In my experience it’s very rarely accompanied by flashes, bangs, glitter, fireworks, gasps, or small white animals.
Instead, it’s usually a tingling – a circle of pins and needles at the top of my head.
That’s how I know when magic is near me.
I’ve felt it many times in my life. When I’ve written the perfect sentence. When I’ve held a baby. When I’ve laughed myself silly over something. When I’ve done something, or seen something, or felt something AMAZING. When I’ve witnessed incredible coincidence. When disparate parts have suddenly fallen together perfectly.
That’s magic.
A cold knowing.
A bubble of happy, at the moment of burst.
Hairs raised on your arms, on the inside and the outside.
Magic, for me, has become rarer as I’ve gotten older.
The problem (and weirdly, the gift) of experience is the perspective it gives you on small moments as part of a wider picture – so whatever you’re experiencing isn’t so all-consuming. And while the pain isn’t as world-endingly acute as when you’re a child, for instance, the magic isn’t quite as bright either. Not when put into your now bigger context.
But every now and again, I still find a small pocket of magic.
Usually when I’m not looking.
And I found one the other day on Channel 4.
Now. I don’t watch that much telly, partly because I don’t have the time, and partly because my telly watching is done with small children in tow, and as they’ve become bigger it’s actually gotten worse. Although they could theoretically now watch things I actually want to watch, they don’t want to, and now they’re up later in the evening so they’re eating into my solo TV time. (In fact we’re fast approaching the moment when the Big Small’s bedtime will be after mine).
So anyway, all in all I managed to miss the now very old documentary about that time they dug King Richard III up from a car park in Leicester.
I remember seeing it on the news.
What I don’t remember is quite how mad the whole thing was…
So here’s the basics, in case this passed you by, too, or you’ve forgotten because it was so long ago.
Some brilliantly bonkers woman with a weird fan-crush on Richard III did a bunch of research on where his body ended up, and managed to persuade people at the University of Leicester to dig up a social services car park, which she believed was the site of an old friary.
She is joined in this random quest at various points by various academics who clearly think she’s as mad as a hatter, the most comically camp local historian ever to have unwittingly impersonated John Inman, Simon Farnaby of Horrible Histories and Ghosts fame, and, importantly, SIMON FARNABY’S HAIR – which is so moppily huge, out of control and genuinely charismatic it deserved it’s own billing on the credits.
So this unlikely crew rock up to this car park, pick a spot which is randomly emblazoned with the letter R (for Richard or possibly Reserved, we don’t know) and start digging. They literally find his skeleton in the first trench they dig, within the first ten minutes of the documentary.
He’s even got clear scoliosis (the curvature of the spine for which he’s famous) – which greatly upsets the bonkers lady as she’s convinced herself (and her obsessive online fan club) that this was all a propaganda myth perpetrated by the Tudors stealing his throne. There are actual tears!
The scene where Bonkers Lady and Camp Historian reverently remove the cardboard-boxed remains from the grave, draped in a flag of Richard III’s colours – and then shove it in the footwell of a crappy car – all under the withering gaze of the academics, is one to behold, and indeed to treasure.
The next hour and a half is devoted to them gradually unearthing more and more evidence that against all likelihood, sense and expectation this IS in fact the real Richard, via actual historical evidence and even the DNA of his 17th generation cabinet-maker grandson. (!!!)
And the very best bit is watching all of these highly-educated professors slowly having to admit this random crazy woman, all her conspiracy theories and the tingle she got in the car park – WERE ACTUALLY RIGHT ALL ALONG.
It is pure gold.
And surely, SURELY, a little bit of magic.
Certainly, I got a bit of a tingle. (Though that could have been the Sauvignon Blanc).
So if magic is a commodity you are running low on, if you love a good coincidence, and/or celebrating Britain’s eccentrics, if you need to believe the world is bigger and better and more organised than it currently looks, this is well worth your time.
Even if you’re a few years behind everyone else on it.
Even if you don’t believe in magic anymore.
The really important bit, I find, is just to keep on looking for it.
In all the littlest, oldest, and almost forgotten places.
365 days of missing you - in tiny pinpricks and deep gasps, ways big and small, hard and soft, fast forward and slow motion.
The passing prickle of your bark-laugh, or something like it, from across a room. The press of your presence, the invisible weight of your hand in mine, things you would have said - so loud in my ear, I jump.
Wisps of space you should have taken, or thunderous chasms – all the gaps you would have filled (probably with ugly lumps of plastic and bracing flair) now black holes, leaching out the technicolour you loved.
And sometimes life is stilted, like those first films, jerky and grainy, white scratches and black grit - silent below the white-noise whirr of the projector.
I wonder what you would say about their fate, these machines that were your life’s work, as we try to rehome them? But I can hear it. Your half-joke pine-whine, mock offence – arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
The first film we watched, I was sick. The blue carpet scratched my knees and I worried about my jungle nightie. And then I was scooped on your lap, clean and warm and thrilled to be up late, your moustache tickling my head, rough fingers stroking my palm - tobacco and oil and rusted tin - the roar of battle in my ears as the prince fought the dragon, the dark in my lungs.
When the sword turns black, I am afraid – but I am also safe. Because before I knew sentences, or myself, I knew you were there – and I knew it every day after
but these last ones.
I am afraid again.
Will there be 365 ways to miss you, next year? Will they hurt when I need them to? Will the sound fade and pictures blur to grey as life grinds on scene by scene and drags me with it - celluloid frames improperly stored?
The thorns recede and the princess wakes up, inexorably over and over, colour flooding her cheeks - a thousand times or more through the years, despite your protests.
At the end, the tape flaps wildly, spinning free like me, now, Reeling.
One of the problems with children is that just when you’ve buried some past trauma/shame nice and deep, they go through something similar and you have to dredge it all back up again and DEAL WITH IT LIKE AN ADULT.
Urg.
The Big Small moved to secondary school in September. Inevitably, that has meant new and changing friendships as the social structure flexes and settles.
It has therefore also meant some Girl Drama.
