Life Changing Times

Life Changing Moments

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  • Compassion and Serial Killers

    Me: I am on season 12 of Criminal Minds
    Therapist: Have you watched Unorthodox? (goes on to describe it)
    Me: No, I am obsessed with serial killers currently and have watched all of these seasons consecutively
    Therapist: Continues to talk about the poignancy of Unorthodox…
    Me: Oh! You think I should stop watching serial killers and connect with something more heartfelt!
    Therapist: …..

    I often joke that the first half of my life was about getting fucked up, and the second half was about fixing it. Cue 20+ years of therapy. Although I will have to change the maths, as that was applicable when I was 40… I am back seeing my oncology psychiatrist for an unwelcome return of PTSD, or PTSS (replace ‘disorder’ with ‘syndrome’), or whatever it is called when you are utterly disconnected from yourself and trapped in an endless spiral of anxiety/insomnia/terror. I tend to be ridiculously high functioning when I am in a state of trauma and not only fool those around me into thinking I am doing well, but I also fool myself. Perhaps that should be high functioning foolish.

    I started seeing the wonderful Amanda when I was mid chemo in 2015 and I was about to say she was a lifesaver then. Of course, the chemo/surgery/radio were the actual lifesavers, but she saved my sanity going through it all. Going through it all included entering into my first committed relationship in 10 years, which, it turned out, was a great reminder of why I had remained single for 10 years and why I have remained so since.

    Back to compassion – I am deeply compassionate although it tends to be equally deeply buried. Underneath a pile of serial killers currently. Compassion is vulnerability, compassion means opening up parts of myself that hurt and are raw, compassion is scary. To feel compassion for others, you need to feel compassion for yourself and that for me is the hard part for all the reasons listed. It requires bravery to open myself up that much and sometimes I am all out of brave.

  • Airports

    I love airports. Luckily, since I spend a significant amount of my life in them.

    I’m a people watcher, and airports are one of the best places to engage in this pastime. I love watching people heading out on an adventure, returning from one, meeting and greeting loved ones at arrivals, excited goodbyes at departures.

    There is the seasoned traveler – marching through the airport confidently, efficient luggage and clothes, not looking around, they know where they are going and they take no hostages on the way. Not literally, obviously, since I imagine an airport to be one of the worst places to try and stage a kidnap. They are smartly dressed even if casual, and always appear to be extremely organised. In case it’s not obvious I am mildly envious of these people because while I am a confident and accomplished traveler, I hardly ever look smart including casual smart and I always have various extra things in my hands making me slightly chaotic all the time.

    Then there are the people who act as if they have never been to an airport in their lives. (Yes, I appreciate some haven’t but it is not these I am talking about.) These are the ones who arrive at security, suddenly remembering that they cannot carry liquids, look affronted when asked to take their laptop out, unfailingly oblivious of everyone else in the queue behind them. They have nothing prepared when they get to the actual security part, search their copious amount of hand luggage for every last liquid, try and fail to fit it into the plastic bag, need to then entirely repack their cases. They must have 5 hours to spare before their flight. The rest of us don’t.

    The friends and family at arrival who are there with banners, who cannot contain their excitement at the impending arrival of loved ones. Who are rowdy, laughing, taking up huge amounts of happy space, who look as if they may combust with eager anticipation. Smiles and jokes all round. Love it.

    The bleary and bedraggled traveler. Who has come off a red eye flight, has no-one waiting for them, looks around slightly bewildered but knows where they are heading. Exhaustion is palpable from these people, they want to get through and get to bed without having to engage with another human being.

    Children are special at airports – because its a confusing place for many adults and yet children seem to be able to navigate them with no problem at all. From queuing at immigration to waiting for bags they take it in their stride. Get up, sit down, stand in line, walk up, down sideways, get on the plane, get off – totally unfazed.

    Quite literally as I am writing, while sitting an airport waiting for my family to arrive (sadly, no banners as its not quite the same when you are alone bouncing up and down with balloons), there is a person at a table next to me in the cafe speaking loudly in Bosnian. Believing no-one around him can understand, which is a strange assumption at an airport. I am currently learning more about his relationship with his wife than I ever needed to know. In between he is including copious amounts of swearing, even allowing for the fact that one of the reasons I love that language is for the swearing – the type and the free use of pretty outrageous terms by the majority of people. I’m also learning that today is not one of the best days of his life and seemingly not sweating the small stuff is so far an unknown concept to him, judging from his complaints to the long-suffering person on the other end of the phone Mind you, an elderly man has also just sat next to me talking even louder on the phone, in English, discussing his aged relative’s arthritis and then ends the call abruptly after being told by his wife she is busy at the hairdresser. He is now watching a YouTube clip of ABBA singing Dancing Queen. Loudly.

