No, not the “emotional toll, logistics too difficult with a small child” answer that I glibly throw away on podcasts and at dinner parties.
The real reason?
I was tired.
But not in the way you think.
Well, ok, in that way, too – I was a single parent to a 4-year-old and maxing out my babysitting credits so I could go make toast for teenagers.
But I was tired of something different.
I was tired of taking every single bit of behaviour, stopping, and saying to myself, “That’s not what they mean. Yes, they may have just thrown a chair that narrowly missed my head. But actually, that’s completely understandable because of these 8 different ridiculously hard things that they’re currently having to deal with. So I’m not going to call the police. I’m going to make them a cup of tea and have a chat.”
Now, on the surface, this might seem like good old-fashioned youth work. Seeing behind the symptoms to the cause. No behaviour happens in a vacuum. All that jazz.
And that’s all true.
But constantly having to deal with people doing shitty things to you without being able to say “Oi! That’s a shitty thing! Can you stop?!” has implications.
For example, it made me much more likely to make excuses or people in my personal and professional life when they treated me badly.
It also made me less likely to enforce healthy boundaries for Ethan and for me.
And it reinforced the tendency that I learnt growing up in Evangelical Christianity to put my own feelings and needs dead last in the hierarchy.
Because it’s true – no behaviour happens in a vacuum. There is a reason for everything people do to you…and rarely is it anything to do with you. It’s much more likely to be their own childhood trauma, their current anxieties, an underdeveloped sense of their own boundaries…the list goes on.
Rarely do people mean to hurt you when they say hurtful things. Honestly.
But the problem is, when people do shitty things to you, you get hurt. Regardless of whether they meant it or not. Regardless of whether they never had anyone tell them they were good enough as a child. Regardless of how much pressure they’re currently under at work.
And it’s all very well to go, “Ok, so they may have hurt me deeply with their words and actions just then, but they only did this because (insert valid excuse here).” But you’re still hurt.
Explaining it away just means you’re invalidating your own feelings, needs, boundaries, and worth below everyone else’s. Constantly.
Because they’re having a hard time.
Do you know the most freeing thing about leaving youth work?
Being able to stop being “friends” with someone who was out of order.
Being able to stand up for myself when people hurt me.
Not having to constantly make excuses for everyone else’s behaviour.
And the unfamiliar experience of letting it be ok that I’m upset.
I reclaimed my feelings.
Well, it’s not quite that simple – it’s a process. And I think that some people around me might find it a little abrasive that I’m not as easy-going as I have been in the past. That I don’t always gloss over disagreements. That I stand up for my opinions, my boundaries, and my decisions. But if I want to teach my children that their feelings – their wellbeing is as important as how the people around them feel, then I need to model that.
Otherwise they’ll end up constantly people pleasing as they grow, not asserting their own wants and needs, and pushing themself down the hierarchy. Just like I did.
I don’t want that for them.
So, I’ll be as (kindly) assertive as I need to be. And try to unlearn it all.
I’ve just finished a 4-month business course for copywriters.
Yes – a business course.
Those of you who have known me since train-track braces and idealistic socialist rants (well, ok, I still have those every now and again) are probably either snorting into your coffee or staring at the screen open-mouthed around about now.
Those of you who came a little later to the Peta Show, (Hi! Don’t worry, everyone gets the same comfy seats – socialist, remember?) might be slightly less baffled.
I can’t pretend that I ever thought of the business world as a place I’d be at home.
But this copywriting thing has sort of snuck up on me.
From a few pounds for a few words on Upwork to a fully-fledged business (with website – www.wordsbypeta.com if you’re interested, marketing strategy, retainer clients, and actual testimonials no less!) in less time than it’s taken Erica to realise that all the food lives in the fridge….
And while I was feeling pretty confident about the writing side of things, I was out to see when it came to running a business. So I jumped on board with some seasoned experts and set sail on the SSS Copywriter Club Accelerator. You can hear about my experience here.
