Category Archives: mental health

Don’t be kind. Be ANGRY.

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in mental health

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Like a lot of people, I’ve been following the coverage of Caroline Flack’s suicide. It’s been hard not to.
A large part of me doesn’t want to talk about Caroline Flack, because people talking about Caroline Flack is basically what killed Caroline Flack.
But people would not have talked about Caroline Flack as they did if Caroline Flack wasn’t a woman, and that’s made me really, really want to talk about Caroline Flack.
If Caroline Flack wasn’t a woman her value just wouldn’t have been so wrapped up in her image. She wouldn’t have faced intense scrutiny over every outfit, hair cut, appearance in public, or – you know – appearance in her everyday life. ‘Man wears yoga pants and has greasy hair’ isn’t a Thing. Neither would her penchant for partners several years younger than her be a Thing. It would be… the norm.
If Caroline Flack wasn’t a woman, she wouldn’t have received the same level of online abuse. It’s well recognised now the trolling women recieve is worse than their male counterparts, who are less often threatened (for instance) with rape or violence. Because how dare women be loud, or pretty, or successful, or unsuccessful, or ugly, or quiet? It’s an affront. And it’s an affront to keyboard warriors both male AND female.
If Caroline Flack wasn’t a woman, I have no doubt she would not have found the bottom dropped out of her career in quite the same way, either. Because there isn’t just a gender pay gap – it’s a gender expectation gap, too. Women have to be better – every day and in every way – to get the same opportunities, pay, consideration… and leeway. Slip up, and fall down.
If Caroline Flack wasn’t a woman, there would not have been the gleeful, salacious, salivating fascination with her assault charges. Women are not supposed to be violent – it’s unladylike! And kind of sexy! Let’s add mud! Let’s add jelly! Let’s sell tickets!
There’s been a vile pantomime around it, with overtures of ‘What about men?’ or ‘# NotAllMen’. See? Vindicated! Women do bad stuff too. So stop harping on about all the bad stuff done to them because you’ve just proved yourselves wrong, by the power of binary logic!
The overwhelming response from the intense coverage I’ve seen on Caroline Flack’s suicide has first of all been blame – the press, the CPS, ITV, the comments sections – and then a call for kindness – let’s all be KINDER to each other.
Well I’m not sure the blame doesn’t fall wider and deeper, isn’t more endemic than that. I’m not sure the answer is just to be kind, either. I think the answer might be to be ANGRY.
Look, I suppose that’s where I want to stop talking about Caroline Flack, because I didn’t know her, and nor did you.
Instead I want to talk about binaries, and misogyny.
I think it’s the binaries that trap women in a way they don’t trap men. Women must be all one thing or all the other and they are not allowed to be both, or in between, or neither.
Oh, a binary makes for a great headline – the all or nothing flip.
Evil or innocent.
Guilty or not.
Whore or virgin.
Victim or monster.
Saint or psycho.
Beauty or beast.
Cut and dried…
But things are rarely that simple. People are rarely that simple.
Binary logic is male logic. Linear. Direct. Black or white. And it’s so often used against women – in relationships, in workplaces, in the wider world. There is a great deal of it in our politics and media right now, and it’s so hard to fight.
Facts are refuted with other, seemingly related but actually uncorrelated facts, and the argument is presented as either/or, and the simpler, louder voice ends up overriding truth. Because truth is often hard, and messy, and complicated, and not easily boxed in or sewn up in a summary, clickbait paragraph.
Not everything is either/or.
In my experience most things are AND…
As a for instance, it is in fact perfectly possible for men to be victims of domestic abuse by women, AND for it to still be a feminist issue that affects more female victims, and where women need specialist interventions and support. The one thing being true doesn’t make the other UNTRUE, or the attention it receives unfair.
In the same way, it is also perfectly possible for someone to be both a victim, AND a perpetrator, at the same time. It’s not a zero sum game. It’s not a game at all… and the truth is there isn’t really any such thing as a ‘perfect’ victim.
Victims of domestic violence sometimes fight back. Sometimes they even invite or incite the violence – because they prefer having some sort of control over what and how and when it’s done. Sometimes, relationships that involve abuse are so toxic that it’s hard to know who started and who finished what, where physical and mental abuse or control cross over, or where you are in the tit for tat and defence and offence cycle. Sometimes victims don’t admit what’s happening, because they think they’re guilty too. They think they’re to blame. They think they deserved it. They think, if they hadn’t done that, or this, it wouldn’t have happened.
Sometimes victims of sexual assault DON’T fight back. Sometimes they even make their assailant a cup of tea afterwards, because they are trying to stay safe and feel normal when neither is true. Sometimes they just take the abuse because the consequences of not doing so are worse. Sometimes they slept with their rapist before, or kissed them, or took them home, or – God forbid – wore a short skirt out. And they don’t report what’s happened, because they think they’re guilty too. They think they’re to blame. They think they deserved it. If they hadn’t done that, or this, it wouldn’t have happened.
They think they will be judged and not found victim or virtuous enough. That they won’t fit in the accepted mould, within the allowable parameters. Because it is all about the APPEARANCE of the thing. Just like it’s all about the APPEARANCE of us. Are we believable enough? Are we instagrammable enough? Are we enough as we are? Are we a neat tick in a tidy box?
By expecting women to fit into perfect, often binary categories, we trap them, when they fall in the middle. We stop them coming forward, getting help, getting better. We stop them being more than a pretty face or an outfit or a wobbly tummy. We stop them being complicated. We stop them being themselves. We stop them being REAL.
And when your reality is consistently undermined, maybe it doesn’t matter anymore if you’re here or not. When the real you is so unacceptable, such an ill fit for the world, maybe it’s better for everyone if you’re… not. Maybe that’s where Caroline Flack got to.
In a world where you can be anything, be kind.
It’s become the mantra of the Caroline Flack coverage – something she wrote herself.
Sure, kind is good.
But women can’t BE anything. We can’t be everything, either. We’re not allowed.
And I think we should be angry about that.
I feel like in the call to be kind (an acceptable box for women) we’re being distracted from being angry (an unacceptable box).
Well do you know what? We can be BOTH. At the same time. Because that’s what women do. That’s what women ARE. That’s what Caroline Flack was.

The Wuwwier

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, School

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The Wuwwier.

Ahhh, literacy, my old friend. Here we go again.

It’s safe to say the literacy journey is not an easy one for the Smalls-on-the-netheredge, especially at the start.

This is probably my fault. I didn’t learn to read until I was 7. I still can’t really spell.

My mother swears she sat on the sofa with Roger Red Hat open on her lap, me on one side, the dog on the other – and that the dog learned to read before I did.

(She gave up on trying to teach me how to tell the time, which is why to this day I can only have digital watches. I CAN read an analogical clock, now, but it takes several minutes, a lot of counting round in 5s, and I’d never bet on someone’s life I’d got the right answer).

