Goodbye 37, hello 38
It’s after 10pm on Monday 12th July 2021 (and in fact it’s nearly midnight as I press publish). On Wednesday, I’ll be celebrating my 38th birthday. A few days ago I had one of those sudden moments of knowing that I wanted to write something about what being 37 has been like for me, something I can look back on in the future, and something I can share with those who want to read it.
For context, I spent the whole day today in bed after a pretty full on week last week. I couldn’t stay awake, couldn’t function and couldn’t work. Over stretched and over stimulated, my body responded by getting sick and I had to just rest. I’m really grateful to be feeling a bit better this evening, and the slowness of today has allowed me to formulate some thoughts about this past year of my life.
I’m sure there’s loads I’ve forgotten to write about, but here are a few key highlights from my most recent trip around the sun.
First up, a realisation…
Tonight, lying in the bath, I was thinking about what I’d write and a realisation came to me.
I am the first woman in my maternal line to be this age and not have any children of my own. Nick’s daughter is in my life of course, and I love her so much, but it feels quite striking to me to be child-free (I don’t feel childless) at this age and to connect the dots through the generations. When my mum was my age, she had three daughters – and I was already 12 years old, just on the cusp of becoming a teenager! That’s wild. And of course, every woman before her in my maternal line had (as far as I know) multiple children. For previous generations of women, that was of course just ‘the done thing’ and many women without children were viewed by society as anomalies or aberrations. For me, it feels a little bit like being a pioneer.
I can’t lie: it’s been one of the hardest things about being this age, the relentless and increasingly urgent baby/child/parenting question. It’s something I can hand on heart say I have spent at least some time thinking about every single day of the past year (and more). I’ve spent countless hours thinking about, talking about, wrestling with, crying over, fretting about, stressing about, reading about and processing. There have been times in the last year where I’ve really wanted to become a mother and times when I really, really haven’t.
I don’t know what the future holds, and right now I feel clear about what feels right for me and for our little family, but regardless of what I and Nick want or don’t want, choose or don’t choose, and whether that happens or doesn’t happen, I am turning 38 not pregnant and not a biological mother. It is many things, being this age without children, and I have a LOT I would like to share about it, probably in the years to come. But tonight, connecting the dots and realising that I am in some way pioneering something different in my family system by being the first woman in my maternal line not to have a child, it feels oddly poignant, powerful in a way I hadn’t expected.
Next up, this time last year…
This time last year I’d been viewing properties for about three and a half months and had almost put an offer on one flat. But it just wasn’t right. Then, around July 12th I think (I am almost certain it was this day a year ago actually!) I came to view this flat that Nick and I now call home.
I put the offer in to the estate agent on my birthday last year, and five arduous and stressful months later on Winter Solstice 2020, the sale completed and I got the keys. Now, another seven months on, Nick and I have really settled in and have had multiple occasions where we’ve had friends and family over – something I did too little of in the past. I’m so grateful lockdown restrictions have relaxed and have allowed us to do this.
As a recovering under-earner and someone who has really (really) struggled to find my place in the world of work, I am deeply grateful that I managed to get to a place where I could secure a mortgage as a self-employed individual – and I’m indebted to certain key people in my family for their generosity and help. Otherwise I probably would have been renting for the rest of my life.
Owning a home is one of those things that I spent most of my adult life either thinking wasn’t for me, or that I wasn’t capable of doing, and tonight I feel very proud of myself to be here, in my first home.
Our family…
Two and a half years ago, a beautiful man came into my life, and I into his. And because he is a dad, many months later so did his daughter.
I have multiple ‘step-parent’ figures in my life, and so becoming one myself has been really beautiful. Hard sometimes, very hard in certain moments, and something that I often feel there isn’t enough awareness or conversation around, but I wouldn’t change it.
I love Nick and his daughter deeply.
I’m an anxious-avoidant, so can swing from being incredibly neurotic and needy to aloof and distant, but something that a teacher once told me feels true today – that the love between us can withstand the pressure of all the ‘stuff’ that we bring with us into relationships. We’ve navigated a lot together in the last 12 months and I’m astonished by his daughter’s confidence and growth. If you’re friends with me on Instagram or Facebook, then you’ll have seen little snippets of our family, but holding good boundaries around this is also very important to me for multiple reasons.
One current thing I feel so happy about is that I get to wake up on my birthday with her here in her second home, and that I’ll get to spend some 1:1 time with her over summer. And next week, the three of us are going to our first festival and I’m nervously excited. It is indeed the circle of life.
Work has been amazing (and gosh, self-doubt is hard)
Over the past year, I have had the utter privilege of working with hundreds of people who work in the not-for-profit sector through the workshops I facilitate for my friend Hannah’s incredible business, Bird. I’ve coached around 50 people too, which has been an honour and a privilege that I do not hold lightly.
I’m also involved in a couple of other organisations as a consultant/coach and a writer respectively, both of which I am very grateful for.
I’ve also spent a huge amount of time struggling with self-doubt, self-criticism, worry and anxiety about my performance. That’s been hard, but my overall feeling is that I’m starting to really find my feet with my work in the world, and for that I’m incredibly grateful. I feel like the next year will be interesting, work wise. I’m taking August off to rest and play and breathe, and knowing that if it carries on like it has been, it’ll be fairly full on from September onwards.