(Yes, I know that I stretched the metaphor a little far…I’m currently writing this sat in the dark in Ethan’s room while I wait for him to go to sleep. A girl’s gotta have some fun.)
So I found myself learning about customer avatars, niches, branding, pricing strategies, packaging, and my own X-Factor (nope, no Simon Cowell in sight.) under the wing of copywriting legends Kira and Rob. I made a whole host of friends from all over the world, and I reckon I kicked my business about 3 years further ahead than if I’d just have muddled through.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.
I’ve not been on here for a while. Mainly because running a business in the tiny pockets of time my sister-in-law and naps can give me is bloody hard. But also because (as some of you know) Ethan’s anxiety has kicked up a notch. One of us is currently spending up to 2 hours every evening in his room until he falls asleep – constantly reassuring him that everything is ok and he is safe. That sort of eats into blogging time – not gonna lie.
In this sort of situation, it feels like I’ve been drowning, frankly. My to-do list is so long that I have to carry it around in a scroll, and I no longer have a washing pile, but different categories of washing pile – from “definitely needs washing”, through to “put this away when you have 5 minutes”, and “this is never going to reach the wardrobe, is it…it’s been sat here for a week?”
Even when Erica started nursery 3 days a week in mid-January I still felt as if the walls were closing in on me. There was never enough time to do everything I needed to do. In my head was this hallowed, yearned for place where I’d answered all my emails, put away all of the clean clothes, batch cooked for the next week, answered all of my friends back, ticked off my workouts, and sent all necessary birthday presents. I’d get there one day, all I had to do was just work harder.
Turns out – that’s crap.
One of the books that my course leaders recommended whatever chance they got, was Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The subheading (always my favourite part of a book) is “Time Management for Mortals”.
If I’m honest, I’d roll my eyes every time they sang its praises. Not because I didn’t believe that they’d found it helpful, but because I have my own issues with time management gurus as a mum, and I didn’t really fancy reading another book that just made me feel bad about myself for all the things I wasn’t doing.
Turns out I was wrong.
It’s not another generic “get up at 5 am and power through the day” guidebook. Essentially Burkeman spends his pages explaining how this mythical day we all cling to – the one when you finally have everything under control – is a lie. It’s never coming. And then he tells you that this is great news!
Why?
Because it means you can choose.
“There is an alternative: the unfashionable but powerful notion of letting time use you, approaching life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success but as a matter of responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history.”
So, instead of berating myself when I get to the end of the day and there’s a whole shedload of stuff unfinished.
I’m going to try to be kinder to myself. To focus on doing fewer things well, instead of spreading myself thinner than fancy cucumber sandwiches at the Ritz.
Maybe the point of our lives isn’t to do more – but to enjoy more.
Don’t get me wrong, life can be pretty shit too, but that makes it even more important that I take the time to experience its wonder – you know – to balance it all out.
Anyway, that’s what my fancy American business course taught me…seems like a pretty good lesson for a few of us to learn.
I’m too old to start a blog on a public forum with “My mummy says…”
But…
My Mummy says… that yesterday’s blog needs a part B, and you know what, she’s probably right (don’t tell her, she’ll be insufferable).
I look at what I wrote at the end of September about surviving and thriving and exciting things, and then I look at what I wrote on Monday about just this pit of disappointment and things not working out the way that I wanted them to when I was 20.
And the thing is, they’re both true, and that’s ok.
It is true that my optimism, my crusading spirit, my concept that there’s something I’m meant to do in the world, and the belief that I can make things right has gone, for many reasons.
But there is a different part of it that remains and is woven into the things that I do on a daily basis. Some of these things were pointed out by my lovely family and friends after my last post. Times when I have made an impact on them and those they love and my small little band of “followers.”
But it’s alright if we feel both at different points, especially if we’re grieving (because grief is not a linear process as somebody in a seminar once told me. It’s a weird cyclical spirally cobwebby thing like those doodles that you used to do around your name at school and colour in).
So yes, Monday sucked. I listened to Train and I felt disappointed in myself and in my impact.
