Blowing Out The Candles

Birthdays make you think don’t they? Beyond the arbitrary marking of time passing, the little traditions we observe of gift giving, messages penned in cards and making a wish as you cut your cake, all lend themselves to kick starting thoughts about the past, changes that have taken place since previous birthdays and aspirations  for where you might be heading in the future. With both my birthday and a milestone birthday for my daughter being celebrated within the space of a week, there have been a lot of thoughts floating around my head this weekend. 

A year on since my ‘fabulous fifty’ celebrations and I find myself writing this 50^th blog piece and thinking of all that has happened since I began blogging last July. What began as an anonymously safe space to log my thoughts like little diary entries of my midlife musings, now has taken its own shape and direction, openly as me for all to see. The content of a great deal of the posts formed the basis of my book and to have written and published a book would have been something that I saw as unobtainable a year ago. With many negatives that I could have dwelt upon, writing has somehow become my lifeline, my positive action and escape. It has often been my nostalgic route too, dredging up glimmering moments from the past to give them a fresh opportunity to shine again.

Such thoughts are quite apt this evening as I think about the significance of the next few days. Tomorrow we are going out for a family celebration of my daughter’s 18^th birthday and then two days later will be joining her in all that she has planned for her special day, as she officially joins the adult population. No longer my little girl in a pink tutu dress, running around the garden. No longer the Rainbow, the Brownie, the Guide, full of ideas and keen to help in the running of activities. Now instead, she is a grown woman with opinions and a drive to complete tasks that she sets for herself.

I find myself welling up as I write this. I have blogged before about the role of parents when your children are adults and how that is often hard to define. Much of who I have become over the last twenty-something years has been inextricably linked to being a mother. Choices I have made within my career to fit around childcare arrangements and the way that I tried to accommodate both home and work demands. Choices I made with my husband through the years about purchases, holidays, moving house and redesigning our current home, to provide what we felt would work best for the good of all of the family within the financial parameters that we had. Often quick to help out my children, to facilitate their hobbies, to provide transport to and from their social engagements, it is easy to become the ‘yes person’ to their requests.

Then, initially unnoticed, they begin to need you less and less as they become more independent. Then the day comes along when it hits you that you are no longer the central figure in their lives, no longer run ragged by the daily to and fro of school, clubs, appointments, work, dinner, bedtime and starting all over again the next morning. Some days this revelation feels like the positive success story that it is – you brought up your children well enough for them to be functioning independently within the world. Some days though it can leave you feeling without a purpose and yearning for those times when you held their hands to cross the road and you stamped your feet to keep warm as you stood in the park, pushing them back and forth on the swings for just a few minutes more.

It is all about adjustments. I have had a lot of adjustments to make at different points throughout my five decades. Some have taken longer than others and some have needed more support than others. I worried about my children the first time I left them with a childminder and on their first day at school. I cried when they went off for their first residential school trip, out of their sight of course, but nevertheless I cried. I panicked that they would not be okay the first time they walked to the shops or went to play with friends in the park on their own. I was both proud and a little sad on their first day at High School, dressed in such a grown-up uniform. I wished I could have had all of the pain of injections and X-rays and illnesses as they came along, so that they would not have to endure it. I hoped all would be okay and their nerves would hold whenever they had exams or tests at school or for their hobbies.

I had no control over any of those things and at the end of the day, I have no control over what will come next for them through their adult lives. So I have to adjust to that and accept the truth of it. Yet, whatever age they are, they will forever be my children and I will always want the best for them and worrying about that just goes with the territory. It is part of the job description of a mother and that’s fine by me. There are 18 candles to blow out on the cake this week and there may well be a few tears to wipe away at the same time, but I shall be proud to do so as we all sing ‘Happy Birthday.’

Motherhood Masquerade

There may be manuals, websites and blogs with advice for motherhood out there, with tips and practical advice and more increasingly with recognition of the fact that mothers need emotional support. (So do Fathers, of course, but I can only comment from the first-hand experience of being a mother, whilst recognising that much of this would be the same for either parent.) However, all the advice in the world can’t make you ready for the job and just when you think you’ve cracked the job description and are easing into some sort of auto pilot state with it, motherhood can throw up an unexpected moment or two to send you into a tail dive for a while.

Recently I have found myself talking about those days when your body clock starts ticking and telling you that you need to have a baby. That time when you decide to take the big leap and then every month becomes a waiting game to see if all has aligned to create two lines in the window of a pregnancy test. Way back when this was our aim, it seemed like someone had planted a baby at every corner to remind me that it hadn’t yet happened for us. Once you’ve been through that process, the highs and lows of pregnancy and then negotiated childbirth, the true job of motherhood begins. When thinking back to these early days I think now that I probably had some post-natal depression, especially with my first child. Having had him by emergency caesarean I had an irrational belief that I hadn’t done the job properly and so immediately set up thoughts of failure as a Mum. Throw in an inability to breastfeed too, and I really felt like I was incapable of the basic functions required of a mother. When health visitors asked questions and got me to complete forms I knew all the right answers to say. I put on the happy mother mask, because that’s what is expected. I was mostly okay but knowing what I know about depression now, I would have benefited from support with this at the time.

Over the years, I think I have worn many masks as a mother. The mask to hide your disappointment that something that was special or important to you was swept aside or forgotten. Sometimes a small thing, sometimes larger but those moments when what you were hoping for, or what you wanted to do is brushed aside for the greater good - the needs or wishes of the wider family, so you just park your thoughts to one side and move on.

