All Quiet on the Blogging Front

Busy busy…

This is just a quick note to explain my silence on the blog recently and to say that normal service will hopefully resume in a week or two.

This week I’ve been concentrating on drafting my children’s book (working title George and the Arch, but that will change!) I’m around a third through, at 22,000 words, and have realised that writing a first draft uses ALL my energy and inspiration.

My daughter’s school teacher pointed out that there are only 11 full weeks of school left before the summer vacation, which means I have that much time to get George ready for the Chicken House competition AND get Class Act ready to publish (I haven’t even sourced an editor yet). Argh!

The reason for my silence over the next two weeks (more specifically the next four days) is that the children are on their Easter Holidays. In four hours the children and I will drive to Skegness to stay in a static caravan for the week with my good friend and her two children. I’m terrified. Please God don’t let it rain!

I’m looking forward to it too, but the idea of four days in a small box with four kids aged 2-6 does fill me with fear! Ear plugs and wine at the ready! 😉 I don’t even know if there will be internet…

So, enjoy the peace and quiet and I’ll hopefully have some new things to write about when I get back! Wish me luck.

A Mothering Sunday

Homemade climbing complex

This Mothering Sunday I have mothered. The day started with cuddles at 5.30/6.30am (the clocks went forward), followed by gifts, breakfast and a lie-in. Lovely. When I got up, I discovered the children had watched a movie and were starting on their second, breakfast half-eaten and the house a state.

I started my usual morning routine of making beds, carrying laundry downstairs, putting the washing machine on, emptying and re-filling the dishwasher, letting the dog out, clearing the breakfast things away and making a second cup of tea. Then I helped the children plant seeds and baked pain au chocolat for everyone. Eventually the kids went out to play, and I realised that – with the clocks changing – it was too late to go out for lunch.

I had only one request for Mother’s Day – that we could go out for a roast lunch so I could eat a meal I hadn’t had to cook. When it was decided that we weren’t going to go I was pretty cross and stomped round the kitchen preparing a roast lunch, to make up for the one I missed.

I even made a kebab on request for my daughter (that she didn’t eat) and carrots for my son (which he didn’t eat.) By the end of lunch my mood hadn’t really improved. In an effort to buy some time to read my book, I opened and raked over the sandpit, before clearing away the dishes.

Homemade is best

Somewhere admidst it all, I realised I was enjoying providing for my family, making yummy meals and watching the kids cause carnage in the garden. I gave in to domesticity and made an apple crumble for after dinner (hubbie’s favourite, because he needs cheering up.) I did all the ironing. Finally I snuck upstairs to read my book for an hour, until a screaming child took me back downstairs.

While I was preparing lunch I felt irritated that I was having to cook, rather than being taken out, and I wished for a family who pampered me on Mother’s Day, who bought chocolates and flowers and booked a table for lunch. But then I realised this is our first day at home for weeks, because of all the birthday parties, and it was lovely. Hubbie pottered round the garden, building a makeshift climbing frame for the kids and sorting out the accumulated junk. The kids ran and dug in the sand and played with water. Unwatched and unfettered (mostly) as I want them to be.

And do you know what? I’ve enjoyed my domestic day much more than I would have enjoyed a day alone to read (too guilty! Besides I can do that tomorrow) or a day out (too stressful, noisy, busy, expensive.) Homemade apple crumble was just as nice as chocolates and the last flowers my daughter bought me ‘just because’ are still (dead) in the vase.

Mothers of small children don’t really get a day off. But I got a day to do my thing, up to a point (cooking curry for dinner while watching Homes Under the Hammer without being pestered by children IS a day off!)

So, thank you family. Today I have felt useful and nurturing, like a mother. I feel loved.

Insomnia, Anhedonia and The Unbearable Politeness of Being

I just had to reblog this post: It decribes exactly how I feel at the moment, only much more eloquently than I could ever put it. The comments beneath are worth reading too.

