Are you OK?
Why 'Fine' is a four letter word...
Happy Monday!
I sat down to write this, and then got sidetracked by a thought…so I’m going with it - bear with me!
Yesterday evening I was tucked up in bed by 9pm with a hot water bottle and a book, in an attempt to make myself feel less crappy. One of the thoughts that distracted me from my book (The Artists Way by Julia Cameron, if you’re interested, kindly lent to me by a lovely friend - thanks, V) was that I seem to have developed a habit of asking my children (15 and 12) “Are you OK?” at regular intervals throughout the day. (Am I neurotic? Answers on a postcard…)
I’m not sure how it started, or when it seemed to become my catch-all phrase for interacting with or initiating conversation with, my kiddos, but I think I need to stop. Partly because it’s probably really annoying and they are too kind to tell me, partly because they probably think they only acceptable answer is “yes”…and I suspect that is the equivalent of someone asking us how we are, and we say “Fine” - when what we really want to say is…
‘I’m exhausted.’
‘I’m overwhelmed.’
‘I’m feeling sad and a bit lost.’
‘The world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket…and I don’t know how to feel anymore…’
Or something along those lines.
Anyway, my point, if I have a point, is that we drop in to patterns of being, and behaving, and sometimes those no longer serve us.
My podcast this week is a corker - with Erin Gallagher on her book Hype Women (published tomorrow) - and one of the things we touch on is how we ‘deprogram’ ourselves from unhelpful Operating Systems, and it’s something I have been thinking about ever since we spoke last month.
That ‘rebooting’ is not easy - for us, or those around us. It takes time, and some people will not like the Version 2.0 that emerges.
I do hope you’ll listen…and I’d love to know what you think…
Here are a couple of quotes from the book itself:
I predict a Riot…
Save the date…on 12th October the new series Riot Women starts on the BBC - from Sally Wainwright the creator of Happy Valley, the cast looks incredible and on the basis of the trailer this drama about a posse of menopausal women starting a punk band promises to be right up my street…
I love the quote from this article: “The songs they end up with – composed for the show by indie-punk two-piece ARXX – land in the bit of the Venn diagram where punk meets the menopause: an absolutely uncompromising “fuck you”.”
Last call…for our Ask the Dr Everything Menopause session…
Tomorrow (Tuesday…so today, if you don’t read this until Tuesday morning!) is our Q&A session with Dr Beth Thomas (yes, related, fabulous sister in law) inside our Holding Up The Sky community.
So this is your last call to let you know that you can (for now at least) join for a month for just £5 (utter bargain) - and you’ll be in time to spend some time shooting the breeze on all things peri/menopause with Dr Beth, tomorrow night from 7.30-8.30pm AND you get to hang out inside Holding Up The Sky for the rest of the month.
No lock-in period, you decide how long you want to stay (I mean, obviously I’d love you to hang out)…just cancel before the renewal date.
Have a fabulous rest of the week - if you’re a LinkedIn kinda person, I’m sharing menopause resources most days during October, so do come and say Hi over there too if we are not already connected!
Emma
x