I’m on my own again

Mentally adding to the list of

Why I cannot bear men

With exception of just one

The love of my life

If it wasn’t for my husband

I’d surely have a wife

For what’s under silk, lace

Within my heart are for him

But my god knows boundless beauty

They made in women

Power. Money.

Destruction. War.

Ego. Libido.

Slave. Whore.

If they don’t already,

If they could they would

Harm my beloved

Sisterhood

Loving. Kind.

Soft. Care.

Open. Hollow.

Coven. Shared.

I choose my husband

Forever his

Plan B, plan C

Safety with sis

Not cis

Sciss

.

…feel sad that it isn’t like a snail and have a home with it, then see some beautiful flowers…

…which makes you wish you were laying amongst them reading a book. The book that comes to mind is A Tangled Web (love love looooove), which then leads your thoughts to her beautiful caravan. And you end up with this…

Yep. A particular flavour of crazy brain.

Ally x

You were either #teamanimals or #teameyeroll and there was no permission to be anywhere between.

And do you remember when you were about to leave school and there were endless conversations about ‘what’ you were going to be?

You needed an answer. Preferably one with few words in the title that was easily recognisable to the questioner.

Aaaand do you remember growing up talking about who you were going to marry?

And of course then have all the kids, tick all the neat life boxes to live happily ever after?

Well….

At the ripe old age of 37 I’m finally beginning to shed the skin of past me, the skin that was covered in cuts and bruises from the barbed wire wrapped around me. Do not grow. Do not change. Stay small and stay in your lane!

And I’ve gotta say, this new skin is enjoying the air of freedom.

I remember being ‘hardcore’ vegan and, when it was big family gatherings for a celebration, really wishing I could join in with the dinner Mum had loving prepared, instead of having guilt for needing a separate dish (sometimes doubling her workload!). So new skin me is living in the grey area where I don’t live in fear of cutting myself on the sharp internal judgmental razors, but instead having grace for those moments where I want to live freely my way.

The old skin was also crusty and crispy, from the dehydrated hardening that was required to work in Global Corporate Automotive Sales. New skin me is an artist, musician, singer, teacher, care worker and much more in between and I feel glowingly luscious. The answer ‘Commercial Manager’ seemed to make people happier as a response to ‘what do you do’, they tend to lose interest in my ramblings now, but I want to live freely my way.

I had a husband who was a paper prince with green flags and box ticks galore. But the hitting and pushing wasn’t detailed on the page. The silent treatment wasn’t on the page. The emotional, financial and mental abuse wasn’t on the page. My old skin was black from the constant burning. The fear of social outcast, judgement and scary change lasted too long. Out the other side with new husband and our beautiful life, I feel like new skin me had a lucky escape. Life is short. Accept the changes needed and keep moving towards happiness. It was worth the fight to live freely my way.

So if you think ‘I love animals and like the idea of being vegan, but couldn’t give up bacon’…. Then drop everything else and eat the bacon.

If you think ‘I’d love to do volunteering in the arts sector but can’t because I need my corporate job stability’ then find just one window of time to squeeze in a volunteering morning here and there where you can. It will scratch that itch!

If you think ‘I need a husband and that will fix my worries and give me my happily ever after’, just remember that peace is not in another person but in you right now. We only ever have now and if you don’t know your own happiness you won’t find it somewhere else.

Think about what scars you’re carrying on your skin, is it time to release your new one?

What does it look like to live freely your way?

With love,

Ally

For years, I believed happiness was hiding in a self-help book written by a woman called something like Willow Breezebank.

I thought one more chapter would finally sort me out. I’d become the kind of person who rises early, journals daily, and doesn’t eat pickled onions wrapped in cheese straight from the fridge under the big light….dont judge me ok?!

Instead, I remained myself.

Ugh. How disappointing.

We are sold a strange idea: that being human is a defect requiring constant maintenance.

Sad? Heal. Tired? Optimise. Lost? Rebrand. Slightly bored on a Wednesday? Clearly you’ve ignored your ever elusive purpose.

Or (and stay with me here) you’re just alive. In that very real, mundane way. The same as everyone else..

Not every ache is trauma, and not every messy season needs a workbook.

Sometimes you do not need fixing.

Sometimes you need a sit down, preferably with a cuppa and a sweet treat.

There is enormous peace in abandoning the search for your “best self,” who sounds exhausting anyway. In forgiving the version of you who didn’t become shinier, richer, calmer, or mysteriously fluent in French.

There is peace in accepting the ordinary:

Tea gone cold.
Rain on the grubby windows.
Your family asking where things are that they are literally standing directly beside.
An ageing face in the mirror that has seen some things.

No breakthrough, no radiant transformation.

Just a decent enough life, quietly happening, almost forgotten while you were busy trying to improve it.