The Belle Jar

Right now my favourite part of the day is the last half hour or so, which is the time I spend fighting the effects of my prescription sleeping pill. I get to ride this wave of sleepy euphoria, where the whirring, clanking machinery inside my head slows down and all of my limbs are loose and relaxed. It’s like being drunk or high, except that it feels very calm and safe — unlike other altered states of consciousness, I know that nothing can go wrong. When I finally do lie down, with the thought that I have several hours of blissful unconsciousness to look forward to, I feel everything draw away from me, my body suspended in a dark sea as I wait for sleep to gather at the edge of the horizon and then come crashing over me.

This is what I look forward to, from the time I wake up until…

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Fading Scars

Dad, me and sis at the beach

Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of the unexpected death of my father, and for the first time the day drifted by in mundane normality. I couldn’t have imagined, back then, that the pain of his passing would ever be anything but raw and unbearable. Despite having a complicated and often turbulent relationship with my dad, and despite not having lived with him for more than a few weeks at a time since I was nine, his death left a huge hole in my life. The last years saw us come to an understanding and we had a friendship, a shared view of the world, that I’ve never found with anyone else.

The tragedy of my father’s death is that it came before any of his grandchildren were born. I believe that spending time with his two granddaughters and two grandsons would have completed my father’s journey. Despite my in many ways awful childhood, Dad was much better with small people in later life. He would have been an amazing grandfather, taking the children fishing and to cricket matches and for walks along the canal.

What hurts most, now I’ve become a parent, is that I now understand my father and my childhood and utterly forgive him for all his flaws. He wasn’t a great Dad at times and I’m certain he was a terrible husband. But he didn’t have the best upbringing himself, with two volatile parents, and a dominating, controlling mother.

Dad as I remember him

Like me, he had little patience and a quick temper. Like me, I imagine he found it hard to be home with the children, trying to fix cars and mind the kids, while Mum worked a 9-5 job. But he didn’t have the support network that I have. There were no Dads Groups in the 1970s, no blogs and online forums. I’ve never hit my children, but I’ve come close. And I’m pretty certain I’ve repeated every terrible thing I heard as a child. The difference is I can cry and apologise and explain. I can’t imagine Dad doing the same.

My hope and fear is that my dad was reborn in my son. He reminds me of Dad in so many ways. It gives me hope for the future, that Dad’s memory and legacy are not lost. But fear that, just as happened 8 years ago, my son may also be taken from me, suddenly, without warning, with no chance to say goodbye. If I’m an over-protective, worrying, clingy parent, it is for that reason. All the love I couldn’t show my dad, that I didn’t know I had until it was too late, is lavished on a cheeky, naughty, charming little boy. And maybe, somewhere, Dad is watching. I hope so.

Too Many Words!

Why can’t they all be nice and quiet like the dog..?

After my day of zen on Friday I had a bit of a relapse on Saturday, culminating in me loudly biting out the words “just shut up” to my son in the middle of a busy supermarket. I so love making other parents feel better about themselves.

The problem is the talking. The endless, incessant, dual voiced, competing in stereo, “Mummy, mummy, mummy” talking. Alone or together, my kids are driving me nuts.

The irony, of course, is that I am a chatterbox. A talker rather than a listener. I have spent my whole life being teased for having too much to say.

My mum thinks it’s hilarious that the kids are driving me crazy. Of course, as the office-based parent when I was growing up, with my father the working-from-home one who presumably looked after us (I don’t remember) she didn’t have as much first-hand experience as she might think.

For six hours a day on nursery days and twelve on days when they’re at home, I’m expected to be able to hold two or three concurrent conversations, and tantrums ensue if anyone isn’t answered directly. And I do try. Because it upset me so much to be ignored as a child or to be ridiculed for having too many words, I try so hard to answer every query with patience.

But oh my the repetition.