The mask to hide your worries when your children are embarking on something new that you know may not work out for them. You want so much as a mother to have your children succeed and to avoid pain and disappointment that you try to protect them and feel a growing tension when you cannot guarantee an outcome to be the way you would like it to be for them. Of course, we all have to experience failure in order to learn from it and to grow and succeed in the end. Yet when things look bleak, you would willingly suffer yourself in order to see your child achieve and soar.

There is the mask you wear to effectively gag yourself from passing comment when you know that to do so would only push your child further down a negative pathway. You hold it all in and keep worries to yourself about a phase they’re going through or a relationship they’re forming, save the thoughts up so that they play out in disjointed movies in your waking moments in the early hours as sleep evades you.

What about the mask that can become so well worn that it’s hard to take off sometimes? The “I’ve got this all under control” mask. To many, that appears as your real face: capable mother, professional and competent career woman, loving wife and adept homemaker - wow, you’ve got it all in that multitasking mask. Pity the friend that dares to peek beneath that mask with a well-timed question or comment that reveals what’s really going on under there.

As I began to write this I started to wonder how it was for my own mother. As a child I cannot recall any obvious problems being in evidence with her doing the job of a mother. Well, more precisely the many jobs of a mother. It all seemed so effortless and without issues. Once you’re in the position yourself you wonder what cues you didn’t pick up on, how difficult was it for your parents as you happily and obliviously got on with the important business of being a child? From my point of view I always had clothes that were clean and ready to wear, a hot meal on the table after school, support with homework or hobbies, like accompanying me to about six dance classes a week! All the mundane routine stuff was taken care of in a smooth fashion so I was left to focus on my own things - toys, TV, records and 80s pin-ups - so I guess I had no need to notice what else might be going on around me, for my parents. Unless all that is breaking down in front of you, I imagine that children just perceive everything to be okay. Perhaps my parents too had a series of masks they chose from to wear?

What is going on now then? How many masks am I wearing lately? I close my eyes and imagine myself at the centre of a masquerade ball where all the participants have their true identity hidden and for one moment, one night of sheer decadence in truly magnificent surroundings, we can all be anyone and do anything we would like. Immediately my poetic and dramatic self, commands my thoughts and paints a picture of the colours and feathers and glitter and I find it hard to move myself beyond this. Is that my subconscious grappling with my ongoing unease about my current position? A writer waiting for the next inspiration, for peer or external approval, for the drive to complete a project and see it succeed at some level, and all the while feeling that it’s all just a mask I have put on to disguise the fact that I am without work, without direction, without purpose?

Whilst this mask may be the most complex one I have worn to date, at this point in time it is simultaneously allowing me the luxury of time and space to devote energies to the finer details of still being a mum. I have had more opportunities to spend time with my daughter and to talk in some depth about the really important stuff of life. Moments like that should be treasured. All too soon, she will follow the example of my eldest and they will both be completely absorbed in adult life with little opportunity or motivation to pause and interact with their parents. We will still be here, on hand should they need us, but I don’t know what we’ll be doing or wearing by then. I hope it will still have a feather or two.

Into the Woods.

Autumn has long been my favourite season- it’s such a treat for all the senses. The spectacular colour treat that meets your eyes as you walk past trees - like artistic masterpieces on show without the need for a visit to a gallery, just emerging in the sunshine or fluttering on a breeze, even being reflected in a puddle from an autumn shower. The sounds that accompany the fallen leaves, crisp under your boots to remind you of a time when adult restraint didn’t keep you from stopping in the street to scoop up an armful of leaves and throw them high over your head to watch them fall all around you.

Then there’s the tastes and smells of autumn - many I am sure are inextricably linked to my childhood experiences. The smell of a bonfire reminds me of standing in a dark park, wrapped up in hat, scarf, gloves and coat waiting for the fireworks display. The joy of slowly chilling to the bone was the thought that when you got home, Mum’s sausages and jacket potatoes would be ready to warm you up, along with a cup of cocoa. Nowadays, it’s hot chocolate, rather than cocoa. That may sound like a subtle difference but the cocoa of my childhood was a simple affair whereas today’s offerings are one of luxury velvety chocolate, cream and marshmallows towering above the drink below.

The clocks turning back time at the end of October signals the shortening of days and to some seems a foreboding signal of darker times but this has never worried me. Without dark there is no beauty in candlelight, flickering bonfires or twinkling fairy lights that adorn homes and gardens during the festive season. Autumn has its own beauty, in nature’s display and in bringing people together, sheltering at home from the cold or sharing time together in celebratory mood whether that be for Halloween, Diwali, bonfire night, thanksgiving, Hanukkah or Christmas - indeed any other festival or celebration that brings family, friends and groups together. There’s something about gathering as a group at this time of the year. I’ve always liked the colours that appear on the autumn fashion rail and the sparkles that scatter themselves across the party outfits. Perhaps I just get caught up in the romance of it all?

It’s also an annual reminder of life’s ongoing circle, an outlandish flurry of colour and splendour before winter’s metaphorical sleep and end, whilst beneath it all is the promise of the first snowdrop and a spring awakening fresh and renewed next year.

