Pinchy and friends

I read an interview recently with comedian Sue Perkins, she of Great British Bake Off fame, in which she said something along the lines of: ‘You get to an age when you assume your friendship dance card is full, and then someone new and wonderful comes along, and enhances your life immeasurably’. I know exactly what she means. I’ve had a couple of instances in my life when I thought I had all the friends I needed or wanted, and then someone lovely and interesting and funny has sashayed into the room, and whoosh, within a couple of months I could not imagine my life without them.

This is the cheesiest picture I could find.

I’m still very good friends with three people from my school days in Salisbury, and in touch with loads more on Facebook. My uni housemates – a trio of gorgeous girls  - are still tremendously important to me. I share decadent dinners in London with a couple of special people from the days when I had a proper job as a journalist. Plus I’m really close to my sis, and DH and I have been friends since we were 15. That’s a pretty good haul. I was quite content with that.

Then I got pregnant for the first time, and signed up to NCT classes to learn ‘how to have a baby’, as you do. Before the first session, in May 2006, I distinctly remember saying to DH: ‘I’m not going to make friends. I have plenty of friends. I don’t need to make friends with people just because we’re having a baby at the same time.’ Oh, how wrong I was. Because in that room were three lovely ladies who I still see regularly. As our four big girls approach their seventh birthday, I know with absolute certainty that I could not have got through my journey of motherhood without them. You really do need some friends with children of exactly the same age, who totally get what you are going through in that moment.

One of them has become my best friend. We see each other every week. We text or call almost every day. Our families have holidayed together, and celebrated every milestone of the past seven years together. I’m her son’s godmother, and we turn to each other first when we need any help with the kiddies, or just want to hang out as mums and smalls. We both love tea, and wine, and good steak, and spa days. She’s tall, beautiful, clever, generous, makes me laugh, is extremely good company, and is just as happy to watch trashy telly in companionable silence as to have a proper chat about everything under the sun. Our girls describe each other as best friends too, even though they go to different schools. She was the first person I told when I’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and was hardcore Team Pinchy throughout that little interlude. She also makes a cracking fish pie. We’re very different people, in so many ways, but we rub along really well, and I love her to bits.

Then, when DD was in pre-school and DS was in nursery, I met another mum with two children exactly the same age, both girls. We started chatting in the car park, then having playdates, then getting together at the weekends as families. Luckily – and I do think this is important – DH really likes her DH, so they have become ‘couple friends’, and another critically important part of our Guildford family. She’s extraordinarily lovely, funny, and thoughtful, and is also the only person I know who’s even more into the esoteric, complementary, woo-woo, and magical as me, and the only person I can talk to about certain things without having to edit what I’m saying. She gets me, completely, and I get her, and when we give each other a massive hug every time we meet, we both feel our shoulders drop and both exhale loudly, like we are each other’s sanctuary. We became really close when I was diagnosed, and I couldn’t have got through it without her.

Surely now, as I approach my 40th birthday this summer, that’s it as far as friends go? I am so, so lucky to have all my amazing girlfriends, plus a couple of lovely male friends. There’s no room for anyone else, right?

Well, wrong again, Pinchos. Because in the past few months I have acquired yet another dear friend. Well, I say acquired, he just appeared out of the blue, like a wonderful and unexpected gift. As with my two best girl friends, I remember exactly the first time I met him, thinking: ‘You seem rather marvellous. I’d like to get to know you better.’ And lo, I now cannot imagine my life without him in it. He’s tall, dark and handsome, not to mention clever, hilarious, and a brilliant baker. He sings beautifully, and makes me copies of his favourite CDs. He brought me peonies when he came for dinner this week, my favourite flowers. He always smells delicious, has some very good shoes, and is a reliable source of big squeezy hugs. He also gives the best text of any man I know – long, detailed, witty, and always with a kiss on the end. He is brilliant with the kiddies, who adore him. He’s a stubborn Gemini, like my sis, so although he is relatively new, being with him feels oddly familiar. He’s gay, of course – no straight man ticks all those boxes, let alone embraces champagne and Eurovision with such gusto – and it is an unadulterated delight and privilege to count him, already, among my very favourite people.

Life has an ebb and a flow, however, and other friends have come and gone. I have made many other lovely friends since having children, and through school and work, each of whom enhances my life. I would never have the same conversation with any two of my friends, and there is surprisingly little social overlap between the people I love most. But I’ve found friends getting divorced extremely distressing, because when a foursome is ripped apart, the ripples go out a long way, no matter how hard you try not to take sides.

So I feel truly blessed to have my coterie of friends, old and new. I really do love them all, very much (and tell them, all the time) and have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for them: all of my dearest friends have experienced extremely tough times and yet have remained dignified and compassionate, and bloody good fun to be around. I’ve learned – and continue to learn – valuable lessons from all of them.

I do think it’s possible that my ‘friend dance card’ is now properly full. But who knows? It turns out there is plenty of room in my heart. All I know is that if I keep the friends I have now for ever, I’ll be more than happy. As Kahlil Gibran said in The Prophet: ‘In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed’.