Chatterbox Children

In the twenty minutes preceding my loss of control in Tesco, my son had said the same sentence a dozen times. Like a Chinese water torture it broke through even medicated calm.

I suppose the difference is that, instead of blowing up at them, ranting and bellowing, then sobbing and apologising, I’ve had no release, so I’ve been snapping at them all afternoon. Frustratingly to the same end result that my daughter sobbed through dinner because of something mummy said: albeit in a snappy voice rather than a sergeant major shout.

It seems that maybe the bellowing rage works as a release valve and without it I’m just a mean mummy instead of a monster. I read a beautiful post on Amy Saab’s 2me4art blog today saying she is trying to listen to her ten year old son because she knows it won’t be long before he stops wanting to talk. I found myself looking forward to the surly uncommunicative teenage years today.

I’ve heard people say ‘listen properly to the small things or they won’t ever tell you the big things’, but how can you listen and listen and listen when you’re a talker? A ‘babbling brook’ as Gary Chapman describes it in The Five Love Languages. And as my children are talkers rather than listeners they’re not even happy using up their words on each other: I’ve taught them not to talk over people so all I hear is “he talked over me!” “but she wasn’t listening to me” followed by a tantrum, tears or a thump, because no one hates being ignored more than a three-year-old second child.

I don’t know what the answer is. The more I sit in silence the harder it is to be abused by the torrent of noise. And, is it me, but do they use fewer words at school than nursery? I suppose it’s all that listening they have to do. Certainly my daughter seems to need more of my attention than she did before she started school. I might have to go back to plugging them into Cbeebies before we all go mad.

Medicate Me: Day Fifteen

Sleeping Family

Day fifteen on my antidepressants and I have found a love for life. I laugh more. I am more gentle on myself. I take time to read my book with a cup of tea, or cook dinner while watching Homes Under the Hammer on the iPad, instead of trying to blog, fold laundry and iron at the same time, doing all four things badly.

I leave early for the school run and read my book in the car, arriving at the school gate with a smile on my face. I walk the dog mid-morning rather than running around ten minutes before I need to collect the children. I sleep when I need to, preferably in a sunbeam in the playroom.

I haven’t bellowed at the children or sworn at them in a fortnight.

I’m still not sleeping. I still feel anxious about lots of things (schools, food, teeth!) My writing and particularly the blog have taken a back seat. I miss it. I miss logging on in the morning and seeing blog post likes and new comments. I worry I’ll lose everything I fought so hard to build up last year. But not having to come up with a new topic to discuss everyday is giving me time to breathe. Not having to make time to take pictures to go with my posts is increasing my reading time.

I’m awake!

It isn’t all a result of the medication. Reading The Five Love Languages brought smiles and understanding back to my marriage and increased my ability to see when the children need my time or a cuddle. The longer days, the sunshine and warmer weather are all mood enhancers, especially for me.

But most of all I have given myself permission to heal. I’ve accepted I don’t have to do everything all the time. I don’t have to fill every minute with sixty seconds run. I accept I am the luckiest woman in the world to be able to cook dinner calmly at 11am while watching TV, or to be able to read my book.

But also I acknowledge that I get up at 5am to wipe bums, crawl out of warm covers at 2am to replace blankets that have fallen off chilly children, and fold laundry at midnight when hubbie is already asleep.

Mine is the responsibility to cook, clean, empty the bins, iron and shop. Mine is the juggling routine of remembering when to collect the children and when to make them packed lunches or sign forms.

I realise I’ve been competing mentally against working mums, needing to prove I work just as hard as they do. Why? What does it matter if I don’t? We made choices for me to be at home. We go without meals out, babysitters, expensive holidays. Surely a happy mummy is an important part of that?

It reminds me of the poem I read at my Mum’s wedding; the Desiderata: “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence … Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

Words to live by.

Medicate Me: Day Three

Having a cuddle

Day three since starting on anti-depressants:

My inner thoughts are scattered and harder to get hold of, like troublesome toddlers or helium balloons bobbing just out of reach. Normally while walking the dog I have several conversations running in my mind at once. Today it was just broken and random words.