It is now the smallest Small’s turn to struggle with her reading, writing, and spelling – and something is just not CLICKING.

It’s my second time round in the Mum-role of the literacy-rodeo. I’m sure it WILL click, in time, possibly with a bit of extra help from school, just as it did with the Big Small (sort of – there’s still some interesting flipped characters and spellings are a struggle) and me (sort of – I doubt I’d be employable without word processing and spellcheck).

But it IS something of a worry, which is why I was particularly delighted to get my very first note from her this week.

OK, it’s not perfect. Mummy is spelt entirely with Ws instead of Ms, which is an understandable mistake, and frankly, a rather alarmingly accurate one.

It made me laugh. Because I am a WUWWY.

I am a Mummy who worries… Sometimes a lot.

I AM worried that she can’t hold a pencil properly and can’t seem to recall the shapes of letters or process phonic sounds, and what does that mean, and is it just a starting blip or is it going to be a bigger problem, and what can I do to help, and should I back off when she gets frustrated, and how DO you actually make getting things wrong FUN?

I worry about her cough, every time she coughs, and how bad is it this time, and when to go to the Dr, and how many antibiotics she’s having, and about the operation she has to have, and the general anaesthetic and how she didn’t go out well last time, and how awful that was to watch, and what will they find this time, and will she be okay, and what if it’s serious?

I worry about how much the Big Small worries, also inherited from me, and ranging from what’s going to happen at school today to failing the spelling test, to who said what about whom in girlville, where she’ll get changed or what if there aren’t any toilets – and her hysteria over anything new or unusual, from me dying my hair to a change of pick-up routine or not having the right bloody tights.

I worry that she won’t do clubs where she won’t know anyone. and she doesn’t get to go to the ones she WILL go to every week, and what’s she missing out on, and how it will impact her opportunities and friendships when they all do stuff without her, and how to help with the friend issues, and when to intervene and when to stay out of it.

I worry about the school and club trips and what if something goes wrong, and what if mine is the one in the headlines standing up on the ride, falling through the gap, not strapped in the coach properly, messing around, in the wrong place at the wrong time – and what that phone call will sound like.

I worry who I would be if I wasn’t their mother, and if I define myself too much by them, and if that’s fair, on them or me.

I worry I’m not doing enough to support either of them, and there just seems to be no time, and certainly no way to carve out one-on-one time, and am I listening to them enough, or too much? and is it better for them to feel heard and accommodated or to just have things decreed for their best interests and maybe that makes them feel safer? and do I negotiate too much and have I set the right boundaries, and am I showing weakness or modelling humanity – and what if I’m getting it totally wrong and mucking them up?

I worry I’ve passed on my crappy worrying and spelling genes.

I worry we’re not having enough fun together, that we’re just plain routine and chores, and the time is short and I won’t have them for long and am I wringing enough out of it all, and am I enjoying it enough, and are they, and am I making enough effort and enough memories, and what WILL they remember, as they grow?

I worry they don’t know I love them, or that I love them too much, and what if that’s stifling, and CAN you spoil kids with too much affection, and am I spoiling them in other ways because I’m making up for the broken home, and how do I stop?

I worry how much my strained co-parenting relationship is affecting them, and how to make it better without just agreeing to things I don’t agree with, and how to talk to them about those disagreements – which they see and ask about – and if I’m answering the questions right, and if they know we both love them to the moon and back, and if they know that actually makes them lucky?

I worry if they will still love me back every time they come back from his.

I worry about the state of the world they’ll grow up in, and global warming burning the planet, and the rise of nationalism and the far-right past threatening to repeat itself, and War, and local violence in The Star, and homeless, hopeless families right on our doorstep, and Ebola, and acts of terror, and my inability to protect them or do anything at all to make any of it any better.

I worry I’m failing them, in big ways and little ways, all of the time.

I worry I worry too much.

That last one is something I’ve been accused of, recently.
That my anxiety impacts my ability to make ‘sensible’ decisions for the children.

I thought about it long and hard. The Wuwwying. And then I realised that the reason I thought about it long and hard is because actually, THAT’S WHAT MY ANXIETY DOES.

Look, there is clearly a downside to worrying. I know it well. If you let anxiety rule you it CAN impact the decisions you make (possibly stopping you from making any), and even your personality – because worry can come out as anger.

The thing is, when you know about the anxiety, you can watch for it, FEEL for it. And ultimately manage it. (Possibly with medical or theraputic support). But when The Fear comes down on you and stops you breathing, it is possible to both recognise it, and do something about it. You just need to learn what, and how.

I have learned that the way to deal with worry is not to let it bully you.

You can arm yourself with information to combat it, gathering the evidence to undermine it, and put it back into perspective.
You can refuse to listen to it, and think and do other things.
When it does get the better of you you can stop, and breathe, and make amends.
When it is too big, you can break it down, and do the little things that you CAN affect.

My anxiety doesn’t stop me from letting the kids go on school trips, for instance.
If it has led me to shout, I say sorry, and explain why I got angry.
If it is loud, I play louder music and I run to outrun it.
When it gets big, I go small, with recycling, food bank donations, teaching them tolerance.
When I question myself, I weigh up the pros and the cons, I take advice, I look inside myself, I test it out, I sleep on it – and then I make the best decision I can at that moment in time.

Because that’s the flip side of anxiety. Over-thinking involves THINKING, and that’s actually a GOOD thing. Questioning whether you’re doing the right thing, for the right reasons, at the right time – the very fear of getting it wrong – can actually lead you to make GOOD decisions. In fact, I’d rather make decisions with and in spite of anxiety than make them with and because of arrogance.

The stopping and thinking bit is okay, just as long as you START again.

Self-doubt can be harnessed into self-analysis, and that deliberation can translate into careful, powerful, and very deliberate action. Parenting with anxiety doesn’t necessarily make you a bad parent. If you can work through the overwhelm and the paralysis, it could make you a considered and considerate one. It may even make you a BETTER one.

What’s more, being afraid and doing things anyway is actually the very definition of being BRAVE.

So if you recognise any of this, if you are a Wuwwier like me, or just a Worrier, if you are doing it all anyway, remember you are also a Warrior.

As the Small Small reminded me, it’s all in the spelling.

And sometimes turning things upside down isn’t a mistake.

Be More Sid

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Motherhood

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This is Sid.

Sid is not my cat.

Sid likes to sleep on my landing.
And my sofa.
And my bed.
And the Big Small’s Bed.
And the Small Small’s Bed.
And Catonthenetheredge’s bed.

Mostly, Sid likes to eat Catonthenetheredge’s cat food.
It is apparently delicious and to be coveted above all things, and sought after at every opportunity.
It is from Aldi.

Sid’s name is in all probability NOT Sid.

We named him after the children’s classic ‘Six Dinner Sid’, a book about a cat which goes round the neighbourhood hanging out with different families to get his requisite six dinners.

