Season 1, 004: in fairytale fashion: those rare moments in life when we are brought to a sudden need to decide on something that will alter the course of our days.
I’m so sorry I completely forgot about the word count !!!! Apologies 💖
Thanks for asking about my writing , I’m still working on the first draft and I am making notes everyday which I plan to sift through and work into the first draft as soon as the college year ends in July ! I’m so looking forward to it and as it approaches I’m appreciative of your substack as an outlet .
"Welcome Charlotte " , she gushed in her usual uplifting tone and Eastern European accent.
I love booking a massage with Evita when funds will allow , which is far and few between but this was a treat to myself for my birthday and Evita is amazing , so professional , intuitive and skilled. I'm not writing a testimonial here for her but finding her massage was like finding 'the right' hairdresser after years of seriously disappointing hair cuts.
After a few 'plain uncomfortable , or just not hitting the spot' massage experiences , it was a relief to find Evita. I had read her bio which explained that she had practised massage as a child and that it was a very normal ritual in her culture to give and receive massage at home as self care . I thought about how lovely this sounded , to embrace massage as something as normal as washing your hair rather than an expensive luxury , many of us can't afford to do regular if at all.
"Nice to see you Charlotte , how are you " Evita gleefully asked as she bounced up the stairs ahead of me . "I'm good thanks , just a bit tired, and you ?" , she looked at me a little surprised , as if she's not used to been asked how she is and went on to say hastily that she was happy to be working and that she had left the kids with her husband. "Yeah " , I agreed . "Oh no " she responded briskly "Its fine , its life , its the way it is , isn't it? "
“It isn’t for me “ , I thought . My response surprised me , I found it slightly abstruse, but I guess I was just acknowledging that 'it isn't the way life is' for me , having kids to look after I mean.
She turned back to look at me , I smiled .
"This white sage spray will allow you to let go of whatever is blocking you and this lavender spray will help you with bringing things into your life, things that you wish to receive … like a new house"
"Mmm " , I thought "This is a new addition to the already top level ceremony , that is having a massage with Evita"
I excitedly thought about what I wanted to let go of , life is feeling pretty good at the moment but maybe there's some remaining baggage from that situation at work or from them family concerns . These options didn’t seem that pressing as I have already put work into them but they would have to do, after all I wanted to make the best of this opportunity to 'let go'.
"Mmm, and what will I ask to receive ? " I thought . Evita had already planted a seed with the new house , and actually, I would love a house of my own at long last but again I’ve done the work. It will happen in time !
I knew how amazingly skilled Evita is at holistic massage but I'd some how forgotten just how much of a magical experience she creates , but today felt like 'a whole other level ' .
I was now laid face down happily imagining letting go , As always I was overthinking for a while , maybe my head goes a bit haywire trying to work out parameters , knowing I’m naked in a room with a person I don’t know all that well. I encouraged myself to relax , breathe.
I was gently, thinking of this and that , then Evita pressed down on the hand left side of my lower back , hip area and boom ! Seemingly out of no where , a cloud of sadness came over me . She hadn’t hurt me , it wasn’t physical but it was as if she had pressed a button in my body and it had simultaneously opened up a pocket of sadness , that unbeknown to me had been nestled inside of my body for time .
Still faced down, I noticed tears had started to drip out of my eyes and were heading towards the floor. I thought about the abortion I had over twenty years ago and in an instant my intellect kicked in with , "but I’ve worked this out I’ve let it go , what's this about ?" and in another flash my heart and head seemed to intuitively connect the dots , "but I haven't grieved been childless for the rest of this life and is that the final decision ? , Yes it is , I think "
I inhaled and exhaled , there was a fleeting and familiar pang of guilt , for the foetus that I had aborted decades earlier but also another not so familiar sense of ungratefulness for not using my healthy womb in the way nature had intended. I silently whispered some gratitude to my ovaries and explained that I won't be using them in that way in this life , maybe in the next life though , maybe il have several children in the next life .
And I let it go.
“I’m going to turn you around now “Evita hummed in her soothing voice
“Would you like a tissue ?“ , she asks .
What ? How does she know , it was a few tears and I don't think I had made any sound to suggest I had shed a tear or two, but I guess she ‘just knew ‘ , the way Evita does.
“ I didn’t expect to get emotional “ , I gasped , as I turned over to my front side and faced her.
“ It’s ok , it’s normal it can happen sometimes with massage , better out , than in “ she chirped reassuringly.
Now , I was face up and considering the energy that I wanted to receive and which was naturally uplifting my whole being whilst cleansing away what had just happened in the space of my body.
"Hmmm" , I inhaled and exhaled and considered , nurturing relationships , acceptance , wellness , contentment and I’d love my own house , but all in good time.
Oh Charlotte… I only look at incoming work on Wednesdays this year, and so this powerful piece by you has been waiting for me to find it for almost a week.
At a thousand words, it is longer than I can curate into the project archive (the 300-word limit is to do with not only my time & what it does for writers to have to edit to a close word count as is needed often for magazines - but also for the format I use online in the story collection).
But it is moving for me to read a longer-form piece by you, especially on this subject which is also at the heart of my book as you know. The way your long-ago decision to have an abortion comes back to your body during the treatment is something I think will speak to so many of us here in the project. And then the strength and surprise of this line:
And I let it go.
How I want to be able to say that to the remaining sorrows/losses/choices I still struggle with.
I also love the closing words: ‘all in good time.’
So much wisdom in your piece.
Do let me know how you are getting on with your writing beyond here when you have a moment: I’d so like to know.
Today, I am aware of the times that call for bravery and I have come to see that in life there are many times where it is required .
First I experience a rush of wild energy in my stomach, it is fear but not in the all-consuming sense , it has more of an excited tone and it seems to be enveloped by a knowing wisdom, a quiet voice that urges me to summon courage and push on for the natural evolution of things .
I remember now that facing things maybe uncomfortable and even painful but by moving towards and through that, there is growth and learning.
I couldn’t imagine being so mindful of how I was feeling when I was in the chaos of alcohol , besides it was the act of drinking that 'stopped' me from feeling, and that was what I thought I wanted , it was a kind of perverted courage. The fire in my belly from 'gin' had long been mistaken for something of mystical and heroic state to arrive in and all along it had been a deception, a complete and utter lie that I told myself , for so long that it had fabricated itself into a whole belief system. A backwards myth that I chose to believe so I didn’t have to face the truth and ‘feel’.
It's so good to feel that this space is part of how and where you're exploring that new 'excited tone' you describe so vividly here: a courage that is fuelled by your instinctive and creative self instead of by alchohol.
And I'm still so happy that you were - unbenownst to me at the time of choosing! - one of my Ilkley mentees this year.
I am reflecting on ways in which 'getting sober' has and continues to enhance my life and it is wonderful to be able to share my writing on here as I grow and learn . I am enjoying noticing myself working through 'difficult ' things and patiently embracing a process rather than acting in my old 'knee jerk' way , which was never as fruitful . I feel as if I can't fully articulate a lot of the 'change' just yet as a lot is still been processed , but having these prompts certainly helps me try and start to do this .
I am so pleased I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have the phone call with you , it has helped me so much in way of moving forward with my writing .
I knew it wasn’t fair to deprive him of children because I was scared of being unable to protect them. His longing had been thickly veiled, supportive as he was of my agency as a modern woman. It was painfully visible to me, observed on my daily rounds of the ward that was our relationship.
I couldn’t get past the fact that the harms I had known since age 9, were impossible to prevent. After all, I’d had a loving mother; a protector who would tell of the time she lost her shit when a wasp hovered over my cot. And yet.
I felt no desire for motherhood.
My therapist said to gently hush the concerns of my inner child. It was all in the past. My friends wanted me so badly to join their gang; there was no reason they could fathom for me not wanting to experience such profound love. Society told me in coffee shops, laundrettes and family parties that it was time to stop being selfish. My GP told me most people don’t think this hard about it. Just Do It. How I hated that thoughtless trope. God probably spent less time thinking about creating life than I did.
A decade of interrogating myself and us, meant there was little time left. With the chances now so slim, it was perhaps safe to leave to fate.
I was pregnant as soon as I allowed myself to be. That very day. My restlessness had, after all, been a signal to jump. Ambivalent action, the way forward. I felt vindicated for my years of indecision. It was always going to happen when it was meant to be.
