I thought it was time to put pen to paper (so to speak) and talk about what I am doing and why I am doing it. This first entry is an adaptation of a blog I wrote for work. I discuss what I have been through in the last 18-months and how I have faced it.
My views are my own and my approach certainly won’t work for everyone. But I hope they provide context as to why I have taken on a fundraiser of this magnitude.
So, for those of you that don’t know, my name is Michael. I’m 32-years old, and many of you will know me as Lamby, Lambo, or Lambert. I am a Physiotherapist by trade working in London. Prior to this, I was an athlete representing Great Britain at U23 European and World Championship level in kayaking over 200m sprint while working as a builder to supplement my athletic endeavours.
Late in 2022, my life turned upside down. My mother collapsed at the gym following what we now know was an aortic dissection (a tear in the aorta, the largest blood vessel in the body). Being present with her in A&E I witnessed firsthand the failings within her care. Despite advocating strongly on her behalf, staff did not believe her condition was serious and failed to investigate the possibility of an aortic dissection in time (despite us making everyone aware of the familial history of aortic dissection). Long story short, she had successful aortic surgery, but the delay in her care resulted in complications which led to brain death, and four days after her collapse, she died.
Dealing with this loss was at first devastating and surreal. The immediate adjustment to a new reality is difficult to accept, and I could hardly believe that my life could change so fundamentally in such a short space of time. The future that I anticipated and took for granted was snatched from beneath my nose. I was left missing my Mum for who she was as a person, as a mother, but also as a confidant and role model.
Prior to my Mum’s death, the relationship with my partner of five years had been turbulent. We had bought a house together, which was very much a fixer upper, but the level of commitment this required strained the relationship. This came to a head one week before my Mum’s funeral, and I was rather unceremoniously dumped. This added heartbreak and uncertainty to my grief, making for a potent excrement cocktail.
Post-breakup, I temporarily moved back to the family home, while my now ex-partner stayed in our house as she organised somewhere to live closer to her work. Five days before Christmas she moved out, and I moved back in. What I found when I came back was a waterfall of soiled water pouring through the kitchen ceiling from the bathroom above. On her last night she blocked the toilet (unintentionally I was assured), which after being left unresolved for two days, caused the soil pipe to pop off the back of the toilet and pour literal effluent through the floorboards and into the kitchen below.
Metaphorically and literally, my life was a shit show.
Resilience
There is no consensus on the definition of resilience (welcome to the field of psychology). But it is broadly defined as your ability “to maintain or regain mental health, despite experiencing adversity”. I want to draw everyone’s attention here to the ‘maintain or regain’. I feel we often view resilience as the ‘maintain’, rather than fully appreciating the strength it takes to ‘regain’ your mental health – think Tyson Fury for all you boxing fans.
Going through this, I believe I experienced what many people call rock bottom (although subsequent challenges have me constantly questioning whether there are further depths yet to plumb). I felt this was the bottom because everything else that happened to me after Mum’s death had little impact as I was already at my emotional capacity. At this time, I was incredibly aware of the fragility of my mental state; I was at a fork in the road that could lead either one of two ways (deep into the dark or through it). I knew then I had to take steps to regain my mental health.
The first step I took to facing my problems was by seeking the support of family and friends. This was very unnatural to me as I generally like to try and be as self-sufficient as possible – an approach I feel is common in men. Taking this step was uncomfortable, but essential. I then started reading, ALOT. I wanted to find stories of people that faced hardship and endured it. These people and stories provided reassurance and subsequently became role models for me. I identified with so many of the different varieties of struggle that people endure, as I came to understand the path I was walking was well trodden. These people and stories provided a reference point for me to start processing my grief, heartbreak, and uncertainty. Whilst also helping me realise that I was, in fact, not alone.
Dealing with problems on multiple fronts required a huge degree of compartmentalisation. When your problems become overwhelming, they need to be broken down into manageable chunks. I found doing this not only helped me understand problems in greater depth, but also gave me some control and a roadmap to work through them. It can often be overwhelming dealing with multiple situations happening simultaneously, not always because of the size of the problem, but because we don’t fully understand it, let alone have a plan to deal with it.
I largely separated my problems into what was emotional, and what was practical (this is simplistic as the reality was and is more nuanced). I did this because practical responses to emotional problems, and vice versa, often do not blend well. This allowed me to focus on what I can do (e.g. clean my excrement marinaded kitchen) but gave me the time and space to process what was emotional (e.g. grief and heartbreak).
When it came to my grief, talking to people helped, but it eventually came to a point where no matter how much I talked about it, nothing provided comfort or insight. I had reached a point within my emotional problems where I felt I needed to take a practical (and physical) approach. This is when I decided to do a fundraiser in memory of Mum. I felt like I had to do something to help process the experiences that contributed to her death, and best help future families avoid the experience that we had endured. I therefore started training to break the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of mainland UK in a kayak, for my mum, and other patients and families affected by aortic dissection.
The inspiration behind the circumnavigation is within the book ‘The Art of Resilience’ (from which I plagiarised the title for this blog) by Ross Edgley. For those of you who are unfamiliar, he is the first person to swim around the UK. He applies lessons in Philosophy and sports science to help redefine perspectives on human endurance. His interpretation of stoic philosophy differs from what I had previously encountered about stoicism. I used to think stoicism was about a stiff upper lip; if you have a problem, go to talk to a tree. But I now know that being stoic is not about suppressing your emotions, rather a detachment from them. Putting distance between myself and my emotions enabled me to observe and understand what I was feeling. Once I get to this point in a problem, I am better equipped to plan and act (I should note that this process has been bidirectional and can take a bloody long time!).
Ultimately, I chose this fundraiser because it was going to be hard. It needed to be something with the prospect of failure, something that would motivate me to crawl out of bed at 4:30am in the morning and return home after 11pm, something proportionate to the cause I am representing.
Training for this alongside full-time work has been intense. Particularly in the early days of my journey when I was combining work, training, repairing the house, and meetings with solicitors and banks. I was often encouraged not to take on the demand of training for this fundraiser as my life was intense enough as it was. Despite the initial lack of support, I believed in what I was doing, and I found the effect of training for the fundraiser, while incredibly demanding, helped process my grief and started to stabilise my mental health.
I am now 16-months into my training for this fundraiser (I am due to start early June 2024). To take my body from a severely de-conditioned sprint athlete to an endurance paddler has taken time and hard work. I have often found myself in a paradox along the way, feeling frustrated because things have been so hard, but then coming to the realisation that this is exactly what it needs to be. To be able to do hard things, you must do hard things. This is just a general rule for life. If you want to be something, you must do it.
I have learned that the art of resilience is not resenting your hardship but using it for good. It’s not about wishing for an easy life but developing the strength to deal with a hard one, and while you may often feel weak and defeated, that does not mean you are.