I have tried to discourage Sid from illegally breaking and entering my house, largely out of respect for Catonthenetheredge.

I have thrown water on Sid.
I have banged pans at Sid.
I have hissed at Sid.
I have shouted at Sid.
I have set the Smallest Small on Sid to smother him in pent-up four-year-old affection, which cannot be unleashed on Catonthenetheredge for fear of losing an eye, or possibly a finger. (Let’s be generous and say she’s not much of a cuddler. If we were being less generous we’d say she’s a vicious little cow).

Sid just comes back.

In fact, most of the time he doesn’t even leave.

He sits just outside the catflap for about 30 seconds until he’s convinced himself we’ve either forgotten or forgiven him, and pops back in with good-natured cheer, like nothing’s happened.

He patiently endures the Small Small’s maulings, with an air of palpable and long-suffering indulgence, and goes straight back to the cat food when she’s finished with him. If Catonthenetheredge attacks he just hunkers down with his ears back and tries to look unassuming, whilst not moving one inch away from the aforementioned cat food.
Catonthenetheredge is so used to people screaming and fleeing her in abject terror she has absolutely no idea what to do with him. In the end I think she’s come to the same conclusion that we all have: Nothing.

You see, there’s just no real help for it but to LIKE Sid.
He now has his own bowl, and we got him his own catnip mouse for Christmas.

The only fault I’ve found in him is that he is definitely a Free Range Pussy Cat. On the two occasions he has been accidentally locked in the house he’s turned into some sort of freak Hulk Cat and battered his way out through a locked catflap. (And then come right back in again for a snack).

Hell, it’s got to the point where I don’t just like Sid, I ADMIRE him.

And as I head into 2020 with a spare cat, I can’t help but feel like he’s got a lot to teach us all (although possibly not the bit about going uninvited into strange houses).

Because JUST IMAGINE living your life like Sid.

Just imagine.

The audacity.
The tenacity.
The single minded focus on a goal.
The willingness to fail, again and again, and to try, again and again, undaunted.
The unfailing good humour in the face of adversity.
The sheer CONFIDENCE.

I wish I was more Sid, in lots of ways.
And the thing I admire in him most is his absolute, rock-solid, unshakeable conviction that people are going to like him. You know, eventually.

God, I wish I had that.
I have always worried, you see, if people like me.
I worry about what they think of me. How to make them accept me. What they want from me – what they need me to be in order to like me, and how I can change myself to give it to them.

And I do this with everyone. EVERYONE. From the damn postman to random shop assistants, work colleagues to school mums, even my long standing friends – even my own bloody kids. Even to the point where I lose my sense of myself when not defined by other people and what they think of me. And I question it constantly.

Do they like me?
Am I good enough?
Am I enough as I am?
What do I need to change?
What did I say wrong?
How do I fix it?
What if they find out the truth?
How do I keep them from finding it?
How do I make them like me MORE?
How do I make them like me over and over again every time I see them?

A month or so ago, something of this was caught by the Big Small.

We’d had a humdinger argument where she’d basically been a BRAT, and told me she hated me, that I was embarrassing, and the worst mother EVER (a recurring theme). And I was out of all energy to empathise, distract, appease, ignore or rise above anything. So I told her that you know what? Sometimes I don’t like myself very much either. Sometimes I don’t always say the right thing. Sometimes I don’t always DO the right things. Sometimes I don’t have any of the answers. But I always love her, and I’m trying my very best to be my very best for her and her sister.

The argument blew over, but I hadn’t realised that what I said had hit home quite so hard until I got The Christmas Card.

It is the best and the worst present I have ever received.

In it, she told me that I was the BEST mother ever, that she loved me, and that she knew it was hard doing everything on my own and that she thought I was very brave. And then she said, ‘I know you say you don’t like you. But I like you. I like you because you are lovely and kind and play with me and [Small Small]. I asked my friends to write down why they like you too.’

And four little girls aged between 7 and 8, with clearly far more emotional intelligence than I’ve gathered in 40 bloody years, wrote a sentence about what they liked about me.

They like that I’m funny.
They like that I’m kind.
They like that I love to play with slime.
They like that I make them laugh.

And I cried like a baby.

Because people don’t really say nice things about me. And when they do I find it so easy to dismiss them or not to believe them. Have you ever noticed that? That the good stuff, the compliments just slide off you like water? But the bad stuff sticks? And if someone says the bad stuff to you often enough it becomes truer than true just by being consistent. And it’s so easy to believe… That I’m too intense. That I’m lazy. That I’m too much and doing too little and over emotional and being over sensitive and slightly stupid and not wired up right and never follow through, and I’m all talk and all of it, all of it, all of it. It’s all still there, not even buried deep.

But then four little girls in Year 3 sat down in their Christmas jumpers on Christmas party day at school and made me the most beautiful card I’ve ever had, and I feel like they pierced through all the bad stuff for the first time. Because for some reason they’re easy to believe. And I have never been more horrified or more grateful for anything.

I can’t work out whether it is a massive parenting fail that I’ve allowed my daughter to think I don’t like myself and set that example for her, or a massive parenting win that she’s just turned 8 and she’s done something so thoughtful and mature and kind.

What I do know is that she deserves for me to find my inner Sid this year.
She deserves to see someone who doesn’t need to be validated by anyone else, including her.
She deserves to see someone happy in their own skin.
She deserves to see someone who doesn’t constantly worry if people like her, if she’s said the wrong thing, made the wrong choice, who doesn’t second guess herself and who isn’t afraid to be who she is, always, in all ways, no matter what. No matter who’s looking.

And do you know what? I deserve that too, this year. In 2020 I deserve to see myself in 2020 vision – or at least how 7 and 8 year-olds see me. Because sometimes they see a lot of things a lot more clearly than we do.

I deserve to like myself.

And so do you.

So my New Year’s Resolution isn’t a complicated one. I’m just going to look at everything and think, What Would Sid Do?

Because Sid wouldn’t give up.
Sid wouldn’t care if people liked him – he’d know they would when they got to know him.
Sid wouldn’t be diminished by cold water, or derailed by loud pans, or depressed by failure.
Sid wouldn’t be hemmed in by other people’s rules or boundaries – he’d just break his way out.
Sid would just be Sid.
And then have a nap.

And that – that sounds like a resolution I can really get behind.

I highly recommend you do the same.

#BemoreSid
#WhatWouldSidDo?

By the way, if anyone lives in the Woodseats area of Sheffield and actually KNOWS Sid, I’d love to find out where he lives. And his real name. He’s literally an inspiration.

Project Stop

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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There’s a phrase that has been bouncing around my head for some time now.

What if you’re defined by the worst thing that ever happened to you?

What does that make you?

Who do you become?

How do you seize back control of your own story, as someone who DOES and not someone who is done TO?

