Nathalie - LumenaConecto

Nathalie - in her own words

Out in employment

I've tried to get back to work before, but I couldn't even get up to four hours a week. I was totally exhausted when I got home, and the next day. I couldn't even do the things I like to do and that usually energise me, I just lay on the sofa and did nothing.

It's been a few years since I last tried and nothing has really changed, just like the rest of the time during my sick leave. Or so I thought. I thought I could try again.

I came on a study visit to Samordningsförbundet after having some problems finding a work training place that would suit me. The manager on site mentioned tasks like Excel and proofreading things to job train with. I decided that this sounded perfect for me as I really love Excel (and have a history of maybe being a bit too fussy with the Swedish language).

The first day was a bit scary

The first day was a bit scary. I had failed so many times before. But I got into the task quite quickly. I started work training by recording attendance reports in an Excel document for statistics. That's when I realised that statistics is also something I find interesting. Over time, I have been given more tasks, at first it was more things to fill in, in more documents, then it expanded to sitting in on meetings, attending webinars, proofreading texts and writing articles.

We went up to 2 days of two hours quite quickly and this is where in my previous experiences it used to start to go worse for me when I was job training. But here I felt that I wanted to increase the time more, because I wanted to get more done when I was there. After a while, it became more and more natural to actually go to the job training and get up earlier in the morning.

Here I feel valuable

After being on sick leave for about ten years (you stop counting after a while), it's very interesting to see how the “other side” works. It's so easy to give up on all the authorities and agencies and all the what-is-going-on-right-now. But I've met so many nice people who actually care and want to help people like me, and it's still quite nice to hear.

Lately, I've been opening up more and more about myself, including a recent meeting where I shared my perspective on things, and I'm surprised at how interested the people I talk to are. Usually you get a “yeah...” or an “mm...” and you don't feel heard at all. Here I feel valuable. Probably for the first time, maybe ever, in a workplace. I can't really describe it to make it clear how much difference it makes.

I came up to 25% without being completely exhausted when I got home, did further work training at 25% through the Employment Service and now I have just been employed! It was worth trying again even though I thought nothing had changed.