Remembering Mum…

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Nancy Friday wrote:

“When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself”.

Like all mothers – to us, mum was primarily just our mum.

But of course, she was so much more than that.

Although she was a rather nervous and introverted person, she was also bold and courageous, particularly for her generation.

It’s easy to look at the three of us, and think that we inherited our independence and drive to succeed from Dad. But I think Dad would agree that mum was quietly tenacious, and actually the motivator behind him.

As a teenager, I didn’t know any other mums who holidayed regularly without their husbands, exploring the world of ski-ing, circle dancing and all sorts of other things with people who shared those interests when Dad didn’t.

She went ski-ing behind the Iron Curtain before it came down, going up mountains in Poland, not in cable cars, but by horse and cart and then ski-ing back down.

She spent time in Spain for several summers, helping Spanish business people learn English. She told us that this was the only place she felt she was properly listened to and not interrupted, and sadly I think this was probably true.

Well into her 70s, she surprised and impressed people with her yoga headstands and flexibility.

She travelled the world with Dad, regaling us with stories – for example her hilarious decision when visiting China not to go to the Great Wall, preferring instead to visit a Chinese Tesco, where apparently they sold live frogs!

She taught me to identify garden birds and flowers, although her actual interest in gardening has been inherited by Lucy only.

Mum was horrified by being the centre of attention, so she tended to hide and diminish her talents.

But she was much cleverer than she ever believed.

She was an accomplished musician and as a young child I remember her playing the piano whilst Lucy and I sang Christmas carols.

She was a talented artist and I loved going through her sketch books oohing and aahing whilst she insisted it was all rubbish.

She made Lucy and I beautiful ballgowns worn at Cambridge May Balls and Officer’s Balls – a skill she learnt from her mother who worked as a seamstress for Sir Norman Hartnell.

And as you can see from the photos on the order of service, Mum was beautiful – although she never, ever thought so.

An enduring memory as a child is of watching Mum and Dad leave home for black tie events, Mum in her evening dresses looking stunning and smelling of a wonderful combination of rose scented talcum powder, perfume and Elnett hairspray.

I think Lucy and I at times caused her as much sorrow as joy with our constant challenging and determination to ensure that everyone knew about all our opinions. James was always so much more pragmatic and measured than us – but to be fair he got an easier ride, being the youngest and the prodigal son.

But it’s only really when you have your own children that you understand what it is to be a parent. How complex, terrifying and utterly wonderful it is.

I was the first of the three of us to produce grandchildren – first George, who is joining us by the wonders of the internet from his home in Sydney, and then Anna.

Lucy, James and I have talked about how having our own children made us suddenly realise that Mum must love us with the same passion and willingness for self sacrifice with which we love our own children, and I think that was part of a new understanding between us all.

Mum loved giving us advice, and on an incredibly wide range of subjects.

If you told her you were considering a purchase, she would do incredibly extensive and meticulous research on it for you – whether you wanted her to or not.

Some of the advice she gave was kind of incomprehensible though – like the time when I was about to 11 and going to stay with my friend Jodie and she told me sternly that I must not inhale my deodorant. I had no idea why, but for years I diligently leaned away and held my breath when spraying deodorant under my arms, until I realised that she was actually warning me against inhaling and abusing aerosols – something which I had absolutely no knowledge of at the time!

But some of the unsolicited advice could be irritating.

On one visit to stay with us in Sydney, having endured a long lesson on how to use my own washing machine – which as a woman then in my forties I used every day of the year, quite effectively I thought, and without need for commentary or guidance – I lost my temper with her.

Dad took me aside later and said:

“Wendy – it’s how she loves you. You have to stop seeing it as criticism and start seeing it as Mum just really wanting to help you, because she loves you”.

He was so right.

We all love differently, and Mum wasn’t given to overt expressions of love or hugs and cuddles. But she was going to make sure me and her grandchildren had very clean, fresh clothes.

With a parent who is maybe less demonstrative, you especially treasure those loving moments. Mum would be surprised I think by some of my treasures. For example, aged 19, in my miserable university house I phoned her with a miserable cold and had a grizzle. A few hours later I saw her pull up outside with a hot water bottle, various cold remedies, an extra duvet and a sweatshirt covered in pandas. I’ve never worn the sweatshirt because it’s a crime against fashion. But I still have it – because under each gaudy panda is a love heart and the words ‘I love you’.

Of course, all the grandchildren loved her – George and Anna, Katy and Emily, Lewis, Samuel and Poppy. They loved her stories, her adventures and her quirky gifts.

It was clear that nothing made mum happier than having all of the grandchildren around her, and over time she morphed more into being Granny than she was Mum.

Grandmothers should not have favourite grandchildren – but Mum did. Her devotion to Lewis was obvious to everyone and begrudged by no-one. Lewis is everyone’s favourite.

As parents, we would lay down our lives to protect our children from heartbreak, and I’m glad that of the three of us, James was the one geographically closest and most able to benefit from her love and attention.

We’ve had many wonderful visits from Mum and Dad to Australia over the years.

However, the last time she visited us – in 2017 – she already did not know who I was and believed she had not had any children.

At first I was heartbroken.

But then I discovered that if I called ‘Mum’ from another room, she would appear. And if I asked her if she loved me she would respond ‘yes’ without hesitation.

It taught me a new thing about being a parent – that your love for your children is so deep and so enduring that it outlives memory.

Lucy, James and I will spend the rest of our lives finding ourselves spontaneously thinking ‘oh I must tell Mum about that’ or ‘Mum would love that’ or ‘I’ll ask Mum about that’.

We were lucky to have her and we will miss her forever.

Rise Women – Podcast

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It’s been a while!

I think of writing often, but somehow don’t. I’m not sure why that is, but I think that lately I’ve felt my life has reverted to business as usual, and there is a limit to how long you can keep on just writing about yourself, especially if you feel that you don’t have anything particular to say. And I say that not in a negative way, but a very positive way. Perhaps I have finally worked out how to be me.

