This is a year of milestones. I could tell you all about how my eldest daughter is now 16 (and knowing it all, as teenagers do), or my son turned 14 and is now taller than me, or the little one turning 11 just a few days ago and now learning to cook with Granny. But the most significant milestone…
Category: Issues
A dreaded call…
There’s so many different calls you hope you will never get as a Mother. Today I got one of those. And all things considered, it was one of the possibilities that I could cope with, with some level of calm. My eldest Ms Z calls me in a panic and puts her (new) boyfriend on. “Hi! We have a big…
Miss you…
There’s several quotes about the number of times you die. Some say it’s twice, some say it’s three times. I prefer the one that says that we all die 3 times. Once is a physical death. Second is when the last person who remembers us forgets/dies. The third is when anything we create is lost or forgotten. My Mom died…
The shift to parenting your parent…
They say that by the time you realise your parents were right, you become a parent yourself. And then you have your own set of big mistakes to make ahead of you. What the pretty phrases you find on Facebook don’t tell you is what happens when you have to become the parent of your parent. It is a total…
Heatwave…
It happens for about 5 minutes each year. In fact, if you blink, you’ll miss it. But in those 5 minutes, a lot can happen. And so, as if the stresses of every day life, the war in Ukraine, the rising bills and taxes, and the small matter of a political crisis in the UK weren’t enough, we had a…
A new dawn is dawning…
It’s been a long time coming, with a couple of attempts in the past, unsuccessful and fleeting… With all the emotional turmoil of the last few years, exacerbated by the Covid pandemic and the recent passing of my Mum, my levels of anxiety (and no doubt many people around the world) have shot through the roof. Physical symptoms associated with…
Incomplete…
We’ve just come back from a long stay in sunny Portugal. The kids were with their Dad for nearly 4 weeks (I was working from home in Portugal as well), and then came to me for the last 2 weeks of their school holiday. We had time in the countryside and we had time at the beach. And, apart from…
Mothering is also letting go…
It was thirteen years ago today that I became a mom. I can’t say that I knew what that meant back then. Sure, I had an idea, but really understanding what it meant… I didn’t. Do I now? I’m not sure. One of the reasons why I think motherhood is an art, rather than a science, is that each person…
The S word
What do you do when your 10 (almost 11) year old, proposes that the “solution to this situation” (which he knows I’m gonna be mad about) is suicide? It was the second time he mentioned this. And I thought I had dealt with it pretty well the first time. That I nipped it in the bud. But clearly not. Saying…
Is 2 thirds good enough?
My three kids are twelve (almost thirteen), ten (almost eleven) and seven (almost eight). I wanted to have kids that were close in age, mainly because I had this notion, from my own experience, that siblings with big age gaps wouldn’t be close, wouldn’t be friends. I grew up feeling closer to my cousins who are 2 and 4 years…