Month: September 2016

How not to nail it!

I’ve had a few comments on my blogs recently, congratulating me for ‘having nailed’ parenting. So as not to feel like a fraud, or even, god forbid, an expert who people start to turn to for advice, I thought I would readdress the balance with ways that I have fucked up in the past week. I’ve made a list, because I like lists. Lists are my life.

I didn’t go to daughter 2’s year 11 information evening at school – the one where they were telling parents what an important year it is for their child, giving out vital dates and general words of wisdom. (In my defence, I couldn’t go because I still couldn’t drive after an operation and couldn’t get the train because I still couldn’t walk…but then again, that was after irresponsibly jumping off a 6 foot wall onto concrete in sandals.)

I didn’t go to daughter 4’s year 8 information evening, because I really couldn’t be arsed. I felt a bit guilty and so ran it by number 1 friend, who replied that she hadn’t bothered to go to her daughter’s either. Rather than thinking we were both shit mothers, I felt this justified my absence.

I let daughter 3 pack for her Duke of Edinburgh weekend completely unsupervised, as I was crashed out on the sofa drinking wine and feeling sorry for myself after a busy day. Oh, and Strictly was on and I had to catch Ed Balls making a tit of himself. She then told partner in the car on the way to the drop off point that she didn’t have a coat and yes, the following day it pissed down in the Ashdown Forest. 

I won’t take daughter 1 out driving, because I’m too scared.

I allowed daughter 2 to buy 7 different packets of sweets to take on her D of E weekend, when she had actually been assigned the task of buying breakfast for the group. However, I did lob in a packet of brioche, albeit with chocolate chips. 

Partner and I had a totally uncharacteristic, ‘fuck it’ moment and booked a holiday abroad during term time, alone. If I had been at the year 11 information evening I would have been told that daughter 2’s GCSE mocks are literally the exact dates of our holiday. We could not have been more precise had we tried.

An e mail from daughter 1’s school yesterday, confirmed my worst fears…her A level mocks are literally the exact dates of our holiday…etc

Daughter 4’s school jumper is full of holes. Not just the usual elbow holes, but other much more random holes. When we were at the hospital yesterday for her pre-op for an operation she’s having tomorrow, the nurse asked her to swab her groin. She lifted her skirt and simply had to stick the cotton bud straight through the huge hole in her tights, thus saving her the embarrassment of having to pull them down, but I was mortified.

To be honest, I could go on. But the best length for a blog post is about 500 words (apparently). So I’ll just mention that I have done some good things as a mum this week: my kids have been fed and some weeks, even that feels like an epic achievement.

image“Oh dear Mum”

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

 

Seeds of Thought

I sat down on my daughter’s bed last night and snuggled in – a rare treat with a teen. Forcing a little closeness and it felt good. She carried on swiping through her phone with a dexterity that can only come from practice, liking photos of barely friends with a heart. She stopped at one whose look she objected to, took a screen shot and sent it to a friend: why? Why? Why? She asked her friend rhetorically.

‘The internet makes us all so judgmental’, I said to her. She could only nod her head.

We all have seeds of thoughts: little seeds of negative thoughts, when we don’t like a person’s choice of dress, or hair or actions. Dreams of holidays where the sea is clear and turquoise blue and the sand glides through our toes. Cravings for interiors that are clean and white and velvety grey. Wanting that gorgeous pair of boots, that dress, those shoes, that cashmere jumper to keep us toasty warm, because the nights are drawing in. Small seeds of worry, where we imagine that a rash is a fatal disease and a stomach ache is Cancer. Harmless seeds of fantasy, where sex is hot and horny.

The internet is the greenhouse for these thoughts. It germinates them quickly and they grow. They grow far bigger and stronger than they would without the hot house of the web.

Before you know it, you have put it in your basket and because it already knows your password, that seed of thought is quickly and easily real. Next day delivery is the icing on the cake. No need to wait. To ponder. One minute left to bid on E Bay creates an urgency and a need that a shopping centre can’t provide.

Before you know it you are sure you’re really ill. You wonder how many different ways you can write your symptoms in the search engine to get the answers to concur. You get an emergency appointment, to find your doctor disagrees. You decide she must be wrong, until you get better and you know, on that occasion she was right.