And honestly?

There’s such happiness in the quiet happening. Come and join me. You do not need to bring anything. Let’s just be.

Subscribe if you’d like more reflections on middle age, motherhood, feminism, and the slow death of pretending we’re fine.

A hot, wild blaze, completely out of control.

“Out of control”….everyone’s happy place right…

[TW self harm]

Growing up in a small village, snuggled in the English countryside, the message was clear

• be quiet

• be pretty

• get husband

• have kids

that’s happiness.

Cinderella told me so! Tick those off and you get your happily ever after.

Except I ticked what I could, ended up abused, manipulated and under my husbands control…that wasn’t in the fairytale?!

And then Mr Plot Twist appeared.

Sending lightning strikes across my life so fast I could not stop the wild fires engulfing everything.

Eventually I ended up sleeping on a friends sofa, living on anti-everything medication, barely conscious, with bleeding wrists and a blade on the floor next to me.

Now I’ll be honest, I haven’t watched the Cinderella sequels but I’m fairly confident it doesn’t show the arc of her digging a way out from this? (Correct me if I’m wrong!).

Looking back I needed this muirburn.

I needed everything to die. To break. To reveal its true fragility and impermanence in order for me to move away from that happily ever after tick list.

And I ended up not with Prince Charming, but 11 years later Mr Plot Twist is still going strong. He still likes to strike down any notions of destructive fairytale narrative that may pop up.

And I need that.

Despite loving the princesses so deeply.

A grief.

An awakening.

Acceptance. Reluctant.

To grow up female in the UK, experiencing patriarchy, reading the statistics on male violence to woman, surviving, and still thinking “yes, I’ll marry one”. Peculiar.

Because by that point you know, the imbalance, the entitlement, the background hum of violence that’s common enough to feel like the societal heartbeat. You’ve felt how the world bends, consistently, in their direction.

I tried to do it all; career, motherhood, sanity, and was losing marbles left right and centre. The system wasn’t built for us, the expectation is to perform in it flawlessly anyway, fucking impossible.

So choosing a man in that context can feel… questionable.

And yet.

Some men are awake to it, yes, not perfectly, not always, but ‘enough’? Enough to listen and carry their share without applause. Enough to understand that equality isn’t theoretical, it’s daily, practical, essentially it’s inconvenient.

Marrying a man like that isn’t surrender.

It’s alignment to a purpose.

It is definitely not a fairytale which brings its own grief (thanks 90s Disney!) but more an ongoing negotiation.

The women before us didn’t do all that work so we could step away from the cause. They made space. Handed us The Baton (check out Katie Gavin’s beautiful song! https://open.spotify.com/track/2IeTudz0ELnsU2fRSkqYY1?si=ym3AOKxJRP2EQP0qH3R-3Q ).

And now it’s up to us. Fuck.

Messy, tired, aware, we can do it, one day at a time.

So yes, I married a man.

Courageously.

At some point, you realise you’ve stopped performing for the male gaze quite so… eagerly.

Once upon a time, long(ish) ago, it was a full-time role! Obsessing over lighting, angles, poses, and it felt like a low-level audition at all hours. You nonchalantly referred to it as “making an effort,” which is British for deeply ingrained societal conditioning with lip gloss.

And you were bloody knackered by the constant performance.

Then gradually, you stop.

Not entirely, let’s not be dramatic, you’ve still got to face your Mum(!), but the intensity of interest in it all fades. You find yourself prioritising comfort over appeal, the lure of infamous pockets over silhouettes, sitting down properly in chairs so you can actually breathe and letting the rolls roll, eating crisps in public without attempting to look like a wistful heroine in a French film (I had an obsession with Andrey Tautou when I was younger).

And it’s ..freeing.

Also, slightly ..unsettling.

Because however irritating the attention was, it was also a kind of feedback. A quiet, constant reassurance that you were still in the ‘game’?

And despite all the work with self help books, feminist awakenings and therapy sessions, you are embarrassed to admit you miss it, in the way one misses a noise you once found unbearable.

Right. Enough preamble. Let’s get to it. Flirting.

In your carefree twenties, it’s practically a personality. By late thirties when you’ve battled to find a beautifully solid, loving relationship, it becomes more of an existential query (as if we haven’t got enough of those in this decade!).

My question to you dear stackers: Is flirting harmless charm or am I essentially running legacy software, trained for years to seek approval and now unsure how to uninstall it?

My current truth is feeling that the male gaze doesn’t vanish, it just becomes less… managerial in that you stop reporting to it quite so often.

And in its place, something quieter emerges. Not self-love in the way I am constantly striving for (despite the many many many books!), but a sort of functional self-approval of adequacy?