As I write this, I’m taken up with the question of whether I am now entering my own autumn. The Spring of my youth is certainly long gone, although glimpses of those carefree days have come to the forefront of my mind as I’ve scanned through old photo albums or discussed memories with my own teenage children when they ask those recurring questions of ‘What did you do when you were that age, Mum?’ The spring-like eagerness you have when you’re finishing school, finding work, getting married and looking to the future seems somewhat naive with hindsight sometimes, but it sees you through the difficulties of setting up your adult life.

Summer - known by many for its long days, idyllic peaceful retreats with opportunities to paddle in the waves and eat ice cream, has also its fair share of pests: persistent wasps at a picnic, hay fever hindering your enjoyment of the outdoors and sometimes a humidity and heat that’s almost too much to bare. All in all, a good metaphor for the adult life I’ve had so far - nurturing a family, married relationship and a career path through all such highs and lows.

So now I stand in my metaphorical autumn wood. It’s my chance to be outrageous with a splendid colourful display, to kick up the crunchy leaves from beneath my boots and sink back on a sofa sampling the velvety smoothness of a hot chocolate. Whether anyone is stopping to watch the display before them or they’re too caught up with their own daily demands to notice another middle-aged mother with something to say, something to offer to others, that’s not for me to decide.

There’s a certain joy to the slow realisation that over time you’ve started to lose some responsibilities and that you can carve yourself a bit of time and personal space. When you notice that your kids don’t need you in quite the same way anymore it can feel a little like you’re a kite whose string has been cut on a windy day. The twists and turns of the journey ahead can leave you plummeting towards the ground some days and soaring through the clouds towards the sunlight on others.

If this is my autumn, then I’m going to emerge myself in all that it brings and show all that I still have to offer. There are some things in life that I can’t control but there are others where I have choices to make. Now is my chance to show my true colours, as the song states, and I intend them to be vibrant russets and golds - the very best that an autumn can show. I may even climb a few trees!

Friends and Frivolity

It is often said that friends are the family that you choose for yourself. As it is with family, friends come in all shapes and sizes and move in and out of your life, as circumstances dictate. Some friends are regular participants in your life and others may be more sporadic but true friends, the people who really matter and make a difference to you, are always ready to listen, to meet up, to be a presence when the need is there - even if you haven’t seen each other for a long time. It is a blessing to me that I have a strong group of friends that I can call upon when I need them and who, I would hope, would do the same to me as and when they needed support.

I am about to spend a weekend away with a group of friends - an eclectic bunch who have agreed to join me in a girls adventure marking my birthday. Each one of them has their own busy life and family commitments, yet they put it all on hold to indulge me in a madcap, frivolous weekend and spent a year saving up to be able to do so.

What is it that draws people together to become friends? Often a shared interest perhaps and we are all partial to a bit of drama, this is true. When in the playground, choosing friends, you pick from similar aged peers. Now there’s 20 years or more between the youngest and oldest of our group, yet it doesn’t seem to figure in the relationships. We can all laugh together and support each other, as required, without limits.

It seems like I should return to this blog, when the impending weekend is done and I no doubt will have a wealth of experiences from it on which to comment. Yet is that necessary? I’m thinking of the old adage of “you needed to be there.” Indeed, trying to relay anecdotes of something that a group found completely hilarious to a dumbfounded looking individual, after the event, is never a fully satisfactory pastime.

I know that we will laugh, drink, eat and do silly things and perhaps that’s all that needs to be said. Over a year saving, several months planning events during the weekend, copious amounts of messages back and forth fine tuning details of outfits to wear, times to meet and catch trains and one central space set up for all of us to post our photographs during the weekend - all culminates in a shared experience that, with a bit of luck, we’ll all look back on with fond memories for many years to come.

And that is surely the crux of it? Making memories with the people that matter to you, isn’t that what life needs to be about? I’m sure, when the curtains are about to fall upon your final life’s performance, it is not the items you have bought or the jobs that you completed that come into focus in your mind. Memories are etched into your mind from sharing experiences together - with friends or family, or friends who become family. It is not how long you have shared a pathway with someone that matters, it’s who you jumped in the puddles with, who climbed a tree with you, who ran giggling with you to hide behind the bushes.

So, I’m not sure that the seven of us will be doing those things this weekend but we are booked into a dance workshop, an afternoon tea, an evening of relaxing chat with a tipple or two thrown in and who knows what else may transpire? As the theme is vintage, we’re all dressing up accordingly - I did say it was a madcap adventure! Within that context, we have our feather boas ready and are so excited that it’s akin to being schoolgirls again. It’s so lovely to be giving ourselves time and space to be silly, be pampered and to make memories together. Onlookers may not ‘get it’ but we’re all up for the nonsense of it and if you can’t have a bit of nonsense from time to time, then life’s a bit dull.

Perhaps we all need to be daft from time to time and we certainly shouldn’t just keep things on a bucket list and never get round to doing them. Choose your bucket list items carefully but share the experiences with those who are significant in your life, be that friends or family. I’m off to pack now and I’ve made sure I’ve got my bucket with me!

Time for a Chat.