However, I was recently asked to do an interview for a podcast and thought I would share the link here. Rise Women – who interviewed me – are a great organisation committed to supporting women to be their most confident selves and I was very humbled to be asked. Everyone who has read this blog will know that I am person who is not always at their best, and that’s kind of what I talk about – alongside a lot of things I’ve written about on here.

So if you fancy listening to me, rather than reading about me for a change, please do click on the link below – and why not follow Rise Women as well?

16. Rebuilding Confidence after a marriage breakdown and other life challenges – with Wendy Pettifer

In which I ponder…time is a healer and other bullshit (Part One)

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InkedSt Pauls_LI.jpg

There are a lot of myths out there about relationships, love, heartbreak and dating, and many of them are widely believed and quoted, but immensely unhelpful. I can’t claim to be an expert at relationships (although I was with someone for 21 years so that must count for something, surely?) but as it turns out, I am an expert in the other three, so as a public service I thought I’d give you my thoughts on some of the more popular bullshit that people will tell you. All based on my personal relationship experience, my study in psychotherapy and my own years of therapy.

(There are so many of these, I’m going to spread them over a few posts, so here’s your first installment)

Disclaimer 1: you may vociferously disagree with some, or all, of this, and that’s ok.

Disclaimer 2: just because I know this stuff doesn’t mean I do it all. But I feel like knowing it is two-thirds of the way there.

Myth 1: Time is a healer.

Nope.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, just by the steadfast passing of time, all your most painful psychological wounds could be healed? It’s a compelling and attractive idea, so it’s no wonder people will tell you this, but it’s also absolutely not true and if you believe in it you will be doing yourself a disservice.

The reality is that time is only a healer if you do the work of healing. This means really honest self examination, probably therapy and being willing to confront difficult feelings about yourself and your experiences. Of course, the passing of time does make things less raw, less of a continuous, preoccupying pain but that is not healing. That’s just memory fading, and life moving on. You’ll start to feel ok again. You’ll be telling yourself you got this, you’re moving on. Time is indeed a healer.

If you have a wound though, it’s still there.

The problem is that if you just let time pass, what you learn to do is to protect that wound. You keep it safe from ripping open, from becoming painful again. Instead of confronting and working through your pain, you stand in front of it in a constant state of high alert looking for anything that might be a threat.

At its worst, this behaviour will prevent you from getting into the sort of relationship you seek, as to potential partners your distance and unwillingness to leave your command post will look like a lack of interest and a problem with commitment. You’ll be left wondering why your relationships never work out. But eventually, you’ll start to feel more comfortable. You’ll probably get into a relationship again. You’ll look pretty functional just so long as not too much is at stake and you don’t – through the feelings you are developing – start to feel vulnerable. Relationships require both the willingness to be vulnerable and courageous – Brene Brown is great on this, so I won’t go on about it. But once you start to feel vulnerable you start getting nervous. You’ve got to protect that wound. You need to keep looking out for any signs of danger. And then when you perceive that a threat is there, you can’t help but to let fight or flight kick in. And that’s when it will all start to go terribly wrong.

The thing is that, when you are in flight or fight, the oldest, most prehistoric, most unregulated part of your brain kicks in. Your autonomic nervous system can’t tell the difference between an imminent attack by a sabre tooth tiger and the fact that your boyfriend didn’t notice you’ve had your nails done. Your heart races and you get that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach. But most importantly your thoughts become scrambled and before you know it, you’ve persuaded yourself that he doesn’t love you, that you’re fundamentally unlovable and you’ve thrown in the towel. Despite any real evidence to the contrary. Self sabotage 101.

The good thing though, is that your wound is safe.

Or is it?

The only way to prevent all this is to be brave. Confront that fear, do the healing. See the therapist, read the books. It will take time. But at least at the end you might be healed.

Myth 2: No one can love you until you love yourself

Annoyingly true.

In the past I didn’t believe this and it annoyed the hell out of me when people said it. This was mainly because it seemed so difficult. How could I love myself when the people who should have loved me didn’t? Surely the answer to this was to get someone to love me, which would provide irrefutable proof of my lovableness? And then I’d be able to relax into loving myself.

Nooooooo…

The problem with not loving yourself, being unable to see your own strengths, your beauty, your worth and your contribution is that living with self loathing and a sense of being unlovable is a pretty bleak place to be. And so we look to others to reassure us that we are ok. We try all sorts of ways to feel loved and to feel validated. At its least concerning level, we diligently document our brilliant lives on Facebook or Instagram, carefully curating the posts so that our inner pain can never be discovered, and drop subtle hints about the more difficult things in the hope that someone will be interested enough to ask if we are ok. And then we stand back and watch the likes come in. The more likes we get the more liked we are, right?

At its worst, we get into a relationship with someone and then make them responsible for making us feel loved. But this is way too much of a responsibility for another person, even if they actually do love you. For one thing, if one partner has healthy self esteem, it creates an imbalance in terms of the focus of the relationship – because rather than loving one another equally, one person gets burdened with loving their partner enough to fill up the emptiness they feel about themselves.

But also, if you haven’t done the work and are still running to a script that tells you that you are unworthy and unlovable, loving you is going to end up like pouring love into a leaky bucket that will never be filled. Because that voice is really loud – loud enough to make sure that you never feel loved, no matter what – and you’ll be on the lookout for signs that support your world view. You’ll find yourself ignoring things that you should be noticing – the small acts of love that take place every day – and focusing on the bits and bobs that prove you are right to think that you’re unlovable. You will end up feeling resentful that your partner doesn’t love you enough and your partner will feel confused and exhausted. And they will also feel unloved, or at the very least, unsure – because your focus is not on loving them, but on ensuring that they love you.

And every time you feel unloved, that ancient bit of your brain is going to kick in again and you’ll start behaving like a crazy person.