You cautiously leave the house looking fine. Not aiming for exceptional, not aiming for devastating, just accepting ..fine.

Which feels, frankly, like progress.

All for your Mother to see you in such a state and worryingly ask ‘Are you ill? You look terribly tired? Are you sure you’re not poorly?’

For fucks sake.

Thoughts?

Do you miss it?

Do you still flirt?

And if so, are we being charming, or just historically consistent?

Please hold my hand and help me through this 🫶

Forgive me, I haven’t written for over a month. Some might say that’s Substack suicide!

And it wasn’t because I’ve been busy (though I have, as we all are. I’m fully in that chaotic, middle-aged-mum chapter where you’re never quite sure what you’ve achieved but you’re definitely exhausted).

But because (drum rolllllllllllll) I read the comments

I know I know I know! Rookie error.

Some of them were… unnervingly weird.

Strangers asking if your husband owes people money, calling you a fake, and asking for proof that you’re really married(?!), is not something you imagine receiving while sipping your cuppa!

And to be honest I hated it, I don’t like confrontation at the best of times, particularly from the male flavour of human, and it made me feel nervous. Like I shouldn’t be here, how dare I have a voice when I haven’t justified my worth (seemingly defined by my husband?!).

So I ghosted.

I chose a quiet retreat whilst I let my nervous system settle.

I wanted to leave even though I had only just arrived. And leave in a quiet, slipping out through the stage door, coat half on, kind of way, muttering something about “not really my scene anymore”. Wanting to hide in a corner, wrapped in a blanket with a hot cuppa.

But I didn’t. (Well.. I did do the blanket and cuppa bit clearly, but the running away part I didn’t 🤣) Because, for the most part, I truly feel like this is my scene.

Which, frankly, is either resilience or poor judgement…TBC!

Luckily, for every comment that made me want to turn into a small, bitter troglodyte, there were others. Kind ones. Thoughtful ones. The sort that land gently in your heartiest of hearts and stay with you.

The ones that quietly nudge: keep going.

(And I will name you at the end you lovely Stackers.)

So thanks to you I’ve stayed.

Stubbornly.

Like an understudy who refuses to go home even though they’re 99% sure they’ll never be called on.

And perhaps that’s the moral of the story, if we must have one, and Substack does rather lend itself to a moral doesn’t it.

You don’t leave the stage because someone in Row B coughs loudly and looks unimpressed. You stay, you hit your mark, you say your lines and you trust that somewhere in the dark, someone is actually listening.

The wrinklier I get, the more I believe life is consistently an absurd act of faith.

So here I am. Back on stage with a slightly bruised ego, under this questionable lighting. Painting a face on ready to try again.

And if you’re still here, reading, subscribing, quietly nodding along while stirring your tea or hiding from your children in the loo (come on, you know we all do it) thank you. Truly.

You are the audience that makes it worth staying for.

Your cue:

If you’ve nearly quit something because someone was a bit… much with their comments please do tell me. It’s nice to feel less alone.

Coming soon (because every good show needs a teaser):

More from the life of a woman attempting to juggle:

• children (sticky)

• responsibilities (relentless)

• and a slightly delusional return to the stage (delusional)

Expect rehearsal diaries, minor existential crises and the ongoing question of whether one can convincingly project to the back row while also remembering to defrost the chicken.

Spoiler: unclear.

Until then, places, everyone.

We’re not done yet.

Here are some of the wise, kind, supportive words and their writers. I’m sharing this to honour their impact and in case you need to hear it too 🫶

(sorry I can’t tag for some reason but I’ll tag them in the comments 💗)

💕 “Stay for the creatives […] lean all the way into those […] you are not too sensitive or soft, those things are a gift and the world needs more of it” JoJo - The Pocket Coach

💕 “Carry on writing…I’m not prepared to give them to power to drive me away […] the world needs your voice” Annie Ashdown

💕 “we need to hear your unique and personal journey through only the words that you would use. Keep going” Jo

💕 “I support you in protecting your peace” Liz O’Connor

💕 “Sending you love to make the right decision for yourself” Helene

💕 “The good, kind hearted creatives still exist! Stay! We need your voice!” Amelia Hall

💕 “I like having you here. Screw nasty people.” The Invisible ink

💕 “Don’t go! You’ve been a consistent friend” Serafina Alessi

There is a very particular rage that comes with traumatic events.

And it’s never the romanticised theatrics we see on screens, there’s no throwing ourselves on the bed or gazing longingly out of raindrop decorated glass.

No, it’s this cold, lonely, prickly fury. Anger because the world has the absolute audacity to continue.

How. Fucking. Dare it.

When I miscarried, I walked out of the hospital clutching flimsy leaflets about “next steps” and “helpful telephone numbers”, whilst moving in a body that had utterly betrayed me, bearing the guilt of being a failure as a woman (don’t worry, I’ve had therapy since so of course this is not true but hey, your brain does what the brain wants in these moments right?).

