Life Changing Times

To be accurate, three in my life to date:

• Becoming a parent for the first time
• The day I accidentally arrived in Bosnia Herzegovina during the war
• Having had breast cancer

These all fundamentally changed who I am. I have had many, many life defining moments and times, but these ones altered the course of my life. The first was very much planned, the second I fell into, the third appeared in me; and yet despite how different they all are I am undoubtedly a better person as a result of all of them

To qualify #3. My line is that I am not grateful I had cancer – and yes, there are people who profess that they are grateful, I am not one of them – but I like the person I have become from what I learned through that particular rollercoaster.

#1 I could talk about forever. The whole world of being a parent was a whole new level of love. And blind panic. I remember holding her in my arms after she was born thinking ‘what the actual fuck do I do now?’ I quite literally had no idea how to parent, from changing nappies to engendering emotional wellbeing. The former I managed, the latter on a far more hit and miss basis. As evidenced by her deciding at age 11 she would be a psychologist and never having wavered from that path….she took my ‘you have no university fund, but rather a therapy fund’ very literally.

#2 will get lots written about it on these pages over time, as actually will all of them, but this slightly differently. Insofar as I was offered a book deal for that story once upon a time, but in my history of, let’s say, unusual life choices, I instead decided to live with the man who was going to write it after he unexpectedly expressed his undying love for me. And then shortly after he proceeded to have a mental breakdown while I found out I had Hepatitis C and went through 9 months of gruelling treatment .

Life tip? PTSD is not a good foundation from which to make major decisions. Life tip 2? Try to avoid having some degree of PTSD for most of your life or else tip #1 becomes redundant.