I am familiar with Girl Drama. It saddens and actually slightly surprises me that SO LITTLE has changed in the last 30 years in terms of social structures, cliques, frenemies, and bullying.
There is still all of the eye rolling, the ignoring, excluding, undermining and mean little jibes. There’s still the gathering into ‘sides’, with self-preserving peers inevitably following the strongest social force.
But I don’t know why it surprises me, because it’s not even like I’m remembering all this from 30 years ago…
The last time I was bullied, I was at work.
ALL of the above happened – like it was playing out in a classroom.
And I did everything wrong.
What’s really difficult is that under this sort of situation, it seems the Big Small has similar, wrong natural instincts. It’s painful to watch history repeat itself. And despite having decades of experience on her, I fear I’m STILL not the best person to help her navigate it.
When there is conflict, I automatically assume I’m the one in the wrong. However angry or wronged I feel, it is short-lived, and I go very quickly into appease mode. So does she. We show our juggulars, try and ingratiate ourselves, flatter, bribe, grovel. We’ll go to great lengths to try and gain sympathy to make it stop.
But the more submissive you are the more you annoy your aggressor, and the more you act the victim, the more you get treated like one.
What happened to me in the workplace has taken a really, really long time to get over. And the hardest bit has been to forgive myself.
The fact is that not only did I not handle it well, I didn’t behave well. And I’m ashamed of both. In fact this is the first time I’ve ever talked about it.
Looking back with kindness, as I am slowly learning to do, I was struggling with my increasingly toxic marriage, with postnatal depression that had re-triggered my OCD and other long-standing mental health issues, plus miscarriage and fertility problems and the physical ill-health that was causing them.
I was not dealing with any of it healthily or successfully.
It clearly affected my work, my reactions to people and situations – my personality. I was oversensitive, over-reactive, in constant fight, flight or freeze mode. I wasn’t thinking in straight lines, in long terms – or very much about others.
And I’m sure I was very, very annoying.
But here’s the thing I now know. I know I was never actually failing to deliver the core things I needed to, even if I was no longer a rising star. And I was never deliberately cruel or unkind to anyone.
I KNOW, now, that I did not deserve to be treated the way I was treated.
I think the worst moment was coming in on mat leave for a meeting, steeling myself and going up to say hi to one particular woman. She literally rolled her eyes at me, did not respond, and turned her back to talk loudly to someone else in full view of the whole office.
Regina George eat your heart out.
I thought I was going to pass out with the sheer awfulness of it (which says something about the place I was in). I couldn’t hear, or see, and everything burned static. It was so public, and so humiliating – it’s still excruciating to remember it. And when I managed to pluck up the courage to mention it to my manager, who had clearly seen and was aware, she smirked at me, and said it would probably blow over. It was clear they had discussed me.
It remained heavy weight over the rest of my mat leave, and an early death knell to my time there. She had more seniority, connections and social power than me, and I was restructured out not too long after – something I now consider a huge favour.
The trouble, I have learned, with being a victim, is that no victim is ever perfect. You sort of become complicit in your own bullying or abuse, by whatever it was that caused you to be chosen, by continuing to take it, by reacting badly to it, by trying to control when and how it happens.
So here are the things that I’m still trying to learn about how to deal with bullying and/or difficult people, and I’m trying my best to pass on to my kids.
10 WAYS TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE – as an adult or a child:
1. Reflect
Bullying is NEVER your fault, but it’s worth stepping back to consider what’s happening, when, and why. Be honest with yourself – IS there something you should apologise for? Are there triggers for this person, or patterns that you can notice? Does the bullying happen when you’re talking about specific subjects, or using specific phrases, for instance? Are there things you can avoid, or ways to present information, so there’s less drama between you?
Just make sure you’re not compromising yourself. You’re figuring out how they operate and what they need from you so you rub along better – you’re not changing your whole personality for them.
2. Call it out
Try and call out problematic behaviour in the moment. It’s often useful to pretend you didn’t hear something, and ask someone to repeat it, or to pretend you didn’t understand, and ask them to explain it. If it’s openly unkind or awful, having to say it out loud again might make them rethink.
If they do say it again, be surprised. “Wow, okay” or “Wow, that was kind of mean/aggressive/extreme.” And follow this up with, “Are you okay?”. Turn it back to THEM to justify what they’re saying and why.
3. Stay calm
‘If you don’t react then they’ll get bored’ is trite bullying advice, but there’s something in it. If you’re not showing that you’re upset or angry, then you stay in control. Bullies are getting a dopamine hit from having power over you – take some of the pleasure out of it. And give them less material to use against you. Be factual, plain, emotionless, and concise.
If you need to, go full Grey Rock (scroll back to see previous blogs for more details on how to do this).
4. Have a direct, goal-oriented conversation
The next step is to have a direct conversation (I am still terrible at this). Get the person on their own, or take a friend with you to help. “Karen, I get the impression I’ve annoyed you. I didn’t mean to, and I want to set things right. Can you let me know what the problem is so we can fix it?”
Be armed with examples if they deny things. “Yesterday when I said X, you said X, and I just wanted to ask what that was about.” Sometimes, it can be helpful to keep a diary of the behaviour, partly so you know you’re not going mad.
If they do respond, be prepared to listen, and consider what they say. Be goal-orientated – it’s not about scoring points or righting wrongs, it’s about agreeing what each of you needs to do to interact more successfully in the future. “What can we do differently next time?”
5. Tell someone
However old you are, it’s so important not to go through bullying alone. If you have not been able to sort it out for yourself, it’s time to get someone else involved. That could be a parent, a teacher, a manager, or HR.
This is where it’s really useful to have that diary – make sure it includes dates and witnesses who were there at the time.
6. Remove yourself
If you are consistently having problems with someone, distance can help. If it’s possible, literally go off and do something else – with someone else. Some useful phrases:
“I don’t think this conversation is helpful, so I’m going to go.”
“Let’s come back to this later.”
“I need a bit of time out – I’ll see you later.”
“I said I’d hang with XX today – see you later.”