At night I’m exhausted but can’t sleep. I feel the tiredness but am wide awake as if I have jetlag. This is new. My previous experience of SSRIs is one of endless sleep.

I found it harder to read to my son earlier but that could be the sleep deprivation slurring my words. The dizziness and sickness from day one and two is subsiding slightly but I do seem prone to hot flushes. My brain itches, just beneath the skin. I imagine it’s as frustrating to wear a plaster cast though I have no direct experience. Hubbie – who has history with this drug and is merrily nodding at each new symptom – says the brain itching is new to him. Nice to have something original.

I don’t feel like crying; scrap that, I don’t feel capable of crying. I take this as a good thing although the remoteness of emotions is what has held me off from taking the drugs for so long. All I remember from my last time on anti-depressants was the feeling of living in a bubble, with the world just pretty pictures moving around me. This time I feel rather like I’m underwater, in a cloudy sea with limited visibility. I have to remind myself this is temporary.

I’m still getting cross and frustrated easily with the children but haven’t yelled at them once. That might be because I’m still not working as such – no writing in two weeks and precious little housework. The quietening of the voices in my head makes me worry that I might not be able to write at all, once the drugs have fully taken hold. I have to remember hubbie’s dose is much higher and he’s written two books in recent years.

I do feel anxious and have had the odd palpitation. I seem to be taking it in my stride, largely thanks to hubbie’s support and the fact that I’ve stopped working for a bit. I am strangely reassured by these things as they confirm to me that I wasn’t ready to go through this two years ago. Not with this little impact certainly.

All in all, Day Three and all is well. I’ll keep you posted.

The Perfect School?

Sudbury Valley School

Almost as soon as my nephew was born, my sister began to speak about sending him to a particular school in America. A free school, a democratic school – run by the children for the children. A place where a child could ride their bike or play video games all day, everyday, if they chose.

I scoffed. My parents rolled their eyes. I’m an academic at heart, with straights As and a first class degree and a Masters (we won’t mention the B in A Level General Studies – after all it wasn’t a ‘real’ qualification – it was only about life and that’s not important to a student who wants to succeed.)

Over the years, my brave, courageous, determined sister never let go of her American dream. Her husband’s sister’s children went to the school and her desire grew. I never got it. Three years ago, after untold hours of effort, my sister and her family emigrated to America to live near my brother-in-law’s family, with a view to my nephew and now niece going to the school.

The school run for my sister

I still didn’t get it. School is about learning and classes and exams and school uniform and all that, and my children were going to love it. There were going to be reading and counting to a hundred by the time they were five, they were going to be top of the class. After all, I was, and that made me happy, didn’t it?

My daughter started school six months ago, and my confidence began to waver. School seemed so regimented, especially for these tiny four-year-olds looking so serious and adorable in their smart uniform. The school run was chaotic and emotional and full of stressed parents snapping and snarling (particularly me).

To begin with, my daughter loved it. As suspected, she thrived on learning and was reading and counting to a hundred by her fifth birthday. She loves the community of school, idolises her teacher, and adores singing, reading and PE. But, here’s the thing: after spending a whole year desperate to go to school, my bright, academic, sponge-like learning child doesn’t want to go anymore.

“Mummy why do we only do PE once a week, I love PE.”

“Mummy, I love singing, is it singing assembly today? Is it?”

“Mummy, we didn’t get to do reading today.”

Drumming with his sister (click for video)

Then, yesterday, I watched this video on the Sudbury Valley school my sister has set her heart on. And I cried. Oh my. I want that for my children. I want them to be able to play piano for three hours straight if they choose. I want the calm, majestic, green surroundings, the rocks and the lakes and the books and the teachers there to facilitate enthusiastic learning. I want my children, my artistic children who often spend hours playing in their band, to have that.