Learning to love yourself is hard, and sometimes the relationship you’re in is part of why you don’t. But it’s more likely to be a bit more ingrained than that – in that you’ve ended up in a bad relationship because you never actually learnt to love yourself in the first place and you’ve accepted what you think you’re worth.

Again – the only way to avoid this is to do the work. Do the therapy. Practice self reflection. And be really honest with yourself about how you might have contributed to the things that go wrong in your relationships. This doesn’t mean you should take the blame – this just means being really clear about what was your shit and what was theirs and then focusing on working on yours only. Don’t worry about theirs. Don’t even bother telling them about it, tempting though it is*. That’s their journey.

And if you’re finding it hard, fake it until you make it. Shout down that voice in your head and tell yourself every day, every time you feel like you might be waivering, that you’re beautiful, you’re clever, you’re enough*. Or whatever it is that you need to hear. Eventually, if you work hard, you’ll believe it.

Myth 3: If it’s meant to be, it should be easy

Bullshit.

News flash people: relationships are hard.

When you are young, things seem so straightforward. Almost from birth we are sold the idea that we’ll meet someone, fall in love and live happily ever after. Simples. For some people this happens and that’s wonderful. I actually have quite a number of friends who met as young teens and here we all are in our 50th year, and they’re still together. I’m going to assume that they are happy – certainly they are happy enough to still be married.

However, I’m going to hazard a guess that, despite what their Facebook feed might suggest, most of those couples will have been through challenging times. They will have let one another down over the years or disappointed one another. They will have been bored and wondered where the excitement has all gone. They may have had moments when their head has been turned by someone else, and some of them may have acted upon those feelings.

But they are still together.

This won’t be because it was easy. It will be because they chose not to give up, and to ride the storms.

The reality is that all relationships are difficult – even the good ones. And when you enter into a relationship older I believe it gets harder. Maybe your previous partner left you for someone else. Maybe they treated you badly. Perhaps you had an affair which destroyed your marriage and left you deeply regretful. Whatever the reason, you will enter your next relationship with a certain amount of baggage.

Even if, as I’ve mentioned above, you’ve been doing the work, exercising your new found self knowledge in the context of a new relationship can be tricky. Perhaps you had trouble setting boundaries with your previous partner – but now you’re so keen not to make the same mistake, you’re laying down the law like a dictator with your new one. Or maybe your last partner told you that you didn’t help out enough around the house, so now you’re in a domestic frenzy almost permanently, but constantly looking for reassurance that your efforts have been noticed.

I think that the main thing you can do to make relationships easier is to acknowledge that they take time, and that it might take some years to get used to one another on a really deep level. And that there are going to be times when you feel like it would be better just to walk away.** I’m not talking about relationships that have just begun, of course. I’m talking about relationships where the limerence has gone, you’re committed and you’re into the day to day business of being together. But if you hang on in there, roll with the punches and learn together, maybe you’ll be able to laugh together in 20 years about what nightmares you both were at the beginning.

Myth 4: Closure

Again – bullshit.

People often talk about needing closure at the end of a relationship, and in my view, they end up torturing themselves looking for it.

This is because what they mean is that they want to try to understand not the things they did, but the things their partner did.

I’m here to tell you, that’s never going to happen. You are never really going to understand, and it’s not your business anyway.

It’s hard to enough to understand why we do the things we do ourselves, let alone start thinking we are going to be able to understand the internal machinations of other people. Even people we’ve loved.

The only thing you can do – and really the only useful thing you can do in terms of future relationships – is to work on why you did stuff. Because, unfortunately, no relationship really ever ends because one person was the embodiment of evil and the other was an angel. We all contribute to everything, and believe me, you will have done things. The things you did, don’t in any way condone or explain the behaviour of your partner – they are responsible for that – but you can learn from them. You may decide you would do some of the things you did again in similar circumstances, but you might think that there is also some stuff you can work on. I’d be surprised if you don’t.

So instead of closure, look for acceptance and then learning. Accept it’s over. Accept you’ll never know why your partner did this, or said that. And then learn from it all.

*I will admit to being particularly bad at this

**of course sometimes that might be true, and I’m not at all advocating staying in a relationship where you’re not happy. But make sure you definitely can’t be happy before you end it.

In which I ponder…teenagers

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(I have loads of drafted unpublished posts and I found this the other day. I imagine I didn’t post it because it might have caused offence to said teenage offspring. They are both out of their teens now, and this still rings true, so here it is).

teen_whisperer

 

Unless you have teenage children, you really have no idea how stupid, emotionally unstable and embarrassing you are.

In the glory days when they are young, you are perfect. You’re the best Mum – the prettiest, the cleverest, the kindest. You can do no wrong. Children have fights in the playground over who has the best mum or dad.

Then, overnight – and without warning – you become persona non grata. It starts with the rapidly dropped hand in sight of the school gate and the cheek turned away as you lean down for your goodbye kiss, and is followed up quickly by eye-rolling and a reluctance to be seen in public with you. Then before you know it you are – apparently – a fully fledged psycho.

I’m happy to say that these stages of teenager-dom are close to being over in my household. In fact, one of my children is no longer actually a teenager, and has moved out to his own place. But I do still have one hormonally charged resident sharing my home, and although I’m fortunate that for about 98% of the time she is absolutely the light of my life, during the other 2% she comes close to driving me to the sort of psychosis she thinks I exhibit anyway.

I read somewhere once that teenagers are particularly sensitive to changes in the volume of voices. I hope I did anyway, as every time I am even slightly irritated I am accused of shouting when I’m pretty sure I am not. The problem is though that then we get into a cycle. Because originally I was mildly irritated about something like – oh I don’t know – the sink being full of washing up when I got home from work. But then I’m irritated about the fact that what we seem to be debating now is not whether it is reasonable to fill the kitchen sink with your redundant plates and mugs – often along with uneaten food – but whether or not the amount I am ‘sooooo upset’ about it is commensurate with the crime, which apparently hadn’t been anticipated*. And if I’m not careful, I can then find myself shouting things like – ‘if you want to see me soooooo upset I can do that if you like’, and I end up looking like the teenager while she sighs and does the washing up.