Before you know it you hate your child’s teacher because they failed to notice that your child was a little wet. All the other mothers on the internet agree: it’s outrageous! How could she not have noticed? (I mean, really: only 35 children in the class and a child who didn’t tell her). The seed has grown into a venomous plant. That seed of doubt about the teacher has turned into child abuse and neglect and everyone talking about it on the internet agrees. Horse shit on the roots that make the poisonous plant grow stronger and out of control.

Before you know it, your son’s seed of sexual fantasy is easily planted and is growing in to a monster that is never satiated and is uncontrolled. Unrealistic expectations create unrealistic relationship goals.

Before you know it you find yourself asking: why? Why? Why? Rhetorically.

Because we know what the internet is capable of; but once those seeds of thought take root, the genie has left the bottle and they grow.

Image result for a seed growing

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

A Little Distance

I don’t expect your thanks, but I want your respect. 

When you were on the cusp of hitting these teenage years, I read that your brain was going to change. I was in denial. I didn’t want to believe a word of it. Not my child, I smugly thought. My little girl, who is ever growing. My child who is thoughtful and thankful and who, I honestly feel, everyday, adores me. She thinks that I am funny and I know that because we laugh together – we catch each other’s eye and we get a bit hysterical. We don’t care that those around us don’t get it, all that matters to us is that we do. 

I don’t expect your thanks, but I want your respect.

It crept up on me. I was too relaxed, too content that we were ‘cool’ together. You didn’t want to seek me out in a room. You didn’t need to rest your gaze on me. Moments together became fleeting and tense. Every interaction became a possibility for a battle. Anger made you put up a defence, from where you hid, sharing your woes by text, escaping from them through snap chat.

I don’t expect your thanks, but I want your respect.

I tried to stay close by – within reach, where you had always been happy for me to be. Your coldness pushed me away. I eased forward like a pawn in a game of chess, one square at a time and like the queen you pushed passed me, taking my now fragile mummy ego with you and discarding it at your will. That hurt and stupidly, I let it show. 

I don’t expect your thanks, but I want your respect.

So, like a sailing boat forced by the wind, I changed my tack. I sailed away. Not too far: I dropped the anchor where I could see you and I moved with the waves. I reached occasional highs and I crashed back to the surface many times, but the anchor prevented me from drifting away and the curves of the boat’s hull meant I didn’t sink. I no longer sought your laughter. I no longer sought your thanks. I did things for you out of love. 

I don’t expect your thanks, but I want your respect.

Then one day, when I had sorted through your wardrobe – a job that you were intending to do, but the task had seemed too huge – you came home to that task complete and you said, ‘thank you’. I didn’t let you see me whoop for joy. You didn’t see me smile. You heard me reply with a nonchalant, ‘no problem’. I am happy with a little distance. I am quietly smug that I’ve worked us out.

I know I get your thanks and your respect and in return, you know that you get mine.

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I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

So Fucking What?

According to research (shudder – don’t switch off) we would be happier, healthier and slimmer if we listened to our body clocks. (The Times, September 17th, 2016)

What an absolute crock of shite. Yes, two fingers up to spontaneity in life: that quick fuck, cheeky glass of wine at 5 or frothy cappuccino mid-morning. For Christ’s sake peoples, what the hell are you thinking?! Listen to your bodies’ natural daily cycle or you will be sad, unhealthy and fat. 

Shit, things don’t really get much better, do they?

The perfect time to wake up is 7.22am
Oh well, that’s it then. Sorry kids: get yourselves sorted because Mummy’s stress hormones dictate that she mustn’t wake up until 7.22. Don’t you DARE come into my bedroom at 7.20am BECAUSE I’LL GET FAT!

Only drink coffee at 3pm
This may help to get you through the afternoon school run, but it won’t help with the crap of the morning. Tea won’t cut it. Sorry bod, but you’re going to have to learn how to deal with cortisol. SUCK IT UP!

Do important tasks at 11am
When your brain is at peak function – bloody marvellous. So when the kids are showing me their maths homework at 8pm I have an excuse to tell them to google it. 

The best time to run or cycle is 5pm
Seriously…who is ever free to run at 5pm? 5pm is never an available slot. 5pm is slap bang in the middle of mayhem. Hey kids, today we’re running to football training, via ballet and the circuit will take us by the Brownie pick up. 

The least damaging time to have a glass of wine is 6.30pm
Fuck off. No, really. Just fuck off.

Go to bed before 11pm
In my dreams….