    And I think that’s it – airports give brief snapshots into peoples lives like little else, its like watching a collage of life through the equaliser of travel. Absolutely wonderful.

  • Another day

    June 2020:
    – First global pandemic in over 100 years
    – UK and USA ‘led’ by certifiable lunatics
    – Systemic and institutional racism rampant
    – The hottest month of May ever recorded in the UK

    We are living massive global changes right now. Literally right now. Living history except we don’t know the outcome. So much that has been hidden by mediocrity and apathy is now coming to the surface – climate change, endemic racism, greed – now is the time we are seeing the leaders and the failures. Yes, denial and blind following will always be present, but we are seeing women leaders coming out on top, we are seeing protests rocking America, we are seeing those who felt protected in their ‘safe’ countries realise what others go through.

    On the other side, I’ve just spent the last 2 days in bed. When the going gets tough and all that. I’m overwhelmed by the enormity of what is happening in the world right now. Do I cry? Do I rage? Do I hide? How much can I absorb? Should I be protesting? Have I been whitewashing my black children? How bad does it have to get out there in the world before we rise? Lines are blurred between my personal life and what is happening globally – I function on empathy and that demands a high level of self-awareness and accountability. Its all too easy to make it all about you when its not.

    I’m out of funny right now. Doing really well on anxiety. Energy seems to be on the same holiday as funny. Hope is irrepressible, sometimes obscured, but always managing to peek out around the side of anxiety. Apathy is, well, apathetically, hanging around. Rage for justice is absent and I am lost without that. Luckily, the desire for chocolate remains.

  • The soldier

    He looked into my eyes, smiling, and asked, ‘You will be here for me when I come back?’. I laughed, uncomfortably, because I knew there was something more. 

    We carried on flirting, talking, smiling. Then he said it again. ‘So when I come back, you will be here waiting for me, right?’ This time it was a little more desperate, urgent. A hint, but there nonetheless.

    The third time he asked I looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘Yes. Yes, I will wait for you. I will be here when you get back.’

    Mostar, Bosnia Hercegovina. There we were, three young, naïve, well-intentioned but foolish people running around a war zone. We were going to help. Heading to Tarcin, a town near Sarajevo where there was an orphanage that we would visit and send supplies to. Right up until the mortar landed close to our car in Mostar and we clambered out, shaking, white-faced, people beckoning us to run into a basement for protection. Abid, our driver, clearly also scared but trying to hide it. I was beyond trying to hide it and more worried about shitting myself. Literally.

    Then I walked into this other world – this smoke filled, coffee smelling basement full of people. No children as I recall, but young and old men and women. It was not a dark, damp basement, it had chairs, furniture – I suppose a lower ground floor is what it would be called now. On the table were all the accoutrements for Turkish coffee – the small cups, the ornate sugar holder, the cezve – the long handled pot for brewing the coffee. 

    A wave of comfort and familiarity hit me. My grandmother used to make Turkish coffee at home and I loved the ritual of it. People were talking all around, I only understood some of what was being said – the conversations were fast paced, in accents I wasn’t familiar with but the whirlwind of energies were tangible. 

    And I felt as if I had come home. The shaking subsided, the furious smoking helped calm me, the familiarity of the setting was soothing. While listening to the shelling outside…but that began to move from the fore of my consciousness, replaced by the all the sounds, smells and feelings I was experiencing inside the basement.

    The coming home sensation intensified. And in fact never left me over the years where I was in and out of Mostar, it just became more entrenched. I cried every time I left, heartbroken at what I was leaving behind, never able to remove the feelings of not having done enough and that I was abandoning people. And I cried when I left home to come back to Mostar. At leaving my daughter, again. And for never knowing when I would come back or if I would come back.

    He sat next to me in the basement. The young soldier, in his old and worn fatigues, startling green eyes, dirty blond hair, tanned face, mischievous written all over him. Like the boys I met during my summer holidays in former Yugoslavia – handsome, funny, arrogant, confident, cheeky. Sometimes when we talked, I felt myself back there – he and I in a bubble, by the sea, on holiday, laughing and flirting. And then the jolt back to reality – another mortar fell, someone started to cry or shout. 

    I was captivated, it was almost hypnotic. People kept interrupting, of course, life in the basement continued. I was continually being asked to translate – ha – my mind and emotions were spinning so fast I couldn’t make sense of them to myself, never mind translate. I pieced together parts, added in parts of the conversation and ‘translated’. 

    My soldier kept pulling me back into our world. Drawing me in with his charm, his smiles, and all else would fade away again. I am sure there are a 101 psychological, factual explanations for what was happening between us, but they are irrelevant to me. It was real, intense, incredible.