Who cares if they meet some government-decided tick box of success. I want them to know what makes them passionate by the time they’re fifteen, not fifty.

Already, in six months, I’ve seen my daughter lose her edge. Become less able to find things to do without direction, become more concerned about breaking rules than having fun. She gets some of that from me, but where did I get it from?

I read a post yesterday written by the talented and successful writer, Kim Bongiorno, who wondered if the fact that she didn’t finish college would affect her own children’s desire and ability to go to college. She wondered whether she was a good enough role model for them. This was my reply (before watching the Sudbury Valley video!)

“I think you are being a better role model by not having finished your college degree. I don’t think university is for everyone. I went to university because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. For people with vocations, like doctors or teachers, of course university is essential. However, if you’re not academic then it’s a way to run up huge debt and be no nearer to a job at the end. Certainly that’s true in the UK.

Fifteen years ago I graduated with a first class degree and it marginally improved my chances of getting a good job. Which I did. But I hated it and had a breakdown after three years. The next job was no better except I lasted five years before realising I don’t handle office stress well and I need to be creative.

And I AM academic, I loved studying. What about the people who don’t learn through lectures and essays? My sister struggled for four years to get a 2:2 in a language she hated, and graduated with massive debt, great pool playing skills and a love of Jack Daniels. Since then she’s started from scratch, building up her own businesses and finding what she loves and is good at.

In fifteen years time, when my daughter would graduate, I suspect a degree won’t be enough to compete. She’ll need a Masters, maybe a PhD. Years more of study and debt, for what? She wants to be a writer like her mummy, my son wants to be a racing driver (he’s three). I truly hope I’ll be strong enough to encourage them in those desires because happy is as important as well paid.

There is a great lecture I watched http://new.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity all about academic inflation and how university is really only good if you want to be a professor. I have long debates and worries about education and making sure it’s right for my children and this lecture consolidated some of them.

If your children want to go to college, the fact that circumstances outside your control prevented you completing your course shouldn’t stop them. And if they don’t want to go, you’ll be the best person to show them that – with hard work and determination – they can be a success without it.”

Daughter drumming – stuff she can’t do at school

This all sounds like I’m upping sticks and moving my family to Boston, doesn’t it? Oh I wish. But I don’t want to live in America, not even for an amazing school. For all my angst and depression, I’ve travelled the world and found myself home. But it does mean I can now say,

“Sister, you are the bravest, smartest, strongest, kick-ass person I know, and well done. Sorry I didn’t always understand.”

And I can keep looking for a better school for my children, and give them space at home to be children. To be themselves and to be happy with that. It’s taken me nearly four decades to achieve it, and I’m only partly there. In the meantime, I hope more schools look to the Sudbury Valley model and at least take some parts of it away. Watch the video and tell me you aren’t just a teeny bit impressed.

My 500th Post and a Giveaway

Wow!

How exciting! WordPress has just informed me that my last post was my 500th post! That’s not bad going in two years.

I wanted to pen a quick line to say thank you to everyone who follows this blog, reads my posts, likes them, comments on them, shares them and generally makes the whole thing worthwhile.

When I started Writermummy two years ago, I didn’t really know what I was doing or what a blog was for. I only knew that if I wanted to sell books I needed an author platform. I’m not sure Kristen Lamb would approve of my blog in that role.

The blog has become my therapist’s couch, my sounding board, my coffee shop where I hang out and chat with friends. My safe place, where I can vent on pretty much any subject and find someone willing to give advice or at least a virtual hug. You guys can’t begin to know what it means to me.

So, it might not help me sell books (it certainly takes time away from writing new ones!), but my blog is my soul. To celebrate reaching my 500th post I’ve decided to offer Baby Blues and Wedding Shoes for free this weekend (even though I said it would never be free!) The promotion should be live around 8am GMT on 1st March. I wish I could offer cake, but that’s a bit more tricky.

