Unconscious Incompetence

In the conscious competence ladder within psychology the bottom rung that we all begin at is unconscious incompetence, or unconsciously unskilled. It is a skill or knowledge that we are unaware of and therefore do not know that we need to work on it. You progress up the ladder by becoming consciously incompetent - learning …

Choosing To Be Happy

Last Saturday marked 4 years since Finn had his stroke. It seems like a lifetime ago but also as though it was just yesterday. So much has happened since then and we're both very different people than we were back then. I do miss elements of our old lives. I miss feeling more (but not …

Soap Gate

On the face of it this is a boring story about some soap...but it really highlights the impact aphasia can have on something that is otherwise just a mundane, everyday task. About a month ago my darling husband was refilling our soap dispensers. I handed him another empty dispenser and asked him to fill it …

Parenting With Aphasia

As I watched my husband carrying our son around the kitchen island pretending to be a car I couldn't help but smile. It was the picture perfect moment, all of us together happy and enjoying each others company. I'm reminded in this moment of how lucky we are to have the gift of time. Neither …

A New Chapter

It's been a while since I last put pen to paper (figuratively speaking seeing as this is clearly digital 😉). I stopped because I felt like I had reached rock bottom and I felt an overwhelming sense of shame and failure. Moving house and solving our financial issues wasn't the saving Grace (pun intended) I'd …

It isn’t the fall that defines you, it’s how you choose to get back up.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been doing really well but the truth is the last couple of months have seen some highs and lows for me. Selling the house has been stressful to say the least and we’re still not there yet. There have been …

Vulnerability

This weekend I let myself get a little overexcited. I might have mentioned last time that we have now accepted an offer on our house. So far everything sounds promising, buyers ready to move forward with a mortgage already approved on a house purchase that fell through and no chain. However it’s early days. Anyway …

What Happens When You Lose Everything

'When you are young, you can lose it all and still have something ' Young - RaeLynn (feat, Leeland Mooring) I was listening to this song on the way to country to country festival this weekend staring out of the train window and trying to fight the overwhelming nausea (I hate those pendolino trains). For …

A balancing act…

For a long time I was in denial about my role as Finn’s carer. He was able to do most things on his own such as washing, dressing, and eating. The kinds of things you typically associate with caring. I convinced myself that the increased burden I had taken on dealing with our joint but …

Finn’s Aphasia Recovery – Writing

I thought it might be helpful to show you some of Finn's progress over the past 19 months in order to help show how his aphasia has affected him. This post will focus on his writing skills. The pictures below show some of the writing Finn attempted while still in Salford Royal hospital. Most of …