And in the hospital car park, out in the open for all to see, brazenly, a young couple were debating whether to go to Nando’s.

Nando’s.

They were discussing chicken.

Can you belieeeeeeeeve?!

I remember thinking: haven’t they heard the deafening sirens? Didn’t they feel the ground shake beneath our feet? Aren’t their eyes completely out of focus? How the hell are they thinking about lunch when we’ve lost all senses?!

People!

STOP!

A second time the rage came, it was following another loss but of a dear, long life loved one. And it was the same jarring, violent contrast of realities.

I drove one day that week, scream singing in my car, properly, unhinged, mascara-on-the-steering-wheel, gut wrenching wails, and then realised I had come to a junction. (Evanescence ‘Going Under’ on repeat in case you’re wondering.)

Then an actual man in an actual van waved me through. Like it was actually a normal day, but it was not actually a normal day. How was he acting so painfully normal? Nothing was normal anymore!!

Nothing is ever ‘normal’ again after grief pays a visit.

I wanted to get out and shout, “Have you not heard? Something has ended! The world has shifted and we cannot go back! How the hell do you dare carry on!

Just STOP!”

But no one stopped.

Trauma splits the world in two. Before and after. You’ve seen behind the thin curtain and you can’t unsee it, you know it’s fragile.

Errands became utterly absurd.

Small talk became an extreme sport.

“Can I get you anything else?” felt like satire.

But I am British. And aaaaaall the toxicity that goes with it.

So I straighten my back and say things like, “These things happen,” as if miscarriage and death are mildly inconvenient weather systems.

I apologise to pharmacists.

I over thank receptionists.

I go to work despite less than 48 hours ago being hospitalised.

I thank goodness for bank holidays.

I feel proud of my stiff upper lip.

I hate myself.

There is a national skill in carrying on. We treat devastation like a pulled muscle: Ice it. Don’t mention it. Definitely don’t make a scene in Tesco. Keep your screaming in private. Put your smile back on.

So I did.

I hid my rage beneath the smile.

I carried on like a ‘normal’ human would, playing the part expertly so as not to make others uncomfortable.

All the while thinking: this is madness.

I wanted the world to stop. Literally stop turning, everyone to be paused like a still image of life, statues, just briefly. A quiet, respectful pause. Acknowledgement that something irreversible had occurred and we needed a breath.

But the world did not stop.

It offered a loyalty card and asked if I’d tried the new flatbread range.

And eventually, offensively, I joined back in. I truly hated myself for it but i did it anyway. “I haven’t the energy for driving social change right now”, I tell myself, “I’ll do that next time”.

And I deploy the most British coping mechanism ever invented.

Tea, anyone?

A surprising number of my now friends have confessed something to me over wine, and no, not those kind of confessions you filthy readers!… But rather, “I didn’t like you when I first met you.”

Not “I didn’t know you” or “I misread you”, no.

Flatly: didn’t like.

The reasons are always fascinating, “you seemed too nice”, “I thought you were fake”, “I assumed you were smug.”

Too nice is my personal favourite, a real character flaw.

The thing is, lovely ladies in particular, (men you have your own set of challenges!) we’re told to be warm, confident, articulate, competent, emotionally intelligent, good at eye contact, firm handshakes, strong but vulnerable, ambitious but grounded etc etc etbloodyc!

And simultaneously, be small, be quiet, be agreeable, be unintimidating, don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

Which is impressive, because those instructions directly contradict each other, what a joyous, never ending challenge for us ey! Even Sisyphus would be jealous.

So you grow up trying to calibrate yourself like some sort of emotional thermostat. Smile, but don’t beam. Speak, but don’t dominate. Achieve, but apologise. And on and on we go.

And eve if you do aaaaaaaall the things, you still get filed under Annoying On Sight.

When enough people later admit they disliked you initially, something shifts. You start scanning rooms, reading faces, interpreting neutral expressions as silent verdicts, the paranoia is suffocating.

I have, far too regularly and as recently as three days ago, convinced myself that strangers hate me before I’ve even taken my coat off.

It’s not drama, It’s pattern recognition gone rogue. Even my therapy sessions go quiet when I present the extensive evidence behind this assumption that haunts me. My poor therapist has her work cut out!

This all considered, made auditioning for the local theatre group last year feel mildly unhinged. Willingly(ish) going into a room full of new people. Literally asking them to judge me. Oof. Masochist.

Every old thought resurfaced, of course. Off the brain train went, “they’ll think you’re too much, too keen, too big, too old, too something, too everything”.

And I went anyway.

That’s the bit I’m quietly proud of. Not the performance but the entering.

