u/Obvious-Stage-6792

I went to uni as a mature student and while studying my mum got very sick. When I graduated I became her carer until her passing in September 24 (I also worked part time for some of this time so I could pay my rent - I gave this up in June 24 as my mum needed someone 24/7).

After a period of grieving, I have been applying for jobs without any success at all, not a single interview, and I’m wondering if this is in part because of the gap, I don’t know how best to address this on my cv? At the moment I have acknowledged it in my personal statement, I said I took time away from employment to care for a close family member. Should I list caring as I would a job? What about the two years since her passing? I also do a bit of work as a freelance artist but it’s here and there rather than a steady income, should I list this too?

Would hugely appreciate any advice please 🙏🏼🤍

Sometimes I will do things because they are things my loved ones enjoyed doing because they can’t do them anymore, like I’ll eat food they liked or watch tv/films they liked. Do they see me doing this? Do they like it? Or are they indifferent now they aren’t here any longer 🥲

My go to’s are buying myself something or posting on social media. I don’t want to do either of these things, but really craving dopamine 😬 what do you do?

Does anyone else find it sort of alarming that so many people have to take antidepressants? Like surely this is symbolic of something seriously wrong with society and the way we are living that so many people have to take pills to function? Of course for some it is a biological issue, but for a lot of others it seems to be caused by circumstances. I have many people around me on some form of SSRIs, and there’s probably more that I don’t know about. I have just been thinking about it because I too have been given a prescription, but I am fighting with myself to get comfortable about taking them (for multiple reasons). It just makes me feel sad that so many of us are suffering.

Edit: this is not an anti meds post and I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about taking meds or feel like they shouldn’t! Wasn’t my intention at all. More that the way we live is making people sick, and as we are getting more and more squeezed, more and more people are having to rely on medication to survive.

Being hounded by the “I can’t do this” thought today. Moving through a particularly rough phase of my life and trying to be gentle with myself, trying not to pressure myself too much to get it all fixed immediately (because I know that’s impossible), I’m in therapy and am trying to take one step at a time and not focus too much on the future, but, as much as I expect this to pass, today I just feel like I want to give up, I can’t do what needs to be done, and it’s an awful feeling. I’ve tried going for walks, making myself yummy nutritious food, but it’s not helping. Talking to friends about it seems to make it worse because it highlights it all in my mind.

What do you do to help yourself on days like this?

Please help me, I‘m feeling destroyed by grief at the moment, I’m in a run of anniversaries and in so much pain. I lost my darling mum in September 2024 and then my partner in August 2025, his funeral was held on my Mums first anniversary. We weren’t together at the time but loved each other very much and spoke every day, he was my biggest support since losing my mum. It was his birthday recently and it has really plunged me into darkness, I just need to know he‘s ok and still around and that he still loves me. I cried for him to contact me yesterday and I think he sent me a couple of songs as messages (he did this in life too), but I don’t know if I’m just connecting dots with my pain.

Please do either of them have a message for me? Did he send me those songs? Does he still love me? I miss them both so much every single day.

Has anyone else come across her work? Specifically the images she captures? I was watching a podcast the other day and the guest was talking about her. I went to have a look out of curiosity at her ‘unknowns’ catalogue and found a picture that looks strikingly like my mum. I don’t know that I really believe it is her, but it piqued my interest. Curious what others think?

Grief has completely broken me. I lost my mum who was my only parent in September 2024 after giving up work to care for her. Then I lost my partner in August 2025, 3 weeks before my mum’s first anniversary.

I have been trying so hard to gather myself back together. I do the things I’m supposed to do that are supposed to help and they only leave feeling exhausted at best, in a dark spiral at worst. I have applied for many jobs and can’t even get an interview. My siblings live far away and my friends all have young children and their own families, they can’t relate to me and don’t know what to say and so they just leave me to get on with it on my own. I just can’t do this anymore. I won’t harm myself because I don’t want to cause my siblings more pain but I’m exhausted. I am so low and so alone and nothing I try makes me feel any better. I don’t see anything getting better and feel like I’m just waiting to die.

I don‘t follow a particular religion but I do believe in God. I have had a really rough time of it the last few years and something is telling me to pray. The thing that stops me is I feel like I don’t really know how to do it properly. I talk to spirit/God/universe and the loved ones I have lost throughout the day, but I want to make more of a ritual of it. How do you pray?

I won’t go into my whole story but I am in what I can only call a dark night of the soul. I have been here a while, but in Jan/Feb time I thought I could see a tiny bit of light, this has since been dashed however and it all feels darker than ever. Even more has been stripped from me, and I didn’t really think that could happen, but it has. I keep thinking I’m at rock bottom and then the ground gets ripped from beneath me again, and down further I go. I’m now at a point where I cannot fathom anything getting better at all, I see no options. I feel exhausted. Like I have been treading water for the last two years. I thought I had surrendered to it all, but maybe I hadn’t, maybe I was still holding onto possibility and that is something that has been taken too.