7. Find your tribe
Not everyone was made to be best friends, and that’s okay. Not everybody has to like you – that’s okay, too! And it doesn’t reflect badly on you if they don’t. Find your people – the ones that appreciate you when you’re all of your different yous – silly, grumpy, high and low. Lean into those alternative friendships.
8. BE YOU
Here’s the real secret to bullying. BE YOU.
If you’re less around someone, if you’re littler, quieter, feebler, if you’re in ‘victim mode’ around someone, then you’re not YOU. And that actually makes it easier to bully you.
Being you is your superpower. When you do it fully and unashamedly, it’s actually the thing that attracts people – and specifically YOUR KIND OF PEOPLE. And when you’re happy and fulfilled and doing your thing, the bullying affects you less, and often just drops away.
9. Try and understand
Bullying works in cycles. Happy people don’t bully others. So it might help to try and understand your bully, and that it’s definitely about them and not you. Maybe someone’s being mean to them elsewhere in their life. Maybe they have crippling anxiety or other mental health problems. Maybe they’re neurodiverse and just struggling to process the world.
You really don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, and putting the best possible spin on their motivations is probably a good starting point. There are very few evil people, but unfortunately there are lots and lots of sad and struggling ones.
I’m pretty sure my bully was going through her own trauma, which is why she had zero truck with mine or my failure to deal with it. And that’s why I wish her the best, now.
10. Break the cycle
You remember how it felt to be bullied. Now make sure you don’t do it to anyone else.
Not being mean isn’t actually very hard. You can set boundaries with annoying people, you can be firm, and you can totally avoid those who are clearly car crashes waiting to happen (the category I think I came under at this particular point in time). Just don’t throw more obstacles into their path, eh?
It’s also important you don’t WATCH it happen to anyone else without saying something to them, their bully, or someone in authority.
Finally, one of the best things you can do to break the cycle is to CHAMPION OTHER GIRLS/WOMEN, and encourage your daughters to do the same.
That means normalising celebrating each other’s successes, helping each other through our failures, forgiving each other our foibles – and boosting each other up instead of tearing each other down.
Because we’re not in the 90s and in Mean Girls. We HAVE to have learned something over the last 30 years (or 10 years in my case). And we have to pass it on…
New Year’s Resolutions are, as we all know, a crock chock full of the chocolatey-brown stuff.
But if you’re overwhelmed, stuck in a rut, struggling with mental health, middle age, menopause, misery or run of the mill brain-muddle, maybe re-setting isn’t such a bad idea.
Here’s the thing: whatever you do, DON’T GO BIG.
Giving it all up at once and changing your whole lifestyle/personality/routine just isn’t going to stick.
Plus it sounds super exhausting.
And don’t go on 1 Jan! We’re all still reeling from Christmas. Right NOW is the time to go. And by go, I mean gently creep.
Go small, go gradual, and go a little bit every month (hence 12 resolutions). (Ish).
Now, the Good Lord (and everyone who’s ever met me) knows I’m NOT the person to be dishing out life advice to anyone… But the side effect of being a copy-writer in January is that everyone wants you to write New Year content. Which means you can now benefit from the left-over research I’ve been doing for clients!
Here are the best, smallest and most manageable resolutions to start the change you need but don’t have the energy for.
Some of which I may even try myself.
1. The One Minute Rule
If a task of any sort is going to take you less than a minute, do it IMMEDIATELY. Crumbs in the sink? Wipe them up. Email from a client? Dash off an acknowledgement. Towels on the floor? Hang them up. It’s a surprisingly effective way of being more effective.
2. The Ten Minute Tidy
If you’re anything like me, tidying takes forever.
Most of this time is spent thinking how much you need to tidy, worrying about how much tidying there is to do, not knowing where to start tidying, avoiding tidying, and doing things that aren’t tidying but also aren’t any fun, because you’re supposed to be tidying. The actual tidying bit DOESN’T ACTUALLY TAKE THAT LONG.
The Ten Minute Tidy takes away the procrastination. Set a timer, do what you can in that time, and then stop and do something better.
Get everyone involved! Possibly as a pre-screen-time condition! It’s only ten minutes, after all.
3. Timers and Rewards
This is a technique used by a lot of ADHDers to help them focus. Essentially, you time EVERYTHING. You time chores you avoid to see how long they really take, so you know it’s not that long, and then set a timer to do it – and try and beat it!
It works for work, too. You give yourself 20 minutes to check your email, or an hour to complete a task/article/spreadsheet. BUZZ! And then you get yourself a reward for sticking at it and focussing that long – eg. a cup of coffee. (You’d have had it anyway, of course, but you’re tricking your brain into compliance).
Invest in a real-life, old-fashioned timer. NOT your phone – you’ll end up on Facebook by mistake reading dumb-ass listicles.
4. Start your day differently
Most of us these days start the day by picking up our phone (our alarm), and starting to read it. Probably news or social media. Both of these things are proven to be depressing.
Stop mainlining climate change, war, suffering, murder, gang violence and other horrors as soon as you attain consciousness. Or other people’s curated lives and staged photos that make you feel inadequate. It’s madness.
Instead, try starting your day differently – even if it’s just at weekends – by reading something NICE. And even better, by reading it IN A NON-ELECTRONIC FORM.
This may be going too far for some. Fair dos. But do yourself a favour and try and get lost in a REAL BOOK. Remember those? With pages! And paper! It doesn’t even need to be a novel. Non-fiction also works – or essays. Eg something like Ross Gay’s ‘The Book of Delights.’
5. Practice Phone Discipline
It’s not your imagination, your phone IS making you more grumpy, more anxious, and less able to concentrate.
If your screen time is going up and up, if it’s the first thing you look at in the morning and last thing you look at at night, if you’re on it every toilet trip, mealtime or spare minute, if it’s eating up all your down time to the exclusion of other things/people you enjoy, you may be an addict.
Yes, this IS actually a thing. Says science, which I don’t have to cite, because I’m NOT AT WORK.
Going phone cold turkey is impossible – don’t attempt it.