That no longer felt true 12 weeks later. The first scan was a cause for celebration: the doctor was pleased I had managed to empty my womb safely the night before. My attempt to alter the course of my life, shown for what it was. I’d interfered along with the best of them.
This is bold, declarative writing: the tenderness of the experience is not dodged with brittleness or humour, but confronted head on as the collision of competing views and opinions and needs that constellate around so many of these really central aspects of life. You show so well the huge amount of energy other people expend on trying to recruit others into their way of being.
(I found out only in my mother's last ten days of life what had always felt like a mystery to me: why did she want a baby so badly when she had so many siblings to look after, and had been so very happy in her childless 20s, working the Bank? Something a doctor pressured her to give up when she couldn't conceive as he believed work was the cause of her infertility. So she lost the thing that gave her money and status and invested too much in advance in me, the idea of me. Painful and disappointing for us both. I finally got an honest answer: 'I was at a big Shadrick family gathering, happy after a great week in work and enjoying being part of farming life on the weekends. One of the second cousins looked across the room at me and said in front of everyone: 'You've been married three years and still no baby. What are you? One of those barren cows?' And I felt so ashamed and angry that I was determined to have one. And then when you didn't come I started to want a baby very much.')
For me, your piece does two things at once: It is disquieting, unsettling, full of forces bearing down... and then is it also bracing, certain, self-sovereign. Also good prose: not a word that doesn't earn its place.
That's how I received it as a reader. Interested to hear how it felt to write and share...
Thank you for such a beautiful response. Your mother's story feels both familiar and raw to me. The weight of expectation on her, transferred to you. Your description of how you received this, brought tears to my eyes. Your words reflect my life experience so succinctly and perfectly. It felt easy to write - a kind of gathering of years of thoughts. And also difficult because there is a longer story in every paragraph and I'm never quite sure if the reader can fill in the gaps, or whether it stands alone and they don't need to. It exposes things that aren't exactly secret to those close to me, but that I've never shared in this way so there is of course slight trepidation about anyone I know reading it. Thank you again, I'm blown away by your feedback.
I love reading your work - but also hearing you describe your process. I can tell from how you write that there is a rich mix of decision making and instinctive energy going into it. That's why it has such a direct quality. It means a lot to me that you write for the project xxx
Terrible homesickness engulfed my first term at boarding school. I was adrift in human flotsam. Trying to tread water in wave after wave of relentless change.
The magnitude of the unanchoring was masked: new rules, new subjects, new campus to map. No time remained to think.
Soon though, unfamiliar tasks became routine, left more time for retrospection. Laying the table made me cry. Eating school food made me cry. P.E. and the sadistic ex-gymnast who taught us made me cry. This last one was the most humiliating. Not only was my fear-rigid body inflexible and unyielding, but my large and overwhelming emotions were on show, too.
I learnt it was better to weep in what little privacy I could find; back turned to the room as we did homework; in a largely deserted changing room stall; under the duvet at night. Great silent suffocating sobs, these.
If crying in public was disorientating and mortifying, crying alone was worse because it felt as though it might never stop.
At the end of the Christmas holiday, I was bereft; a tidal wave of tears ready to wreck my return. Grandma handed me a hyacinth bulb, proto-leaves already sloughing skin at the top. She put her arm around me. “You don’t see me crying for Grandfather, do you?”
And because I loved Grandma more than anyone in the world, I chose to stop being homesick. If Grandma could stop the flood, so could I. I was never homesick again, turned it off like a tap.
The most important lesson of my first year at school was this: plants offer hope, excitement, reward. And, if you’re really lucky, beautiful blue flowers whose scent transports you far away to a warm conservatory where there is only love.
What an unforgettable piece of writing. As someone who dreamed of being at a boarding school to escape the chaos of my childhood home, I understand now that there is an equal and opposite force of sadness to be so fully uprooted.
Those beautiful blue flowers: how you invested them with your need for continuity, hope, reward.
Thank you for sharing this with us. Here is your link:
And I'm thinking now that your pseudonym for this project is a reference to Novalis and the blue flower...? I had a copy of Penelope Fitzgerald's novel of that name a long while ago and always meant to read it... but then when I went to fetch it off the shelf one day... gone.
Thank you, Tanya. Once the bullies had (largely) moved on, I came to love boarding very much. Eventually I saw it, as you say, as an escape from chaos; offering stability, the chance to test out academic, cultural, and sporting things I never would without the careful support of adults who genuinely cared.
Those (new) routines that upset me so in the first term were a balm in the end. Their predictability was such a comfort. The final year was agony; I knew what was coming (though I wasn’t sure if I feared A-Levels or leaving more) and wanted time to slow.
I was aware of the gamble of looking online but I had exhausted all other avenues. I was keen now that the time felt right, and I was hoping that I might get lucky.
His photo immediately caught my eye; such was the proud way that he held his head and looked directly into the camera. I felt he was looking right at me, but I guessed that I wasn’t the only one to feel the intensity of his look. His certain ‘Je ne sais quoi ‘ spoke volumes through the screen.
The next thing I knew, we were meeting! As the day arrived, I tried hard not to expect too much. I wanted to appear nonchalance, hoping it would disguise the bubbles of hope that bumped against each other in my tummy.
There he stood, looking every bit as imposing as his photo, with his intense stare and jaunty bandana, enough to make anyone look twice. He watched me as I walked towards him, and he certainly wasn’t playing it cool. His face lit up and softened as he continued to gaze at me. I was smiling hard and trying not to break into a grin. His eyes were the sort one reads about in romantic novels, deep luminous pools that you could get lost in. Eyes flecked with every shade of autumn and large glossy pupils that would pull you under if you dared to look for too long.
As I crouched and stroked him, I let the grin break free because I knew the choice that I was going to make.
**********
This beautiful (deaf) dog, Boof, is still with us today. He was badly abused for the first year of his life and has been left with scars on his head, however he could not be more loving and gentle. Along with our other rescue dog, Lu, Boof is an absolute blessing.
What a delight this was to read! The first time I smiled in pleasure at how clever and fun your piece was - the second time I was struck by the sadness of how Boof had been treated before the good fortune of being chosen by you. Here is your link:
Thank you so much Tanya. I will never understand just how anyone can hurt animals, it is heart breaking to say the least.
Boof has a little PTSD still but it unbelievably loving. We have so much to learn from animals.
Looking for a dog online was a new experience for me and that fact that Boof was advertised as 'Deaf Dave' (we changed his name because my brother is called Dave) made him seem more like a person than a dog. I felt like I was on a dating site!
Thank you again for the opportunity to write in this space.
In the high school bushland across the road is a dead blue tree. Only dead trees are painted this shade of blue in ‘The Blue Tree Project’. The project mission is “to help spark difficult conversations and encourage people to speak up when battling mental health concerns, by spreading the paint and spreading the message ‘it's OK to not be OK’.”
The project founder lost a brother to suicide then painted a tree as a memoir. After awhile she encouraged the gesture, promoted the idea and grew the project. Blue trees scatter the landscape throughout my home state. This memoir choice began as her love song but ends as a lump in my throat. Nearly four decades ago I was grounded with loss from suicide and crawled through the undergrowth. I had learned to manage the difficult emotions that pierced my heart. Then just like that, it was painted. The day I saw the bright blue trunk over the road I felt flooding pain for the school community and my friend. I saw the tree throughout the day. Light reflected it to me in my kitchen, lounge and garden. I didn’t want this stabbing memory of decades old grief from far away. That’s why we have cemeteries and choose when to go. Months passed. The tree haunted me. I phoned the school with condolences and an enquiry about tree relocation within their grounds. The street is sparse and only I see the memorial. Except that it’s not. They said no one died. The tree was a gift. A suicide-tree gift. I let that sink in. Then I wrote to the school. I wrote to the project. I wrote to the paper. I wrote to the board of psychology. My not-OK-ness with their project wasn’t what they meant.