Letting people decide what they like or don’t like without pre-editing myself into something more palatable. Showing up as me.

Here’s the twist: every single person who later told me they “hated” me at first eventually admitted the same things::.

“I was intimidated.”

“I thought you wouldn’t like me.”

“I assumed you had it together.”

Which is almost funny, considering how often I’m just trying not to bolt for the exit. Maybe we don’t get to control the first impression, or win the contradiction.

Maybe the real bravery is letting people misunderstand you, and showing up anyway. Again and again.

Tell me, have you ever been told you were misjudged?

And did you shrink next time?

Or did you go back into the room?

As I’ve written before, I often find the second time harder than the first. Going back into a room knowing people have made up their minds, yet still do not know you.

Peopling is hard.

I Thought I Could Fix Him. It Broke Me.

Based on a true story. Allegedly.

She married him because she thought “Loyalty + Hard Work = Love” ..PAH! Idiot.

In her twenties that felt mature. He struggled with addiction, she told herself it was sensitivity.. Depth.. what ‘Bright Eyes’ had been singing about. He called her his anchor, which sounded romantic until she realised anchors don’t get thanked, they just get dragged.

She genuinely believed if she loved him properly, patiently, then he would settle. Become the version of himself he occasionally hinted at when they were with friends or family. What a great showman.

Unsurprising surprise: he did not.

What he did become was increasingly certain that everything was her fault. Oh! The moods! And the tormenting nights away. The way she reacted to these unexplained absences. His Mother understood, of course she did. (Insert eye roll). Narcissism doesn’t arrive with a name badge. It just rearranges reality until you start apologising for things you didn’t do and there’s no one left to call.

He made sure of that.

Shortly after the arrogantly sized wedding, a bright and breezy medical consultant proudly told her he had discovered she had PCOS and “it might be difficult” to have children. Wasn’t he clever. Gold fucking star for him. She nodded, held it together, and then cried in the car. The weight of the looming consequence she knew was coming. The husband did not speak to her the whole way home. Her tears were inconsequential.

Unsurprising surprise: they divorced.

It wasn’t dramatic. Just paperwork and a slow, humiliating understanding that you cannot fix someone who doesn’t think they’re broken. Besides, Jessica from Accounts soon starting f…ixing him before ink was even on the papers. Lucky her.

Anyway, back to the heroin of the story.. she moved counties and rented a room in a flat with two grown adults who walked their cats on leads. On purpose. In public. Harnesses and everything. She tried very hard to be open-minded but the less said about that situation the better.

Weekends became noisy and chaotic. She told herself she was “living a bit” … it was when her friends reappeared and slowly started recommending Brene Brown Ted talks, Glennon Doyle podcasts and even posting her a copy of The Outrun by Amy Lipton (great book by the way!!!), she started to get the feeling all was not as it should be. But what should it be?

It was somewhere in this period that she started narrating her life in third person. As you do.

‘Look at her, she is absolutely fine, another bottle of Prosecco down, legend, Snapchat will love her, people will love her, what a pathetic fool’ the voice would say as she got ready to go out yet again. So thin. The divorcee diet was working well. Mustn’t forget, long sleeves to cover the cuts.

Plot twist..she fell pregnant.

She miscarried.

The silence afterwards was enormous.

Her way of living out in the world got so bad she ended up having to file a harassment complaint against one particular relentless consequence, how ridiculous. failed again. The copper was cute which helped.

Unsurprising surprise: she ran away.

Australia. Naturally.

If your life feels like it’s caving in, crossing several time zones feels proactive. Skydiving right? maybe fear would reset her. Instead, the instructor flirted with her mid-air For Fucks SAKE.

“Do you fancy getting a drink in Sydney tonight?” he shouted.

She was strapped to him and falling out of the sky. Awkwarrrrrrd. Turns out you cannot outrun men. Not geographically. Not gravitationally.

Unsurprising surprise: a nice man crops up.

Years pass. Let’s fast forward.

She Mothers during Covid AKA Learning to drive while the car is already on fire. At the same time, she’s deep in global corporate sales management for a snazzy pants car brand. Her dream job for all of 45minutes on day1, then 3years of hell. Long relentless hours, short dick energy egos, pressure to pull miracles out of her ass.

Conference calls with men who smirk things like “Don’t get emotional” and “You’re very fiery” as though that very un constructive feedback was invited. Endless opinions about her tone. Her ambition. Her “approach.” Things her male counterparts were never asked to soften as they threatened each other to a punch up in the car park (yes, this genuinely happened).

Her phone never stopped, International colleagues ringing at all hours as though she existed in a permanent state of availability. Legs constantly open to them. She performed competence so convincingly she nearly forgot she was drowning.

And then the oddest thing happened.

