Happy Valentine’s day Anna!
share this
“I want my own little house – maybe in Devon 🙂 – where I can live a beautiful married life. With pets. Er – and I’d like it all by tomorrow, please!”
Sassy 22-year old Anna might not have quite used those words but she’s crystal clear what she wants out of life. This Valentine’s day we’ll tell you her story – and describe how we’re helping her learn that, like the tortoise and the hare, she might get there fastest by slowing down a touch….
Thank you, Anna, for being happy to share your love story. It will, we think, help other people and other support teams find and maintain great relationships:
Anna joined Dimensions from another support provider where she lived with people with far higher needs. She wasn’t well matched. Now she lives happily with three other ladies, and an all-female staff team, in supported living.
Pets were easy. Amy and Tracey, her guinea pigs, live in a lovely pink hutch in the garden. Anna is supported to look after them, with help from one of the other ladies if Anna’s away.
If only pet shops sold boyfriends…
At the start, Anna’s sexual orientation wasn’t clear. She had a close loving relationship with her best friend and it took some time and a lot of open and personal conversations – using some great Beyond Words resources – for us to help her sort things through in her own head, understand the difference between friendships and relationships, and decide that she was heterosexual.
It was February 2020. We supported Anna to go to a night club in Redditch, which she loved. Staying up late might be an ongoing challenge for far too many people needing support, but to our team in Bromsgrove, supporting people beyond the 9-5 is all in a day (or evening’s!) work. There was a plan for her to join ‘Stars in the Sky’ – the friendship group that featured on the Undateables. Then lockdown came in, and nights out stopped.
Anna wasn’t beaten.
She’s now met a boy she likes at college, and has started bringing home letters and drawings from him. There have been date nights and plans for him to visit. Left to herself, she’d be facetiming him 24/7, letting her hobbies (and chores!) slide. As her support team, we needed to help her recognise and manage that emotional intensity.
We tell her about how our interests are often not the same as our loved one’s – and that’s ok. About how a healthy relationship includes spending time together, quietly getting on with the chores. About how money works in relationships. About life.
We’re helping her, too, build the life skills she’ll need if she’s to live in her own house with less support. How to hold down a job (a voluntary one for now.) How to keep the house and garden straight. How to cook. How to get to the local shop and back independently and, in time, how to navigate local bus routes.
It has helped that Anna’s family has met her boyfriend’s family. Everyone reinforces the same key messages in their own way, giving Anna a secure backdrop on which to paint her life’s picture.
We’re proud of Anna, for working towards her dreams. We’re proud, too, of how each member of Anna’s support team has been so open and personal with her, courageously sharing their own life stories to help Anna fulfil her ambitions.
This Valentine’s day, our family consultants have published some advice for support teams with difficult questions around supporting people with relationships and sex. We hope it helps you support someone to find happiness, too.