So the other great thing about being the parent of a teenager is not only that you can be stupid, embarrassing and emotionally labile, but you can be a complete loser as well.

This dynamic is made more difficult by being a single parent. If you’re still happily ensconced in wedded bliss with the other parent of your teenager – or maybe even if you’re still ensconced but not necessarily happily – you should have at least one other adult in the house to support you during these interactions. How I’ve longed for someone to say ‘don’t speak to your mother like that’. Also what your teenagers don’t realise is that when they say we are being unreasonable, horrible, or difficult, we are often wondering if we are or not. Am I an awful parent? Am I? There is no one to debrief with, no one to back you up, or to discuss where you might be going wrong, or could take another approach, and it makes it all that little bit harder.

I have been extremely lucky that my own teenagers have been largely lovely**. We’ve even reached a stage where sincere apologies and reparations are made after there has been an incident. But as a parent, I’ve learnt that you also have to be prepared to apologise when you’ve overstepped the mark, and that admitting that sometimes you’re not sure, or you find it hard seems to build trust and understanding. It’s ok not to be the expert, to be fallible, imperfect. And to be honest – whilst they are struggling with never being a teenager before and all that brings, we are also struggling with never having been a parent to a teenager either, so we’re going to make mistakes. When you do this, of course, it does mean that you’ve gone full circle from superhero to real actual person, but it also seems to open up the door to a new type of relationship – a more adult and authentic one. And you teach your children that it’s ok to make mistakes so long as we learn from them – the first stage of which is admitting them.

Of all the phases of parenthood, these teenage years are the ones with the highest anxiety. You must let go, you must allow them to start to assert their independence, go their own way, take some risks. Even though every fibre of your body is saying ‘stay home with me, where it’s safe!’. I have successfully traversed the nail biting experience of knowing your child is in another country alone, of first forays to nightclubs, of driving with their friends down the coast for the weekend. Every parent of a teenager will know the horror of the unanswered call, the text message with no response and of waking up in the early hours of the morning and discovering their teenager is not yet back from their night out in the city.

I’m no expert, but I’ve tended to allow a higher level of independence than many parents, often out of necessity rather than choice. As a single working parent, I couldn’t drive my children everywhere, and we live in a major city. They’ve been navigating the public transport system near and far for years, and learnt to drive right in the city centre (literally terrifying for everyone concerned). My son was at school in the UK, flying back and forth on his own. Both children have made the long trip to and from the UK alone – the first times only just in their teens. I like to think that these experiences have contributed to making them the independent, brave, adventurous young adults they are today.

However, on the rare occasion, I’ve put my foot down with regard to what I’ve felt was an unreasonable request. And when the inevitable onslaught of begging, and accusations of unfairness and being horrid etc etc has begun, I’ve asked them this. Do you think I am saying no to this because I’m a dreadful person who just wants to ruin your life (as suggested) or….could it be something else? Then I’ve made them tell me why. And of course, it’s because I love them and I want them to be safe. Even very bolshy teenagers seem to find it hard to remain quite so indignant in the face of this. And if they carry on being rude or difficult, unplug the internet and take the modem to work with you. If nothing else it will make them come out their rooms.

I would say though that it’s also my experience that teenagers often ask to do outrageous things in the hope that you will say no, in order to absolve them of the embarrassment of declining to do so, even though it would be achingly cool or would ingratiate them with someone cool if they did. I’ve been happy to be the fall guy and have everyone think I’m a bitch – to the extent that we even had a code which would tell me in a text message that I should say no, prior to the call asking me. I won’t tell you what that code was so as not to embarrass my kids, but you should think about setting one up with yours.

So if you’re currently parenting teenagers, good luck! But remember – like all those other stages, even when it feels like it’s lasting forever, it will be over before you know it. And then adulthood beckons – so enjoy them while you can.

*even though I have repeatedly, since the beginning of time, been expressing irritation at said dishes in the sink…

**well I would say that wouldn’t I? But it’s true.

 

In which I ponder…unexpected endings

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So here we are at the end of 2018. For me, it’s been an extraordinary year. I saw the New Year in with my parents on the South Coast of NSW and I’ll see it out in Sydney. In between I spent a week in unaccustomed luxury with my daughter in Bali and spent a month travelling through Italy, Portugal and Morocco with both my children – a lifetime high, never to be forgotten. I was there when people I love married in Portugal, Greece and England. I fell in love and moved to a new house to create a beautiful new family with a kind, clever, lovely man and his lovely boys. I turned 50 in an ambulance on the way to a Greek hospital with my daughter* and then stretched out the celebrations over a month once I got back to Sydney with the loveliest family party anyone has ever thrown for me, a special dinner with friends in Bondi and drunken shenanigans in the city. I hiked, had weekends away and had family dinners again. I was able to spend time in England with my parents and siblings and my closest friends. I had loads of fun. As I said – it’s been an amazing year.

It hasn’t ended quite how I expected though.

At the end of November I was made redundant. I’d worked for the same organisation for 6 years, with amazing people who are friends as well as colleagues, doing work that I am passionate about. The abruptness of redundancy is a shock that you can’t prepare yourself for – not only is some of your purpose gone, your income, your fancy car and the routine of your life, but you are suddenly removed from the day to day relationships you had with people who in fact you spend more waking time with than your family. It’s a form of bereavement and it’s up there in the top ten most stressful life events, along with divorce  and death. And although intellectually you know that redundancy is about business and business decisions, it’s accompanied by an inevitable sense of failure that can be difficult to shake off. On the other hand, after a particularly stressful year or so, you are no longer required to go to work – you no longer have to work out how to solve this or that problem, don’t have to write that business case or report and don’t have to navigate organisational politics. You can spend your summer at the beach, extend your weekend trip to see your best friend well into the week, and complete all those home related jobs you never had time for before**. In between panicking about never working again, dying destitute and homeless and niggling concerns that maybe you don’t know anything about anything – you can actually relax and enjoy the unexpected opportunity to have a bit of a holiday. Particularly when you’re made redundant just before Christmas and no one is really recruiting.