Instead, try putting it across the room when you’re working. Try taking a phone-free poo. Try 4, and not looking at it first thing. Try banning it from mealtimes and leaving it in your bag when you’re out – not on the table. Set limits on the apps you get most lost in – or set your new TIMER for a finite amount of doom scrolling.
And try to end double-digi-ing. So if you’re watching telly, put the phone down, and vice versa.
One thing at a time is a GREAT 2024 resolution.
6. Resurrect a Hobby, or do Something Creative
Hobbies, it turns out, are dying out. No one’s collecting stamps anymore, because they can see all the ones that ever existed on the internet, plus cat videos and PORN. (I am not suggesting any of these things become your new hobbies).
But the thing is, you do need to do SOMETHING that’s not work, home/family running – or your phone. What did you used to like? Before the exhaustion? Pick it back up again. And make it something that takes a bit of concentration – and involves your hands. This takes your mind to a wonderful place where it rests in doing – and you probably don’t get enough of that. And it IS what makes humans happy.
If you’re stuck for ideas, doing something creative is a good place to start. It doesn’t matter if you’re terrible at it! It’s the process more than the result you’re interested in (although a nice result is a nice validatory-acheivy bonus). Do a colouring book. Knit a scarf. Get the kids’ paints out. Build a model. Write a short story. Describe your day, or something you found funny. Set a timer for ten minutes if it’s too hard.
7. Find your Third Place
A hobby is your Third Thing – after work and home. You also, apparently, need a Third Place. Somewhere you go that’s not either of those places, but that feels like it fits you. Think Central Perk in Friends. Or the bar in Cheers. Or Hogwarts. Or something.
Since the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, all of our lives have become smaller and less colourful. And when you’re overwhelmed you just want to hide and hibernate – but somehow it doesn’t actually RENEW you. Sound familiar?
Widening your life, finding a Third Place and spending time there, possibly doing your Third Thing, could be the one thing you’re missing.
8. Create a Sanctuary
Having said you need to get out more, you also need to NEST more, too.
When life has got too much, your house is the often the second victim – after your wellbeing.
The stair piles multiply, the bits-and-bobs draw overflows, the post and paperwork stacks up, and Washing Mountain achieves new heights of Everestial Grandeur!
And the worse it gets the more you feel like you’re failing. Like you can’t get away from your failure, like your life is out of control, like there is nowhere safe to go and hide, like there is nowhere you are happy, that is yours, where you are you. I know.
So reclaim ONE space. Take out all the junk and pile it precariously elsewhere, out of sight! It could be your bedroom, or even the bathroom. Clear it out, clean it up, and bring in and arrange all of your candles/fairy lights/cushions/cosmetics/knick knacks. Make ONE place where you can BE, and be happy.
A Sanctuary.
And maybe you’ll feel calm enough and inspired enough to do the next room. Or the next cupboard. Or whatever you can manage.
9. Give yourself Permission to Rest
Once you’ve made a Sanctuary, give yourself permission to rest in it. Doing nothing is not being lazy, or giving up, or letting yourself or others down. It’s what people DO.
We work towards this all our lives – it’s called retirement.
And because of gross mismanagement of politics, culture, economy and society, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO ANY OF US! So start using it up NOW. Micro-dose retirement! A little bit every day. Because you have earned it. You do deserve it.
And you don’t have to achieve stuff to be worth stuff.
10. Start Micro-Exercising
Look, a new exercise regime is A LOT. But you don’t actually have to do a lot to feel a lot better. Again, Real Science!
Go super, super small.
Start heading to the toilet furthest away from you – at home or at work. Do 5 squats before you sit down on it (great challenge for the pelvic floor, which can see the toilet seat and starts getting all excited). Do some lunges or sit ups while the kettle boils. Park a bit further away on the supermarket/school run/commute. Take a ten minute walk round the block at lunchtime, in the company of your faithful timer, should you need the discipline.
11. Be Empty in Nature
OMG this is an actual thing. More Science! Trees are good for you. Walking is good for you. NOT HAVING INPUT is good for you.
So this one is basically about going for an old-fashioned walk.
Don’t listen to music, a podcast, or a book. Listen to the sounds. Look at the patterns in the leaves, the bark, the concrete. Let your mind wander with your feet. Let the thoughts come in. Don’t be afraid – don’t drive them away with SOUND. Welcome them. They’re telling you stuff.
And while they can be scary, NOT giving them time and space is also hurting you, and damaging your patience, creativity, and resilience.
12. Projects and Plans
The REAL secret to human happiness? PROJECTS AND PLANS!
You need to lose yourself in being interested in something, and you need to LOOK FORWARD to something.
What’s really weird, is that this bit BEFORE THE THING is actually EVEN BETTER THAN THE THING – and that’s okay and normal!
So start a project. Make some plans.
I know you don’t feel like it. I know you’re tired. I know everything is hard. But it really is the key to feeling a bit better. Start small. Re-organise or re-decorate your sanctuary. Start your hobby. Arrange a night out. A family games night. A cinema trip.
Build in the stuff that historically has made you feel most like YOU.
BONUS RESOLUTION!:
Mostly just as a reminder to myself:
12.5 – STOP RUSHING.
The dog days are over.
No one is chasing you anymore.
You don’t have to go at 100 miles an hour at everything to escape the demons.
You can’t outrun fate anyway. You can’t bargain with life not to knock you down if you drive yourself mad enough by bracing for it.
The Small Small expressed her opinion the other day that He doesn’t exist, and that I probably do it all when they’re asleep.
I told her that sounded like a lot of effort for me, and I’m far too tired for that sort of thing.
She accepted this verifiable truth pretty readily, but still looked somewhat doubtful, so I rolled out the ol’ ‘Don’t believe, don’t receive’ adage as back-up.
She dropped the subject.
But, clearly, it’s nearly over…
Pretty soon she’ll ask again, and it’ll be time to roll out the Santa Script I used with her big sister. (I’m fortunate she’s just got a new baby brother, so she has someone to keep the magic alive for).