Most people these days have schedules that make them want to weep due to their complexity and they buckle under the sheer grind of life. But if there’s one thing that gets us all through, that keeps us going on the endless treadmill of life, it’s a morning coffee, a run or a bit of Zumba in that one luckily available slot we’ve spent days negotiating with our other half, a glass of wine at whatever fucking time we want it and we collapse into bed heaving for breath, praying it’s at least 1 minute before midnight. 

So those Canadian scientists have spent a shed load of money on research that means bollocks all to quite literally anyone. 

If I aligned my body clock with my daily schedule, I would piss off a lot of people. So I’ll risk being unhealthy, sad and fat. I’ll carefully monitor the situation and should I notice any of the above symptoms I will change my entire life to worship my circadian rhythms. Until then I will say to those researchers: so fucking what?

coffee-fix-for-less

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! If you aren’t too offended by my swearing in this post, please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

Their World isn’t Our World

I’ve come to a conclusion on something: I wouldn’t want to be a teenager today. I’ll talk from a female perspective, as I am one and as I have 4 daughters and a step daughter, but I’m sure that it’s equally tough for boys. 

Having spent nearly 2 weeks in the company of all 4 of my daughters on holiday – something that never normally happens due to a mixture of work, their clubs and divorce – I realise the constant, unrepentant pressure they are under in their lives. Social media – they cannot get away from it. It is all-consuming. It sucks them in and changes them in the process. It turns them into highly-strung, short-tempered individuals, who would otherwise be perfectly pleasant. In fact, who are perfectly pleasant to other people; they save their stress outs for their parents. 

Social media changes them. It’s a bit like someone who is having an affair. They have to get their next contact hit or a sick feeling builds up inside, as the stress of separation becomes almost unbearable. It’s as addictive as a drug and it also has side effects: paranoia, fear of missing out, depression. They are only the start: body image is distorted as are people’s lives. Everything is just so perfect on screen: happy photos of happy groups, photo shopped photos and photos that have been whittled down from a million selfies to one. Imagine the pressure for ‘likes’ on that one selfie. That one selfie that is literally one in a million. It is this pressure that creates stress and it is this stress that induces mental health issues in many teenagers. 

Let’s talk about sex baby and specifically on-line porn. It’s setting the benchmark for my girls’ experiences and that really bothers me. You see, I want them to feel empowered when it comes to sex – mentally as much as physically. I want them, not only to say ‘no’ if they don’t want it, but to say what they do want too. Porn is making their future sex lives so much harder. It’s setting completely unrealistic expectations and I know that this isn’t good for the boys either. 

So you see, I wouldn’t want to be a teenager today. Exams are all over the place right now. GCSE’s are changing all the time: is it a number you get awarded or a letter? Is it a triple science or a core? Wtf is it, because a parent here is confused. AS levels: in or out? Shake it all about. University anyone? If you fancy a debt of £46,000 hanging around your neck until you are well old. 

Decisions seemed easier when I was a teenager. You knew where you stood with your ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels. University was a straight forward affair: if you were poor you got a grant and lived on baked beans for three years. Sex was as simple as fuck – just the threat of AIDS to navigate your way safely around. 

When I  ask my daughters about the pressures they face, they shrug their shoulders and quite rightly say that it is all they have ever known. They cannot imagine life without social media – of course they can’t, but us parents can’t understand why they can’t put their phones down for a minute without feeling horribly alienated from their world. 

Their world isn’t our world. They have to learn how to cope with it and we can’t help them with this one. That is why, as parents we get so frustrated with their world. 

But I repeat: their world isn’t our world. The best we can do is try to understand and deal with the inevitable fall outs: low self esteem, paranoia, depression to name but a few. What we can’t do is try to enter their world and what we absolutely must never do is cut off their lifeline to it. 

mhm-3

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

Drunken Selfies

No wonder teenage girls are so bloody cranky all the time:

“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not even looking at you!”
“Oh my god, everyone is just so annoying looking at me all the time.”

You know, that kind of thing.

It’s because their lives are so stressful. No sarcasm intended. Seriously. Keeping up appearances is exhausting and they have to do it 24/7 for ‘likes’. Get it wrong and their world can collapse with one misjudged selfie.