    He started to get more edgy, hyped up. Mildly at first, although that edge had been there from the start. His asking me to wait for him became more desperate. The ideas of what we would do when he got back (from where, I had no idea) more rapid. I began to notice the same tension in the room with other people – I saw a glimpse through the newly opened door of weapons. A room full of weapons. 

    Then he said he had to go. I didn’t understand. Go out? Go to get something? He kissed my hand, told me he would see me when he got back and walked away. I said goodbye on auto pilot, smiled, told him I looked forward to seeing him again and would wait.

    I am trying not to cry as I write this. 24 years later, almost to the month, and it still breaks my heart as intensely as it did then.

    I looked out of the window to the courtyard. There was my boy, with 10 or more other soldiers. They were putting on camouflage paint, some sort of bandanas around their forehead, hyping up. I could feel the testosterone through the glass – it was palpable. They were egging each other on, back slapping, mock punches while getting ready. Arming themselves.

    An old man came out and handed one of them a grenade. The person next to me looked at me quizzically for a minute, as if weighing me up. Then said quietly, ‘That grenade is for them to blow themselves up if they get caught. We have so few weapons that we have to ration and they only get this one.’

    The understanding came down on me like a ton of bricks, each brick hitting me and hurting me more than the last. I felt sick. I wanted to crouch down on the floor and cry. I wanted to scream out the window for him to come back. Shout at them all to stop. Make everyone go away, get me the fuck out of there, it was too much, I couldn’t do this, I was a coward. 

    My boy, my beautiful, charming, gentle boy was going out on a mission, and he didn’t know if he would make it back alive. I had missed that, completely and utterly missed that. I felt a pain in my gut that was physical. I looked around, everyone in this room was feeling or had felt the same way. Except for them, it was a brother, a father, a husband, a lover. Not someone they had met for an hour. 

    Then the next thing was that the shelling stopped and my companions said we had to go. Oh god, it was all I could to not scream at them – we are not going! We are not leaving until they come back alive. We will stay. To this day, I regret that I didn’t do that. I said I wanted to stay, but I didn’t stick by it. I have said before many times that I don’t have regrets: clearly I was wrong. 

    So we left. I walked away. I had promised him I would stay and yet I left. Yes, I have gone through the logic so many times I have lost count: it is fine I left, I had to, he needed the hope that I would be there to leave with blah, blah, blah. Honestly, it makes no fucking difference. I left. Because I was overwhelmed, because I put pleasing my companions first, because I did not trust myself enough to stick by what I felt and believed. 

    Over the next years, I went back many times to look for him. To laugh, to joke, to smile together and to somehow let him know how sorry I was that I had lied. But I never found him. 

  • Loving lockdown life

    Disclaimer: This is purely about how it’s working for me. The politics in the UK where I am currently based are criminal, the deaths are heartbreaking, for so many the isolation terrifying. I am deeply aware of all of these facts and more.

    Here we are in the grip of a global pandemic and here I am for the most part loving lockdown life. I got back to the UK late March on one of the last flights out just in time to collect my children who finished school a week early. Got home and 8 days later got COVID-19. More on that elsewhere. Suffice to say it is not like the flu in any shape, way or form.

    The weather has been incredible – can you tell I am back in the UK – talking about the weather? After 18 months of having no base at all, I bought a home last November and had only spent 3 weeks in it over Christmas. Lockdown means over 2 months and counting at home, with my children and a complete overhaul of the downstairs.

    To say I have been a little obsessive about this would be mild. Time taken to choose a new tap for my new sink? 4 days. I so wish I was joking.

    Time taken to choose flooring? 30 minutes. Effect, 100% stunning. Practicality, 0%.

    Shockingly, loving lockdown life is not just about the tap or floors – not even the worktops (but they are amazing) – it’s about the simplicity. Time not filled with planning, moving, travelling, arranging. Or people.

    Family, house, beautiful walks, laughter, IKEA arguments, 12 seasons of Criminal Minds. What’s not to love?

  • Furniture building is not a team sport

    Worth stating that making IKEA furniture is a not a fun family activity. 

    1.5 hours in: 

    • 2 rows
    • 3 bouts of hysteria
    • 1 set of full-on Fortnite withdrawal 
    • 1 trip to get sweets and pizza, currently in progress
    • 0 pieces (of 4) furniture made
    • 1 mother wondering what on earth possessed me to think we’d turn into some fantasy family smiling and laughing while building furniture

    2.5 hours in:

    • 1 large bag of sweets, fizzy drinks and junk procured
    • 3 pizza’s
    • 2 children in their rooms with all of the above, apart from one pizza
    • 1 mother rebuilding the existing attempts which include shelves at interesting angles and a table that doesn’t stand up

  • Depression and men

    I’ve been clinically diagnosed as depressed/anxiety disorder (I feel I am generally disordered…) and both times they were chemically induced. The other common denominator was that I was with disordered men…I feel a theme coming on here.