But I’m going to miss it.
Making magic come to life for my kids every Christmas has been one of the highlights of motherhood. And as they get older creating joy for them seems to get a lot harder…
It used to be easy, didn’t it? I could get a genuine giggle out of them with a sloppy kiss, by throwing them in the air, pulling a penny out from behind their ear, with silly voices, a song, a tickle.
Now the even the antics of the Elf are barely eliciting a grunt.
Welcome to the pre-teen and teen years…
But there are compensations.
Now they laugh at my puns (sometimes). And at my misfortunes… which is actually validating. At the shows and I actively LIKE on the telly and would watch even without them. At absurd things we observe together – at memes, at Catonthenetheredge’s antics, at misheard lyrics.
And weirdly, despite the sadness at what’s gone, I wouldn’t actually change it. I wouldn’t go back.
I suppose Christmas magic will evolve in the same way everything does. That it will build from the family traditions I made, the joy I weaved for them, the memories I built as foundations.
Maybe next year they can surprise ME with the Elf’s nightly adventures (and see how they bloody like it).
It’s the time of year for looking back and looking forward, and a very good time to remember that it’s okay, normal and indeed a GIFT to be able to hold two (or more) truths at once, two (or more) feelings: happy and sad, terrified and grateful, excited and disappointed, defeated and defiant, up and down and back again.
For now, I’m going to enjoy my last Christmas as/with Santa.
And I’m going to post again the Santa Script, for anyone else who thinks they might need it sometime soon…
THE SANTA SCRIPT
I want you to know that Christmas magic IS real – but there is also a secret. Are you sure you’re ready to know the secret of it, or would you just like to have the magic for a bit longer?
Okay, well if you’re really ready, this is it. But before I tell you, you have to promise to keep the secret. So I can never hear that you’ve told anyone else about this, ever. Do you promise?
Christmas magic is real. And Santa is real… But he’s not a man in a red suit. I’m a Santa. And now you’re a Santa, too.
The magic bit is that all these grown-ups – and now you – across half the world, with all our different views and opinions and languages and ways of doing things – we all agree that once a year we’ll come together to tell this shared story, and make this legend of Santa Claus come to life for children.
We don’t talk about it. No one confers. We just all quietly agree to do it – and we all keep the secret. And THAT’S a pretty magical thing for half the world to do. And the REALLY INCREDIBLE bit is we all do it without expecting anything in return. It’s a completely selfless act – and there aren’t very many of those.
Usually, when people give a gift, they do it because they’re building a relationship with someone. So you give your best friend a present on their birthday because you know they’ll like it, but also because you know they’ll like YOU for giving it to them. It’s part of how you confirm your friendship. They feel good about getting a gift, but you also feel good about giving it.
But when a gift comes from Santa, it’s not about you at all. It’s JUST about them. You won’t get a thank you. You won’t get the credit. But you get something else instead – something better; you get to be the one who makes magic come alive for someone else. And that’s really, really amazing.
Sometimes, the world isn’t always a very nice place. Sometimes it isn’t fair. Sometimes life is really, really hard for people. But sometimes, sometimes there IS magic in it.
And if you’re the sort of person who knows how to believe in magic from your own childhood, who knows how to look for it – and who then knows how to MAKE it for someone else – you’re someone who can not only get on in the world, but make it a better place, too.
The other day the Small Small said to me, after a particularly trying evening, that she didn’t think she wanted to be a Mum anymore because it looked like a lot of work.
She’s not wrong.
But I think in that very moment I realised that this is EXACTLY where WE’VE been going wrong, as women. FOR YEARS.
We’ve been quiet.
We’ve been like these swans on a lake – furiously paddling beneath the surface, looking all put together and serene on top.
Like it’s effortless. Like it’s not costing us.
And it’s not done us any favours.
Being cool and collected just means people pile more crap on.
We should have dumped swanning years ago and instead channelled the energy of pondweed – visibly hanging on by a murky thread, not going anywhere – and just managing to crest the surface occasionally.
We shouldn’t be Keeping Calm and Carrying On, like good girls/swans.
(I mean, we DO have to carry on – see point 1. Quitting isn’t actually an option. However much you wish to curl up in a ball and stay there forever, as a woman and mother whenever you try it a dependent wants feeding and you have to get up again and make snacks).
But instead of Keep Calm and Carry On, we should change the script:
We should Lose Our Ever-Living ShEEt and Carry On.
We should Scream Our Pain Out Loud – and Carry On.
We should Complain – and Carry On.
We should Make Noise – and Carry On.
We should Be Real – and Carry On.
This expectation we feel, this need to pretend everything is okay, to smile love it might never happen, to grit our teeth and bear it, to suck it up, to not make a fuss, to not rock the boat, to take it on the chin, to endure – is just another way we are being silenced. Another way we don’t matter.
And it is another way we’re showing the generation coming up behind us that they won’t matter either, that their emotions won’t matter, and their pain won’t matter. That sacrifice is sacrosanct, stoicism is dignity – that being phlegmatic and unproblematic are qualities to be prized. That this is what being good girls and women and mothers should look like. Quiet. Pliant. ABSORBENT.
We teach them by example that when things are hard, we don’t say so, for fear of being branded ungrateful.
That when men are awful to us, we rise above it, for fear of being called a psycho if we react.
That when we hurt, we pretend not to, for fear of being dismissed as over-emotional, irrational, hysterical.
That when we stumble, we fail.
That when we cry, we lose.
Well no more.
Let’s make it look HARD, when it is.
Let’s stamp our feet when things aren’t fair.
Let’s howl at the bloody moon!
Let’s not care who hears us, who sees, what they think.
Let’s tell each other, and ourselves, the truth.
Let’s be AUTHENTIC.
Because maybe if we do, maybe if we stop the swan act, the next generation of girls won’t be in the same position – or at least won’t be so bloody surprised when they get here. (And maybe the next generation of boys will have more realistic expectations).
Maybe they won’t have to don a mask everyday, wonder how everyone else is doing it all, why they’re struggling so much, if they’re normal.
