to explain it any better than that? Oh, that was, that was, that was perfect. So you've got the accountability partner. How'd you publish it? How'd you get it published? Well, I self publish on Amazon because it's cheap. It's free, actually. And one of my kids, well after most of them, help edit and all that sort of thing. One of them designed, put it into design and put it onto Amazon for me, because that's a little bit technical. I'm bit old to learn it. I could learn it, Yeah, but why have a dog and bark yourself when you've got kids? Ellie uploads this onto tick tock so that that's great, because you've clearly done the work. You've clearly started to dip into the tool kit that we need. And tool kits are different. I always refer to them as because I talk about swim lanes in life, and I have like, a box of rubber rings and arm bands and floats, and

36:56  
because mental health, there isn't an outcome to the journey, which is why I don't like the word journey, because it suggests a destination. Actually,

37:09  
I am still using the same mental health toolkit I was using for when I started my fight, back to when I'm in my thrival mode, because we don't just plateau. It's like weight gain. You don't reach your target where, right? Well, I've got out of control. I'm not going to get any bigger. It's an ongoing thing with our mental health, and it's so important. So when I talk to a teacher and they're in crisis, and they say, Well, I go out for walks. I want to hear I do guided meditation, I go out for walks, I journal, I pray. There's a whole host of things we can be doing at different times in our lives, and that's where robust mental health comes from, and that's self care, and that's talking to yourself with compassion,

38:01  
yeah, but as you say, it's finding what works for you at the time. And actually for me, different things have worked at different times. And actually, with a teacher in Israel, I am just designing an anti stress toolkit for teachers, which has lots of these ideas. It has app syncs. There's lots of free apps out there as well. And different things really support. Because what helps her doesn't help me. You know, we are so different, aren't we? And everybody just needs to try different things, but it does take a little bit of proactive, intentional action.

38:37  
Yeah, 100%

38:38  
100% so my friend, love this. Love everything about your story. Now, you were so honest at the beginning by being the people pleaser, who, even though the doctor was basically saying, leave or you will kill yourself, it still left you in a dilemma. And then you've talked with such eloquence and understanding about your own experiences. There's no full stop. You're a published author, so now,

39:07  
either way, that squeak, you heard listeners. We've not heard somebody. I've had to sit and watch a tabby keep going back and two across your screen, and when finally the tabby cat was dumped on the phone

39:22  
and that I'll come back to any day of the week. Get an animal. Oh yeah, it's an animal. So fantastic story. So how we're going to end it with our guests is this, we ask them the sliding doors question. Rowena, what's your sliding doors moment in life?

39:44  
I It's so easy for me that really because last June, I put myself on a plane to go and visit my son in Bali, and I sat on this semi empty plane in term time going to somewhere hot, just because I wanted to.

40:00  
Do and I could, and I realized that actually I'd taken some control in my life and that I was going to be okay. I wasn't completely better, but actually I could, yeah, I could start to look at myself with value in terms of making a decision for myself, not just what everybody else is one everybody else wanted of me. It was a beautiful moment of realization, and that was a beautiful, beautiful thing, particularly as two mothers of sons, don't Sarah, there is no greater love of your life than your son. I don't care what you say, daughters, we clash like no, we're not even speaking now, right?

40:42  
Uh oh, we'll be speaking by tea time. But her relationship with the relationship with the mother and son is just, is just powerful. And thank you for what was a a glorious pit pony episode. There's so much there. Paula says we are going to drop links to everything you do, who you are, who you are, how people can connect with you. Because just listening to you, I can imagine you going around that school, and when you asked Julie how she was, how are you, I felt that energy come through. What a lovely, lovely person you are. And from Sarah and myself and all of our listeners, thank you so much for giving us your time today. Thank you.