    The first time I was being treated for Hepatitis C, way back in the day when it was a new thing and no-one had a fucking clue what they were doing. So I pretty much designed my own treatment, which, miraculously worked. It involved injecting myself three times a week with a drug called Interferon for 9 months, which is basically like a low dose chemotherapy.

    I was also in the throws of PTSD having recently come back from years of travelling in and out of Bosnia and Hercegovina and living with a man who has declared undying love somewhat randomly. I was so inured to any feelings outside of trauma I moved in with him without really thinking much about it. He then proceeded to have a nervous breakdown: I have that effect, apparently

    Can’t really imagine why I was depressed/suffered with anxiety that time.

    The second time I had breast cancer and felt that running an emergency response into Syria from Jordan was the best way to deal with that – at least during diagnosis, investigations and chemo. I then imported my partner, who I had met 2 weeks before I was diagnosed, and who, shall we say, had anger issues. Not only did I import him, I also employed him – #greatlifechoicesnot.

    Oh look – same net effect as the first time. Back on anti depressants. Perhaps I should change from saying chemically induced to ‘bad life choices in men’ induced. Not as catchy, however.

  • Death

    It’s all in the title – perhaps not the lightest post I’ve ever written.

    Many far better talents than I have written about death. Pithy, witty, embracing dark humour while maintaining the hold on the emotions. Poetry. Books. Articles. I could go on. This post is none of those things, so skip if you are looking for light or witty.

    I’ve faced my own mortality more than perhaps the average person. The average person who has had the fortune to grow up in a country where there is no war or where life is cheap. Not the person who has spent the last 8 years living in the hell that is Syria, for example.

    To use a cliche, I’ve laughed in the face of death. Mostly however, I’ve been terrified anytime it’s come remotely close. Or numb. Right now it’s close to me by proxy – I’ve spent 2 weeks of a 3 weeks holiday with two friends who are facing the death of loved ones. And what a range of emotions – I want to cry with them, hold them, rage with them, wish with them it wasn’t happening. And I want it all to go the fuck away.

    One in particular is too close. Too raw. I know him, became weirdly close to him in the last 9 or so months. For the past 15 years he has been a close friend of one of my closest friends – they’ve gone from work colleagues to…more than friends. Platonic, but more than friends. He is dying of cancer as I type and we don’t know if it is days or weeks, but we do know it is final.

    He died a few short days after I started this post. He was surrounded in his last days by many people who could only think of themselves as it all too common in death. But died with friends who let him go with love and grace, putting aside their grief and personal feelings to hold him while he went. I miss him. Not as intensely as those who knew him longer and loved him more, but I miss him nonetheless.

  • Life Changing​​ Moments

    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.

  • Chemo/no chemo

    Finding out you have breast cancer is a trip in and of itself. However, you then find a whole new world of cancer treatment, which is like entering into a parallel universe. Yes, cancer is dark and terrifying – but bloody hell, the surreal nature of it all at times leads to genuine hilarity.

    My first visit to a chemo ward was…unusual. Or perhaps absolutely normal – who knows since visits to chemo wards are not something you put in your life plans. I’d spent 3 months preparing, absorbing as much as could after my diagnosis, deciding the right course of action for me. I found peace with the belts and braces approach my cancer team proposed – 6 months of chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy.

    So on day one, off my friend and I trot to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, to the rather plush private chemo ward. These were my notes from the first half of the day…. no sign of any chemo:

    1. I got lost 3 times around the hospital (something that continued during very many subsequent visits)
    2. Dealt with my consultant who was sadly rather dismissive, having been lovely the first time I met him
    3. Pissed myself laughing with Claire more than 3 times
    4. Was sent to accounts where there was general confusion and of course liberal doses of paper pushing and box-ticking
    5. Ordered lunch from my chemo(less) chair – does anyone expect lunch menus on a chemo ward?!
    6. I was told many women actually gain weight on this chemo. Likely won’t be a problem for me since I don’t seem to be getting it anyway
    7. Found out I will have a great anti-emetic (no, not anti semetic as someone asked me earlier) drug
    8. Had my arm in a bucket of hot water

    Apparently, the actual administering of the chemo drugs takes approximately 40 mins…..at that point in the day I was doubtful I was going to find out

About Me

Leader, speaker, storyteller, feminist, body positivity activist living an intense, unapologetic life. I take space, I speak loudly, I call out bullshit. With courage, care, and deep empathy. I have spent my life making a positive difference to others through my work as a Humanitarian leader and now through my life experiences.

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