Oh Andrea. What a fierce and heart-hurting piece you have created and shared here. The shocking and painful paradox of how one (state-endorsed) way of mourning/remembering is so pain-inducing for you. Your feelings and reasons have not been heard fully or accepted where you need them to be, but it is a privilege to offer this small space here for your experience to be recognised... https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#andreaday
Thanks. Yes, quite a weird one that whole thing. I had enormous difficultly writing the 300wd piece. What a challenge. But quite cathartic as it turned out. So that tree has been unsettling for me for well over a year, but today it wasn't. How funny is that? It's like being heard properly when I was fully exposed actually mattered. When I spoke to people at the school etc, they just politely fobbed me off, family said I was oversensitive and the tree-project organisation said only 2 other people said what I'd said in 10 years. All in all - 'you don't matter'. But, today I feel different. Maybe because I had to really think through the entire thing precisely and then write and rewrite till it made sense in 300words. That's quite hard. Anyway, something changed. I can't change the situation but I have changed inside from writing about it in an expressive way, quite different from how I expressed myself to the 'authorities'. Thanks for this space. Who knew it could do this? Well, you did I'm sure. Thanks again. Andrea x
Ah. The only thing I knew is what changes happened for me when I found some spaces to start sharing my stories with others - so wanted to make those places for others in turn! You've proved with your piece and how you've felt after it what power there is in short-form writing that really concentrates our experience... x
Lying in my sister’s guest bed, watching my husband sleep beside me, my forehead aches with all the choices we have suddenly found ourselves facing. Middle-age up to now, had brought a mixture of smugness (glad to have got the hectic part of life over), sorrow (the losses, the deaths, the disappointments) and loss of ambition (too late to be starting anything new now). I had chosen my adventures, created a life I loved and thought my future was set, but I hadn’t reckoned on this war that would sour the predictability of our lives, throwing new, unwanted choices in our faces. We could have done nothing of course, stayed, ignored, carried on…
It’s funny how other people’s actions, their choices, seem incomprehensible when you’re not in their shoes. Like imagining getting up at the crack of dawn on your day off from work. You know someone is doing it, and you know you will when it’s your turn, but from the cosy warmth of your quilt it seems unthinkable.
We chose to explore what those choices were. We left everything: jobs, school, friends, flat, even our car, and ran straight into a whirlwind of choosing: bus rides, flights, borders, job interviews, college courses, English exams, visa applications. The pressure of having to make all these decisions weighed heavily over our in-between lives alongside the knowledge that we didn’t know where we were heading, but, gradually, the choices we had been forced to make took on a new form. They became new opportunities, new adventures, an invitation to reshape our lives, choices that would have been ignored before.
I kissed my husband and he rolled over to hold me. Soon we would get up, leave the warm bed behind and face our new day.
Heidi! I almost missed this new one from you due to the volume of stories newly coming in! Phew - so very glad it came up when I did a doublecheck of my notifications just now.
I love this kind of writing: when a much longer time series of events, or a complex set of decision-making (yours has both!), is contained by a physical action (as here, with you lying in bed, then waking for the day). I feel it earths and sends voltage through strong feelings all at once. Powers good prose.
And I love that authorial statement that comes in para 2: I'm always excited when contributors to this project not only share a memory but also give me a sense of how they'd sound in a longer published work, and what their values are...
I long for the days before perimenopause when my body did not feel every emotion as if stung by a jellyfish, as if it was bound in electric wire, both exhausted and thrumming with energy, a woodpecker inside, tapping on each nerve ending. I am in this land of mixed metaphors, no certainties. Human skin sheds dead cell by dead cell, millions a day, but still, just a patchwork, change unseen, leaving one essentially the same. Mid-fifties and change must now come snakelike.
Snake skin does not grow with the snake and the snake eventually cannot abide being contained. To allow this change the time it needs, it will hide away, days, weeks, vision impaired, alone. When ready, the snake will rub against something abrasive to shed, to crawl out anew, enlarged, old skin left there, intact but empty. I was that, but now I am this, that old skin reminds.
Women, too, know the itch of wanting to crawl from one’s skin, past lives no longer fit. Snakes who do not do a complete shed risk infection, blindness, death. Women, the same. Women forced to shapeshift in public, if they dare.
Sheila - this is so visceral, so exciting to me. A large part of my writing work from last month through to next October is not shareable with most of my existing online communities - I'm a co-tutor on Sharon Blackie's Hagitude program, working with hundreds of women (mostly) new to me. I'm hosting a creative confidence thread around second half of life there, and how much I'd love to share a link to your piece, with your permission. I think it would speak so strongly to that community. But I'd only do so with your permission of course.
'the snake will rub against something abrasive to shed' - I love how this reframes the friction and resistance that I feel (as do so many of the post-50 women I know). And this concept, made so visceral here, that if we don't complete the work of shedding we will be materially harmed.
Tanya, What an honor, yes, please do share. Strangely enough, I am a member of Sharon's program, but have not posted anything yet. It seemed like life got busy and but also, all of that material is new to me, so I felt a bit out of my league. It's interesting what stands in the way.
Also, regarding the post on Instagram about your mom's health, I wanted to send warm wishes to you as you go through this time. As with so many other women, this part of your book resonated so much for me, I felt the punch of it and so admire your ability to repair that relationship and now to face the challenge of this next chapter. xo
Sheila! Well this is the most exciting thing to learn! Please, please use the piece you've submitted here then as your introductory post to the Creative Confidence thread over there rather than me doing it - I will see it in my notifications and will reply so that others there who don't already know about this other place for sharing work can find out and join in. Your work is absolutely compelling and will find so many readers in the Hagitude program... xx
“You are so lucky with all the choices that are out there”, I used to say to my children. I only repeated what I was told as a child myself. How many other empty words that I chose to copy?
So much choice of stuff to repeat without pausing, questioning, and valuing. And so many choices we have now with words and labels.
How do you choose to understand the word freedom? Kindness? Self-Love? Self-Trust? How do you choose to see your role? Your path? Where is your left and where is your right?
How much choice do we all really have? Unimportant things – yes, far too many; but if you sift through it, is there more choices now than before?
When I’ve started consciously examining choices I’d made, so many questions popped up. But the one that troubled me most – could I trust myself after years of putting trust in others, who I thought were better qualified.
Who do you trust when making choices? Could you truly trust others if you don’t trust yourself? And could we ever feel free to choose what we want?
One of my old university teachers used to sit in an art gallery by his favourite painting for hours on end before making decisions about his choices. A good friend of mine listen to Bach for guidance.
I’ve chosen to follow my primal instincts into the woods and meadows for answers. Only in nature I found that freedom and self-trust, when an invisible force guided me to what I needed. My senses rested and danced at the same time and suddenly the whole new way of living opened to me.
I love how you invoke your old teacher and good friend towards the end here: as a technique (used naturally or deliberately!) it works so well to make the reader ready to here your own position right at the end after following you through your questions. Wonderful.
Thank you for making this edit, Holly. I've now been able to move it into the story archive (the format of which means I can't control your many line breaks as I could in a print project however; I've set each one as a separate line but how they break within that on different size screens is not something I can control). The format of the project is best suited to prose in that respect! But your words are so powerful that I wanted to have them in the archive.. Here is your link:
Ah! Glad you like, and it's an absolute pleasure. I do hope you'll enjoy responding to other themes as and when they move you to do so. As I say, prose works better visually given there are sometimes a number of contributions on any month's page in the archive, but it can poetic in style if you know what I mean! But for this breath-related piece I was happy to make one of my occasional exceptions!
I'd definitely love to respond to some of the other themes too! This is good to know, poetic prose it is then :) Well, that is so very kind of you to make that exception. xx
There he was, for just that moment. The back of his head, lit by the stage lighting. Then gone. Again.
Twenty years before, he had asked me for a date. He was coy, and seemed genuine, but I had been the subject of gossip before. If I were to say yes, I would be the talk of this small town, as I had been of the last small town. I was tired of the watching eyes, and the bitchy tongues, and in any case, I was still in love with someone else. Someone who no longer wanted me, but had warned me off this other man with kinder eyes. It was easier to say no, as hard as I found it to reject anyone who looked at me that way and was brave enough to pay me a compliment.
I had regretted it, days later and through the years. My past love had married the next woman he met. Twenty years on, I was nine years into a relationship that I couldn’t imagine leaving, nor committing to for life. Life was comfortable and settled, but there was little joy and it was heavy with guilt. Prior to this, I had been open to the idea of 'true love' but with no success. I had eventually persuaded myself that my expectations were too high, after all. This, in spite of the evidence against, provided in the form of failed flings with drop-outs, alcoholics and older divorcees. It was time to accept my losses. I’d never find him. This would have to do.