Mental health
My mental health has not been great overall in the last 12 months. Yes, there was a pandemic, but I think mostly it’s been because I’m still finding my way in terms of my interior life and the frameworks I draw on to help make sense of this painful, brutal thing called the human experience. Years and years ago, I depended on the 12 steps to show me how to live. After that, for many years, it was A Course in Miracles. And these days, I’m in a process of unravelling and re-finding my feet. I talk about this almost every week in therapy (along with the Baby Question), and I do feel that I’m where I’m meant to be, but god, it’s been hard at times. I have felt a genuine desire to not be alive on numerous occasions in the past year. Self-hate has been high, self-confidence has been low. I’ve often worried about feeling like my heart is more closed than it used to be. Something has gotten lost in letting go of ACIM. I don’t think it’s gone forever; I think I’m integrating a lot of complicated stuff. Finally graduating from the Tavistock helped a piece of that land. Weekly therapy has helped too, as has having a fairly small but close circle of people around me.
To some, I am a person who has ‘relapsed’ – I started drinking and exploring certain substances again nearly three years ago after 17-ish years of total abstinence/sobriety from drink and drugs. But I don’t see my mental health or recovery journey in such purist terms. I had plenty of ups and downs when I was actively ‘in recovery’, and whilst alcohol etc have made life more complicated in some ways (as I need to often self-reflect and manage this extra aspect of my life), I have also had some wicked fun, made some great memories, and I have deepened my sense of being able to trust myself in this area. There was an excellent incident with a ladder with one friend, and there’s been loud singing of the Hamilton soundtrack, a month and a half drink-free, some wicked outdoor dancing in a mate’s garden and lots in between.
Maybe I was never an addict, or maybe I was. Maybe I’ll go teetotal again in future. But today, I feel like I’ve done my best to get through what’s been a really hard 18 months for so many of us, and I’m doing alright.
My friendship group is small but deep
I feel in the last year that I’ve deepened certain friendships, others have waned somewhat, and others have had a few bumps in the road. I don’t have a massive social circle, but my god, I am so, so grateful for my friends – including the ones I see once or twice a year but who, when I see them, pick up right where we left off.
Sometimes I feel sad that I don’t have more friends, especially locally, and I know that sometimes, I am a less than perfect friend. I struggle with people a lot these days. I’m more introverted than I’ve perhaps ever really realised, and as I said earlier, my mental health has been pretty fragile at different points in the last year so I’ve often struggled to stay in consistent contact with people. But there have been some wonderful bright spots in the year too, laughter and memory making (especially since lockdown has eased), and I’m looking forward to more of that in the year ahead.
I’ve started writing my first book
It’s slow going, and I haven’t built the habits of a writer who really takes her craft seriously yet. I still go days and weeks without properly writing for myself, and I’m not ‘building an audience’, but I have really owned that I want to be a writer who writes and that I want to write a book. I am writing it, bit by tiny bit, and I do believe today much more than I did a year ago that it will get finished at some point.
Writing a memoir is not easy. There are so many things (i.e. people) to consider, and so many layers to the truth of our lives. There is the question of authenticity, and many avenues to explore around the reasons I want to write it at all. I’ve sat with some incredibly difficult, disturbing questions about certain experiences that I have a sense of but can’t quite remember in the last few months. I’ve had coaching, have done a memoir writing course, and have found an amazing community of writers that I want to become more involved with in the next year.
Oh! And I read a poem I wrote last October (fun fact, I actually wrote it whilst high) at an open mic night and got wonderful feedback! One of my goals for the next year is to learn it off by heart and recite it live to an audience without reading it. That would feel incredible.
And… we FINALLY started climbing
I think it was Nick who first suggested going climbing a couple of years ago. We talked about it quite a lot, but neither of us got round to booking it. Then, just a few weeks ago, I booked us in for an induction session and we are both hooked. We’re actually spending my birthday bouldering in Tunbridge Wells!
One thing I love about how this has come into our lives is that we’ve both crossed the threshold into discovering it together. In the past, I would find myself getting into my (now ex) husband’s hobbies, and then over time wrestling with the fact that it (cycling/weight training) was never really something I deeply wanted to do. But climbing is different. Driving to the centre for the first time a few weeks ago, I was pretty convinced it wasn’t for me. But the feeling of topping a route is just amazing. I think my body can do more than I know, and I think it has a lot to teach me about inner strength, determination and resilience.
We are both complete novices but I can already see so much progression and I have this funny feeling it might be something we stick with for a while… Watch this space (or, if you want to watch an actual space, perhaps this one.)
My hopes for the next 12 months
My biggest hope or wish for the next 12 months is simply confidence and trust. I want to feel more comfortable in my skin, and to trust in the timing and unfolding of my life. It’s not like a lot of other people’s lives, and I’m good with that (apart from when I’m anxiously comparing myself to what I think I ‘should’ be or do, ha!).
And at the risk of sounding like a Miss World competitor, I do also hope that there is more ease, connection, relief and peace for people in general. I feel like we’ve all been having a really hard time in the last 18+ months and it would be lovely for there to be good times ahead, too.
So that’s it from the 37-year-old me. Goodbye, and hello (almost) to 38. I wonder what you have in store…