My question is for those who came out the other side of a dark night, did you experience false starts that plunged you even further? What did the other side look like when you came out of it?

Please be kind, I know I’ve made a mess of my life. I think I’m at rock bottom and can’t see my way out.

I gave up work to take care of my mum who passed 20 months ago. Her death utterly shattered me. I have no relationship with my Dad as he abandoned us when I was 4, so she was my only parent. The only person who was consistently supporting me in my grief was my ex partner, who I still loved very much and he still loved me very much, he then passed 11 months after my mum. This has crushed my shattered pieces into the ground. My friends don’t know how to talk to me, live in different places and are at different stages of life, so many of them have faded away and rarely contact me. My siblings all live hours away and have their own lives. I don’t have a clue how I’m supposed to heal with no support network, most people have solid foundations to hold on to when they lose their parents or partner - children or a career, established support network etc. I don’t have that and I can’t see how to make anything better without anything to hold on to.

I haven’t had a job in over 2 years now. I have applied for many but couldn’t even get an interview and it was making me really spiral badly, so I paused a few months ago so I could focus on getting myself to a place where I felt more capable/stable. That hasn’t happened though. I need to do something meaningful otherwise it feels like there is really no reason for me to be here. This is a big thought I am struggling very much with, I cannot find a reason for me being here, I feel completely pointless now. Inconsequential. A very painful thought is if I was no longer here, not a single persons life would change. Sure some might be sad for a bit, but no one is expecting my call at the end of the day, no one is waiting for me to come home, I’m not integral to anyone’s day or week, month or even year at this point, I’ve spent the last two Christmas at home alone. I would leave no holes. At 41 years old I just feel like I‘m at the end of the road. Sometimes I just want to let it all drown me because I just cannot see the point. My motivation is now on the floor, recently I can’t get myself to do anything and just spend each day waiting for it to end.

I have no idea how I’m supposed to make anything better. I am in therapy, and until recently I had been trying to help myself (I’ve done a couple of online courses, I journal, I try to meditate (with varying success), I paint, I get outside etc), but I can’t get myself to even do any of this lately. I think about things I might want to do, like volunteering or exercising, but CANNOT get myself to do them, I am stuck in freeze mode and my nervous system is always braced.

It feels like I have a blindfold on, or I’m locked in dark cupboard that I can’t even turn around in. I cannot see how I’m supposed to get back up or what I need to do. I don’t even really know what it is I want to do for work. I have an art degree, which I did with the intention of doing an art therapy masters, but that is just completely financially unaccessible to me. I thought about training to be an art teacher but I think I’m far too sensitive and won’t be able to hack it.

I just need someone to tell me what to do. I know I am the only person who can get myself out of this place, and I know it starts with my mind, but I just can’t move.

I don’t think people know how to respond to my story at the moment so I doubt anyone will reply, but even if you just read my whole post, thank you for witnessing me.

Please be kind. I know I have made a mess of my life. I think I’m at rock bottom. Can’t see my way out.

I gave up work to take care of my mum who passed 20 months ago. Her death utterly shattered me. I have no relationship with my dad as he abandoned us when I was 4, so she was my only parent. The only person who was consistently supporting me in my grief was my ex partner, who I still loved very much and he still loved me very much, he then passed 11 months after my mum. This has crushed my shattered pieces into the ground. My friends don’t know how to talk to me, live in different places and are at different stages of life, so many of them have faded away and rarely contact me. My siblings all live hours away and have their own lives. I don’t have a clue how I’m supposed to heal with no support network, most people have solid foundations to hold on to when they lose their parents or partner - children or a career, established support network etc. I don’t have that and I can’t see how to make anything better without anything to hold on to.

I haven’t had a job in over 2 years now. I have applied for many but couldn’t even get an interview and it was making me really spiral badly, so I paused a few months ago so I could focus on getting myself to a place where I felt more capable/stable. That hasn’t happened though. I need to do something meaningful otherwise it feels like there is really no reason for me to be here. This is a big thought I am struggling very much with, I cannot find a reason for me being here, I feel completely pointless now. Inconsequential. A very painful thought is if I was no longer here, not a single persons life would change. Sure some might be sad for a bit, but no one is expecting my call at the end of the day, no one is waiting for me to come home, I’m not integral to anyone’s day or week, month or even year at this point, I’ve spent the last two Christmas at home alone. I would leave no holes. At 41 years old I just feel like I‘m at the end of the road, I know I have made a mess of my life. Sometimes I just want to let it all drown me because I just cannot see the point. My motivation is now on the floor, recently I can’t get myself to do anything and just spend each day waiting for it to end.

I have no idea how I’m supposed to make anything better. I am in therapy, and until recently I had been trying to help myself (I’ve done a couple of online courses, I journal, I try to meditate (with varying success), I paint, I get outside etc), but I can’t get myself to even do any of this lately. I think about things I might want to do, like volunteering or exercising, but CANNOT get myself to do them, I am stuck in freeze mode and my nervous system is always braced.