Well the worst thing that ever happened to me wasn’t all that bad by Terrible Life Stuff standards.

I just got divorced. People break up. Families split. It’s as common as, well, you know, RAIN IN SHEFFIELD.

But 2 years on, it is still rubbish. It still hurts. And dammit, it IS still defining me…

For the last few weeks, it’s once again been the first thing I think about when I wake, usually at 3am, by the call of miscellaneous dread.
It’s the last thing I think about before I eventually go to sleep.
Some days, I am wandering again through the motions of everyday feeling like a stranger in a life I don’t recognise and never wanted.
Some days, I can’t hold a normal conversation with people about anything that’s not THIS, because it’s all there is, and they won’t understand, and saying what I think or feel or even just the facts about what’s happening is BORING, 2 years on, or inappropriate, or even just plain bitter.

That’s the trouble with 2 years on. People want you to be ‘over it’ by now.

But how do you get over something that’s not actually over? That keeps coming back around, like a vindictive groundhog day?

I was working on it. I was actually getting there. I was BETTER for a while (one very significant letter’s difference to bitter).

But then it started up again. It’s still alive and kicking and BITING. It’s still impotence and fear and anger and ridiculousness and lack of good choices and being backed into corners and there is no respite or even keel or even clarity – even REALITY – because it is lost in the he said/she said and twisted logic and semantics and anti-correlation and blame and accusations and ultimatums and reasonable vs unreasonable dressed up as reasonable in sheep’s clothes, howling at the damn moon.

And the only thing, the ONLY thing I can change about any of this – the only thing I will ever be able to change – is me.

MY reactions.
MY actions.
My choices, such as they are.

And sometimes that’s the hardest thing of all, isn’t it?

Especially when you feel powerless. When you feel done TO. When you feel the world can see but simply doesn’t care. When you feel alone.

So I do what I always do, when I feel my feet scrape the bottom of everything that is.
I Weeble.
I roll back up.
I show up.
I plan.
I invest.
I TRY.

But mostly, I DO.
(Ironically words I have come to sincerely regret…)

I throw myself into Christmas early and all the fab stuff we can do together, and crafts, and trips and tickets and friends and festive, because now I only get 2 December weekends to do it.
I try and use my alone time to do all the doing that needs to be done so I can just do Mummy when they’re back, and do it properly, so they remember me. So it matters.
I clean, because that means I’m coping, right? Look – mopped floors, everything must be fine!
I buy too many presents I can’t really afford to make up for everything that I know they see and don’t say, but comes out at odd times, and I’m sorry they have to live with all this, and I buy cheap sparkly clothes I won’t wear because I don’t go out, but sparkles make me happy – or at the very least sparkly, and maybe that will do – and I try and not look at the families in the shopping centre.
I try and build ME and be a growing, flourishing, rounded PERSON and not (only) a diminishing, scared and exhausted shell, so I plan activities and start courses and hobbies and write bad poetry and draw bad pictures and reach out to people and gatecrash friends’ activities but then don’t always respond or show up because I can’t face it.
I run until everything aches and I can’t breathe and then I drink wine so life looks funny again and have sex until it’s the only thing I can feel and blocks out everything else.

What I don’t do, very often, is stop.

I think I’m afraid that if I stop, everything that I’m fighting or running from will catch up with me.

I think I use momentum, I use DOING, randomly, so that I feel like I’m the one in charge of my life. That I’m the one doing the DOING, not having the doing done to me….

And I think that isn’t always the right call.

Sometimes stopping IS doing something positive for yourself.
Sometimes stopping is an investment.
Sometimes silence is golden.
Sometimes doing nothing is renewing.
And sometimes you need to stop before you fall over….

I suck at it. Stopping.

It feels like the enemy.
It feels like admitting defeat:
it feels terrifying.

Because, who am I when I’m not going?

How do I find a forwards, an out, an exit, if I stop moving?

What happens in the empty space that follows?

What is in my head if it’s not full of plans, and can I actually bear it?

What if all I am IS the worst thing that ever happened to me, and it has eaten away everything else and there is now nothing left underneath?

STOP.
STOP.
STOP.

I suppose that’s my new project, in my overall campaign to REdefine me – Project Stop. (which may in fact undermine the whole stopping ethos by being planned and attacked as a project, but it’s the only way I know how to tackle it, because old habits die hard).

So one of the things I’m going to DO this month is to learn to not DO, and take myself off to a pamper evening, run by a lovely friend of mine.

If any other Sheffield-based Weebles out there fancy Project Stop, I’d love to see you there.

It’s a Feel Good self care and pamper evening, at St Gabriel’s C of E Church, Sat 30 November from 19.00.

Here’s the Eventbrite link: http://bit.ly/FeelGoodEventbrite

xxx

Write on Bananas in Biro

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Aging, Humour, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

≈ Leave a comment

So I’m halfway through my 40th year, and the other day someone asked me for some advice.

A large part of me wanted to pig-snort and spit out my tea, because I’m basically the least sorted person I know and with each passing year, if not month, I realise how ill prepared I am to deal with, well… pretty much anything. Adulthood, I suppose.

But another bit of me knew that I knew stuff.
I’ve been through stuff.
I’ve experienced stuff.
And this, this was something I could help with…

Unfortunately she wasn’t ready to hear it.

It’s back to the ol’ Grandmother Paradox I invented last mother’s day. The one where you can know so much but can’t pass it on to the next woman because they need to come to it by themselves. You can only watch, and listen, and be there if they’ll let you.

Every woman is the first woman to have a baby, to feel those new, old-as-time feelings.
Every woman is the first woman to suffer heartbreak.
Every woman is the Eve of her own life…

And every generation is silenced by and powerless under the Grandmother Paradox, watching helplessly from the sidelines as our daughters and our daughters’ daughters follow the same well-worn paths, without ever seeing our footprints in front of them.

This is not what I thought 40 would look like, back when I was, say, 20, starting out on that path.

And I wonder if there’s anything at all I could say to that woman, to me, that I’d have actually been able to listen to?

Weirdly, I fear we’d have very little in common. SingletoninCrookes was a very different creature. God, she was so naive.

She was so energetic.
She was so sure.
She was so well-rested…
She was so damn HAPPY.

Lordy I often feel I’ve lost the trick of that.

She – she knew everything, already. And she ignored the rest.

She was in her last year of University, fed up of studying and not doing enough of it, distracted by this AMAZING man she’d met the year before, her first real boyfriend, with a somewhat damaged past and a backstory that made her feel protective, proud, and probably a bit grown up.

There were some alarm bells. Bits that didn’t add up. Warnings from friends. Differences she told herself were strengths in the relationship rather than weaknesses…

Hindsight is a funny thing, isn’t it?

So is advice.

So here’s the bits I think I could say that maybe I could have heard. That maybe could soften some blows, or inform some better decisions or reactions… at least help 20 year old me develop some tools to deal better with the stuff coming down the line.