Trust me, I know. A bit tipsy on 2 Euros fizz one afternoon after a day in the sun, I gave selfie-taking a go. I don’t think that I was exactly inspired by my daughters, as most of their selfies seemed to be a series of gurns for Snapchat. However, I was curious. Did I have what it takes to nail a selfie? I’ve never been able to pout, I just have the wrong sort of lips, but pumped on wine I thought I’d give it a go. I locked myself in the toilet, having noted all summer that a great deal of teenage selfies are taken in front of a sink. Plus, there’s the added advantage of no-one seeing you. I snapped away. I felt like a complete twat, but I carried on regardless.

I exited the loo quite pleased with my results. Yes, I felt like a sad old cow who was trying to keep up with her teenage daughters, but I was safe in the knowledge that no-one was ever going to see the photos except me and it was something I wanted to experience. It’s a bit like the shot on the beach or the photo of the sunset, it’s what everyone (teenagers) seemed to be doing on holiday and I wondered what it felt like to do it – to be so self-indulgent.

That night we were sitting outside a café enjoying a drink, when one of my daughters asked if they could look at my phone. Knowing that I never have anything to hide, I passed it over.

“What the hell!” came the first cry.
“Oh-my-god-mum!” came the second.

The cries came fast and furious after that. Yes, they had found my selfies.

At first I tried to front it out.

“They’re not bad, are they? For an old ish person?”
“Mum, they are awful. Why? I mean..what the..?”
“Well, this one’s ok..isn’t it?”
“NO!” (A four part chorus)

They made me promise that I will never, ever lock myself in a toilet alone again. I am on a month’s probation, during which time the toilet door must be kept ajar.

fullsizerender1-copy-7Come on, it’s not that bad…is it?

Post Script:
My daughters are screaming at me not to post the photo, as it is too embarrassing. The whole point of the post is quite clearly lost on them. Yes girls, self-obsession does make others cringe. Blimey, the lengths us parents will go to in order to hammer a point home.

Know Your Place

For those of you who don’t know, I am a Taekwon-do instructor – partner and I have our own club: Oaks Martial Arts. On a Wednesday morning we run our ladies’ only class. Partner is allowed in on the proviso that he doesn’t interrupt the female banter with any sort of ‘male’ angle and that he doesn’t pull a face when anything to do with women’s body parts are discussed – you know: pissing ourselves because of weak pelvic floors, that kind of thing.

Today was the first day back after the summer break and we had several new people trying it out. As they entered the dojang (training hall) they were met by me. Ordinarily, I don’t think that this in itself is necessarily a bad thing. I like to think that I am quite a cheery soul and unless it’s been a particularly bad morning with the teens, I generally greet our students with a smile. This morning, however, these nervous newbies were confronted by me in a sling, with bloodied sterie strips plastered in three places on my shoulder, a swollen finger, that hasn’t got a hope in hell of throwing a punch any time soon as it no longer bends and a broken foot, which makes me shuffle.

“You’re going to love Taekwon-do!” I chirped to them, as they opened the door. I could see their faces turn from a mild nervous state to outright panic, as they searched around desperately for an escape route. One of our regulars breezed in, seemingly unfazed by my new look. Thank god for that, I thought to myself. She’ll calm their nerves with her reassuring air.

“You’ve lost weight” she said.
“No, I’m sure I haven’t” I replied. “If anything I’ve put it on.”
“You’ve lost muscle then” came her reply.

I was crushed. Now it was partner’s turn to look nervous. Oh shit, he was probably thinking to himself. I’ve got to live with the fall out from that comment.

“I think she must like pain” piped up another regular. Now it was partner’s chance to relax the mood. “Oh, she’s always liked pain” he replied, with a cheeky smile, whilst stacking the paddle pads into the cupboard.

I glanced over at the new ladies, wondering how they were bearing up. They were smiling. Ah yes, I reassured myself, if there’s one thing that will unite a group of women, it’s a bit of sexual innuendo. I will allow partner that quip, I thought, but from now on in class, he must know his place.

fullsizerender1-copy-6Taekwon-do: the art of hand and foot…oh bollocks

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

Ridiculously Human

A couple of months ago I read a post by a fellow blogger, who was questioning whether she could legitimately call herself a writer. I was quite surprised at her seeming lack of confidence in her abilities: of course you can! I wrote in the comments. You write blogs and you’ve even published a book! Why on earth wouldn’t you refer to yourself as a writer?

Last week I received an e mail and a tweet telling me that I have been shortlisted in the Best Writer category of the Mumsnet Blogging Awards:

Bubbles are in order for , who’s been shortlisted for Best Writer at the – well done!