And I didn’t write it for people to email me or message me and say “Oh, but you’re fabulous and wonderful and I can’t believe that you don’t think you’ve had an impact!”
I didn’t do it for an ego boost, or a cry for help in an “RU Ok Hun” Facebook callout. I know some people do things like that, but I did it because that was how I felt at the time. And, if nothing else, I have always been honest in the things that I have written, and in how I’ve been feeling.
Nevertheless, it was very nice to read the things that people wrote about how I had affected them, and I am very grateful for my people and how much they look after me from near and far.
I know that I have little impacts on people around me every day. I make changes in the way I speak to my children, and teach them about the world around us. I make a difference when I write a post that makes half of the women in my family sort out their financial/death admin shit. I’m a trustee of two charities trying to do good in the world. And I’m helping stressed-out business owners get their messaging straight.
But it has to be alright to have bad days.
Right now I’m cooking dinner, because multitasking is my life, and I have to remember…well first I have to remember that I haven’t started timing the sweetcorn….
But then I have to remember that I’m not dead yet.
And yeah, I might be tomorrow, we never know how these things work out. But I’m not dead yet.
And although 38 sometimes feels impossibly old, it also often feels impossibly young. There is a lot to do, but there is a lot of time.
Right now, it is quite hard to think beyond me and mine, but maybe it won’t be forever.
Right now it’s quite hard to imagine any return to politics because the idea of traipsing around doors or going to evening meetings when I’m treading water trying to raise a family, get a business off the ground, and not overcook the sweetcorn is too much.
I used to look around me at all that was broken and try to work out how I could fix it.
But then my world smashed apart and I found I no longer had a way to carry all the broken things around me. Or the headspace to care.
That is perhaps the biggest thing I lost on the 30th of October 2014.
I used to want to change the world.
Somewhere in my mum’s house, there is a painting of me, pregnant and naked, holding a purple sash to partly cover my modesty. It’s entitled “The Suffragette”. I feel it important to point out that she named it, not me. She wanted to encapsulate the way that I had grown up seeking to be the voice of the voiceless, to right wrongs and stamp out injustices.
Now, I was never going to hang it on my wall (it would make meeting to eyes of my dinner guests a little difficult). But I feel as if I’ve betrayed that portrait.
I have righted no wrongs in the last 7 years.
I have stood up for no one other than myself and my child.
I think if there was a portrait now, it would be of a tired and bowed woman, clutching a duvet and a bottle of wine (malbec, obviously). Broken and bloody, and jaded.
I grew up convinced that I was going to change the world. That I was going to do something amazing. That I was going to make things better.
But death shoved blinkers onto my head, and I find myself only able to concentrate on what is best for me and mine.
And when you have your own blog on grief, bereavement, children, pregnancy, and all the things, it can sometimes feel like you need to hit targets, or anniversaries, or significant days, with profound content that makes people sniff and tell their significant other that they’re fine, they just have something in their eye.
Yesterday was Mark’s birthday. He would have been 39; staring down the barrel of the big 4-0, feeling old and wondering if he had acheived all of the things he was aiming for in life.
Instead he only made it to 32. Which, frankly, is ridiculous.
But I didn’t write a blog post.
Because when you’re the one left alive, you don’t get to opt out of child-related responsiblities like school pick-up, cooking tea, ensuring that there is clean uniform and games kit for the next day, helping with homework, changing nappies, picking up engine parts for lawnmowers (not child-related so much as family-business-related!), and then you know, your actual job.
I sat down at 8.30pm, when both children were (supposedly) settled in bed, and sipped on my Moscow Mule (Mark’s favourite drink when we went out anywhere that wasn’t intent on just serving “beer”), quietly thinking about how my life would have been completely different if the bastard cancer hadn’t decided to eat away at his insides.
But I didn’t write.
Because grief can’t be scheduled.
It is more likely to jump up and smother you while you’re standing in a tent listening to a band play a completly random song than it is to saunter along a few days after sending you a note to say it will be popping round.
Grief is weird, and perverse, and not performative.