The rebranding of Pinchy

I did something small yesterday – tiny, really – that has a much larger significance. I removed two little words from my Twitter profile. So what? you may be asking, quite reasonably. Well, the two little words were ”F*cked Cancer’.

It just felt right to let them go. Or maybe it stopped feeling right to include them. I only have 140 characters to sum myself up for my trusty band of followers, and spending ten per cent of that on a disease I had a couple of years ago (I’ll be three years past diagnosis this October) suddenly seemed…what? Irrelevant? Awkward? Embarrassing? Like I was hanging onto something in the past and continuing to let it define me? Maybe even a little bit David Brent going back to Wernham Hogg after he’d been sacked. Sometimes it’s just time to move on.

This isn’t to say, of course, that I will ever forget about having cancer. The day I was diagnosed was, and will always be, as defining a moment in my life as getting married and giving birth to my two babies, in that it changed everything. There are moments in one’s life when it really does seem, quite tangibly, that you are one person one day, and a completely different person the next.

It’s all about these little guys…

Or, perhaps, that you see the world differently as one chapter closes and another opens. Like you are breathing a subtly different air; like the appearance of everything has been put through an Instagram filter. Marriage, birth, death, diagnosis, divorce, and lottery wins: they split your life into ‘before’ and ‘after’.

So pre-October 2010 was BC: Before Cancer, and everything after 13 October was AD: After Diagnosis. That sounds a little simplistic, but that’s how it was. One day, life is a certain way. The next day, your previous taken-for-granted existence has disappeared, forever.

I was accidentally reading some emails from the BC-AD period this week – you know when you press a button on Outlook and you’re suddenly looking at your oldest emails, rather than the newest ones? – and it was plain weird. In the weeks leading up to The Big Day, it’s all chat, jokes and making arrangements with friends, liaising with existing clients on projects, and setting up meetings with new clients. I marvelled at the normality of it. The innocence.

From 14 October, the emails have a different texture and tone. Cancelling meetings and dates, and explaining why. Announcing, carefully, my news. Asking for help and support and advice. I was astonished at my calmness, my clarity, my eloquence, the lack of panic or distress in my words. But it’s really obvious that nowhere, in not one single email, do I say the word ‘cancer’: it was still too raw, too powerful, too shocking.

My 40 year old boy on his birthday trip to Roma.

I’ve said before that I don’t consider the day I was diagnosed to be the worst day of my life. It was probably up there for DH, my sister, and my parents, but not for me. And I’ve said before, also, that I wouldn’t have not gone through it: I don’t want to go through chemo again, ta, but I honestly feel it was a critical experience, a positive turning point, and full of important lessons. I’m still processing all of that – it takes time to become someone new, or rather, to slough off the crap that has accumulated over the years and allow yourself, with love and approval, to just be yourself.

Rome and Cosmopolitans: what’s not to like?

Nevertheless, I have never defined myself as a cancer patient, sufferer, victim or survivor. It’s just something that happened to me, it’s not everything I am, by a long way (although I know I do go on about it rather a lot in this blog…) And it’s time, now my scars are silvering and my hair is finally thick and growing, to move forward. I’ll still nod respectfully to  cancer, of course: it will never not be a significant part of my life and history. I honour its memory. But it’s not part of my present or, god willing, my future.

And I don’t want it to be one of my ‘things’ any more. My adorable children, their education, the marvels and bafflements of love, books, writing, cats, trees, good light, cooking and eating good food, good wine, good company, the pop music of the late 80s and early 90s, quantum physics, the mysteries of the universe, complementary therapy, Italy (we had an amazing time in Rome for DH’s 40th in April…), London, social media, art, stripey tops, pretty necklaces, spa days, heels, being a red-headed Leo – all of these will continue to be my ‘things’. Cancer doesn’t belong  in that rich, colourful tapestry any more. There will always be a bit of me that’s ‘the girl who f*cked cancer’, but it’s rapidly becoming a 1970s-orange-tinted Polaroid.

Someone I adore once told me I had ‘f*cked cancer with dignity and courage’. I look back on that brief interlude with my head held high, but only for a moment. I turn round to face today, and tomorrow, and the sun on this golden afternoon is warm on my face, and I am smiling, and the view is really quite something.

Little Big Things

I was fiddling about on Twitter recently (as is my wont) when someone from AXA PPP Healthcare asked what were the ‘little big things’ that made a difference while I was going through cancer treatment. The insurance company hosts a pinboard of hints, tips and suggestions on its website from people who have gone through treatment, and their carers.

This got me thinking. I didn’t think much about it at the time, you see. I was just getting through it, in my little bubble. Oddly enough, it’s only now, a full year after my final surgery, and two years after my last chemo in March 2011, that I can look some aspects of being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer in the eye. There’s just enough distance, now, for me to not simply ‘keep buggering on’ but to think ‘OMFG, that was absolute hell. I had CANCER, for goodness’ sake! I’ve had chemotherapy! My personal health nightmare came true!’ And then I have to lie down for a little bit with a cup of tea and a Twix and do some deep breathing.

