"Superwomen" have it all by NOT doing it all..

I was pretty nervous when Nina called from Fairfax to ask me questions about being a working Mum. Mainly because I feel slightly guilty about it most of the time. I have written about the struggle of Mum's today in Mamamia not once but twice, and so hearing that Sunday Life was going to do an article about us "Superwomen" was reassuring.

The age old question, "Shouldn't Mums give up their working, social and every other kind of lives for the lives of their children?", was still rattling around in my guilty conscience as Nina asked me questions about how I coped. But I remembered some of the advice I had had from so many women who now had older kids and had juggled it all. The lovely Bern Morley told me that there has been absolutely no negative affects on her gorgeous children and they'd been in child care from infancy. And TV-host Melissa Doyle, who arrives at the set of Sunrise every week day at 4.30am, told me she felt the same and elaborated saying "I hope they feel proud of their Mum". Their confidence calmed me and reminded me of the key reasons why I chose to be a working Mum.

But if you are thinking about being a "superwoman" and feel like it'd be all too much, you'd be right. It is really hard and what has come to light it is how insane it is. But take heart - help is here. Because there are so many of us now, there are also highly-accessible and acceptable services ready to help us manage. And as journalist Cosima Marriner writes in Sunday's article:

 "No longer do we have to pretend to the world we're [superwomen] – while imploding inside with the impossibility of doing it all...we've found a new role model: Outsourcing Woman."

Read the full article here: Mother's Little Helpers in yesterday's Sunday Life/Sun-Herald. 

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Fitzy does a Nudie Rudie in front of my sketchpad

I hadn't even eaten breakfast when I was faced with a man wearing only a sapphire necklace winking at me. "WTF!" I thought and then I remembered that two short days prior I had actually brought this little, I mean quite large (sorry Fitzy!) situation on myself by sending the tweet below. 

The day started like any other; Crash nearly choked on the apple he snuck out of his kindy bag, Bang didn't quite make it to the potty and I took too long in the bathroom. Then I found myself standing next to Ryan Fitzgerald's wife while her husband de-robed. Despite the indisputable thrill of getting up close and personal (there's a fun euphemism) with my fave radio personalities, Fitzy & Wippa, the real fun was when Fitzy's son Hughie started yelling "Dadda, bum bum...Dadda BUM BUM".

Since becoming a Mum of two boys myself, watching this little man, trying to tell his Dad that he possibly should put some clothes on was priceless. Little people are SO cute and effortlessly hilarious. With Fitzy as your Dad though you may get a bit of a head start in the humour stakes, and showing signs of this Hughie almost stole the show, well for me anyway. Give me a toddler to talk to any day over staring at a 6'5" super cut naked male body! LOL!
(You can see the full hilarious exchange on the video from Nova and also discover that the photo of me was taken surprisingly when Fitzy still had clothes on - see not the dirty p€rve you thought I was). 

Anyway I did manage to get some sketching done despite the utter mayhem that was going on around the easels see below but don't think it does him justice.

"Still Life...my ar5e" a frenetic work of art by Nicole of Fitzy!

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Home is where the hate is...The Slap strikes again.

The Slap even has the NY Times' vote, so it's any wonder that I wrote two articles on it, Aisha's episode airs tonight in the US, here was my take as published on The Punch back in November last year. 

The thousands of words on Twitter reflected my own emotions as I watched ABC TV’s The Slap last week. One tweet said: “it’s totally brutal!”, another: “searing, uncomfortable melancholy” and one more: “did anyone else’s heart sink tonight watching The Slap?”

Fierce, frightening

Mine certainly did and I was not the only one. It was a bit close to the bone for many, as it shone an unceremonious light on characters’ Aisha and Hector’s 16-year marriage.

As I watched Aisha fake anger and hurt at Hector’s admission of his minor infidelity, all the while withholding her own more major dalliance, an image of marriage popped into my head: Marriage is a bonfire stack piling higher and higher with hurts, waiting for a spark to ignite an explosion of desire or destruction.

Unfortunately popular culture would have us believe every argument ends in make-up sex but the reality is closer to Aisha’s lack of emotion.

The pain we cause each other over years seems to numb us and more often than not. Nothing ends in nothing, with one in three marriages unfortunately ending in divorce rather than unquenchable desire.

Having been married for eight years, this statistic doesn’t surprise me. It is amazing that it isn’t higher given how cruel we can be to the one person we are meant to love the most.