1. Always write on bananas in biro before you eat them

It’s a weirdly satisfying thing. Do it. Find a banana and do it now.

In fact, just take pleasure where it comes in all small things, and stop to appreciate them. Warm socks. Belly laughs. Purring. Spinning until you’re dizzy.

(Also, there may also be something coming called ‘Brexit’ that may or may not affect banana prices and supply. Enjoy them while you can).

2. Listen to your instincts

I know you think you’re instincts are sheet hot. Well they aren’t and they are. But only if you listen to them and don’t get lost in other people’s, well… advice.

But please keep reading.

Shut your eyes. Centre yourself. Find your strength, your energy, your core, and channel it at your choice.

You’re usually right.

3. Be your own person, not who you think you should be, or you think others want you to be.

You’re actually pretty cool.

Also, learn to take a compliment.

4. Stop worrying what other people think

Sorry love, not everyone is going to think you’re cool. Not everyone is going to like you. That’s okay. Let it go. (This will be a hit song!) Yes, I know you’re really nice. Yes, I know you get a buzz out of making people respond to you and creating harmony.

But it turns out harmony isn’t everything, and nor is being liked.

Defining yourself by other people doesn’t work. Define yourself from the inside out, not the outside in. As long as you like you, you’re #winningatlife. (This is a hashtag, useful for mini-blogging, coming soon!)

Just keep hold of the bits you like best, that make you you, and try not to lose them along the way.

5. Face conflict head on

Avoiding conflict is going to impact every relationship you will ever have, romanticly, professionally, platonically.

Sometimes people will behave towards you and others in ways you don’t like. Ignoring the problem, placating, pacifying, pretending it’s not that bad, looking the other way, all of these have a price.

Work out what your boundaries are.

There will be things that are best let go for the greater good or the bigger picture. There will also be things you need to stand up for, and to.

6. Don’t be afraid of anger

Feeling anger is okay. Expressing anger can be okay, too. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you unstable, or volatile.

It makes you a person with feelings and the ability to process them. Congratulations!

7. Feel all the feelings

You know what? It’s not just anger. Feel ALL the feelings. Burying them will hurt you.

I know keeping emotionally steady feels safe for you. I know sometimes the big feelings come out in ways you don’t like and are trying to forget – in obsessive thoughts and routines and physical pain you inflict on yourself.

But choosing not to feel things, to self anaesthetise your emotions with bland routine and a veneer of normality (not to mention the drugs and alcohol), is masking what’s real.

And what’s real is beautiful as well as scary.

8. Ask questions

Keep curious. Don’t pretend you know what something is if you don’t. Everyone is making it up as they go along. No, they really, really are. Even the important people. Yes, even the Doctors. And the politicians.

Terrifying isn’t it?

Ask all of them questions. And ask questions of yourself. Keep asking even when you become annoying.

9. Keep learning and growing

Want to stop making things up as you go along? Know stuff. Follow the stuff that interests you. Read. Create. Expand.

Soon you’ll be able to do this on your phone! Using the interweb! Wherever you go!

10. Keep moving

I know you hate exercise. I know you’re traumatised by years of wearing industrial-strength-navy-blue-knickers and no sports bra and being forced to run (and consistently lose) stupid races round a track with all the boys in the middle fully clothed in cricket whites and staring.

But moving is good for you. It makes your body and mind feel great.

And running is good if you’re wearing a proper sports bra (invest in this!) and not doing it in giant humiliation pants. Honest.

11. Tend friendships

Connection is what connects you to everything, and tending friendships is key.

Look for the ones that you can show all your faces to. The ones that you don’t have to perform for. The ones who let you be more than one thing, have different moods, meet you in different guises, for different activities. The ones that show up at 3am if you’re lost. Physically or emotionally.

Don’t mistake colleagues or drink buddies for true friends. When the brown stuff hits the cooling device they won’t be there.

12. Look for people’s gaps

This is the real trick to identifying the true friends. Don’t let people tell you who they are, let them show you.

And if the two don’t match up, think about why, and what that means.

Look for your own gaps too. Be the person you want to be, and the friend you want to have. Show up. Keep you word.

13. Don’t forget family

You’re building your life. It’s exciting. There are so very many possibilities and opportunities. There are also dark times. When these come, your family (and a few of the really good friends) are the ones who will pick up your pieces.

Treasure them.

14. Keep up your hobbies

Find a way to do what you love, and don’t get distracted by the meaningless bells and whistles of life… or the damn TV.

Top tips: Give up soaps. There’s going to be a lot of random plane crashes/explosions/affairs/deaths that make literally no narrative sense. Meanwhile, watch out for the rise of the Super Series! Don’t watch ‘Lost’. Do watch ‘Game of Thrones’.

15. Remember you’re beautiful

No one is looking at your damn spots.

You’re not in the least bit fat and I can’t believe you’re worrying about it, because you’re gorgeous. Jesus, I wish I looked like you.

Wear the short skirt. Wear the crop top. Enjoy your body. It’s going to do AMAZING things. Try loving it.

16. Say yes

Say yes to the night out, the trip, the experience, the everything.

17. Say no

Learn to say no if you need to protect your boundaries. No isn’t a negative. It can be a strength.

18. Don’t save things for best

Look, stop saving stuff for best. It’s not the 1950s.

I don’t care if it’s evening wear, trust me, you soon won’t be going out as much, and you should just wear it everyday if you love it. No, it won’t wear out. That’s really not a thing. It’ll go out of fashion first. It’s just your Mum talking, because she is from the 1950s. She’s old, like, over 40, what does she know???

Apart from shoes. They do wear out. Get them reheeled and save yourself a fortune.

19. Be honest

Sometimes, you lie.

You lie to put people at ease, to create a relationship – sure I know that book/show/place. You lie because you don’t feel like you’re enough without embellishment. You lie to yourself because you can’t face feelings, conflict, pressure, decisions, even the truth.

You lie because you are hiding, from so much.

You don’t need to do this.

20. Check who you are

These are the questions you should be asking yourself. Are you someone you like? Are you someone you recognise? Are you being the best you, the very truest version of you?

Check in with yourself every now and again. And make changes if you can’t answer yes.

21. Expect the unexpected

There will be stuff. You can handle the stuff.

You are far, far stronger than you think you are.

22. Everything will be ok

Spoiler alert! It all works out in the end. Everything will be ok.

I promise.

Looking back at this list, BUGGER 20 year old me. That beeyatch can fend for herself!

All of this is the advice I need RIGHT NOW.

Maybe this is the year I’ll start to take it.
Maybe this is the year I’ll learn the lessons of half of a lifetime.
Maybe this is the year I’ll start to live them…

If you’ve got some advice to add to my list, I’d genuinely love to hear it.