On walks, she started seeing labels above people’s heads.

AFFAIR.

DIVORCED.

ADDICT.

LIAR.

BREAKDOWN.

She knew they weren’t real, that was the worrying bit. She was still semi-sane enough to know her brain had made them up. But it felt soothing assigning neat summaries to strangers. Categorising them to feel less lonely amongst her sea of other fuck ups.

Unsurprising surprise: she needed drugs.

Eventually she went to the GP and produced a colour-coded spreadsheet of the past decade, like she was presenting a quarterly review of her own collapse. Type A’s give me a cheer(!!).

Marriage. Divorce. PCOS. Miscarriage. Harassment. Australia. Pandemic. Burnout. Cat Harnasses.

He looked at it and said, very gently, “Well… yes. That’s a lot.”

Which is doctor-speak for obviously.

He prescribed anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants with the calm of someone who has seen too many women arrive at breaking point while still managing to function. And she thought she was special pfffft.

Unsurprising surprise: she was not.

She drove to Chester (her safe space, past Her would know what to do) and checked into a hotel because she didn’t trust herself to process it at home. With witnesses. Shhhhhh.

Grubby stained carpet looking back at her. No amount of cleaning would ever erase the marks. She stood there holding the tablets, looking in the mirror at her own face.

Who actually are you?

The fixer?

The failure?

The high-performer?

The woman who sees subtitles above strangers?

For a moment she slipped into third person again. Hello narrator old friend.

“Still a pathetic failure I see, how boring”.

She took the medication exactly as prescribed, 1 tablet, 2 tablet, 3 tablet, 4. and sat on the edge of the bed waiting for something profound to happen…

Unsurprising surprise: Nothing did.

No revelation. No cinematic breakdown. Just the deeply underwhelming realisation that she wasn’t uniquely tragic or dramatic. She was a very typical, very competent woman who had taken on too much for too long and called it resilience, but endurance is not strength.

She laughed. A proper, tired laugh.

She’d married a project. Crossed continents. Jumped out of a plane. Climbed corporate ladders. Survived a pandemic. Built spreadsheets to explain her own brain.

And the conclusion?

She was burnt out and anxious.

How wildly glamorous.

The next morning she checked out, paid for parking, and drove home. The world had not shifted. The demands and ghosts remained. The only thing that had changed was this: She could no longer pretend that performing strength was the same thing as being well.

And, frankly, if she was that bloody good at performing, she’d better get back on the stage. Which brings us to here.

Rehearsals again tomorrow.

Break a leg.

What is Mercury’s problem and why is it seemingly always in bloody retrograde? Although it’s a nice excuse/explanation for why instead of striding confidently through my thirties like a woman with a plan, I seem to be carefully undoing my twenties and reviving parts of myself I thought I’d outgrown.

According to the stars, this isn’t failure it’s retrieval. As though I’m a Labrador? And whilst it’s confidently pitched to me as reassuring, it’s certainly not what I had in mind. I was hoping for wisdom, not a character recall from 1998. (Oof, the 90s…. Glitter on top of glitter with even more glitter. As if the endless plastic sparkles would make life magical.)

Career-wise, the horoscope suggested I may have climbed the wrong ladder. Rude, but fair. It turns out I’m less interested in forward momentum and more interested in remembering why I once thought music, creativity, and joy were perfectly reasonable life goals. Rather than striving to live to someone else’s reasonable and perfect.

On a personal level, I’m apparently “softening.” Less keen to be impressive. More likely to sit on the floor (or steps, see last article!). This checks out and I do not love how accurate it is.

Motherhood featured heavily. I’m advised to be more present, less polished, and permanently holding a cup of tea. Although this feels easier though Winter when we’re hibernating, intrigued to see how it plays out through Spring…

Health guidance was brief but bold: stop proving yourself, stretch occasionally, and lie down when possible. Groundbreaking stuff.

The overall message was clear

*progress is temporarily unavailable

*please try rememberiing

*forward motion will resume later

*for now, backward, inward, and sideways are acceptable routes

I don’t know whether this is growth or Mercury having a laugh at my expense. I only know I feel less lost than I did before I read it, which feels suspiciously like wisdom.

If your life currently looks like reverse with intention, I’d love to know whether you easily have trust in it? In past you?

Horoscope ended with:

You are not regressing. You are remembering.

Honestly? I’ll take it.

I am very aware of my age. Of my body. Of how long it’s been since I last moved in a room full of mirrors.

The soft, carpeted, grey, fuzzy, fabric, bland, safe step is cold, yes I am stalling.

Im not ready to be seen.

The sparkling new trainers are painfully clean, my attempt at armour and attempt to fit in. the sort worn by women who still believe they might be allowed to want things.