So it was an additional and unexpected blow when, with equal abruptness, my lovely man broke the news that he was not happy and was moving out. I can’t honestly say that we had an unhappy household or life. We had arguments, which at times we struggled to resolve, but I was committed to making it work. Getting used to living with someone again, and learning how they behave in a range of situations can throw up some curve balls and blending two families is not easy, but I felt we’d done a great job of it. I loved his children, he appeared to love mine, and the differences in their ages meant that there was no rivalry between them. I enjoyed step parenting the boys and being  part of a vibrant, busy household again but also appreciated the quieter times when they were not there. Life was good and we really had a great year together.

But of course, this is my perspective not his. And if life has taught me anything over the years it is this – you can never properly understand the experiences and motivations of another person, even if you love them. This means, again, that I am reminded of another lesson – that there is no such thing as closure. No matter how many ill considered angry, sad, confusing interactions with a person you have post break up, you are not going to suddenly have some sort of epiphany where why it’s all happened suddenly becomes clear. Because this is their experience, informed by all their past and present experiences and all the things that go on in their head, and you don’t have access to that. If someone isn’t happy, that’s that really, and their interpretation of why is always going to be only their perspective. All you can do is move on, move up, try to stay positive and remember that just because someone doesn’t want to be with you anymore doesn’t mean that either you or he are dreadful people. This doesn’t mean, of course, that I’m not currently swinging between anger, grief, self pity, dismay and confusion. It hurts – it really bloody hurts.

And as for timing…

Timing wise, all this has absolutely sucked. It. Has Sucked. Big. Time.

I am jobless, partnerless and it’s Christmas. I am literally three quarters of the plot of a shit Christmas movie – the obvious denouement to which would be that I unexpectedly fall in love with someone I bump into in an appropriately festive and romantic setting. This won’t happen though as I’m hibernating (hiding) in an undisclosed location, refusing most invites involving social interaction, staying off Facebook, accepting the support of my very much appreciated friends and family and have taken a vow of celibacy.

A month or so before all these disasters took place we bought a beautiful 8 seater dining table, ready for our big family Christmas. When it was delivered it was faulty and whilst we waited for this to be resolved it sat, dismantled with all the boxes and new chairs, in our dining room. It struck me that it was a bitter metaphor for my current life – in that I thought I needed a lovely, big family dining table, but it turned out it was broken and beyond repair, I don’t have a lovely big family, and I can’t afford it anyway because I don’t have a job. It’s gone back now, and so that those of us who are left could have a good Christmas I went out and bought another, smaller table. And so – life goes on…

As always, when I am letting myself wallow in self-pity for a moment though, I am reminded of how fortunate I actually am. I have my health, I have completely wonderful children, friends and family. I have a redundancy pay out which means I have a bit of time to sort myself out workwise. I live in Australia and it’s summer and the beach is free. I am determined that this amazing year will not be remembered for these two unfortunate events right at the end and will instead remain one of the best of my life. I was good at being single. I can be good at it again. I was good at working and I’m currently assuming that someone will employ me again. The alternative is way more terrifying than the prospect of being perpetually single.

And anyway – 2019 is going to be my year…***

 

*she had a severe kidney infection – she’s fine now!

**haven’t done any of those jobs. Yet.

***just as soon as I stop grizzling

In which I ponder…being loved and being remembered

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me and mum

It may seem harsh, but my mother is universally acknowledged as being a rather difficult person.

Until I had children of my own and had matured enough to at least try to see the world through her eyes, as far as I was concerned that was it – she was tricky and sometimes volatile and at times we clashed terribly. For my own part, I’m probably universally acknowledged as being a rather sensitive person, so I would often feel hurt or angered by her behaviour and so it went on. At times I wondered if she even liked me, let alone loved me.

Then – partially as a result of study – I started to wonder about my mum. When I had children, I realised that there was no doubt that she had felt and probably still felt the intense love for myself and my siblings as I did for my own children. And seeing how gently, how delicately she treated my babies reminded me of a mother I’d largely forgotten in the red mists of the teenage years and then the struggle to establish myself – to differentiate myself – away from my family.

Mum was anxious and I realised that often when I felt she was being controlling or difficult or unnecessarily obtuse, she was actually just trying to control her environment so that she could feel safe. The things that made her anxious were irrational, but I knew that this was the nature of anxiety. And I knew all this because I recognised it in myself – either as a result of inheritance or learning or both.

My mum had an anxious mother too. Of course her mother was anxious – she was bringing up a child in London during the dark years of the Blitz and her husband was away being a soldier with all the other husbands. So my mum’s first 6 years were spent largely without a father, scurrying to an air raid shelter every night and often during the day as well. If she was in anyway predisposed towards an anxious personality, this cannot have helped, and her position as an only child meant that – according to psychology – that all the anxiety in her family system had only one place to go. To her.

Over the years, she got older, and I got older and I started to feel that I understood her better. Either she was getting less difficult or I was getting less reactive and we clashed less. I began to realise that her little digs at the way I ran my house, was bringing up my children or cooking dinner were less criticisms than rather clumsy attempts to help me and – as a person who was not given to shows of affection – a way of showing me that she loved me.

Now my mum has Alzheimers and doesn’t know who I am.

It’s not just me – our whole family is generally a mystery. And as she’s lost her memory of the nearly 50 years I’ve been alive or the 67 years she’s been married to my dad, she continues to reveal parts of herself that I either previously ignored or overlooked.

For example, I always felt she was not close to her parents and that this had always been the case. She rarely had anything positive to say about them. But now I know that she loved them, and saw them as her support system, as we all do. I know this because she re-experiences the shock of their loss every day. I’ve realised the gentleness of the way she was with my children was not a quirk in relation to my babies but part of who she is – possibly hidden by her anxiety. She laughs easily, and makes jokes with me. She loves my dog and even let him on her bed when she stayed with me, although we were not even allowed human friends in our bedrooms when we were children. She loves cake. More than virtually any other food.