41:28  
What a beautiful soul Wasn't she? Yeah, the so much resonated for me, parallels

41:39  
and obviously different experience, but similar in terms of the other side there's, there's a couple of things and parallels for me as well, in terms of neuro divergence, and some of the steps that that are about recovering in terms of mental health are actually really helpful in terms of managing neuro divergence, and I'm coming at this from a personal perspective, but she it made me giggle a little bit. I was obviously muted when she talked about the fizzy brain when you haven't got enough time to think about things. Because I've said that to you before now, haven't I? That I sometimes get to a point where my brain feels like it's fizzing and I cannot, cannot process anything at all. At that point, one of the things that I do want to mention she she used the phrase eat the frog. Well, she didn't use the phrase eat the frog. She talked about doing the task that is the worst thing on your list for the day, and it led me to that Mark Twain quote, which is that if you, if you eat a frog as the first thing that you do in the day, that will probably be the worst thing that you do in the day. And there's lots of studies about that, and there's books been written about it in terms of when, when you're when you're struggling with your day, take the thing that's worst and actually get it off your plate and then go. So I thought that was that was really interesting. But what just genuinely, the route into authorship, I thought was just lovely. Some real golden nuggets there, because there's lots of people who've got a book in them for sure, yeah, but I think what will stay with me about Rowena story is her doctor telling her that if she did not stop, she would die. Yeah, I agree, and that that you've just said about the frog, if you remember our accountant. Phil, wells be first through that one with me. And I didn't say it at the time, it was peak irony, because actually eating the frog was spending time with my accountant. So it was peak irony that that was the one that, yeah, I had to get out the way.

43:55  
But a quick one, I do, and it's similar to an eat the frog. I change the word from have to get, um, have to pick the kids up. I get to pick the kids up. I have to do this paperwork. I get to do this. And I think that toolkit will come to the fore more and more, because that's when our pit ponies, when they land and splat in that field, nine times out of 10, the people I talk to have not adapted that within the classroom. And I always have that moment of I wonder if I'd have stayed, if I'd have those boundaries, if I'd have had my toolkit at the time, would I have remained a healthier teacher? I don't know, and that's and that's what I'm never going to naple gaze over.

44:46  
But we lose sight of what we can say yes to and what we don't have to say yes to. But when you've lost your value, she had no value on herself, despite the fact she knew what she was doing was in value.

45:00  
All.

45:01  
She couldn't make that connection.

45:04  
I just loved her.

45:06  
I liked how she talked to spent her spent a lot of time pre recording, talking to Rowena. She's a good soul. She's a really, really good soul who's now in the right place, journaling

45:21  
everything she talked about, about those small steps, what you can be doing, and I almost could have predicted, when she gave it to the head teacher to trial, what the head teacher's response was going to be. I've not got time to do that.

45:35  
Yeah, and if you're answering that question with I haven't got time stop

45:42  
you are absolutely the very person who should be making time. Because,

45:48  
on an on a different note,

45:51  
we have said goodbye to parents. We have said goodbye to people who've come to the end of their time. And my dad was 75 my mom was 82 Roy 83

46:04  
was Roy 80 oh gosh, I'm gonna get this wrong now, 85 or 8688 he was 85 he was just due his 86th birthday. Was it

46:15  
you go and speak to somebody who's retired

46:19  
and ask them what they wish they could change it's about that time and getting it back. Yeah, especially now retirement age is getting a lot later. Now's the time, especially if you're in your

46:35  
summer or your Autumn period of your life, you'll never get the time. But last night, I had to go and pick

46:46  
the daughter up at 11 o'clock at night. She'd been to some Halloween

46:51  
dairy farmer garden type thing.

46:54  
I get to do that because, you know what? I ain't going to be doing that in five years time. And that's and that's exactly it. Gig with my son on Friday, who is driving now. He could have met me in Manchester, but I chose to go and pick him up so that actually I could have the drive with him both ways, because it's quality time,

47:19  
because I've missed too many sports days. I was at parents evenings at my own school, talking to other people's kids, because why Warrington schools did that? I'll never know. And then I was doing a 10 minute catch up on the phone about my own kids education. And I live with such. I used to live with regret about the moments that I've missed, and the moments I was there for but wasn't present. Yeah. How long's his school play gonna last? Well, what time are you actually on Ellie? Because do I have to sit through the first half hour of other people's drivel? What's not how it should be? You know, other people's very talented children performing good

48:02  
made me is that there's only so many versions of the Nativity you can do when you it's got one line at the end. So I think she was really, really great. And I think a very thought provoking, reflective episode that we have, and wonderful to have. So Sarah from me, lending much love to you, and I'll see you on the other side.

48:29  
thank you, as always, for listening to our pit pony podcast. On behalf of Sarah, our guests and all involved with the production, we're so grateful for your support. Please subscribe to our channels, follow us on social media, and we look forward to seeing you next time when we will have another inspirational story from a fellow pit pony who has exited the classroom and thrive. You.