The terror, oddly, is entirely retrospective.

So here, in honour of, and with thanks to, all the amazing people I had around me for that torrid time, are the Little Big Things that made a difference:

The hour after I was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer, still shaking, but with a clear, calm belief that I would be absolutely fine, the toast went up from my best friends over an emergency cup of tea: ‘F*ck caaancer!’ This became my mantra, my rallying cry, throughout my treatment. DH got it printed on a pink t-shirt that I wore to every chemo.  This ongoing black humour helped, enormously. A lovely school friend from days of yore sent me 12 cupcakes spelling it out for my very first chemo session – a very, very long day, with four intravenous potions including a new trial drug. As it drip, drip, dripped through, my mummy – who stayed by my side for the entire 11 hours – and the nurses watched me carefully, as if I might do something whizz bang, like Grandma after taking George’s Marvellous Medicine.

Attractive (and very cold…) hat, there, Pinchy.

No matter how long those treatment days were – not to mention the interminable scans and check-ups – I had company for the full length of almost every one. New friends, old friends, my sister, my mummy, my mother-in-law and my husband came in shifts. My best friend bought me an M&S tuna salad every time so I could pass on the grim hospital lunch on the chemo day ward – always the last tasty thing I ate before my taste buds were nuked and my mouth went dead for a fortnight.

My sister – my rock – brought sweet lattes, and trashy magazines, and a beautiful Merci Maman necklace with the names of DH, DD and DS engraved on tiny hearts. My brother-in-law lugged Uggs back from a trip to the US so I would be warm and comfortable over that long, dark winter. My mummy bought me a sheepskin bear to cuddle, and made me flasks of ice chips to suck to save my mouth from blistering. Most importantly, she and my Pops, and DH’s parents, took turns to look after DD, who had just started school, and my DS, who was at nursery, and keep life as normal as possible for them.

It would have been an altogether difference experience without social media. The texts and Twitter and Facebook messages on every treatment milestone, from chemo through surgery, radiotherapy, months of herceptin drips and more surgery – became my oxygen. I was truly bombarded with love from all around, transcending time and distance and family fall-outs. It was overwhelming at first – I honestly had no idea how much I was loved – but people just saying they were thinking of me was a little thing that made a huge difference.

My friends saved up gossip and made me laugh, to take my mind off the pain of the canula, and the throbbing freeze of the cold cap, often arranging their own childcare just to be with me. One dear friend, who appointed himself my court jester throughout my treatment, texted me with a terrible joke every single time I was wired up to a drip. My biggest client bought me a real Hermes scarf to cover my bald patch! Another amazing friend handled all the woo-woo stuff I love: driving me to Essex to see a healer, and finding a kinesiologist and an acupuncturist to help with the side effects. Someone I hadn’t seen for years sent me some beautiful crystals. Another lovely friend sent me Figleaves vouchers after my surgery so I could buy some new, smaller bras. And my darling husband was always there: holding my thinning hair back when I was throwing up, gently stroking my sore skin, providing tissues for the constant nosebleeds, ferrying me around and generally trying to make life as easy as possible for me.

Chemo days almost felt like we were waiting for a flight to an exotic holiday, not battling anything – just buggering on through it, with humour and patience and as much dignity as one can muster when one is constantly required to get one’s tits out for examination. Trench camaraderie, maybe, but I’ve always thought of cancer as an interesting journey and my most important lesson, rather than a war against rogue cells.

And perhaps the biggest of all the little things was my loved ones’ willingness to indulge me in this. They never cried in front of me. They never showed their fear. They were never too sympathetic. No-one ever said ‘poor you’, thank goodness. They took my rejection of ‘cancer language’ such as ‘fighting’, ‘battling’ and ‘surviving’ on board.

Whatever they talked about between themselves or felt inside, I was always, consistently, buoyed up with laughs, and love, and extreme care. They let me be optimistic, and stubborn, and cheerful and sociable. They encouraged (or at least didn’t completely dismiss) my exploration of complementary therapies. They let me treat cancer as a terribly big adventure. They let me take the controls.

They let me f*ck cancer in my own way. And so I did.

Anger management

This is going to be a hard post for me to write, I suspect. But you know I’ve never shied away from looking myself in the eye and critically assessing my emotions and behaviour. And when there’s a Big Thing going on in the background, it’s kinda tricky to honestly and engagingly write about anything else. So I’m just gonna blog this one out. Be patient with me, gentle reader.

So. This is the thing. [Deep breath]. I lose my temper.