A typical 4 year old, if there is such a thing, has a vocabulary of about 1500 words – impressive in such a short space of time. So you would think that by the teenage years their eloquence would extend beyond “No, uh, M-u-m and what?” All the rich tapestry of the English language laid out before them and it is reduced to a smattering of mumbles, when pushed, and a string of hashtags or a winky face emoji as their thumbs work overtime on their stream of messages in one online chat forum or another. It seems at times that they have entered some secret club that you, as the parent, can only view from the outside. They certainly don’t want to engage in conversation about their daily activities and if you do hear them speaking, it’s often in some new and strange language that I won’t embarrass myself now by attempting to quote any examples from. There’s nothing worse than a Mum trying to be ‘down with the kids’ and I’m sure we all remember the cringing feelings when our parents attempted to be cool in front of our teenage friends, way back when.

Now my kids have entered this teenage and beyond phase, it can be with some regret that I nostalgically look back on their toddler years – the time when they asked questions every single minute of the day – and think why didn’t I appreciate the value of this at the time? Why? That’s what my children asked constantly – why is this or that the way it is? At the time, it is easy to pass off questions with a quick response to close down their line of enquiry or to think if only they could be quiet for just an hour so I can drift off mentally to a place of peace and quiet. But at that point in time, to them you are the font of all knowledge and this doesn’t last for long. How many times more recently have I heard them scoff “Mum, don’t you know what that is?”

Perhaps our household has always been a chatty place. As my two children grew up they were always included in conversation around the dinner table and although encouraged to wait their turn and be polite enough to listen to others, they knew their opinion and contributions would be valued. I recently came across a quote which I find poignantly significant at this time in my life:

“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”  (Catherine M Wallace)

Joking aside, I am grateful that my kids – who are mostly grown-up now – do still want to talk to me when they have something on their minds. There has been a patch where this was difficult, where the adolescent hormones combined with diagnosed anxiety and depression in such a way that it felt almost impossible for one of my children to speak to me. Almost 18 months of talk therapy and a whole heap of hard work by the family have helped to address this and I’m feeling that we are now sharing things again. Whether this sharing has been little or big stuff, and some of it has indeed been big stuff, it is worth remembering that the seemingly small step taken to talk about it has been a gigantic leap of faith in making the decision to do so.

And what about me? How am I in conversation? The phrase – “Do you have time for a chat?” conjures up different connotations for me, some negative and others positive. If you’re called into your line manager’s office for a chat, it’s rarely to be about the latest developments on a TV programme or to plan a social event together. Sometimes I will send a message to my husband via text / messenger and receive the reply “Let’s chat about it later.” I know that means that the subject matter is going to be up for lengthy debate later and neither of us are sure what the outcome may be.

Meeting a friend for a chat might go one of many ways. Often it is because one or both of us need the space to unleash all the niggles that have been grinding us down over the last months and say them out loud to someone that we know will listen and not judge. Other times, amongst the niggles, is a bigger, more demanding problem that needs airing and a friend can be the support mechanism for this. Food, drink and chatting with friends can help to make the world a better place, even if only for that moment in time.

A chat about no particular thing is also a great form of therapy – talk about whatever comes into your head first and just go with it. To an outsider, I am sure that’s what a lot of my conversations with friends look like. But the process of this - being with good company, those with shared interests and common experiences - that is a great recipe for a successful chat session. Sometimes you don’t even have to say out loud what is really troubling you – the random other bits of chat act as a cover or code and those who know you well, know to keep that going so that you can process the difficult stuff and everyone in the room knows that’s just what you needed.

And now I come to group chats – you know the ones you can set up on Messenger? I’m quite the technophobe, in fact setting up my writing into a blog was a challenge for me and one for which I had to call upon the support of a tech-savvy friend to complete. Is it a good thing that we have the technology available to be able to hold a multi-way conversation without any need for the physical presence of those people in the room?

Group chats have been great when trying to organise a social event or give details for rehearsals to the whole drama group that I am part of. Sometimes, a couple of members of the group chat divert from the intended point of the original message and if you weren’t online at the time you open the chat to a stream of comments, thumbs up signs and GIFs that you have to scroll through, emphasising just how late you were to this party chat!

It is true that I am guilty of holding several group chats at once and then I really have to be awake and aware of which comments I am sending to who. It would be difficult to explain a flirty message intended for your husband to a group set up with work colleagues about an important meeting in the schedule.

However, I have found myself checking my chats daily and it has been good to be able to access advice from friends when I have needed it or to check where my family members are and whether they are intending on being home for dinner. The benefit over texts being that I can at least see that they have received a message, even if they choose not to respond.

I don’t think electronic chat can replace the real thing though, for all the reasons I’ve explored already. To talk to each other, in person, face-to-face is to be human and individual amongst the daily crowd of automatic responses and faceless encounters. “Do you have time for a chat?” Always, for my family, my friends, I will always make time.

 Have you ever been caught out in a group chat?

What do you think about the social media opportunities for chat and how our children engage with these?

Fabulous is a State of Mind

As I have said before in my post ‘Confined by my Cage of Confidence’, I had decided that I wasn't going to be 50 and fat so I started working on that at the start of January. As the weight has started coming off and I find myself hurtling towards my milestone birthday, an idea has started to form in my mind of being fabulous at 50.

It's the sort of tag line you read on a greetings card or a headline in some celebrity magazine that you glimpse when thumbing through the pages, as you're in the hairdressers waiting for the colour on your roots to take. For those pages though, it’s all a perception played out to portray the elusive image of womanhood. The everyday woman doesn't have access to Photoshop, airbrushing and a personal trainer who will work his magic with you every morning - more's the pity!