It feels like I have a blindfold on, or I’m locked in dark cupboard that I can’t even turn around in. I cannot see how I’m supposed to get back up or what I need to do. I don’t even really know what it is I want to do for work. I have an art degree, which I did with the intention of doing an art therapy masters, but that is just completely financially unaccessible to me. I thought about training to be an art teacher but I think I’m far too sensitive and won’t be able to hack it.

I just need someone to tell me what to do. I know I am the only person who can get myself out of this place, and I know it starts with my mind, but I just can’t move.

I don’t think people know how to respond to my story at the moment so I doubt anyone will reply, but even if you just read my whole post, thank you for witnessing me.

I think about this often and can never really settle on what I think. My darling mum got diagnosed with cancer in late 2021, we were really lucky to have a couple of years with her after diagnosis, but in the summer of 2024 she went downhill rapidly.

I was travelling on the train one day after we found out things were progressing and was really upset. A man sat next to me and started talking to me, I really wasn't in the mood and was expecting him to ask for my number at some point (he never did). I don’t like to be rude though so was responding to the questions he asked me. For some reason I started feeling like he had been sent to talk to me and just as I thought that he said the same. We somehow got onto the topic of trauma and I said my mum was very sick. He said he would say a prayer for her and that I should too. He asked if I was psychic and it soon became apparent he knew much more than me. As we were talking he looked over my shoulder and motioned with his hand and said “fade away, fade away”. At that point he said that he was going to move to another seat as he felt that he should. He stood up and said to me “good luck with your test, I know you’ll do well” he went to the next carriage and I stood up to get off as it happened to be my stop. I looked through the window of the next carriage but couldn’t see him, I don’t know why but I just had this really weird feeling about him, like he wasn’t really there. At some point he was telling me about something on youtube but said he couldn’t show me because he’d left his phone in the boot of his car. Rather than thinking that was true, I just feel like he didn’t have a phone because he was a spirit of some kind.

My mum spoke with an angel once. She was woken one time many years previously by a voice she said was like nothing she had heard on earth. The angel said to her that a man who had once harmed her was going to die soon and he was asking for her forgiveness. She said she could not forgive him and fell back to sleep. A while later she read his obituary in the paper. A while after that both my mum and dad saw this very man at the same time just standing there. They said he looked like any other person, only they knew he was dead. My point of telling this part is, even though this man I met on the train looked very real, he might not have been, and I was left feeling like he wasn’t really there. Another weird part of it is I had asked the universe/God to speak to me and I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what had happened. A few months before I had asked for God to speak to me and the message got delivered through a person knocking at my door.

I’m really curious what other people think? And if anyone else has encountered an angel?

I was told by a medium I went to see after the loss of the two people I loved most in the world that I should go to a spiritual church. Generally speaking, what might I expect? I have had bad anxiety through my grief, and not having any idea what to expect makes me feel too anxious to go.

TY ♥️

Off the back of a comment about Oxide and Neutrino yesterday, I’m curious what your favourite UK Garage track is?

Spin Sugar and Gabriel are a couple of my faves!

How wonderful it is to have so much information right at our fingertips whenever we might want it, to talk to almost anyone anywhere, anyhow, anytime, yet how awful it is to never be able to fully disconnect!

If we are brutally honest, are most of us addicted to our phones? When I’m travelling somewhere and I look at all the people around me (I do love to people watch) and they are all looking at their phones it makes me feel quite sad. But I am just as addicted to mine as the next person.

My cat has recently been enjoying the lounge and she will often call me from the hallway to go in there with her to give her a fuss. Usually she goes to sleep when I do and I leave my bedroom door ajar at night so she can wander around as she pleases. Recently though she has decided she would like to sleep in the lounge and will sit in the hallway and call me to go to the room with her at bed time. Obviously I don’t want to sleep in the lounge at night, and as I live with others I can’t leave her meowing in the hallway, so I have had to close my bedroom door. Which of course, being a cat, she is not remotely impressed with and will meow incessantly for a good few hours and walk over me and dig at my duvet to try and get me to open the door. Eventually she gives up and settles down but this is the fourth night in a row she has kept me awake until at least 2:30am and I don’t know how to manage it. She will likely wake me up at about 5:30am to open the door, at this time for whatever reason she doesn’t call me to the lounge (perhaps because it’s hunting time?) so I can let her out.

I play with her very actively at different points during the day, including in the morning and right before bed, she is fed wet food twice a day and always has access to dry food. I know its best to ignore her demands to open the door so she doesn’t learn that’s how to get what she wants (though I probably have done this in the past) and I have stopped going to the room when she calls me in the day. Hopefully it’s just a phase she moves on from quickly, but is there anything else I can do? It‘s really just the meowing in the hallway at night that’s the issue. I could shut her in the lounge overnight but she’s quite an anxious cat and very attached to me so I expect shutting her away in another room will distress her and she will then meow in there, which is next door to and underneath other people’s bedrooms.

I really love the little darling btw, I love that she talks to me and calls me to her favourite room, it’s not her fault, she doesn’t understand 💔😭