OK, I can hear a chorus of wry guffaws from other mums there. We all lose our rag, I know that. It ain’t pretty, but it happens. Sometimes our reaction is out of proportion to the crime committed. Often, we feel bad and guilty afterwards. But I’m not just talking about ‘normal’ exhausted mummy roaring when the smalls or their father have just tipped you over the edge. I’m talking about a truly disproportionate, terrifying fury that is extremely scary for everyone involved, including me. I’m talking about Losing It. ‘Seeing Red’, like Lucy, the little girl in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Magic Finger’, who finds sparks flying out of her fingers when she gets cross. Being out of control. Anger that bubbles up from deep inside, on a rush of adrenaline, and then explodes with little warning, leaving everyone traumatised, and weeks or months of relationship flotsam and jetsam to mop up. 

Last May I wrote (Moodswings to the Max) about how hard I was finding it on the Tamoxifen I have to take for a total of five years to prevent my particularly aggressive, hormonally-linked form of breast cancer from coming back. I admitted that I was being a nightmare to live with, very up and down, and had on occasion gone off on one with people I love. I was still in that state, though, and not really ready or able to see things clearly.

What’s changed now is that after those horrendous first nine months or so on this powerful medication, I really did settle down, and the mood swings disappeared. And then something weird happened at the start of this year: I started to feel happy. Truly, peacefully, content. It started on a Thursday morning, on the way back from the school run. I was in the car, close to home, and suddenly had this overwhelming feeling that I can only describe as bliss. Like all the love in the world was available to me, and like I could only conceive of expressing myself in loving ways. I know this sounds extraordinary, but that’s how it was.

And it didn’t go away. I had nearly two months of feeling completely marvellous. Work was effortless, and fulfilling; my relationships with DH, my children, my family and friends were relaxed, and loving, and joyful. Nothing really wound me up; I didn’t sweat the small stuff. I stopped worrying about things I couldn’t change. My inner sea was calm, and I was cheerful. I also experienced what I can only describe as compassion for the first time. For someone who has spent much of her adult life in various states of anxiety, depression, resentment and martyrdom, it was a revelation. This was how good life could be, with not a single thing changing other than my outlook! And it was easy, and unconscious! I was happy. Seriously, how cool is that?

All of which loveliness made it even more shocking when a few Saturdays ago, out of the blue, I EXPLODED with anger at a family dinner. No-one saw it coming, least of all me. It was like I was watching myself. I went ballistic, about a small thing, that had always mildly irritated me in the past but which I had never mentioned. I stood up. I shouted. I gesticulated. Doors were slammed. The row escalated – fire was met with fire – and then very soon afterwards I started to feel a terrible sense of remorse, horror, and utter worthlessness. It felt like I had smashed something really precious. I felt utterly drained, wrung out, and like I didn’t want to exist. My thoughts were scrambled.

And then endless apologising, and the validity of the thing I had been trying to communicate negated entirely by the manner in which I delivered it. There were mutterings about me needing to see a doctor, and even mental illness. And then I felt very flat, and very low, for a few days. So sorry. So disappointed and frustrated that I had shattered my own state of calm and happiness. So conscious that the relationships involved would take a long time to get back to normal.

And then I realised that this was the third time since starting on the Tamox that I had done this. There have now been three separate occasions, all with close (safe?) family members, where I’ve been annoyed about some relatively minor bit of behaviour for a while, and then the next time it happens, BOOM. Pinchy, having never mentioned that she was irritated by this behaviour before, throws a grenade into the room. Friendly fire is always the most shocking. There have also been other occasions with acquaintances where I’ve suddenly gone from being Mrs Nice Guy (with a particularly rubbish cleaner, with a jobsworth postman, with a nosy neighbour) to being the Crazy Angry Lady.

And I can only see this now. It’s so obvious, in retrospect, but at the time, on every occasion I really did feel that the other person was to blame, that they had pushed me so far that I had snapped. This gives me hope, actually: I think my Rose Period at the start of the year meant that I was in a good enough place when this last episode happened that I could reflect on and evaluate it in a much more honest way.

Anyway, DH and I went to the doctor (which we both felt was a box-ticking exercise to appease worried family members, to be honest) who was sympathetic, and not at all surprised or concerned given my current chemical make-up. She also cautiously suggested that DH and I go for some joint post-cancer counselling. I have never had any feelings of anger about having had cancer, and feel I’ve dealt fully with my own experience, with outside support in the forms of my wonderful Health Creation Mentor, Kit, and my coach Amanda (not to mention my amazing family and friends). DH has also had his own course of counselling, but we’ve never spoken to anyone together about the hell of 2010-2011. We literally have no idea what the other has gone through. And his tendency to get angry himself when I go off the rails (thus not really helping the situation) may be rooted in his fear of losing me, which we’ve never explored together in a safe place.

I have also taken what feels to me like the most appropriate action: getting some tools under my belt to diffuse anger if and when I feel it brewing. I have just got back from my second cognitive hypnotherapy session with the quite brilliant Teresa Harvey who uses a mix of counselling, hypnotherapy, NLP and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique – the ‘tapping’ that you sometimes see Paul McKenna using to help hardwire positive suggestions more effectively). We’ve looked at my memories and experience of anger, in the past and recently. We’ve done some visualisation stuff in a trance state. We’ve looked at how I might, in the future, be able to calm myself down and respond, rather than react, from a calm, assertive, loving place. It’s exhausting work, because I re-experience all the emotions I felt at the time, but it also feels very cleansing, and important, and positive.