I’ve written before about how, as a species (because I can’t put down my wannabee-librarian hat), we search for markers. We want rituals, anniversaries and days that help us mark the marching of the years, the changing of the seasons, and the development of our lives. And all of this is true. Significant days (such as Mark’s birthday, the day he died, Ethan’s birthday, our wedding anniversary, and the day we sat in the doctor’s office and were blindsided by the cancer diagnosis) give me checkpoints to think about how much my gorgeous Welshman has missed, how much he gave me in our time together, how far I’ve come, and how much Ethan is like him in a million different small ways.
But putting my thoughts, hopes, dreams, neuroses, and general craziness out into the world via this blog has it’s downsides. I’m a people pleaser (mostly, until my impatience kicks in!). So I feel like people expect me to hit these milestones with insightful words that will make them think, and help them with their own grief. And, I’m not going to lie, there is also a part of me that feels like I need to tick the boxes of the good little widow, and spend time on anniversaries wearing black and delicately wiping my eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief.
Well, Jane Austen may roll in her grave, but this isn’t me.
This is me:
I bought this plant and its white pot around 4 months after Mark died.
It was something of a “fuck you” statement. To life and cancer and all the things that I felt had been thrown at me.
It was a way of announcing to the world that this wasn’t going to break me. That it was shit, but I wouldn’t drown.
And it was also a way of convincing myself of this on a daily basis – a fake-it-till-you-make-it attempt.
This plant has been overwatered, underwatered, forgotten, knocked off of shelves by flying nerf gun bullets, and moved around the house constantly. But it has survived.
In fact, it’s more than survived. Last week I noticed that this unkempt piece of vegetation had managed to cope with all of it, and sprout two new baby plants. More than survival, there has been growth and thriving.
Which feels like a bit of a metaphor for my last 7 years really. There has been grief, confusion, depression, joy, confusion, sheer bloodymindedness, love, counselling, stupid decisions, but there has been growth. In a literal sense I have managed (with help) to keep a boy alive for 9 years, and I’ve grown another actual mini human being. I have my own two little baby plants.
But I have grown as a person too. I have done what I always promised myself I would do. Mark’s death changed me, but I have not let it make me smaller…less. I have learnt about myself (even the unflattering bits) and about what is important to me. I have become more selfish, not as accommodating, and more prone to snap decisions. But I have also become more spontaneous, more willing to find joy, and more aware that, no matter what you see from the outside, everyone has their own shit going on and we’re all just trying to make it through the day.
So I sit here with my two incredible children, my amazingly patient and kind husband, my little house that is all ours, and a new and exciting business that I have built from scratch. And I know that Mark would be proud.
Welcome to part 2 of Peta’s “Things to sort out before you die” series. Which I’ve been meaning to write for about a month. But, you know, life happened.
I promise it will be funnier than you’d expect (mainly because I’m incapable of talking about anything serious without adding a sarcastic aside or 5). So, strap in and have a think about housework (yes, seriously).
I’m a sucker for an Instagram “tap to tidy”.
If you’ve not discovered these deceptive beauties yet, they’re an Insta story where a messy counter full of ingredients becomes a cake decorated with delicate icing flowers, or a playroom covered in the remains of a day’s playtime is instantly tidy when you click to the next frame. Unfinished jigsaws are swept back into their boxes, half-dressed barbies are back in the dream house, relaxing after a day of shopping (or being an astronaut), Grimm’s rainbows are returned to the correct order on the top of the cabinet.
It’s basically the modern-day equivalent of Snow White flouncing around singing while the forest creatures clean her house. And it’s about as realistic.
I have a stormy relationship with housework. There are some days when I like nothing better than blitzing the whole house in some sort of frenzy whilst listening to retro music (this seemed to happen more when I only had one child, go figure). But mostly, I am eternally frustrated that housework is a never-ending, never-finished list that swirls around in my head from dawn until dusk, occasionally returning at 2.15 am when I remember I didn’t turn the washing machine on before I went to bed.