It takes a lot of product and time and effort to come anywhere close to the celebrity fabulous that every 50-something is going for! Actually, we're not going for that look at all. Don't get me wrong, we all love to dress up and slap on some make-up, blow dry our hair and paint our nails for a special occasion. It makes you feel good in yourself and adds an extra sass to your steps. 

But on a daily basis, feeling fabulous surely has to go further than applying all that fake veneer, doesn't it? If you don't feel good within yourself, the rest is just a mask you wear to join in the grown-up's game of pretending everything is fine. The inside feeling of being fabulous takes a lot longer to achieve and it can be quite fleeting at times and take many forms. It may only be a little thing but it can have a cumulative effect: the times when I have successfully tried a new baking recipe and seen how much it has been enjoyed; when I have completed a difficult and demanding work task to meet a deadline; when I have spent an evening with friends and laughed until I ached and can’t even remember what it was that started us laughing. Valuing these moments has been part of pursuing my fabulous quest this year. 

Prior to losing weight, I would put myself down regularly and outwardly joke that I was fat, like a mechanism to protect myself it was almost like if I said it first,  then no-one else could comment and upset me. But a good friend pulled me up on this and got me thinking about why I was doing this. The knock on effect of this was that I started my weight loss efforts because I made myself stop having permission to be fat. My default to excuse myself by joking about it was no longer going to be acceptable to me.

When you've been big for a long time, it takes a long time to start to see the shrinking version of yourself. It's like a moth to a flame, picking up the larger clothes first and trying on bigger sizes than I actually need. Inside there's been this slimmer, more attractive and outgoing person waiting to be released and the big me, that's still in my mind, stands in the way sometimes.

To anyone who doesn't know me, I imagine I would still be judged as fat.  Though I've dropped 2 to 3 dress sizes, I'm still not catered for in some high street stores and I know I have a way to go yet. In my head though, I have begun to feel more attractive and with that a certain body confidence and self-image is growing. That's the fabulous bit. When people tell you that you're looking good, when you've noticed that you're less out of breath, when you've started to look at the sort of slinky clothes that you thought no longer belonged in your boudoir, that's fabulous isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, it's not all about the weight.  This year has seen a sort of awakening within me, as I've started to talk with friends about the darker places that I've been to, I've gained the confidence to explore what's been going on. The strain of shelving my emotions, shutting them up in a box on a high shelf has a negative effect over time. It's hard to feel fabulous when you've become disengaged and you're going through the motions of your everyday reality. Unlocking these inner thoughts hasn't always been easy. I think I've cried more tears this year than in the last ten and at times, it has felt like I've opened a flood gate. Yet, it has been a journey that friends have supported me on.

Writing this down has felt like the next stage of the process really – a therapy in itself. I start a page and it's as if I'm unlocking a series of doors in the hallway of my mind. To write is to create. This type of writing has allowed me to create a channel to process my emotions and lay them out there for others to see too. Some may take comfort from what they see laid out before them and perhaps recognise a little of it in themselves. Some may have no interest in it at all. Either way, there has been a response to the words on a page. An artist's work is always a portrayal of part of themselves and the exhibition process inherently stands that up alongside the artwork.

My words and thoughts, tumbled as they do from mind to page, are not nearly as grand as an artwork but they obviously represent a piece of me. Someone said it was brave of me to write about my thoughts and issues. I don't know if it is brave or foolish. I do know that it has felt like a natural step from the year of examining myself from the inside out. I'm feeling more okay with my thoughts and I'm planning to keep doing the things that bring a smile to my face. Mindful of actively adding positive experiences will in itself enable me to meet the negatives more head on. There are parts of my life that continue to cause me stress and currently, I have no control over these. I’m working on it but at least recognising that and asking my family and friends to help me with it, is making things more manageable. I have spent time coming to terms with who I am and where I want to go and I am determined to hit the next decade positively. So I am working on my chosen quest and slowly succeeding as, it has to be said, fabulous is a state of mind.

What makes you feel fabulous? You owe it to yourself to pick something and go for it - have your own regular fabulous moments. 

Mermaid Mother

I am sitting on a beach on the sort of day when years of UK holidays have trained you to button up your cardigan, smile and say how lovely it is. Listening to the waves rolling in, slowly seeping into your mind- pushing aside the stresses of your everyday reality and gradually allowing space and time for calm. Just as I’m drifting willingly into a reverie of relaxation I get bulldozed by our dog who has bounded into me, covered in a dusting of sand - she’s just discovered the unbridled joy of jumping in the waves, trying to catch an elusive piece of driftwood.

For a moment, whilst my daughter laughs heartily at the sight of me floored by our pup, I’m back in my childhood swimsuit days. Reminiscing about many years of holidays on the Isle of Wight, where a day on the beach seemed endless and only punctuated by sand-filled sandwiches or an ice cream, when I was free to build sandcastles, splash in the waves, collect shells and generally engage in the serious business of beach play. At any given moment I was a pirate about to walk the plank or a mermaid collecting shells for my underwater palace, the best sand architect in the world or a swimmer who was sure that a few strokes more would win an Olympic medal. Imagination knows no bounds when a child gives it the freedom to soar. Why do we limit it in our adult world? Obviously the responsibility of adult life puts constraints on our playtime- I’m not sure I could fit in making a shell necklace between answering emails at my desk and tipping out a bucket of sand would certainly be frowned upon!