So. I wish I could turn back time and not have put my loved ones – or myself – through these episodes. But sometimes things have to get really bad before they get better. Every experience teaches us something valuable. And if I come out of this more able to deal with conflict and my emotions, then that’s got to be a good thing for my children, my marriage, and my relationships with everyone from our parents to our siblings to my best friends to the bloody jobsworth postman. I’ve only got three and a half more years on the Tamoxifen. And hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be able to say that I used to lose my temper. And get back to being calm and cheerful again.

Most of the time, anyway: I need to continue to teach my children that experiencing a full range of emotions, positive and negative, is normal and desirable, and it’s how you handle those feelings that counts. Also, I’m not the new Pope, or Buddha, and there’s always going to be some tosser who cuts you up on the roundabout.

An Inspector Calls

I’m so excited, I’m just going to come right out with it: my children are now officially, as of today, at A Good School. And it feels SO good.

But I haven’t moved them from the ‘failing’ one they were at. Oh no. Our school, Weyfield Primary in Guildford, has, in the space of just 12 months, done the highly improbable: it’s gone up two Ofsted grades in all four rated categories (pupils’ achievement, quality of teaching, pupils’ behaviour and safety, and leadership & management), from Unsatisfactory to Good across the board. WOW. And WHOOP WHOOP! And WHOOSH!!

When I wrote my original blog post on How I fell in love with my kids’ school back in November, I was overwhelmed by the positive response, on the post and in person, from parents, teachers and support staff at the school. So it’s a huge pleasure to be able to confirm that I wasn’t being blindly optimistic, or defensive, or exaggerating the fabulousness of our sparkly new head teacher.

Simon Wood arrived in January 2012, and after a hell of a tough start, with the support of his wonderful deputy Kate Barnes and a dedicated, committed, energetic team, has turned our school around so dramatically that it really does feel like an entirely different institution. Nevertheless, when Ofsted gave the school 24 hours’ notice of a full inspection a couple of weeks ago, exactly 12 months after the last damning report, I think many of us went into ‘brace’ position.

After the tough first day with the inspectors (and a very late night preparing all the information and data Ofsted require) the head and deputy looked pretty glum. We were just hoping we could maintain the ‘satisfactory’ interim ratings we’d had in the summer, which would in itself have been one hell of an achievement, and maybe we’d keep the ‘good’ rating for leadership and management from the autumn mini-inspection. The conspiracy theories started: maybe it was no coincidence that we were being ‘Ofsteded’ in our final two days before we became an Academy on 1 February. Maybe they would give us an artificially low rating so next year it could be claimed by the DfE that its pet project of academisation had made the difference, not a year of extremely hard graft and inspiring leadership…

But after day two, the whispers started that the inspectors had, in fact, been mightily impressed by what the team had accomplished, against all the odds, in just a year. Parents were given the hint that the school was pleased, and those who had their children on waiting lists at ‘better’ schools might want to change their minds. And today, we finally got to see the report. I’m going to quote directly from it:

‘The headteacher, with the support of the deputy headteacher, has brought a significant and positive transformation to the school’s work since the last inspection. Many parents say ‘it is like being in a different school’. Senior leaders and staff have created exciting and imaginative working spaces that foster pupils’ curiosity. Pupils want to be in school to learn. It is made interesting and magical in all age groups.

‘The Early Years Foundation Stage has been rejuvenated. Teaching is good. Children make good progress and make a good start to their education. Teaching is consistently good across all age groups. Everyone shares the same high expectations. Pupils are being challenged and helped to achieve their best at all times.

‘The speed of pupils’ progress has increased dramatically since the last inspection. Most are now working at expected levels or higher and getting better all the time. Behaviour has improved significantly and is good in lessons and around the school. Pupils know what is expected of them and respond positively. Everyone is now able to work in a calm and productive atmosphere.’

Cool, huh? When I read it this afternoon, I was overcome with emotion and actually cried. Seriously, I had to completely re-do my make-up before heading to pick-up and doing my PTA duty at the Valentine’s disco. Seeing recognition for what the school has achieved in black and white was quite overwhelming. I am bursting with pride for our head and his team, and for a school that is finally a joyful, buzzing, productive community. And I am hugely relieved that I bet on the right horse instead of moving the kiddies to another school last year. They are so precious, and their education is so important, and it’s great to know that my gut feeling that we are in the right place is now backed by solid evidence. In other words: he’s only bloody gone and done it.

The best thing is that the pointers to how to improve further and reach Outstanding status are, well, sort of flimsy. Like they had to find something to say, because it’s probably not allowed to jump from failing to outstanding in a year (and also because our SATs results do obviously still have some catching up to do). Nevertheless, we are well on the way to achieving the goal of being an Outstanding school in the not-too-distant.