Being ever-so-optimistic I follow an unhealthy amount of “organizers” on social media, and so scrolling through my feed I’ll gaze wistfully at cleaning checklists and wardrobes where all the coathangers point in the same direction. I’ve tried The Organized Mum Method, devoured Marie Kondo (it turns out I actually need some of the things in my house that don’t spark joy…nappies, for example, are particularly useful) and I am one of Mrs Hinch’s 4.1million followers, for all the good it’s done me.
But I have decided that this is a special form of torture that I seem to have brought upon myself. I have two children, a husband who runs his own business, and a busy job myself. I am also not actually that organized. Every time I print off a “change sheets on Monday, run the hoover round on Tuesday…” checklist I am giving myself one more thing to fail at. I will look at the missed ticks that start to appear by Wednesday and convince myself that this means I am slovenly and incapable of this adulting business. The reality is, there are not enough hours in the day for all the things that we need to do. And women fall foul of this more than men (with the usual disclaimer that some men fall into this category too, but not enough to break the stereotype). Take a look at this 2019 YouGov survey on the housework split between couples:
As women, we constantly underestimate our unpaid workload: when it comes to childcare, organization, cleaning, cooking, and the mental load attached. (For a succinct explanation (with pictures) of the mental load and how this affects women on a daily basis, check out this comic by French artist Emma.)
So, what has this got to do with preparing for our possible futures?
Well, if you’ve read my blog on Life Admin then you’ll hopefully already be thinking about necessities such as a will, expression of wishes, and life insurance.
But, when staring at screen-full of different levels of life cover, women tend to have a blind spot. We focus on making sure that the mortgage would be dealt with. But all this extra work that we do doesn’t go away if we die.
Take childcare, for example. In 2017 Scottish Widows estimated that mums spend 23 hours per week on childcare – on top of their own career commitments. This includes things like taking the children to school, preparing family meals, helping the children with homework, doing the housework, getting the children ready for school, picking the children up from school and watching them play sport.
Women consistently undervalue their contribution to the family when they think about life insurance levels. Without you running around dealing with these jobs, your partner would either have to pay someone else to do them, or take a pay cut in order to have time to fit them in around work.
Factoring these responsibilities into your life insurance and critical illness cover isn’t decadent (your husband is unlikely to be sipping martinis on his new yacht while the recently employed nanny and housekeeper take care of everything back home). It is acknowledging that our responsibility toward our family doesn’t stop if we get ill, or if we die.
If you’re anything like me, putting a monetary value on the things you do (for nothing) every day can feel a bit weird, boastful even. The best way to manage the slightly icky process is to sit down with an objective (but sympathetic) expert. My friend Annika, who I mentioned in my last instalment of Life Admin Skills for the Pathologically Avoidant, specialises in helping women work out things like this. She can sit down with you and work out how much it would cost you to manage your household if you were sick, or for your partner to manage it if you died. And then she can find you the perfect cover so that no balls are dropped and you can focus on the important things, like hugging your children and buying a puppy (maybe don’t buy a puppy…).
Seriously, give her a call (or an email, we are in the 21st century after all). Scary things don’t go away, they just blindside us on a Tuesday afternoon. Do me a favour and get it sorted at least by Monday.
It was our 3rd wedding anniversary yesterday, and we finished the day under Heaven’s Gate in Newbury, eating sushi and looking down on the world (in an ever-so humble way, obvs!).
So, this seems like a good opportunity to repost what I wrote last year about how to plan a 2nd wedding (with all the fun, complications, and verbal gymnastics that it brings). If you’ve already read it then thanks! Maybe you could forward it on to someone else who’s having a quiet evening. And if you haven’t, then enjoy and let me know what you think!
It also gives me a chance to post one of my favourite wedding photos (for reasons which will become clear if you read the post!).
I started my business when Erica was 8 months old, and Ethan was homeschooling because of the pandemic.