Whenever you get a chance though, I challenge you to use your imagination. Let that inner child out and just run with it. The best times I have had as an adult have been the silly times, when I’ve let down my guard and imagined daft scenarios shared over wine in cahoots with friends or family. The creative part of my personality is allowed to fly through my writing and when engaged in creating a character on stage or working out dance moves for our drama group – it’s all a chance to unlock a piece of imagination and in doing so, be more the child than the adult which is something worth doing on a regular basis. How many times do you allow your inner child to surface and call the shots for a while?

To return to the moment in hand though: the dog bounding around with me pushed over on the sand and my daughter laughing moment. The best thing about this joyful snapshot is the sound of her laughter. Having watched her struggle for over two years with anxiety and depression, to see her currently joining the dog in a splash in the sea is indeed a joy. It seems a tempting of fate to actually write these words but she does seem to be a whole lot better in the past few months. Recently she has volunteered and been working at a local coffee shop. To see her talking to strangers as she serves them coffee is akin to watching a rare flower bloom and stand proudly in the sunshine, resplendent in its colour and beauty after growing from a small inconspicuous seed in the darkness.

It’s been two months now since she sat her last exam and we will know today what grades she achieved. Whichever numbers or letters have been arbitrarily assigned to her efforts, they will show no recognition of the immense achievement that she has accomplished in getting herself to a place where she was able to even contemplate sitting in an exam room. It is true that we do not know what lays ahead, with college enrollment and whatever that new chapter may bring. We do seem to be moving forward but the journey that anyone with mental health issues makes is never linear. For now, we are grateful for the journey we have made so far and for the joyous moments that have interspersed this journey. We are not sure exactly where our destination will be and indeed have no idea how long it will take us to get there.

So perhaps it is not surprising then that a day on the beach, a chance for relaxation, has triggered such a nostalgic response - a hidden yearning for a simpler time, when I could conquer the world with my bucket and spade. Back then, I could do anything that my imagination conjured up, with no limitations of gender expectations, qualification requirements or family responsibilities.

As I started to explore in my first post "Mum's the Word," life throws up obstacles in all sorts of ways but you have to find your way to steer around them and sometimes to grab hold of them tight and fling them aside. My mermaid days may be behind me but my dearest wish as a mother is to instill an adventurous spirit in my children. If you want to swim with dolphins, go do it. You can do anything with your family and friends behind you and whatever choices you make, believe in yourself and those that matter will always be proud.

 

Parent Sandwich

People make different choices about their relationships. Back in the 80s, when I met my husband, within our social circles, it was still the accepted norm to meet someone, get married and then have kids. We followed that pattern and after 7 years of marriage, started our family.

When you have a freedom like that, you don't really appreciate it. Those 7 years where we could stay up talking to friends until 3 in the morning, cadge Sunday dinner off the in-laws with little notice, lay in bed on a Sunday morning until it was actually Sunday afternoon and fit in work commitments around it all and still have plenty of time for each other.

Then Bam!  Babies arrive and you can't distinguish one end of the day from another. Relentless rounds of feeding, changing, smiling at relatives and friends who've come round to coo, leave you unable to stir a cuppa, so stirring any passion is completely out of the question. After childbirth your intimate areas don't quite hold the allure of sultry promise as previously. When you've had to put your private parts in the public domain of a hospital birth it seems like everyone's had a look up there including the guy who only came in to the room to change the bins! So it takes a while to think of yourself as attractive again.

Though debilitating at the time, the sharp end of parenthood passes after a while and then you continue on to each new phase or, if you're like us,  you do it all again and repeat the baby madness with the added complication of a toddler in the mix. If you think the 1st was tricky, you don't know what has hit you with a 2nd!

Still, without any formal parenting qualification and no prior manual of support, we grew into our parent role and did the best we could to support our kids from one phase to another: baby, toddler, school years into teenager and beyond.

Somewhere along the line, it gets easier doesn't it? Kids grow up and the family dynamic changes and you get to that point where you can stop being so much of a parent and get back a little of that freedom can't you? I mean, that appeared to be what I observed some friends doing. I began to think of possible couple holidays that we might have and fantasize about moments of calm, in a more settled house. Ask a woman what her fantasies are and you might expect all sorts of erotic scenarios with various hunks playing the lead. Actually, it's more likely to involve the need to carve out a bit of peace and quiet, sipping wine somewhere with a pleasant view and a slice of cake!

Anyway, I should get to the 'parent sandwich.' This is something that has happened to us over the last decade I suppose. Not only are we parents to our kids, something that we willingly if somewhat naively signed up for, but somewhere along the line we have adopted the role of parent to our own parents.

I lost my Dad six years ago but to be more accurate, I lost the clever, funny, kind man that he was ten years ago when his illness struck and smudged areas of brilliance in his brain. So looking back on it, from then I had to step into that parent role to explain basic daily things to my Dad and to support my Mum. Not only had she lost all the things I had with Dad, but she had lost her soulmate too and looked like a ship cast away on what was to become a very stormy sea.

Not long after his death, I almost lost my Mum too. A perforated bowel and sepsis did not make a good prognosis but somehow, after all the difficult years with Dad, she found the strength and reserves to come out the other side fighting.  It was probably a six month fight when at its most difficult, yet to this day she lives with the effects of the time. Being the positive person she is, she manages well and doesn't often let on that she's feeling emotional or anxious or lonely. So my 'parent' duties with Mum have reduced to more of a checking in and supporting from time to time and that's absolutely fine. 