 

Best Writer? I questioned to myself. What about all those other amazing bloggers out there? How on earth have I managed to get on to that shortlist?

Are you detecting a theme? We are always so good at recognising other people’s abilities and will be quite vociferous in our praise for them, but when it comes to our own strengths, we somehow become blind.

It is of course natural that we are our own worst critic. There are many times that I have been reticent to publish a post and that’s been the one that got the most hits. It becomes almost impossible to be objective about your own work. Is this why when we cook a meal it never tastes as good as when someone else has cooked it? Is it because as humans we are simply unable to properly appreciate our own creations?

This got me thinking about our kids. I know that there are many times that parents will wax lyrical about their children, but I often think that I am more likely to admire the achievements of other people’s children, than I am to shout about my own kids’ successes. I’m sure that I’m not alone. Of course I tell them how proud I am, but I rarely shout it from the rooftops. I appreciate their achievements, but it feels overly self-indulgent to announce them to the world.

But therein lies the dilemma. If we don’t tell people, then nobody will know and doesn’t everyone actually, really want people to know, because everyone feels motivated by praise. We all love to get a huge slap on the back, yet we’d rather turn our backs on the people that will give it.

I love writing, but if I wrote blogs that sat gathering dust in my computer I wouldn’t love writing so much. It’s the enjoyment that other people get from my writing that makes me love it. People’s comments make me ridiculously happy. This is a huge thank you to everyone who reads my blog and for all the encouragement you give me by saying to me: please don’t stop writing!

Part of me, somewhere deep down wants to shout about it. I feel that I should be telling people how incredibly honored I feel to have been shortlisted for the Best Writer award and how much it would mean to me to win. I would be dumbstruck, but I would be so excited that my writing has struck a chord.

So, I am going to say that if you enjoy my blogs, please vote for me by clicking on the link below. After October 7th I promise I will stop going on about it. I’ll regain all semblance of a human.

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

Oh and before I go, I have also been commissioned to write a unique feature for GoodtoKnow, the on line home of Essentials magazine. I was picked as an August winner and this is the link to my post:

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/family/547265/holiday-with-teenagers-ultimate-parenting-challenge

Apparently, the post with the most views in the week it appears wins the opportunity to write a piece to be published in Essentials magazine. I hope you enjoy it. Please share 🙂

Thank you so much for all your support.

 

Refuse to Lose

Jonnie Peacock celebrates winning Gold during the Men's 100m - T44 final.Jonnie Peacock wins 100m Gold in Rio

I’ve got to be honest with you – I’ve never been able to get ‘into’ the Paralympic Games. I love watching all kinds of sports on the TV. I love the Olympics, but try as I might, the Paralymics have just never fired me up…until now. Now, I am totally mesmerised and inspired by the disabled athletes I am watching perform at the top of their game in Rio.

So, what’s changed?

I have.

I am no longer an able-bodied athlete who is competing in her sport. My body is a little bit fucked at the moment. I know that my disabilities are not forever, so I am in no way equating myself with the long term disabled, for whom there will be no end to their pain and discomfort. But I can connect.

I can now fully empathise with these athletes in Rio. I watch them with awe. They don’t evoke my sympathy, they make me feel that anything is possible. I look at their strong, muscular bodies and I feel inspired by the work it has taken them to get into that shape. I see them as ambassadors for grabbing life by the balls and squeezing every last drop of pain out of it until they have reached their goal.

I see these men and women, and some still only children, as true warriors. The hurdles and barriers they have overcome to reach the pinnacle of their sport is astonishing and now, I can really feel it.

I can feel it because everything I do at the moment hurts. I am one handed and one legged. It hurts me to walk and even more to stand. I’ve temporarily lost use of my right shoulder and my right middle finger is currently out of action.

Every day these Paralympic athletes hurt, but on top of this hurt, they train. They are pushing through pain barriers that I can only begin to imagine, as I stand and teach on my broken foot, before collapsing in agony on the sofa. These guys are the nuts and am really enjoying watching them compete, with a newfound sense of awe.

Because of course, it’s not just the physical barriers that disabled athletes must overcome, it’s the constant discrimination that they have to face. I admit that I struggle with this too. I struggle to know how we should approach the subject of disability. What is acceptable? What will offend? I started thinking about what disabled people find offensive while I was reading a review in the Times yesterday for, David Brent: Life on the Road, in which he sings a song about disabled people and apparently the lyrics contain the line: ‘hold a disabled person’s hand, if they’ve got one.’ I was reading this with the Paralympic Games on in the background. It made me squirm, which I am sure is the reaction that Ricky Gervaise wants from us.