As it often does for mothers I’ve discovered, my copywriting journey began by starting my own blog about the trials and tribulations of motherhood. In my case, I started this blog to talk about the weirdness of my situation: widowed with a 2-year-old son at 31, now remarried and expecting another child. A friend reached out and asked if I’d like to write some blogs for her sustainable fitness brand about keeping fit and being a mum. She paid me £40 and I was pretty chuffed that someone else wanted to read what I’d written.
Before Erica was born I was balancing 10 hours a week of bookkeeping from home (that I was terrible at) with the part-time position of Chief Exam Invigilator at a local secondary school (which I was awesome at, but wasn’t exactly inspiring). Neither of these were going to work once Erica was born, especially when Covid hit and finding childcare was an impossibility. I was going to have to think of something else.
Nick was listening to a business podcast and heard about this website called Upwork, where freelancers could find paid writing opportunities. It suddenly dawned on me that I could actually get paid to write things.
This is a pretty familiar story on the copywriting podcasts. People who have always found writing easy, through school, college, and work. People who get asked by their friends all the time to “just take a look over my CV”, or “what do you think of the wording in this essay paragraph”, don’t necessarily think this is a skill that others will pay for. Surely everyone finds writing fairly easy?
It seems not. It seems that I had a marketable skill just sitting there, only pulled out for heartfelt messages in birthday cards and wedding speeches. So in I jumped, going from zero in September 2020 to July 2021 and my first $2k month. I’m incredibly proud of my progress so far, but I’m not going to pretend it’s been easy.
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I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl. When I decide to do something new I want to find out everything I can about it. I’ll read all the books and scour all the websites until I know all there is to know. These days it’s all about the podcasts. Partly because they’re so very in right now, and partly because I haven’t had the time to crack a book since January 2020 (can’t think why).
There are about a million (at a conservative estimate) podcasts about running a business, and a million more about copywriting and digital marketing. I’ve been binging them all on the school run and in my earbuds while I feed the baby to sleep, clean the kitchen, make dinner and sort the washing.
As you’d expect, among the common topics of conversation, time management features quite heavily. For a lot of freelancers, or solopreneurs, their business starts of as a “side hustle” that they fit in to their evenings and weekends, once they’ve got home from their regular jobs. So time is a factor.
But not all busyness is fixable.
I was listening to one particular podcast the other day, where a time management guru asked the listeners whether they valued entertainment or learning more. And challenged them to look at whether the way they spent their time reflected this. Basically, if you say you value learning, but you spend 3 hours every evening watching Netflix instead of working through the digital marketing course you bought or starting your novel, then you’re kidding yourself.
As I drove along the road from school I realized why this particular podcast episode was making me cross. It was because I’d consistently heard from business guru after business guru that we all have time to do the things we want to do (workout, learn a skill, start a business); we’re just not looking hard enough.
Trust me. I’m looking pretty hard. And, unless you want me to stage my client calls at 3 in the morning while I’m breastfeeding a baby, I’m a little confused as to where all these magic pockets of time in my day are. Because I do actually value learning. But the last time i sat down to look through the digital marketing course I bought I realized that there were two loads of washing to put away, one to put in the machine, and the breakfast things still hadn’t made it to the dishwasher.
2 weeks ago I downloaded a 14 day bootcamp from a very well-known copywriting business that rhymes with snottypackers. Now I appreciate a no-nonsense tone as much as the next impatient person. But Day 1 focused on setting up your workspace, and argued that unless you had a specific area that was just for you to work in, with a door you could close, and scheduled times that you coud go and do that work with no distractions, then basically you were playing at this whole business thing and no-one would take you seriously.
Life doesn’t work like that if you have kids, especially small ones.
This blog post for example. I was meant to write it after Erica went down for her afternoon nap. But she didn’t. After I’d spent 45 minutes trying to get her to drift off. So it was written in 3 minute blasts between getting her food, getting her to eat the food and not throw it all over the dining room, changing her nappy, explaining to her that eating chalk was not sensible, and finally giving in and finishing it off later in the evening.
But I am a freelance copywriter. I have regular clients who pay me for work and give me glowing testimonials. My earnings pay bills. And I’m serious about growing my business. So where does that leave me in this story?