We seem to save our empathy and kindness for the stranger we strike up an impromptu conversation with or the little old lady that needs a hand up the stairs. Our partners, however, get full-blown resentment, rudeness, neglect and disdain.

These emotions are often balanced with intimacy, trust and loyalty but why, when things are going wrong, do we turn on the person we thought we could not live without?

It’s probably because marriage is tough. And it’s even harder when children come along.

The cute little blighters turn hairline cracks quickly into structural damage.

But they’re not fully to blame and often just accentuate underlying disappointment, which is the real culprit.

It’s any wonder we are set up to fail when the start of a marriage mimics a red carpet event. The wedding is such a pivotal event in our society, you and your spouse never looked better, you have this huge party with friends and family and then you go on holidays somewhere beautiful for at least two weeks.

This fun series of events never happens again as you settle in to living with someone who has a unique type of annoyingness designed to drive you slowly insane.

You hit the treadmill of working towards a home and a family, money issues come up, time together is minimised by work, looking after kids or rare, but sanity-saving time to yourself.

Next thing you know you are old and living with someone who is your co-parenting housemate and that’s about it.

For me and I think a lot of women, the disappointment is based on my expectation that I would have a deep connection with this person as soon as we said ‘I do’.

I obviously had no clue about blokes, where often the only thing that is deep is their inbuilt ability to hide their emotions.

Everyone’s challenge is slightly different but our own unique disappointment ends up looking a lot like Aisha’s face every time she looks at Hector.

Her bonfire of pain is so large she buries it so as not to feel hurt every second of the day. She blames Hector for it and punishes him so she’s not the only one feeling so bloody awful. It is dysfunctional, unkind and near the opposite of love.

But it is human nature to avoid responsibility for your own unhappiness. It is so much easier to blame your partner for trapping you into a life you didn’t expect than facing your own inner flaws and personal failings that got you there.

And looking for a solution in another human that looks as sparkly with potential as your partner once did, well that’s even easier.

As I watched Aisha consider leaving Hector, I thought of my own marriage and imagined if it was over. My heart broke at the thought.

I wouldn’t remember that my husband didn’t hear human voices if sport was on, or that he made the bathroom look like a great dane had just shaken himself off in there.

But I would desperately miss all the things I take for granted. His patience with the boys, his calmness when I feel like I will lose my mind, his pragmatism that balances my dreaminess. His shy blue eyes looking at us with love and wonder and his stoic confidence and ability to just get on with it when others would fall in a heap.

I’m no expert on happy marriages, but seeing the hate and numbness of Christos Tsiolkas’ characters made me realise where I didn’t want to end up.

So I’m off to slap my hubby - with a big fat kiss and if he’s lucky… with some much-earned kindness too. Okay, a bit of something else may be considered. Just don’t tell him, I’d hate to disappoint…

Nicole is a blogger at MyIdeaLife.com.au, a freelance writer, social media junkie and corporate marketer.

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The Problem with Mortality: Jim Stynes gone at 45

On the day of Jim Stynes state funeral an edited version of this post was published in the Tele

"All those moments lost in time...like tears in rain...time to die"

BladeRunner 1982

I’m not in to watching sport, in fact when my husband turns it on, daily that is, I go kind of mental and loudly threaten a 24 hour Jane Austen marathon until he changes the channel. But tonight the not so random Fox Sports channel specifically selected to watch a dedication to AFL legend Jim Stynes sent me a different kind of crazy. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I took in the loss of an obviously great man with a rare mix of humility, drive and amazing character. My heart broke as I imagined his wife and children facing a future without what was obviously the backbone of their reality gone. And as I saw the helplessness we all share when the enemy of our time rears it’s ugly head, to cut short another young life at only 45, it was almost too much.

Last year Sarah Watt died of Cancer, a month before her, Steve Jobs, weeks before that Gavin Larkin, a few months before that my cousin, and the list goes on like a morbid game of Chinese Whispers that leaves only grief and sadness in its wake.

We are surrounded by death, a day does not go by in which we are not confronted by mortality. Whether it be a car accident, a suicide bomb or an illness, the TV beams it to us daily. Not surprising really, given over 150,000 people die each day. What is surprising though is how we manage to ignore it, mainly because it is not our own and for years and hopefully whole life times we carve a path through life without looking death squarely in the eye. We live as if immortal.

Even when my Mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer I managed to shelve the situation in the “she’ll be right” category of my brain and luckily she was. Today though my delusion is showing cracks and I don’t know whether it is maturity or just that the people threatened and dying now are peers, but my "eternal" existence is being challenged.

