Becky's Hope Story

Becky has a child with IIH (Idiopathic intracranial hypertension). Before she went on the online Hope course for Parents of children with IIH, Becky says she was “struggling with hospitals, medications, constantly - hour-by-hour, day-by-day. It’s hard to plan things. It was getting me down.”  She found out about the course on the IIH UK National Charity’s Facebook page* and put her name down.

“I approached it with an open mind and I loved it!” Becky says. “I liked the way you could pick it up and drop it, if life got in the way. I could do 5 minutes, or 20 minutes. It gave me some time for me.” She liked the online format of the course, too: “It was really user-friendly. It felt good to see how many pages I’d done each week, and how many I had left.” Becky liked the fact that she could bookmark the most relevant pages, including some of the videos.

The parts of the course where she learned about Gratitude appealed to Becky. “I really enjoyed the positivity of the course. Being grateful for the small things, looking at that side of life – it’s so important. It’s easy to get too caught up with everything else that’s going on in life to notice. It’s let me balance that seesaw.”

And is there anything that Becky has carried on doing, since the Hope course finished? “The goal setting. Just little things that I wasn’t making time for. I’ve written a Christmas list. I’ve been on a diet but I didn’t have time to look at recipe books, so I made that one of my goals. And I set myself a daily goal to drink more water, for my health! I’m definitely still doing that, keeping hydrated.”

In summary, Becky says “The Hope course is really practical and relatable for parents. It’s made a difference to give me a chance to reflect, create a breathing space in my head. I realise that I can’t pour from an empty jug.”