And yet, on a night out far away from any small town, I had walked into a room, just before he left it. Fuelled by drink, regret, hope and the knowledge that if another twenty years passed, it would be too late, I went to find him.
Laura! How lovely to have you join our story-sharing community - and with this beautiful piece, and the other you have contributed over on the Desire theme. It has been my pleasure and privilege to add them both to the permanent story archive over on The Cure for Sleep website, and here are your two links:
How much your writing on class and university spoke to me. I can't remember if you're already reading my book, but if you have it ahead of you, you will see these very same forces working themselves out (slowly, painfully) in my life too.
If you'd like to add your surname at any point, just let me know and I will update both your contributions as soon as I do.
Sociologist Susie Scott writes of ‘myriad lost, forgotten, unreal selves that never came to be’. She argues that beyond the storied looking glass, the unlived life unfolds in parallel.
Growing up, I devoured ‘Famous Five’ books. I didn’t identify with George because I wasn’t a tomboy. Nor with Ann because she was wet. The ‘best’ character was obviously Julian. He knew stuff, solved problems, took charge. I didn’t identify with him, though, because he was a boy. A prototypical male.
Georgette Heyer arrived. Julian morphed into suave heroes who met their match in feisty young women or rescued quiet ones from bullying families, the ‘resolution’ always the woman bagging the man. Aping the former hadn’t worked for me, so I sought further guidance on how to ‘fulfil my destiny’ from other sources: the coming-out-as-a-debutante novel Coronet Among the Weeds (which allowed me the fantasy that I was rejecting various ‘Chinless Wonders’ rather than being rejected by blokes with and without chins); and the guide-book ‘In Search of Charm’ which imparted essentials like how to walk, sit, stand, get in and out of cars; which gloves to wear with evening dresses and how to remove them before eating (“Take a firm but feminine grip”).
A working-class girl whose gender identity formation was shaped not only along the class lines promoted by her Wykemist Headteacher, but by a femininity that led her to fall in love with traditionally ‘masculine’ boys/men in literature and life. I’m not sure when that ghostly girl became a vanishing wraith but what was lost along paths not taken…? Certainly opportunities to allow dinner companions to guide my menu choices; and getting out of sports cars elegantly. But also the realisation that the Julians of this world are not the font of all knowledge. So not all bad.
Jackie, this is such a fine piece of writing - I love it when a writer can deliver such a vivid sense of social history and its personal legacy. So glad you have joined the project. Here is your link. Tx
I think I got into the habit of feeling that if I drifted through the days; if I let things be, choices would present themselves. Maybe I was scared of the responsibility of decision making. Maybe letting stuff happen was just how things were now.
It was Tuesday. Dad had gone. Just like that. Mum said so. On Monday he was wandering round the house in his too short towelling dressing gown from 1978; Tuesday, “Your Dad’s died”.
In my teenage mind he’d made choices- the wrong ones and that had left me to make mine by myself. So, he didn’t love me then? I decided not if he could be so selfish and just piss off so easily like that.
It didn’t really add up though. I could feel his love surely and deeply in my bones; in all those memories that tumbled over each other. I had to rethink. Yes, he’d chosen to live life to the full; to laugh, to drink (quite a lot), to cook and to eat- (even more), to entertain and to charm.
I have a big question though. How was he chosen? He was adopted and this fact has come to absorb me more and more. I watch Long Lost Families and wonder about his mum and about my grandpa and grandma Stead who chose him. They would never share what they knew. Why not? Shame? Fear or just because they wanted him to be only there’s.
What made him choose to make our family with mum, to write stories about us when he was a journalist for The South Wales Echo?
Those choices created a childhood for me. One of days at the beach, shepherd’s pie and amazing fishcakes, camping and a holiday in California, of house moves including one to The Solomon Islands and of treasured letters at boarding school and water fights and “get out of that” grips in his arms.
So, he can’t have chosen to leave us. He loved us too much.
Louise: this is so moving. The way you take us with you through your loss and the way your thinking moved through it. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to add it to the archive and here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#LouiseStead
If you would like me to link on your name to your own website or a social media account just reply to this with it and I will update asap.
Please do share word of this safe space for sharing stories with any friends who you feel might also benefit from it.
Thanks Tanya. It’s quite exposing isn’t it! I’m really enjoying reading others stories here too(& yours of course!) . I haven’t really shared my work before. Louise
Well if you haven't shared your work before, Louise, I am now doubly glad for your contribution. In so few words you have given me (and other readers) such a concentrated sense of your father, your loss. It's been six years now since my first, short, locally-published and online essay came out (was asked to read it in public on - of all days - my birthday. Age 42, and back in the university where I'd been known only as a shy student and reserved administrator). I've become more used now to living a minor public life through my words online and in print, but yes, absolutely, it is a massive shock to the system, even if sharing one's art or words or music or whatever other passion has long been held inside as a dream or goal. That's my the main reason for my using my own's book publication to invite others to share tales: to give people the kind of safe starting space that a couple local projects gave me when I began. Thank you again for taking part - and how that some of the remaining themes will call forth more words from you. Tanya x
I desperate needed a break from my increasingly stressful work life in a senior public service role; I chose to go on a ten day camel trek in the Sinai desert with a small group of others, led by Bedouins. We rode on the camels during the coolth of early morning and early evening, resting in shade in the heat of midday. We were spending the last day and night in a hotel on the shores of the Red Sea. I stood with in the sea watching tiny jewelled fish swimming around my feet and, looking up, marvelling at the far shores, where something (dolphins or big fish?) were leaping. A sudden determination gripped me and I said to myself, “if I want to feel anything like this again, I must leave my job.” On my return home, I handed in my resignation, took a year’s sabbatical and, via stints stacking supermarket shelves to avoid bankruptcy, I set myself up as a self employed deaf, disability and diversity equality consultant and trainer, supplementing the inevitable troughs and peaks of income with a couple of public service roles. A life changing and life enhancing choice.
Sarah! What a wonderful piece of life experience you've just shared with us. Thank you for bringing the Sinai and the Red Sea into my self-isolating week. It's especially good to have you join us here, given that you and I first connected around my very first work back in 2017 on Watermarks. I hope you will enjoy responding to other of the existing and upcoming themes. And please do share word of this safe storytelling space with any friends you feel might get use from it. If you'd like me to link from your name to a personal website or a social media account just reply with it and I will update your entry. Very best as ever, Tanya xx
Oh gosh Tanya
I hope that you are well
I’m so sorry I completely forgot about the word count !!!! Apologies 💖
Thanks for asking about my writing , I’m still working on the first draft and I am making notes everyday which I plan to sift through and work into the first draft as soon as the college year ends in July ! I’m so looking forward to it and as it approaches I’m appreciative of your substack as an outlet .
Thank you 🙏 💖🙏
That first draft is always the hardest - from then on you’ve got material to cut and reorder and refine. Excited for you xx
Thank you Tanya , I will let you know when it feels ready ...... xxx
"Welcome Charlotte " , she gushed in her usual uplifting tone and Eastern European accent.
I love booking a massage with Evita when funds will allow , which is far and few between but this was a treat to myself for my birthday and Evita is amazing , so professional , intuitive and skilled. I'm not writing a testimonial here for her but finding her massage was like finding 'the right' hairdresser after years of seriously disappointing hair cuts.
After a few 'plain uncomfortable , or just not hitting the spot' massage experiences , it was a relief to find Evita. I had read her bio which explained that she had practised massage as a child and that it was a very normal ritual in her culture to give and receive massage at home as self care . I thought about how lovely this sounded , to embrace massage as something as normal as washing your hair rather than an expensive luxury , many of us can't afford to do regular if at all.
"Nice to see you Charlotte , how are you " Evita gleefully asked as she bounced up the stairs ahead of me . "I'm good thanks , just a bit tired, and you ?" , she looked at me a little surprised , as if she's not used to been asked how she is and went on to say hastily that she was happy to be working and that she had left the kids with her husband. "Yeah " , I agreed . "Oh no " she responded briskly "Its fine , its life , its the way it is , isn't it? "
“It isn’t for me “ , I thought . My response surprised me , I found it slightly abstruse, but I guess I was just acknowledging that 'it isn't the way life is' for me , having kids to look after I mean.
