But I think one very significant point was when you get all the health visitors come round and all that kind of stuff and I always felt like they were just saying okay yeah but you can just fix that, you know, can you do this? can you do that? Can’t you do such things like it’s easy to, to kind of just get on with things and not feel isolated. And it was when I had a breast feeding counsellor about ten months after the baby was born who listened to me and actually said it’s okay to feel like that, I feel like that, you know, and she put me in touch with some support but all these supports that are supposed to help you, statutory services didn’t work, they don’t recognise it.

I: So, so talk to me about first of all the the people that came over to check the baby, the health visitors

Yeah

I: Do you think they were dismissive or did they think that it was something that was easily fixed?

Yeah they just, everything that I said they were just like oh yeah it’s like that and also that, that was kind of the message from my mum as well like with the generational difference, yeah it’s hard, you know, and you just get on with it, especially as a woman you just are the person who runs the house, looks after the children, goes back to work and all those things, it was just like that’s how it is. And also there was quite a lot of really unhelpful interactions with the health visitors. Things like, you know, going to get the baby weighed and I was saying like I’m really tired because obviously I think I was going into depression and they were saying like ‘Oh just make your sandwich the day before for the next day so that you’ve got your lunch covered’ and I was saying like that just isn’t happening. And then they picked up that I was vegetarian so they started giving me all these lists that I wasn’t getting enough nutrition because I was vegetarian and it was all very by the book rather than looking underneath the surface and realising there’s somebody not coping here.

I: Yeah

Until the breast feeding counsellor came to visit and I think because she’d had personal experience she was just right onto it because she was listening rather than just talking at somebody, she was listening to what I was saying and looking for solutions, not solutions but access to support.

I: Have, you, have you tried to join any other kind, have you accessed have you tried to access any kind of other forms of support?

I tried like [name of charity] the single parents support group well the advice line.

I: So, so is that how was that, how did that work for you?

It, it didn’t work for me because I felt that when I was talking to them about the issues I had affecting me they just said the other person equally has the right to be a parent and doing basically whatever they want to do. So I felt quite dismissed by that as well.

I: How, so I don’t understand?

So I spoke to them about feeling that I was responsible for everything around my child [um] and, and I was isolated and I also didn’t feel like I had any rights like because that was at the time that, that he was, you know, just wanting to turn up and, and just impromptu arrive and take the child out and so on without any communication and they just said well he’s basically if he’s on the birth certificate he can do that and it’s up to you to negotiate and I didn’t feel very supported really, I felt more like I was being read what the legal situation is rather than acknowledging the impact that that had on me.

I: I want to ask you about social media so Facebook, Twitter I don’t know what these, you know, people use and how, how do, do you think it fits into loneliness in today’s society and has it helped you, has it not helped you?

Yeah actually that was, that was huge, I got on Facebook just to share some photographs with somebody just to receive some photographs, I wasn’t interested in that at all and that was actually a lifeline for me. When I was stuck at home with, with my baby and in the evenings especially, I managed to keep in contact with all the people that I’d been in contact with before because before I had my daughter I was in loads of, I was in three bands. I spent all my spare time performing and doing community work

I: Oh what do you, what instrument do you play?

Brazilian drumming, so

I: Really?

A huge drum, yeah.

I: You’ll be happy to know my husband is Brazilian

Excellent, excellent, yeah

I: So my little one is playing samba

R: Yeah that’s what it was, it was Brazilian Samba but different styles so that’s why I was in three different bands. One of them was just really ferocious like carnival like xxxxx it was like very closely linked to those and so yeah I could network with all those people even though I wasn’t going out and doing the music anymore I realised that I knew hundreds of people and so I utilised social media for that and still do now.

I think there needs to be a lot of investment in community work, I think that, you know, in the last decade especially as a youth worker myself all the services have been cut so all the kind of community groups, support groups things like that have, have just been run into the ground really. In, in my last job I worked with visually impaired people and we had a bunch of elderly people used to hire the room in the library and meet every week and play games and throw a pound in each to hire the room and then the charges went up and then they couldn’t afford to do it in case somebody didn’t turn up. So a lot of people who are isolated have been set up to fail because they can’t make that accessible group happen, so I think, you know, it’s a shame that it’s about money but it’s either money or a free room to allow the people in the community who want to set up support groups or just hobbies even I think, you know, there’s, there’s nothing free and accessible for people to go and join in with.

I went to some of the like parent and toddler groups but I think that they need to be a bit more, I think they need to be staffed by people who are a little bit more clued up as to what people are going through or could be going through particularly as new mums. So they tend to be young 18/19 year old girls running those groups which is very sweet but they’ve not had those experiences of, of what those people attending those groups may be feeling and may be going through. So I think if you had staff who were trained or had experience of, of being an isolated new young mum rather than just leaving the whole bunch of mums who are all in the same the same boat, you know, just to play with some toys, I don’t know, I just I feel like the, there’s a real missed opportunity is there to check in with people and, and offer support and signposting to, to other services if they need it because I think you, you just try to fix the thing yourself.

I: There are many lonely figures in books and in movies [um] do you remember any of them and can identify with any of them?

The, the one that springs to mind is the recent film The Joker. I don’t really identify with him, don’t worry but I think it was very powerful for people because it really touched a nerve as to how people can be treated if they don’t seem to fit in.  And you also never know what other people, what people are dealing with, you know, so that’s one that springs to mind.