Maybe they won’t pretend they’re okay when they’re not – to make everyone else around them feel more comfortable.
Maybe they won’t feel ashamed if they need to ask for help.
And maybe creating all the oxygen for everyone else and being the bedrock of the entire pond ecosystem will get just a little bit easier.
XXX
PS. If you still insist on being a swan instead of pondweed, please be the sort that starts breaking freaking arms if someone looks at you funny.
In particular, I don’t think we say this enough as MOTHERS, because we’re still so caught up in the societal expectations of us and the belief that we must constantly nurture and sacrifice ourselves, over and over, because we are women – and we are less worthy as women if we don’t.
My kids are HARD WORK.
There are high needs kids and there are low needs kids (with and without a neurodiversity diagnosis) – and there are high need seasons and low need seasons for everyone. Right now I have high needs kids in a high needs season and it is A LOT.
It is absolutely unrelenting, and there is very little reward or gratitude in parenting them.
There are no medals.
And trust me, recently, I have very much deserved them.
This last few weeks, I don’t think anyone in my household has said anything that hasn’t been angry, whiny, or tearful. Misery and hostility have abounded. I have been managing emotions and managing emotions and mopping-up and sympathising and counselling and consoling and cajoling and distracting and peace-keeping and negotiating and TRYING and BEING love, love, love, love – for at least 8-10 hours a day because of course in this high season of high need NO ONE IS GOING TO BED AND STAYING THERE.
I am tired, and worried, and FED UP.
I wanted kids because I thought it would be FUN. I wanted an excuse to go in soft play areas, and down slides, and to dig holes on beaches, to sing songs and go on walks and have days out and games nights and tickles and wrestling and dancing and snuggles in bed. I thought it would fill me up.
Turns out most of it is cooking, cleaning, and trying to keep your own emotions in check while handling theirs. Most of the time, it drains me. Plus, you know, I’ve also got to be running a household, keeping everyone’s calendars, holding down a job and trying to conduct healthy adult relationships – and not give in to my own mental health demons. It would drain anyone.
This is always a bad time of year.
I find my soul weighed down with darkness every October. The bright leaves flutter down like burnt orange snow, and while they are glowingly, stunningly beautiful – they leave behind them naked skeletons and decomposing mulch. For me it’s like that process is echoed internally every year, and I think something of that is true for my kids, too. So I should really understand… and be able to muster more patience.
I know I wouldn’t say to any struggling adult, for instance, ‘Come on now, smile, love, it might never happen’ (in fact I’d want to slap someone who said it to me). I wouldn’t say, ‘Pull yourself together. It’s not that bad. You’re exaggerating. Be grateful. Why can’t you just be happy? It’s like you WANT to be miserable. You can just CHOOSE to react differently you know. ’
But as I have battled more and more Small negativity and become more and more drained and more and more fed up, I have found myself wanting to say all of those things to my kids.
I DO want them to be happier. And I’m sure they are, elsewhere – with their friends. But back with me the masks are off, the gloves are off, and the Autumn blues are very much ON.
THIS, this right here is the reality of motherhood: Taking the punches, absorbing the hits, biting your tongue, coming last.
And it is tiring.
Like so many parenting crises, the trick to getting through it is to parent myself first.
I have to remember my children are allowed to have their feelings, just as I am.
I have to consider that maybe the person I’m frustrated with is me – that maybe the person I want to be happier and different is MYSELF.
I have to understand why I pretend so often, why I put myself last so often, and why I resent it when it’s a choice that I’ve made.
I have to reflect why disharmony triggers me the way it does.
I have to remember I can’t make other people happy – however much I want to.
And I have to look at WHY I’m so invested in people being happy all of the time, why I’m such a people-pleaser, constantly assessing the moods of those around me and trying to change them so I feel better – so I feel safe.
It’s something I’ve done my whole life.
As a child, I was trying to please my parents, and in particular my dad. At work I was (and am) continually avoiding conflict – often at the expense of personal comfort and progression. As a partner I try to predict reactions and fix things by showing my jugular, appeasing, making myself smaller, taking up less space – staying one step ahead of their needs and trying to shape myself to fill them.
The good news is, I suppose, that I can step back and see this now. I can see that my need to smooth over, keep up appearances, paste on a smile, radiate positivity, martyr myself and pretend everything is fine when it’s not – isn’t actually healthy.
The even better news is that I have at least broken the people-pleasing cycle in my children… Certainly, they are not trying to please ME, very noticeably.
And they shouldn’t have to. Because I am the adult, even when I don’t want to be. Even when old wounds are ripped open. Even when it’s difficult and thankless.
And that’s the real reason we should admit that we’re fed up with our kids more, because it’s the first step in recognising THAT IT’S OKAY.
It’s normal. Pretending otherwise or beating yourself up about it isn’t actually helping or working. It’s a feeling – in the moment – that will pass only if you give yourself the space and grace to FEEL it. If you examine where it came from. If you acknowledge that you deserve to say when hard things are hard without being judged for it, and that you deserve to have someone recognise how hard you’re working, and that you deserve to be loved for it and because of it and no matter what – JUST AS YOUR KIDS DO.
Admitting you’re fed up with your kids is the first step in re-setting. In starting over fresh. In coming back stronger. In parenting with intention and not reaction. In being the love THEY need, no matter what.
So if you’re at the end of your own tether, say it.
I am fed up with my kids.
I am fed up with being a mother, and not a person.
I am fed up of everything being hard.
I am fed up of looking after everyone else.
I am fed up of being responsible for everyone else’s emotions.
I am fed up of coming last.
I am fed up of no one seeing, no one understanding, and no one appreciating me.
I am fed up of not getting any mother-forking medals.
Well I see you, I hear you, and because no one else is going to I’M here to give you the medal you deserve.
Because if this is you too, I know that you’re a goddam freaking HERO.