How could I have missed all this? How lucky am I to have found this out before it is too late?

And – even though when I ask her who I am, she doesn’t know, and is either surprised to discover she has a daughter or adamant that she doesn’t have children – I’ve never felt more loved by her or loved her more. If I call out ‘Mum’ – she answers. If I ask her if she loves me, she answers without thought – ‘yes’. She treats me with love, along with my children. Her voice (most of the time) carries love. Although she refers to my long suffering dad as ‘my new man’ or ‘that man’, and is confused and surprised when we tell her that that man is Colin, her husband of 67 years – when she is unsure she asks us where Colin is.

So it occurs to me – love is more than memory. When your brain can no longer articulate your relationships with, and your love for, the most important people in your life, your heart knows. Your body knows. Somewhere deep inside, somewhere beyond words, you know who you are and who you love and who loves you.

And given a choice, I’d rather feel and give love, than be remembered.

In which I ponder…transformations

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For the last three years, my daughter and I have lived peacefully on the riverfront*, waking up each morning to birdsong and the ever changing waters of the Georges River and the surrounding bush. It’s been the perfect spot – a house completely unseen from the road with an outlook as if we were miles from everywhere, but actually only 3 stops on the train to the domestic terminal at the airport and 23 minutes to Central.

It’s been a time that has been both transformative and healing for both of us. We finally found a home again and a community where we’ve been welcomed. And we got happy – real happiness – not that constant search for excitement and joy that people often mistake for happiness, but the contentment and peace that is actually the real deal. Anyone who has ever been lonely and felt displaced will understand the comfort of being acknowledged at the local shops and bumping into people who know you. And as a parent, having the house full of my daughter’s lovely friends – even when occasionally they leave something of a trail of destruction behind them – has made me feel like we’ve finally been able to find something of what she lost all those years ago when this single parenting journey began.

For myself, I feel like this home has helped me to complete an important journey. In 2011 when my marriage first ended, I was so terrified to be alone after 21 years of being in a relationship that I probably would have shacked up with anyone had they shown an interest. Fortuitously I was such a basket case that only someone with a penchant for utter crazies who was mentally unstable themselves would have been interested and no such catch came along, so I was forced to face life alone. The next stage of my journey was to date men fully believing myself to be looking for and ready for a long term relationship whilst simultaneously being thrown into an utter panic if anything looked like it was going that way. I wanted to fall in love and live happily ever after, but I was afraid that doing so would make me vulnerable and thought I could not survive another heartbreak if things did not work out. Of course, despite (or possibly because of…) considerable effort on my behalf, no one suitable really came along and I started to resign myself to being alone forever. I could see that this was possible – I was doing alright at life and was pretty happy – so if I had to be alone then I would be, but I carried on looking and endured the old lady dating scene ‘just in case’.

But over time I started to lose interest. I went on fewer and fewer dates. I put up with less shenanigans from single men. My life developed in other ways and was enriched by other types of relationships. And suddenly I found that rather than being resigned to being alone, I was just happily making plans for a future with only me in it and frankly starting to feel like having anyone else in tow was likely to be a detriment to those plans rather than an enhancement. With my children pretty much grown up, I could see a freedom approaching that was relatively unfettered with responsibility for anyone else, and I started to feel excited. And alongside that, I was proud. I realised that I’ve made a pretty good fist of all this. It wasn’t what I would have chosen but the kids are fine (great even) and I’ve got myself to a place of financial security and peace of mind that 7 years ago didn’t seem possible. Go me.

So obviously, now would be the time I’d meet someone and actually fall in love and do all that stuff I thought I didn’t need any more.

The difference now is that I don’t need anyone, but I do choose this man – who is decent, kind, loyal, funny, and smart. And he loves me back – importantly not just in words, but in deeds. He’s willing to put up with my idiosyncrasies and expose me to his. We’re both people who have successfully been alone and we’re determined to preserve that independence whilst building a life together. We’ve learnt that being on your own can be great, as can being together – so we’re going to take the best of both worlds and make it ours. I feel very lucky.

And so it is that tonight is the last night Anna and I will spend in our little idyll on the water. We are trading amazing views for a family home a few kilometres away that has room for all our shared children and very much fewer stairs to the front door.

People say that time heals everything. Some people say love heals everything. I’m not sure either of those things are true. But they certainly help.

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*yes – that’s our house, right there. Beautiful isn’t it?

**and yes – that’s him…and me…

In which I ponder…decades

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Last weekend – the 1st April – marked 10 years since we left the UK for a new adventure in the sun. If it wasn’t for the fact that the children have doubled in size and gone from primary school kids to adults I’d have trouble believing it, but in other respects our previous life seems like a very distant memory.

As a family of four, although we were sad to be leaving our family and friends, we were certain we would not be returning home. We wanted to make a new life, start again, challenge ourselves – and anyone who knows me well knows that this sort of thing excites me. So even though I knew leaving everything that was familiar to me was a risk – for many reasons – I was still keen to do it. It would be easy to mistake me for one of those people who believes that if you change everything externally – your home, your job, your country – then internal things will change too. Like your relationship. However, I wasn’t stupid enough to think this might be the case, and I figured that if I ended up divorced then Australia was as good a place to do it as anywhere.

After all, everything seems better when the sun is shining, doesn’t it?

In the event, just when I thought that miraculously distance, some good weather and beautiful beaches had done it’s job, everything fell apart in spectacular fashion, and it turned out that the sun didn’t make a whole load of difference.

At first I wanted to go home. I was desperate to go home. I was lonely, and frightened and heartbroken. But the idea of returning home – packing up and making such a momentous decision on my own – was overwhelming. I’d never made a decision of that magnitude on my own. And I knew that taking the children to other side of the world, where they would rarely see their father was not in their best interests. Inexplicably, even though at times I hated his guts and would happily have stuck a fork in him, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do that to him.