Behind me, the door is open,

patient, forgiving,

offering tea, familiar rooms,

and a version of myself I’ve grown accustomed to.

Ahead:

a rehearsal room,

strangers with easy confidence,

bodies that remember what mine has forgotten.

Fear arrives, not dramatic, but sensible and cruel. It reminds me I am a mother. That I am busy. That I am so late to this life.

It asks “who do you think you are?”

I hummm Spice Girls in agreement.

If not now, when?

My legs shake.

My mouth is dry.

I pick up my bag anyway.

Not because I am brave, but because staying would mean teaching myself I am done.

If you’ve ever paused like this, ashamed of wanting, terrified of trying

Please tell me..::

Did you go?

This is the story of how I took the sensible path, lost myself slightly, and found my way back.

Once upon a time (and quite a long time ago), there was a misfit girl. Someone who did not blend in.

Little me.

This is for her.

At school, this was immediately obvious. While other children were busy becoming socially acceptable, she was signing up for choirs, school shows, and anything involving standing under a light and singing feelings at people, whether they wanted it or not.

Break times were for rehearsing.

Assemblies were for harmonies.

Corridors were for quietly longing to be somewhere else.

Yet she felt she was a misfit with a map because music helped her make sense of the world. It had rules and structure, and it let you feel things without having to explain them.

So when it came time to choose a future, she followed the map straight to university, assuming this was how her story should go.

Afterall, wasn’t that what everyone else was doing?

The part where the story stalls

University was thrilling and confusing in equal measure. Everyone around her seemed to want more: more recognition, more success, more proof that they were exceptional.

She, meanwhile, just wanted to belong quietly.

It soon became clear that the path ahead involved self-promotion, competition, and a willingness to shout ‘pick me’ into rooms dominated by the patriarchy wearing scarves and strong opinions. She got collared by an agent in the big smoke of London ready to ‘make her a star’ …his star…

But she didn’t want to be anyone’s star.

She couldn’t pretend to care about being paraded around swanky parties, talking about trivial things she had no interest in, this wider world made little sense to her.

Once again, she was a misfit, now with a degree yet no clear path ahead. Feeling even more isolated as her old world was rejecting her for trying to be something, and the new world was not accepting her because, to them, she wasn’t anything. She was lost. Alone again.

Desperate for something to anchor to and steady herself. Something ….serious?

Afterall, wasn’t that what everyone else was doing?

The sensible detour (which lasted years)

Feeling practical, and after a rather strange and harsh direction change, she made a sensible decision. The sort that sounds very grown-up when explained to parents.

She went into corporate sales management for Aston Martin. How glamorous, surely…

This is how she found herself in the automotive world, surrounded by targets, buried by spreadsheets, and intimidated by men who treated time zones like a personal challenge.

She learned the new language: P&L, commercial pipelines, amortisation.She hardened. She adapted. She became very good at sounding confident. Her theatre skills coming in handy for a short while, after all, she saw business as quite the pantomime!

Motherhood arrived somewhere along this 100mph road, and she simply added it to the list; children, meetings, life, juggling everything with a polite smile and a slowly tightening chest. Suffocating. Drowning.

She told herself this was adulthood.

Afterall, wasn’t that what everyone else was doing?

The moment the spell breaks

Every fairytale has a moment when the enchantment falters…

For her, it came quietly. A realisation that corporate management wasn’t just demanding, it was changing her. That spending every day armoured, decisive, and permanently available was costing her something she could no longer afford to lose.

She didn’t feel safe being soft there.

She didn’t feel safe being feminine.

She didn’t feel safe being herself.

So one day, with no fanfare and an excellent handover, of course, she left.

Afterall, that is what she needed to do.

The unexpected return

Without the corporate script, her life began to rewild itself.

She reached out and started volunteering with Barnardo’s children’s charity, where care mattered more than outcomes.

She worked with animals, who required presence, not performance. Having some peace for her busy brain, attempting to slow down.

She wandered into a local theatre audition “just to watch” and somehow ended up in a musical. (More about that debacle in my other article!!).

Instead of being available 24/7 to international demands, she became available to school pickups, rehearsals, walks, and long breaths she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. It was not efficient. It was deeply nourishing.

The soft ending (which is really a beginning)

Something curious happened as her life softened.

She became a calmer mother. A more patient one. Less sharp around the edges. The armour came off, piece by piece.

She laughed more and slept better, she remembered who she’d been before she learned to make herself smaller to fit the room. She was fun again. She had fun again.

And just like that, the misfit found herself at home, in a life that finally had space for all of her.

Still a misfit.

Still drawn to music.

Still choosing the woods over the castle.

And if this is a fairytale, it’s the British kind so no grand finale, just a quiet sense of grounding, a slow cup of hot tea, and the relief of knowing the story hasn’t ended after all.