Maybe there are a whole bunch of people sat on their bottoms watching Schitt’s Creek who just need to be told to get up and work towards their goal. But I reckon that (especially during the pandemic) there are even more people who are trying to follow their dream of a small business or a freelance career whilst teaching their daughter long division, battling zoom parents evenings, and bouncing toddlers who suddenly decide sleep is for losers at 18 months old.
I want time management and business tips from people who are making it work while balancing a baby on one hip. I want to hear their top tips for how to deal with a pile of client work when they were up every hour the night before.
I really don’t want to hear fresh-faced and groomed women on Instagram lives talking about how getting up an hour before their children has been the best thing they could ever do for their business, as now they can get their workout/meditation/journalling/scheduling of social posts done before they embrace their cherubs over breakfast.
I want to hear from the parents typing blogs one-handed (not that I’m doing that right now, obviously….) whilst holding a poorly preschooler, hoping little hands don’t lean over and delete the last paragraph. I want to hear from the business owners who arrive at school 15 minutes early for pick up so they can answer emails while the baby is contained in the car seat.
And most of all, I want to hear from them because I’ve spent the last year struggling with my brand voice and communications. I didn’t want to post about the realities of running a business as a Stay at Home Mum, because I was worried clients (and potential clients) would think I wasn’t a professional. I didn’t want them to think I was half-assing my work.
But, if anything, I work harder because of my limitations. Just because a blog post might be concepted while I cook spaghetti bolognese doesn’t mean it’s any less of an effective marketing tool. Just because I might be answering their email at 2am while I’m feeding Erica doesn’t mean I’m “phoning it in”. Just because I’m not at my desk (or in a hipster coffee shop) from 10 till 4 doesn’t mean I’m not a credible business woman. I’m just slightly more covered in humus than business women tend to be.
So, podcast hosts: bring on the mess and the honesty, and lead me to the women (and men) who I know are knocking it out of the park while literally holding the baby!
And, if you’re looking for a copywriter to polish your website, or inject new blood into your blog, you can find me here: www.wordsbypeta.wordpress.com
She decided that the best way to make friends with a bee was to stroke it and then to grab it so she could give it a cuddle. It did not go well. She was very angry with the bee, but mostly she was angry with me.
And it was really, really hard because I knew that, besides popping some lavender oil on the sting, (or where I thought the sting was because she wouldn’t let me see properly) there was nothing that I could do. I had to wait for the pain to pass and give her cuddles while she got through her hand really hurting. It wasn’t only the pain but also the confusion of not really knowing what was going on and not really connecting it to the bee. Mostly she just looked like she was thinking: “Mummy, why did you let this happen to me?!”
As I was sitting there cuddling a grumpy baby, it got me thinking. We’ve been having problems with Ethan at the moment. Well, that’s a terrible way of putting it. We’ve not been having problems with Ethan. Ethan’s lovely, Ethan’s fabulous. Ethan is a kind and caring and empathetic and loyal and hilarious little boy who loves his friends and loves his family and feels things very deeply (and who is occasionally a 9-year-old with a teenager’s attitude). Right now we are trying to help him deal with his anxiety. We’re not entirely sure what jumped it up a notch, but for the last 6 weeks there’s been a lot of anxiety, worry, and sadness about going into school.
Now, his school is fabulous. I would give almost anything to go back in time and be able to go to his school, spend time doing the things that he does, and be in such a caring environment. My brother often gets quite jealous that he is 28 now and can’t go back to school (he’s quite tall, I thnk they might notice). We’re incredibly lucky to be able to send Ethan to a private school, and this is one of the reasons we made the decision. The staff have the time and energy to be able to support Ethan, to give him the space and encouragement he needs, and we haven’t had to wrangle with CAMHS waiting lists.
But Ethan is incredibly worried that he will have a bad day and that school will be terrible. The school counsellor has told us that he meets the clinical level for separation anxiety and is borderline for social phobia. It seems his main issue is that he’ll miss me and Erica and he’s worried about bad things happening when he’s at school. Nothing catastrophic, but things going wrong, or him getting into trouble, or falling out with friends and them not wanting to play with him. There is no logical reason for any of this because he never gets in trouble, people always want to play with him, and he always has fun, but he’s worked this all up in his head.