So once again, I am delighted to get my pom-poms out, along with a growing number of other cheerleaders, and do a little routine, maybe even involving a cheeky high kick, ending with jazz hands and a triumphant yell: WEYFIELD ROCKS!

Where have all the cowboys gone?

I’m worried about the boys. Or rather, men. Really, I am. Over the past couple of years, a hefty percentage of the chaps I know, or who are married to people I know, appear to have dived, lemming-like, into what I can only describe as a mid-life crisis of some kind.

I spent a couple of days last week with some amazing women, on a goal-setting day run by our fabulous coach Amanda Alexander. We all run our own small – mostly one-woman-band – businesses. We all have professional backgrounds, some at a very senior corporate level. We all have young children. We’re all planning significant income for the year ahead, some of us into six figures. And as we talked – in the collaborative, open, non-competitive, supportive, sharing, and sometimes emotional way that a group of like-minded women talk – it became clear that most of us had something else in common. Problems with our men.

Between us, the grown-up boys in our lives had been through, or were still going through, a whole smorgasbord of bad stuff, including: anger management issues, depression, unemployment, family illness, and bereavement. Divorce and separation – past or impending – was mentioned by around 50% of our group. Counselling, medication, suspected infidelity, obsessive fitness, expensive new hobbies, and the purchase of powerful motorbikes had all been involved. Other themes included husbands and partner’s disengagement, absence, lack of support for their women and children (whether emotional, financial or in terms of childcare), really quite shit communication skills, emotional constipation, and general flakiness.

Seriously, where’s this guy when you need him?

And it’s not just this group of women. In conversation with friends, The Trouble With Our Men comes up again and again. But please don’t get the wrong idea, boys: we’re (mostly) not sitting around bitching about how crap you are. We’re properly worried about you. We love you, and we care about you, and we’re worried as wives, as mothers of sons, and as friends of women and men. We’re worried about what these mid-life crises – because this does seem to be happening to a ridiculous amount of men in their late thirties and early forties – mean for you, for us, for our marriages, for our children, and for society.

A couple of months ago I heard that men aged 35-49 are now the highest suicide risk in the UK, according to government figures for 2008-2010. I was saddened, but not at all surprised, by the stats. Men in this age group – our husbands, our children’s fathers – are under an awful lot of pressure. I’m no psychologist or sociologist (or any other ‘ist’, unless you count piss artist), but it seems pretty obvious that men’s place in the world is not as straightforward as it used to be. For a whole load of complex reasons, men are no longer necessarily respected as the head of the family, authority figures, breadwinners (hunter gatherers…). The old testosterone-fuelled ways of running businesses and indeed countries – power, aggression, competition – don’t seem to be working quite as well. They are also expected to step up and achieve their earning potential, be active and involved parents, share the running of the household, be great in bed, and be emotionally intelligent.

I’m being simplistic here, but it seems as if we want men to be softer and more sensitive, and yet we still expect them to be strong. Meanwhile, women are busy changing the world while changing nappies. No wonder men are confused. No wonder they feel rather emasculated. No wonder they need to be in control. No wonder they feel like they ‘can’t do anything right’,  and ‘can’t go on like this’, and ‘need some time out’ and ‘we don’t show them enough affection’. Chuck a recession, job and money worries into the mix, and you’ve got a timebomb on your hands.

In some cases it seems almost like post-traumatic stress disorder: something very bad has happened, and they just haven’t had the tools to deal with it. My own DH won’t mind me saying that he found my diagnosis of breast cancer and 18 months of treatment incredibly hard. He had to be strong, for me, for our babies, for his employer, when he felt shocked, scared, anxious, and really very upset much of the time. He had additional responsibilities with the children and the home as well as working full time, his wife (who would normally have been his confidante and coach through a crisis) was throwing up after chemo, losing her hair, recovering from surgery, and then working out how to be herself again. When it was finally all over, he just hadn’t dealt with any of it, and this manifested itself in getting increasingly shouty and exploding  about nothing at all. We’ve pretty much sorted it out now, and I think we’re better at talking, and loving each other, than we ever have been in our 23 years together. But, you know, there was definitely a point at which our marriage could have swung the other way.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to bear, when our men dissolve into tears, or are distant and numb, or avoid coming home from work, or drink too much, or yell at us, or even attempt to find solace in another, less frosty, bed. There is, it has to be said, an element of frustration, impatience and resentment in our feelings about all of this. It might even seem, when they are being particularly rubbish, like selfishness or self-indulgence, because mothers have to keep buggering on, basically. The kids’ tea isn’t going to make itself, no matter how shit we feel. Even when I’ve been in the depths of depression, we’ve all had clean pants. But resentment is not a fertile ground for love.