She turned back to look at me , I smiled .
"This white sage spray will allow you to let go of whatever is blocking you and this lavender spray will help you with bringing things into your life, things that you wish to receive … like a new house"
"Mmm " , I thought "This is a new addition to the already top level ceremony , that is having a massage with Evita"
I excitedly thought about what I wanted to let go of , life is feeling pretty good at the moment but maybe there's some remaining baggage from that situation at work or from them family concerns . These options didn’t seem that pressing as I have already put work into them but they would have to do, after all I wanted to make the best of this opportunity to 'let go'.
"Mmm, and what will I ask to receive ? " I thought . Evita had already planted a seed with the new house , and actually, I would love a house of my own at long last but again I’ve done the work. It will happen in time !
I knew how amazingly skilled Evita is at holistic massage but I'd some how forgotten just how much of a magical experience she creates , but today felt like 'a whole other level ' .
I was now laid face down happily imagining letting go , As always I was overthinking for a while , maybe my head goes a bit haywire trying to work out parameters , knowing I’m naked in a room with a person I don’t know all that well. I encouraged myself to relax , breathe.
I was gently, thinking of this and that , then Evita pressed down on the hand left side of my lower back , hip area and boom ! Seemingly out of no where , a cloud of sadness came over me . She hadn’t hurt me , it wasn’t physical but it was as if she had pressed a button in my body and it had simultaneously opened up a pocket of sadness , that unbeknown to me had been nestled inside of my body for time .
Still faced down, I noticed tears had started to drip out of my eyes and were heading towards the floor. I thought about the abortion I had over twenty years ago and in an instant my intellect kicked in with , "but I’ve worked this out I’ve let it go , what's this about ?" and in another flash my heart and head seemed to intuitively connect the dots , "but I haven't grieved been childless for the rest of this life and is that the final decision ? , Yes it is , I think "
I inhaled and exhaled , there was a fleeting and familiar pang of guilt , for the foetus that I had aborted decades earlier but also another not so familiar sense of ungratefulness for not using my healthy womb in the way nature had intended. I silently whispered some gratitude to my ovaries and explained that I won't be using them in that way in this life , maybe in the next life though , maybe il have several children in the next life .
And I let it go.
“I’m going to turn you around now “Evita hummed in her soothing voice
“Would you like a tissue ?“ , she asks .
What ? How does she know , it was a few tears and I don't think I had made any sound to suggest I had shed a tear or two, but I guess she ‘just knew ‘ , the way Evita does.
“ I didn’t expect to get emotional “ , I gasped , as I turned over to my front side and faced her.
“ It’s ok , it’s normal it can happen sometimes with massage , better out , than in “ she chirped reassuringly.
Now , I was face up and considering the energy that I wanted to receive and which was naturally uplifting my whole being whilst cleansing away what had just happened in the space of my body.
"Hmmm" , I inhaled and exhaled and considered , nurturing relationships , acceptance , wellness , contentment and I’d love my own house , but all in good time.
Oh Charlotte… I only look at incoming work on Wednesdays this year, and so this powerful piece by you has been waiting for me to find it for almost a week.
At a thousand words, it is longer than I can curate into the project archive (the 300-word limit is to do with not only my time & what it does for writers to have to edit to a close word count as is needed often for magazines - but also for the format I use online in the story collection).
But it is moving for me to read a longer-form piece by you, especially on this subject which is also at the heart of my book as you know. The way your long-ago decision to have an abortion comes back to your body during the treatment is something I think will speak to so many of us here in the project. And then the strength and surprise of this line:
And I let it go.
How I want to be able to say that to the remaining sorrows/losses/choices I still struggle with.
I also love the closing words: ‘all in good time.’
So much wisdom in your piece.
Do let me know how you are getting on with your writing beyond here when you have a moment: I’d so like to know.
xxx
The Courage to Grow .
Today, I am aware of the times that call for bravery and I have come to see that in life there are many times where it is required .
First I experience a rush of wild energy in my stomach, it is fear but not in the all-consuming sense , it has more of an excited tone and it seems to be enveloped by a knowing wisdom, a quiet voice that urges me to summon courage and push on for the natural evolution of things .
I remember now that facing things maybe uncomfortable and even painful but by moving towards and through that, there is growth and learning.
I couldn’t imagine being so mindful of how I was feeling when I was in the chaos of alcohol , besides it was the act of drinking that 'stopped' me from feeling, and that was what I thought I wanted , it was a kind of perverted courage. The fire in my belly from 'gin' had long been mistaken for something of mystical and heroic state to arrive in and all along it had been a deception, a complete and utter lie that I told myself , for so long that it had fabricated itself into a whole belief system. A backwards myth that I chose to believe so I didn’t have to face the truth and ‘feel’.
It's so good to feel that this space is part of how and where you're exploring that new 'excited tone' you describe so vividly here: a courage that is fuelled by your instinctive and creative self instead of by alchohol.
And I'm still so happy that you were - unbenownst to me at the time of choosing! - one of my Ilkley mentees this year.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#charlottedawson
Txx
Thank you Tanya ,
I am reflecting on ways in which 'getting sober' has and continues to enhance my life and it is wonderful to be able to share my writing on here as I grow and learn . I am enjoying noticing myself working through 'difficult ' things and patiently embracing a process rather than acting in my old 'knee jerk' way , which was never as fruitful . I feel as if I can't fully articulate a lot of the 'change' just yet as a lot is still been processed , but having these prompts certainly helps me try and start to do this .
I am so pleased I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have the phone call with you , it has helped me so much in way of moving forward with my writing .
Thank you for all you do xx
I knew it wasn’t fair to deprive him of children because I was scared of being unable to protect them. His longing had been thickly veiled, supportive as he was of my agency as a modern woman. It was painfully visible to me, observed on my daily rounds of the ward that was our relationship.
I couldn’t get past the fact that the harms I had known since age 9, were impossible to prevent. After all, I’d had a loving mother; a protector who would tell of the time she lost her shit when a wasp hovered over my cot. And yet.
I felt no desire for motherhood.
My therapist said to gently hush the concerns of my inner child. It was all in the past. My friends wanted me so badly to join their gang; there was no reason they could fathom for me not wanting to experience such profound love. Society told me in coffee shops, laundrettes and family parties that it was time to stop being selfish. My GP told me most people don’t think this hard about it. Just Do It. How I hated that thoughtless trope. God probably spent less time thinking about creating life than I did.
A decade of interrogating myself and us, meant there was little time left. With the chances now so slim, it was perhaps safe to leave to fate.
I was pregnant as soon as I allowed myself to be. That very day. My restlessness had, after all, been a signal to jump. Ambivalent action, the way forward. I felt vindicated for my years of indecision. It was always going to happen when it was meant to be.
That no longer felt true 12 weeks later. The first scan was a cause for celebration: the doctor was pleased I had managed to empty my womb safely the night before. My attempt to alter the course of my life, shown for what it was. I’d interfered along with the best of them.
This is bold, declarative writing: the tenderness of the experience is not dodged with brittleness or humour, but confronted head on as the collision of competing views and opinions and needs that constellate around so many of these really central aspects of life. You show so well the huge amount of energy other people expend on trying to recruit others into their way of being.
(I found out only in my mother's last ten days of life what had always felt like a mystery to me: why did she want a baby so badly when she had so many siblings to look after, and had been so very happy in her childless 20s, working the Bank? Something a doctor pressured her to give up when she couldn't conceive as he believed work was the cause of her infertility. So she lost the thing that gave her money and status and invested too much in advance in me, the idea of me. Painful and disappointing for us both. I finally got an honest answer: 'I was at a big Shadrick family gathering, happy after a great week in work and enjoying being part of farming life on the weekends. One of the second cousins looked across the room at me and said in front of everyone: 'You've been married three years and still no baby. What are you? One of those barren cows?' And I felt so ashamed and angry that I was determined to have one. And then when you didn't come I started to want a baby very much.')
For me, your piece does two things at once: It is disquieting, unsettling, full of forces bearing down... and then is it also bracing, certain, self-sovereign. Also good prose: not a word that doesn't earn its place.