I have compiled a list. Take one, two or more. Let me know which, and why. And please add your own:
Medal for Restraint
Medal for Outstanding Fortitude
Medal for Unfathomable Reserves of Patience
Medal for Apologising When Unfathomable Reserves of Patience have Run Out
Medal for Being the Repository of All The Bad Emotions
Medal for Services to Laundry
Medal for Doing Hard Things
Medal for Juggling Everything
Medal for Listening to Small Children Even When It’s Boring
Medal for Consistently Showing Up Even When You Don’t Feel Like It
I’ve heard grief described in a lot of different ways. A journey with ups and downs. An ocean – vast and wild and coming in waves.
It is such a universal experience, but it has stunned me how little it IS actually talked about. How we ignore it, brush over it – how we don’t know what to say to each other.
And I suppose that’s because it is such a painful and private experience that looks very different for different people.
For me, grief is a snake.
It is secret, sly, and mostly very well camouflaged in the mundanity of my life – sliding silently along in parallel like a shadow.
Sometimes it is close, and sometimes it is far away. Sometimes I only know it’s there by the fear crawling across my skin.
Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of it, glittering in the grass, just out of the very corner of my eye, and I will run away – fast – in the other direction.
Sometimes it strikes from nowhere, sinks its fangs in, terrible and beautiful all at once, black diamonds flowing in impossible symmetry down its back.
And it is never where I expect it.
It is not in the anniversaries, or the big milestones. Because then I suppose I am watching for it. Instead it hides coiled in the little things, the gaps I didn’t know were there.
It is in a pile of papers, with his messy scrawling handwriting on it, in the relish of his g and y tails.
It is in his phrases as they drop unbidden from my own lips – you could get a Sherman tank through there, what’s that in real money? you little ratbag.
It is in the funny things he would love and the half-written texts and half-formed stories that don’t have anywhere to go – left hanging without their audience.
It is in the reminder pictures that pop up on my phone, in the tilt of a familiar expression not seen for months now – in knowing soul-deep what it meant and what he would say or do next.
It is in the small, dark moments where I am desperate for comfort and my heart leaps for him and he’s not there to catch it and hold it safe, like he always did.
I am afraid of the snake.
But I am also afraid it will leave – that if I avoid it for too long I will forget.
Sometimes I want the pain.
I want to feel the venom seep through my body and seize my breath, grip my chest in a vice. I WANT to be crushed. I want to BLEED. Sometimes I want to feel the cold burn of each individual poisonous needle pricking each cell of my body – I want to be filled to bursting by the thundering wrongness and emptiness until I am ripped apart by it. I welcome the violence of it, the power.
One day, maybe I will learn to live with the snake.
Maybe it will become a pet, and I will care for it, visit it, let it out of its enclosure to spend time in its presence, stroking my hands along its familiar muscled body.
At the moment, it finds me. And when it does so, the best I can do as it wraps itself around me and starts to squeeze, is to imagine its embrace is my dad’s.
Week 2 of Back to School and for the Smalls the unfortunate reality of having to go in FIVE DAYS A WEEK has set in once again. Welcome to the rest of your lives, kids! Anyway, everyone is exhausted and a bit ratty.
This includes me.
I find that random RAGE is actually a general side-effect of middle-age.
Here’s five things that have annoyed me this week:
1. School communications
After a halcyon year of dealing with only one school’s insane levels (and contents) of communication, I am back to receiving missives from TWO schools across multiple platforms, multiple times a day.
Many of these begin with the biggest school comms lie of all: ‘As you are aware’.
Let’s be really clear: no, I was NOT aware, and I will likely remain perpetually confused about what day PE is on, who needs to take an instrument in, what donations for resources I’m supposed to have made, when after school clubs actually start, how much is on lunch accounts, which permission forms I’ve forgotten to fill in, and who has to dress up as a bloody Roman.
Also, I’ve already lost the reading diary.
2. Phones
The start of secondary school has meant the advent of the phone-life for the Big Small.
I began with good intentions about restrictions, screen time and supervision, but despite these – like everyone else – I have basically said goodbye to the Big Small ever wanting to play with any other toy ever again, and indeed to her even acknowledging my presence once she is basking in the hypnotic blue light of her new God.
The main theory, of course, is that as they get more independent and are out and about before and after school, the phone will offer reassurance about their whereabouts. Spoiler alert: it won’t. They won’t bloody answer the thing and the tracking app never works. OR you will receive 50 messages from them in under 4 minutes demanding to know YOUR whereabouts, usually while you’re in the middle of an important meeting, out with your mates, or undergoing a gynaecological exam.
Both of these things are enraging.
At home they will be glued to it continually, get into farcical What’s App misunderstandings even with the limited number of contacts you allow them, and make borderline inappropriate videos of themselves.
Since the Big Small has had a phone, I have had to have several conversations I wasn’t really terribly ready for, including what counts as age appropriate content, what is ‘sexy’, how to recognise emotional manipulation, being aware of what’s in the background of our photographs (there is a small group of 11 year olds who are never going unsee that image of me mostly in a dressing gown), how to safely confront racism (plus the whole history of why white lives matter isn’t a thing), and swearing etiquette.
In short, I wish the bloody things had never been invented. No phone contains enough head exploding emojis to sufficiently express or justify this sort of horror.
3. The weather
I’m British. I am obviously a bit disgruntled about the weather at all times.
4. Perimenopause
I continue along the super-fun path of trying to find out why I’m feeling rubbish, in a roulette-style game I like to call ‘Is it long covid, thyroid, perimenopause or cancer?’
Next up: various wands and cameras inserted into places which, I have learned, ARE NOT ALWAYS COVERED BY MY DRESSING GOWN. I can’t wait. And frankly, if I don’t feel annoyed about it, and the unfairness of being a middle-aged women vs being a middle-aged man, or the injustice of having to battle to be believed about my own body, or the travesty of an NHS so crippled it can only fire-fight and not prevent – then I’ll have to start feeling WORRIED.
As I’m about 98% worry/neurosis at any given time anyway, I don’t think I’ve got capacity for any more. Ergo, annoyance. It’s actually a healthy displacement activity.