I’m now officially old enough to try and transcend the Grandmother Paradox, and learn something from those who’ve gone before me.

I hope.

World Mental Health Day, Baby Loss Awareness Week, International Day of the Girl

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Love and sex, mental health, Miscarriage, Motherhood, Parenting, Postnatal depression, Pregnancy, Returning to work

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So this week it was World Mental Health Day, Baby Loss Awareness Week, and International Day of the Girl.

For me these are all sort of related. And I’ve struggled to say one thing about any of them.

I think being a girl brings with it particular mental health challenges. I suppose they start with hormonal imbalances… and power imbalances. Expectations, from others and then from yourself. Pregnancy, pregnancy loss, baby loss, infertility, post birth PTSD, post natal depression, the whole-life upheaval of motherhood, shaped by both biology and society.

Life batters women’s bodies and minds and it’s supposed to be normal but when it’s you it’s not – and the thwarted expectation of normal is probably the hardest of them all. It feels like there’s a conspiracy of silence around being a girl, that minimises our pain, and leaves women very much isolated as a result.

We’re not supposed to tell anyone we’re pregnant until 3 months, becuase early miscarriage is just a thing that happens and should be gotten over, and God forbid it might make others uncomfortable.
We have to grieve our losses, appropriately, in private, at the correct volume, for the correct duration or we are unstable, hysterical, need to get over it now, have you considered taking up a new hobby?
We’re supposed to live with the pain of endometriosis because that’s normal and we should stop complaining when the decorators are in, it can’t be that bad.
We’re not allowed to address or even process a traumatic birth because at least the baby is healthy and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?
We can’t say how awful and hard and boring our new baby is because that’s ungrateful and some people would kill to be in your position, you know – you don’t deserve to be a mother.
We can’t share the thought the baby would be better off without us, in case they take it away.
We can’t say we are struggling – with motherhood, work, life, our marriages and relationships, with crippling loneliness and disconnection because that’s failure, other people are doing it all, look at the Facebook pictures.
We can’t talk about waking up in the middle of the night terrified the baby has stopped breathing, even when they’re 8, living the worst case scenario in our heads and fighting off crippling fear every waking moment of every single day – of which there are too many – in case the world thinks we’re mad, because maybe we are.

And those silences leave women alone in their heads. They leave women’s mental health untreated. They leave too many too normal things a taboo.

If there’s anything that I’ve learned about my own mental health, over the years but particularly recently, it’s that you need to be able to feel your feelings. They are not wrong. Ever. No one else should tell you how to feel, when, for how long, or how to express it.

Not feeling a feeling, suppressing it, denying it, trying to shape it to fit someone else’s expectations, replacing it with another feeling like anger instead of fear or sadness – turns it dark. And it will eat you up from the inside out.

We owe it to ourselves – and to each other – to come out of hiding. To say the things we’re afraid to think out loud. To share our pain, so it is heard and we are witnessed, and so that others can find comfort in the mirror of their own feelings.

I suppose really, that’s what this page has become about. It’s a bit about motherhood, sure. It’s a bit about mental health. It’s a bit about being a girl. But mostly it’s about truth. It’s about not being afraid anymore. And stepping out of the shadows.

No photo description available.

The Gas Light

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, Poetry

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Gaslighting has become a bit of a millenial buzz word, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

I think a lot of people don’t really understand what it means, what it looks like, why it matters, why it’s so hard to deal with, how it relates to wider abuse – or even if it’s actually happening to them or someone they know.

And it’s not just about personal relationships, it’s bigger. It’s about politics, women’s rights, #metoo, and more…

And sometimes when something is big and complicated and hard and I’ve been trying to sort it out in my head for a long time it comes out as a poem.

And that’s not always a good thing, because they can be harder for people to connect with, but if you’ve ever wondered what gaslighting sounds like or feels like then maybe this will help.

Thanks to all the women on this page, and in personal messages, who have shared their stories with me. You’ve certainly helped me.

xx

The Gas Light

when it’s lit, you don’t notice
a fire sitting under a potted frog
did you forget again? silly

it doesn’t illuminate, it obscures
sucking up light and clarity
consuming your spark and turning it dark against you –
but that didn’t happen, I never said that
the gas starts invisible, odourless but poisonous
a mist of missed marks, misunderstandings, mistakes, failed tests,
that’s okay, I forgive you

the canary sent in ahead is long dead
and a colour you second guess yourself used to be yellow
but now can’t be sure if you saw it at all,
because you’re being over sensitive

and maybe the red of the red flags is just menstrual,
are you on your period or something?
you’re overwrought, did you take your pills?
you need to chill

because up is down and down is up
and black and white come in stripes of static
and logic defies gravity but you are always wrong, somehow,
and everybody thinks you’ve lost the plot
I cannot deal with you when you get like this
it’s not normal

beginnings and middles and ends and causes and effects get muddled,
and you’re falling
down the gap between words and actions and stories and evidence,
befuddled,
and at the bottom of the trap are spikes
you’re talking crap, I’m the one being reasonable
you’re behaving like a fucking terrorist

because beneath the gaslight smoke are mirrors –
no, you’re controlling, YOU abuse ME
look you’re gaslighting me, now, can’t you see that?

and you can’t see so you close your eyes to clear them
but it’s the only peace you’re allowed
and you’re so tired maybe you should just keep them shut,
like your mouth,
you’re being paranoid you need to get a grip
are you thick? don’t be ridiculous

and as the gas light turns up things just get dimmer, diminished,
no one else would put up with you
you’d be nothing without me – less –
and maybe, maybe nothingness would feel like relief

and it scales all around you blocking escape
I grabbed her by the pussy but that’s not assault it’s your fault I’m like this
and 350 million lies on a bus means nothing don’t fuss,
look at me I’m a good guy, I’m trying here, it’s you

and what do you do if everywhere bare-faced truth isn’t true
and alternative facts before your eyes are/aren’t presented as lies
and in the eyes of the beholder, bolder is realer than real
and swagger sways, pays well, and steals actuality
and whatever you feel is a betrayal, a pale imitation of you
that will always lose but you’re the one that’s confused
an unreliable witness unfit to think your own thoughts
your mind undermined
tricked by a ruse in a rose that you chose
you made me do this
why are you like this?
what’s wrong with you?
what the fuck is wrong with you NOW?

and the cycle of create, stipulate, manipulate, capitulate, abate and wait
for it all so start again, starts again –
flaring in the black the gas-light is back
throwing shadows into the future long and low
no one’s going to believe you, I argue better
you’re a psycho

and you will host ghosts inside
because you can’t hide from the fact that secretly you will always believe –
even if you’ve managed to retrieve something of yourself from the fog –
you will still ask, was it me? is it me? is it me?
maybe I am the mad dog, after all?
pass

and in your heart of hearts there will always crawl doubt,
lit by him
fuelled by gas.