That's how I received it as a reader. Interested to hear how it felt to write and share...
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#laura2
Thank you for such a beautiful response. Your mother's story feels both familiar and raw to me. The weight of expectation on her, transferred to you. Your description of how you received this, brought tears to my eyes. Your words reflect my life experience so succinctly and perfectly. It felt easy to write - a kind of gathering of years of thoughts. And also difficult because there is a longer story in every paragraph and I'm never quite sure if the reader can fill in the gaps, or whether it stands alone and they don't need to. It exposes things that aren't exactly secret to those close to me, but that I've never shared in this way so there is of course slight trepidation about anyone I know reading it. Thank you again, I'm blown away by your feedback.
I love reading your work - but also hearing you describe your process. I can tell from how you write that there is a rich mix of decision making and instinctive energy going into it. That's why it has such a direct quality. It means a lot to me that you write for the project xxx
The Blue Hyacinth
Terrible homesickness engulfed my first term at boarding school. I was adrift in human flotsam. Trying to tread water in wave after wave of relentless change.
The magnitude of the unanchoring was masked: new rules, new subjects, new campus to map. No time remained to think.
Soon though, unfamiliar tasks became routine, left more time for retrospection. Laying the table made me cry. Eating school food made me cry. P.E. and the sadistic ex-gymnast who taught us made me cry. This last one was the most humiliating. Not only was my fear-rigid body inflexible and unyielding, but my large and overwhelming emotions were on show, too.
I learnt it was better to weep in what little privacy I could find; back turned to the room as we did homework; in a largely deserted changing room stall; under the duvet at night. Great silent suffocating sobs, these.
If crying in public was disorientating and mortifying, crying alone was worse because it felt as though it might never stop.
At the end of the Christmas holiday, I was bereft; a tidal wave of tears ready to wreck my return. Grandma handed me a hyacinth bulb, proto-leaves already sloughing skin at the top. She put her arm around me. “You don’t see me crying for Grandfather, do you?”
And because I loved Grandma more than anyone in the world, I chose to stop being homesick. If Grandma could stop the flood, so could I. I was never homesick again, turned it off like a tap.
The most important lesson of my first year at school was this: plants offer hope, excitement, reward. And, if you’re really lucky, beautiful blue flowers whose scent transports you far away to a warm conservatory where there is only love.
What an unforgettable piece of writing. As someone who dreamed of being at a boarding school to escape the chaos of my childhood home, I understand now that there is an equal and opposite force of sadness to be so fully uprooted.
Those beautiful blue flowers: how you invested them with your need for continuity, hope, reward.
Thank you for sharing this with us. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#mnivalis
And I'm thinking now that your pseudonym for this project is a reference to Novalis and the blue flower...? I had a copy of Penelope Fitzgerald's novel of that name a long while ago and always meant to read it... but then when I went to fetch it off the shelf one day... gone.
Thank you, Tanya. Once the bullies had (largely) moved on, I came to love boarding very much. Eventually I saw it, as you say, as an escape from chaos; offering stability, the chance to test out academic, cultural, and sporting things I never would without the careful support of adults who genuinely cared.
Those (new) routines that upset me so in the first term were a balm in the end. Their predictability was such a comfort. The final year was agony; I knew what was coming (though I wasn’t sure if I feared A-Levels or leaving more) and wanted time to slow.
I was aware of the gamble of looking online but I had exhausted all other avenues. I was keen now that the time felt right, and I was hoping that I might get lucky.
His photo immediately caught my eye; such was the proud way that he held his head and looked directly into the camera. I felt he was looking right at me, but I guessed that I wasn’t the only one to feel the intensity of his look. His certain ‘Je ne sais quoi ‘ spoke volumes through the screen.
The next thing I knew, we were meeting! As the day arrived, I tried hard not to expect too much. I wanted to appear nonchalance, hoping it would disguise the bubbles of hope that bumped against each other in my tummy.
There he stood, looking every bit as imposing as his photo, with his intense stare and jaunty bandana, enough to make anyone look twice. He watched me as I walked towards him, and he certainly wasn’t playing it cool. His face lit up and softened as he continued to gaze at me. I was smiling hard and trying not to break into a grin. His eyes were the sort one reads about in romantic novels, deep luminous pools that you could get lost in. Eyes flecked with every shade of autumn and large glossy pupils that would pull you under if you dared to look for too long.
As I crouched and stroked him, I let the grin break free because I knew the choice that I was going to make.
**********
This beautiful (deaf) dog, Boof, is still with us today. He was badly abused for the first year of his life and has been left with scars on his head, however he could not be more loving and gentle. Along with our other rescue dog, Lu, Boof is an absolute blessing.
What a delight this was to read! The first time I smiled in pleasure at how clever and fun your piece was - the second time I was struck by the sadness of how Boof had been treated before the good fortune of being chosen by you. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#traceymayor
Txx
Thank you so much Tanya. I will never understand just how anyone can hurt animals, it is heart breaking to say the least.
Boof has a little PTSD still but it unbelievably loving. We have so much to learn from animals.
Looking for a dog online was a new experience for me and that fact that Boof was advertised as 'Deaf Dave' (we changed his name because my brother is called Dave) made him seem more like a person than a dog. I felt like I was on a dating site!
Thank you again for the opportunity to write in this space.
Tracey x
Oh my....that was wonderful! What a surprise ending, I did not see that coming! xx
Thank you Shelia!
X
Choosing a memoir
In the high school bushland across the road is a dead blue tree. Only dead trees are painted this shade of blue in ‘The Blue Tree Project’. The project mission is “to help spark difficult conversations and encourage people to speak up when battling mental health concerns, by spreading the paint and spreading the message ‘it's OK to not be OK’.”
The project founder lost a brother to suicide then painted a tree as a memoir. After awhile she encouraged the gesture, promoted the idea and grew the project. Blue trees scatter the landscape throughout my home state. This memoir choice began as her love song but ends as a lump in my throat. Nearly four decades ago I was grounded with loss from suicide and crawled through the undergrowth. I had learned to manage the difficult emotions that pierced my heart. Then just like that, it was painted. The day I saw the bright blue trunk over the road I felt flooding pain for the school community and my friend. I saw the tree throughout the day. Light reflected it to me in my kitchen, lounge and garden. I didn’t want this stabbing memory of decades old grief from far away. That’s why we have cemeteries and choose when to go. Months passed. The tree haunted me. I phoned the school with condolences and an enquiry about tree relocation within their grounds. The street is sparse and only I see the memorial. Except that it’s not. They said no one died. The tree was a gift. A suicide-tree gift. I let that sink in. Then I wrote to the school. I wrote to the project. I wrote to the paper. I wrote to the board of psychology. My not-OK-ness with their project wasn’t what they meant.
Oh Andrea. What a fierce and heart-hurting piece you have created and shared here. The shocking and painful paradox of how one (state-endorsed) way of mourning/remembering is so pain-inducing for you. Your feelings and reasons have not been heard fully or accepted where you need them to be, but it is a privilege to offer this small space here for your experience to be recognised... https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#andreaday
Thanks. Yes, quite a weird one that whole thing. I had enormous difficultly writing the 300wd piece. What a challenge. But quite cathartic as it turned out. So that tree has been unsettling for me for well over a year, but today it wasn't. How funny is that? It's like being heard properly when I was fully exposed actually mattered. When I spoke to people at the school etc, they just politely fobbed me off, family said I was oversensitive and the tree-project organisation said only 2 other people said what I'd said in 10 years. All in all - 'you don't matter'. But, today I feel different. Maybe because I had to really think through the entire thing precisely and then write and rewrite till it made sense in 300words. That's quite hard. Anyway, something changed. I can't change the situation but I have changed inside from writing about it in an expressive way, quite different from how I expressed myself to the 'authorities'. Thanks for this space. Who knew it could do this? Well, you did I'm sure. Thanks again. Andrea x
Ah. The only thing I knew is what changes happened for me when I found some spaces to start sharing my stories with others - so wanted to make those places for others in turn! You've proved with your piece and how you've felt after it what power there is in short-form writing that really concentrates our experience... x
Lying in my sister’s guest bed, watching my husband sleep beside me, my forehead aches with all the choices we have suddenly found ourselves facing. Middle-age up to now, had brought a mixture of smugness (glad to have got the hectic part of life over), sorrow (the losses, the deaths, the disappointments) and loss of ambition (too late to be starting anything new now). I had chosen my adventures, created a life I loved and thought my future was set, but I hadn’t reckoned on this war that would sour the predictability of our lives, throwing new, unwanted choices in our faces. We could have done nothing of course, stayed, ignored, carried on…
It’s funny how other people’s actions, their choices, seem incomprehensible when you’re not in their shoes. Like imagining getting up at the crack of dawn on your day off from work. You know someone is doing it, and you know you will when it’s your turn, but from the cosy warmth of your quilt it seems unthinkable.