The separation anxiety doesn’t come as a huge shock to me. I’ve always known that the experience of losing a parent would come back and rear its head at various times in his life. I know that some people looking on might think that he’s always been clingy, but when you stop and look at it from his perspective, one of the most important people in his life completely disappeared without warning when he was 2. If you were him, wouldn’t you hold on tightly to the one that was left?
I did ask him about the whole missing me thing, and rather amusingly he said: “Well I don’t know why but I think liking you has just kicked in a little bit more”. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Did he not like me before? Did he think I was terrible, and now he’s suddenly realised that I’m quite lovely and a pretty good mum?
Anyway, every morning I drive him to school. Sometimes in the car he’s very quiet, sometimes he’s listening to music, and sometimes he talks to me about how he’s worried. And we try and logically go through his worries, and we try and focus on the positives, and we do all the things that I know from my training and that his counsellor has suggested. And then we get to school and we sit in the car and he says: “I can’t do it, I cant’ get out”. And we talk about why it’s something we need to do (We don’t push the legal thing because then he got worried that Nick and I would be arrested). We talk about all the things that have been put in place by the school to make him feel safe and secure. And we try breaking it down. So the first step is we take our seatbelts off, and then step 2 is I open the door, then I walk round to his side of the car, I open his door, step 3 is swinging his legs over the side of the seat, step 4 is standing up, step 5 is picking up his bags, and step 6 is walking to the gate and saying “See you later” (we don’t do goodbye). Now, that took all of 15 seconds to tell you. Generally, it will take between half an hour and an hour for it to actually happen. Sometimes he does it just with me, sometimes we need a staff member to try and intervene.
Honestly, having to sit there every morning and pretend to be so calm and collected, and so matter of fact. Having to be that safe space. Watching him fall apart to the extent that on Monday he had a panic attack in the school corridor, and this morning he wouldn’t let go of my waist even though 2 teachers tried to reason with him. To have to watch him do that every single morning is slowly breaking me. Because I can’t make it go away.
It’s like that bee sting. I can’t stop the pain. I don’t have a quick fix. I can’t give him medicine, I can’t give him a solution. I can’t do anything other than sit there and be with him as he’s going through it. And as someone who likes to fix things, as you’ve probably realised by now, this is not my comfort zone, this is not my area of expertise.
Well, that’s a lie, it is my area of expertise, and that is probably the only reason that I am able to stay calm and collected and not completely burst into tears and fall apart every morning. I think that, probably, I am compartmentalising and putting my work head on. Just like I did when Mark was sick, just like I did when he died, just like I did when I had to answer those questions over and over again when Ethan was small, and help him, and explain, and be that safe space. The problem is that I don’t know whether that’s the best thing to do anymore, but it is the only thing I’ve got right now.
So I’m just going to have to continue to sit there and be with him while we all go through it together.
For the last 3 weeks or so I’ve been seeing a stream of emails in my inbox from companies whose subscriber lists I’ve ended up on. They’re all asking me the same thing, and it’s not the usual “buy all of our stuff”. Instead, they’re all suggesting that I let them know whether or not I’d like to hear about Father’s Day. I don’t remember this being a thing last year, but I’ve probably had about 25 in the last month.
Although the cynic inside my head wonders whether they’re banking on some goodwill purchases as I marvel at their selfless sensitivity, I’m pretty happy about this development. The recognition that National days of celebration are not always celebratory occasions for everyone, or devoid of complicated feelings is a welcome change.
Father’s Day can be a wonderful opportunity to celebrate those in your life who have played the role (and you can read all about mine here).
But it can also be a day of confusion, guilt, sadness, regret, and a lot of cookie dough ice cream.
So, in the spirit of making things a little easier on social media for some people today, here is an article that my friend Angeline shared with me.
Second Time Around 