Jim, Steve and Sarah had children, so have I, they were happy, so am I, they were in their 40s, so am I, they were needed, so am I. There it is, the unfamiliar face of death taking someone my age, at my stage of life. It is despicable, wrong and absurd. But most of all it is insanely confronting.

It is an understatement to say I am not happy about this happening. The injustice of it is driving me quietly mad. I am sad and angry and desperate at this interruption to such brilliant existences. “It is NOT fair! this is not how it is meant to be” I scream as I try to return death back to its abstract box, miles away from me. But as I spin hopelessly in my new world without infinity, I realise I need a new way to look at this or I would be of no use to anybody.

Then I remembered what I had heard last year. When it became apparent that Steve Jobs was gravely ill, I watched his speech to Stanford graduates. It left me a blubbering mess then and compelled me to write about his life, but his words were like oxygen for those grieving his loss after he died and I so I share them again as we grieve again today for Jim Stynes:

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart…”

Steve Jobs, 2005

And when Jim Stynes was asked whether he thought what was happening to him was incredibly unjust he responded: 

“Life throws up challenges, life is unfair.
When you understand that, you can get on with your life”. 

Jim Stynes, 2010

He also admitted to being too busy to get a sizable lump on his back checked despite his wife urging him to go to the Doctor. Sound familiar? “Living” does gets in the way of life and if on the day we die we want to look back without regret, listening to those that have at last faced their own mortality is key. 

So maybe instead of seeing a seething monster when death reminds us it exists, we need to see a motivator with a light shining through our material and superficial trappings to our soul and heart. A filter that tears away the unimportant and uncovers what it is we want from our very finite life. 

Unfortunately these inspirational and wise words can’t reduce the intense pain of losing someone we love or the thought of our own self ceasing. But maybe if we accepted that one day our spirit will end with one final synapse firing in our brain. Maybe then and only then would we truly learn how to live, grateful for the things that matter, and looking for ways to find inner happiness and share it with those we love.

When life gets in the way and I forget what really matters I am going to stop and remember the great ones that don’t have the chances I have, to cherish their gorgeous family and friends and to stop sometimes and just be.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam Jim Stynes

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MUMMY FAILURES UNITE!

For those of you that know me, you probably know I am SO not afraid to express my opinions in real life, but mainly on topics I know a lot about. So maybe if I was writing about advertising or marketing I would be out on a limb every day (stay tuned), but instead I mostly write about motherhood. As a fairly new Mum myself and with no formal parenting training I am very careful not to put myself forward as any type of expert in that area. Like most Mummy bloggers, I am bumbling through the most challenging experience of my life and all I can hope is that what I write shows empathy to other parents who were equally shocked by the challenges of parenthood.

So I was pretty surprised at the reaction of some women to a piece I wrote that was published on Mamamia last Tuesday. The article was my personal feelings surrounding sending my eldest to daycare. I intentionally put an alternative view forward simply because it occurred to me that maybe a bit of daycare would have done me good when I was younger, never dreaming this would be misconstrued as attacking stay-at-home Mums. Nor that it would incite nearly 500 comments.

One comment from a non-Mum created a very valid furore:
"Sorry, but what’s the point of having kids if you’re just going to ship them off somewhere? Yeah, I know, ppl need to work blah blah but if you can’t afford kids then don’t have them. Personally when I have kids, I’m going to look after them 24/7, I won’t have kids and palm them off willy nilly." 

Another Mum was in a fury:
“I do find this article infuriating. Is it not possible to simply outline all the positives you see about your own personal choice of parenting without having to resort to attacking any other choice that’s different to yours?...Please don’t assume that my daughter was sheltered and protected at home by a doting, grumpy mother…”

Another stated I was condescending and a bully to stay-at-home Mums. (I am not, for the record.) 

Another was a little more realistic and extremely funny:
"I am a SAHM. I would dearly LOVE to place (dump, bung, fling, fire out of a cannon) my children into daycare for a day or two a week. Can’t afford it. Sigh. It’s been 7 years at home and we’re all sick of looking at each other. I would love a chance to miss my children." 

And there were many gems of wisdom such as this one:
"The way I see it, it takes a village to raise a child, not a mum and dad in isolation, which is often the case now, we live so far from extended family." 