More recently, it is my husband's turn to be the sandwich filling. Both of his parents are now in their 70s and have growing health issues and lessening independence. A proud and driven man, he has risen admirably to the task and, as the eldest child, feels duty bound to carry the weight of it all on his shoulders alone.

I never realised how the lines of responsibility and duties of care blur as your parents enter that phase of life, where they need you back in their lives more than they ever like to admit.
Like a dough stretched out, being pulled from each end by our kids and our parents, I find the safest survival tactic is to stick together and hang on in there. From time to time, they loosen their grip and we can take up the slack to remould ourselves and start again. 
We may not be in a place where an exotic couple's holiday is possible but a moment here and there for each other will have to do. I'm lucky to still have the man by my side who was acceptable in the 80s and, all things considered, he's okay now too.

If you're currently coping with a parent with dementia there are support networks out there, for example: https://www.dementiauk.org/ 
Perhaps you have other methods of support that you can recommend too?

Coffee and Cake - Code for Therapy!

I’m completing those medical type questionnaires and I think they’re missing something. You know the ones where they try to check out your addictions and give a health baseline? My answers portray a somewhat bland, some might suggest boring response:

Have you ever smoked? – No

Do you / have you ever taken drugs? - Prescription only, a morphine drip after an emergency C-Section for my first child and a couple of puffs of gas and air having my second before I decided that I didn’t like the woozy feeling and gave up on that!

How much alcohol do you drink? – Most weeks none; it’s not a usual thing in our house. Lately, if meeting up with friends, a few glasses to get into the spirit of that Friday frolic fever. You know how everyone seems to manage their mundane and stressful working week by putting Friday up on a pedestal all week so that we can glam ourselves up, park our working lives and feel silly for a few carefree hours? Close friends might testify that’s it been more than a few glasses on some occasions, but no-one puts the whole truth on these forms do they?

Do you exercise? – Well, I walk the dog when no-one else in the family will and I join in dance routines at my weekly drama group. If the dishwasher is loaded and the TV programmes haven’t caused me to nod off and the stars of passion are neatly aligned, I might have an extra bit of bedroom exercise from time to time.

What’s missing from my questionnaire though is the thing that I am now having to admit to myself is my addiction: coffee and cake. Along with a proliferation of coffee shops over the last few years, comes the realisation that they’re tapping into something. It’s not that everyone has just suddenly developed an unquenchable thirst for coffee – though it is in itself addictive. It’s more to do with the fact that we’re looking for a little slot of relaxation and, when you find yourself a friendly local coffee spot, a smiling barista with a few minutes to listen to you and make you feel important. This, I’ve come to realise, is my therapy.

Half an hour on a sofa in a coffee shop with a sweet treat and a latte and I’m ready to carry on with my day. Whether I’ve sat alone or to catch up with friends, used the chance to check work emails or to chat with my Mum or pop in for a moment away from the kids to actually talk to my husband (though often we’ll sit alongside each other checking out the screens on our phones as we sip coffee) – it’s all a way to recharge batteries and pretend for a moment or two that life has been put on hold. An equivalent slot on a sofa with a therapist would be infinitely more expensive and possibly no better for me.

My coffee time is my ‘me time’ and has become a necessary part of my week – my mindfulness programme. I can make coffee at home and have been known to create perfectly adequate bakes but it isn’t about that, is it? Taking time out, in a little sanctuary of calm, is to step away from the plate spinning that encapsulates my waking hours; a plate for managing an increasingly stressful job, a plate for coordinating kids’ activities, a plate for caring for pets that we were persuaded into buying and now have most responsibility for looking after, a plate for keeping the home running, a plate for being there for friends and family. How many plates is that now? I’m a walking circus act!

This year, I have to admit that my need for ‘coffee therapy’ has certainly increased – possibly to worrying levels. I’ve been joking with friends that I am having a midlife crisis but I think it has just been a significant year. One kid has finished university, the other managed to get through GCSEs despite many challenges. We’ve had 5 months of disruption as we have refurbished the house in an effort to future-proof it, for we see little hope of our kids being able to fly the nest any time soon. My job has taken a new direction too, with more responsibility, more deadlines, more of everything except money and recognition – such seems the accepted norm in the austerity driven work place of the current day. Against this backdrop, I’m planning celebrations to mark a significant birthday – I intend to be fabulous and fifty, at least for the celebrations, it’s most likely to be downhill after that!

Why one birthday year should be more significant than another is arbitrary. For many, each candle on the cake is just another passing year – one no more meaningful than the next. Many have developed this habit of celebrating the ‘decade birthdays’ more than others and certainly, for the last few years I’ve not particularly gone overboard on the celebrations. Six years back I spent a memorable birthday night sat alongside my Dad’s hospital bed, following the difficult decision to withdraw medication and wait for him to pass. The fighter that he was meant that he struggled on way past expectations and died 8 days later. So I guess my birthday has been inextricably linked with those events since.

Determined – that was the word he used to describe me in his speech on our wedding day. Determined to pursue a course of action whether he was proved right or wrong in the wisdom of my choices. Well, despite many stumbling blocks along the way, he was proved right that I’ve been determined enough to stick at my marriage and persevere as a parent – something that comes with no prior qualification or manual.