The longer we didn’t go home for, the harder it got. The children cemented their friendships and got to critical moments in their schooling. I started a career which I enjoyed and in which I was successful. Eventually, I too started making new friends and developing a life removed from and separate to my old life. We bought a dog.

But the pull to return never went away. I didn’t sell the house in the New Forest. And every time I visited I became convinced that going back would be – conversely – the way forwards. My family* want us to. And we miss them so much. My friends want us to. And we miss them so much. When I’m there I think that’s what I want too – it would be so easy to be there, in my house, with my best friends round the corner and my family not too far away. It’s confusing. It’s all so familiar.

So why haven’t I done it?

Well…this weekend I decided that we should celebrate these 10 years in Sydney. We came for a new life and we certainly got that. We came for a better life, and in many respects my life is indeed better. We came for a challenge – and we got that in bucket loads. I’m finally at a place where I feel proud of what I’ve achieved. Things didn’t turn out how I expected, but I’ve raised independent, resilient, smart, awesome young adults. I’ve established a career in a new country. I’ve made a new home and new friends. And I’m a new person – stronger, more confident, more independent**. I have become myself.

It’s been a hard lesson and a long road, but I’ve learnt how to be me…

The children and I spent our decade anniversary evening surrounded by friends in the most iconic of Sydney spots, in the shadow of the Opera House. I had so much fun and I felt blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. I realized that I am not lonely. My life is full. I have my moments – of course – but life is good.

And I think I have to recognize that the reason I haven’t gone back is because I don’t want to.

Because I’m already home.

 

 

 

 

*except my dad. And I suspect that’s because he wants to live here himself

**with better shoes and hair

In which I ponder…being liberated

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This won’t come as much of a surprise to my married and partnered friends – but there are some very liberating aspects to being single.

The one that generally springs to mind is that I – in theory – could have sex with anyone*.

Obviously in practice this is neither as true nor as desirable as you’d think. Both George Clooney and David Beckham are sadly unavailable, for example. But also sex is not the thing that most single women miss most in the absence of a relationship. For example, I am more frequently vexed that there is no one to help with the garden and deal with the admin tasks relating to the car then I am about the absence of a willing and naked man in my bed – although if George Clooney turned up unexpectedly I probably wouldn’t get him to phone the RTA** to sort out my green slip.

All that being said though, I am, for example, in the enviable position of being able to buy whatever I want (so long as I have the money for it). Now I realize that for many people this is also true when in a relationship, but shopping for things other than food – and sometimes even for food – was often a bone of contention in my marriage, and over time I resorted to a variety of forms of subterfuge to disguise any shopping trips. I don’t think we were very unusual in this regard, and to be fair on my ex husband, I probably had more shoes than I needed. Or than anyone needed really. But who hasn’t swapped the fancy designer bag of clothes lovingly wrapped in tissue paper for a plain old carrier before they got home or said ‘what – this old thing? I’ve had it for ages!’. Or is that just me…

I can also just get a dog if I want one (a decision I regret regularly, even though I love the daft dog. Where’s a husband when you need one?!). I can move house whenever I want – and believe me, I have. I can have as many cushions as I like on my bed and no one complains. I have all of the wardrobe space to myself, and dinner no longer has to consist of meat, potatoes and two veg. If I want the light on to read, there is no one there to complain about it.

All awesome, I think you’ll agree.

But I’m learning that in fact, something which filled me with fear and dread in the early years of singledom is turning out to be one of the best rather than the worst things about being alone.

For the first few years after my ex husband and I separated, I didn’t go on any holidays, other than to visit family and friends in the UK. How could I go on holiday alone?? This is something that should be done with a family, or at the very least, a partner. Besides, I’d been on holiday alone once and it had been a disaster – years ago I’d taken myself off to Spain to ‘think’ after finding out about one of my husband’s affairs and I am here to tell you that ‘thinking’ is pretty much the worst thing you could do for yourself in this situation. I spent most of that week either crying alone or crying to my friends (at enormous expense) on my mobile phone. Crying in Spain alone is not preferable to crying at home with some friends who might distract you every now and again from your navel gazing. Crying alone in Spain means you have nothing else to do other than torture yourself about what ifs and might have beens and oh my gods…

Understandably I was not keen to repeat this experience. So I didn’t go away. I thought I would wait until I had a partner again.At the time it seemed like a good plan – after all, how hard could it be to meet someone? Soon I would be all loved up again like a normal person, and I’d have my holiday partner for life.

Five years on, I knew I was going to significantly reevaluate my plan. I still didn’t have a partner. And I still wasn’t going on holidays apart from with family or the kids. I could see that the children were not going to be wanting to go on holiday with me for much longer, so what was my plan? What if this is it – I’m on my own forever? Is my plan never to go on holiday? No weekends away? Am I never going to go to all those places I want to see – Sardinia, Corsica, Mykonos, Bora Bora, Vietnam and all the rest – because I don’t have a special someone to go with?

And I realised that if this was the plan, it sucked big time. And I also realised that the only person who would actually be preventing me from doing all these things was me.

So here I am, on one of many weekends away alone I’ve been on in the last year, and it’s fine. More than fine. It’s great. I can do what I want. Make my own plans and change them at will. Get up early or late. Eat three square meals a day or eat nothing.Spend ages staring at the same painting at a gallery or scoot through barely looking because I’ve already determined that I’m not keen on anything in it. The possibilities are endless and I feel not just liberated but finally as if I am fully in charge of my life.

And I haven’t cried once.

*although for some people that was the case actually when ‘happily’ married – and that, my friends, is why I am no longer married…

** the fact that it was only when I proof read this piece that I realised I had put NRMA here instead of RTA should give you some indication of how badly I need this help…

In which I ponder…how to be friends with single people

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being-single

 

When I was married, I thought of myself as being well liked. We had lots of friends, hosted and were invited to lots of social events, and as well as a group of close friends – both in Australia and in the UK – we had a broad network of other friends and acquaintances with whom we would occasionally catch up. On the social front, life was good. We had been in Australia for only a few years, but we had a great group of friends – our Aussie family – and I thought we would be there for each other through thick and thin.