Here’s to 500 more posts. Thanks for listening. 🙂

What’s Your Love Language?

My daughter loves quality time

I had a revelation at 6am this morning – when I have most of my epiphanies – to do with the book I’m reading: The Five Love Languages. As I mentioned before, the Five Love Languages – as defined by Gary Chapman – are Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.

Chapman argues that, for a relationship to thrive, we must first identify and then learn to speak our partner’s love language. I’ve always assumed my language is Acts of Service. I do the laundry out of love, I cook and clean and make coffee out of love. It has frustrated me beyond measure that my husband doesn’t understand. Not just that he doesn’t do those things himself, but that he doesn’t recognise them as acts of love from me.

Hubbie’s love language is Physical Touch. Not (just) in the obvious male way – Chapman distinguishes between sexual desire and touch as the primary love language. If you have sexual desire, but can take or leave the hugs, hand-holding and incidental moments of day-to-day physical contact, then chances are you have a different primary language.

My son is either touch or quality time

Thinking it through this morning, using the techniques Chapman suggests, I suddenly realised that the Acts of Service may well be learned behaviour from my parents. Chapman recommends thinking back to the time when you and your partner were first dating, to understand the thing about your partner that made you think ‘he’s the one’. Hubbie and I lived apart for the whole of the two years between meeting and getting married. Picking up dirty underpants and cooking rarely figured in our equation. Oh yes, I liked that he cooked, that was a bonus. Who doesn’t love a domesticated man?

But the thing that first snared me, on day one as we chatted online before even meeting, was that he listened. My favourite times in our courtship were the long phone conversations, lying in the dark with just the two of us speaking. No interruptions, no distractions, just voices, sharing, listening. (Well, I assumed he was listening. I did have an ex who confessed years after we broke up that he used to mute the phone and watch TV while I rambled, but at least – even at the tender age of 16 – he realised my need to speak and indulged it.)

All my life I’ve felt that no one really listened to me. As discussed that’s not uncommon. But as I thought it through this morning, I realised that I blossom when I am listened to. I have a good friend who is a listener and I come away from our coffee catch-ups fizzing and smiling and alive (and feeling guilty for being what Chapman calls a ‘Babbling Brook’). Growing up, and even now at least once a month, my family tease me remorselessly for being a chatterbox. I hated it; still do. The endless words were driven inwards, to diaries and inner thoughts (not helping the depression) and now to my blog and my novels. And always I feel guilty for speaking, for hogging the attention, for asking to be heard.

Chapman lists a dialect of Quality Time as ‘Quality Conversation’ which includes quality listening. I was so quick to accuse myself of being a rubbish listener that I missed the point. Being listened to is my primary love language.

Joanne Harris

I went to an author lecture by Joanne Harris last night and came home bubbling with excitement and a need to discuss it. Hubbie paused his TV program but I still felt I was interrupting. I realise now that an act of love – to me – would have been for him to turn off the TV and give me his full attention.

And again, earlier in the evening, I was getting angry and frustrated with my son because he kept interrupting me, endlessly, as only a three-year-old can. And it dawned on me that the yelling I often resort to, that has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, possibly stems from an insatiable need to be heard.

I know my daughter’s language is quality time and I suspect my son’s is too, (although – like his Dad – physical touch is also super important.) Certainly both children talk as much as me and get just as frustrated if they aren’t attended to. That’s tough on hubbie – being in a house with three chatterboxes all vying for airtime. No wonder he switches off and stops listening; it’s probably a self-defence mechanism. However, if we can become a family that hugs and hears, that loves and listens attentively, we might just cut back on the shouting and increase the joy. It’s worth a go.

I told the doctor yesterday, when talking about my depression, that I didn’t need any more therapy; that words didn’t help and the last psychotherapist I saw made it worse. Turns out I just needed to hear (read) the right words. I can’t recommend the book enough and I will always be grateful to the lovely lady who leant it to me.