Life Changing Times

As anyone who regularly reads this blog couldn’t fail to notice, I regularly take my clothes off in public. Ostensibly to promote the fact that living life with no breasts is not only possible, but can be celebrated.

With regards to body parts, a few years ago it struck me as ironic that I was replacing my hip just a few short months after deciding not to replace my breasts. Albeit titanium was not a breast replacement option – perhaps if it was, I may have made different decisions.

And now I have yet again gone for implants. This time in my mouth.

I wonder am I really just hankering for implants of any sort….?

I was in Turkey recently doing a review of the humanitarian response to the horrific earthquake that happened on the 6th February.

A slight aside. My life in a snapshot. I was in a theatre a couple of weeks before I left for Turkey, watching myself on a VERY large screen, you guessed it, in my knickers. Did I mention it was a screen literally the size of the full stage – ffs?! It was recorded some time back, as part of a show called ‘Mark of a Woman’.

To say that it’s daunting to watch yourself like that would be an understatement. Being half naked is vulnerable. Speaking from the heart about the reason I am popping up half naked all over the place, even more so.

Then off to Turkey! Talk about a change of persona. My two types of work couldn’t be more polar opposites.

But the link is that they are both real. Gut wrenchingly so at times. I was, as I always am, humbled by the people I met and spoke to in Turkey. Many of them 9 months later still working night and day, yet who had themselves lost everything.

Myself and my team worked hard, 12+ hour days – and we dealt with the intensity by laughing a lot during our evening debriefs. One particular favourite was the breastfeeding festival. I was interviewing a local organisation comprised of nurses who provide support to women, including around breastfeeding. The interview was being translated, and I was told that in this particularly conservative part of Turkey, they had recently held a breastfeeding festival. I was trying to keep my expression neutral as my thoughts were swinging between admiration for doing something like that and ‘what the actual fuck were you thinking and did we fund this???’ It wasn’t a festival, it was a workshop I finally discovered, to my relief and small bit of disappointment.

At the end of the two weeks, a few days before we were due to leave, we arrived back to the luxury of a lovely hotel and where we were sitting in the lobby enjoying the warmth and comfort. When the floor and chandeliers started to shake. A colleague appeared, pale and clearly terrified, from her room on the 5th floor where she had felt it even stronger. Richter scale 5 earthquake – apparently super common. Right.

The next day I went to the dentist as a tooth had got damaged. Seemingly everyone apart from me knows Turkey is the dental implant capital of this part of the world. This was Friday, I left the appointment agreeing to two dental implants being placed on Monday evening at 5pm, just ahead of my Tuesday 7am flight.

I have wanted implants for 10+ years, to be clear. But could never afford them. However, I had absolutely no intention of getting some quite like this – I was stunned when the dentist made it sound so simple. And when I mentioned this to any friends, all were ‘oh yes, of course – Turkey and implants!’ I had no fucking idea.

And here I am, 2 weeks later to the day, home with the stitches in my mouth slowly dissolving. Alongside my bank balance.

As I wrote about before, I’m making major changes to my life and my work. The madness has to stop. But fuck, there will be parts that I will miss.