Needless to say my personal quandary caused a little bit of 'discussion' probably because modern parenting is so personal, contentious and varied. I am glad we have choices, however hard they may be, where our own Mothers did not. I think we will always have regrets, I already feel that it probably would have been better if my eldest went to kindy at 16 months instead of 9 months but my work situation did not allow for this (I was pregnant with my second and had to return for 6 months before going on maternity leave again). Then again as one wise commenter on Mamamia said, you can never tell what would have had better outcomes because you can’t run concurrent existences for your children to see if they would have faired better taking a different path.

One thing occurred to me though as I read all the comments, Lana Hirschowitz, the editor of Mamamia and Mia Freedman have the best jobs in the world if this is what they see most days. That is, passionate women who adore their children and truly want the best for them, which was the theme through most of the comments. Also the vast majority were empathetic, understanding and kind in their support for Mothers who face tough decisions involving the loves of our lives. We’ve all been there and the support between us is so crucial. Children used to be brought up by a community and although so many of us are isolated geographically, online can be that community at least for insanity-prevention if not for providing the break all Mums need now and then. 

For those that were judgemental, harsh and self-righteous well they can stay by themselves in their perfect worlds and have this video to keep them company. 

So go have a read and see what about 400 Mums feel about daycare – it is fascinating and mostly really heartwarming and encouraging. 

The video above is a part of a very funny series of videos, created by Valerie Stone Hawthorne you can watch more on YouTube or visit her blog 

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Motherhood Unearthed

As I write nearly three billion Google searches have happened, 98 million tweets posted and 210 billion emails sent and that’s just today. We are living in an age of information, it is everywhere and for most it is easily accessible, that is, until we reach the topic of childbirth.

Traditionally mystery has shrouded this rite of passage, so to speak, but in a time when we are exposed to the sex videos of try-hard celebrities, gruesome crime photos or graphic footage of surgeries, surely the details surrounding childbirth are mild in comparison?

I have given birth twice and I went to the antenatal classes the first time, I watched the video of the screaming woman, but I still had no idea of what I was in store for. I knew there would be pain, I knew my options for drugs or not and I had been told by lots of well-meaning mothers “make sure you get lots of sleep before the baby comes.” That was about it.

Now is when I could choose to fill the gap with some gory details to help prepare any blissfully, waddling first-timers, but a couple of things have given me pause.

Firstly when I asked newly pregnant twitter friend Emily Jade O'Keefe what advice she’d like, she said ‘Only share the good please, I’ll find out the bad’. Secondly pre-baby I vaguely recall hearing some advice but it seemed to go in one ear and out the other. It made me wonder is childbirth and being a new Mum inexplicable to footloose, childfree women?

But what finally sealed the sealed section on childbirth for me was the fact that women are classic worriers, pregnant women are on the anxiety-ridden, hormone roller coaster and new mothers are often near to being committed. So if we were to share the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me drugs, would it help or just send them over the edge?

So I’m not going to explain to you what an ice-filled condom is for, or what happens to your empty belly soon after giving birth, my friend is right – you’ll find that out soon enough.

But there is one thing I wish I’d known: that my life would be turned inside out and upside down and that during the tumultuous and emotional change you have to be kind to yourself. Becoming a mother is one of life’s biggest changes. You’ve probably heard this one by Raphael-Leff (1994) from me before but I love it, they say new Mums are “plunged into a state of inner disequilibrium and external upheaval quite unlike any other encountered in adult life”.

I made the mistake of expecting that I would be an automatic natural earth mother, because understanding and knowing how to rear a child was in both my X chromosomes, wasn’t it? The previous generation didn’t really help as even more was expected in their day, difference being they were often already managing the home so adding children to the mix was tough but not as life-changing. Going from corporate meetings and making decisions on million dollar campaigns up to 60 hours a week to being housebound, while providing food from the stove and my body, and all within a clean environment was like expecting my husband to converse with me during a football match.

The remarkable thing is how remarkable humans are. You adapt and you change and you see the world in a whole new light, one that is broader, deeper and very rewarding. So if nobody has really explained the details of childbirth or been able to articulate what you’ll feel when you first arrive home with a gurgling, wholly dependent, little poo-and-spew ball, then don’t worry – just remember as you get shoved into the deep end of this particularly choppy sea, be kind, be understanding and give yourself a lot of leeway to be as mental as is fitting to one of the biggest challenges you’ll ever face.

P.S. And before the birth cook as many meals as your freezer can store while having your favourite takeaways on fast dial, the last place you want to be is near an open flame on 3 hours sleep.