I was unprepared – in the extreme – for how this would change when my marriage ended.

These days I could count on one hand – and still have a few spare fingers – the friends I have retained from that time. And I have to say that this loss of friendships has, over the long term, caused me more pain than the divorce itself. It was clear that my marriage could not continue, but the end of so many friendships took me by surprise.

This may all be in my head, but it seems to me that when you are single, people think, at some level, that you are a bit of a loose cannon. For me, this was most evident when it transpired that a friend of mine was of the belief that I was involved in drug selling, despite having had only very limited and short lived experience of smoking marijuana in my late teens and never having touched anything since. I don’t even drink caffeinated  coffee for goodness sake.

But there are other signs. When I was married, we would frequently have friends over and much alcohol was consumed. Generally speaking, those who were driving would stay sober whilst their other half got a bit merry and loud, and everyone had a great time. I’ve noticed that single women getting drunk is viewed rather differently though. Judged is probably a better word to describe it really – as though their being a bit inebriated is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how wild they might really be and that they are only barely keeping a lid on their debauchery.

I refuse to be one of those women who believes that the reason that they are no longer invited to ‘couples’ events – which is virtually all events – is because the other women think they will try to take their man. Partly because I’d never do it, but also because it suggests somehow that you believe that you’d be attractive to your friend’s husbands. The reality is – as I know far too well, unfortunately – that if your husband is the sort of husband who would sleep with, or run off with, one of your friends – or any other woman in fact – he won’t care if she’s single or not. And nothing you do, and no amount of trying to keep single women away from him will stop him.

I think the reason that single women become outsiders is simply because people like symmetry. They are a couple and they want other couples in their lives. They also like stability, so they don’t want someone around who might up end the apple cart by introducing someone into the mix that everyone doesn’t like.

When you become single, you don’t belong in the social group you used to belong in. You’re a special category – perfect for coffees, girl’s lunches, girl’s nights out and not much else. Weekends away with groups of friends is out for you – unless all your married friends come away with you for a girl’s weekend. It gets so that you virtually never get to speak to a man unless you’re on a date or in a business meeting. And I like and miss men – not just as partners but as people generally – most of the time without a single thought of getting them into bed. Throughout my life, pre marriage and during my marriage, I’ve always had close male friends. One of my closest, and best loved friends is a man – who is thankfully single or else I’d probably not be allowed to speak to him either.

So – in the interests of public education, I’d like to share a few top tips with you for being friends with a singleton…

  1. Never assume that your single friend won’t want to join in something that is otherwise all couples. We’re used to being single – we’ll probably cope. Every single woman has had a friend tell them that the reason they haven’t been included in something is because they thought you wouldn’t feel comfortable. If you find yourself having that thought, first consider whether it is actually you that won’t feel comfortable – and then having done so, give your single friend the opportunity to decide for themselves whether the event is likely to make them feel uncomfortable or not;
  2. Don’t assume that your single friend only ever wants to see people of the same gender as them. Personally I really miss family style events where there are couples and children and I am very rarely invited to them* – and I think this is probably more acute for those of us who don’t actually have any family in the country;
  3. For most people who get divorced, fundamental material things about their lives change. For me, I went from not working to working full time and I moved house to be nearer to work so that my children were alone for shorter periods before and after school. I was very much busier than I had been previously and found it hard – although I really tried – to balance the need to do my job, be a parent and run a household alone as well as try to manage my social life. These changes are on top of the challenges of the end of a significant relationship and can often cause tension in friendships. Try to bear with your friend while they make these adjustments – the likelihood is that they value and want to retain your friendship but it’s going to look different to how it was. And be prepared for things to take a while to settle down;
  4. Try to avoid prioritizing ‘couples’ events over social events with your single friend, particularly if you’ve already made arrangements to do something with them. All of my single friends complain – and I’ve also experienced this – that there is a hierarchy of invitations, and doing stuff with single people is at the bottom of it. It’s so far at the bottom of it that there is an assumption that we understand that couples events take precedence, so people are often quite open about cancelling or postponing an arrangement with you on the basis that they have now been invited to something with the other half and sometimes the kids. I can’t think of another way to describe it so I’m going to come straight out with it. It’s rude. And often really disappointing.**
  5. Think of your single friends occasionally on those days when traditionally you’d be all en famille. Check in with them to say hi, and if they are alone and it would be appropriate to your family circumstances, ask them if they’d like to pop in. It’s likely that they will say no as they wouldn’t wish to intrude, but just to know that someone thought of them is probably enough. This is particularly true of single people who have shared care arrangements for their children, and so might be spending some special days completely alone;
  6. This doesn’t happen to me so much anymore as the few friends I’ve retained know me pretty well, but don’t assume that if you’ve arranged to go out for a drink with your single friend that they are wanting to drink 6 months worth of sparkling and have their biggest night of the year. That’s you wanting to do that, because you’re on a girl’s night. For us this is possible any night we go out so it’s more likely that we’d like to have a couple of glasses of wine and a good chat, getting home in one piece and waking up the next morning with a clear head.
  7. Related to the above – don’t be afraid to go out for a drink with your single friend. They’re not going to get drunk, chat up some hot guy at the bar and abandon you in the dodgy end of town. They can do that any night, and if they do, they are probably not a good friend regardless of whether they are single or not.
  8. And lastly – if you are a singleton who has now found love, don’t forget your single friends. If they are good friends, they will be thrilled that you are happy, but they still want to be part of your life.

 

*in Australia. When I’m back at home in the UK with my friends who have known me forever this doesn’t happen. I’m not sure whether this is a function of the longevity of our relationships or whether this is a cultural difference between the two countries

**again something that I don’t think would happen to me in the UK but the same applies – is it the length of the relationships or a cultural difference?