With no let up on the horizon – mortgage payments to continue for a fair few years, workloads staying heavy, it’s fair to assume that I’m going to require coffee therapy for a long time to come. Now, pass me my latte.

Does coffee therapy work for you? How do you make time for yourself among your daily responsibilities?

Confined by my Cage of Confidence

This year started with less of a bang, more of a half-hearted fizz and a pop really. Never ones for big New Year’s parties we had plans in place for the usual few relatives and friends to come round for a take away and to play some board games. Not exactly the most exciting plans for new year's eve, but a way to mark the passage of time and to wish everyone success for the next chapter ahead.  Such is the ritual that we all have adopted, singling out this date as one for celebration and reflection. Well, best laid plans were not to be this year as the day before our electrics failed and, despite the best efforts of a guy prepared to come out and work over the holiday weekend, we cancelled our plans and functioned with candles and jumpers.

So it was against this background that I had time to reflect upon life choices as part of that annual, usually farcical process of making New Year resolutions.  This New Year, I thought, I'm going to be 50. I decided then that it was going to be my year for myself, for my goals. I was going to be slimmer and try to find some 'me time' amongst the busy work and family schedule. No weight goal in mind, just a vague idea about dropping a dress size maybe. I was a size 22 at the time and no matter how much make-up and glittery accessories I might add, there was no escaping the fact that I was short and fat. Short – I’ve come to terms with, but it was about time that I faced the fat issue.  So I actively cut down on all the things that we all know are bad for us and tried to do more exercise. I’ve always known what to do to lose weight, but I had to be in the right place mentally to start the journey.

However, the next few months brought unforeseen developments.  It seemed that as soon as I had decided to modify my eating habits something switched on in my brain and I had episodes of a loss of appetite along with a rough patch of dizzy spells. Though pleased that I was losing weight, the growing nagging feeling was there, wondering why I felt dizzy and off my food.  When I eventually had the courage to talk it all over with a doctor, it transpired that I was anaemic, my blood pressure was high and I was peri-menopausal.  A trio of trouble.

I've since discovered just how much this trio has chipped away at my physical health and mental well-being. A bit of internet research gave me some information and reassurance - though I should say, this is a dangerous path to take as it sets off all sorts of unnecessary alarm bells about symptoms real and imagined. However, armed with a little knowledge and the support of some friends encouraging me to actually keep seeking medical advice, I began to tackle some of the symptoms and start feeling better.

Tiredness had seeped into all aspects of my life, acting like a domino effect on mood, rational thought, patience and ability to function day-to-day. Now, I see that the steps I took to get a better night’s sleep had far reaching effects. Whilst in the midst of fitful sleep the early hours became familiar beasts to be slain: the midnight attempt to switch off, the 2 a.m worries for the next day ahead, the 4 a.m mental checklist to tick off, the 5 a.m visit to the bathroom, the 6 a.m acceptance that its almost time to get up anyway! With all that going on, it didn’t occur to me that this tiredness was causing my low mood and crumbling of self-confidence.

I’ve always thought of myself as an organised person, in control, able to do many things and certainly more than capable of juggling work and home life and family commitments. Not for the first part of this year though. All that came tumbling down, like the shifting walls of a sandcastle as the waves of daily demands washed over me. What was happening to me? With my former persona of being a strong woman came the unwritten rule that I didn’t stop to tell anyone how I really felt anyway. I was too busy – there was always a job to be completed, something that I needed to do to help the kids or to support other relatives, a meeting or admin job to complete for the local community group that I belong to. Well, when the tiredness and dizzy spells were at their worst, I think I broke. I felt like a cage was constructing itself around me, putting up barriers to hinder me from functioning as before. To put it succinctly, somewhere along the way I lost my confidence.

Now the concept of confidence is a curious thing – it can disappear in the blink of an eye but takes so long to claw it back again to its former glory. I found myself doubting my abilities and questioning decisions that I had to make. On one occasion, when a lot was happening in the same week, I told friends that I was spiralling out of control. Overwhelmed by circumstance without my previous rock of mental stability to stand upon, ‘spiralling’ was a good description. But asking for their help was a good move, as instead of being dismissed as irrational or silly, I was given space, time and support.

Reflecting upon this time, throws up a contradiction. In the last six months I have lost weight to the point that I am now starting to fit into some size 16 clothes – quite an achievement, from 3 sizes bigger at Christmas. With that achievement, I have received an increasing number of compliments from friends and work colleagues, enough that I began to believe what was being said and to start constructing a more positive self-image. The contradiction, however, is that I simultaneously lost confidence with the aspects that are not on display – daily decisions that I made beneath the façade of that capable, middle-aged Mum. Questions would swim in and out of my head frequently: “Should I continue with my job? Does this outfit really look okay on me or will people think that I am trying to dress like a woman half my age?”

That resolution at the start of the year was to make time for me and in making that pledge, I think it gave me cause to look at myself, question my abilities, my accomplishments and more importantly, look at where I am heading and evaluate if I should continue in this way.  I haven’t found the answers to these questions and at times, I think I have regretted asking them. I am still struggling to break out of my confidence cage but I feel that I have located the key. I have come to appreciate advice given by those who care and notice when I’ve been having a bad day. I’ve recognised that there is a way to go on my self-confidence but that I actively need to keep asking for help and finding the courage to take the more difficult steps, as the ones that appear easy and cause the least ripples at the time, are often only temporary fixes and end up leading down a pathway to a larger storm.