We chose to explore what those choices were. We left everything: jobs, school, friends, flat, even our car, and ran straight into a whirlwind of choosing: bus rides, flights, borders, job interviews, college courses, English exams, visa applications. The pressure of having to make all these decisions weighed heavily over our in-between lives alongside the knowledge that we didn’t know where we were heading, but, gradually, the choices we had been forced to make took on a new form. They became new opportunities, new adventures, an invitation to reshape our lives, choices that would have been ignored before.
I kissed my husband and he rolled over to hold me. Soon we would get up, leave the warm bed behind and face our new day.
Heidi! I almost missed this new one from you due to the volume of stories newly coming in! Phew - so very glad it came up when I did a doublecheck of my notifications just now.
I love this kind of writing: when a much longer time series of events, or a complex set of decision-making (yours has both!), is contained by a physical action (as here, with you lying in bed, then waking for the day). I feel it earths and sends voltage through strong feelings all at once. Powers good prose.
And I love that authorial statement that comes in para 2: I'm always excited when contributors to this project not only share a memory but also give me a sense of how they'd sound in a longer published work, and what their values are...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#heidireinsch
Tanya xx
Thank you so much Tanya, I really appreciate your detailed and encouraging responses; you make me want to write more❤
Tanya, Thanks for that gentle push. It is now posted.
I long for the days before perimenopause when my body did not feel every emotion as if stung by a jellyfish, as if it was bound in electric wire, both exhausted and thrumming with energy, a woodpecker inside, tapping on each nerve ending. I am in this land of mixed metaphors, no certainties. Human skin sheds dead cell by dead cell, millions a day, but still, just a patchwork, change unseen, leaving one essentially the same. Mid-fifties and change must now come snakelike.
Snake skin does not grow with the snake and the snake eventually cannot abide being contained. To allow this change the time it needs, it will hide away, days, weeks, vision impaired, alone. When ready, the snake will rub against something abrasive to shed, to crawl out anew, enlarged, old skin left there, intact but empty. I was that, but now I am this, that old skin reminds.
Women, too, know the itch of wanting to crawl from one’s skin, past lives no longer fit. Snakes who do not do a complete shed risk infection, blindness, death. Women, the same. Women forced to shapeshift in public, if they dare.
This is incredible Shelia! Your words say so much, build such an experience that is a joy to read.
Thank you
Tracey x
Thank you! Easier to write about it than go through it. 😊Sheila
Sheila - this is so visceral, so exciting to me. A large part of my writing work from last month through to next October is not shareable with most of my existing online communities - I'm a co-tutor on Sharon Blackie's Hagitude program, working with hundreds of women (mostly) new to me. I'm hosting a creative confidence thread around second half of life there, and how much I'd love to share a link to your piece, with your permission. I think it would speak so strongly to that community. But I'd only do so with your permission of course.
'the snake will rub against something abrasive to shed' - I love how this reframes the friction and resistance that I feel (as do so many of the post-50 women I know). And this concept, made so visceral here, that if we don't complete the work of shedding we will be materially harmed.
Thank you.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#sheilaknell
Txx
Tanya, What an honor, yes, please do share. Strangely enough, I am a member of Sharon's program, but have not posted anything yet. It seemed like life got busy and but also, all of that material is new to me, so I felt a bit out of my league. It's interesting what stands in the way.
Also, regarding the post on Instagram about your mom's health, I wanted to send warm wishes to you as you go through this time. As with so many other women, this part of your book resonated so much for me, I felt the punch of it and so admire your ability to repair that relationship and now to face the challenge of this next chapter. xo
Sheila! Well this is the most exciting thing to learn! Please, please use the piece you've submitted here then as your introductory post to the Creative Confidence thread over there rather than me doing it - I will see it in my notifications and will reply so that others there who don't already know about this other place for sharing work can find out and join in. Your work is absolutely compelling and will find so many readers in the Hagitude program... xx
“You are so lucky with all the choices that are out there”, I used to say to my children. I only repeated what I was told as a child myself. How many other empty words that I chose to copy?
So much choice of stuff to repeat without pausing, questioning, and valuing. And so many choices we have now with words and labels.
How do you choose to understand the word freedom? Kindness? Self-Love? Self-Trust? How do you choose to see your role? Your path? Where is your left and where is your right?
How much choice do we all really have? Unimportant things – yes, far too many; but if you sift through it, is there more choices now than before?
When I’ve started consciously examining choices I’d made, so many questions popped up. But the one that troubled me most – could I trust myself after years of putting trust in others, who I thought were better qualified.
Who do you trust when making choices? Could you truly trust others if you don’t trust yourself? And could we ever feel free to choose what we want?
One of my old university teachers used to sit in an art gallery by his favourite painting for hours on end before making decisions about his choices. A good friend of mine listen to Bach for guidance.
I’ve chosen to follow my primal instincts into the woods and meadows for answers. Only in nature I found that freedom and self-trust, when an invisible force guided me to what I needed. My senses rested and danced at the same time and suddenly the whole new way of living opened to me.
This is wonderful Elena, and extremely pertinent with all that is going on in the world these last few years.
I also take my decision making outside into the forest, for there, I too feel the connection with all that is. Nature is the perfect therapy!
Tracey x
I love how you invoke your old teacher and good friend towards the end here: as a technique (used naturally or deliberately!) it works so well to make the reader ready to here your own position right at the end after following you through your questions. Wonderful.
Here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#elena
I struggle with anything deliberate 🤣. Both used to amuse me quite a lot, how naive I was then xx
sat too still, for too long
missing the way that breath seems to expand more in my chest,
when its outside breath,
or puffed post swimming breath,
or dry lips, many words spiralling friend breath,
or hand cramp drawing breath,
oh, what about wet summer rain soaked inevitability breath,
and even more, the lifting forehead to beams and feeling skin blooming breath,
with the nose itching grassy blade breath -
keep those breaths.
gulping back enough to fill the wind pipe,
smack it with the good breath,
smother it with the nutrient breath,
the scraped back salt swim skin breath,
the content, settled in my shoulders, solo reading breath,
the silent kitchen group dance breath,
the oh, you feel that too breath,
the slump but feeling forearms lifting under your armpits breath -
keep those breaths
remember what my lungs feel like,
when they’re filled up good and green,
pushing out with growth,
sliding through the alveoli, between the cauliflower gaps,
with buds and uncurling leaf fingers,
with the haze of that grey blue mist calm, that lands on my neck and
lets me roll my head on a sigh.
that achey into white duvet cloud breath,
that sand in socks on pebble shore breath,
that burrowing of your spine downwards in knowing who you are breath,
that eyes slightly widening with words of praise breath -
keep those breaths.
I choose what keeps me going to be there always
I choose to feel turned inside out by connection to the big bigness of it all
and also the tiny little music moments that tinkle against my heart
more tending, less tackling
more asking for, less stamping panicked feet
more fruit, less packets,
more listening, less lonely,
more walking, less re treading
come on now fluttery butterfly light bulb inside,
lets feel silky comfortable in silky skin made silky from the silky sun
lets feel sliding comfort up and down our length from the knowledge of choosing ourself,
not a best version
just a good one, a kept breath one.
Thank you for making this edit, Holly. I've now been able to move it into the story archive (the format of which means I can't control your many line breaks as I could in a print project however; I've set each one as a separate line but how they break within that on different size screens is not something I can control). The format of the project is best suited to prose in that respect! But your words are so powerful that I wanted to have them in the archive.. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#hollynicholls
Txx
It looks beautiful! Thank you for all your time and attention, very special to be a part of it xx
Ah! Glad you like, and it's an absolute pleasure. I do hope you'll enjoy responding to other themes as and when they move you to do so. As I say, prose works better visually given there are sometimes a number of contributions on any month's page in the archive, but it can poetic in style if you know what I mean! But for this breath-related piece I was happy to make one of my occasional exceptions!