The scribble trap

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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I didn’t think I’d ever be here. Right now.

I’ve been so focused on moving house, and getting the Small Small started at school, I didn’t really think about afterwards.

And here I am, staring down at the rest of my life from a precipice because I literally never envisaged a point beyond this one, and I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a void.

I’ve been so stressed for so long and getting through and getting by that I literally can’t come to a dead halt.

And I’m worried that’s what’s going to tip me over…

Anxiety, you see, isn’t a straight line. Stress doesn’t have a neat beginning, middle and end. It’s more like one of those mad squiggle scribble drawings kids do, when you then colour in the spaces.

Red for rage. Green for fear. Blue for despair. Yellow for madness. Don’t let the colours touch, because if you do, doom…

The bit that SHOULD be the scribbliest bit is the bit when it’s happening, whatever the IT is that is the stress epicentre or focus of your anxiety.

But it’s not. It’s afterwards.

When you can’t come down or calm down. When your body is still in fight or flight at high alert but with nothing left to tackle or run from but ghosts, and too much in the tank to stop, and all for too long so it’s starting to take a physical effect on your sleep, and breathing, and hearing, and vision, and concentration, and weird aches and pains and blank patches as everything shuts down because it can’t keep going like that, but you can’t remember what normal operation looks or feels like anymore.

And you’re on the other side in theory but there’s nowhere to go, and nowhere to put it all.

You have to go from ‘Oh God, what NOW?’ To just, ‘….what now?’

And the unplanned nothingness is as vast and scary as all the vast and scary things real and imaginary you’ve been fighting and everything inside of you is still coiled but the enemy has changed, and might be inside of you too.

The thing with those scribble pictures is that no child has EVER FINISHED ONE. Have you ever noticed that? They are always discarded half done, and amongst the mountains of artistic offerings slipped furtively into the recycling by beleaguered parents.

I think if you’ve been living with that sort of mad-scribble anxiety or stress it doesn’t get finished, or unscrambled. You don’t get to follow a straight line again straight away, possibly ever. I think over time and with age you learn to make the loops bigger and easier to manage and fill in.

And maybe you remember, from childhood, that the next blank piece of paper is an opportunity for more prolific artwork, and not just a terrifying abyss.

I hope so, anyway.

The Weeble Plan

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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The other day I discovered, through a process of rigorous self analysis (not really), that I Am Not A Barbie.
I am a Weeble.
(I’m probably not a Marshall Weeble, but this is all I happen to have in my weeble-repertoire).
I am a Weeble because, much to my surprise, I get back up, again and again, after every knock that leaves me reeling.
And there’s been a good few.
The only problem with the Weeble description is that it seems… involuntary.
A reflex.
The weighted marbles in my base (and I’m reliably informed that I have giant hips) forcing me upright.
But it isn’t.
It’s a choice. (Unlike the hips).

Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t feel like one.
It feels like there is very little choice but to keep going – especially when you’ve got to keep two Smalls going too, for instance. It feels like there are no options.
But there are.
You could throw in the towel, give up, stay in bed, abdicate. It’s an option – you’re just not succumbing to it.
So it IS a choice.
In fact, it’s more than that: it’s a Superpower.
Because if I have ever had any sort of Superpower at all, this – this is it.

It is the power of TRYING.

You see, I am not just forced back up by the inevitability of gravity.
I choose to shake it off, and start again.
Hit refresh.
Do it over.
Turn up again and again determined to make it work –
this time.
This time.

My superhero name, I think, would be Finnegan –
Finnegan Begin Again.
I would wear red, like Marshall, with a big F across my chest.
Every day I would get up ready and raring to try harder and do better.
And that’s exactly what I DO do, on a macro and micro level, in real life, right now. I just don’t wear the costume.
Every bad day when my anxiety has pounded me from the inside out, every day when I’ve got it wrong, in the wrong places or by the wrong amounts, every day I have to deal with more idiocy and control, or domestic disasters, every looooong day of summer with grumpy kids taking all the change out on me, every failure, every knock, every time – I go to bed making up my mind to do it right the next day.

I have been so concerned recently about the dangers of bringing the old crap me into my fresh start. But actually the old me is the Queen of fresh starts – or at least the Superhero.
She is less Girl, Interrupted and more Woman, Continuing. Or at least Weeble Continuing… Rolling back up, trying again.
The thing with Trying, as a Superpower art form, is that you’re not always successful. And rarely the first time. But that’s not the POINT of trying. The point is to show up. And show willing. That’s the (heavily weighted) bottom line. And that’s the BEAUTY of it.
The old me is the new me, every day. Or the potential of her. There isn’t just one fresh start: I can orchestrate a thousand – just through the power of trying.

They say the Lord LOVES a tryer.
They also say that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
And I think that has in the past been my Achilles heel. My kryptonite. Finnegan’s flaw…

Even my ex knew I was a trier.
When I told him, during the mechanics of our breakup, that I got up everyday and tried to make us a family and tried to make everyone happy, he told me he’d seen me do that. It’s just that, by then, he wasn’t interested in doing anything but watching.
Sometimes, I’ve had to learn, you can try TOO hard.
Sometimes you can force things, and break them.
Sometimes, you can be fixated, in a rut, grinding through a groundhog day of awfulness because you can’t see any other way, or any other choice but to put your head down and plough through.
And then try it again.

I hit that magic reset button too often.
Instead of learning from my mistakes, I made the same ones.
Instead of spotting patterns that were damaging me, I kept turning the paper over to a blank sheet. I kept starting with me. Starting again. Assuming I just needed to try harder to make it better. Doing it over.
I missed important signs.
Hell, I missed the writing on the wall, drawn by my own hand.
By going back to factory settings I erased too much – eventually even parts of myself.
My Superpower became my downfall.

I suppose that’s the trouble with the whole weebling thing. Sure, it’s kinda handy. But a Weeble doesn’t just go down and up again. It spins around. And when you come back up you’re disorientated, and you don’t know which way you’re facing, or where to turn, or what is true, and constant, and real. It is all too easy to become confused. It is easy to do the same thing, the same way, the next time. And every time after. Because your head is still spinning and your heart is still lurching and you can’t see or don’t know any other way. And you hold on to too little, too hard, for too long, because that’s the way the manufacturers designed you.

Sometimes – not often – you have to STOP trying.
Sometimes, you have to stop flogging a dead horse.
Sometimes, you have to stay down, for a moment, a beat.
Sometimes you need to regroup.
More times than all of those put together, you need to get back up and try something NEW.

So, fellow Weebles. Keep on weebling. Do it with deliberation, with intent.
Don’t let yourself believe it’s just happening to you. You are CHOOSING to get back up, every time, every day.
And it IS a Superpower.
Now you just have to choose what you do when you get there.
And you have to avoid the Tryer’s Trap…

When you begin again, don’t go back to the beginning.
When you reset, don’t rewind.
Iterate.
Learn.
Grow.
Build.
Continue.