I am worried about the boys, because I love all of the men in my life, and I want them to be happy. I’m a feminist, but not to the extent that I want an alarming number of men to feel like killing themselves because they can’t live up to expectations. I don’t want men to feel useless, and fearful, and powerless, and pointless. Because we’re a team, right? We need each other. We’re on the same side. And I don’t want to be doing all of this on my own. At some point we need to stop resenting our men who aren’t manning up for whatever reason, and feel pity, and express compassion, and show them love. To treat them with humour, patience and praise, a bit like recalcitrant children. To make it easy for them to talk to us. To be their safe place. And gently encourage them to put on a smile and some metaphorical lipstick, face their adoring public, and keep the show on the road.

 

Taking the Black Dog for a walk

Happy New Year! How was your Christmas? Ours was pretty darn textbook, actually. It kicked off with an excellent panto  - Dick Whittington in Woking – with dear friends, and DH heroically finishing decorating our elegant grey dining room just before the big day. We spent Christmas Eve singing carols in the open air in Shere village with family and friends. Christmas day, with my mummy and daddy joining us for the first time, was relaxed, and happy, and foody, and excellent-spoily-presenty and champagney. Boxing day, hosted in aforementioned dining room, was a perfect family occasion: table extended and groaning with delicious cold cuts and pies, cousins playing beautifully together, siblings, parents and in-laws chatting, drinking and laughing. Then me and the kiddies had the requisite virus for a full five days (boo hiss), until New Year’s Eve, when we all decamped to the Runnymede hotel and spa in Egham for a 24 hour minibreak with my sis and our smalls and olds. Swimming, sauna, steam room, new short dress that was probably not designed for a 39 year old, bubbles, great food, dancing with 70 year olds to Rihanna. Tears at midnight after DH mentioned that two years ago on New Year’s Eve I was having my third chemo. More spa action with horrendous I-am-possibly-not-sober-yet hangover. Classic stuff.

Pure joy!

And then the holidays are over, and it’s back to earth with a bump. Reality bites. Back to work. Back to the hectic school run. For me, I have to say, this was BLISS. I love our children more than ever; now they are 6 and 4 they are delightful company: funny, sweet, clever, creative and pretty well-behaved most of the time. But I’ve always been honest about full-time motherhood not being my forte, and some days I find the utter lack of peace and quiet and space to even think in the school holidays quite* (*very)  stressful. Spending the first day of term – an inset day – having a Family Day at Ikea (I know, WTF was I thinking?) was not my best decision ever; we all basically fell out quite spectacularly. The kiddies were desperate to go back to school on Tuesday (they love it, even more this term as our wonderful head and deputy and their creative team of teachers have turned the whole place into a magical Narnia-fairytale-nursery-rhyme mash up. You even have to go through huge ‘wardrobe doors’ and a row of fur coats into a sparkly winter forest to get past the entrance hall. Sensational.) And I was very glad to be back in my office. Utter silence. Me and a huge pile of documents to edit. Earl Grey. No need to speak to anyone or worry about meeting anyone else’s needs for five and a half hours. Like I said, a little bit of heaven, if you’re me.

So why the ‘Black Dog’ of the title, if life is so good at the moment? For once, thank goodness, it’s not my black dog  (read Mr Chartwell for one of the most beautiful, funny, surreal vignettes about depression. It’s got an actual massive black dog in it). But I do know from experience that January isn’t always a ‘new start’ in a positive way, if you do have a big dark-haired canine slobbering all over you.

It’s no secret that I am, shall we say, prone to depression. I have come to the conclusion that, certainly before the diagnosis of breast cancer, I was just one of those people who was anxious, depressed, or panicky for much of my life since about the age of 14. Cognitive behavioural therapy eventually knocked the panic attacks on the head, and the rather good Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors – SSRIs, aka the Prozac type of anti-depressant – sorted out the two bouts of ‘normal’ and one bout of post-natal depression. I probably should also have been on them after DS was born and failed to digest properly or sleep for 18 months, in retrospect. And while now, post-facing-up-to-my-own-mortality-and-vowing-to-end-suffering-etc, I am honestly more contented and cheerful than ever, I still get the odd black dog day, which is probably mostly down to the mind-bending powers of the breasty-lump-preventing Tamoxifen I am 18 months into a five year prescription of.

Christmas dinner in the new dining room.

So I get many aspects of the broad umbrella condition known as depression. I get not wanting to be labelled. I get not wanting to give it a name. I get not wanting to be seen as crazy. I get not wanting to been seen as not coping, or not in control, or ill. I get not wanting everyone to know you’ve been diagnosed. I get being reluctant to go on anti-depressants. I get the hell of the first few weeks of the drugs, and the trickiness and fear of coming off them again. I get being pissed off when people who love you assume that if you are just plain angry or upset or down or exhausted, then you must need medication again to moderate your feelings or behaviour. And I also get that the drugs don’t always work. That you may need a different little pill at a different dose, or to try a completely different treatment or approach, before you truly start feeling normal again and your brain chemistry gently resets itself. That you may also need some kind of therapy or counselling, for the treatment to be most effective. That even if you are ‘well’, you will have good days and very, very bad days. That alcohol and anti-depressants don’t really work. That no-one else can fix you, however much they love you.

