I need to take a moment to absolutely sing the praises of the Royal Navy Welfare team.

The other day I had some personal stuff going down and to put it bluntly, I was not coping. I was a snotty, blubbering, gaspy-breathing, high pitched-fast talking wreck. 

(I don’t mind sharing this with you dear readers as I am assuming this has/may/will unfortunately happen to some of you at some point and I desperately want you to know that it’s okay to fall apart- just never stop trying to get back in one piece again. 

Ok that sounded a bit like one of those lame inspiring memes that pop up on annoying people’s newsfeeds. Yeesh -promise it won’t happen again. 

Anyway, yes, so I was a big bag of losing it freak out jelly. I had done all the civvy things available to me- called my mum, talked to friends, been to the doctor, emailed Popeye, called my mum again, googled the crap outta everything vaguely related to being stressed and unable to cope, and walked the dog whilst wearing sunglasses so no one could see me crying. 

(I really hope all that’s normal). 

So Popeye calls and basically at this point orders me to get in contact with the welfare team (actually his exact words were “Olive the second you get back bloody call welfare. I can’t do anything from here I’m on BOST babe”. Like I needed another reason to hate BOST). 

And I’m so glad I did! 

It wasn’t the best first impression granted. My apparently psychic Sweetpea kicked off at the precise second the phone got answered, and I cried hysterically to this complete stranger on the phone for five minutes with a baby howling in the background and a dog barking at the postman. Nice. 

So she- Mrs Awesome Welfare Woman- called me back ten minutes later and just helped. She listened to me moan, she helped me work out a plan to get my personal stuff sorted out, she explained what the hell welfare do and most importantly she got me to calm the fuck down. 

(Btw welfare is there to ensure we get the help and support we need so that our sailors can stay at work. They are literally there to get us back to being the super-coping-awesome-sex-kitten-domestic-goddess-earth-mother-high flying-career-woman navy wives that we are.) 

So anyway my lovely welfare woman is calling me next week to see how Operation Get My Shit Together is going. I know they can’t fix my problems but omg it’s good to have some support from the navy for once! And this post is just to say they are lovely people, don’t be afraid to contact them if you need to and a big thank you to them really. 

Wish me luck! 

Muchos love 

Olive

 (aka soon to be reinstated super-coping-awesome-sex-kitten-domestic-goddess-earth-mother-high flying-career-women navy wife).