So it was with real interest that I watched Channel 4’s show: The Last Leg, which gives a light-hearted preview of the Games. It is presented by Adam Hills, who sums it up as, “three guys with four legs talking about the week” and it works – brilliantly. It works because the presenters, two of whom are disabled themselves, joke about disability, but they know what to say. David Brent they are not. It has me in stitches with comments like the one made on last night’s show about our national anthem: ‘a person with no arm and no leg singing to God to save a multi-millionaire…what’s all that about?’ Suddenly you realise that disability can be talked about with humour, it can be talked about openly without fear of offending and I find this extremely liberating. Far from distracting from the Paralympic athletes’ achievements, it embellishes them. It makes us realise that we don’t have to tip toe around their disabilities, because it is those very disabilities that have made them the people they are today.

At last I feel that I personally have far more freedom in my thoughts for people with disabilities – I have never been prejudiced, I just didn’t quite know what I could say. Finally, I feel that I can connect with these athletes, these inspirational forces of power and strength, who just refuse to lose.

Image result for dame sarah storey image

Dame Sarah Story – 12 Paralympic Gold medals

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer

Nothing to Prove

Image result for images of quotes on not having to proving yourself

I stood on the top of that 6 foot wall in Spain and I felt on top of the world. I was high on nothing but sunshine and a couple of tins of San Miguel. I looked down at my daughters and partner, who were already safely on the concrete pavement below and I thought to myself: they think that I will be scared to jump. I saw partner’s outstretched hand, offering me a safety net that I just didn’t want. I wanted to show them all that I could do it and not only that, that I could do it better than them – that I could exceed all their expectations.

Three hospital visits later: one broken foot, a broken finger and a severely dented pride, I have learnt that lesson that you would have thought I may have grasped in my 20’s, perhaps even in my teens. That lesson that we teach our kids about not needing to prove anything to others. That the people who we want to impress, just want us to be ourselves. The day after I jumped onto the concrete pavement, daughter 2 said to me: you are acting like a teenager. It wasn’t a compliment. She wasn’t telling me that I looked young and vibrant. She wasn’t high fiving me for my energy and enthusiasm. She was saying that I was trying to be someone I wasn’t and that I should stop.

With the start of the new school year this message is a poignant one. One of our main concerns as parents when a child starts a new school, is not their grades, but more that they will make friends. We tell our children to be themselves. We talk to our older children about not changing so people will like you, but rather to be yourself and quickly the right people will love the real you. My kids and partner didn’t want to see me jumping confidently off that wall. They wanted to see my vulnerability, because that is the real me. I am not a teenager, I am not the person who I stood at the top of that wall and decided, in those few moments that I wanted to be. I am vulnerable and that is why my partner offered me his hand. That is why my daughters were looking up and gently encouraging me to get safely down.

I think that standing on that wall was actually a metaphor for my life. So often I try to live up to my perception of other people’s expectations of me and then to try and exceed those perceived expectations. Yet what I am actually able to achieve is not what others think I am capable of, but what I choose to do: how I choose to use my time and energy. So I should stop worrying about what other people think and live for me.

What we should be telling our children is not to lose sight of themselves by just doing what they think other people want them to do. They must follow their own path and be their own person. Life is not a race: we grow on our journey, not by reaching the destination and there will be fuck ups along the way – that is ok. That is how we learn. We have nothing to prove and you know what? The older I get, the more I realise that you can never please everyone anyway and so the most important thing in life is to please yourself, to find your own happiness.

As Marc Chernoff says in his article: 7 Reasons to Stop Proving Yourself to Everyone Else, “Care less about who you are to others and more about who you are to yourself.  You will have less heartaches and disappointments the minute you stop seeking from others the validation only YOU can give yourself.”

Standing on the top of that wall, I didn’t need to prove that I was able to jump. I didn’t need to prove anything and you know what I have learnt – that life is a lot less painful when you embrace who you really are.

img_2567Feet and hand on ice, but toasting the real me!

I’ve been shortlisted in the Best Writer category for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards! Please vote for me by clicking on the link below – it takes literally a millisecond. Thank you 🙂

http://www.mumsnet.com/events/blogging-awards/2016/best-writer