I'd definitely love to respond to some of the other themes too! This is good to know, poetic prose it is then :) Well, that is so very kind of you to make that exception. xx
There he was, for just that moment. The back of his head, lit by the stage lighting. Then gone. Again.
Twenty years before, he had asked me for a date. He was coy, and seemed genuine, but I had been the subject of gossip before. If I were to say yes, I would be the talk of this small town, as I had been of the last small town. I was tired of the watching eyes, and the bitchy tongues, and in any case, I was still in love with someone else. Someone who no longer wanted me, but had warned me off this other man with kinder eyes. It was easier to say no, as hard as I found it to reject anyone who looked at me that way and was brave enough to pay me a compliment.
I had regretted it, days later and through the years. My past love had married the next woman he met. Twenty years on, I was nine years into a relationship that I couldn’t imagine leaving, nor committing to for life. Life was comfortable and settled, but there was little joy and it was heavy with guilt. Prior to this, I had been open to the idea of 'true love' but with no success. I had eventually persuaded myself that my expectations were too high, after all. This, in spite of the evidence against, provided in the form of failed flings with drop-outs, alcoholics and older divorcees. It was time to accept my losses. I’d never find him. This would have to do.
And yet, on a night out far away from any small town, I had walked into a room, just before he left it. Fuelled by drink, regret, hope and the knowledge that if another twenty years passed, it would be too late, I went to find him.
Laura! How lovely to have you join our story-sharing community - and with this beautiful piece, and the other you have contributed over on the Desire theme. It has been my pleasure and privilege to add them both to the permanent story archive over on The Cure for Sleep website, and here are your two links:
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#Laura
https://thecureforsleep.com/october-issue-on-desire/#Laura
How much your writing on class and university spoke to me. I can't remember if you're already reading my book, but if you have it ahead of you, you will see these very same forces working themselves out (slowly, painfully) in my life too.
If you'd like to add your surname at any point, just let me know and I will update both your contributions as soon as I do.
Very best, Tanya x
Sociologist Susie Scott writes of ‘myriad lost, forgotten, unreal selves that never came to be’. She argues that beyond the storied looking glass, the unlived life unfolds in parallel.
Growing up, I devoured ‘Famous Five’ books. I didn’t identify with George because I wasn’t a tomboy. Nor with Ann because she was wet. The ‘best’ character was obviously Julian. He knew stuff, solved problems, took charge. I didn’t identify with him, though, because he was a boy. A prototypical male.
Georgette Heyer arrived. Julian morphed into suave heroes who met their match in feisty young women or rescued quiet ones from bullying families, the ‘resolution’ always the woman bagging the man. Aping the former hadn’t worked for me, so I sought further guidance on how to ‘fulfil my destiny’ from other sources: the coming-out-as-a-debutante novel Coronet Among the Weeds (which allowed me the fantasy that I was rejecting various ‘Chinless Wonders’ rather than being rejected by blokes with and without chins); and the guide-book ‘In Search of Charm’ which imparted essentials like how to walk, sit, stand, get in and out of cars; which gloves to wear with evening dresses and how to remove them before eating (“Take a firm but feminine grip”).
A working-class girl whose gender identity formation was shaped not only along the class lines promoted by her Wykemist Headteacher, but by a femininity that led her to fall in love with traditionally ‘masculine’ boys/men in literature and life. I’m not sure when that ghostly girl became a vanishing wraith but what was lost along paths not taken…? Certainly opportunities to allow dinner companions to guide my menu choices; and getting out of sports cars elegantly. But also the realisation that the Julians of this world are not the font of all knowledge. So not all bad.
Jackie, this is such a fine piece of writing - I love it when a writer can deliver such a vivid sense of social history and its personal legacy. So glad you have joined the project. Here is your link. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#jackiegoode
Thanks so much Tanya - I'm enormously pleased - and privileged - to be part of the project!
Jx
Do we make choices or do choices make us?
I think I got into the habit of feeling that if I drifted through the days; if I let things be, choices would present themselves. Maybe I was scared of the responsibility of decision making. Maybe letting stuff happen was just how things were now.
It was Tuesday. Dad had gone. Just like that. Mum said so. On Monday he was wandering round the house in his too short towelling dressing gown from 1978; Tuesday, “Your Dad’s died”.
In my teenage mind he’d made choices- the wrong ones and that had left me to make mine by myself. So, he didn’t love me then? I decided not if he could be so selfish and just piss off so easily like that.
It didn’t really add up though. I could feel his love surely and deeply in my bones; in all those memories that tumbled over each other. I had to rethink. Yes, he’d chosen to live life to the full; to laugh, to drink (quite a lot), to cook and to eat- (even more), to entertain and to charm.
I have a big question though. How was he chosen? He was adopted and this fact has come to absorb me more and more. I watch Long Lost Families and wonder about his mum and about my grandpa and grandma Stead who chose him. They would never share what they knew. Why not? Shame? Fear or just because they wanted him to be only there’s.
What made him choose to make our family with mum, to write stories about us when he was a journalist for The South Wales Echo?
Those choices created a childhood for me. One of days at the beach, shepherd’s pie and amazing fishcakes, camping and a holiday in California, of house moves including one to The Solomon Islands and of treasured letters at boarding school and water fights and “get out of that” grips in his arms.
So, he can’t have chosen to leave us. He loved us too much.
Louise: this is so moving. The way you take us with you through your loss and the way your thinking moved through it. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to add it to the archive and here is your link: https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#LouiseStead
If you would like me to link on your name to your own website or a social media account just reply to this with it and I will update asap.
Please do share word of this safe space for sharing stories with any friends who you feel might also benefit from it.
Very best, Tanya x
Thanks Tanya. It’s quite exposing isn’t it! I’m really enjoying reading others stories here too(& yours of course!) . I haven’t really shared my work before. Louise
Well if you haven't shared your work before, Louise, I am now doubly glad for your contribution. In so few words you have given me (and other readers) such a concentrated sense of your father, your loss. It's been six years now since my first, short, locally-published and online essay came out (was asked to read it in public on - of all days - my birthday. Age 42, and back in the university where I'd been known only as a shy student and reserved administrator). I've become more used now to living a minor public life through my words online and in print, but yes, absolutely, it is a massive shock to the system, even if sharing one's art or words or music or whatever other passion has long been held inside as a dream or goal. That's my the main reason for my using my own's book publication to invite others to share tales: to give people the kind of safe starting space that a couple local projects gave me when I began. Thank you again for taking part - and how that some of the remaining themes will call forth more words from you. Tanya x
I desperate needed a break from my increasingly stressful work life in a senior public service role; I chose to go on a ten day camel trek in the Sinai desert with a small group of others, led by Bedouins. We rode on the camels during the coolth of early morning and early evening, resting in shade in the heat of midday. We were spending the last day and night in a hotel on the shores of the Red Sea. I stood with in the sea watching tiny jewelled fish swimming around my feet and, looking up, marvelling at the far shores, where something (dolphins or big fish?) were leaping. A sudden determination gripped me and I said to myself, “if I want to feel anything like this again, I must leave my job.” On my return home, I handed in my resignation, took a year’s sabbatical and, via stints stacking supermarket shelves to avoid bankruptcy, I set myself up as a self employed deaf, disability and diversity equality consultant and trainer, supplementing the inevitable troughs and peaks of income with a couple of public service roles. A life changing and life enhancing choice.
Sarah! What a wonderful piece of life experience you've just shared with us. Thank you for bringing the Sinai and the Red Sea into my self-isolating week. It's especially good to have you join us here, given that you and I first connected around my very first work back in 2017 on Watermarks. I hope you will enjoy responding to other of the existing and upcoming themes. And please do share word of this safe storytelling space with any friends you feel might get use from it. If you'd like me to link from your name to a personal website or a social media account just reply with it and I will update your entry. Very best as ever, Tanya xx
https://thecureforsleep.com/the-cure-for-sleep-june/#SarahPlayforth