5. Toothpaste cars
I’m sorry, I’ve been holding on to this for some time, but it now has to be said:
MINT GREEN, POWER BLUE AND MUSHROOM BROWN/BEIGE ARE NOT APPROPRIATE COLOURS FOR CARS.
Especially when they are MATT colours.
For the love of all that is holy, these are CARS – not kitchen cabinets or bathroom paint options from Crown.
Come on, automobile designers, get a grip.
I will accept matt white, red and black, or metallic silver, blue of any shade (I’m not unreasonable), red, green or grey. I don’t much hold with gold/yellow whether it’s sparkly or not, but after that I NOW DRAW THE LINE.
I have no idea why these particular shades should anger me so, but they do.
Probably – again – they are a scapegoat. Because there is so much else big and little to worry and rage over, from climate change to playground dramas, the degradation of women’s rights worldwide to flour weevils (don’t even ask), all of which are so wildly and overwhelmingly out of my control that the feelings they engender have to go SOMEWHERE that’s comparatively manageable, generally benign – and suitably distracting.
In short, every middle-aged girl has got to have a spurious-rage hobby, or hobby-horse.
Over the last six weeks, I have embarked on several summer holiday Family Days Out.
My idea was that these would be cheaper than a Big Family Holiday, particularly abroad.
Lols.
Our Summer Family Days Out have ranged from beach trips to forest rambles, play parks to farms, arcades to museums – and one disastrous and traumatising trip to a high ropes course at an outdoor pursuits centre – which I may never be ready to talk about without therapeutic support.
We have, against all odds, survived all of them.
Mostly (give or take a bruise on my hip approximately the size and shape of Buckinghamshire, a wrist injury, a wasp sting, a black eye, and several screaming emotional meltdowns – not all of them from children).
I have been doing Family Days Out now for 11 years. Here are my 9 top tips, fresh from recent experience:
1. Changes of clothes
You will need at least 3 of these, for each person, including shoes. What? You’re going to an indoor venue on the driest day of the year in the middle of a hosepipe ban??? Don’t be silly! Someone will get wet or muddy, or both, probably your Smallest Small.
Mine, at least, has not had a good day unless she’s dunked herself in the nearest fountain/pond/ocean/stream/puddle/sink, and created at least two loads of washing.
You will have to carry all of these changes of clothes around with you, plus towels, all stuffed into the world’s most gigantic bag – which will be approximately 5x the weight the SAS are required to carry around with them on endurance training exercises.
(Note that no matter how much your darling children promise they’ll carry their own coats/floats/bucketsandspades/phones/stickycatchers THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN).
2. Cagools
The best way to guarantee that the sunny Summer Family Day Out you’ve planned REMAINS sunny, is to lug around full waterproof-wear for your entire party, too. (Plus, obvs, all the sunny stuff, like hats, sunglasses and suncream).
NEVER decide to leave these in the car. This will guarantee torrential showers.
TOP TIP: You may wish to embark on weight training or a heavy-lifting safety course before Summer in preparation.
3. More snacks
Yes, I know you’ve packed a full picnic, plus extra sandwiches, biscuits, crisps and some sort of condensed-fruit-juice-gummy-stuff-that’s-supposed-to-be-healthy-but-isn’t, for everyone, and yes, I know you will be passing shops and cafes, but TRUST me, someone is going to manage to have a wild hangry meltdown when you are fresh out of sustenance.
You will be grateful to be able to reach into the giant bag and instantly fill the noise-hole. It may even be worth the back-breaking misery of carrying all this stuff around with you.
4. Use every toilet
NEVER believe a child of any age when it says it doesn’t need the loo.
I understand that forcing a child to force out a wee is not necessarily promoting pelvic floor health, but the first rule of an even partially successful Family Day Out is that NO ONE WALKS PAST A TOILET WITHOUT USING IT.
If you do not unilaterally enforce this you will spend your entire day interrupting the planned activities and running miles out of your way desperately seeking sanitation.
5. Copious entertainment
Your Smalls will start screaming “I’m bored” after about 10 minutes of doing any given activity on any given Family Day Out, unless kept actively entertained at all times with your blood, sweat, energy, ingenuity, and whatever you can fit into THE BAG.
(Yes, I know this is not how kids were in your day. Yes, I understand you were left to be bored and it never did you any harm. Yes you made your own entertainment. But get over it, that’s not how overstimulated kids of today WORK).
You must therefore be sure to pack balls, bats, card games, colouring equipment, and miniature chess set. At a minimum.
(Note that on a Family Day Out, no one is allowed on devices, on the grounds this is cheating, and might actually make people happy).
6. Plasters
Back in the olden days (when I was a child) your arm had to literally be falling off and blood spouting out of the artery to earn a plaster from your mum.
Today, I hand them out like candy. Or snacks. Or advice for surviving Family Days Out.
This is on the grounds that they make any small invisible injury your Small is over-dramatising INSTANTLY better, which makes them INFINITELY worth it.
Carry a supply at all times.
(Remember, your Small Small will want character ones. Your Big Small won’t be seen dead in these, and requires plain flesh-coloured ones. At this point you might as well just stick in an entire medical kit and be done with it).
7. Practise strict equality
You must at all times ensure to distribute the exact same amount of attention to each child, the same number of goes, plasters, pushes, snacks, etc – or face tantrums beginning “But SHE got one” or “It’s not fair”.
8. Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe
Yes, I know none of us are made of money right now, but even the most disastrous Family Day Out can often be saved by a trip to Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe before going home.
(I have trained my children to call all gift shops we find on Family Days Out ‘Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe’, regardless of whether or not they are attached to any kind of historical attraction).
There are some days when I will willingly pay a £10 on plastic junk or yet more stuffed animals JUST FOR IT ALL TO BE OVER AND FOR EVERYONE TO BE QUIET IN THE CAR ON THE WAY HOME.
9. LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS
The true key to enjoying a Summer Family Day Out is to lower your expectations.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you will NOT be the happy smiling family you’ve seen on the brochure, website, or other people’s Facebook pages. (All of those pictures are a crock of brown stuff).
Mumonthenetheredge 