In the words of the Mother Taylor…

Next chapter.

Husband away with work. I’ve the night off from kids. Time to get the house ‘straight’…..

And now I’m in a musical.

This is how a frazzled middle-aged working mum with two young children, and a carefully managed calendar accidentally reintroduced jazz hands into her life.

I did not warm up.

I did not plan ahead.

I definitely did not expect to be cast.

And yet here I am, standing in a rehearsal room on a Thursday night, singing eight part harmony while trying to remember which foot leads on count four, my crackling knees quietly questioning my judgement.

Say yes to yourself

How did this happen?

Well…

It was a small, quiet advert amongst a sea of scrolling. Open auditions. In my town. That day.

Surely I couldn’t.

Or could I?

A teeny tiny voice inside said YES. So I thought, I’ll just get showered in case I go…

I’ll just get dressed in my most loved outfit in case I go…

I’ll just have a listen to a song I love to sing when I’m in the shower, pretending to be a stage diva, in case I go…

I say nothing about it when I catch up on the phone with the husband, because I’m not actually going to go am I?

I’ll just get in the car and see what the hall looks like.

I’ll just sit in the car and see if other people are here.

Maybe I’ll just pop my head in to see if they have space, I’m sure they’re full.

Four hours later I’m on my way home thinking ‘what just happened?!’ And ‘well that was fun, aren’t there some talented people about, I’ll definitely go and watch that when it’s on’.

Then I get a call back(?!)

I have to go again?? I guess there’s no harm in having fun just once more is there?

And now, three months later, I’m here. Facing five months of rehearsing three times a week, and then a run of eight shows in a musical I didn’t mean to be in.

Buckle up buttercup, you’re on.

The body notices first

Musical theatre is not subtle.

It asks for breath and movement at the same time.

It asks the body to remember things the mind has politely forgotten.

I am surrounded by performers who move with ease, who seem to have been stretching consistently since adolescence. They slide into the splits like your old flame haunts your Insta DMs! My own creaky, soft body is older, wiser, shaped by pregnancy, sleep deprivation, and years of carrying everything (literally and metaphorically).

There is fear here.

Not of failing, but of endurance.

Can I do this night after night?

Can I be strong enough without turning it into another unfinished project?

Can I let my body meet me where it is, rather than where it once was?

These questions arrive uninvited, and stay. The old devil ‘perfectionism’ calling by.

A memory rises

I have a music degree.

This fact has been resting quietly in me for years, like a stone at the bottom of a river, smoothed, still, easy to forget until you step on it.

As a teenager, music was how I understood myself. Rehearsals, late nights, that shared hush before the first note. It wasn’t about being impressive. It was about belonging inside sound.

Adulthood didn’t erase that part of me.

It just asked her to wait.

The moment I sang in that audition room, something ancient and familiar stirred. Not ambition. Recognition.

My body remembered before my head did. Those chills running down my spine, hairs standing to attention, the connection through voice is a special kind of magic our ancient mothers passed down.

A space where I am not the odd one out. Rare.

Fear, again, but softer this time

There is the practical fear:

of sore muscles

of missed steps

of being the one who needs a breather

And then there is the deeper one, the mother fear, the quiet question of whether joy that takes time and energy is somehow indulgent.

Leaving the house with sheet music instead of packed lunches still feels transgressive some nights.

But fear is not a verdict.

It’s a signal.

Sometimes it just means you’ve stepped back into your own life. Hello you. I’ve missed you.

The unexpected medicine

No one tells you that singing while moving is deeply regulating.

There is no space for rumination when your breath is busy, when your ears are listening, when your body has to be exactly here.

The mind quietens.

The nervous system steadies.

The body grows stronger without being punished.

This is fitness without self-criticism.

Movement without moral weight.

A rare thing.

Motherhood, seen differently

My children see me practise.

They see me tired and trying.

They see me leave the house nervous and return lighter.

This isn’t time taken from them.

It’s a different kind of offering.

A mother who is allowed to want something.

A mother who doesn’t disappear.

What this is, and what it isn’t

This is not a comeback.

I’m not reclaiming anything.

I’m not proving I’ve “still got it.”

I’m letting something grow, awkwardly, imperfectly, in a body and life that have changed.

Some nights I will be strong.

Some nights I will ache.

Some nights I will forget a step and laugh instead of apologising.

All of it belongs.

Final note

I don’t know how my body will feel by show week.

I don’t know how neatly it will all fit.

But I do know this: a younger version of me loved this world, and I am finally kind enough to let her back in, without urgency, without optimisation, without asking it to make sense.

That feels like mental health.

That feels like growth.

That feels like coming home.

Could you stay here with me through this? Writing it down keeps the gremlins at bay x