I’m really looking forward to 2013, anticipating fun and adventures and laughter and lovely times with family and friends, including mine and DH’s 40th birthdays. But I’ve been depressed in January before, and I remember it felt like a whole burdensome, impossible year of numbness and going through the motions was ahead of me. It felt like another year that I couldn’t even imagine getting through. Making positive plans and decisions was incredibly hard, especially when I was pretending to everyone that I was fine, as I did for long periods of time. It sometimes felt, quite acutely, like maybe if I removed myself from the framework of my life – a different university, a different boyfriend or husband (or no-one at all, just precious solitude), a different home, no children, different friends, a different country, a different job – then somehow I would be released from the trap I was in. Maybe then I would be OK. Be happy, even. Feel better. Maybe my relationships were bad, and if I wasn’t in them anymore, I would be myself again. Maybe it was my employer’s fault, and if I went freelance (as I did, resigning on a whim in 2001 without consulting my new husband because I couldn’t take another day of panic attacks) then I would be absolutely fine. I very much was not. I thought I had had a moment of absolute clarity. But I really was in a crazy place from where no major decisions should be taken. In my very, very darkest days, I might even have considered that it would be better all round if I simply didn’t exist (I know! A world without Pinchy! What a terrible thought!).

But one thing I have learned over the past 25 years of coping with a whole smorgasbord of depression and anxiety is that the solution is never, ever outside me. It’s all in my head. Changing major structural and emotional elements of my life will not alleviate my symptoms, or turn me into a cheerful, happy-go-lucky person. Running away from the people who love me, and spreading the suffering further, won’t make life easier, or more fun, or less like wading through porridge. Checking out won’t turn my dampened feelings up again, or release the need, however it presents itself, for oblivion. Because, to paraphrase something extraordinarily insightful that philosopher Alain de Botton once said in a book on travel, the trouble with going away is that you take yourself with you. Even if you’ve never been depressed, you’ll understand this if you’ve ever booked a dream holiday, thought about its lush tropicalness and spa treatments and views and swimming pools for months, and then been let down when the reality was  filled with as many marital disagreements, over-tired and exhausting children, and general drudge as spending a week at home. People who move to the other side of the world and then slowly realise they haven’t actually achieved the mythical ‘new start with quality time together as a family’ know this. We are all still ourselves, whatever the location. You’ll still be you in your next job, your next relationship, your next home. And if you is depressed, to a greater or lesser extent, that ain’t gonna change. You are, in effect, merely taking the black dog for a walk.

Happiness is always, and forever, and only, available within ourselves. It’s a terribly simple thing, but tantalisingly difficult to achieve. My wise mummy often says that being happy all the time is impossible (and probably another sort of madness), but we can all find moments of joy. And the massive secret is, it’s only you blocking your capacity for joy – no-one else has that power over you. Whatever other people do or say or feel, or don’t do or say or feel, is irrelevant. After the drugs and/or therapy have done their initial job of resetting the thermostat, sooner or later you need to start looking inside to achieve any sort of inner peace, contentment, and a sense of joy.

A very onesie Christmas…

The three things I’ve found most effective are basically the opposite of running away. They are about meeting myself, treating myself  gently and with love, and appreciating all the infinite good in my life:

1. I express gratitude. I count my blessings. If I’ve had a particularly bad day, in my head before I go to sleep I list all the small things I am grateful for that day, from being given a cuddle, to finding a parking space, nabbing a bargain, a friendly email, someone who made me laugh, or a good meal.

2. I try to be in the moment. I make a conscious effort to become mindful. Whatever I am doing, I do it with all my focus. I try to honour the people I am with, the work I am doing, the journey I am on, with my absolute attention. This might mean getting off Twitter and actually playing with the children or watching the movie with them, or slowing down, stopping multi-tasking, and doing one thing really well. It might mean, on a more micro level, when I am feeling particularly strung out or detached, focusing on each of my senses in turn. What can I hear? What can I see? What can I feel in my body? What can I taste? Because when it comes down to it, I am just a woman, sitting, standing, breathing. All the rest is storytelling, and some of the stories we tell ourselves about what our life is like only increase our pain and suffering.

3. I am learning to love myself. Many of us don’t even like ourselves. I say ”I love and approve of myself” to my reflection or just  mutter it under my breath, many times a day. This was surprisingly hard to start with. I felt tearful, and resistant, and silly, and started coughing, and yawning. But I kept at it. It really, really helps. I guess because if you are OK with yourself, it’s much easier to see an abundance of love, joy and other good things every day; we find in the world that which we project out into it.

And these are not just tricks to get me through bad times. They can turn an average, normal day into a pretty wonderful one too. The difference is all in my mind, you see. It’s my firm intention that 2013 will be packed to the rafters with all good things, and so it will be. I know I’ll have good days and bad days, but I also know when I look back at 2013 on New Year’s Eve, every experience and feeling I have had will be all down to me, and no-one else. And why wouldn’t I choose a Happy New Year?