Bring your effort and your energy to the front and centre, and let it centre you.
And then go from THERE.
Go forwards.

At least that’s my new Weeble Plan.
And maybe one day I’ll start to enjoy the roll and the ride again, and not just endure it.

Small green shoots

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in Divorce, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting

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Last time I posted, I posted about the final straw.

I swore I’d try and use it – and the resilience from not buckling under it – to build myself a new nest. From the inside out.

Well I’m now, after all the run-of-the-mill horrendous house-moving, sat-in-a-van-waiting-to-exchange-and-for-money-to-come-through-shizzle, IN my new nest. The actual physical one. And this picture was taken in my new and perfect little patch of garden.

It is the opposite of the final straw – it is in fact a first green shoot.

And it shows (through entirely accidental timing) the dawning light as I step out from the long jagged shadows of my old life.

Into the new one.

I know lots of people who stay. In their old marital home. For lots of reasons – mostly school catchment and kid stability… Or lack of any damn choice, obviously. They invest in fairy lights and cushions to banish the shadows and change their shape. Their colour. I’ve seen it work.

But I didn’t realise how much the old echoes still rang in my ears, how much the grey and dull and dim of my relationship, it’s physical brick and mortar borders, still clouded my view of everything, including myself.

Moving has been a whirlwind, but it’s blown away the echoes and the clouds in a way so physical it’s literally left me swaying on my feet.

I feel free.

The old stuff can’t touch me here. HE can’t touch me here. I can’t be hurt in the same way. It is a step change, a step forwards.

But…

Freedom is a bit scary, too. Because it has its own pressures.

And I do feel pressure.

Partly that’s because I’ve been under so much stress for so long I’m finding it hard to come down and slow down and stop living at a hundred miles an hour fuelled by pure adrenaline and copious nutella, and a pathological fear of my own bank account. I can’t sit and stop and relax into it.

And I want to.

Because I LOVE this house.

I love that I’ve literally filled it with colour and that the old crap brown sofa has been replaced by a bright blue one, and with yellow and red and green bits all at once (not all on the sofa). Yes, there are fairy lights. And cushions. And upstairs a duvet cover so girly my boyfriend feels his testosterone levels drop at the bedroom threshold (he gets over this).

I love that it’s small. That all the downsizing and tip trips mean me and the Smalls fit it perfectly, and it us, and everything has its place, or will do when I finally get some wardrobes, and that the first thing the distressingly middle-class Big Small tells people who ask about her new home is that “it’s VERY small”. I love that we can see and hear our neighbours (which is also shocking to her), and walk to a park and a shop and a cafe, and that it feels MANAGEABLE. It feels like I’m on holiday. It feels perfect.

I love that it’s not the old place, with it’s gas leaks, and asbestos, and woodlice, and space – detached physically and metaphorically – and too much quiet, it’s tweeting twatting boiler, and memories, and huge ridiculous mortgage that no one should pay out on a house every month ARE YOU MAD???

I even love that I haven’t yet got blinds in the velux above my bed, so I can’t sleep, but who the FORK needs sleep anyway when you’ve got all this to take in, and I can watch the clouds roll past and feel small and blessed – yes even with the row of threatening pigeon bums lined up directly over it (and my flowery duvet) at 5am.

I love that it has given me the things I always wanted, and couldn’t have when we were chasing bigger and better and more and STATUS, and that every choice I have made from the choice to ask him to leave has been about redefining MY values, and that what I get now is what I begged him to prioritise – less stress, more time, more quality, less rat race, less strive, less STRIFE, more LIFE.

My life.

But that’s where most of the pressure I’m feeling comes from. Because this is my new start. And I have to get it RIGHT.

I have to start LIVING my values, not just planning for them, imagining them. I have to now actually create the family and the environment I want, and be the MUM I want, and the ME I want when I’m not in a mould and on a path and living a life that didn’t suit me and eroded me and I couldn’t breathe in, and when I’m not fighting my way out of that and coping and managing and juggling and organising and packing and working and FORGETTING to breathe.

This isn’t just about new green shoots. It’s about new leaves. Turning them over. Keeping them turned.

And while right now I feel like the physical change of moving has boosted the emotional change I’ve been working on for the last 20 months and longer – there is still part of me that is afraid.

I’m afraid I’ll still be the person that doesn’t turn ON the fairy lights because it might waste the batteries. Or the one who will never be able to sit, or stop, or settle, because she’s mostly momentum, and without that she’ll collapse, and maybe there isn’t anything else underneath worth a damn anyway. Or the one that is always so on the edge of her tether the anxiety turns to anger on a tuppence, who shouts, who is broken by straws, big and small. Who doesn’t let the kids make mess or go outside again or stay up late because the hassle is too much and she just wants to sit, and lie, and work up the energy to face the next day. The one who focuses on surviving not living. The one who leaps at every shriek convinced it’s a disaster. The one who can’t sleep because her mind is running on wheels. The one who overplans, forgets to enjoy any of it, and who lives a life of thwarted expectations. The one who can’t bring herself to get up off the sofa – even now that it’s blue – and go to bed – now a whole extra floor up – because it means the next day and doing it all, all over again. The one who squanders or sabotages opportunities because she is afraid. The one who is always, always afraid. The one that doesn’t look out of the window. The one who lets pigeon bums stop her opening it. The one that doesn’t live up to her potential.

This new house, this new life, this new freedom – is a gift. It is also a responsibility.

The fact is I don’t do well under pressure. Which is why every choice I’ve made to get here is about having LESS of it. And why now I’m here I feel MORE pressure to make the most of that. A Catch-22…

So.

This is it.

And I’m going to do the only thing I can do to start getting in right – I’m going to start small. As I mean to go on.

Because all of this, ALL OF IT, has been about going smaller, and slower, and simpler.

So today, I’m going to remember to breathe. It doesn’t get simpler than that.

I’m going to stop.
I’m going to see what happens when I stop. Who I am when I’m not stressed, and rushing, and worrying.
I’m going to turn on the damn fairy lights.
I’m going to open the velux.
I’m going to leave the unpacking and the nesting and the DIY.
Hell, I’m going to LEAVE THE WASHING UP.
BUGGER the routine. We’re not even going to brush teeth if we don’t feel like it, and we’re certainly not wearing shoes.
I’m going to enjoy my children.
I’m going to enjoy ME.
I’m NOT going to have a plan.
I’m not going to achieve ANYTHING.
I am going to let happy come to me.
I am going to go outside.
I’m going to watch the clouds.
I’m going to paint a picture.
I’m going to GROW, upwards, towards the sun, if it ever decides to shine again, like a new, green shoot.
I’m going to turn my face up to it, and bask, and APPRECIATE.

Although, as you can see from this picture, I AM probably going to have to mow the bloody lawn first…