Inspired by the heavily pregnant Emily Jade O'Keefe, Motherhood Unearthed first appeared on KleenexMums and later on Emily's blog Emily Everywhere

©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

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Steve Jobs and following your heart R.I.P

I was meant to write here yesterday but my content got nicked by The Daily Telegraph. So here's the embarrassing back story instead.

Do you like the professional shot?
Note the strategically placed sunglasses and perfectly coiffed hair! 

I don’t know whether a man half way around the world knows that, in part due to his life’s work, a woman he doesn’t know from Adam is crying because he is off the planet inspirational and she's just heard he is gravely ill.

Sitting minding my own business in a library courtyard on Sunday I was unknowingly about to be rocked to the core, just by clicking play on Steve Jobs’ 15 minute speech to Stanford graduates in 2005. Despite being someone who can’t sit still without a tweet or two every few minutes, I was mesmerised from the start. A lady sitting next to me was also I realised, after she asked me whom I was listening to. "Steve Jobs", I replied, suddenly overwhelmed. “What a nutter!” I thought, “bursting in to tears in front of a stranger!” She was lovely and offered me a tissue. How embarrassing, but really when faced with words such as these below, probably the most logical reaction.

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

This man had already made my life more beautiful and more effective and now he was telling me to follow my heart. Should I have expected anything less? And then I find this out because he is close to the end of an all too short and brilliant life. I wanted to rage against the gods, “why him, why take him when there are lesser men who you could take”, but he has an answer for that too.

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.” Steve Jobs

And this...
“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve Jobs

So I dried my eyes and started to write about this man that I don’t know. And I took his advice literally and with my heart in my throat, I summoned the courage he talked of and sent the finished product off to a major newspaper. And the next day as I was telling myself I had lost nothing by sending it, except maybe a little pride, I read an email asking me for a photo of myself and that my story was to be published the next day!

I will cry again for this man I’m sure, his life’s work has been a part of my life for 17 years and his absence will be felt acutely. But today I am just thankful, not only for him giving me my favourite products in the world but for inspiring me to have faith in myself and be brave. 

He is truly the architect of our lives and our futures.

If you met Steve Jobs, what would you say to him?

© My IdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved.

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Catching fireflies

What a day. The sun’s shining, the birds are singing, the A380s are flying overhead (I live in the inner west) so I grabbed Crash* and threw a rug on the lawn and we surveyed our sparkling surrounds. In between eating grass my 8 month old soaked in the scenes. He’s been trapped indoors by rain for about a week and he couldn’t really contain his joy at finding there was a world outside his colourful rubber mat and the table he’s been systematically pulling himself up on and then falling off.

Watching him with the sun warming my face I got nostalgic, as you do (ok, only if you’re an emotionally-unhinged, hormone-filled nutbag). All these moments from my past and my childhood were flashing through my mind as senses. The smell of the grass, the feel of the winter sun cutting through chilly air, the sound of lorikeets had me galloping through a winter paddock bareback, walking on a sandy beach picking mussels with my Dad, hiding behind a neighbours fence in the dark playing spotlight and jogging through icy night air as my eyelashes froze.

Millions of moments, one half-life (hopefully!) and gone in a flash. There are 6.9 billion humans on earth all having thoughts, moments, times worth remembering and recounting. It’s overwhelming what we’re missing, what we don’t see or understand. It’s humbling and at the same time it’s beautiful to think of the vast preciousness of so many human lives.

I wish we could do justice to every moment of a life, even to just our own, but we can't and we don’t and then before we can think the word ‘regret’ the time has passed. As I look into Crash’s hopeful eyes filled with wonderment I see myself there too, and billions of others. We were all once 8 months old, full of innocence, and despite mine “growing up” and taking in 39 more years of ups and downs, they are still in essence a child’s eyes looking for joy in simple things, craving unconditional love, and innocently curious about everyone and everything.

Right now I focus back on us. Crash is talking in his own little language and he’s yet to learn that sometimes you have to hide your feelings. So his joy, his curiosity, his frustration all come out in gorgeous open facial expressions, sighs, giggles, snaps and bubbles.

And me well I'm breathing in the moments, loving being alive. Today's one is gone now as he’s having his afternoon nap, growing centimeters as he sleeps, and I am writing, desperately writing, trying to capture the light of a firefly in my hands.

*Crash is my 8 month old boy, read more at my About page
 © 2011, My IdeaLife, All rights reserved

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