Confession time. I am going through what Brené Brown calls a midlife unravelling. No, it’s not a midlife crisis. It’s not a mental health collapse, either, although it feels like it. It’s an undoing. An uncontrolled and uncontrollable breakdown of what has been assumed and is assumed. What was certain is not. What seems to be reality is actually a foundation of quicksand. It’s a curious No Man’s Land of stripped back limbo where I’m questioning my decisions, and the preceding groundwork and reality on which I have based those decisions.
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There’s something really nice about being on the other side of fifty. You’ve seen it all and done it all (well, maybe not everything, but quite a lot) and you know that you don’t have too much tolerance (or time) for crap… your own or anyone else’s. You know what works for you, and conversely, what doesn’t. And if things fall into the “not working for you” camp, you can say without hesitation and without too much delay, I’m done. There’s a certain freedom that comes from knowing when you’re done, and calling it. It means you can walk away,
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As you know, I’ve just returned from a trip to Bali. I went there for the Write A Bestseller Retreat at Sharing Bali. I think I also mentioned in a previous post somewhere that I had never been interested in going to Bali, what with all the drunk Australians that are drawn to the island. Bali equalled Kuta equalled Bali, as far as I was concerned. I am here to tell you that Bali was one of THE best travel experiences I’ve ever had. If you have been following my escapades adventures on my travel blog, you’ll know that the
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If you haven’t read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of The Ex-Files you should. It will give you some context as to why I’m taking this self-indulgent trip down memory lane. John John has the dubious honour of being the most good looking man I have ever had a relationship with, and the man who did my head in almost as much as the Italian. I met him when Tessa was four, almost five. I was still teaching—and it was early on in my teaching career—so it must have been around 1998. I would have been 34 or 35. I
Continue reading...(And I’ve read so many…) Y’all have been reading this blog for a while. Y’all know that I’ve had such miserable and painful experiences in the love and relationships department that I decided to bow out, throw in the towel and resign myself to the fact that I am doomed to walk this planet alone. But what if I told you I have read a book that has literally made me rethink my I Am Doomed to Be Single Forever And Will Just Be A Crazy Cat Lady relationship status? That I am not crazy-mad-stupid for how I have previously tackled
Continue reading...One of the easiest—yet hardest—things you can do to enhance the quality of your life (and in doing so, up your happiness factor by a quotient of at least 10) is to know yourself and know what makes you tick. I say easiest, because it’s much easier to unpack yourself and get to know how you work than another person. After all, you are always around. You can never hide from you. Granted, you can maybe zone out from yourself in the form of drugs or sex or alcohol or any other kind of self-medication you can think up, but you
Continue reading...Recently, I almost, very quickly and without much thought, fell in love. He was a man I had met a number of times, and when we crossed paths this last time, something just clicked into place. Suffice it to say I was swept off my feet with his attention; his openness and warmth; his wanting to get to know me; and his heady promises of an awesome future. He seemed so authentic, so genuine, so real and so different from all the fucktards I’d recently had the dubious pleasure of being involved with. And he was authentic, genuine, real and different until
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